marko milovanovic: Es Devlin, 2018

My name is Marko and the aim of the series is to bring AA members including those who practice in the real world in conversation with some remarkable people who operate on various kinds of boundaries between different fields and who are very comfortable being on the boundaries. The idea is also that these conversations encourage us to rethink our ways of working, the slow pace of architecture, sometimes the rigidity in which it is practiced. So our guests work in very different ways. They use different principles, even business models, to ultimately do a very similar thing which is to realise an idea.

Now Es Devlin seems to be able to realise any idea, even those that seem quite impossible. And at the AA we have always been very keen to find out how to make impossible things possible so we are very excited to have you here. Es has won London Design Medal last year, a couple of Oliver Awards, an OBE in 2015, Evening Standard Critics Circle, and I have probably missed a few. Recently you could have come across Es’s Christmas tree at the V&A, and I think the opera Salome designed by Es is actually on at the Royal Opera House tonight, at 8, so you can just about make it to Covent Garden after we finish.

Anyway, these two examples are just a small indication of different scales that we will be talking about tonight. Can we begin with the most recent scales which are beyond stage set design?

I was saying to you earlier that I was slightly gratified when I met somebody recently because they did not know that I do set design. I thought that was quite good. What I wake up to every morning is this line of light that is visible through a slot in the curtains and now. where I live, is actually two squares of light because I have blinds rather than curtains. A bit like when you wake up in the morning and you are tuned into your alarm clock and you know your alarm clock is going to ring and you've made a whole story around your alarm clock. The one I have at the moment is sort of tu ra ru ra ru ra and I have a whole story about it. So now I've started tuning myself into being prepared to see this line of light when I wake up. It has been going on for a while because I didn't used to have curtains. But now I do. Because I used to be able to sleep very easily and now I don't. So now I have curtains. It seems like a diversion but under discursion it has actually kind of become central. When you are in that state of mind, when you are not properly in control of it, when this part of your brain isn't properly engaged and the other one, old lizard at the back is just chaning, what is it that you are offering it, what is it that you are offering the unconscious to chew on. And this line of light has become the thing. So I just made a piece in Miami. I built a room, it is called Room 2022. You walk into the room and you understood nothing, you just thought you were walking into a room so your terms of engagement were understood as those of entering into a hotel room. And when you set down on the bed or in the chair there was a window and a time lapse film took you into the evening and then into the darkness and then the curtains closed and then a film started. And at a certain point in the film the window split in two and the film has ended and you were invited to walk through the film. To permeate the film from two dimensional screen to three dimensional space. And you went into some corridors. And you find yourself in a sort of hippocampus, memory, a memory of a hotel and then you found yourself in a central room full of water and streaming imagery. A lot of it quite personal and then finally you found yourself in the space of glass and mirror, a maze space.

When did the leap from stage design to other forms of design happen?

About 10 years ago I was invited to make a piece in Miami. A friend of mine said, I run Design Miami, would you like to make a piece and I didn't actually understand the question. It didn't occur to me then, because my work has always been in a service of another text, a play text, an opera text. It didn't occur to me that it was possible to make space.

The thing that started off this kind of train of thought of translating words into space are poems, two short poems that I wrote for Mirror Maze in Peckham and Room 2022 installations. I wouldn't have dreamed 10 years ago that I would do something like that, reading out loud, I don't think I could have stood the sound of my voice

What happened in those 10 years?

Well I had some children and I read to them at night and I got used to the sound of my own voice. And listening to myself reading and getting into that rhythm of reading stories. And this piece was the other thing that happened which was at 180 Strand, in 2015, it was a request from Nicolas Ghesquière, a designer at Louis Vuitton. He said, can you translate a 12 minutes catwalk show into 22,000 square foot? And so the idea really peaked my interest how can you translate 12 minutes into 22,000 square foot and what are the 12 minutes about anyway. So in this you can see the beginnings of the maze and the tunnels

So in those 10 years you went clearly from two dimensional stage to spaces that one can walk through rather than sit and observe from a very fixed point of view. What is different for a designer?

I think, it is finding the language eventually. I'm sure there is a lot of people of different ages in this room, and a lot of you are still studying and still deciding what you are going to do and certainly what I have learned is that you cannot miss a step. It seems to me ridiculous that 10 years ago somebody would have said to me: do you want to do a piece of at the Design Miami and I could have just said yes and done one but I couldn't have.

I think this is an encouragement to all architects to almost think backwards.

I just think being a blind person in the room and feeling for the walls - that's the only way I can describe it. I'm sure everyone has that sensation. The breakthrough was saying, I don't need a primary text to work to. And in terms of architecture, I have not engaged in architecture very much myself. I was saying to Marko, you mentioned a few things that are related to architecture, and I said I never really quite related what I do to architecture that much. The experiences I have had are the buildings that you have to do something in.

The mirror maze was a very much an intervention into an abandoned building?

Yes, but that was the least of its worries. When I was training as a set designer, because somebody needs to train you for that, I also trained as a costume designer and actually the experiences I have had working on people's buildings or my own building or working on interiors, it far more akin to costume design in my experience. Because it is considering what would people do in architecture, how would architecture be used. People that work in my studio have come through architecture and often, one of the things that they are excited about is the idea of the temporary. Oddly enough, the one thing that I have not thrown away is that mirror maze I just showed you. Annoyingly they rang me up when they were just about to destroy it, and they said we are about to throw away your mirror Maze, do you want it. And in 20 years nobody has ever asked me that question. I really wish they bloody hadn't because now I have got it.

Where is it?

It's in Deptford and it is costing me £750 a month to store. It's a nightmare. But of course when one is asked, you will not say destroy my thing. But I wish I had.

But your work really lives in photographs?

Actually there is two things to the work. The photographs and anyone who has seen any of the work. So if you are to go at 8 to see Salome at the Royal Opera House or if you are to see any of the other work that is on tour, you will not see this photograph really. What you will see is obviously a thing made in time so the photographs are no more the work then the film is the work and really curated. I spend quite a lot of time on photographs. They are my fantasy of what I wanted the work to be. They are usually my compensation for the failure of the work. A lot of it was crap, but this bit was great. If I Photoshop this bit out it is better. There is a lot that goes on in the photographs

So there is some constructive dishonesty there?

Definitely there is dishonesty. I also think the dishonesty is in setting one terms of engagement and then breaking that contract with the audience. I told you you are coming to a hotel room but you are not really. You thought you are coming to a warehouse but you are not.

I guess what we are very unable to understand is that, in stage set design, you see something that is not necessarily what you see. We are not quite able to understand that concept of things not being true to its materials?

That is funny because the truth to materials thing I have never heard anyone say it and I know it is a fundament of architecture that nobody ever said it to me. I had a job of assisting Daniel Libeskind when he was invited to design a ring cycle at the Royal Opera House and of course he despised every suggestion I made. Because they were all fakery and bullshit. Everything for him had to be glass and concrete. And even if something had to be kinetic it was already dishonest, it had to be solid. I am beginning to understand all of that...

But it doesn't bother you very much

I think fakery is its own thing.

In a sense, there is a temporary to our buildings as well.

Yes there is that too. I mean it's just a sped up version because everything is ending up in the trash, but mine just go there quicker.

You did discover Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre at some point as an architectural piece?

And again that is a story of my own atter ignorance, the opportunities that I have been given… It is like when I went to buy a camera and the guy in the shop was so miserable that he said, if only I could afford the camera that you are buying, because you know nothing about taking photos and you're buying this amazing camera and I know everything about taking photos and I can't afford it. And that is the story of my lucky little life. Because there I was turning up in the 1998, 20 years ago, I have rolled out of 1-year of set design training. I knew nothing. I knew nothing at all. And I got this job at the National Theatre, and I didn't know who Dennis Lasyn was, I didn't know who Charles Eams was, I didn't know anything. And then Trevor Nunn, this big daddy director, would throw these names around and I would go home, and this was before Wikipedia, I had to get a dictionary or whatever... Anyway, when I discovered who Denys Lasdun was how he made the National Theatre, my response was true and I set out clearly, he has made this extraordinary Theatre and it must express itself on the stage. So we made huge chunks of shuttered concrete on the stage, but I then wanted them to move so mine weren't really concrete, they were just some fakery painted on a travelator.

Should we move on to the portraits?

Ok, go on with the pop stars.

We start with Beyonce What is it like working with Beyonce?

(audience laughs)

Ok, we talk about portraiture, we talked about portraits made of LEDs. It is quite interesting because someone in here is a Mark Fisher Scholar? Where is Bodeaux?

Here is Bodeaux and this is Jack who is also a Mark Fisher Scholar.

Mark Fisher was he trained here?

Yes, he was.

Mark Fisher hated word stage design, he despised it with a passion. He called himself and his company is still called Entertainment Architects. And yet when I did my piece in Miami one of the reviews said they were surprised that this could be art. This was an art review. Because they normally despise art that comes from entertainment so this kind of take on art and entertainment, art and architecture it is very troubled and conflicted and people are anxious about it.

And you are just there?

Well I'm the least anxious about it. Because I am in it. I don't even know what is what. I don't need to stick a label on myself because I am being myself, I guess. But, I did take a trouble thinking about Mark and I was looking up the word entertainment before I came out this evening. Entertainment in French means hold together. So there is obviously a virtue in what we see on the screen now, which is 90 thousand people being held together. The stadia are probably the cathedrals of gathering. I went to St Paul's Cathedral actually last week. I was looking at the film about Coronation in Westminster Abbey and when it was full of people and they were stacked up and it felt like a stadium. That is probably, in my opinion, how it should be and we should all go to listen to that or we should just sing and have those spaces reclaimed. But the stadia are the best we can get for now, so there is just a simple need to see the person who is singing. It is a really basic requirement. Because the trouble is with entertainment architecture, it quickly becomes diluted by all the stuff it needs to deliver. So quickly you have these screens at the sides, and speakers and actually it would be better to start with all the things that it needs to do, condense them into one object and actually you don't have room for anything else at the end.

You tend to say that there is very little difference in working on this scale to the very small scales that you work on?

They are very related. A play that was done in a really small theatre at the Almeida Theatre, maybe 250 people a night. But to me it is the same gesture of expressing a character and the drama through a very simple platonic shape which can then transform and spit fire and surprise. I mean this is such a dishonest object, look at it. First it said it was solid, then it said it was transparent, then it opened up. It said it was a kitchen, then it said it was a Chinese restaurant. The day-to-day reality of these objects is in the notes I would get from the director. It would say: chopstick number four needs some more felt on the tip of it so that we will not hear it being set during the quiet library scene. So while the Chinese restaurant scene is being set at the back or that cube there is a quiet scene in front and each chopstick has to have a little piece of felt stuck on it - it is that level of sellotape and string really.

Is Don Giovanni is similar?

Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House is a mid-sized version of it. I mean, I am very happy to keep scratching the same edge of an inclination of a cube which can revolve and present different stories shamelessly really. I could quite happily pursue that for a long time.

Bono?

And then there is Bono. This actually began as a collaboration with Mark Fisher. Of course, he sadly couldn't complete it but I was able to continue it. What Mark wanted to do was far more elaborate. Mine was very simple because I kind of wanted to take the elaborate away and understand what this band actually had to say and what their story was. And I felt that in Rock and Roll design there had been such an emphasis on technology and big machinery and staff and effects and those conversations hadn't centred enough around the fundamental thing like poem. What is the poem, what is the text.

Now there are many technological levels to your designs. There is the physical object, there is a projected image, there is a transformation of it there is sound. All of it is part of your design, so you really operate in different areas within a single project?

Exactly. It is a congruence of departments. At large scale, the safety of people even. Just the fact of one hundred thousand people being together and what that entails. There are 100 departments I know nothing about. I protect myself from knowing all the stuff that needs to be known. The sound is another huge list of departments. But the timing of it, the timeline on which everything has to operate has to be completely aligned or else nothing works. Actually the most interesting thing in theatre is when it doesn't work or in a concert. Concerts very rarely don't work actually at theatre quite often doesn't. When you go to a piece of theatre and the timing is off or the sound didn't exactly work with the video or the video didn't quite line up with the speak-in, it is amazing how intolerant we are because we are so used to the absolute timing of everything.

Sometimes you work with the already existing pieces of art. Carmen for example. In fact you come back to Carmen twice, we will see the other one later. But how do you develop those familiar characters with design? Presumably directors are crucial but how do you contribute with the design to the way that we see the character?

Again, the basic fundament when you go to the opera and you look at Carmen, you can't see anything which is really annoying. So this was really a fundamental response, please can I make Don Jose bigger, because I can't see him. There he is, he's big but then he has to sing and you have to see him, so here he is small and he is in prison. So he is in prison, he is small and I can see him and I can have a sense of intimacy and involvement with his face and therefore I engage with the story. So things are pretty basic, but in the time people didn't do it so it was unusual to do it. It seems to me just really obvious if you can't get the sense of space because you are far away and they are tiny then you're fucked really.

So that is the first Carmen you did?

Yes, it was really despised and hated this one.

So you do get booed?

It was booed. This was a proper booing situation.

So how do you handle that

Oh you just go out again for more

Because you do bow in opera premiers...

Yes you bow for the boo.

It is interesting because you don't normally show your face.

Yes, opera is interesting because it is one of the rare places where you actually present yourself and say this was me. And you often get booed because opera audiences are notoriously conservative and they don’t want it messed with. And this was Sally Potter, a film director who directed Carmen and she had made a mistake of going out and doing quite a few preview, press things, to try to get coverage for the show and she had done this primal error where she said she was going to change the face of opera. She said she had a new approach, she has never done this before, it was all new, it was going to change it all and of course opera critics were out to get her. From that point of view and she was toast.

Back to pop stars. Should we talk about the Weekend?

Yes, this is a paper airplane. Quite a big one. And you need to understand these things are fast. Everything I'm showing you happens quickly and I have done a lot of them. They are fast, the concept might happen pretty quickly, maybe a month and then the building would happen within 2 or 3 months. And then it might tour for a year, but it is really fast. Fast building, fast developing and quite complicated. Complicated kinetic. But fast. It often has to be very immediate and I have now stopped worrying about simplicity and the immediacy of the ideas and embrace it. Abel Tasfaye who is the singer of the Weekend is very small and it struck me that he is a small person in a huge arena of 20 thousand people and I thought a giant arrow pointing at him would be appropriate. So that's how we started. I told him, we are going to have a big arrow like the lottery advert and on a slightly more involved level his trajectory from basically being on the streets of Toronto to being where he is now, I felt it could be expressed in the story of a paper aeroplane and a flight path. I mean with any of these pop concerts how do you find a text? This is a thing from having a very solid text, here is a play like Hamlet, here is Carmen, that is a solid text. In a way that is great school, a great training, because that is what text is for. It is one bloody parameter that is sorted. And I have noticed with a lot of architects that are writing to me and who I’m looking at the work of, I noticed this brilliance of creating parameters. Because otherwise you loose your mind.

That is the key question, how do you operate when you don’t have any parameters?

That is a question for everyone - what is the architecture of your life, of your train of thought, where will you find parameters? So I think I resorted to set design and to following a text, because I needed it at that point. I could have gone to art school, I could have done many things but I didn't feel safe and I didn’t feel I could trust my own train of thought. When I left foundation course I thought, god, I need a text to hang onto and I need to learn more from other poeple’s texts and I guess that is what last 20 years has been. It is an extraordinary school to learn a text in so much depth that you can create an environment for it. But with the pop concerts you have to write the text because all you’ve got is the lyrics but that is it.

Does the stage really relate to the lyrics?

Sometimes it does, sometimes is a counter point - you absorb a lyrics but there is certainly no clear linear text there. So finding something like a flight path of an airplane is a thing to hang stuff onto and to bounce. It becomes a parameter

Can we go back to the idea of collaboration? Because what I think is very interesting is that you refer to your associate designers in your studio as well as the superstars as collaborators so in some ways they both have an input into the work... What is that collaborative environment like?

This is really modelled on the work in a theatre because I actually never heard a word client. I never really got paid and I never heard word client until I started getting paid. It seems that it was related to money so in theatre noone ever talks about client because I don't know who the client would be for a set designer. I guess it would be the producer of the show. But say you're doing a show at the Royal Court Theatre as I am at the moment, the producer is sort of asking you anyway to work without being paid really so they are not the client they are not paying… The playwright might be...

What about the director?

Well the director is the person who has invited you to collaborate so they're the person who has... You're doing that project because they have invited you, but they're not paying you and they're not your boss and certainly the actors are not, the singers are not, the writer... So it is a collaboration… If the writer were not happy with the design, if the actors are not happy, plenty of people could say this is not working. You have to evolve it but there isn't a client. And client is another word that I ended up looking up because people say client to me and as you all know it means to clling. It comes from cling which isn't nice. By all accounts it was a roman term used for lawyers, so the clients were the people who literally clang to the robes of the lawyers to grab their attention and cleave listen to their every word so that is where client came from...

When you sit down with superstarts, is it a different kind of tone? Are they particularly self aware of the way they come across through the stage?

That would also be true of a playwright who had written a very personal play and spent years writing it. The little turning box with the Chinese takeaway, that is Lucy Krikwood, who spent four years writing that play. So the weight of responsibility for somebody’s visual expression is equal I’d say. So I don't feel a different sense of responsibility to the lyrics of a musician to the words of a playwright.

Apart from having to use their faces?

I don’t have to use their faces but I have noticed their faces are going to turn up and I used to resist it. Because the world of making pop shows in very chaotic and you would rehearse for a very long time and there wouldn't be image magnification, the two big screens on either side. They wouldn't be there in rehearsal. So you create an exquisite pure thing that has nothing to do with that and when you turn up in the stadium or in the arena they are there. So I just decided to make my piece with them and make them a show. I was working on a project and I found myself I didn't look at my show I just watched the screen all night. Because I’ve come to see Adele, I’ve come to see Kanye, I didn’t come to see some designer’s bullshit so.. I thought I might as well make a focus on one thing...

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Es Devlin, 2018