Martine Syms Quotes
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Representation is a sort of surveillance.
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Pipilotti Rist is a Swiss video artist I learned about pretty early on. She's one of the first contemporary artists I knew about and was really drawn to.
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I think the medium or format of distributing things has its own characteristics. I think that an exhibition can communicate certain things that a video can't, and publications communicate that in a different way.
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My family, my background... it just parallels really nicely with a lot of social and cultural movements.
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I'm interested in the economy of words and forms: jokes, aphorisms, copywriting, advertising, that way of writing when meaning has to be squeezed into as few words as possible.
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My mum was very interested in art and liked to write, and my dad was a hobbyist photographer.
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Los Angeles is an uncanny place to live. It has many science fiction qualities. For example, when I'm standing in line at the supermarket and I recognise the person in front of me, but I can't figure out how I know them. Suddenly, I realise I saw them in some random commercial six years ago.
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I had a studio visitor ask me when a piece was complete, and afterward, I realized I was kind of annoyed by the question. I wrote down to myself, 'Nothing's ever finished' as an operating value.
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I think of entrepreneurship as a way of creating value.
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I have said it before and I will continue to say that I don't think art is the most effective form of protest. I don't think it changes policy; I think it changes discourse, and discourse can change ideas, and for me, that's what it's about: having that space for conversation.
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I'm so voracious with books, movies, TV, and I'm always interested in the way that different cultural values are presented or, in their absence, are present.
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It's very comforting to feel myself getting stronger.
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I grew up watching tons and tons of television. It was all I would do, especially during summer vacations.
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I grew up in Altadena, California.
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Entrepreneurs create value; I wanted to create ideas that became machines for making value.
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I didn't really grow up with any traditions. I grew up in a pretty liberal household in Southern California. I think that's part of my interest in thinking about heritage. I don't have a second language or cultural heritage in that way.
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One of my early memories is of a white girl twirling in a circle. I realized later on that it was from that show 'Small Wonder' - the oldest I could have been when I was watching it was four or five, but it's one I think about a lot. It's stuck in my head, this terrible Fox television show.
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If some things don't make me feel good, I stop them. How simple, yet so hard to do.
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I was very conscious of the film industry - a lot of people, neighbors, worked in it. I actually grew up doing a bit of extra work myself. I was homeschooled, and it was a way that I could make money. My parents let us do these jobs, and I never got very far, but I was much more interested in what everybody else was doing, and I liked being on set.
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I'm really obsessed with this show right now called 'Power,' produced by 50 Cent.
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At some point, all black movies became biopics. All the good, serious ones became biopics. 'Ray,' 'Ali'... those types of movies, those are the opportunities available for mostly men. Those are the opportunities for a black actor to transcend 'black' movies. They have to play a black icon.
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I guess I can be a little mischievous!
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It's weird how the Internet changes everything. The kind of narrow casting... instead of reaching for a broad audience, you are reaching for a more targeted audience.
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I grew up in Los Angeles. I watched lots of television; I still watch lots of television.