FEDERICA ZAMBELETTI / KOOZARCH I want to start from the title of the exhibition, A Kind of Language. In what ways is the storyboard a language of its own?

MELISSA HARRIS The title came from David Byrne. I asked him about his use of storyboards and he replied:

"Having done storyboards for music videos, I realized they are a much better way to communicate mood and lighting (and camera angles in music videos) than verbal or written descriptions. Theater communicates visually as much as it does through text (or song or movement), so drawings become a kind of language."

I think the storyboard, as he says, communicates visually and, in that way, universally. Beyond being compelling and often very beautiful, storyboards are functional and pragmatic documents designed to share information with a range of people — often working in different media and including the actors on a film. As visuals, they may also be more elastic, more open to interpretation, representing an idea, a state of mind, or a feeling rather than defining it with words.

KOOZ Different to other exhibitions, A Kind of Language focuses on the initial ideas rather than finished works. How did this inform how you approached the exhibited material? What was the research process? In what ways is the exhibition an exhibition on copies?

MHIt was a wonderful challenge to consider how to convey a process. In a sense, this show is about everything except the finished work — an unusual approach! I wanted the installation to capture this sense of process, of working, which became the prompt I gave Andrea Faraguna and his team at Sub, the Berlin-based architects tasked by Fondazione Prada with helping to conceive and realize the installation. Storyboards were rarely intended as one-of-a-kind artworks. They were meant to be faxed, handed out, pinned to walls, reworked, copied... We wanted that energy in the show — a sense of something alive, the journey toward whatever the filmmaker envisioned, knowing that sometimes the storyboards themselves might influence that vision. Copies felt true to the spirit of the work and also gave us flexibility in the installation when we wanted it.

As for the research, we cast the net as wide as possible. It was often difficult to track down filmmakers or cinematographers, and even once we did, we had no idea if they used storyboards or similar renderings. If they did, could they find them? Would they share them? Carlo Barbatti — the in-house researcher and associate curator at Fondazione Prada assigned to this project — and I spent two years on what became a wonderful treasure hunt of sorts!

KOOZ Storyboards have been widely used to establish place, explore character relationships, and help directors determine effective angles, among other functions. How does the exhibition reveal these different purposes and uses? What other mediums and tools play a part in this creative process?

MH I think the storyboards in this exhibition are extremely diverse, and speak to different sensibilities and needs. If you look at Satyajit Ray’s ink drawings for Song of the Little Road (Pather Panchali), these drawings were at times used, apparently, in lieu of a script. If you look at Fellini’s work for Amarcord, these are more like character studies. Then we have Martin Bell’s and Charles Atlas’s camera angle notes for Ward 81 Voices and Torse, respectively, or the storyboards by Agnès Varda for Salut les Cubains, where she culled work from nearly two thousand pictures she made in Cuba. We also include animated storyboards for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and Pablo Buratti’s for Álex de la Iglesia’s television horror series 30 Coins. And then there is video... for Jia Ling’s Yolo, and Jia Zhang-Ke’s Caught by the Tides. I think it’s very individualistic, and not at all formulaic.

KOOZ Can the origins of storyboarding be traced to a specific individual or time? What role did animation play in the evolution of this visual language?

MH We know that Georges Méliès created some form of renderings in the early 1900s, though they likely no longer exist. In my own mind’s eye, a precedent for storyboarding can be found in Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies from the late 1870s — such as his iconic image of a horse in motion — where you see the rapid succession of movement in grid form. These images indicate a progression of action before films even existed! That said, the process certainly took off with animation, where characters were created and drawn by artists in the studios and essentially given life — expressions, gestures, and backstories — all first explored and developed through storyboards.

KOOZ How do the differences in methodologies and uses reflect the varying approaches of European, American, and Asian cinema? How might these differences also relate to the different categories you identified, such as music and dance films versus epic journeys and horror films?

MH From my perspective, all the differences emerge from the sensibilities of the individual authors, regardless of their nationalities, gender, or film genre. Take our "dance/movement/gesture" section, for example — look at how different Matthew Barney’s work is from David Byrne’s, Merce Cunningham’s, or what was created for Agnes de Mille’s "dream ballet." That’s part of what is so marvelous about this work — there’s no one right way. Preconceptions are meaningless! It’s all so liberating!

KOOZ Among the many mediums presented, I was particularly struck by the dual use of photographs in Carrie Mae Weems' process and "product." Could you expand on this and perhaps link it to the works of Martin Bell and Agnès Varda?

MH Yes, I was excited by this as well. With Carrie Mae Weems, her storyboard essentially consists of the extensive research she conducts, including photography. For this work, she drew on materials her family may still possess, as well as resources from the state, newspaper, and other archives. These images and materials are so extraordinarily orchestrated by her into the moving work Leave, Leave Now!, which addresses the issue of reparations for slavery in the U.S. alongside her own family history.

Similarly, Martin Bell’s film incorporates documentary photographs by Mary Ellen Mark (his wife, until her death from cancer) taken in 1976. She and a journalist spent 36 days photographing and interviewing women on a locked ward, Ward 81, in an Oregon State psychiatric facility. This documentary-in-nature tackles issues of mental health and healthcare for the poor. Agnès Varda’s work, too, is an astonishing compilation of still photographs. To me, these three projects return to the idea of Muybridge’s work as a precursor, where a sequence of still images suddenly feels in motion—a narrator of the action. Everything happens so vitally in time and space.

KOOZ With the advent of computer technology and digital rendering, what is the status of the storyboard now? How have these technologies changed the process?

MH For sure, some storyboard artists now use Photoshop and various programs to draw, and some are even creating animated storyboards. However, for now, the storyboard remains an extraordinary first look at the earliest moments of the creative process, connecting mind to hand, with the goal of collaboration.

Bio

Melissa Harris is editor-at-large of Aperture and served as editor-in-chief of Aperture magazine from 2000 to 2012. Since 1990, she has also edited more than forty books for Aperture. Harris curates exhibitions worldwide, and teaches at New York University in the Tisch School of the Arts, Department of Photography & Imaging / Emerging Media. She served on New York City’s Community Board 5 for several years, is a trustee of the John Cage Trust, and author of A Wild Life: A Visual Biography of Photographer Michael Nichols (Aperture, 2017). More recently she published a visual biography of Josef Koudelka, titled Next (Aperture 2023; Torst (in Czech) and Delpire (in French) 2024). “A Kind of Language” is the third exhibition she has curated with Fondazione Prada.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and digital curator whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2015 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Prior to dedicating her full attention to KoozArch, Federica collaborated with the architecture studio and non-profit agency for change UNA/UNLESS working on numerous cultural projects and the research of "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.