If the MTV generation had a short attention span then the world of 140 characters and gifs is, as they say, a world of goldfish. But perhaps this is what is driving the success of this undertaking? People are yearning for more substance and willing to invest their time when the returns are high. Eventually, Life and Times will become a mammoth ten episodes and while Liska is never short of motivation, he admits that the undertaking is unique with regard to the creative process.
“Each episode is always informed by the unanswered questions from the previous ones so we’ve learned that we shouldn’t make too big of a plan for anything in the future because once we start working with a new episode things change completely” Liska says. “We’re working on Episode 8, 7 and 6 – we’re working on them simultaneously because we have support for them – but we know that ultimately until 6 is completed, 7 won’t be generated. Episode 10 will be tough because we’re deliberately keeping ourselves ignorant about the plans.”
As with the rest of the dwindling creative economy, Liska and Copper faced a challenge financing this project. “It’s so hard with this, particularly when we’re looking for grants and support because we’ve learned that no matter what we say, we’re lying,” he laughs. “As much as we may fall in love with an idea we know plans have never worked out before and everything changes with this. We need people to trust us to deliver. Ultimately, we want to do the whole thing together. The messages we’re getting is not that we’re crazy, even after we did the 15 hour show, the messages we’re getting are ‘Keep going.’”
Just as Michelangelo’s David was once a crude lump of marble and Air on the G String from Bach was once a silent piece of stretched sheep’s gut, Life and Times was just someone’s ordinary life. Of course that life is valuable to the person living it, as the sheep valued its stomach, but the eventual conversion into art is what the audience wants to witness. “The whole idea is that the story wasn’t interesting,” he says. “We always look for things that are not art yet and that’s the main premise of everything that we do. I already appreciate Chekhov, I already appreciate Mozart, but there is a limited amount of what is already art and there is only so many times I can go to the theatre or see a great film. So I spend the rest of my day looking at things and trying to figure out if they could also be art so that I can live perpetually in the arms of art – not to sound pretentious or anything. I guess I just don’t want there to be a break between my experience of art and my life.”
While many may see that as an exhausting existence, Liska views it as the only life worth living. “Life is short, why would you want to spend it on things that are not great?” he says. “When you realise that art is all over the place then you don’t have to put so much pressure on yourself to search for it. We’re working on Episode 7, which is going to be a film, and I’m looking at Orson Welles and I’m looking at Citizen Kane, purportedly the greatest film ever made which I really appreciate. I’m also looking at Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, purportedly the worst film ever made, and both of them I appreciate equally. I don’t delineate with art or make judgement. Everything that I like I learned to like on my own so what I see as art is just what I chose to see.”
While the episodes are being run as separate shows, Liska and Copper are presenting one marathon performance of all four episodes. Liska isn’t concerned, however, about people misunderstanding what they’re coming to see. “I don’t have to worry about those [distracted] people because it’s not like anyone’s going to come in there by accident thinking they’re coming for an hour long show,” he says. “I have a very short attention space myself; I get very restless too. But I feel like I’m not alone in knowing that I want experiences like these. It’s always hard to convince the curators not to worry about the long performance because I find people are hungry for an experience that’s out of the ordinary and are willing to make that commitment.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
