Photographer/artist Jacqueline Hassink wouldn’t mind taking a break, but in the near future that’s just not in the stars for her. “I’m making a movie in the Buddhist temples of Kyoto, working on a book about Japanese gardens for German publisher Hatje Cantz, and researching a project on the new economy in China.” The New York-based—but always traveling—artist has assistants in New York, as well as in Amsterdam and Tokyo, and she keeps them busy according to the flow of projects. “Whatever I can delegate, I push away.” Right now she’s compiling a book on her haute couture Fitting Rooms series, for which she was allowed to photograph the fitting rooms (discreetly sans customers) of some of the world’s most exclusive couturiers. And she is creating a hi-tech sequel to what is probably one of her most well-known projects; The Table of Power, on which she first worked from 1993 to 1995. Hassink’s work Considering her preference for corporate and formal subject matters, I wasn’t expecting for us to be laughing as much as we did.

TG: When I look at your work I sense gender issues…
JH: Oh reeeeally? (laughs)

TG: Well, not your gender issues. But what I mean is that masculinity versus feminity seems to be a major theme…
JH: That might be your personal interest, rather (laughs). I don’t perceive my work to be gender oriented. One of my main focuses is economy. Global economy, economic power, these kind of subjects are of great interest to me. I did a major body of work in the Middle East, called “Arab Domains” about the most prominent business women in the Arab World, And this may sound really ridiculous to a lot of people, but Car Girls is really about corporate identity. It’s about how a major international player like the car industry uses a certain tool–girls–to market their project.

TG: But you could say that this multinational corporation is using women’s bodies. Exploiting women, even.
JH: I’ve been working on car girls for 5 or 6 years, traveling the world, spending time at all the major car shows. And I’ve started to understand much more about car psychology on general. And the most interesting thing to me is that the car itself is actually a very sexualized object, and it has been since its inception. Irma Boom designed the Car Girls book, and she recently held a presentation at the Walker Art Center. I was there, and she showed me a very telling picture from the Ferrari book she designed. It was a picture of a Ferrari motor, which has this red kind of phallic symbol in it, it’s part of the motor…and it kind of says everything you need to know about cars.

TG: The Ferrari has a dick.
JH: Exactly! As I photographed more and more car girls I began to notice the significance of the soft female hand touching the hard steel. First I thought: “Oh, that’s such a nice, elegant gesture.” The Japanese executed it so gracefully, so gently. And then, after seeing it done, over and over again, I started realizing how it emphasizes the erotic aspect. The male and the female meet each other.

TG: Aha! So it is about gender.
JH: Yes, but it’s the nature of the beast; it’s just how cars are made. It was never any different, no matter what era in the existence of the automobile you look at. It’s a symbolized, animalistic situation that culminates at these car shows. It all sort of comes together on these little circular platforms, and I think that’s incredible.

TG: The Tables of Power focuses on the physical spaces of successful companies, and in particular on the conference tables. Very Knights of the Round Table. Do you look for archetypes? Or more specifically, did you when you started Tables of Power?
JH: Well, I was living in Oslo at the time—like 1993 or something—and I was attempting to map the city of Oslo by photographing all sorts of different tables. And I had a hard time getting into these boardrooms, which makes sense. Around that time I became interested in finding out what the major driving force of our contemporary society is. And that led to the world of economics and multinationals, to all the companies with whose logos and ads we’re surrounded the whole day. That realization sparked my curiosity about the actual boardrooms where decisions are made, and where contemporary European society is shaped, more or less.

TG: It is clear to me now that most of your series are thematically connected in a very specific way; they’re about places, locations where people decide to spend, or not spend, make money or risk money. The dressing rooms where women decide on a couture purchase, the car girls tempting male car-buyers, and the boardrooms where day-to-day deals are made…
JH: That’s right. In addition to the economy, I’m interested in spaces, in the psychology of rooms. It’s quite fascinating to look around in the office of a powerful CEO. In Japan, for example, it’s all about the image of the corporation, whereas in Europe and the US, it is the CEO personally, who has the last word on the design of the boardroom. Most companies redesign the boardroom with the arrival of a new CEO.

TG: Kind of like the Oval Office with the installation of a new president. And now you’re doing a sequel to the original Table of Power. It’s a different world now. What would you say are the main changes?
JH: First of all The Table of Power 2 is going to be an ipad appilication, thanks to a multimedia company I’m working with in Holland. It’ll chart the economy at the time of the original series, and keeps track of real time changes for those companies. The first series dealt with Europe’s forty largest multinationals. And that top forty is different today, of course, so those changes are part of The Table of Power 2. I did something similar with the exhibition design of Car Girls, which has in common with The Table of Power that it’s not just a selection of images; it’s also a lot of information. Car makers, countries, sales figures, trade shows, all of this was displayed on four computers, and on projectors and a soundscape was crated by combining the ambient sounds of multiple car shows. It will be traveling around in that set-up, but it’s a very costly affair because it is so involved.

TG: I know that you spend a significant amount of time in Japan. That makes sense to me, because there’s something Japanese about your reverence for corporate culture. Do you feel a special connection to Japanese culture?
JH: Yes. I have an assistant in Japan, and I spend a lot of time in Kyoto, in the temples. At one point after having worked with her for years, we came back from the temple at 7 in the morning, and she turned to me and said: “I have to tell you something Jacqueline, I think you were born Japanese.” And I said: “What do you mean, Noriko?” And her response was: ”I think your mind is Japanese, You think like a Japanese person.” So maybe that explains why I feel so much at home there, and why I connect on a visual level—I like the way people interact.
But in the end I’m a real chameleon. That’s why I can work with these corporations, work in the middle east, or get permission to shoot those couturiers’ dressing rooms. I probably adapt very easily to all these environments, because I have great respect for my subjects.

Links:
> Jacqueline Hassink – The artist’s site with links to the galleries representing her.