Flávia Tojal: In a simple way, it can be said that from the perspective of phenomenological thought, the identity of an individual is design and composed by the very relationship, the link, the connection with the world around – here the world can be understood as people, geography, time, culture, etc.). Art often highlights precisely this connection, therefore, deals with frequency and depth with the issue of identity. In the text of the book Divendal, Jan de Goede, puts it in a very evident way, for example, in the following passages:

“This way of looking is not aimed at identification or belittlement, but at connection. Of course images, like words, refer to the world, but that connection is implicit and is among the prerequisites of image and text. Divendal’s photographs, however, are about being aware of that connectedness. (…) He seems in his pictures to bear witness to the power and melancholy of looking. This trivial fact, within the overall inflation o four culture of intrusive imagery, comes across as something very special”. (page 73)

 “That sensory engagement consists, in concrete terms, of a dialectic of distance and proximity. Looking presupposes distance. Awareness thereof, in the formo f an unpretentious modesty, is present in all the photographs. Looking, to Divendal, means showing respect fot the integrity of the world and thereby allowing people and objects to unfold their private natures. That is also why his photographs are connected with things of value, with people and places that are dear to him. They offer a counterpoint to the disengagement and distance forced upon us by living and looking, they exemplify our longing for closeness, the longing to narrow the distance”. (page 74)

“To me the beauty of this photographic work lies in the offer of a certain equilibrium, in which the division between man and the worlds in day-to-day existence is temporarily suspended. It makes us aware of the Power o four subjectivity. For the principle underlying not only the making of these pictures but also their viewing, is that of reciprocity. And that moves us, for Leo Divendal’s photographs need us in order to unfold their meaning”. (page 76)

Is there any conscious intention throughout the creative process that will lead to this result, or is it just in letting go of conscious goals that the artist can explore and show the strength of these links/relationships?

 

Leo Divendal: Thanks for your amazing mail within all these fragments and questions, quotes and thoughts about my work. 

I am still touched by your first question: ‘How do you feel about this, Leo? Do you think we can do it? We’d be very happy and proud to have you involved somehow with one more of our projects!’ Well that’s also the other side around. Although it’s sometimes alienated to write about yourself as if you are the third person. It’s almost like Coetzee said in an interview (which he never likes to do): the answer is in the work itself, even when it raises only questions.

But I feel your real interest and love and desire to go deeper into the meaning of a creative process. In that sense we share the same, our love and critical view and desire to make connection and understanding (creation of the world in seven days, we are just on day one…).

 

It’s always surprising strange to read all this thoughts and quotes and to see and remark that your work become alive by the viewers, like Jan de Goede said at the end of his beautiful text in the DIVENDAL-book: “To me the beauty of this photographic work lies in the offer of a certain equilibrium, in which the division between man and the world in day-to-day existence is temporarily suspended. It makes us aware of the power of our subjectivity. For the principle underlying not only the making of these pictures but also their viewing, is that of reciprocity. And that moves us, for Leo Divendal’s photographs need us in order to unfold their meaning.”

 

Let me improvise to make our conversation that fresh as possible (as a way of talking and listening).

I read again Jan’s text this morning and felt some pain that I haven’t seen him since a long time because of probably some misunderstandings. He can be that ironic that sometimes you don’t know what he means or not seriously. But in the reading I did find him back as pure as I knew him in essence and I did send him the small Inner Court booklet. I had to do this first before answering you, now I have peace in my heart with him again. So: thanks for reminding!!

 

You are talking about a conscious intention throughout the creative process, or is it just letting go that the artist can explore and show the strength of these links.

I strongly believe in a not to separate mix of both. In fact as a human being (and also as artist) you are in a constant moving process of living (and creating), so partly you have to act all the time and to reflect, to get conscious about your options, choices and decisions.

I my approach of working I like to be prepared almost abstract, sort of bigger intention, but certainly not too strict or limited, otherwise I feel no space for the adventure of looking and the adventure of imagine, whatever it is, photography or writing -or teaching.

I don’t want to have an unchangeable schedule in which I put myself in a voluntary prison. It should not give a space for my curiosity and sensibility for the surprises of life.

So in that sense: conscious, yes, but not too much and not always on an aware level, especially not when you are in the middle of creation. But even then, on another level, you can speak about a conscious level: your intentions, your purposes, your dynamic of life itself what brings you somewhere. And -like Jan de Goede is also speaking about: it’s a dialectic process, all the time people -the world- reactions, you are the center of the world and a very minimal part of it at the same time.

Why are we so close by and so far away also? Who I am when I am writing or photographing? I have to free myself from my myself to be able to open and let go out what’s in. I have to stop censor myself: what is permitted, what is decent, what is fashionable, what’s respectable or admirable. To let this all loose. But for a certain layer you cannot free yourself absolutely from that, you are also part of the world of conventions, codes, judges, admirations and fear, fashion, everything.

 

In fact you have to deal with all this IN the work itself, not as a content program, but as condition, you have to struggle with this in the working process itself. There are the answers, there is this secret connection between distance and proximity. That is the creative process: giving form to this secret. 

 

Of course you can be prepared for this, you have to work for that all the time: to create space for this process, to make good conditions, to organize, to study, to take care, to keep courage, to believe. (to rise above ‘the banality’ -think on Hannah Arendt). Of course that’s also a strong conscious process of taking responsibility for this, to reach higher quality, deeper meaning, more precise form. To be part of a human social process of creating instead of destroying the world, to be not selfish and addicted to nonsense or quick satisfaction within violence).

For this process you need communication with others, this is also essential, you have to be stimulated and to stimulate yourself, you have to be helped and help others, also in the exchanging of ideas, of critics, of discussions. This process, which is also essential for the creative process is a high matter of choice, conscious choice. Step out the ivory tower, the comfort zone. 

 

Flávia Tojal: In your text, To come home, you describe some of your artistic path having as a guideline the idea that the creative process can happen in two ways: one horizontal, more curious, that takes the artist to the outside world, to what’s desired, the different, the mild and transient, or one vertical, deep, leading the artist to his inner world, a dive in the “here and now”, what is present, silent. And the text ends with the following passage:

In all the projects I tried to unfold the meaning of being at home, in the sense of John Berger’s. The first project in terms of dead, the second in terms of life. He writes in his book And our faces, my heart, brief as photos: 

Originally home meant the center of the world – not in a geographical, but in an ontological sense. Mircea Eliade has demonstrated how home was the place from which the world could be founded. A home was established, as he says, ‘at the heart of the real.’ In traditional societies, everything that made sense of the world was real; the surrounding chaos existed and was threatening. Without a home at the center of the real, one was not only shelterless, but also lost in non-being, in unreality. Without a home everything was fragmentation.

Home was the center of the world because it was the place where a vertical line crossed with a horizontal one. The vertical line was a path leading upwards to the sky and downwards to the underworld. The horizontal line represented the traffic of the world, all the possible roads leading across the earth to other places. To emigrate is always to dismantle the center of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.

 More and more I discover in my work this inspiring and expiring movement of horizontality and verticality. This alternation is fruitful and expresses the essence of my work, the continuous attempt to come home.

This comming home could also be the constant effort of self recognition, a search or construction of one’s identity?

 

Leo Divendal: Let me continue on the first part still a while. About imperfection…..

 

The whole process of consciousness is in fact a mysterious one, even in the reflection part of the creative process is such a strange mixture of fragments, experiences, logic thoughts, feelings, flash-backs, dialogues, dreams all the time present, that’s still a miracle something comes out what makes sense anyway.

 Often I have the feeling of a constant improvisation and movement, full of imperfections and unfinished elements. This imperfection is really important. In contrast with our culture (everything has to be the best, the most beautiful, the strongest, the most important) I like more and more a certain imperfection and I can see it’s also present in my pictures and stories. It’s the awareness of a constant search for a better imperfection, an imperfection more complete, more meaningful, within the idea that everything needs to be worked out, continue, never finished, always something to work on, like  a dance. In the dance itself the creative process is present in an ultimate form. Comparing this to photography or writing, it’s the same: in the photographic process or the writing process it’s happening, it’s the visual, the linguistic dance. You have to explore it, using all energy, finding balance, creating movement, exploring space and light, gravity and tiredness, feeling being born and dying. It’s always imperfect, you are an architect of imperfection. Taking decisions all the time, balancing, acting immediately, doing this and not that, taking risk, showing your face, feeling and touching. 

 

This process is also a matter of sharing, in recognizing this process in someone else, we are our mirror and at the same time so unique. Sharing is learning out of common experience, you are all the time teacher ánd student, student ánd teacher. This is reciprocally. It’s a constant experiment, changing all the time, never established, never closed.

Teaching, guiding is in this whole universe maybe even important, an essential part of the creative process. Giving and taking, listening and speaking, proximity and distance. With care and love, honest, curious, enjoying!

 

This are the conditions to learn and experiment, to create work and feel the space to do and try. Without this, nothing happens, photographer or writer, architect or teacher, dancer or carpenter, it doesn’t matter. In that sense each human being can grow and create, so we are responsible for each others condition too. That’s the cultural, political side of it. Playing hide-and-seek. Finding the right wood, the right trees for this. (behind each tree is a horse…. you see?

………..

Let me continue, after a few days, reading back your text and my first answers and realizing that even when I want to be that precise as possible, it’s still rather abstract. So maybe it’s good to become more concrete step by step, or after this first reactions -also on question/chapter 2 and 3 – to try.

 

In fact the answer on the question if this ‘coming home’ could also be the constant effort of self recognition, a search or construction of one’s identity , can only be yes in my view.

 

Of course, the ‘horizontal/vertical’ is a metaphor, translatable in so many different ways. In my photography I can see this metaphor quite clear in more horizontal or vertical projects, although each horizontal project needs a vertical layer too and a vertical the horizontal one (like a stairs), otherwise a project become one-dimensional.  

But in a larger view I am not talking only about my work, but about lifetime processes of growing and developping. In this process one needs ‘to come home’ all the time and all our energy and efforts need to be focused on that.

That’s a process of responsible acting, of learning all the time and of communicating, in the awareness that these kind op processes are never isolated strictly individual processes. 

Every encounter, every relationship is part of it. The best thing to help desperate or desolated, isolated people is to take them out of this isolation into a more social context. The process of horizontality -progress- and verticality -reflection- is continuous. The creative process is a way to uncover this life-line all the time in a translation, in acts, forms, interaction, constructions. It’s a way to show your face, expressing who you are or to discover this, because the question who you are or to become who you are is a never ending one.

We are speaking about a guideline and that’s interesting, because in there is a movement of guiding. Guiding is really something special, it’s a dynamic way of morality, of choices to be possible to make. Good ones, bad ones. By what we are guided, in which way we are guiding ourselves or others? What means responsibility?

I think that culture, history, society is guiding us all the time, in a mix of clear and disturbing impulses, moralities, purposes, fashion, desires, urgency, necessity. There is no big overviewing authority anymore, no churches, no state, no unions, no politicians. We have to invent our morality as new, based on human values and human rights.

 

Flávia Tojal: In your works A winter heart, Hotel du Nord, and Internal Affairs, is very evident/relevant the issue of mismatch between man and woman – and in each of these works, the aproach and description of the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of each character seem to take us closer to them, making deep layers accessible, and takes into account gender differences. These clashes also end up constituting the identities of these individuals. It transforms them. Some even into creeping creatures. Is there a limit that can be placed on the changing effect that relationships have on our identity, both as artists and as simple individuals?

 

Leo Divendal: Your third issue is an intriguing one, in my writing works (A Winter Heart, Hotel du Nord, Inner Court) , the ‘mismatch between man and woman, ending up constituting their identities.You are asking at the limits of these changing effects from relationships on our identity. As artists and as individuals. Let me try to say a few thoughts and ideas which make sense to give more sight and insight. 

 

First of all, I believe that relationships anyway are a complex necessity of our being, to develop an identity. At the same time essential and without impossible to live, but difficult also, something to work on all your life. To focus on mismatches and obstacles makes more clear what’s happening in these processes as just focussing on matching and harmony. That should be false romantics. As if life is just paradise. In fact I am in my novels or poetry not exactly speaking about mismatches, but about imperfection, sometimes dramatic and almost impossible, but to lighten this creating hope in fact. How to know who you are, and then, meeting or being with someone, how to know who this other human being is. Why we are attracted. What means love anyway? 

 

Sometimes people ask if this story (by example A Winter Heart, or Inner Court) or poem (Hotel du Nord) is autobiographical. My only answer is and can be that every inch of a novel, a story, a poem, every personage, is composed out of an autobiographical view on life and reality, in which fragments of yourself are presents, but in being part of culture, history, experiences. 

 

In fact my story or poem is each in their own way investigating the meaning of individuality and relationships. And specific love relationships are so intriguing to me because the balance between being individual and social is on the edge. In my pictures I am investigating somehow the same, in distance and proximity, in space and construction, in mood, in cultural metaphors for human existence. Total perfection is boring and dull. I love harmony and happiness, but I hate paradise.

Beside this the whole range of developments, experiences, knowledge, feelings are present in a sort of intimate explosive field in which all kind of traditions and codification are also on the edge of visible. The sexual drive of desire, of unification is a life energy stream of dynamics and essential in any identity.

This total field is existing out of imperfection and frictions, because of integrated life energy and mortality. 

Jan de Goede writes: “This way of looking is not aimed at identification or belittlement, but at connection. Although we do not see much – a few stone steps, shadows, a town square, a curtain, light falling on a table – he seems in his pictures to bear witness to the power and melancholy of looking…. In his work the acceptance of time and the fatality of death is eroticized because of his commitment to life, women, children, nature.” 

I recognize myself and my approach in his words very well, it’s exactly what I try to visualize, to tell stories about, to write poetry or to film. 

 

To write experiences on the edge, to the limits, is an attempt to go into the deepest layers as possible of this process of identity. 

Of course such experiences has to be part of life and development, not only to be credible, but to investigate the range of these processes. 

A Winter Heart is also written like this. There wasn’t a set-up schedule in advance to sketch the personages from the beginning to end, but just a certain position in the beginning and from that also in the writing process a growing existence and identity given form in themselves and in their relationships. Even in the beginning is already a lived position, a life experience present, and as writer you give pieces from that, just enough to make them flesh blood soul and all to move on. In fact they are working out in the story the question of identity and imperfection each in their own existence. Man and woman, yes, gender cultural definable, natural instinctive. I try to discover also these layers into myself as part of it and to express in the story in the way you create, give form, design. All tools, circumstances, environments, surroundings, time and place, histories and experiences are helpful and essential pieces of this here and now. 

This process is written in a man-woman relationship, but of course this can be also a man-man or woman-woman relationship, there is no difference in this process.

In fact in the personages in A winter heart are both layers present: masculine and feminine. 

They are mysterious in their being and drives, sexually, in their desires, in their urge for connection and the imperfection or almost impossibility of this. To investigate the dramatic layered complexity of these idiosyncratic identities part of our culture. 

 

In the artistic process I think is a common issue working, to express this complexity in a visual language which mirrors identities and culture. This process is also that imperfect and needs to grow into an optimal appearing form. I try to work on this all the time, to let this form grow into its natural and most evoking stage. At a certain moment you know it’s ready, at least to take this distance to let it communicate. ASt that moment in the process you leave the position as author and become audience.

 

“for a long time they were alone. with no one else entering the space. they would drift apart and then approach each other again, as if they were lovers and also strangers. increasingly something intangible had crept into them, placing them at an ever greater remove from one another. after the walk, in their hotel room, they had made love and she had cried when she lost her way inside herself.” – a winter heart

 

Flávia Tojal: The word desire appeared a few times in your last comments. This caught the attention of Dani, Who is here with me now, while I’m preparing  the continuation of our conversation. Some thoughs came to our mind: The desire, sexual or not , leads us to a connection with each other. The desire to know yourself better, to explain something we do not understand about ourselves leads us to seek an “alike” in the world, search for some sort of mirror, an equivalent, something external, so that we can understand and recognize ourselves, and then have a clearer understanding of our own identity. These holes to be filled are themselves the channels of connection with the world, with others. This impulse of connection so we can form our own identity is where the creation can happen. And then Dani remembered a book called “The eroticism” by George Batailles, where it reads on the first chapter:

“Eroticism is one aspect of the inner life of man. We fail  to realize this because man is everlastingly in search of an  object outside himself but this object answers the innerness of  the desire. ‘The choice of object always depends on the personal taste of the subject; even if it lights upon a woman whom most men would choose, the decisive factor is often an intangible aspect of this woman, not an objective quality; possibly nothing about her would force our choice if she did not somehow touch our inner being”.

What can you say about all that?

 

Leo Divendal: Talking about identity, you are writing: ‘Who is here with me now.’ You are talking about Dani who remarks the word desire several times, and is with you, but you are writing Who with a capital what makes this small sentence in between to an almost Freudian crucial statement what takes my attention: Who is here with me now. 

 

Remembering the drawings, etchings, paintings of Lucian Freud, this streched out ‘here and now’, a question that needs to be answered through the work itself. His ‘models’ seem to be completely themselves, not posing anymore, let go everything, no shame, no codification, no idealizing yourself to impress someone else. In his work this deep theme is physically worked out, in the appearance of the body, often laying down, dead and alive are close by each other. The skin seem to be transparent but is still superficial, we don’t see the inner side of the body, no anatomic lesson of Rembrandt, but an anatomic lesson of painting. 

The desire is in my view the energy in this ‘here and now’, what makes you move to mirror yourself in someone else, to confront yourself also and finally to unify, to become one. I think this desire is basicly resistance to mortality or to be alone fundamentally. This desire, is expressed through our body, our juices, blood, beat, excitement and we try all the time to connect, functionally, emotionally, cooperating, loving, moving. It’s meant to make us transcendent. So in my view it goes deeper as mirroring, although you try to find a ‘soul congenialety’ Often this process is imperfect, and mysterious complex. 

 

I try to investigate this imperfection in A Winter Heart, sexuality but even deeper, connection, melting together, orgastic, heavenly, no more alone. The woman in the garden house is a crucial figure in her try to ‘repair’. I discovered while I was writing that I needed this personage to investigate this process of repairing deeper. But she is not just a technician, she is a human being, with the same essential drive of desire. Maybe she is the most mysterious one, because she is ‘here with me now’. In this sense identity is -like Emmanuel Levinas -the philosopher- the human face of another human being, or Hannah Arendt ‘to be responsible’ for someone else, anyone, who ever. 

An everlasting process of searching ‘an object’, indeed, outside himself, outside herself, someone else, an ‘alter’. What Bataille calls: ‘an object what answers the innerness of desire’. This innerness is mysterious, I can call it ‘soul’, the soul of desire. This innerness is always connected to outerness, through our being, in acting, language, the creative process, the continuing stream of choices, directed by our ‘cultural’ morality (ten commandments in all religions).

Of course this process is erotic, a lust for life, the desire to an ‘alter’ person as yourself. 

 

For me, I discovered more and more, writing gives me the play field to investigate these processes, in a storytelling, poetic way. I see photography as a parallel medium, to give form and mood to this stories visually, a stage, space, material, architecture. Very sensorial. That’s also in filming, using movement and development. Maybe in the film, like in La Marelle, photography and storytelling integrates more complete. In other performances, like Inner Court, Hotel du Nord, I bring pictures and text together, I try not to illustrate each other, but to connect, to encounter.

 

Flávia Tojal: Another thought that came to my mind (and my journalism training won’t let me be afraid to ask – maybe – “silly” questions) is that even if the imperfection is something more natural and spontaneous than its opposite, during the creative process, the artist must be careful not to shorten the time that the work needs, do not hurry up leading to perhaps an incomplete or premature result. There is always a risk  that element of, let’s say, immaturity of the work be confused with the possible enriching imperfections. There is a delicate balance in the exercise of become your own work’s audience with real critical eye, without letting the processes of sharing, exchange and discussion with others drive you in the wrong direction and jeopardize the identity of the work itself. How can one find out the best rhythm of one’s own personal dance?

 

Leo Divendal: Yesterday I did write: immaturity and imperfection… ‘How can one find out the best rhythm of one’s own personal dance?’ No silly question at all.

And that’s true. This question is playing a part in the work all the time, I recognize this and it’s so close to doubt, to hesitations and fear also.

Is the work (or idea) strong enough, does it make sense, is it really me and what I want to express. 

 

In fact different streams are working at the same time. First one is the necessity of acting. You have to do something to discover. The development is in the working process, there it only become visible. So you need to take time and energy to give space to this development, or what I call to your movement. You have to go into the work, become the work yourself with all what’s in you. To jump in, dare, keep courage, the deepest as possible. In this acting there is time for experiment, try-outs, exercises, adventure, there is non schedule or road in advance to trust on. Knowing everything before is strange and wrong security. Of course you can trust on certain experiences, you are learning everyday, you are curious for serious advices, critics, sources, inspirations, but for all this you have to look for it, searching for dialogue. In a way your work is constantly in a dialogue, with you, and with any audience on the moment of showing, of taking distance. When I look to my own work, I can say that at the end it needs to see somehow natural, speaking, almost ‘easy’, I mean you don’t have to see all the difficulties and obstacles which are in the process. You try to reach a certain perfection. But when is the work perfect, I think only when the work is true and really yours and in this process of becoming yours you try to make it strong and pure, precise and in balance. Then still there is some imperfection. In fact the work is part of a stream, never finished in the context of all your works, always something to improve, to work on, to see a next step. I like it also when the work is connected contently also to a certain imperfection, mortality, fragility, pain and joy, even in a certain glance of beauty. Technics and art are in the original (greek) meaning the same. Technics has to be integrated, as in a performance: stage, light, depth, material, you have to take responsibility for this all and trying to improve this all the time. It’s part of the continuous process of learning. 

 

Showing yourself is taking risk, because it’s showing essential imperfection of life itself, but you have to find courage, and to share this, to recognize the same processes and come back to yourself all the time again. In this one can find out the best rhythm of one’s own personal dance.

 

It sounds a bit as a model, a ‘program’, you have to do this, you have to do that, but the most important thing is feeling a certain urge to go. Then: go!! Dance!! And I’ll dance with you, I promise, if you fall, I catch you!