Latest Laurel Nakadate Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The act of recording requires you to look at and handle and touch things, so yes - art is more than just looking and recording. It's messy and time consuming and people might fall in love and get hurt.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Falling In Love, Art, Hurt

  Source: therumpus.net

• Everything is mediated. Everything is influenced by its maker. And happily, right? I'm so happy everyone leaves fingerprints on things whether they like it or not. Fingerprints solve crimes. They're profound. They're your best and worst friend and you were born with them and you can't get away from them without a lot of pain and sandpaper.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Pain, Profound, Crime

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think it's a really good idea to be bumping into all kinds of people in all kinds of ways. So you make art with strangers. You give a reading. You move somewhere new and try to build a life. You grapple with humanity.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Art, Moving, Reading

  Source: therumpus.net

• If you can see a thing you don't have anymore it's very heartbreaking. To hold onto things longer than we actually can hold onto them is a desire. Writers and artists are trying to record these things they can no longer have. We're a heartbroken lot. Taking pictures is a brave act in which you try to explain and remember a thing you can't have anymore.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Heartbroken, Artist, Brave

  Source: therumpus.net

• Every time I hear that somebody died I think of their body, on a steel table in a morgue somewhere. I think of how they can do nothing about it.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Thinking, Steel, Body

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think we're put out into the world to forge relationships with people. Those can be as small as buying coffee from someone or as large as a marriage. The important thing is that we try to make connections or have experiences with other humans. Otherwise what's the point of being on this earth?

  Laurel Nakadate

  Coffee, Thinking, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• I love fiction. I like reading short stories. Cupcakes, pop songs, Polaroids, and short stories. They all raise and answer questions in a short space. I like Lorrie Moore. Amy Hempel. Tim O'Brien. Raymond Carver. All the heartbreakers.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Song, Reading, Heart

  Source: therumpus.net

• After you die, your body is just there. Isn't it kind of embarrassing that your body is going to be there and you have no say or control over it? Somebody's going to have to deal with it. I've always respected people who kill themselves and find a way to get rid of the body. Very clean. Lost at sea. I can see why they do that. There's nothing left.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Sea, People, Body

  Source: therumpus.net

• Well, my intention is to make work about being uncomfortable. About being in a world that isn't always the world you want to be part of. I talk a lot about the free fall, the moment in the scene where gravity takes over, and the beautiful awkwardness when gravity wins. Gravity is hilarious. Gravity always wins.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Beautiful, Fall, Winning

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think that fact alone levels everything. Slapstick amazes me, the folly of humans today, the Ponzi schemes, giving birth to eight babies at once, it's amazing... And I know, it's horrible to have your money stolen and all that, but those are amazing stories.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Baby, Thinking, Eight

  Source: therumpus.net

• Heartbreak is when you're just far enough away from what you desire that you can feel it. Change is the Pangaea moment. I feel like I'm at this point in my life where I have created this place, this island in the ocean, and I'm happy there.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Ocean, Islands, Desire

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think most interesting people are socially awkward even if they're able to hide it most of the time. If Henry Darger hadn't been a shut-in would we love him so much? Any act that we do in private is amazing and profound because it is private. You don't have to worry about being socially awkward in the privacy of your own home... well, unless I show up.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Home, Thinking, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• I feel like I'm at a place in my life where I'm really strangely happy, and in awe of how great the world can be, and I think that's because I have gone through periods of looking at the world through a really melancholy lenses. It's all just flip sides of the same coin.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Thinking, Lenses, Gone

  Source: therumpus.net

• There's such an energy created when the world is turned upside down, and when things are good again it's nice to take note. Then it goes away. Change. Change means friction. Friction happens where things aren't quite right, when everything is separating, when nothing is the same. Later you piece it back together.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Nice, Mean, Together

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm always afraid going into strange places, but I also choose carefully and listen to my instincts. These were men I could trust. I'm a pretty good judge of crazy versus sad. I prefer sad.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Crazy, Men, Strange Places

  Source: therumpus.net

• Discomfort and awkwardness are places where you feel things. I'm a big advocate for being happy. We can choose to live in a happy bubble. But part of being happy is understanding how sad things can be.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Understanding, Bigs, Discomfort

  Source: therumpus.net

• I present the thing we're going to do as a simple starting point. They all know it's an art piece and that it's all going to be recorded. And I have never had an experience where one of these men tried to take advantage of the situation. If they were guilty of anything it was of being lonely. It was never that they were violent or dangerous.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Lonely, Art, Simple

  Source: therumpus.net

• Tenderness and lust are just immature little brothers of love. Yes of course it was lust... but I'm not sure how evolved or resolved that lust was.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Brother, Lust, Immature

  Source: therumpus.net

• I would always say I'm doing a video project. About dancing or birthday parties. Of course, the video becomes more than that. It goes deeper than that. But it's not a lie. It's a starting point.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Lying, Party, Dancing

  Source: therumpus.net

• I think people like to have everything be perfectly morally clear. When the lines get blurred it worries them. I'm not worried. I don't think the men are either. But I think that the videos bring up feelings in people that they don't want to feel. Sometimes people get really mad. That's okay.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Men, Thinking, Worry

  Source: therumpus.net

• Sometimes it's good to get mad, sometimes it clarifies where we stand. I think that art has the ability to challenge and push, and that's great. That's better than great... it's necessary.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Art, Thinking, Mad

  Source: therumpus.net

• The act of looking is brave. Especially if you look at things you can't handle. I think that most people do not look. If you're really paying attention you could have your heart broken twelve times a day. Most of the time we aren't looking.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Heart, Thinking, People

  Source: therumpus.net

• I never want to make videos with people who don't want to make them with me. I don't want to force people to take part. Only people who want to collaborate. And that's important because otherwise, the videos wouldn't work. Them choosing to take part is very important to the videos.

  Laurel Nakadate

  People, Important, Video

  Source: therumpus.net

• The most amazing moments are when something horrible is about to happen or has just happened. The iceberg falling into the ocean. That aching moment. You can see the pieces, you can see how they fit together, but you can't put them back together.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Ocean, Fall, Together

  Source: therumpus.net

• Also, I'm drawn to moments of ambiguity, when things could go right or they could go wrong. I'm interested in discomfort. Discomfort is a place where we're still close enough to comfort to understand our unhappiness. Most of the things we desire are things that can destroy us.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Desire, Comfort, Moments

  Source: therumpus.net