In “First Point,” his new short film, the artist Richard Phillips combines two of his current obsessions: surfing and Lindsay Lohan. Phillips has worked with the actress and tabloid goddess before, on a 90-second video for Neville Wakefield’s “Commercial Break,” which had a very brief run during the 54th Venice Biennale. And his studio is lined with several larger-than-life paintings of Lohan that came directly out of that particular project.

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But don’t call Lohan his muse. Lohan, Phillips insists, is his collaborator as much as anyone in the stellar cast of people who worked on the film, including the legendary surf filmmaker Taylor Steele; the professional surfer Kassia Meador, who performs mesmerizingly as Lohan’s body double; the editor Jay Rabinowitz; and Thomas Bangalter, one half of the electro duo Daft Punk, who composed the ominously swelling score. As the trailer implies, “First Point” is at once a surf film and a film noir, an exploration of the California dream and the Hollywood nightmare, worlds that Lohan doesn’t have to pretend to straddle on screen.

But no doubt the question on everyone’s lips when “First Point” has its premiere next week at Art Unlimited, the curated section of the Art Basel fair, will be: “Is it art?” And that is just fine by Phillips. “It’s just like in my paintings,” he says. “Because of the actor and the popular culture dimensions of the project, it will give people — especially people in the art world — a real sense of instability with regard to my intentions. Is it a film? Is it an art video? It refuses to announce itself as either.”

Source: Time Magazine