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a variety of content. Hello,

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I'm Ben Luke. Welcome to A Brush

0:28

With, the podcast from the art newspaper,

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in which I talked to artists about

0:32

their influences, from writers to musicians, filmmakers,

0:35

and of course other artists, and the

0:37

cultural experiences that have shaped their lives

0:39

and work. And in this episode, it's

0:42

a Brush with Edatkins, who's best known

0:44

for exploring the strange but endlessly rich

0:46

space between the digital world and human

0:49

experience and emotion. Ed has taken an

0:51

unorthodox approach to software and hardware, misusing

0:53

them as he... puts it to produce

0:56

videos and animations that are recognisably

0:58

related to certain formats and idioms

1:00

like computer games and cinematic CGI.

1:02

But he reflects on these technologies

1:04

critically and poetically, testing their relationship

1:07

with the messy world of physicality

1:09

and feeling, using sound, touch and

1:11

space potently to complicate his materials

1:13

and means and deny the utopian

1:15

assumptions of progress and certainty in

1:18

the digital realm. A crucial factor

1:20

in achieving this is his work

1:22

in writing and draw. which offers

1:24

a counterweight to the digital textures

1:26

of the video installations. Ed himself

1:29

is ever present, physically and emotionally,

1:31

and the result is a body

1:33

of work that for all its

1:35

deliberate complexities and confusions has a

1:37

profound core of tenderness. He was born

1:39

in Oxford in the UK in

1:41

1982 and now lives in Copenhagen.

1:43

He studied at Central St Martins

1:46

and then at the Slade School

1:48

in London where he gained an

1:50

MA in 2009. It was at

1:52

the Slade that he got his

1:54

first taste for digital video editing

1:56

and within a year of graduating

1:58

he'd made two videos that are

2:00

his earliest pieces in the 2025

2:02

survey. of Ed's work at Tate

2:04

Britain, where we met for this

2:06

conversation. Death Mask 2, The Sent,

2:08

and Kerr, both made in 2010,

2:10

are digital collages of materials, some

2:12

of it stock imagery and some

2:14

shot by Ed himself, that he

2:16

sees as primers for his language

2:18

in their balance of on the

2:20

one hand, form and conscious engagement

2:22

with the particularities of video editing,

2:24

and on the other, what Ed

2:26

has called the sentimental space. Notably,

2:28

his father had died in 2009,

2:30

and his art making became bound

2:32

up with the devastation. of that

2:34

loss. In 2012 he made Us

2:36

Dead Talk Love at the Chisnhow

2:38

Gallery in London, a two-channel video

2:40

installation with visceral surround sound. It

2:42

featured an absurd yet strangely compelling

2:44

conversation between two cadavers, and Ed

2:46

called it a tragedy of love,

2:48

intimacy, incoherence and eyelashes. The latter

2:50

would occasionally appear disembodied on the

2:52

screen. Throughout Ed's work has been

2:54

accompanied by his own writing, which

2:56

often deals with the same meeting

2:58

of obliqueness and vivid expression, and

3:00

is informed by poets, novelists and

3:02

theory. from the Irish writer Samuel

3:04

Beckett to the American literary critic

3:06

Leo Bassani. Ribbons from 2014 developed

3:08

Ed's use of high definition technologies

3:11

to present the character of Dave

3:13

whose movements Ed made using his

3:15

own body mapped by motion capture

3:17

technologies. Dave was based on a

3:19

stock image yet Ed made him

3:21

a deeply individual character who became

3:23

more complicated the more one watched

3:25

the work. Initially he appears thuggish

3:27

drinking beer and smoking with hate

3:29

tattooed on his knuckles. colorbone, yet

3:31

by the end he's singing an

3:33

aria by Johan Sebastian Bach and

3:35

eventually deflating. Here's from 2015 pushes

3:37

much of this language to even

3:39

greater excess. It focuses on another

3:41

stock male figure. Ed has called

3:43

them emotional crash test dummies. Again

3:45

the figure is animated by Ed

3:47

as the performer. He appears mightily

3:49

confused apologizing and explaining that he's

3:51

run out of things to say,

3:53

lying for lawnly on a bed

3:55

and masturbating in the corner of

3:57

the room. Eventually, cataclysmically he dis-

3:59

sends into a sinkhole. a reference

4:01

to a real event in Florida

4:03

in 2013. Here it reads like

4:05

much of Ed's work as a

4:07

sense of crushing alienation in the

4:09

interface between the digital world and

4:11

reality. That sense was brought to

4:13

an extreme with old food from

4:15

2017 in which multiple computer-generated video

4:17

animations are set among racks of

4:19

costumes from the Deutsche Oppa, the

4:21

Berlin Opera House. Three characters appear

4:23

in the videos, a huge baby,

4:25

a boy in fine historic garb,

4:27

and an old peasant man in

4:29

a robe. They're unable to speak

4:31

and cry continuously, eventually sitting down

4:33

at pianos and playing a plaintive

4:35

song. The absence of their voices

4:38

is complemented by the absence of

4:40

bodies in the costumes articulating a

4:42

key element in much of Ed's

4:44

work, a sense of loss. Old

4:46

food is a turning point, the

4:48

most baroque and excessive of Ed's

4:50

work in terms of its imagery,

4:52

and yet the beginning of a

4:54

number of pieces that explore what

4:56

he calls depletion. He sees this

4:58

not as a pejorative term, but

5:00

a means of isolating essential elements.

5:02

It's present in another video installation

5:04

involving a piano, and written by

5:06

the Swiss clarinetist Jurgenetist Yurg Frye,

5:08

Yurg Frye, called... piano work 2

5:10

from 2023. We see a high

5:12

definition version of Ed himself playing

5:14

the titular piece of music by

5:16

fry focusing intensely on playing agonizingly

5:18

repetitive chords. We see Ed's every

5:20

tiny tick and gesture mediated through

5:22

his digital double. Another avatar of

5:24

Ed appears in The Worm from

5:26

2021, this time a digital model

5:28

purchased online bearing no resemblance to

5:30

the real person. He looks vaguely

5:32

like a chat show host but

5:34

he and the setting are partly

5:36

inspired by a television interview given

5:38

by the British playwright Dennis Potter

5:40

to the writer and broadcaster Melvin

5:42

Bragg just before Potter's death in

5:44

1994. In congruously Ed's voice inhabits

5:46

this character as we hear Ed's

5:48

conversation over the phone with his

5:50

mother including moving sections where she...

5:52

talks about her own mother's depression.

5:54

Self-representation has been a preoccupation throughout

5:56

Ed's career. Even the three speechless

5:58

characters in Old Food are him,

6:00

he's written. But the latest incarnations

6:02

of this tendency are vividly him.

6:05

Finally detailed self-portrait drawings on paper

6:07

in red pencil. Writing about them,

6:09

he said that he loaves his

6:11

body and the way he looks.

6:13

And there's a sense in which

6:15

he's reflecting himself in all his

6:17

rawness bodily and emotionally in multiple

6:19

works. He's begun showing post-it notes

6:21

with miraculous little drawings and affectionate

6:23

and funny messages that he packed

6:25

daily into his daughter's lunchbox during

6:27

the pandemic, which unashoredly reflect parental

6:29

love. come and go but none

6:31

for me from 2024 made with

6:33

Stephen Zultansky. Ed's father's diary which

6:35

he called sick notes written in

6:37

the last six months of his

6:39

life following his cancer diagnosis is

6:41

read by the actor Toby Jones.

6:43

Jones plays a fictional character Peter

6:45

who once he's finished reading the

6:47

diary enacts a game played by

6:49

Ed and his daughter Peter lies

6:51

on the floor and pretends to

6:53

be sick with a malaise called

6:55

Dragon disease. There he's attended to

6:57

by Claire played by Saskia Reeves

6:59

who treats him with... fantastical remedies.

7:01

The film is tremendously affecting, and

7:03

it's the subject of emotion with

7:05

which I began our conversation. Even

7:07

in this film, which is a

7:09

distinct departure from much of Ed's

7:11

computer-generated work, sincere feeling meets the

7:13

fictional and the artificial. I asked

7:15

Ed, why has he found such

7:17

fertile ground in the meeting of

7:19

sincerity and artificiality? The

7:29

perversity or the sort of realization

7:31

that sort of carried me for

7:33

a long time was that sometimes

7:35

the more artificial something is or

7:37

at least the more conspicuously, confessionally

7:39

artificial it is, the more sincere

7:41

it feels. That it sort of

7:43

manages to circumnavigate some social barrier

7:45

or something, some kind of thing,

7:47

particularly if the artifice is attempting

7:49

realistic realisticness. or is in fact

7:51

trying to be sincere. in the

7:53

place where that couldn't possibly exist.

7:55

Which is sort of, I don't

7:57

know, there was a long period

7:59

of rebelling against the ease of

8:01

a word like uncanny. Just because

8:03

it was so ubiquitous and it

8:05

felt attached to slightly schlocky sensations

8:07

or sort of scary stuff in

8:09

some way. Whereas I always felt

8:11

it was sort of more complicated

8:13

than that. Yeah. Because in the

8:15

end, I suppose I think about

8:17

myself in these ways too, you

8:19

know. as in not really knowing

8:21

and not being entirely convinced by

8:23

myself at any one moment. And

8:25

then therefore the sort of sufficiency

8:27

of a performance of sincerity or

8:29

of authenticity or whatever often seems

8:31

to kind of a but really

8:33

excessive artifice somehow. But one of

8:35

the things that's really clear from

8:37

the show is... that there is

8:39

so much real feeling here. There

8:41

is a strain which begins right

8:43

at the start of the show

8:45

which links to your father and

8:47

your father's death. Yes. And then

8:50

it ends the show too. Yes.

8:52

There's an element of you bearing

8:54

all here. But you're doing it

8:56

in very complicated ways. Yeah. Well,

8:58

I suppose the big one would

9:00

be that... I don't really know

9:02

what to do with this stuff,

9:04

or I don't know what it

9:06

is, what it is. You know,

9:08

there isn't even a sort of

9:10

therapeutic technique in action, or you

9:12

know, there isn't some sort of,

9:14

oh, I do this for this

9:16

reason. There's a compulsion in relation

9:18

to wanting to speak like this,

9:20

or rather there's a compulsion to

9:22

want to express, but not quite

9:24

knowing what to express, I suppose.

9:26

and finding these things that sort

9:28

of are excessive to expression or

9:30

to representation that kind of exceed

9:32

the purview of what's possible within

9:34

that. I mean, you know, a

9:36

good example that I used to

9:38

think about was often like on

9:40

a sunny day to day thinking

9:42

about the snow or the wind

9:44

or the thinking about the night

9:46

in the day, there's a kind

9:48

of peculiar impossibility to it because

9:50

it seems essentially sensational and excessive

9:52

in its experience. So those kinds

9:54

of experiences are always the things

9:56

that I want to make art

9:58

around. sort of impossible thing there.

10:00

But for whatever reason that's always

10:02

felt like the place I think

10:04

art should be is on this

10:06

sort of peculiar, not failing because

10:08

another sort of word that's overused

10:10

somehow, but kind of struggling, yearning,

10:12

pining, all of these kinds of

10:14

sensations and therefore hugely desirous, hugely

10:16

felt. I suppose these kinds of

10:18

extreme locations which are nothing new

10:20

in terms of human experience, you

10:22

know, aware where I want the

10:24

work to be and where I

10:26

hope people can see that it

10:28

is and that maybe... they also

10:30

recognize those locations. It seems to

10:32

me that the push and pull

10:34

in your latest work, which is

10:36

called Nurses Come and Go But

10:38

None For Me, and it was

10:40

made, we should say, with Stephen

10:42

Zultansky, is between the death of

10:44

your father and the playfulness of

10:46

you and your daughter. Yeah, totally.

10:48

And she also is central to

10:50

the post-it notes, which I think

10:52

you see as the kind of

10:54

heart of the show, and what

10:56

you've said is your best work.

10:58

Yeah, I like trying and saying

11:00

that. Do you know what I

11:02

mean? It felt like something that

11:04

would be easy for some people

11:06

to understand and difficult for other

11:08

people to understand. Not through their

11:11

own experience, but through kind of

11:13

culturation or sort of expectation of

11:15

the hierarchy of things somehow, you

11:17

know, but also because of, you

11:19

know, essentially being an artist is

11:21

maybe thought of in one particular

11:23

way or has been for a

11:25

long time. And fine with that

11:27

and very lucky to have that

11:29

even, you know, you know, but

11:31

also a bit like, well, it's

11:33

not really, it's not really. me,

11:35

you know, or that anyway. But

11:37

certainly the kind of the clarity,

11:39

the lucidity I... can feel around

11:41

my love for my children is

11:43

a kind of clarion that cuts

11:45

through a lot of the kind

11:47

of otherwise necessary ambiguity and loss

11:49

but loss in terms of forgetting

11:51

loss in terms of just very

11:53

banal experiences which are nevertheless gone

11:55

or that they're forgotten because they're

11:57

seemingly unimportant you know and then

11:59

the kind of therefore then the

12:01

sort of hierarchy of experiences that

12:03

are worth representing or worth remembering

12:05

or worth recreating or whatever. But

12:07

yeah, the film is really, I

12:09

think it stands as the kind

12:11

of the culmination of all of

12:13

this stuff in a way, even

12:15

though it aesthetically it might not

12:17

feel like that. Certainly these two

12:19

people from my life, both dealing

12:21

with the unimaginable in a way,

12:23

one in a way that is

12:25

terrifying, but also completely exploding of

12:27

self and also affording. realizations and

12:29

around love, friendship, failure, regret, all

12:31

the things that I suppose are

12:33

kind of hackneyed to a certain

12:35

extent, which are very real, clearly,

12:37

but also things that you can't

12:39

make happen unless you're there seemingly.

12:41

I mean, there's always the Dennis

12:43

Potter thing was like, you can't

12:45

tell people what this feels like.

12:47

You have to be in it.

12:49

And that as an apex of

12:51

a kind of irrecooperable experience, you

12:53

know, at the far end of

12:55

life, but something that nevertheless incredibly

12:57

fully eludesudes. any kind of anecdotalizing

12:59

or representation or anything. And then

13:01

in the film, you know, so

13:03

there's the diary read, you know,

13:05

even, I don't know, two days

13:07

before the morphine was too much

13:09

so he couldn't write. He was

13:11

still asking, when does one begin

13:13

to think about dying? Now? You

13:15

know, yes, extraordinary. I think it's

13:17

a wonderful piece of writing and

13:19

a very generous thing. But then,

13:21

yeah, my daughter loves playing and

13:23

as a lot of kids do,

13:25

pretending to be essentially... chronically ill.

13:27

I mean even if that illness

13:30

is dragon disease and the treatments

13:32

are like magical in some way

13:34

or you know improvised by you

13:36

know parent dramatizing. thing. I mean

13:38

you know that performance that Toby

13:40

Jones and Saskie Reeves do in

13:42

that is absolutely verbatim it's exactly

13:44

like that and Toby somehow manages

13:46

to perform as a seven-year-old perfectly.

13:48

A slightly unimpressed but also like

13:50

I want more treatments you know.

13:52

Anyway but these two things essentially

13:54

of like two people fantasizing about

13:56

what that is because that's the

13:58

only sort of... mode of approach.

14:00

I know you think a lot

14:02

about allegory and it seems to

14:04

me that there is in these

14:06

two very real examples something of

14:08

an allegory of art making and

14:10

Toby embodies that in the way

14:12

that on the one hand he's

14:14

doing this astonishingly beautiful reading of

14:16

your father's diagrams and then as

14:18

you say he plays a seven-year-old.

14:20

So there's this grounding in reality

14:22

but this this wonderful artifice and

14:24

this so that that's the push

14:26

and pull in the heart of

14:28

this film and again the complication

14:30

that you insist on you insist

14:32

on. big thing for me and

14:34

I think it maybe it was

14:36

sort of more of a big

14:38

thing once a kind of commitment

14:40

to not knowing a commitment to

14:42

an ambiguity and ambivalence towards things

14:44

and that that really is at

14:46

least for me the place of

14:48

art like if it has some

14:50

kind of unique location it's that

14:52

it's the kind of inexhaustible you

14:54

know, all of that, the texture

14:56

of life that is that, that

14:58

it can somehow hold, at least

15:00

temporarily in some way. I think

15:02

it's wonderful as well, you know,

15:04

like you can obviously italicize that

15:06

to a certain extent and sort

15:08

of lean into it by making,

15:10

I mean, even Saskie was sort

15:12

of asking, but what is this,

15:14

who are these people really? You

15:16

know, I'm like, because like you

15:18

say my brain is often more

15:20

allegorical than that and more structural

15:22

than that, I've never once thought

15:24

of them as thought of them

15:26

as characters, you know, you know,

15:28

you know, in the way that

15:30

the figures in the whole show

15:32

are. People occasionally like, oh, is

15:34

that Dave, that model or whatever?

15:36

And I'm like, no, it's a

15:38

sort of, it's a thing I

15:40

want to have stuff happen too,

15:42

but they're decidedly not real. But

15:44

what's interesting about that too? is

15:46

that through the show, you've written

15:48

text to a company each work,

15:51

and there's something really powerful about

15:53

the fact that you were writing

15:55

it, because you repeatedly say, it's

15:57

me. So these ciphers, these avatars,

15:59

these other beings, repeatedly, they're you

16:01

too. So there's a sort of

16:03

weird kind of mediated confessional element.

16:05

But I think that that slightly

16:07

confused thing is that they are

16:09

all me, but that really... points

16:11

back to a kind of plurality

16:13

of self or a kind of

16:15

worry about who I am or

16:17

you know all of these things

16:19

or aspects of the self to

16:21

sort of put through certain experiences

16:23

and to sort of try things

16:25

or skirting close to a notion

16:27

of it being therapeutic in some

16:29

way but it's not intentional. It's

16:31

a very digressive practice you know

16:33

it's a kind of at least

16:35

adjacent to some psychoanalytic ambience, but

16:37

it's not, it's not, it doesn't

16:39

have a school, do you know

16:41

what I mean? Absolutely. And neither

16:43

do I towards myself or some

16:45

construction, you know? Yeah. I'm really

16:47

interested in this idea that you've

16:49

discussed in relation to making things

16:51

with digital components, which is that

16:53

on the one hand you said

16:55

that sound gives these digital images

16:57

weight and also you've talked about

16:59

the thinness of the skin of

17:01

these digital beings. and about how

17:03

then that thin skin is attached

17:05

to the character if you like

17:07

beneath it, which again adds a

17:09

kind of weird physical quality. You're

17:11

making digital artifacts to a degree,

17:13

but you are also deeply engaged

17:15

in the physicality of that, and

17:17

that seems to be terribly important.

17:19

It is. It really is. But

17:21

really understanding the location of those

17:23

things or the effect of those

17:25

things. because it feels important to

17:27

try and hold things simultaneously and

17:29

sort of hypothesize their truth to

17:31

a certain extent, even if it's

17:33

not true. How do I make

17:35

this thing, this nothing rather, be

17:37

a thing? Yes. And obviously... and

17:39

sound and as a kind of

17:41

literally physicalizing thing that feels like,

17:43

because it does stuff in your

17:45

body when you, you know, your

17:47

inner ears stuff, I don't remember

17:49

the terms, but sort of, you

17:51

know, vibrates in accord, which is

17:53

a very unique thing as a

17:55

sort of one of the senses

17:57

in some way. It has this

17:59

really physical effect. But more than

18:01

that, it's also just like how

18:03

we sort of somehow know the

18:05

world is that it tells us

18:07

things through sound, at least those

18:09

of us that can hear. So

18:12

doing that and excessiveness and obviously

18:14

that comes through Foley, the art

18:16

of Foley as a kind of,

18:18

again, italicizing of something. We should

18:20

explain, so Foley artists create sound

18:22

for films, TV, etc. Yeah, and

18:24

it's always completely fantastical, you know,

18:26

like a punch does not sound

18:28

like that at all. But we

18:30

think it does because we've been

18:32

fed a kind of hysterical gleeful

18:34

sort of... You know, slightly cartoonification

18:36

of things, of experiences that hopefully

18:38

we don't really have, like being

18:40

gunned down or whatever, you know,

18:42

sort of cinema world or industrial

18:44

cinema world, but it is also

18:46

how we're sort of cued to

18:48

feel to a certain extent. I

18:50

mean, so much stuff is sort

18:52

of borrowing or surfing on presumed

18:54

fluency within an audience about how

18:56

they know to feel through certain

18:58

kinds of... cues they've been brought

19:00

up in I suppose through the

19:02

moving image and stuff. Sorry I

19:04

can't remember your question I'm sorry.

19:06

Well we're talking about the balance

19:08

between the kind of thinness of

19:10

the digital and the reality that

19:12

is a very physical process that's

19:14

behind your work. Yes I mean

19:16

I think that's probably one of

19:18

the central crimes of the work

19:20

which I think is sort of

19:22

it's kind of it's blasphemy or...

19:24

Again, back to an uncanny, but

19:26

something hopefully a little more than

19:28

that is the fact that, you

19:30

know, you're looking at something that

19:32

is very, very obviously not real,

19:34

but which is sort of reporting

19:36

itself very convincingly, or rather too

19:38

convincingly, is excessive, every gesture, the

19:40

lens flares, the dust moats, all

19:42

of these. things that you know

19:44

they are actually sort of symptoms

19:46

of the analog but they're not

19:48

real and it's like the way

19:50

a caricature or a parody it

19:52

sort of it triggers some slightly

19:54

sort of disgusting aspect I think

19:56

so I think they are profoundly

19:58

pathetic things to look at that

20:00

kind of like these burlesques of

20:02

people and of experiences or of

20:04

emotion you know how dare they

20:06

in a way I think that

20:08

is really interesting because you've mentioned

20:10

excess a couple of times but

20:12

it seems to me that the

20:14

excess needs the corollary, which is

20:16

what you call depletion. Yes. And

20:18

depletion is just as important. Totally.

20:20

Even if your work, when one

20:22

immediately confronts it, one might spot

20:24

the excess first. Yeah, totally. But

20:26

you need that kind of emptiness,

20:28

the absence, the inability to speak,

20:30

the way that there are so

20:33

many points of kind of void

20:35

in the work. Yeah. That's important.

20:37

Absolutely. Absolutely. And actually, you know,

20:39

now that you're saying that after

20:41

sort of mentioning the thinness, the

20:43

hollowness that is also speaking. to

20:45

that echoing nothing inside the thing.

20:47

But the other end, when I

20:49

think of depletion, I mean, you

20:51

know, this sort of mild obsession

20:53

with Beckett, of course, and Bassani's

20:55

sort of interpretation of Beckett and

20:57

this kind of impoverishment, deliberate impoverishment,

20:59

which is something that I sort

21:01

of, yeah, exactly, sort of pushed

21:03

quite hard. after a lot of

21:05

kind of a good few years

21:07

of quite maximalist sort of stuff

21:09

very effect-driven and I think old

21:11

food which is in the show

21:13

you know where they just cry

21:15

and look out and then they

21:17

play a very plaintive kind of

21:19

piano thing and then start again

21:21

but that's also my love of

21:23

thinking about things formally and as

21:25

much as that's the video loop

21:27

where this is purgatorial thing and

21:29

then you know and the fact

21:31

that the bedroom in hiss have

21:33

fits the 16-9 aspect ratio is

21:35

also kind of you know what

21:37

wanting it basically to be entirely

21:39

holistic so it's it's attaching itself

21:41

both to the structure of the

21:43

medium and and then the feelings

21:45

and you know all of these

21:47

things to sort of fantastically come

21:49

into some horrible accord. Right. Yeah.

21:51

But that's interesting because that's why

21:53

it feels so much like sculpture

21:55

a lot of the time because

21:57

it seems to me that you're

21:59

creating this might be the wrong

22:01

way of putting it but both

22:03

a kind of physical and a

22:05

kind of philosophical armature on which

22:07

you can structure the work. Yeah,

22:09

totally. I mean in a way

22:11

it sort of begins as a

22:13

media theory to a certain extent

22:15

of like well okay what is...

22:17

At least the early doors for

22:19

me, sort of what's high definition

22:21

mean, how high. And then like,

22:23

and why are people talking about

22:25

like, you know, frame rates being

22:27

disgusting? Or when the Hobbit came

22:29

out, it was 48 frames a

22:31

second, everyone was like grossed out.

22:33

And it was 8K and you

22:35

could see the makeup suddenly and

22:37

everything looked fake. And people like,

22:39

I didn't want this from cinema.

22:41

I want a little fuzz left,

22:43

you know, and I was interested

22:45

in that and the kind of

22:47

what's being covered up, what's being

22:49

confessed, what, you know, all of

22:51

these things, and then trying to

22:54

sort of understand what are the

22:56

sensations at the heart of the

22:58

encounter with that medium, you know,

23:00

one of the big ones being

23:02

lost. And therefore, how do you

23:04

make a work that sort of

23:06

is self-reflexive of the medium, and

23:08

also how do you have subjects

23:10

inside the medium that are the

23:12

medium? These are living on the

23:14

same strange plateau as the digital

23:16

anyway. It's not like just filming

23:18

you with a digital camera. It's

23:20

too easy to fall outside of

23:22

the medium, but within this you

23:24

can still sort of, you know,

23:26

tap its edges and things and

23:28

feel it out. So you never

23:30

have to abandon that, at least

23:32

to me, that level of sort

23:34

of criticality towards the medium, while

23:36

also... you're kind of given this

23:38

free reign to go places then.

23:40

I like that you've talked about

23:42

a criticality through misuse. Yeah, totally.

23:44

It's crucial that you're undermining the

23:46

technologies rather than celebrating them to

23:48

us. Yes. Although it doesn't, it's

23:50

not necessarily a kind of good

23:52

or bad. No. I like, I

23:54

don't like. It's more, well, how

23:56

do I relate? to this thing,

23:58

I suppose. And I think, and

24:00

it's a very sort of a

24:02

modernist approach, you know, where you

24:04

could deconstruct something literally, but you

24:06

can't do that now. You can't

24:08

take apart that laptop without destroying

24:10

it, that killing it. So there's

24:12

a kind of feeling, though, of

24:14

it's still important to be slightly

24:16

amateuristic about these things, you know,

24:18

I mean, part of this book

24:20

flower that is a kind of

24:22

book of book of confessions and

24:24

a sort of memoir thing, but

24:26

is kind of deliberately, Not consumer,

24:28

because that's a terrible kind of

24:30

subject, but you know what I

24:32

mean? I don't want to be

24:34

a professional anything. I don't want

24:36

to be a guru or a

24:38

TED Talk if I'd bastard. You

24:40

know, I don't, or an authority

24:42

on anything. You know, occasionally people

24:44

say, what do you think about

24:46

AI? You know, I don't care.

24:48

I know as much as you,

24:50

you know what I mean. And

24:52

I think that that seems very

24:54

important to me. And that's been

24:56

your approach to doing a take

24:58

show. It's not a very clear

25:00

and precise chronological presentation of your

25:02

work. Yeah, no, exactly. I mean,

25:04

I do know what I'm doing,

25:06

or I feel impulsively confident about

25:08

certain things, but I also, it's

25:10

important that that's not authoritative. I

25:12

suppose I hope against hope, maybe,

25:15

that people would be able to

25:17

read the wall text, because I

25:19

know wall text. I mean, that

25:21

was a sort of, it's a

25:23

never-ending battle. Yes. And part of

25:25

the reason they're in my voice

25:27

is to allow them to say

25:29

certain things, you know, because actually

25:31

to ventriloquize the institution proper, quite

25:33

complicated, it turns out. Yes. But

25:35

you know, everyone was amazing here.

25:37

I'm not trying to do anything,

25:39

but it was an interesting location

25:41

because I think also because writing

25:43

is such a big part of

25:45

what I do, I didn't want

25:47

to martyr that or sacrifice it.

25:49

It felt like, no, it's just

25:51

as important, actually. And then there's

25:53

the confusing moments when there's contemporary

25:55

art writing, daily texts, my text,

25:57

and then another text, you know,

25:59

it's too much, and I'm sure

26:01

some people loathe it, but it's

26:03

kind of, I like this, again,

26:05

multiple kind of locations of voice.

26:07

Why am I reading about what

26:09

a corpse turns into when it...

26:11

goes to the bottom of the

26:13

sea at this point. You know,

26:15

to me that cacophony is very

26:17

real. It makes me very excited.

26:19

I think probably Jansfankmire, really. Our

26:21

home was full of a lot

26:23

of big art books and nice

26:25

things. I was very lucky, you

26:27

know. And I was going to

26:29

say someone like Edward Gowrie or,

26:31

you know, had one of these

26:33

big collections of things or lots

26:35

of French impressionist stuff, a big

26:37

Manet book, a big digat book,

26:39

you know, these sorts of things,

26:41

but they seemed mildly inert, whereas

26:43

I think that, do you remember

26:45

that time of channel four formations

26:47

and... for animation and stuff. Shankmai

26:49

was sort of in our house

26:51

the king of it. And... Do

26:53

you mean literally as a family?

26:55

Yeah, we all... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

26:57

We had a few VHS's that

26:59

were like just Shankmai's stuff. Almost

27:01

complete. And my mom was an

27:03

art teacher. She would occasionally take

27:05

in Alice to show her students

27:07

and things. But that was really

27:09

like, you know, one of those

27:11

things that really opened everything. Yeah.

27:13

and it's so felt and I

27:15

mean if I'm honest I think

27:17

I've sort of borrowed a lot

27:19

I mean his use of sound

27:21

the kind of the unconscious in

27:23

it you know I mean he's

27:25

much more didactic about being a

27:27

surrealist you know I'm not but

27:29

yeah I mean some of his

27:31

stuff I think yeah his Alice

27:33

and his Faust are things I've

27:36

watched the most and they were

27:38

big at home And that was

27:40

wonderful. It felt like something we

27:42

all agreed on was like an

27:44

undeniable thing that we love. And

27:46

also the kind of glee of

27:48

like this setting us apart as

27:50

a family. There are many others

27:52

in this little close who are

27:54

watching. on re-watching Frankmar. I think

27:56

I had one of those visceral

27:58

shocks that one really had in

28:00

life, actually, when I first saw

28:02

Alice by Jance Frankmar. It's a

28:04

retelling, like no other of the

28:06

Alice Smith. Can you describe what

28:08

the physical effect of watching Jan

28:10

Frankmar's like? Well, it's simultaneously like

28:12

being this sort of incredibly close

28:14

to a stranger. So it feels...

28:16

and also weirdly distant as if

28:18

in a dream. So it has

28:20

this sort of strange float and

28:22

push and pull. It's full of

28:24

close-ups and full of grotesqueery, like

28:26

real pieces of meat being animated,

28:28

things like that. I mean the

28:30

white rabbit in it is a

28:32

stuffed rabbit in a case who

28:34

pulls themselves out and smashes the

28:36

glass. And it's terrifying, really, but

28:38

somehow also, matter of fact, like

28:40

a dream, there is this sort

28:42

of acceptance of reality. This is

28:44

why Alice is sort of perfect

28:46

for him, I think. But yeah,

28:48

it's stop frame. It's sort of,

28:50

his wife does all these sort

28:52

of set designs and incredible, it's

28:54

sort of total, you know, and

28:56

particularly for children. I started showing

28:58

it to my daughter the other

29:00

day, and I think still a

29:02

little. Maybe seven is a bit.

29:04

It's a bit sabotaging, you know.

29:06

When I was 19 it was

29:08

a bit much. But I also

29:10

think, I think it's also, because

29:12

it does, him and his wife

29:14

are very clearly, artists in lots

29:16

of different ways. Those are all

29:18

the people that I most admire

29:20

really, is people who are sort

29:22

of fully independently minded and able

29:24

to make these things that to

29:26

me are visually, they're seared into

29:28

my being far more than any

29:30

piffling or whatever that comes out

29:32

in the cinema that basically animation.

29:34

sound music. I mean, one of

29:36

the first films in this show,

29:38

which is called Deathmass 2, which

29:40

has weirdly this sort of keeps

29:42

cutting back to this unfolding clock

29:44

calculator thing. It's really funny. Yeah,

29:46

with this Cannibal Holocaust theme tune

29:48

from a horror exploitation film. But

29:50

that... is exactly trying to sort

29:52

of follow the feeling of, I

29:54

can't remember what it is, there's

29:57

a Shrankmah football animated film. Yes,

29:59

I have seen that. It keeps

30:01

cutting back to just sort of

30:03

gliding around with this sort of

30:05

soft core weird music. Anyway, it's

30:07

in me. You know, whatever that

30:09

period is, that was that and

30:11

like Aguirre Roth of God or

30:13

something, there's this sort of cycling

30:15

of VHS when I was about

30:17

12 or something that felt essential,

30:19

you know. I mean, you know,

30:21

when we say historical, I suppose

30:23

I should clarify the terms of

30:25

that, but I suppose you mean

30:27

long dead, fully canonized in some

30:29

way. And I actually, I was

30:31

going to say bar. Because I

30:33

don't tend to look much historical

30:35

art, although, you know, it was

30:37

a couple of years ago going

30:39

to Prado for a few days

30:41

with a friend, just going to

30:43

Prado every day. six, seven hours,

30:45

go and get drunk and talk

30:47

about it. Mainly, I just stood

30:49

in the Velasquez rooms. I mean,

30:51

it's the first time I've ever

30:53

cried in front of something, Las

30:55

Mininas. Art, visual art, cry in

30:57

front of everything else, but just

30:59

not art, you know. Right, interesting.

31:01

It's just, it's everything. I don't

31:03

know. You've got in the show,

31:05

as you say, it's the postcard

31:07

on, it's on a pane of

31:09

glass. Yes. And on the back

31:11

of the back of it. Arto,

31:13

right? Antonin Arto's list that he

31:15

makes when he's in a psychiatric

31:17

institution, these sort of excessive lists

31:19

and it begins with drugs and

31:21

yeah, yeah, rice, manioc flower, rats,

31:23

400,000 camels, you know, it's sort

31:25

of, it's utterly deranged and extraordinary.

31:27

I suppose I tend to read

31:29

and listen to things much more

31:31

than I... look at visual art,

31:33

I suppose. Not deliberately, just I'm

31:35

often looking for some sort of

31:37

effect feeling on me and I

31:39

just don't usually get that from...

31:41

I don't know, I mean it

31:43

might be bullshit actually. I suppose

31:45

I don't remember to do that

31:47

maybe. It's much more in the

31:49

kind of thrum of life listening

31:51

to music or reading things. I

31:53

wanted to talk about a work

31:55

which involves art history, but it's

31:57

sort of mediated a bit, which

31:59

is, it's called The Trick Brain.

32:01

Oh yeah. And it's a film

32:03

that features a kind of appropriated

32:05

film by a French filmmaker, which

32:07

was Andre Britton's great collection that

32:09

was, just before it was sold.

32:11

It was made for the auction

32:13

house. Yeah. And I think, someone

32:15

gave me like the CD-ROM with

32:18

the video on and the massive

32:20

catalog. and every single itemized thing

32:22

in there. Yeah that was a

32:24

sort of a self-commission or something

32:26

if one can have one of

32:28

those things where it feels like

32:30

I don't usually have an idea

32:32

I'm not really an ideasy sort

32:34

of guy you know what I

32:36

mean you know like I want

32:38

to do there was a clarity

32:40

around this of wanting to use

32:42

this footage and then and write

32:44

a thing that was a kind

32:46

of meditation on the collection to

32:48

a certain extent, or rather inspired

32:50

by, it was far more oblique

32:52

than that, you know, a parallel

32:54

thing that would be recited about

32:56

a relationship to objects, a relationship

32:58

to feelings and erotic sort of

33:00

sensation and stuff. It seems to

33:02

explode it a bit. It's almost

33:04

like somebody had commissioned a surrealist

33:06

to write a text about it.

33:08

in some way. I didn't know

33:10

if that was in your mind

33:12

because it feels like a bit

33:14

like automatic writing. Well it felt

33:16

like a sort of, you know,

33:18

whatever it's worth, it felt like

33:20

a sad thing, you know, the

33:22

collection was going to be dispersed.

33:24

And obviously the pompidous bought a

33:26

chunk. But all of the other

33:28

bits, the matchbooks and the, you

33:30

know, like everything, which, you know,

33:32

really he's then just standing in

33:34

for anyone who dies in a

33:36

way. You know, you sort of

33:38

start to... or at least I

33:40

think over time I've come to

33:42

be less interested in someone being

33:44

a kind of special case. This

33:46

person's life is worth celebrating or

33:48

something. But at the same time,

33:50

I suppose I wanted to foist

33:52

my own kind of, I suppose,

33:54

inherited surrealist sort of something on

33:56

top of it and reclaim it

33:58

at a... bit. It's about loss

34:00

again, isn't it? You talked about

34:02

loss at home. It's another form

34:04

of loss. Totally. Yeah. Again, I

34:06

think that was that was at

34:08

a point where it seemed, again,

34:10

if the medium was to confess

34:12

itself in some way, it would

34:14

invariably be around that. Whatever sort

34:16

of morbid something that's in me,

34:18

I tend to see media that

34:20

seeks to represent something, a document

34:22

even, as something that is somehow suffused

34:25

with the loss of the thing that

34:27

it is not. and yet makes claims

34:29

around in some way. And that's not

34:31

a sort of to be angry at

34:33

the item that is doing that, but

34:35

to maybe be sort of slightly hysterically

34:37

sensitive to that thing in the thing,

34:39

you know. Yeah, I like that hysterically

34:42

sensitive. I suppose it relates to sound

34:44

again. It's about pitch and there were

34:46

varying pitches it seems in the word,

34:48

you know. Yeah, it's been a while

34:50

since I've seen that one, but I

34:52

think it was also a period where

34:54

I was feeling very rightly rightly, very

34:56

sort of... Vibos, probably, and had

34:58

made a couple of other films,

35:01

one called The Primer for Cadavas,

35:03

and another called Delivery to

35:05

the Following recipient failed permanently.

35:07

Because actually that was, I

35:10

remember that was straight after,

35:12

I'd been writing occasionally emails

35:14

to my dad's email address,

35:16

and then one day this came

35:18

up. They just shut it down. Which

35:20

is fine, but it was such a

35:22

kind of, you know. Right. Good title.

35:24

Good something. I don't know. Gotta do

35:26

something with this feeling. But yes, there

35:28

was a lot of talking and writing

35:31

and writing and kind of... And finding

35:33

voice, really. I was always surprised at

35:35

quite how misanthropic my voice was when

35:37

I was writing and then performing it

35:39

and so on and so forth. You

35:41

know, I think in a way old

35:43

food when we talk about depletion earlier

35:45

and it sort of was stoppering up

35:47

that wanting to sort of stop talking.

35:49

but still there are those amazing texts

35:51

that are alongside it. So that's again

35:53

in terms of twos and fros within

35:55

work. What's amazing about that work in

35:58

terms of depletion and excess is the...

36:00

excess in the text. Totally. But that

36:02

was the farming it out to these

36:04

anonymous writers. Yeah. I've been trying to

36:06

be in touch with, but I think

36:08

it's sort of stopped. But I was

36:10

just, I loved them. This is contemporary

36:12

art writing daily, and I had stumbled

36:15

across it. And it really was a

36:17

kind of reviews based on documentation on

36:19

contemporary art daily, which sounds really arch

36:21

and boring. But it was weirdly a

36:23

location of some extraordinary criticism. Really dense

36:25

and beautiful. And we published a book

36:28

together. I still don't know who they

36:30

are, you know. How amazing. And it

36:32

was wonderful, you know, and later on

36:34

I asked them to write about old

36:36

food only based on my descriptions and

36:38

gave them complete carte blanche to write

36:40

about whatever they wanted. So they didn't

36:43

see the work before it. They did it. And

36:45

the same with the worm. They wrote some

36:47

of these things on the walls in there.

36:49

But yeah, it's a little bit horror vacui

36:51

kind of thing. I kind of want and

36:53

maybe some sort of unfindable... itch that I

36:56

want to scratch of a kind of repletion,

36:58

is that the right word? Fullness, you know.

37:00

I want it to be everywhere. Which contemporary

37:02

artist you most admire? Other

37:04

than Jan Sfankmah who's still with

37:06

us. It's extraordinary, yeah. I was

37:08

thinking about this and again, somehow

37:11

in my relatively new life in

37:13

Denmark, I don't go to much

37:15

art stuff, but I've really found

37:17

a home organising in sort of

37:19

thinking about music a lot more.

37:21

and someone who had a similar

37:24

scale impact on me as Shankmire

37:26

then is someone called Graham Lamkin

37:28

who is a musician. I mean he

37:30

had a band from Folkston

37:32

called The Shadow Ring, but

37:34

then really what grabbed me

37:37

was his first solo album

37:39

with something called Salmon Run.

37:41

The acoustic spaces he made. I

37:43

mean it feels like someone and it might

37:45

be, you know, a thing... sort of

37:47

recorded on a dicta phone, edited on tape.

37:49

It's often the feeling that he's just beside

37:52

the microphone while recording something else. Occasionally he'll

37:54

laugh. There'll be thumps from the other room.

37:56

I mean, again, someone that I should probably

37:58

confess to stealing wholesale. from it away

38:00

but I know him so it's okay

38:03

but I really it really completely touched

38:05

me found the spot and just did

38:07

its extraordinary work and I've adored him

38:09

ever since and it's been super important

38:11

that stuff and increasingly whatever end of

38:13

music that is I suppose it's sort

38:15

of really post minimalism his stuff has

38:18

this kind of punk inheritance as well

38:20

but then like this label called Vandalweiser

38:22

which is who Yerk Frye or flay.

38:24

I'm not sure what Swiss-German ways for

38:26

the job. But you know that and

38:28

Anton Boiger who runs Vandal Pfizer and

38:30

you know just that end of things

38:32

has been such a joy to spend

38:35

time with and to really test myself

38:37

with you know and also there's always

38:39

that slight glee of if you play

38:41

this, not these pieces but some of

38:43

the stuff people are like, someone put

38:45

this out as music. Which makes it

38:47

somewhere between music and sounder. Yeah, right.

38:49

Exactly. But it often includes the kind

38:52

of excess of reality. You know, when

38:54

I did a show at the Gropius

38:56

Bao in Berlin, we organized a concert

38:58

with Jurg and Anton both playing. And

39:00

they spent quite a long time setting

39:02

up the PA system. Didn't know what

39:04

they were going to do. Opened the

39:07

top windows in this space right on

39:09

a main road. closed it a little

39:11

bit, opened it a bit more. You

39:13

know, trying to establish the right seepage

39:15

of the world into this thing. And

39:17

then the concert they proceeded to play

39:19

was, I mean, at least half of

39:21

it, sort of 40 minutes of barely

39:24

playing clarinet. Just, just. It was so

39:26

wonderful. I mean, you know, like if

39:28

you get into that world, there's a

39:30

lot of pleasure. I mean, I think

39:32

the way I approach it, like with

39:34

piano work, the piece in here and

39:36

playing this stuff. He's has kind of

39:38

high anxiety to a certain extent, which

39:41

is definitely not his intention. His is

39:43

like a really almost zen-like kind of

39:45

spiritual thing. And you can feel that

39:47

that's somewhere in the work if you're

39:49

a professional, but if you're not, then...

39:51

I love it, you know, I still

39:53

love it. Yeah, it's so interesting watching

39:56

you, not you, but the thing. The

39:58

version of you, the thing. Yeah. Performing

40:00

it, because I know that you were

40:02

wearing all sorts of stuff that was

40:04

depicting every facial tick, and you get

40:06

those facial ticks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But

40:08

also, like, you can see your hand

40:10

is in pain, but I know it's

40:13

not real, but I know it's also

40:15

was happening to you. So there's this

40:17

curious thing that happens, but yeah, but

40:19

yeah. So the music is, so the

40:21

music is, if you shut your eyes.

40:23

it appears calm. Yes. But what we're

40:25

watching is a state of kind of

40:27

mild physical anxiety. Yes. And I always

40:30

felt with his thing, and again he

40:32

would disagree, and probably rightly is that

40:34

I felt like he was asking a

40:36

body to do things that were, I

40:38

would find impossible, like count 468 of

40:40

the same chord. But that's the kind

40:42

of focus that, you know, like, I

40:45

would usually sniff at. you know that

40:47

would be the Abramovich counting grains of

40:49

whatever and I'd be like awful I

40:51

hate it but somehow in this because

40:53

it's tethered to what feels occasionally like

40:55

extraordinary arbitrariness why you know and the

40:57

floating of that question it's not for

40:59

some profound weeping you know what I

41:02

mean it sort of has this sort

41:04

of flatness at the same time which

41:06

I really like I really like that

41:08

feeling I suppose because it also feels

41:10

like absurd somehow it's still a sort

41:12

of still has a bit of the

41:14

sphankmari feeling of work, kind of, what?

41:16

What's happening here? And I love that,

41:19

I suppose. I want that. There is

41:21

a strong feeling about the absurd in

41:23

your work, I think. But also just

41:25

in like the way you make the

41:27

work, there's a very notable picture of

41:29

you in Berlin before you talk to

41:31

your mother for the work called the

41:34

worm. Yeah. And you're covered in stuff.

41:36

You know, you know, motion. capture stuff.

41:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's completely absurd,

41:40

right? Yeah. And you're about to have

41:42

this really touching conversation that we hear

41:44

in the work with your mother. But

41:46

I'm conscious that all the time that

41:48

you're having that conversation, you've got this

41:51

stuff on your body. Yeah. Well, this

41:53

is, I think this is where the

41:55

sort of notion of... in a bit.

41:57

I mean in that film particularly, there's

41:59

a bit where I drink from a

42:01

glass that's not there, or I have

42:03

to take this horrible headache-inducing head rig

42:05

off. Of course, the figure on the

42:08

screen is just touching nothing or grabbing

42:10

an invisible thing. So those things that

42:12

puncture the surface of the thing, and

42:14

they kind of offer up this sort

42:16

of instant eruptive sort of thing. And

42:18

then again, that's the gap I want

42:20

to sort of really feel, the sort

42:23

of lurch, which... maybe previously I would

42:25

have thought of a kind of abject

42:27

moment or something, but it's often just

42:29

as much a kind of absurd thing,

42:31

a kind of unmorring, which you can

42:33

either receive I suppose as a kind

42:35

of slightly awful thing or as kind

42:37

of hilarious maybe or. I mean it

42:40

was it was ridiculous. There was these,

42:42

you know, there's two very charming German

42:44

technicians in the neighbouring hotel room with

42:46

cables going everywhere and I'm trying to

42:48

sort of pretend to have a normal

42:50

conversation with my mother. Yeah. But again,

42:52

I think maybe there's two poles of

42:54

that. The excessiveness of like, why didn't

42:57

you just film yourself talking to your

42:59

mother? And to allow that question to

43:01

sort of hover, you know, like maybe

43:03

the conversation is moving and it's kind

43:05

of beautiful, but is it enough to

43:07

merit spending quite a lot of money

43:09

on? And so, you know, but I

43:12

like, again, that sort of perverse feeling

43:14

of like, well, no, no, no, I

43:16

want my characters to cry or... try

43:18

and drink things, but I don't want

43:20

them to fly and knock down buildings.

43:22

I want them to, you know what

43:24

I mean? This is sort of, and

43:26

the closer they cleave to the banality

43:29

of lived experience or something, the more

43:31

I can speak about a certain kind

43:33

of realism. A

43:39

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44:57

What do you have pinned to your

45:00

studio wall? Not that much, but I

45:02

share it occasionally with Steve, who we

45:04

did the film together. Amazing Steve. I

45:06

think we both have now put up

45:08

letters from people, like scam letters. I

45:10

convoluted one. Yeah, convoluted scam. I mean

45:12

some pictures from my daughter. Some tiny

45:14

reminder, I think Martin, one of the

45:16

people that runs cabinet, some sort of

45:19

slightly drunken kind of thesis on what

45:21

writing is or what language is for,

45:23

that kind of thing, most cards, bits

45:25

of postcards, but not a huge amount.

45:27

I'm not very good at planning or

45:29

sketching up or, you know, it's quite

45:31

sort of bursty, you know. Yeah, but

45:33

it's intriguing, the more I ask that

45:35

question, the more I'm realizing that there

45:38

were certain... sort of forms of support

45:40

that emerge through what people have around

45:42

them. Yeah, yeah. And you know, that

45:44

connection with Martin, who's been your galaist

45:46

for, you know, just to start, and

45:48

that both you and Steve are... put

45:50

something out that's kind of amusing, you

45:52

have that familial connection. There's sort of

45:54

things that people have around them, almost

45:56

like a kind of building an arm

45:59

around themselves, or the studio is a

46:01

complex space and unique thing around you

46:03

that help you in there. That's very

46:05

astute, because yeah, some days it needs

46:07

to feel like I'm going to work

46:09

to take myself seriously or like to

46:11

believe that I'm not just some idiot,

46:13

you know, you should get a job.

46:15

There's a sort of... No, no, no,

46:18

I'll walk to the studio. I mean,

46:20

even having a studio a lot of

46:22

days. I'm like, I don't need a

46:24

studio. You know, and I've spent many

46:26

years on and off trying out studios.

46:28

This is ridiculous. Abandoned studio, work at

46:30

home, so on and so forth. Found

46:32

a really wonderful one now and feel

46:34

very... excited about it. Maybe can't afford

46:37

it, but you know, you'll see about

46:39

that. But you know, and also Steve

46:41

coming for a couple of days a

46:43

week and then we can work on

46:45

projects that we're working on, but it

46:47

doesn't feel much like a studio. It's

46:49

a bit too sort of comfortable to

46:51

be a studio. But it is a

46:53

very strange thing and I have a

46:56

very typically ambivalent relationship to it, I

46:58

think. Yeah. Which museum do you visit

47:00

most frequently? Probably because I live close

47:02

to it. because it's gorgeous. There's some

47:04

amazing things in there. There's some nice

47:06

food in the cafe, you know. I

47:08

mean, it's a day trip, and I

47:10

like that, you know. It sounds ridiculous,

47:12

but you know, like something of the

47:15

level of the Prado or something, which

47:17

is what I dream about being able

47:19

to get to all the time. It's

47:21

a wonderful experience to have to go

47:23

there. I mean, I pop into the

47:25

SMK. in town and stuff, mainly kids

47:27

workshops there, you know, that kind of

47:29

thing. They have a Michael Angelo show,

47:31

I'm going to go and see, but

47:34

I never really had that fantasy, which

47:36

I always wanted to be the kind

47:38

of, I've wanted to be lots of

47:40

different people, but one of them was

47:42

the person that would go and visit

47:44

one work of art in the museum

47:46

every day and sit there pondering it.

47:48

I'm too impatient to, I don't remember

47:50

that's what I could do or something.

47:53

Yeah. You mentioned Michaelangelo. me that your

47:55

self-portrait drawings were partly informed by Leonardo.

47:57

So you have these self-portrait drawings which

47:59

punctuate the tape show and they're in

48:01

red. And I presume therefore the references

48:03

to Leonardo's chalk drawings, red chalk drawings.

48:05

Yeah, it's as straightforward as that. It's

48:07

not there's not some profound connection to

48:09

Leonardo or something. Although potentially some sort

48:12

of anatomical attention. I wanted them to

48:14

feel outside. of things, of relevance, of

48:16

kind of tendency or of aesthetic or

48:18

something that they sort of highly illustrative.

48:20

They're also a document of an experience

48:22

of making them, you know, of a

48:24

kind of attention. Can I ask about

48:26

the altifacts around them? They look like

48:28

pages or maybe a post it, because

48:31

you've got postits in the other part.

48:33

Yeah. I haven't worked that out, yeah.

48:35

I mean, that's really interesting. Sometimes... If

48:37

I'm honest, they're probably a mistake I'm

48:39

covering up. But there's some sort of

48:41

noise to them. Again, I think this

48:43

is sort of sense of more. I

48:45

want the replete thing, you know. I

48:47

want this sort of little writhing bits

48:50

of white noise or something. You know

48:52

what I mean? It's sort of like

48:54

with CG videos, particularly you often add

48:56

grain to make it sort of look

48:58

more like film stock. which is essentially

49:00

just covered in noise, you know, and

49:02

it's a failure of light reading. And

49:04

I love that, the sort of text

49:06

that everyone really wants and is convinced

49:09

by is failure as a kind of

49:11

analog report. But yeah, in a way

49:13

these things are a kind of the

49:15

sense of a hand, particularly in the

49:17

sense of like, you know, what is

49:19

aspiring at least to be kind of

49:21

slavish and fastidious and all of this

49:23

thing to have a sort of... spasm

49:25

of expressivity, even if it is just

49:28

tiny. But it reminded me of, there

49:30

were these texts when you had your

49:32

serpentine show in 2014, and they were

49:34

punctuated by these little kind of cartoonish

49:36

drawings. And it's about kind of interference,

49:38

and it occurs to me that there's

49:40

lots of interference in your work. Yeah,

49:42

I think that would be another word

49:44

for when I say noise, but I

49:47

think you're right, in a way that

49:49

bears equivalence with, I don't know, in

49:51

the videos when there's... sort of noise

49:53

coming from a sort of neighbouring apartment

49:55

or something. It's a sort of, or

49:57

there's, you know, the strangest of the

49:59

night, sort of refrain that's in Hisser,

50:01

it's sort of drifting in through the

50:03

window, but there's also the sound of

50:06

maybe an argument or some cutlery. You

50:08

know, it's a very cagey and kind

50:10

of sense of no silence. There's just

50:12

this thing, and then visually, I suppose

50:14

one could sort of extend it, sort

50:16

of like, I can say interference now.

50:18

Because the words get really sort of

50:20

rung out, don't they? They do. I

50:22

can't say that again, you know, noise,

50:25

noise. Especially when you got a retrospective

50:27

at the table, you've got to the

50:29

stage where, and you've referenced it earlier

50:31

on, that you know, you were expected

50:33

to work within certain fields. Yes. One

50:35

of the ways that you're countering that

50:37

is by right from the start, you've

50:39

got these textiles which have this... very

50:41

difficult to read text on them, but

50:44

they're accompanying the digital video. So you're

50:46

immediately saying, I'm not just a digital

50:48

artist, you know. Totally, totally. I mean,

50:50

it's also, oftentimes, it's like having screens

50:52

where the, deliberately, it's more like walls,

50:54

bits of architecture or something. One of

50:56

the security guards here said it reminded

50:58

him of like, assault courses, where he

51:00

sort of he should be vaulting over

51:03

this thing. But that was great. It's

51:05

sort of anything that sort of stirs

51:07

the body that sort of stirs the

51:09

body, the body in that sort of

51:11

counterweight weight weight. No pun intended, but

51:13

of the weightless digital in some way,

51:15

you know. Which cultural experience changed the

51:17

way you see the world? Yeah, I

51:19

always thought about this one. I think

51:22

if it doesn't sound sort of too

51:24

boring, but I think VCR, a video

51:26

recording thing, because I just think I

51:28

was very lucky with what was being

51:30

shown at night and programming the video

51:32

and me and my brother would record

51:34

just hours and hours of... We'd go

51:36

through the radio times and the TV

51:38

times and we'd have the timeout film

51:40

guide and we'd sort of check out

51:43

things. And my dad was a big,

51:45

you know, synophile. And we'd just record

51:47

stuff and then come back from school

51:49

and watch hours of movies. And you

51:51

know, sometimes completely just going off a

51:53

sensation of a type. But you know,

51:55

that was a really... incredible school through

51:57

that. And then yeah the four dance

51:59

and formations that channel four period. Yeah

52:02

and just these sort of films secreted

52:04

deep into the night. It was a

52:06

wonderful time. It makes me realize how

52:08

impoverished our public service broadcasters are now.

52:10

They have no confidence in the arts

52:12

as a means of inspiring people. No

52:14

I mean yeah it feels like that

52:16

goes along with maybe... just within the

52:18

cultural sense of what of class movement

52:21

for a start but also of kind

52:23

of cultural expression and realization and like

52:25

and it's not exclusive you know you

52:27

could watch the most radical dance while

52:29

you were drunk after the pub you

52:31

know yeah that's not insane and you

52:33

didn't have to Google it or something

52:35

it was just some beautiful person had

52:37

compiled this stuff and and then and

52:40

the treasury of stuff that one could

52:42

accumulate by recording off the TV was

52:44

just I can still picture you know

52:46

the tiny bits of writing and crossed

52:48

out things on the side of a

52:50

long playing four hour tape and you

52:52

know there's sort of a butting of

52:54

like I remember one which which did

52:56

say Alice and then Dog Day afternoon

52:59

and then there's you know like these

53:01

things that like but they you end

53:03

up with these mix tapes in a

53:05

way of kind of like and you

53:07

just put one on and and then

53:09

there'd be mum's casualty one which is

53:11

a brookside and casualty over there and

53:13

then anyway but I think that was

53:15

really it was everything it was Which

53:18

writers or poets do you return to?

53:20

I mean, Bassani is someone I... I

53:22

don't pretend to fully understand a lot

53:24

of where he goes, you know, and

53:26

I don't have the schooling, but there's

53:28

something about the way he writes, the

53:30

kind of erotics of it in a

53:32

way, I think. It's very rare, I

53:34

think, to have critical theory delivered so

53:37

beautifully. The pros is just amazing, you

53:39

know, the maneuverability of the writing. It

53:41

feels like art to me. It's not

53:43

just... theory, it feels like, the thing.

53:45

Yeah, Mark Lucky and I had a

53:47

really interesting conversation about critical theory on

53:49

this podcast, partly because of one of

53:51

the... things I'd like about Mark is

53:53

he's prepared to say how difficult it

53:56

is and I think one of the

53:58

attractions about critical theory to lots of

54:00

artists is precisely its difficulty yeah yeah

54:02

and not understanding it I'm wanting to

54:04

understand it and I think lots of

54:06

contemporary artists want that to be what

54:08

their work does too yeah I think

54:10

you're right I think you know one

54:12

is often sort of put off by

54:15

the more arid stuff because that's not

54:17

good art you know you want it

54:19

to be sort of lush And I

54:21

don't know why that stuff can't be

54:23

extraordinarily well written, you know, like, I

54:25

don't know, reading Bart is always a

54:27

joy, you know, but again, you know,

54:29

like I always feel cowed by my

54:31

own lack of education and stuff. I

54:34

mean, I couldn't possibly own this stuff,

54:36

but I'm drawn to it a lot.

54:38

And... Also, I feel occasionally a sort

54:40

of licence to just, I can have

54:42

this, I love it, you know, and

54:44

I don't have to get it. Oh,

54:46

and yeah, I mean, you're totally right

54:48

about not getting it as a kind

54:50

of, but it's a funny way round,

54:53

you know, because it's something that at

54:55

least professes to be about explaining things,

54:57

interpreting things, but it's an interesting location

54:59

of not knowing, which is a kind

55:01

of somehow anti-authoritative kind of thing, you

55:03

know. likes and dislikes the lists because

55:05

there's a connection made and I think

55:07

it's a very profound one between the

55:09

lists in your work in all sorts

55:12

of forms. And that's wonderfully accessible, wonderfully

55:14

kind of random to a certain degree,

55:16

but kind of beautiful as well. Well

55:18

it brings him really close because you

55:20

know these are sort of like towering

55:22

figures of whatever stature, but he also

55:24

really liked Pomeranians, you know, or he

55:26

liked Pomeranians. Don't get it wrong. But

55:28

I think there's something in that, right?

55:31

It's a bit like the autobiography or

55:33

something, you know, if it's good, or

55:35

rather the biography probably, because it's not

55:37

so hagiographic, but I've still demure a

55:39

little bit. I could probably have, should

55:41

have said, I like top 10 of

55:43

everything. That was a favorite book when

55:45

I was, you know, like really, list

55:47

love was sort of from the... I

55:50

was talking to my brother about this

55:52

the other day and talking about the

55:54

drawings we did as kids and I'd

55:56

do like someone being garotted or with

55:58

an arrow through the head or something.

56:00

And he would do a footballer with

56:02

stats, made up stats, but this sort

56:04

of statistical thing which I know people

56:06

sort of gender in some way, but

56:09

I think everyone likes lists. You know,

56:11

the top, what's at number one? There's

56:13

a kind of, and statistics and numbers

56:15

and things. And I think if you

56:17

start treating that sincerely as literature, literature,

56:19

it's quite exciting, you know. Because you

56:21

mentioned your drawing there, this might be

56:23

a good moment to talk about the

56:25

postage. Sure, yeah. Which are shown in

56:28

a single space and the entire work

56:30

is called Children. Yes. And these are

56:32

drawings that you made for your daughter

56:34

every day and put in her lunch

56:36

box, right? That's how they started. They've

56:38

not all gone through the ringer like

56:40

that. I was going to say, it

56:42

grows, right? Yeah, I mean, you know,

56:44

like, it's not that she didn't like

56:47

them, but she didn't ask for them.

56:49

She would have asked for something else,

56:51

I'm sure. But they were important to

56:53

me. I felt close to her through

56:55

them. I often think, I like doing

56:57

things that she can recognize. She can

56:59

go, our daddy's an artist, because he

57:01

draws himself in red pencil. You know

57:03

what I mean? It's so simple. Or

57:06

daddy can draw things on post it.

57:08

that feels as a clarity to it

57:10

that I really like. But yeah, they're

57:12

very simple things, but they also returned

57:14

me to things that I've forgotten that

57:16

I loved, just drawing, you know, and

57:18

rummaging in my brain. And also little,

57:20

you know, it's only 10 minutes per

57:22

thing maximum, really. And it's liberating, and

57:24

the provisionality of the object affords a

57:27

kind of freedom. I mean, for the

57:29

longest time, I suppose I didn't know

57:31

what to do with drawing. How does

57:33

that make sense when you talk about

57:35

high definition? in the end, doesn't matter.

57:37

You can sort of actually lean back

57:39

and kind of feel like, stop worrying

57:41

about the consistency between these things or

57:43

some legible thing, it's not. But if

57:46

it is there, it'll emerge anyway, and

57:48

don't worry, you know? And I think

57:50

it is there. I think somehow, these,

57:52

whatever it is, hundreds of poster notes,

57:54

are also in old food. are also

57:56

in the piano motif. There's something felt

57:58

and sincere. It's just that you're right,

58:00

it becomes a difficult to pronounce philosophy

58:02

or something, you know, or a way

58:05

of being. But it's that insistent presence

58:07

of the words I love you. Just

58:09

punctuating the work. So you feel that

58:11

connection. And again, you're unafraid to put

58:13

that on the wall of an art

58:15

gallery. Yeah. But that felt, again, there's

58:17

a little bit of the glee, you

58:19

know, a bit of like, and then

58:21

taking her in on the day of

58:24

the day of the day of the

58:26

day of the opening. I mean, it's

58:28

a bit like the scene with Toby

58:30

and Saskia, I've got these two phenomenal

58:32

artists performing a game that I played

58:34

at home with my daughter, and maybe

58:36

again, you know, like all of these

58:38

things seem to have these sort of

58:40

extremes of, well, maybe a nicer world

58:43

would be sort of humility or something,

58:45

or of throwawayness, of just like joy,

58:47

you know, life moves, and you forget

58:49

most of it. And then to just

58:51

sort of pluck one thing and elevate

58:53

it in this sort of insane way.

58:55

It's kind of beautiful and I really

58:57

like that feeling and I think having

58:59

a whole room, it's also the sort

59:02

of conventional room of the show, it's

59:04

in the heart of it and it's

59:06

lit nicely and I mean there's a

59:08

big screen with rain and stuff falling

59:10

near it but still it feels like

59:12

a kind of normal art show but

59:14

then it's these, you know. What

59:30

music or other audio do you

59:32

listen to while you're working? I

59:34

mean, it depends on the work,

59:36

writing nothing, but I have music

59:38

on all the time and a

59:41

lot of different things. I mean,

59:43

the stuff I was talking about

59:45

earlier would feature heavily, I suppose,

59:47

for whatever reason I'm going through.

59:49

I've actually, because it's in nurses

59:51

actually, our friend that we got

59:53

to compose, the theme at the

59:55

end of it, but they also

59:57

have this extraordinary project, which I

59:59

love, which is where they... on

1:00:01

YouTube, Derek Barron is their name,

1:00:03

they site read the cantatas, the

1:00:05

Bach, site read, and they're sort

1:00:07

of halting and slow. And so

1:00:10

we asked them to do that,

1:00:12

and it's kind of their art

1:00:14

in a way, do that with

1:00:16

this Brahms intermetso. And so that

1:00:18

returns over and over in the

1:00:20

film. There's this great Glenn Gould

1:00:22

performance of the Brahms intimacy that

1:00:24

is phenomenal. One of people that

1:00:26

Bart likes. Yeah, he's in the

1:00:28

likes. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, not

1:00:30

with the Pomeranian. But I think

1:00:32

also, you know, because I've written

1:00:34

this libretto for this opera, this

1:00:36

composer called Rebecca Saunders, who's amazing.

1:00:39

It's like a really extraordinary contemporary

1:00:41

composer for the Deutsche opera. And

1:00:43

so I've been sort of pursuing

1:00:45

her work. I mean, it's really

1:00:47

extraordinary, sort of wildly expressive, dissonant,

1:00:49

complicated, thick. I mean, speaking of

1:00:51

difficulty, I am generally drawn to,

1:00:53

I suppose, conventionally difficult stuff. But

1:00:55

I think for that thickness, for

1:00:57

again, that kind of like, what's

1:00:59

this? You know, you want the

1:01:01

extreme, kind of like... Wow, you

1:01:03

know, I don't want to know

1:01:06

what it is, you know, and

1:01:08

I remember I visited her and

1:01:10

I was just looking at her

1:01:12

scores. It's just cuneform. I mean,

1:01:14

I can read music and this

1:01:16

stuff is just bananas. Incredible. Going

1:01:18

back to bark, one of the

1:01:20

works that most hit me of

1:01:22

yours was ribbons. Oh yeah, which

1:01:24

features this character called Dave, which

1:01:26

was a ready-made name. Yeah, yeah,

1:01:28

yeah, yeah, yeah. But he at

1:01:30

one point sings. airbama dish from

1:01:32

the semantic fashion. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:01:35

And going back to that whole

1:01:37

sincerity versus artifice thing, I found

1:01:39

myself unbearably moved by this thing.

1:01:41

Yes, yes. You know, that can't

1:01:43

have been an accidental effect. No,

1:01:45

no, no. In quite a few

1:01:47

of the films, there's me singing,

1:01:49

often sort of I could... often

1:01:51

a bit broken. I mean, it

1:01:53

sort of comes through this understanding

1:01:55

of the voice's location within the

1:01:57

sea of artifice. I often don't

1:01:59

do anything to my voice. There

1:02:01

is something in that the kind

1:02:04

of identification through voice of body,

1:02:06

but also of identity or something.

1:02:08

I think before ribbons. The first

1:02:10

piece I made, actually the first

1:02:12

time I worked with Polly who

1:02:14

curated this show here with Nathan,

1:02:16

was this piece called Us Dead

1:02:18

Talk Love, where I sing these

1:02:20

songs from Sweeney Todd. And I

1:02:22

think it was in the experiment

1:02:24

with the motion capture thing. It

1:02:26

was like, what is the kind

1:02:28

of apex of expression that this

1:02:30

thing cannot do, but is really

1:02:33

like full of sentiment and sensation

1:02:35

and... you know obviously the abamage

1:02:37

dish is so like it's oh

1:02:39

my god you know like anyone's

1:02:41

singing it let alone a slumped

1:02:43

figure with fag in hand who's

1:02:45

not real you know it's so

1:02:47

again it's sort of I suppose

1:02:49

sometimes there is this kind of

1:02:51

subbing of feelings for another you

1:02:53

know like I think I often

1:02:55

think about like it's a pat

1:02:57

thing to say, but you know,

1:02:59

they're going to laugh or cry,

1:03:02

you know, and I think sometimes

1:03:04

there is this sort of hard

1:03:06

handbreak between particularly very absurd things

1:03:08

can often for me sort of

1:03:10

prickle into tears because I don't,

1:03:12

you know, it's so, it's too

1:03:14

much, you know, that's really powerful.

1:03:16

What other media influence your work?

1:03:18

I mean, cinema is a huge

1:03:20

thing. I'd like to try and

1:03:22

make more of it, you know,

1:03:24

you know, or some of some

1:03:26

of it. I mean, you know,

1:03:28

nurses with such an extraordinary, incredible

1:03:31

experience. The first time I'm working

1:03:33

with a full crew and professionals

1:03:35

and real actors and stuff was

1:03:37

just a total joy. But I

1:03:39

think, you know, it's also, that's

1:03:41

probably the main language I grew

1:03:43

up with in a way, was

1:03:45

kind of obsessing around films and

1:03:47

talking about them. There's a remarkable

1:03:49

work in the show, which uses

1:03:51

a kind of classic of cinema.

1:03:53

The film men in Montaine, it's

1:03:55

called voila la verity. Yeah. Again,

1:03:57

talking about... works that prompt tears.

1:04:00

I was... floods in the show.

1:04:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And do

1:04:04

you know that scene? I've never,

1:04:06

I've never, I've never seen Menemonton,

1:04:08

which is a 1926 French film.

1:04:10

Yeah. But the thing again is

1:04:12

there's an element of artifice here.

1:04:14

Massive. I mean it's a very

1:04:16

sacrilegious thing I've done to it

1:04:18

really. It's a silent film and

1:04:20

along with this fully artist called

1:04:22

David Camp. We've added just realistic

1:04:24

synchronous sound. as if it was

1:04:26

exactly recorded with sound. But down

1:04:29

to like, you know, conversations of

1:04:31

what time of year is this?

1:04:33

Like, I think it's late winter,

1:04:35

early spring. You know, and what

1:04:37

kind of traffic is around in

1:04:39

Paris at that time is the

1:04:41

park in Menil Mouton? You know,

1:04:43

and then what kind of birds

1:04:45

are around? And all of this

1:04:47

kind of stuff, which feeds into,

1:04:49

essentially, like, I think it's a

1:04:51

four-minute loop, you know, and then

1:04:53

these actors performing as the two-

1:04:55

her thread in a way, you

1:04:58

know, like it's just completely destroyed

1:05:00

in some ways and she has

1:05:02

a baby on her lap actually

1:05:04

in the film. You can't really

1:05:06

glimpse it, don't you, at the

1:05:08

start of this. Very beginning. This

1:05:10

nameless worker, this man, sits down

1:05:12

next to her and shares his

1:05:14

food with her. And it's a

1:05:16

very kind of religious scene, another

1:05:18

allegorical sort of feeling around it.

1:05:20

But yes, you know, I borrowed

1:05:22

a 16-mill print from the Arsenalian

1:05:24

Berlin, terribly scratched thing and then,

1:05:27

and then... had it digitized, cleaned

1:05:29

up, colorized, upscaled, frame interpolated, most

1:05:31

of which done with AI, you

1:05:33

know, the colorization, I didn't touch

1:05:35

it, you know, this is what

1:05:37

the AI did in recognizing that's

1:05:39

a face. These are some lips

1:05:41

they should have lipstick on, I

1:05:43

guess. This man's beard should be

1:05:45

slightly purple. Again, like with a

1:05:47

lot of things, bits of music

1:05:49

and snatches of other cultures, I've

1:05:51

been obsessed with that scene for

1:05:53

a very long time. Because the

1:05:56

film itself, there are no intertitals

1:05:58

at all, which is kind of

1:06:00

unusual for a piece of silos.

1:06:02

It's all edited in camera, very

1:06:04

cheap to make, a lot of

1:06:06

kind of... guarantee experience around Paris

1:06:08

and particularly that district of Paris.

1:06:10

But it feels incredibly modern to

1:06:12

me. Also, what is performance when

1:06:14

all you are doing is crying

1:06:16

and eating? The idea that this

1:06:18

Natasha Sabreskaya or something like that,

1:06:20

I can't remember her name, forgive

1:06:22

me, but she's acting, but the

1:06:25

guy is not, he's not an

1:06:27

actor, he's just a guy. Anyway,

1:06:29

that also just felt like a

1:06:31

perfect. place to also really heap

1:06:33

this, you could very generously call

1:06:35

it restoration, but it's not, it's

1:06:37

sort of sabotaging away, or it's

1:06:39

impure as a gesture, but it's

1:06:41

one born of love for it,

1:06:43

you know. Is there a particular

1:06:45

discipline in your daily working life

1:06:47

that you see as an essential

1:06:49

ritual? Not really, no. I'm quite

1:06:52

rubbish at that discipline, you know.

1:06:54

I'm a bit improvising all the

1:06:56

time. probably drinking, you know, if

1:06:58

I'm honest. But a lot of

1:07:00

things, I suppose. I really like

1:07:02

a lot of things happening simultaneously.

1:07:04

I like to feel fully occupied.

1:07:06

I'm quite prone to worry and

1:07:08

I think I like to be,

1:07:10

you know, reading while listening to

1:07:12

music while trying to answer an

1:07:14

email. You know, like this sort

1:07:16

of slight stasis, like I'm sort

1:07:18

of in some weird lock or

1:07:21

something, you know, but... That's not

1:07:23

deliberate. So in a way what

1:07:25

you're saying is that chaos can

1:07:27

release interesting thoughts, ideas. Well, you're

1:07:29

trying to sort of constantly tap

1:07:31

my own desire, I suppose, and

1:07:33

obsessions and things that I can't

1:07:35

get past, and therefore, what is

1:07:37

it that I can't get? You

1:07:39

know, and yeah, allowing that to

1:07:41

spiral. I'm very good at squandering

1:07:43

time. I'm trying to make that

1:07:45

seem like a positive thing. You

1:07:47

know, like that is sort of

1:07:50

just sitting there and being, Oh

1:07:52

my god, I have no idea.

1:07:54

Eternal question, yeah. I'm pretty sure

1:07:56

in conversations with people in a

1:07:58

pub, most of the time, really.

1:08:00

If you could live with just

1:08:02

one work of art, what would

1:08:04

it be? I would be less

1:08:06

many. to take it out of

1:08:08

circulation it seems to. It's a

1:08:10

hypothetical thing. As long as I

1:08:12

could have a sort of entire

1:08:14

building built for it. No, I

1:08:16

don't want to take that. I

1:08:19

don't know. But that's all I

1:08:21

could think of is like the

1:08:23

apex of a feeling, you know.

1:08:25

And also it's such an ambiguous

1:08:27

work. So like who's looking at

1:08:29

whom and with what kind of

1:08:31

affection and the knowledge, the secret

1:08:33

understandings. within it that ricochet. I

1:08:35

mean, there's no point in me

1:08:37

talking about thousands of people have

1:08:39

written beautiful things about it. But

1:08:41

it's still, I think the thing

1:08:43

is that everybody brings themselves to

1:08:45

it and somehow weirdly sees themselves

1:08:48

in it. Yeah. Perhaps because Velasquez

1:08:50

is looking at us. Yes. Totally.

1:08:52

But so is the... Infanta. Yeah.

1:08:54

And I don't know. Again, it's

1:08:56

an example of something that I

1:08:58

suppose this is something I seek

1:09:00

in the work I make is

1:09:02

some sort of ancient sensation of

1:09:04

experience that is just whatever methods

1:09:06

I have, you know, in some

1:09:08

way. But looking at that painting,

1:09:10

as with watching Menil Monton, as

1:09:12

with listening to Bach, feels wildly

1:09:14

contemporary, I think. And that's the

1:09:17

extraordinary success of those things. Inexhaustible,

1:09:19

you know. Absolutely. And lastly, what

1:09:21

is art for? I don't know.

1:09:23

I mean, I think we touched

1:09:25

on a bit earlier. Right now,

1:09:27

it feels to me to sort

1:09:29

of allow the sort of graceful

1:09:31

suspension. of not knowing, you know,

1:09:33

that letting it sort of spin

1:09:35

in the air forever somehow. And

1:09:37

yeah, maybe that's enough. Yeah. Edakins

1:09:48

is at Tate Britain in London

1:09:50

until the 25th of August. Edakins'

1:09:53

book Flower is published by Fitzcaraldo

1:09:55

editions on the 10th of April

1:09:57

and is priced 12 pounds 99.

1:10:04

And that's it for this episode.

1:10:06

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