Mathieu Copeland
Flat3, 84 Blackfriars Road
SE1 8HA
London, UK

Anna Sanders as a fiction person...

Anna Sanders originally appeared as a character created in 1997 by artists Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno, following their desire to tell the history of a feeling. She first appeared as the name of a magazine, a magazine that presented us with this very character, yet you would never see any images of her, she would only materialise through the choices of the articles, the pictures and the layout. You would not see her, but have a feeling of who she is.

Anna Sanders as a film company...

Anna Sanders Films ultimately replays her original appearance. You never see her, but only get a feeling of her presence through the films she produces. Anna Sanders Films was created by filmmaker Charles de Meaux, and artists Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno, later joined by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. All met around an initial similar & singular interrogation, ‘how can we tell the world nowadays’, in other words, ‘how can we make the portrait of a landscape as one would do the landscape of a person’. Inserting itself within the history of artists led film company, somehow close to Dziga Vertov (Godard, Gorin…) and Zanzibar (Garrel, Mosset, …), Anna Sanders Films lies somewhere between economies (contemporary art & cinema), between realities (mental and factual), between fictions, and between dreams. Ultimately Anna Sanders Films is a film producer, registered at the national centre for cinematography in Paris.

Experimental films in France nowadays...

Even though the films produced by Anna Sanders Films are very experimental in their approach and assumes their status as a cinema d’auteur, the films are produced within the film industry, and as such evolves within the classical means of wide public distribution (in cinema through main distribution in France and abroad, and through the Anna Sanders Films Tour, and subsequently as a DVD Collection distributed by MK2 – releasing since 2005 the films by Charles de Meaux, the films by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, the films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and the films by Melvil Poupaud).

Anna Sanders Films and Apichatpong Weerasethakul...

Anna Sanders Films brings together numerous artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers. For instance, it is beautiful to remember that Anna Sanders produced Ann Lee, a virtual character giving life to another one. The relations within Anna Sanders Films are obvious as the concern that led to the creation of the company is very close to the concerns that animate all of whom she collaborats with, for instance Apichatpong’s films do offer a deep and sustained look into landscapes, moments and presents. Anna Sanders Films co produced Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s latest film ‘Syndromes and a century’, presented recently at la Mostra in Venice, and is currently producing Charles de Meaux’s forthcoming film ‘Stretch’ to be filmed in Macau. 

You as a curator of contemporary art... 

I tend to enlarge the scope of the exhibition in embracing a whole range of contemporary art forms, as ultimately, there are no differences between art forms, and all are just through a medium used. An exhibition is a truly amazing form to manipulate, a formless medium, a conceptual backbone acting as an empty structure, a temporal host. I recently realised the exhibition ‘Soundtrack for an Exhibition’. Soundtrack characterises this in its very form, as the exhibition confronted a series of evolving paintings by John Armleder and Steven Parrino, a film where what was shown was not the film that was to be known but all the 270 hours of footage as filmed to realise the film ‘The King is Alive’ by cineaste Kristian Levring (Dogme95), and a third element being a soundtrack composed to last 96 days by Susan Stenger featuring contributions by Alan Vega, Kim Gordon, Mika Vainio, Robert Poss, Alexander Hacke, F. M. Einheit, Bruce Gilbert, Ulrich Krieger, Warren Ellis, Jim White, Jennifer Hoyston, Andria Degens (Pantaleimon), Spider Stacy. It was in the confrontation of all the three elements that happened all the moments of the exhibition, three evolving elements (paintings unstable in tome, a soundtrack lasting 3 ½ months and a films exploded in its form) constantly generating new forms of exhibitions.
I am currently working on an exhibition to open in January at Sketch London of the films ‘The Movement of People Working’ by intermedia artist Phill Niblock, movies he realised between 1973 and 1989 of – literally – the movement of people working. Beautiful films, formally as well as intellectually, these are a cross over between a concern with the workers’ gestures (and therefore its status) and a choreographed movement endlessly repeated – similar to a dance, all films confronted to a very large selection of his music pieces since the early 70s to nowadays. Endless confrontation, randomly generated, this exhibition 
I am also working on an exhibition for the Hong Kong City Hall for May 2007, with artist Loris Greaud and musician Arnaud Michniak. An exhibition taking several shapes in a multitude of moments, first as a DVD (published in early spring), followed by an exhibition where what is is not the artworks as such (as produced and featured on the DVD), but as felt and described or presented (literally presented, as one would talk about presenting a TV show). An exhibition where the art is not what is present, but somehow everything else that surrounds it.