Peter Spanjer
with Wells Fray-Smith
‘… in the midst of wanting to stand for something and wanting to say something that was close and dear to my heart, I think it was also about letting people have desires. We’re all, in one way or another, sexual beings. This is something that I don’t think necessarily should be excluded from telling stories about black bodies.’
Listen to full interview here:
My name is Peter Spanjer. The core of my work is always based on a question, and I think that question usually comes from either a space of self-discovery, or losing oneself, or turmoil or anything that I’m experiencing at the moment. My work feels biographical, in the sense of being about how I feel about a certain issue, topic or something that I’m currently interested in. It’s about standing still in the middle and feeling everything; allowing yourself to feel whatever it is that you are really, honestly, deep-down feeling. I try to be honest with my work.
What are you showing in The London Open 2022?
I am showing a film called Make Me Safe (2020). It’s a perfect example of me starting off with a question, and maybe the most vital part is the time that it was being made in. It was made in 2020, during the Black Lives Matter resurgence and lockdown. I think it was an overwhelming feeling for me. I make work and try to be as honest and vulnerable as I can be, but also, at the same time, I try to challenge what I’m feeling. This film, for example, deals particularly with the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
It was really important for me to share the sadness and anger that I was feeling. I also had unanswered questions that everyone was asking themselves at the same time. I wanted to reimagine how we may visualise footage or sound, relating to police brutality and relating to black life. It was important to create new images and reimagine the way that we share our bodies, and the way they are perceived by people, in terms of how we are usually represented in the media.
An element which I’ve been working with since quite early on are flowers and the imagery in flowers, because for me they represent and mirror so many things in life. As humans, I wouldn’t say we’re the same as flowers, but there are certain things that just really connect. And being in lockdown, we only had the park that we could go to and walk around in, so flowers really became part of my daily unwinding ritual. Adding that to the video gave it an element of rebirth, of coming out on the other side.
Alongside the flowers, there is also text in the film that solidified the message and really put across what I was trying to say, but in a way that didn’t seem to be necessarily angry. I think, for me, it’s important that people also find their own purpose within the work. Or their own point of view.
You’ve talked about the relationship between text and image, also about pictorialising violence enacted onto black bodies. There’s also a really strong through-line in all of your work about desire, sensuality and sexuality. And that comes into play in the second half of the film, where we do see a figure. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that undercurrent of desire, as well?
One of the important things to me when I was creating in the midst of wanting to stand for something and wanting to say something that was close and dear to my heart was also about letting people have desires. We’re all, in one way or another, sexual beings. This is something that I don’t think necessarily should be excluded from telling stories about black bodies. Desire doesn’t have to be sexual, but just desire for something better, or desire for whatever it may be, but we all have them. So, I think that’s always a key part in my work.
Work in the exhibition:
Make Me Safe, 2020 Video
07:21 mins
Peter Spanjer (1994, Bremen, Germany)
2020 MA Contemporary Art Practice: Moving Image, Royal College of Art, London
2015 BA Fashion Promotion, University of the Creative Arts, London
Selected exhibitions: In Order for it to Change, Screw Gallery, Leeds (solo) (2021); What do you desire, inter. pblc, Copenhagen (solo) (2021); TESTAMENT, Goldsmiths CCA, London (2021); Facing The Sun, Schloss Goerne, Germany (2021); The Tingle That You Feel On Your Tongue, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (solo) (2020); TRANSMISSIONS, Season 3 (online), BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2020); Royal College of Art/Slade Graduation Show, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2020); London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery, London (2020)
Watch Every Piece of You (2020) (password: redcherry)
Watch Water Blood-n-Bones (2019) (password: waterocean)
