I never intended to become a commercial filmmaker in the first place. What I do requires time and experimentation. Commercial work is often not the best way to get the most innovative work, because it's about money and marketing. Although advertising is now embracing non-commercial people.
— Marco Brambilla
Just doing a project because it's an opportunity won't create meaning. As an artist, I need something to communicate.
Most of my work has no conventional narrative, so it's not essential to have a beginning and an end - your attention can flow in and out of the experience rather than having a set entry point.
I think that in a weird way, as technology gets more sophisticated, people have become less aware of it. It's become part of our day to day life. We're seeing large-scale projection mapping, like on buildings. There's video everywhere. It's much less noticeable that we're actually looking at technology.
A lot of very popular mainstream artists are products of record companies and marketing companies, and any time anyone can stand outside of that, that's interesting.
Thematically, most of my work deals with transition, our culture's constant acceleration, and emotional connection and disconnection through technology.
Usually, the energy in elevators is so awkward; I mean, I can't imagine the politics in the ones in the Conde Nast building.
I think in America there's this free flow between fashion, art, architecture, music and design. In Europe, it's more segregated between those different disciplines, I think.
I love the idea of bringing my work to the general public, not just people who go to gallery openings.
The art world has become the R&D department for so much fashion and music, so knock-offs are getting better and better.
I'm a huge cinemaphile. My interest in filmmaking came out of experimenting with different genres, and I wanted to go back to working in a way that was more personal, which, for me, was artwork. Commercials and films are more collaborative.
For me, a lot of my work has dealt with what it means to be at the center of the universe and how alienating and kind of seductive it is. A lot of my work is very aggressive and very visual, but at the same time, it has a lot of tension in it and makes you kind of uncomfortable sometimes.
Being able to make work - if it's on your terms, and it's a good fit with the people who are supporting it - can be a very interesting exercise. When it doesn't work is when an artist just connects with a brand, and they try to take advantage of each other.
I'm very obsessed with the energy of New York and the idea of the way people behave in the city versus the way they behave in a natural environment.
I like controversy. The more controversial it gets, the more interesting it is.
