Nina Paley on the Agni Pariksha

William L. Benzon Scholar in Residence

QuestionCopyright.org

C O N T E N T S

What, When & Where .........................................................................................................................................2 Pictures of Hearts .................................................................................................................................................2 In the beginning: Invention ................................................................................................................................2 (1) Hearts ...............................................................................................................................................................4 (2) Light a Match ..................................................................................................................................................6 (3) Opening fire.....................................................................................................................................................9 (4) Devotional Stance........................................................................................................................................ 11 (5) Traced in Orange ......................................................................................................................................... 12 (6) Scalloped Archway ...................................................................................................................................... 13 (7) Paisley Fire .................................................................................................................................................... 14 (8) Traditional Borders...................................................................................................................................... 15 (9) More Rotoscoped Flame ............................................................................................................................ 16 (10) Concentric Agnis ....................................................................................................................................... 17 (11) And Now the Gods................................................................................................................................... 18 (12) Sita Sees the Gods ..................................................................................................................................... 19 (13) Sita Dissociates........................................................................................................................................... 20 (14) The Eyes ..................................................................................................................................................... 22 (15) Multiple Sitas .............................................................................................................................................. 24 (16) Sita, Positive and Negative....................................................................................................................... 26 (17) All Merge..................................................................................................................................................... 27 (18) Sitas Fade .................................................................................................................................................... 27 (19) Only the gods Remain .............................................................................................................................. 28 (20) Closing Fire................................................................................................................................................. 28 (21) Blow Out the Match ................................................................................................................................. 29 Furthermore, Talking about Art is Creepy .................................................................................................... 30

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WHAT, WHEN & WHERE I interviewed Nina Paley on Thursday afternoon, 1 July, 2010, in her apartment in the West Village in Manhattan concerning her film, Sita Sings the Blues. I was specifically interested in discussing the Agni Pariksha segment of the film. This segment occurs a bit over half-way through the film and is different from every other segment in the film, which is otherwise animated in four different visual styles. Prior to the interview I had taken a number of screen shots from the Agni Pariksha with the idea of using them as the basis for the interview. I had sent them to Paley in a Microsoft Word document. After some preliminary chit chat Paley and I sat down in front of her workstation and began discussing the film. I placed a small digital recorder between us. The conversation would go on for a bit over an hour. Then Paley indicated that she wanted to say something else, so I turned on the recorder again and we talked for about five minutes. Then we had lunch with a friend who was visiting her from the West Coast.

PICTURES OF HEARTS BB [referring to a table in a Word Doc where I list all the hearts that appear early in this sequence]: I’m going to put that up as raw notes. And I’m going to take screen shots of every one of those hearts. NP: Which is going to open me up to copyright lawsuits. I was just like grabbing stuff, right and left. I was like, who’s gonna’ see this? it’s just gonna show up for one frame. One frame and it’s totally transformed. But, actually, let ‘em sue me. I’ll defend myself. BB: There was one that looked like a matchbook cover. NP: Probably was. BB: ‘Cause it said “sump’in’ sump’in’ matchbooks.” NP: Yeah yeah yeah yeah. BB: And then it looks like you got a lot of stuff from a jewelry catalog. NP: Yeah, uh, right. Some jeweler’s work. Maybe they’ll come and attack me. I don’t even know who it is. BB: The 21 shots from beginning to end. NP: So what are we discussing here, what do you want to know?

IN THE BEGINNING: INVENTION BB: Let’s go back a few steps. When you started this, you had already done a whole bunch of stuff of one sort or another. You’d made some short films, so you had all sorts of skills. NP: Yes. BB: How much did you invent in the process of doing this over five years?

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NP: How could I possibly know how much I invented? How could I possibly know that? BB: Well, a lot, a whole fuck of a lot, or a super-whole mega lot. NP: What do you mean by invent? All I did was I took skills that I already have and I used them with ideas that are already out there. So, like, where’s the invention? Is it just like nobody but this thing with this thing, but people have put things together before. People’ve put lots of disparate things together. And in my case I just put things together that, to many people’s minds, have not been put together before. But that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been done though. It just means that I surprised people. But I don’t know if surprising people and inventing is the same thing. BB: It’ll do. NP & BB: Chuckle. NP: I mean a lot of people think it’s far more original than it actually is. A lot of people, like, ‘she did a feminist Ramayana.’ There’s a huge history of feminist Ramayanas. This is not remotely original, the feminist aspect of it. And there’ve been other animated Ramayana’s, and then, OK, so, there haven’t been any Ramayana’s that put Annette Hanshaw with the Ramayana. That’s probably the most unique thing about it. A lot of this was driven by technology. So I did things, you know, the collagy stuff and the techniques that I used, I did because they were possible. BB: How many of those techniques did you learn in animation school. NP: Well, I never went to animation school. BB: If you had, how many of them would you have learned in animation school, like zero. NP: I don’t know. Like this specific technique. Everything I did comes from. . . OK, so rotoscope is very old. BB: Right, it’s very old. NP: Flash, there’s all sorts of things that are done in Flash. Masking is a Flash technique. So this uses rotoscope and masking. The technique of combining rotoscope with different fills or different patterns on every frame. That was done in Yellow Submarine, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” It was painstakingly done because they had to actually paint every single one of those things by hand. But that technique is at least as old as that. BB: Did you see Across the Universe? NP: Does that have animation in it? BB: No. NP: What’s the point? BB: It has Beatles tunes.

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NP: Yeah, but come on. Who cares. It has Beatles tunes that are re-sung by other people. Yeah, anyway, you know, grabbing images from all over the place because of the internet that turns people like me and others into criminals. Federal criminals, and soon to be international criminals. Of course this particular combination of techniques isn’t [unintelligible] but that’s true of any piece of art.

(1) HEARTS

BB: Do you recall where that particular heart came from? NP: Somewhere on the internet. Ebay? I don’t know. It’s beautiful and I sure hope that the jeweler who made it doesn’t come and sue me. But if they do, it’ll be an interesting case. BB: I mean, you should present them a bill for marketing and advertising. NP: No, but I’m not. ‘Cause I don’t even know where it came from. It would be marketing and advertising if I could say, this was by such and so, who’s . . . totally buy his jewelry because it’s so beautiful. But I don’t even know whose it is. BB: In the whole scheme of doing Sita, where did this sequence come? . . . In your putting the film together. It ain’t the first thing you did. NP: Right, it’s not, but I’m pretty sure it’s something I wanted to do. It is by far the rawest and most emotional piece in the film, and possibly that I’ve ever done. It took awhile to get the right music. I actually commissioned a different musician, Rohan, to do it. And he came up with a beautiful piece. But it wasn’t quite emotive, what I needed it to emote. And I ended up using it in the trailer. And then did it with Todd, and Todd totally got it like YEAGH like totally just PAIN and ANGUISH, please. And it clearly didn’t matter

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what the words were. And I didn’t even want the words to be in English, because they would’ve just been a distraction. The emotion was carried by the sound. BB: I mean, some people are lyrics persons and some just . . . I could care less about lyrics of songs myself. NP: Yeah, it varies. I mean, it’s interesting how lyrics and music change each other. And I think we also discussed whether this would be in Sanskrit rather than Hindi. It was really up to Reena and her mother, Laxmi. And they chose Hindi. But the main thing is . . . I don’t know. You, like, when I hear it this is a language that mostly is sound to me. But you could hear the word “Rama.” BB: [Sings a bit of the song on meaningless syllables.] NP: [Sings a bit of the song.] BB: So, was this like in the last half of the production, the last quarter . . . NP: It was . . . Yeah, it was in the last half. I had been thinking I had wanted to do it. It’s just that it took time for the music to get done. And, once the music was done I could do the rest of it. I knew that I wanted there to be flames, and I knew I wanted to rotoscope. Actually, I had the idea quite a long time ago because there was another dancer I was talking to about rotoscoping her and then she moved away from New York. And this was all before I even knew Reena. So, I had some conception of this piece early on. BB: I mean, where were you in the conception when you went into the studio with Reena? NP: We had the music all ready. And I didn’t know how she was going to dance, but I just knew . . . BB: Had she recorded the vocal? NP: Yes. And I just knew that, actually, actually? I think so. I just knew that I wanted a dancer. Now, I had already done some rotoscoping experiments of Bollywood dancers. And there’re little bits of them are still in that. Not every single frame is Reena rotoscoped. There’s a little bit of Madhuri Dixit in there and there is a little bit of Aishwaryi Rai in there. In fact I showed it to one friend of mine, and there’s just this little clip and he’s like “Is that Madhuri Dixit?” It’s like ‘how can you tell?” It’s like a signature thing she does, pounding her chest. That’s Madhuri Dixit. So, come sue me! Come sue me! BB: Did you have any instructions for Reena, or was it just ‘do your thing’? NP: It was do your thing, though I wanted, and I didn’t know exactly how I was going to use it, but I did want her to be in traditional dress for some of it, and then naked for some of it. Though she wasn’t actually naked, she was wearing a leotard. I don’t know if I knew how I was going to use both of them, but I wanted the option. So we have the stuff with her in costume and her hair is up . . . and then you have her naked, hair’s flying everywhere. She came up with all the moves.

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BB: I’m wondering if this thing [makes gesture with “scissor” fingers moving in front of eyes] was a John Travolta steal [from, I believe, Pulp Fiction] or was a traditional sacred Hindu finger thingy. NP: Well, we’ll meet Reena tonight. You can ask her. [BB: I didn’t ask her that night: we were meeting her at a showing of Sita Sings the Blues. But I did email her about it. Here’s her response: RS: I learned the hand/finger gesture while I was learning Bharata Natyam. The hand/finger gesture draws attention to the eyes & my entire facial expression and also to where the eyes are looking to.] NP: What’s with this? [looking a photos of the dance session] So she’s a very thoroughly trained Bharata Natyam dancer, but that’s not what she was doing. She incorporated that into . . . She improvises. That informs her . . . What is traditional is the thing she does in the beginning [see screenshot 4] which I didn’t even realize, before she was even dancing, she did that thing [pointing to a photo?] and her eyes with this [Reena covers eyes with finger tips], which I just love. I love that she would do that before she danced. That’s just what you do before you dance. BB: Right. That’s getting into the proper frame of being. NP: And so I loved that I could do that at the beginning of the dance. And of course because I’m animating I can manipulate the time easily. I can have her be still down there and . . . . BB: OK, Next one.

(2) LIGHT A MATCH

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BB: So that’s just the match. NP: That I directed her to do. There was a great deal of direction there. I have pictures, I have stills . . . BB: You knew you wanted the match thing, and . . . NP: Well, you know I had various ideas, and they didn’t all make it into the final thing. [Starts looking through photos on computer.] BB: If I were in my interpretive mode, there’s obvious things to say about Sita lighting her own pyre - NP: Absolutely! BB: - and putting the match out at the very end. NP: Yes, absolutely. That was very conscious on my part. And in fact Sita does say ‘build me a funeral pyre.’ She’s very invested in . . . [leafing through photos on computer] BB: In her own purification. [Paley continues to look for certain photos.] NP: Here’s the [unintelligible] itself. Me directing Reena. And by the way I didn’t actually use a blue screen or the green screen. It ended up that I did that in case I wanted to try some techniques – BB: So you just used the outline, you didn’t – NP: I just traced her by hand, I didn’t use any automated process. [Some chat about Reena stepping on a bit of glass and trooping on.] NP: There I am [points to photo] telling her how to drop the match. So this went over and over – ‘light it like this’ [makes hand gesture]. – Oh, the director. [more photos] ‘You have to show me the hand movement.’ You know the silhouette is very important. Ah, and there she is not quite naked [another photo]. [More photos, miscellaneous remarks.] I hated doing it. I really hate being a film-maker. BB: What do you hate about it? NP: I just – It’s like ‘do this.’ You know, you get this little hierarchy thing going. I’m not comfortable with in any position. Just the pressure you have to rent the camera, it costs all this money, they were heavy – was in this situation where it was costing a lot of money. I didn’t know what I was doing. BB: Now, when you rotoscope something like that [looking at blurry still photo of Reena dancing], do you – well, the camera wouldn’t have had the blur.

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NP: Correct. And the reason I had to rent a camera was I needed it to be 24 frames a second and there just weren’t consumer grade 24-frame-a-second cameras then. There were, like, a week later. Like for eight-hundred dollars I could have just bought one. Instead I had to rent the HD camera. Unfortunately, because they’re a big pain to use. [More chit-chat.] BB: So you’d go nuts in a regular animation studio. NP: Yes. BB: I mean, you wouldn’t want someone telling you what to do, you wouldn’t want to be telling 35 other people what do do. NP: I would want someone telling me what to do if they were amazing. I have had the experience of being directed by someone amazing. Not in animation, but in improvisation. [inaudible] One of my favorite books is Impro by Keith Johnstone. http://www.keithjohnstone.com/main.aspx?id=59 IMPRO: Improvisation and the Theatre ©1979, Methuen Publishing, London, ISBN 0-413-46430-X BB: This is improv theatre. NP: Yes. And, he was directing a workshop, and he told me to do something, and I of course changed it. And he said ‘Say this and do this’ and I of course put some ‘ums’ in there or changed slight movements (?). ‘Say EXACATLY this and do EXACTLY this.’ And he was right. And when I did exactly what he said it was really different, and it was brilliant, and – Give me more of that. Like, I would love to have someone tell me what to do. If they were like that. [BB & NP laugh] If they were telling me to do something awesome. And of course I don’t know until I actually do it, but I’ve had so much experience having people telling me what to do, and going it. Like I know it’s going to be shit. I do it anyway. It’s shit, feels bad, nothing beautiful comes of it. It just gets worse and worse. They tell me to do something else stupid, and that’s been my experience in my very limited time in animation studios. And it’s almost always my experience with commercial illustration. And that’s why I make them pay me a lot. Like, I don’t get paid to make it good. ‘You’re not paying me to make it good. You’re paying me to make it shitty.’ BB: Well, they’re paying you to make what they want – NP: They don’t even want it, actually. They’re not even paying me to make what they want. I don’t know what kind of weird games – it’s like entertaining for them. It’s like some sort of court situation where they just enjoy having that kind of control. But the end result, no, it’s usually not good. And they know it’s not good. And frequently they throw the whole thing out. I’ve had that happen. I’ve had something really good, and – make it worse, make it worse, make it worse, make it worse. And they throw the whole thing out. And then they do it again.

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Whatever. I guess it’s theater or something. [leafing through photos] NP: In the final film even though it’s like ‘oh, you rotoscoped her dancing,’ I only rotoscoped a couple seconds, but they’re all cycles. A lot of it was analyzing the footage that I could find cycles in so I could minimize the amount of work that I did and just have her spinning around and around and around, which is only 12 frames. BB: I mean like there’s that one scene where you had her stacked up like three or four behind. NP: Right. And that was not something that I knew I was going to do in advance. It was just while I was working on it it was like ‘oh, I can do this.’ And it works here. BB: See, that’s what I mean by making shit up. I mean you didn’t have this model before you. NP: Right. BB: And – NP: Well, the whole film was like that. This is why I say the film made itself. I assist, I think of myself as an enzyme. The film is the DNA, the strand’s already there, or whatever, the pattern’s there, but the enzyme actually takes the, I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I just know that enzymes are somehow instrumental in actually building the DNA molecule.

(3) OPENING FIRE

BB: Where’d Mr. Squiggles come from?

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NP: Ah, that is one where I did make an automated rotoscope. What I did I was looking on line for real fire, real explosion. I should say that making fire, animating fire, was such a challenge for me. I did not know how to do it, I could not find books about doing it. There had been a book that I’d seen in San Francisco, I didn’t remember the title of it. BB: I, I, I’m sure it’s a pain. NP: But I saw it beautifully done in Fantasia - BB: Oh, sure. But they had someone who animated fire 24/7, he breathed – and another guy animated bubbles 24/7 – NP: I know BB: And another one did sea foam – NP: I know, but there are principles behind it that could be learned, but I could not get my hands on a book. I was looking everywhere . . . BB: Well, Mike Barrier tells me those, those assholes [The Walt Disney Company] are never gonna’ release the archives, and it’s a world treasure, and no one’s ever gonna’ know what’s in them. NP: Well, anyway, such books exist, I know they exist. But I could not find them. So I was just going nuts, and I actually went to great lengths to get a DVD of Fantasia, which of course was in the vault, out of print, couldn’t get that. So that was an adventure in and of itself. And then I studied it. [Chat about getting a Fantasia DVD. Paley got a used one.] NP: Studying that didn’t, I couldn’t figure it out anyway, even from studying it. It was like I didn’t get it. [BB filler, on Fantasia.] NP: So, I was having to learn how to animate fire. And one of the many things that I did, was I rotoscoped fire. But to do that I needed some footage of fire. So I scoured the web. And remember that I was basically broke, even though the film cost a lot of money, cost many 10s of thousands of dollars, I was broke. So I could have bought a videotape of fire, like somebody had shot various explosions against a black background, for compositing and special effects. And that was like $500 to buy the videotape. It was then royalty free, but I did not want to pay that. I mean, I didn’t really need the videotape, I just needed something to rotoscope. So fortunately I found the tiny little preview videos on the website that was selling the tape. Because who would want it at such low low resolution? And they put their fucking logo in it. So, and um, it might have been like $800 or something, it was more than I could afford. And I wasn’t going to use it for compositing. So I managed to capture some of those videos, remove the logo, and I had to crop the thing. But I rotoscoped those with software called Synthetic Studio Artist. Which is not easy to use anyway. You have to create all the brushes, and create how it’s gonna be – BB: So that’s rotoscoped fire –

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NP: This is, yeah, this is rotoscoped with Synthetic Studio Artist, which is amazing. And I also use that for the explosion in the beginning. BB: I mean, that’s three times in the film. In the very beginning and at the beginning and end of this sequence.

(4) DEVOTIONAL STANCE

NP: And then this fire I made myself. And that, boy there was a lot of trial and error there. Hand-made in Flash. BB: The dancers were – NP: Ah, the dancers are from these old Indian charts, which a friend of mine had a whole book of. They’re really really cheaply printed on like newsprint. And they put them in schools. And there was a chart called Dances of India. It had all these different, this kind of dance, that kind of dance, I realized that I could put them together and make one dance, which is the technique I used in “All creative work is derivative.” BB: And this is Reena doing a sort of devotional thing there. NP: Yes, that’s her doing that introductory prayer thing. And then this background is from, I don’t know. I scanned in a whole lot of different cards. BB: I mean those backgrounds are going, they’re strobing you. NP: Yeah.

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BB: Has anyone flipped out during this thing? NP: Has anyone had a BB: - an epileptic – NP: - an epileptic fit. Not that I’m aware of. BB: I’m told Stan Brackage [an experimental film-maker] used to have that happen to him sometime.

(5) TRACED IN ORANGE

NP: That’s still Reena’s thing [that is, her pre-dance invocation]. What I did with this was I traced her. But that sparkly effect is that after I traced her by hand I processed it with Synthetic Studio Artist. BB: That’s your hand-drawn fire there. NP: Yeah, that’s the same fire shape, but it’s filled with bit-map images, in various shades of red. And those bit-map images are scans of fabric and backgrounds and just anything that was yellow and redish. BB: Any reason you decided to do that, just – NP: There’s something so, you know this type of printing is so ubiquitous, this printing on cheap paper, with the big dots. And at least at the time that I was in Trivandrum and that I made Sita Sings the Blues, that was very Indian. I mean at one time it was very American as well, but our printing technology or, whatever, our access to better printing presses in Singapore, whatever, is greater. So we have more expensive printed goods, but this stuff is just really ubiquitous, and I wanted to give some of that flavor. And there might have been other reasons too. That’s just the first thing I pull off the top of my head.

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(6) SCALLOPED ARCHWAY

BB: And that’s more handmade fire in there. NP: Yes, that’s the paisley fire. You know, once I animated this fire, it’s like ‘well I can do this technique to it and that technique and why not’, because the fact is I’m not really a good fire animator. And this pattern of the fire was the best I could do, so I wanted to really milk it by doing as many variations on it as I could. BB: Now, these little fire things [indicating the edge of the arch], that was just part of whatever you’d scanned in. NP: Yeah, this was the border of something. And I put my fire in here. [Looks around, picks up a small vessel from a shelf.] Here’s a diya right here. Put oil in here and a wick. BB: So, you installed the fire. NP: Yes, but they, I think they had a tiny little flame on them, but their flame wasn’t animated.

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(7) PAISLEY FIRE

BB: And so here we have much larger paisley fire. NP: The idea in this little bit was that the fire’s growing. The more she’s dancing, the more the flames are taking over. BB: I wonder, is paisley a native Indian fabric? NP: The pattern? It’s . . . BB: Or is it something they did in imitation of European stuff for sale to the European market. NP: I don’t know for sure, um, but there sure seems to be a hell of a lot of traditional fabric design from India, that has paisley. I assume that “Paisley” is the name of a trader, or something like that. But it’s very common, it’s all over the place, in fabric designs, traditional fabric design.

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(8) TRADITIONAL BORDERS

NP: That’s Agni. BB: Right. And several frames back he was much larger. And these borders - NP: Yeah, these are traditional borders. This border specifically [right hand border] is actually from – with the feet – it’s from prayer shawls that actually sorta tell the story of the Ramayana. So they’re very Sita-Rama specific fabric design. And then all this stuff, these things [left side], came from just a book of traditional block design.

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(9) MORE ROTOSCOPED FLAME

NP: And thaattt is Madhuri Dixit. [Said in a slightly different voice.] BB: OK. NP: Oh, and this is more fire that I rotoscoped, but I didn’t rotoscope this with Synthetic Studio Artist. I rotoscoped this as vector with Flash. And I did that one frame at a time. BB: Yeah, I mean, those few frames right in there are very striking. NP: Short and sweet. And then of course I put fire in her mouth. The idea is that she can’t contain, she is in fact consumed by this fire. Which I could relate to emotionally, because this is, like, you cannot, sometimes there’s so much emotion or pain you can’t contain it. It’s within you and without you.

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(10) CONCENTRIC AGNIS

BB: And so here, how many concentric circles of Agni’s do you think you have going – NP: I don’t know, because they got larger, um, so they were a cycle, not just a cycle in terms of walking and then rotating, but they were also coming towards you. So in that sense they were infinite. [Note: animators talk of ‘walk cycles’ as a sequence of images that you can cycle over and over to depict a character walking.] BB: I mean, at one point I counted at least four of them. NP: Yeah, there’d be at least four. [Counts them in them image.] One, two, three, four, maybe five of them. BB: And, the various fills, you just grabbed this that and the other thing. NP: They’re devotional cards. They’re specifically devotional cards so they relate to deities, they relate to religion here. And the idea behind that is that, you know, in a state of so much grief and pain, you’re actually sorta’ crossing worlds, you’re – BB: Right – NP: - more in the world of the divine at that point. BB: Sure sure sure.

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(11) AND NOW THE GODS

NP: And there’s god. [Spoken in a voice that is higher and lighter that her normal voice, with rising intonation through the end.] BB: I mean, were those little heads there in the print or did you – NP: Yes, yes. So the torso in this particular frames comes from, ah, Kali [see here]. And Kali has a necklace of heads of people that she’s offed. And that’s actually probably Kali’s bloody knife. But the point of this is that . . . [See Paley’s blog: http://www.ninapaley.com/archives/2007/03/art.html] BB: There was a big net brouhaha about you and Kali [at Sepia Mutiny, here – http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/004257.html] NP: Oh, yeah - . . . Basically each body part is taken from as many gods as I could get pictures of and then cycles through. So the chest cycles through. Sometimes it’s Kali’s chest, sometimes it’s Hanuman’s chest, sometimes it’s Vishnu’s chest - BB: So each frame is actually a composite of various things that are cycling through. NP: And the great thing about Flash is that there are multiple kinds of animation happening at the same time. So each body part is animated in terms of its cycling through the body part of the various gods. But then all of that together is moving like this [some gesture?]. Um, I mean this is probably Kali’s hand, that’s probably Laxmi’s hand, ah . . . I don’t know whose hand that might be - BB: Fred the cop. NP: Fred the cop’s hand. That’s someone else’s hand. And this looks like Shiva’s head right now. That’s probably Vishnu’s leg. That’s someone else’s leg.

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I mean it’s probably a lot more worthwhile to go through this every frame than to go through the hearts in every frame. If you look carefully you can actually figure out who is in each frame. [Note: I had talked earlier about getting shots of every heart used early in the episode.] BB: Well, you can. I can’t. NP: I think I had Ganesh as one of the heads as well. BB: Yeah, you did. I mean there’s a very obvious trunk in one frame.

(12) SITA SEES THE GODS

NP: There she is seeing god. [Spoken in a voice that is higher and lighter that her normal voice.] BB: Yeah. NP: Hello, god. [Again, Paley’s ‘seeing god’ voice.] BB: So that’s what she’s doin’ huh? NP: Yep, she can see him. She’s been pushed. [Both chuckle] BB: Is this the same cycle that you used before? NP: Yeah, yeah. It’s exactly the same. BB: And you just moved it up into the quadrant.

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NP: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the beauty of Flash. And that looks like it’s probably Ganesh’s torso there. But that’s still Kali’s knife. And that’s probably Laxmi’s little discus thing.

(13) SITA DISSOCIATES

NP: And there’s the splitting, which basically was like – what happens? Let me take a look at that actual segment and I can maybe try and tell you what I was thinking. [Looks through stuff on her computer until she finds the segment. Begins playing it.] NP: So, here’s god. Now she’s really, gettin’ to basics. And now she’s contemplating, and she’s changing. Just sort of transforming in the midst of it. [A bit of Palely’s ‘seeing god’ voice on the italicized words.] BB: Phase shifting. NP: Yes. So something’s just happened to her. Oh I see. I think what I was doing was, um, so she starts out as just an outline and then she really sees this, and then this aspect of her starts combining with her. That’s, you know, what I was really saying is in the pictures, but that’s the best I can come up with words for it right now. Ask me tomorrow and it might be different. BB: One of my big things is describing these things, and, we don’t have the vocabulary for describing them. I want to describe it as neutrally as possible. As a sort of starting point. As another of my hobby-horses is I don’t give a crap about meaning. NP: Well, it’s weird describing art. The whole point of it is that you don’t have to describe it. It’s an alternative to words. [something unintelligible], It’s like describing music; it’s completely pointless. Well, not completely pointless, but, it’s really –

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As an artist I’ve seen people describing art. And . . . this is really silly what they’re doing. But, they get paid for it, like, uh, one of my observations when I was younger was that people don’t think something exists unless there’s words for it. BB: Sure. NP: And that’s a problem. Like the problem is not to find the right words for everything; the problem is this mindset that things don’t exist unless you can name them. On the other hand that’s were the money is, so . . . BB: Ain’t no one payin’ me. NP: Well, for many people, many academics. Even visual artists, they’re supposed to write this thing explaining what their work is about. Which is just the most – There should be like a book of those. They are so embarrassing. A book of artist statements. BB: Well, a sort of mix and match Chinese menu, you know. Pick one from here – NP: Yeah. I think they have like artist statement generators, anyway – Yeah, so I think this is one aspect of Sita coming in contact with another aspect. BB: Yeah, of course. NP: And, you know, initially they’re a little apart. Well, initially she’s just one way and then they’re a little apart [unintelligible]. BB: You’d done your stint at CERN before you did this. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, had originally been called Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), hence CERN. NP: Yes. [laughs] BB: I mean, all of a sudden when I was looking at those rings of fire at the end and remembering your busy little CERN bee, I thought – Ah, Sita’s in the collider. NP: I was not thinking that at all. Not at all. But I like the idea of it being used in a physicist’s presentation.

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(14) THE EYES

NP: OK. Ah, the eyes. Sadness. This is all about, like, crying – BB: Crying hot tears – NP: Yes, crying tears of flame. Um, yeah, I might’ve had the idea just that – this is a guess, I don’t know what was really happening. But, you know, Sita’s a goddess, she represents transcendent principles of suffering and devotion and like that. Ah, but she’s divine and, um . . . I don’t know, what was I really thinking? It’s sorta’ hard to talk in words about what this was about. I think just the idea that there’s – BB: What about those eyes? NP: Oh these? Well these come from, ah, I mean I’ve seen them in Tibetan art. In fact I, the apartment I lived in Brooklyn, I sublet from a friend who was in Tibet and he had these Tibetan flags, he decorated it with, that were just these eyes. [too soft to hear] BB: Is that lion from a devotional card? NP: Oh, of course. Yes, that’s probably Durga’s mount. Yeah, so anyway, they’re actually relating to Sita, or Sita’s relating to them. They’re all feeling this together. It’s not just Sita, it’s become a sorta’ universal activity. BB: Well you see, the interesting thing about where this is placed in the film is that it’s right after film Nina gets the news – NP: Yeah!

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BB: - so it’s, I mean, up to that point it’s sort of Nina’s story juxtaposed against Sita. And at this point, I mean, Nina’s story plunges right into Sita’s story. NP: That’s how I felt! That’s how I actually perceived my own life. It’s like laahaa just goin’ along, then I had this like weird crashing into the Ramayana. BB: Yeah, I mean, so Sita’s crashing into the gods and they’re crashing into her, and now you’re crashing into that whole thing, and basically the whole universe is becoming one in this hot mess of anger and grief. NP: [laugh] Yeah. A very brief hot mess. BB: [laugh] NP: And then, you know, she blows out the flame and we go on our separate ways. Maybe that’s why you say it’s like a ritual. There is where I myself in my own experience, that like, rip – BB: Sure. NP: - rip in reality happened, there’s this weird intersection – BB: That’s what rituals are about. NP: OK. BB: I mean, you mark this sort of – there’s this sacred space. And we do a little ceremony and we all leave the regular world. And we go in this sacred space and we go crazy. And then, we come out, and we’re changed. NP: Huh. This was involuntary – [both laugh] – very involuntary. And when I’ve tried, the thing about most rituals is that, they, most of them fall pretty flat on me. ‘I know this is supposed to be happening. but it’s not.’ BB: Yeah. NP: Oh, is that it? No.

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(15) MULTIPLE SITAS

NP: I think here what I’m trying to say is that Sita is not just one, but that Sita is – BB: Oh yeah, this is the multiple Sitas. NP: Yeah, and as the story just keeps repeating, um, and regenerating – BB: And the little Agni’s coming there across the screen there it takes them 20 seconds to get from one side to the other. Well, I have to ask Todd how he structured this thing. I’ve got a guess how the music is structured – NP: Intuitively would be my answer – BB: The major [visual] transitions are phrased to the same major phrases in the music, pretty much. I mean, if this had been Disney there would have been bar sheets and every eight bars, the lead animator or whatever would have said ‘switch to something else here guys.’ Because that, I mean, I know you didn’t do it that way. When I was making those notes on that table, that’s what was coming up. I was – NP: I animated to the music and the music follows certain patterns. What I was going to say that this also – they’re moving to the fire, so you got Sita here –

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BB: So this is the orange outline, I gotta get something verbally to identify this thing on my . . . NP: Yes, back to the orange outline of Sita with the little uh – BB: - dancing – NP: - cheaply printed dancers in front of her going to the fire which is on the right hand side – here I was trying to show this happens to a lot of women. In fact it just happens, this is a pattern that expresses itself through lots and lots of women – BB: That’s why this story has been kept in circulation all over the damn place – NP: Right, but Sita’s in the background. So here’s the principle of it, happening, and here it is being carried out in real life. Unfortunately, you know, in India, you know, historically, yes, women have literally ended up in the fire. Literally. BB: It’s still going on. [sotto voce] NP: Yeah, but that’s, you will get so much shit for saying that’s still happening anywhere. It’s not happening on the same scale, that’s for sure. BB: Right, no. NP: It’s illegal now, which is good. BB: Did you ever see Around the World in 80 Days? NP: Ah, maybe when I was a kid.

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BB: I mean, there was a ritual, I mean, I don’t think the woman got burned, but she jumped on the pyre I think and was rescued or something in part of the film. NP: So this is similar to that earlier scene. ‘xcept this time Agni is going left to right across the screen. BB: Well you see that’s important. What it means I don’t know. I mean, simply in terms of what’s on the screen and how it’s all organized, those are the kinds of things I pay attention to.

(16) SITA, POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE

NP: Ah, yes, there we have life and death [laughs] meeting. BB: Well – and the gods back there too. NP: Yep. BB: Now is, I mean – are you like going through a virtual tube here or, ‘cause these rings move. NP: Yeah. I mean it makes it feel like you’ve moving through – you’re moving through something, obviously. BB: And that’s again your hand-drawn flames that you arranged around – NP: Yeah. Flash is great, animate one thing – BB: [Sung to the tune of the Rama song from the movie] Flash is great, Flash is good – NP: Yeah. Adobe is not great, but Flash is lovely.

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(17) ALL MERGE

NP: There they are, all becoming one, life and death, and the real and the unreal

(18) SITAS FADE

BB: The Sitas are fading away. NP: And god is left, or the divine, or whatever you want to call it. Something beyond.

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(19) ONLY THE GODS REMAIN

BB: What happens is we get to the divine squiggle fire, that clarifies, and solidifies -

(20) CLOSING FIRE

BB: There we are. NP: Oh, but this is the end of the fire.

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BB: What’s the background? NP: This is just a different paint stroke. The background is black and the way I programmed Studio Artist to rotoscope it [unintelligible] got that way. Like where there was activity it would trace the activity and where there was nothing it would [unintelligible].

(21) BLOW OUT THE MATCH

NP: She’s blowin’ out – BB: Except this time she’s got some fill in her. NP: Sure, well, because she’s been transformed. BB: Yeah. NP: She’s never gonna’ be the same.

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FURTHERMORE, TALKING ABOUT ART IS CREEPY Paley and I spent a little over an hour talking about the Agni Pariksha episode. When that discussion had died down Paley indicated that she had something more that she wanted to say. So I cranked up the digital recorder again and we chatted, this time about the tricky business of talking about art.

* * * * * BB: What’s your thought? NP: My thought is that it makes me uncomfortable to talk about art this way. And it reminds me of talking about religion. I think that’s one of the problems with religion is that there’s a spiritual experience that’s then mediated by words. And that people latch onto the words and the words don’t actually help them with the spiritual experience which kind of has a mind of its own. And, talking about art, art is a media. So it’s an artist that has an experience, and then . . . When you witness art, you’re witnessing an artist’s experience that’s been mediate by the artist. And then when you describe, you’re now mediating that. So now someone’s reading descriptions of something and it becomes, with each iteration, further and further removed from what it’s actually about. BB: Uh huh. NP: That’s all. [Unintelligible] I’m just so aware of inability of words, of the inadequacy of words, to really describe any of this. Or not describe – I mean you can describe it, but you can’t convey it. And I also wonder because of what I’ve seen in art schools, where people are really into describing this stuff. And its like they become worse and worse artists. So I have a kind of fear of analyzing it, because I don’t want to become attached to the words. I don’t want my experience of what’s going on with me being mediated that way. Because I have a direct line. The less I talk about it, the more direct the line is. BB: So, well, OK, I mean . . . Nina: Does that happen to you though? I mean you analyze the hell out of music, but you still connect with music. BB: Yeah. I mean, for me, making the music is one thing. Analyzing it is a different world. They just don’t interfere. I mean when I’m playing music, I’m playing music. I’m certainly not thinking about it. And when I’m analyzing it, that’s just something entirely different. And the same with literature or anything else. When I’m stepping through these films, frame by frame or whatever. I don’t for a second think that this is the same thing as sitting there and watching it. It’s a different thing; it’s a different activity. This is an issue that’s sorta’ at the heart of trying to figure out what the hell literary criticism is supposed to be.

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NP: Well at least literary criticism is words talking about other words. This is art criticism. This is visual art criticism, music criticism. BB: But you know, in the end it’s really the same. You use words in literature very differently than you use them in talking about literature. But some critics talk as though what they’re trying to do is recover the experience by writing criticism. NP: That’s funny. Like of all the art criticism that I’ve read, I’ve gotten the most out of literary criticism. I’ve gotten a lot out of literary criticism. I’ve gotten very little, except may be a few laughs, out of visual art criticism. But I have gotten a lot out of literary criticism. What would happen if you criticized a book by writing a song about it? Or like, maybe books should be reviewed as pictures, and maybe that would – BB: But that means that only artists could review books. NP: Well only literary critics can review books. So how is that any less fair? Right? Only art critics can review art. BB: On the internet anyone can review whatever they damn well please. NP: I actually think . . . I’m gonna’ defend what I said about, even though the words are being used differently, it’s still words commenting on words. And there’s actually pretty great pictures commenting on pictures. Even though the pictures are not the same, or using the same techniques, or saying the same thing. One is commenting on another one. But that can actually be . . . I certainly hear music commenting on music even though the notes aren’t being used they same way. The music is saying something about music. Actually I think there is something about the compatibility of . . . Anyway, I want to eat food.