JOYCE WIELAND: Interview and Notes on Reason over Passion and Pierre Vallières

The Joyce Wieland archive is a substantial (just over 7m of textual records) and invaluable resource that has only been recently made available to the public. In the late 1980s, Wieland had organized her personal papers for donation to York University, Toronto, where they are housed in The Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections. The archival material largely dates from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s and consists of countless items, including diaries, journals, notebooks, sketch books, letters, notes, photographs, scraps of paper with everything from lists of vitamins to groceries to doodles, as well as newspaper clippings, scripts for her films, unpublished interviews, essays on her work students had sent her, grant applications, passports, legal documents, and original works of art. The archive offers an incredible resource for developing new ways of understanding, and critically engaging in, Wieland's artistic production. What follows is a small selection of previously unpublished documents found in the Wieland archive. The first is an edited version of an interview with Wieland by Barbara Stevenson dated 8 October 1986 and conducted in Toronto. sections of the interview that have been omitted are indicated by ellipsis marks, but otherwise I have retained the original sequence of questions and answers. The complete transcript can be found in the archive, box 1999- 003/005, File 5. The subsequent documents are scanned images from original undated typed notes on the films Reason Over Passion and Pierre Vallieres. The originals can be found in the archive, boxes 1993-009/010, File 120 and 1994-004/003, File 3, respectively. I would like to thank the executor of the Joyce Wieland estate, Douglas MacPherson, for permission to publish the archival material; Barbara Stevenson for graciously allowing me to edit her original interview and granting permission to publish it; and Michael Moir, University Archivist and Head, and Sean Smith, Assistant Archivist at The Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, York University for helping me to secure permissions for publication, scanning images, and patiently answering my multitude of queries. INTERVIEW WITH JOYCE WIELAND [Beginning on page 2 ] Barbara Stevenson Did you know all the major Pop artists when you were in New York? Joyce Wieland I met them. BS Not as friends, though? Did you see them socially? JW No, I made friends in the movement that came slightly after that, like Richard Serra. I met Frank Stella, but I wasn't a friend of his. But you see it was a very snotty scene after Pop Art. The way it became the Golden Heaven to which people aspired. To be with [Leo] Castelli [an art dealer] was everything. Carl Andre, Mollis Frampton-there were a lot of people who were film-makers. Carl Andre-he was the sculptor of the early 60s and developed a lot of the whole Minimalism thing, along with Don Judd. I knew him and I knew Andre very well and Andre liked my work. However, I did things my way and there was no way I could do things the way they were doing them. It didn't appeal to me. I knew it was good, and I knew it changed the tide of history for a while, but you know, big money changed that history. I mean the big galleries and the big bucks that went into the product. The importance of buying this particular product by these people allowed for them to be made into history. BS Mythologized, almost. JW They are the history. Like Pop Art, and there [sic] are the leaders of that history, and then the Minimalist period, and so on. There was a lot of other work going on, but those big movements were it. BS They were the leading edge? JW They were the leading edge, and that was what was sent to Europe, and that was what brought in billions of dollars. When it was written down, that was the history, the official history. …

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