Artist
Interviews
A series of short discussions between Slow Life
artists, curator Yuu Takehisa and Adrian
Hunt, John Hansard Gallery can be viewed here as
a streamed video, downloaded as an audio file or as a video
and audio podcast , and are also available in transcription.
Watch with Windows Media Player
Instructions on viewing the video can be found here.
Video produced by e-media, University of Southampton.
Download audio mp3 (5 mb)
...or
subscribe to the series of interviews with our podcast -
drag the logo or copy: http://www.hansardgallery.org.uk/exhibition/jhgpod1.xml
to your podcast software.
users please
copy and paste: http://www.hansardgallery.org.uk/exhibition/jhgpod_sussed1.xml
to add a "Custom RSS Channel".
Transcription
Discussion One: Adrian
Hunt, Yuu Takehisa, Beltran Obregon and Dale Berning.
AH: Ok well welcome
everybody. This is the first in a series of three short
discussions with the artists and the Curator of the latest
exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery, ‘Slow Life’,
and I am delighted to welcome firstly Yuu Takehisa, who
is the Curator of the show, and Dale Berning and Beltran
Obregon who are two of the artists from the exhibition.
Firstly, I would just like to talk about the exhibition
in a general sense; it’s got seven artists, all of
whom are very different, and I was wondering Yuu what it
was that brings them all together for this show. What is
the common thread?
YT: Well it was because
this exhibition looks into something I thought might be
missing in a digital age. I mean life is getting more and
more convenient and faster and faster, and we all use the
computer, and we can’t really live without it; but
if you just look back, like 10 years ago, 20 years ago,
we lived without it, and then – you know it became
convenient, but I thought because it’s so convenient
that we decided to move less and then contact less with
people, or something like that. So that’s why I wanted
to look into the influences that this technology has made
into our society.
AH: And particularly
on artists who are not necessarily rejecting it, but finding
ways around using it. I think that interests me, the role
(if role is the right word) of artists. Do you feel, both
of you as artists, that you should be keeping up with technology
or, in a way, it’s one of the good things about what
you do that you can step away and actually reflect upon
it more, and perhaps look at things that are older, or are
passing out of favour, in terms of technology and find something
interesting in that?
BO: I was kind of
fascinated by the way people use technology in a country
like Columbia. I grew up in what they call an ‘underdeveloped
country’ – people make very different use of
technology. Very often they don’t have access to the
latest technology on the market, so they tend to stick to
older things. For example they tend to repair older machines
that are no longer in use anywhere else.
YT: That makes people
more inventive and creative.
BO: Yes, exactly,
that inventiveness is -
YT: Yeah, and because
the rockets in your photographs, and you told me that when
you were little, I mean, children, you and your friends
actually made that toy rockets with the tin foil and matches,
and because I never saw something like that in my country,
Japan, and it’s actually really interesting and very
creative. So probably that’s – that part of
your country being say, under-development made that sort
of work happen, and you refer to that still.
BO: Yeah. Yeah.
YT: And what was sort
of your interest in sort of looking back to your childhood
and then reusing all you know, using the toy rocket again…
BO: Well quite honestly
I wanted to play again (all laugh) with rockets which was
a lot of fun, and it was – an interesting thing is
when I showed the rockets for the first time there, a lot
of people remembered their childhood and you know, when
they played with matches and things like that. So it was
quite interesting in that sense as well. Sort of going back
in time and making people think backwards in time as well
with outdated technology.
AH: That seems to
be a really interesting point with what I understand about
your work as well, Dale, in that, as I understand it, you’ve
recorded music played on a gramophone - old 78 records on
a gramophone - and that has all kinds of references of nostalgia.
And the environment of the bathroom - apparently you recorded
it in a bathroom?
DB: Yes. A friends
parents had a very plush bathroom, with a big wooden gramophone
in it.
AH: So what was it
about that environment that interested you?
DB: It was just very
strange! (everyone laughs) It’s just a – I mean
it’s a beautiful bathroom, very carpeted, lots of
heavy floral curtaining and lace and bath salts and –
a very thick environment, and there is this wooden cabinet
with the gramophone on it and it looks perhaps like an ornament,
except it works and it’s in good condition, and the
records are there and there are a lot more downstairs and
you can play them. And the acoustics in the bathroom are
quite strange.
AH: I think that’s
really interesting from what you originally said about technology
and sort of finding a way of looking at the other side of
it – of the world, you know, without that technology.
And that sort of environment is so completely different
from -
YT: Because you told
me before that a bathroom for you is like a place where
escape. When you have many people around in your room and
you can’t cope with it, you can shut out and shut
the door and have..
DB: Yes. …..
…. In the bathroom
YT: - your own room
DB: Yes, that’s
true. Yes.
YT: And I also wanted
to talk about the material, dubplates, because that was
the trigger that led me to invite you for the show, because
you made a similar work – not a similar work –
a work, using the dubplates before, and then I was really
intrigued by the fact that you deliberately chose a material
that deteriorates. And then when I get to the exhibition
where you showed that work, I don’t think I actually
heard anything because it was already played again and again.
Can you tell me why you wanted to work with that material?
DB: With dubplates?
I guess because you only ever make one – I mean it
wouldn’t make sense to make 10 identical dubplates,
as they’re expensive to make, and because the process
isn’t one of replication, it’s a unique real
time cut of a track, so it’s quite an antiquated technology
in a way. But it’s still – it’s really
prized, it’s really sought after, in particular for
DJs and dance hall and reggae. DJs will use a dubplate as
a means of playing a track to an audience that hasn’t
been released, that hasn’t been pressed, it hasn’t
been published as such, but it’s on a form that they
can use in their usual set up using records, and they can
gauge people’s reactions, so it’s not redundant.
It’s not a technology that disappeared, and it’s
still got a very particular place. But it is quite old.
I mean the records are heavy, they’re quite brittle.
They feel like old 78 records.
AH: For me one of
the interesting things about that is this idea of value,
that it is a one-off thing and it has a life span. Compared
to you know, mass produced -
YT: - CD’s or
-
AH: CD’s, DVD’s
- they’re designed to last for decades and available
in their millions, but these – there is something
almost quite precious about the idea of a dubplate.
DB: They’re
shiny! (All: Laugh) They are quite precious looking.
AH: I think that’s
why it works in the context of this show.
DB: I think, in terms
of technology, I really like technology, but I don’t
necessarily think that new technology is better. I’m
really into really new things because you can do very different
things with them, so I use tracks – when making them
I use mini disc recordings of the 78 records, and in a mini
disc you can fast forward and have sounds – digital
fast forwarding that you can’t have in analogue way.
It doesn’t create the same kind of sound. But then
putting them back onto a dubplate changes that sound again.
So I think technology and it’s history is interesting
because each point gives you something that you can use
in a different way to the next thing.
AH: OK. Well these
are only short discussions, so unfortunately we are going
to have to end it there, but thanks very very much Yuu,
Dale and Beltran. That was really interesting.
Discussion
Two: Adrian Hunt, Yuu Takehisa and
Ryota Kuwakubo.
AH: This is the second
in three short discussions with the Curator and artists
in the ‘Slow Life’, and now I’d like to
welcome Ryota Kuwakubo, along with Yuu, the Curator. So
welcome Ryota. Thanks for agreeing to take part in this,
and I would firstly like to ask if you could tell us more
about these hand made radios that are in this exhibition.
RK: This work is called
‘Prepared Radios’. It is different from a normal
radio. It has a specific device inside it. I will use a
normal standard FM radio broadcast, and the device will
remove all the vowel sounds from the broadcast and then
takes the consonant sounds from it.
AH: So essentially
it is removing information from the broadcast. It is removing
all the meaning from whatever people are saying –
why is that important?
RK: He always works
with these stresses that people get and then the action
that may change because of using high tech devices. In Japan
there is much information going on – it directs the
consumer to consume certain things. Media drives you in
a direction that you lose control and then he wants to refer
to that part of the consumerist society in his work.
AH: So in a way you
are actually denying these devices, or these channels of
information, you are denying them their ability to influence
people and to maintain that onslaught of information that
we are surrounded by every day. You are actually just removing
that and preventing that from happening at all.
RK: It’s not
quite that. It’s more about the position of the receiver
of information, because there is a person who is sending
information and also the person who is receiving the information,
and then people like me, are a receiver but I want to sort
of display that the receiver can control the information
you are receiving. When I was working I used pre-recorded
sounds to make a simulation. When it tried out I found that
after removing all the vowels, the things I heard sound
really much like something from animals. Like you know,
it had the feeling of that and then it’s not so -
AH: Something quite
primal almost.
RK: So it was not
only just sort of making a denial of information, but it
was also about you know, going back to a...
AH: It’s almost
pre-information.
RK: Yes.
AH: Ok, well that was
really interesting. Unfortunately, we are going to have
to call it a day there, but thanks ever so much Ryota and
Yuu.
R and Y:
Thank you.
Discussion Three:
Adrian Hunt, Yuu Takehisa and Wolfgang Staehle.
AH: Well this is the third in our series
of three short discussions with the artists and the Curator
from ‘Slow Life’ and again I would like to welcome
Yuu and also today Wolfgang Staehle, who is again one of
the artists in the show. If we could start, Wolfgang, by
just asking you to describe this work ‘Eastpoint’,
that’s on display here.
WS: This one was part of an installation
which took place in New York at the Postmaster’s Gallery
in 2004. It ran over one month. Basically it was a live
internet connection to a camera in the Hudson Valley near
Garrison, upstate New York, and it transmitted a digital
photograph every four or five seconds into the Gallery.
And we archived the whole period and now you will see here
one day, I think it’s October 11th 2004.
YT: And I would like to ask, because
Wolfgang has been doing a whole series of an archive or
documentation of landscape, or cityscape, and they’re
all shot from a fixed point of view. No movement, just dead
straight, and you’ve been doing this like with the
medieval monastery in Germany, in the Bering TV Tower in
Lower Manhattan, and this time the Hudson River Eastpoint,
and now I want to ask you what was the reason for you to
start this whole series?
WS: As you probably know I was involved
with the Thing, this kind of on-line arts network. And you
know, worked a lot with computers anyway, and let’s
say we worked on the nexus of on-line activism and art.
And like the Toy War - we supported the Toy War - and provided
infrastructure, that epic struggle between E-toys and E-toy
in 1999. The Yes Man – the Electronic Disturbance
Theatre - so I was very much involved in that and we thought
like computers and that were great tools for this kind of
work. At the same time as an artist, I felt a little bit,
how shall I say, frustrated almost. I mean it’s great
for this kind of work, but I tended to go more into a contemplative
fashion with my work, and I also frankly wanted to do work
again that I can sign off myself rather than others –
collaborating with other people – which is great but
sometimes you feel like you have to make your own statement.
So I was playing with cameras since like the mid-90’s
and we had this office with a view onto the Empire State
Building. So I started to put a web cam out there and started
experimenting with that kind of software. And the first
show of this kind of work was in 1999 in Karslruhe in an
exhibition called ‘Net Condition’. And first
the Curator Peter Weiber thought we should – or I
should – represent The Thing, and I told him I cannot
represent a whole group of artists, they have to represent
themselves, but am working on this, and am willing to show
this and he finally agreed. And from then on there were
a number of shows and I expanded on the work and changed
from video, the original video, onto digital photography
to achieve better image quality, because when you ask me
about the landscapes it’s – in a way I’m
going back like 150 years. I want to start over like painters
of the 19th Century left off and still try to engage with
notions of the sublime.
YT: Yes - that is one of the features
that your work has, because when I saw your work first time
- that was in Tate Modern, and it was a webcast image from
the German Medieval -
WS: - Monsatery one -
YT: - Monastery one. And then it just
looked like a painting. The way it was presented it was
just like a huge realistic painting, as if hung in a museum,
and it didn’t – I mean I thought it is obviously
it is still a digital image, but still it had a feeling
of the painting, and I was really intrigued by the point
that you are playing with the notion of like traditional
painting, but using really high-tech technology.
WS: That was my thinking. I mean how
can you today evoke this kind of emotions and I mean because
to experience something sublime is something you are awe
struck with, and today you are not awe struck any more.
We live in a saturated media landscape and things go faster
and the very nature of technology is to make things faster,
run faster, faster processors, faster resources –
and I needed some kind of antidote to that for myself to
step back, slow down and you know, take stock of where we
are and who I am with my own life and with my own development
- artistic and aesthetic development. So for me slowing
down was the way to go, and kind of create an immersive
aesthetic experience for myself, and people are willing
to engage in this kind of thing still.
YT: Your work can be a little bit of
a challenge to people in contemporary high-tech circumstances,
like we are so accustomed to fast moving, changing and everybody
….
WS: - It’s terribly boring! (everybody
laughs) And I kind of – I like that because I am really
interested in what happens when nothing happens. To get
in a state of mind where the littlest thing – a change
in the clouds, or in the light or – you register and
you become aware that there is something there and it’s
a different awareness and being just following things constantly.
You know, it’s a different gaze. There is a different
way of looking at things. It’s almost like looking
at them until they look back at you and -
YT: - it’s actually as if you are
in nature and then sort of lying down..
WS: And the interesting thing is, and
I had originally a discussion with another artist about
that – Lothar Baumgarten – in a way it’s
easier to bring this about through mediation. He was working
with audio recordings and he gave me some audio recordings
he did on an Island. Just nature and animals. And it was
such high fidelity. And you listened it through the speakers,
and if you would walk on that island you would probably
not listen that carefully.
YT: (Laughs) Yeah.
WS: And it works on a similar way, so
I am trying to do it in really high quality now. In high
definition to make it as realistic as possible. Because
the more realistic the better the picture looks and I try
to see if that brings about this kind of change in perception
that when you finally walk out of the Gallery that -
YT: You actually see more -
WS: You see again.
AH: Well that was fantastic. Unfortunately
we are going to have to stop it there, but thanks very much
Wolfgang, that was very interesting and Yuu as well.
%20Beltran%20Obregon.JPG)
