The Secret Files of Gilbert and George

For the last 40 years Gilbert & George have spanned the international art scene with as much insolence as elegance. Real living sculptures, they have developed a repetitive language around recurrent figures and themes: shit, piss, blood tears, nakedness, sperm, alcohol, sweat. Theirs is an oeuvre that has radically overturned conventions and thinking of the period, and which refers literally to sexuality, exclusion, and social and religious violence. This interview, filmed in 2000 by the curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist for an exhibition at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, concentrates on the hysteria of the archive and the collection. Through this document, which does not fit into any distinct category (documentary, oeuvre, fiction) we discover the couple’s intimate life, the interior of their London house, a veritable museum of obsessions. Beyond good and bad, appearances and things (negatives, books, press cuttings … ), we finally penetrate the material and method of these artists, their particular manner of thinking and categorizing which is itself a philosophy on art and life.