In 2014, Erik van Lieshout set up a workshop in the basement of the Hermitage Museum to improve the living areas of the large community of cats that has been living in the museum for more than 200 years. The Basement documents this process while following the artist’s unique and idiosyncratic rhythm and methods.

Filipa Ramos: How did you come across the cat residency located on the underground of the Hermitage, and why did you decide to focus your project for Manifesta 10 on improving the environment where these animals live?

Erik van Lieshout: I was on a visit in St Petersburg for five days, and Kasper Koenig (the curator of Manifesta10) took me to the cellars of the Hermitage, where the cats live. The assistant of Mikhail Piotrovsky (the director of the Hermitage) guided our small group around the cellars, and I immediately felt good in that place. I thought it would be kind of impossible to stay there for two months but in the end I was allowed to do so, and I worked there from 9-17 hours a day, and I slept somewhere else. The cats are not unknown; actually they are very well known, I would even say famous. They are photographed and filmed many times, but until now no artist had made drawings and paintings of them, nor stayed there for long periods of time.

FR: Since the film focuses so strongly on the work process, and the edit allows viewers to follow the various steps taken in the building work, it is difficult to understand the intentions that lie beyond this gesture. Alongside the aim of improving the living conditions of the cats, were there other implications in this whole project? For instance, what is the political significance of these animals, living below and around this State Museum in Petersburg?

EvL: We cut the video film very shortly because of two reasons: the first is that I felt that the edit was like a claim of censorship or I was being a self censor, so I would like the viewer to have the same feeling that there is a lot more that you can’t see or that you are not allowed to see. The second is that I wanted to have an animation film. At the same time, I worked on a long feature film, in which I could show more of the life with the cats. The political significance is very big. Its like a mirror. The whole life is in the hermitage, but it is downstairs, in the cellars, that the shit comes out. The cellars also have plenty of history: during the war, people lived there, and artworks were also kept there. Before 1917 there were employees for cats, and after the revolution there were no more employers for the cats. The women who work with the cats are all volunteers, and this was a big theme.

FR: One of the most fascinating things of the animal presence in films is how they manage to disrupt conventional perceptions of time and install their own, very unique, rhythms and temporalities. Yet, in this case what the viewer sees is your non-stop activity and extremely intense work method, which is enhanced by the video’s montage. It is hard to understand the actual length of the whole process. How long did the construction process last for, and why was it for you more important to give the viewer a sense of the evolution of the construction than a sense of the time involved in the making?

EvL: Very difficult question. As I said, I cut a lot so you want to know more... Maybe than being about maybe it is more about what I could not tell in the film: about the women who don't get paid for their job, for instance. I was afraid they would not allow them to go there anymore because I said all this. Time is not important for me, it’s more about intentions and hectic craziness. I was there altogether with the cats for nine weeks (two weeks fulltime, renovating the cellar with a small team). It took me a lot of research before I went down in the cellars, and the edit took six weeks.

FR: There are some brief moments in which the sound of your voice, addressing the cats, echoes the poetics of Johan van der Keuken’s 1968 film De poes. Were you interested in following the relation between man, animal and language that his film proposes?

EvL: Yes, very much. Talking with an animal who does not speak the same language was very important to me. With dogs, for example, this would not work like this. These cats also have a relation with the cat women. There are no cat men in the cellars, and this is very important, for the very first time I worked with women more than with men. The cats are very mystical. They are very much on their own. You can project your ideas on them, like Johan van der Keuken does, he projects art on the cat; for me this is similar to what I do.

FR: Beyond the work’s production moment and beyond the video: will the infrastructures that you built remain installed in the Hermitage and continue to provide a better living atmosphere for its cat community?

EvL: Yes the cat towers/hotel, and the new kitchen will stay there. They all use it. Also the new cat gallery, with photocopies and copies of drawings I made. What was also very good is that after my first visit, when I returned to the hermitage to install my work for Manifesta, I saw that the director Piotrovsky had bought a brand new washing machine for the cats and the women, to clean all the clothes where the cats are lying and sleeping and pissing on. So, I felt that in that sense art had helped to improve the situation. Before, the cat women hand washed these clothes. At the end, I showed the cat women the film and they loved it. They did not look at the people in the film, but only at the cats.

Credits

Production:
Suzanne Weenink
Dragan Bakema and Kuba Szutkowski
Manifesta10 team

Edit: Core van der Hoeven

Thanks to: Tatiana, Irina, Zoja, Mila, Irina, Georgy, Mikhail Piotrovsky

With the financial support of Mondriaan Fund, The Netherlands Film Fund, OUTSET NL, W.E. Jansenfonds

Commissioned by Manifesta10 Saint Petersburg