Tilda Swinton: 'If Derek Jarman were with us now, he'd be making films on an iPhone'

It is difficult to define Tilda Swinton. Actor, performer or artist, Swinton’s chameleonic quality sees her flit, effortlessly, between worlds, her work a firm rejection of the stereotypically passive nature of the artist. Swinton is all about the collaboration. An actor has agency, and an opinion.

It’s more than a tokenism for Swinton, who has formed close and fruitful relationships with filmmakers and photographers throughout her life and career. Continuing to push at the traditional parameters of acting, she is acknowledging this component of the creative process with a new role, as curator. The new exhibition, ‘Tilda Swinton – Ongoing; at Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, marks these meaningful partnerships with the presentation of new work from Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg, Jim Jarmusch, Olivier Saillard, Tim Walker, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Almodóvar and the late Derek Jarman.

Significantly, it is the first time the museum has celebrated the role of a performer, as opposed to that of a filmmaker. ‘I am someone who doesn't identify as an actor,’ says Swinton. ‘I don't know how true that idea is of an actor as interpreter, who has no real sense of authorship or authority or agency. We need to tweak the algorithm and make sure that people understand that it's possible to be an interpretive actor, and have a sense of being able to bring yourself with you. But either way, there's a kind of weird fantasy. It's sort of the Wizard of Oz, and we're just looking behind the curtain, showing how it works.’

Here, the mundane, fun, silly, uneventful creative process is as refreshingly considered as the finished product. The first work in the show is a piece with the late Derek Jarman, with Swinton presenting previously unseen archival material. It is an acknowledgement of the vast impact they had on each other’s careers, beginning with 1986’s Caravaggio and 1990’s The Garden through to Swinton’s more recent campaign to preserve Jarman’s home, Prospect Cottage.

‘For nine years, I worked alongside him, and I really learned my way of working with him,’ says Swinton. ‘I am very happy that I have these eight collaborators, and one of them is not with us, but even with him, we managed to find a new work. I found these fragments of Super Eight footage [captured on Super Eight film] that had never been shown before, and I placed them alongside as two fragments. And I placed them alongside the last section of The Last of England [1987] which of course was also generated on Super Eight.’

Taken as a triptych, the three fragments are reminiscent of home movies in their casual content. They are off-the-cuff moments created with friends, the antithesis of an industry which demands the raising of million-pound budgets to create a film, or asks the artist to sit in isolation over a screen play for six months.

Emphasising this reality of the creative process, and shifting the focus away from the glory of the end result, is key for Swinton. ‘I want people to say, is that all? [to the Derek Jarman work],’ she adds. ‘There's really nothing to it. And I would love to think that somebody might say, you know, what are you doing next weekend? Should we go out into that wood and muck around with your iPhone? That's all we were doing. You know, if Derek were with us now, he'd be making films on an iPhone. There's no question. We have it now so much more readily available, we have these practical means of authorship, literally, in our hands. It's very straightforward. You can make work. You can keep it in your hands. You can bring yourself with you, and you can just sort of cook it up with your mates.’

Elsewhere, Swinton has created films alongside close friends and collaborators Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg, Jim Jarmusch, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a performance and installation with fashion historian and curator Olivier Saillard and a photography project with Tim Walker.

‘The culture tends to fetishise the product,’ Swinton adds. ‘But I'm just trying to twist the perspective. The relationship is the most important thing, because out of that everything comes. I learned this with Derek. We would sit around at the kitchen table and we would dream up a project, and we would work on that film, and off it would go into the universe, and then we would have another conversation, and out of that would grow an idea for another film, and then that would go out, and it's all at the kitchen table. The relationship was the basis. I don't want to be grandiose, but the culture very rarely focuses on the motor of how work actually comes to be. It may not be true of everybody, but for me anyway, the relationships are the battery.’

Tilda Swinton – Ongoing will be on view from 28 September 2025 to 8 February 2026

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