So thank you very
much for being here.
We're really delighted
that Liam Gillick
is with us here tonight.
Liam doesn't know it
himself, but actually I've
been hoping that we would have
you here for quite some time.
We have some mutual
friends, and I
was hoping to be able to use
them before to get to you.
And so I'm very happy
that you are here.
I think in the context
of our school, it's--
in a way--
I think quite exciting, quite
interesting to have Liam here.
Because in some ways
Liam deals with color,
with sites, with relations,
with words, with juxtapositions,
with lights, with
movement, with perception,
with elements of art.
And many of the things that
Liam deals with, in some ways,
are very architectural.
In a way, they are
designed based.
And yet, maybe it's not exactly
architecture what you're doing,
nor is it exactly design.
But some of the
activities I think
there is a resemblance to
what some of the people
do in this building.
And inasmuch as there is
so much on the kind of--
the relationship of elements,
and in terms of rethinking
the whole space of exhibition.
It seems more and
more it's getting
to have parallel analogies
with architecture.
And yet, I think it's
really productive that it
is something very different.
And I hope that that will be
something that, Liam, you will
talk about during your lecture.
It's also really
astonishing the kind
of range of collaborations and
engagements that Liam has had.
And beyond his own sculptures,
installations, exhibitions,
to be so involved with writing
about contemporary art,
and collaborating with so
many people on the topic.
Liam's, work as
you probably know,
has been also exhibited in a
number of significant locations
and events, including
[inaudible] at the Venice,
Berlin, and Istanbul Biennale.
And he somehow has managed to
represent Germany in the 2009
Venice Biennale, despite the
fact that he's not German.
Which is also very
interesting that he did that.
He's also had solo
museum exhibitions
at the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Chicago,
the Museum of Modern Art in
New York, and at the Tate
in London.
And over the last 25 years,
in terms of his writings,
he's contributed to Art
Forum, October, Freeze, E Flux
Journal.
And is the author of
a number of books,
including a set of essays of
his own, and also writing.
In a way.
On the history of
contemporary art practice.
Which I suppose one of
the key things about it
is the degree to
which it actually
does engage with social
political issues of the day.
And the role of the
artist as someone
who's deeply engaged in
conditions of everyday life,
and is very much participating
in those situations.
I'm really delighted that
Liam is with us tonight,
and I look forward to
hearing your presentation.
Please warmly
welcome Liam Gillick.
Good evening.
It's good that you came
tonight, with the new weather.
So what I'm going to do
is to try and give you
some information, some
background, about what I've
been doing.
And to give you a
framework for that.
And then try and talk
about some of the ideas
in the book that I published
last year, which is a kind of--
an attempt to look
at the history
of the contemporary
arts as a figure
really, much more
than contemporary art
as a discipline.
It's to look at an attempt to
address the question of how
do we end up with this
figure in society that
seems to represent something?
That's often hard to
put your finger on.
It's often an implicated figure.
It's a person that can be
accused of things, like being
a driver of gentrification in
a kind of vague way, right?
A purveyor of the--
in a sense a kind of middle brow
kind of nonsense, in a sense.
A super self-conscious
purveyor of ideas,
yet we're not quite sure what
those ideas are leading to.
A kind of prime hypocrite,
in a way, in society
that maybe forms--
has the same role right
now as being a poet
might have had in
the 1960s, right.
A kind of-- you
know, my parents they
had friends who decided to
drive to Australia in a Rhino
Four in 1968.
And the guy was a poet.
And I remember that guy,
and he had all the qualities
of what we would now think a
contemporary artist would be.
A bit-- he'd clearly
had some basis of ideas.
He had some consciousness
of modernism
and the history of poetry.
He also was completely deluded
about his role in society,
in a way, and his importance.
He felt he had a connection to
something urgent, in that case
it was popular
music, rock music.
He was also cool in
an indefinable way,
and felt that time for him
was different than time
for other people.
I'm not saying you can
make a direct analogy
between these two
types of figure.
But you can also say that for
a contemporary artist, as it
were, the same fate potentially
stands in front of them
as the fate of the poet, kind
of a hip poet in the 1960s.
So we'll come to
that a little bit.
So this question of
architecture came up
at the beginning-- in the
introduction-- which is good.
And I have--
I'm nervous in a way,
because my kind of weakness
is my admiration for
architects and people
who think hard about planning
and building and doing
something in the world.
The analogy I gave to
Paige earlier about this,
over the years I've considered.
Which is, I think
art and architecture
is like apples and bears.
Which means that it sounds
like you're saying apples
and pears-- which are related--
but it's actually
apples and bears.
It's a misheard thing.
So, in fact, there is a great
gulf between these disciplines.
And over the years
I've thought--
and I've been involved
in tons of talks
about art and
architecture or art
as architecture or
architecture and art.
And, obviously,
the idea has been
to encourage this
idea there should
be a melding of these things,
or a kind of crossover.
And over the years I've
thought more and more
there shouldn't be a crossover.
There should be more difference
and more discrimination.
In a sense, between
different practices.
And in a way what, therefore,
has happened in my work over
the years is I've come
very close to things.
And it's very different
coming close to something,
having proximity-- in the sense
that a [inaudible] would talk
about proximity, for example--
is very different from
collaborating or merging
or being together.
So I'll try to get to the
point and show you some images.
And it's always a
scary one to show
because it's you start to think,
oh, God if he's showing this,
we'll be going through
this like year by year.
But this is the first
and last painting.
This is from 1987, it
tells you something.
It's a portrait of Adi Dessler.
And Adi and his brother Rudy
were sports shoe manufacturers
in Germany.
One founded Puma, and
one founded Adidas.
And this was the sort of work
I was doing as I left college.
Which was greeted with
a resounding two one--
if anyone knows
what that means--
in British terms.
And it's a tea tray.
And in Walden two
by B.F. Skinner
you notice the mentioning of
tea trays, better tea trays.
So I leave art
school, and then this
is the first exhibition in 1989.
And that was very
important for me.
I wanted to-- I
thought maybe one
day it would be good to be able
to say I was an 80s artist.
So in 1989-- in 1989, I
was running out of time.
And I had a chance to do an
exhibition, and I jumped at it.
And it was in December 1989.
And I had no money
and no materials,
but I had a Mac SE
30 and a printer.
So what I'd been doing
through that year
was every day I would work
on a parallel activity.
In this case I was working
on the facades of buildings.
And I'd use the first
drawing program on an airport
to design facades of buildings.
And I'd do maybe 80
a day, or 100 a day.
And in the exhibition
I made 84 of them.
And we handed them
out at the opening.
And people would look at them,
and then they could buy them
in boxes like that.
This is jumping-- thankfully
there are these big jumps--
to a little bit later.
This is a room in
that exhibition
in Frankfurt in 1999.
And I decided to give over
one room in the exhibition
as a space for a
conference on criticism.
And so you can
see, again, another
of this kind of parallel.
It's like working in parallel.
And the room was used for
three days to talk about,
of course, the word that goes
very well with criticism,
which is crisis.
The crisis of criticism,
especially in Germany.
And it has a joke by Matthew
Modine about Steven Spielberg
and Stanley Kubrick on the
wall to remind the people
while they're having
their conference
on the crisis of criticism
may be about, I don't know,
death for example.
Because it's about--
it's an old joke
that works with other people.
It would work very well
with architects, of course.
It's a joke, you know, that
Steven Spielberg dies and goes
to heaven.
And St. Peter meets him at
the gates and says, you know,
we love your films.
You're great.
If there's anything
you need, just ask us.
And he says, well, I always
wanted to meet Stanley Kubrick.
And they say, you know,
Stanley doesn't do meetings.
You know that.
But we'll see what we can do.
And he keeps going on
and on, and he never
gets to meet Stanley Kubrick.
And finally one day
he sees this old guy
with a beard riding around on a
bicycle in an old army jacket.
And he says, hey,
look that's him.
That's Stanley Kubrick.
And of course the punch
line-- which is the old joke--
is that's not Stanley
Kubrick, that's God.
He just thinks he's
Stanley Kubrick.
So it was good to have that
joke there for three days,
because it really
starts to be irritating.
But it did have some
effect on the discussion.
Oh materials, dyed jute--
or hessian they
call it in England--
and chipboard, and vinyl.
Again, showing this
kind of weak materials.
This is a prototype manuscript
for a book I wrote around
that time called
Erasmus is Late,
which is about the meeting
of secondary individuals
over time.
This is a hall outside
the porticos in Frankfurt
that I dug with another artist
called Angela Bullock that
was during an exhibition
about football and karaoke.
So we decided we would
take Capri football--
prior karaoke position--
and instead consider
ourselves medieval.
So we did a project called We
Are Medieval, which involved
digging a kind of pig hunting
hole outside the porticos
and sitting in it, and not
entering the museum at all.
So, again, you have
this parallelism.
In this case, the sense of
not wanting to be included,
the kind of Bertrand
Russell-esque
sense of not wanting to be
in the set of all the artists
who are obviously into karaoke
and football in the 90s.
Another similar type
thing that shows itself
in a slightly different
way, which is a clock.
What, I guess--
I don't know-- in
Germany I think
we were calling it [? lampin ?]
technique or something.
You know, where you
have light bulbs.
And the clock, in this case, is
flicking in time between 1810,
and 1997.
And it's telling you where--
it's telling you local
time before railways.
Introduced a kind
of universal time,
as it were, and
the time in 1810.
So of course wrong in
terms of the railway,
and then right in
terms of the railway.
So you have this
flickering with time,
without using a
time-based media.
So what you can see
with these things
is a kind of
integration in a way.
Like a response to
conditions, a certain
lightness of touch, a use
of just a big ream of paper
with some printing on it.
Things being
prototypes or parallel,
not actually having a
primary way of existing.
And around this time I started
to produce more recognizably
abstract sculptures.
And here we see some in probably
the early 2000s in London.
And you see this statement in
the background, the commune
itself becomes a superstate.
So one of the things that was
alluded to in the introduction
is this sense of
the relationship
between the individual
and the group.
Which is always a
complicated one,
in terms of art history
and art practice.
The fact, for example, that
at an art school like the one
I went to, you couldn't work
in that group very easily.
All the critics, all the
assessments were based
on your individual practice, .
On your individual work
Yet through this period
when you're seeing--
and I'm doing it myself--
these individual works, they're
always done in the context.
There's always other
artists around,
there's a museum around,
and importantly there
are curators around.
What I started to do by making
these works is what I now
understand is a kind of
schizophrenic practice.
But that's a misuse of
the word schizophrenic.
I think it's more--
excuse anyone here who
has issues like this,
it's hard to make allusions
to things without using
certain terminology--
let's say an irreconcilable
rift in the work
between a kind of
formalist you could say,
or abstract practice
on one hand,
and some of the other
things I was showing you.
All right.
So these I've worked on
for the last 20 years.
And they're, in a
way, a more precisely
abstract secondary function.
They're screens, full
ceilings, wall panels,
small freestanding screens.
I call them fins.
And these things-- which what
the hell do I call them--
elevations.
So this is where it gets
kind of complicated.
And here we can see some
people enjoying some platforms
and benches.
So what's going on?
There seems to be this kind
of unresolvable problem
between these small gestures,
these collaborations,
these moments of
delicacy sometimes,
and these clearly built,
constructed, fabricated things.
The thing is the
titles of these works
always give something away.
Some of the overhead platforms
I always called them, well,
first platforms rather
than full ceilings.
Discussion platform, but also
maybe development platform
or revision platform
or a deviation screen
or conciliation screen.
Basically the wording
and the vocabulary from--
in a sense the things that
became concrete politically
under Clinton and Blair--
and especially the
aesthetics, and the attitude
towards cultural policy
that came out-- especially
under people like Tony Blair
and the third way politicians.
And there's a whole
body of my work that
happens both delicately
and very precisely that
plays with the coding of
renovation, compromise,
rejuvenation, clouding,
secondary components.
And if you could say that
Carl Andre's work, right--
and he has written and
talked about this--
the use of plates on the
ground doing what plates do.
Or lugs, you know,
lumps of wood doing
what wood does come from
the influence of being
around the rail yards
in Quincy, right?
My work comes from being
around that moment.
Being in that moment.
Being in my early 30s
during that moment,
and trying to develop
a language that
was appropriate to my time
that would be critically
conscious of the conditions of
production that were around me.
And here we see a quarter
scale model of a public project
for a plaza in Guadalajara.
And here we see what
happened quite quickly
as people would
say, OK, you seem
to think about these things.
So maybe you can help
us with our problem.
This is the Interior Ministry
or Home Office in London.
A project from
2002 to 2005, when
I was brought in to a public
private partnership which
had all the accompanying
ideas that you have to spend
a percent on the art budget.
But there was a crisis
within the architecture
of the building, which is
a Terry Farrell building.
He's not a very
fashionable architect,
but is actually kind of
an interesting person.
So I basically
work on all aspects
of the facade of this
building, and introduced
some of the things
I've been playing
with about with the
other work, kind of
to emphasize these things.
Here we see a shot of the front.
And like a treatment of the
facade, which was in order
to stop them putting those logos
that they put on government
buildings with the kind of
swoopy thing or to rebrand it.
To make it very hard to rebrand
and remark the building.
And you can see--
where is my laser--
here, this is the
sign for the building.
It says The Home Office.
There's another one up here.
And then this thing,
these are designated
as artworks within the
collection of the government
art collection.
So to have them removed
is very, very difficult.
So when different governments
come and go in Britain,
when the conservatives
came in a few years ago,
they really wanted to put a
great big kind of big shield
thing with like rampant lions
and or maybe a swoopy thing
going to the right
and up to the right.
But they can't do it without
getting a special order
to remove the artwork.
And as I was joking
earlier, though,
probably the most important
part of the project for me
was being in the conversation,
in the discussion, in the room.
And it was the use of the color
Rahul 9035 for the building.
Where I would often
find myself in meetings
with quite serious people.
And finally, someone turned
to me and said, well,
what color should it be?
And I knew it should
be Rahul 9035, which
is the kind of thing that
only an artist can sometimes
say in those situations.
I didn't have to prove
it or show it or do
a series of studies,
I could just say it.
It's a very different thing.
It's apples and bears, right?
This is the facade of the
Fairmont Hotel in Vancouver.
And it has a work
on it that probably
explains things the best.
Which is stainless
steel lettering that
says, lying on
top of a building,
the clouds look no
nearer than they had
when I was lying on the street.
Which, in a way, is an
extraordinary gesture
of Canadian sophistication
or duplicity
to allow this comment to
go on the building that
critiques the building.
And, yet, makes the building
cool at the same time.
This is a building
in Guadalajara,
in Mexico, that I worked
with with an architect called
Rodrigo Gonzalez Villasenor.
And it looks like
we kind of just
knocked it up in a few days,
and that's sort of what we did.
So in that case,
most of this work--
again seen as artwork
and art commission
and not architecture.
Including what you could
imagine, this kind of stuff,
but not the carpet, not
this, but these things.
I would go on the
site as an artist,
right, with a studio
of people that
came who were often
the same people who
were building the building.
Except, nominally, now
they were making art,
so they are paid differently
and acted differently
and spoke differently,
even though they
were doing the same thing that
they'd been doing earlier.
And we would basically--
I would draw on my computer.
We had outputs and things.
We'd blow them up, and then we'd
basically weld things together
and put them together on site.
And I'd come and have a look.
It was extraordinary
free way to work,
and highly unusual, and
outside most of the parameters
of with the building planning
and coding for the building.
But anyway, this is a model.
This comes to Venice now.
I'll show you a few
photos of Venice Biennale.
I try not to get
into it too much.
But I got invited
as that 90s person
that I mentioned
earlier, the one who'd
thought hard about
third way post war
conditions and aesthetics.
And also it's a sacrifice, in a
way, because you get brutalized
doing the German pavilion.
I mean, that's the
way it should be.
It should have a
critical culture
and a critical environment.
In this case, what
I did is I moved
my rather elliptical
and secondary thinking
one step across.
So the abstraction became more
precise, and more referential.
And the voice became
more singular, and more--
less general.
So I started by raising
money for the project
by making a model of the
unbuilt German pavilion
from the 1950s that would have
completely erased, in a sense,
the Nazi renovation of the
original Bavarian pavilion.
I then worked on the great unit,
which you will probably know
and probably should
be working with,
which is the kitchen cabinet,
which is 60 centimeters by 60
by whatever 75 varying heights.
And I spent a lot of time
sitting in the Frankfurt
kitchen in the MAK
in Vienna that was
made by the great
[? architecturan ?]
Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky.
And as a tribute to her
attempt to make a better
life for people and to have a
good 20th century as a German,
I put bug blinds in the
doorway of the German pavilion
to attempt to domesticate
and de-Nazify this building.
And a kitchen inside--
a kind of a cheap kitchen-- but
an ideal kitchen in a sense.
The unit that's
common, that you can
find in Ramallah or
Bolivia or the [inaudible]
store in downtown Cambridge,
if there is a downtown here.
And then on the top of the
cabinets, they put a cat.
And the cat is obviously dead.
And the cat has--
the cat speaks.
And the cat tells a story
about a speaking cat.
The cat as the kitchen cat.
The cat who survives
everything, and the cat who
sees everything and experiences
every trauma and tiptoes
through rubble, for example.
And the cat is sad one
day, because it's--
you know what, you can
find the story online.
But I had a lot
of fun doing this.
And I have to say no good deed
goes unpunished in Germany.
So, of course, I did feel like
you probably feel sometimes,
completely misunderstood for
the first time in my life.
And I only have myself
to blame for that.
So there you go.
The one good thing--
I don't know if anyone's
familiar with the TV program
Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
But I am a big--
artists like many of you
probably at some point
go through a big phase-- is
what's pre-internet really.
So watching daytime TV.
So I was a big fan
of Clarissa Tells It
All and Sabrina
the Teenage Witch,
and Charmed, because they
were always on in the morning.
And, of course,
there's a speaking cat
in Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
So I always wanted to work with
the wise, wry, ironic speaking
cat.
But the night
before the opening,
I realized that this cat telling
the story about speaking cat
going in this circular
self loathing story,
having been accused of stealing
people's breath while they
sleep, turning back on the
humans, turning back on people
and reminding them it's they
that steal people's breath.
It's they that take away joy.
It's they that
destroy everything.
I took the gallery guide,
which is this thing, it's here.
It's the gallery guide, right?
It's the thing with a
little bit of information
saying that I did documenter
and I did a show here
and a show there.
And I screwed it up
into a bow type shape,
and I jammed to the
mechanism of the cat
by stuffing it in its mouth.
But it still was trying to
move like [? westworld. ?] It
was still kind of [grunts].
So I got a long nail
and waited till everyone
had gone-- this is the
night before the opening--
and got the nail and stuffed
it through the piece of paper
into the cat's mouth, which
finally jammed the mechanism.
And I remember walking away
from the building as fast
as possible thinking,
I've just done
the most evil thing in history.
So I can't really
say more than that.
It's just there
are these moments--
and I'm sure you
have them-- where
you realize you may have
done something bad without.
And it's to do with
the kind of-- it's
to do with a weird combination
of aesthetics, gestures,
references, and implications.
Collaborative work Lawrence
Wiener for a museum in Antwerp,
which involved making an entire
floor working with [inaudible]..
No other things, no
other signage, nothing.
This is a big project.
I want to bring you to this
collaborative thing quickly.
In Arles in France, a
show that I put together
with Philippe Parreno called
To the Moon by the Beach,
where we imported 150
lorry loads of sand
to the Roman arena.
And that's the final
state of the moon.
But basically we've started--
we based this
principle on the idea
that it's always more
interesting to watch
other people working
than do it yourself.
So we had these sand geniuses
from Holland come and work
all day, transforming the
sand from a beach scape
to a moonscape, and
never stopping working.
And while they were
doing this, other artists
intervened and did
things around it.
Again, this secondary
thing, this parallelism.
Here's work by Elvire Bonduelle,
a young French artist who
made these lunar material
aircraft, space material
umbrellas.
This work by Dominique
Gonzales-Foerster
that I didn't understand.
Work by Lawrence Wiener who
kept saying that the thing--
I don't know if anyone's
come across him,
but is worth looking
into if you haven't.
He kept saying it's
all about washers.
You know, like
everything was about--
the whole world is held
together by washers.
You know what I mean, the
things between a nut and a bolt?
And that's what you need
to think about in the world
is washers.
So he made some.
And then we have
a space man who'd
walk around playing a harmonica.
And here you see them working.
And this is the work that
was the most notable there
by Pierre Huyghe
where he paid an actor
to wear a rubber mask that it
was an exact copy of his head.
And then in bees would
hive on his head every day.
And the man would walk
out blinded by this
into the center of the arena
until he fell to the ground
or fell to his knees.
And then quickly, the
last few slides just
to show that a certain kind of--
that in all these practices
if you could say that there
are these things, right?
There's collaboration
at one level.
There's a certain
kind of commitment
to that kind of
abstraction on another.
A desire to express
something that's
hard to express through form.
A kind of muted form.
And then there's a kind
of delicate interventions
and so on.
There are also these
moments of contradiction
that come out of other things.
And that's what I wanted
to show you at the end.
So this is a one year show
I did last year at the Museu
Serralves in Porto.
And it's a Caesar building,
a [inaudible] Ceasar
building from the 90s
I think, or the 80s.
Kind of a great building,
and they've restored it.
It had gotten tatty.
Because those buildings get--
southern European
buildings start
to look kind of ratty around
the edges quite quickly.
But they fixed it up again.
And I did a show there of
these works that are kind of--
can't be accounted for
in my normal narrative.
So this is a piano that plays
Grandola, Vila Morena, which
was the song that
was played to signal
the start of the Portuguese
Revolution in '74.
Meanwhile black snow falls.
And it's me trying to
remember the music,
trying to remember
how the song goes.
It's a very melancholic,
evocative word.
But it comes from me saying
to Phillipe Parreno years
ago when we didn't
have ideas, right--
and in film school
you could always
say if you have no ideas
there's always Tarkovsky, right?
In architecture school you could
say, well, there's always--
years ago maybe or even
now-- you could say, well,
there's always
[inaudible],, right?
There's always something to
fall back on, if in doubt.
To acquire taste and resonance
and meaning and significance,
and even grand ambition.
With us we realized, maybe
it's a piano and black snow.
This would carry enough
in the art context.
Here's my first proposed
art work, which brings me--
I'm trying to get to the end
of my explaining everything.
The trick to this
apples and bears thing
is don't build a building.
Never try and build a building.
Artists who build
buildings are great,
and artists who build
their own houses are great.
But artists who build other
buildings for other people,
I don't think, are that great.
And I've never-- in
fact they can't do it.
It's not possible.
It's actually psychologically,
philosophically,
and conceptually incoherent.
Doesn't make any sense.
So this is a building
that I proposed in 1992
for the city of Milan
for a new public housing
project where they wanted
an abstract public artwork.
And I realized they didn't.
What they needed was a
center for young people.
And already at the age
of 28 I was feeling
not that urgently young.
So I figured what I
would do is I'd propose
a center for young people.
There would be a free zone
where no one can go in apart
from young people.
And I would seed this
building with the two
contradictory libidinous urges
of the male psyche, which
is AC/DC and Joy Division.
The kind of crotch
thrusting idiocy of AC/DC
and the shoegazing
seriousness of Joy Division.
And by doing that, set up a
immediate argument that could
be overwritten and over scored.
They weren't interested.
They were so uninterested
they didn't even reply.
They didn't even respond.
It just got dropped completely.
From that point on, I
never proposed or built
or attempted to even
think about a building
ever again, which has been
very, very good for me.
And that's a model of it.
And here's a kind
of Phantom model
of it combining these
two contradictions, which
I think is rather
beautiful in its own way.
And here is a work which
is a large version of--
Guy Debord, towards
the end of his life,
decided to mainly
work on war games.
And so this a large
version of a war game,
similar to one that he designed.
Just to show you how
this play with form
and touch and lightness and
collaboration has developed.
And then my last show,
just now in Berlin,
which is modeled
on the apartment I
used to stay in in Vienna from
memory, s is a great street.
One of the greatest
named streets
in the world, which is called
[inaudible] and [inaudible]
which means kind of hit the sky
or punch heaven or touch heaven
in a way, firmly.
Touch heaven firmly.
So I did this.
And it's basically my
graphic work, which I've--
I know it's an important part
of what architecture students do
and art students--
but I realized
I had produced a lot of graphics
and a lot of secondary work.
Which I-- a bit like the
sign on a building, right,
the signage that tells you
the name of the building.
Is that like-- it's like that
direct engagement moment,
right?
Which I realized I'd
told more stories
through the secondary or
third level or fourth level
or fifth level minor
gesture than I ever
did through a collaboration
or the work or whatnot.
And that's the
last image of that.
This is sort of the end of part
1 and 1/2, because we are--
I'm going to now--
I'm going to develop this a
bit, but not for too long.
But I just show you this
to give you an idea, right?
So we've seen these
various things.
And I think this
is always the thing
to look out for for yourself.
Because you realize
that you've--
so a magazine cover saying,
were people this dumb before TV?
A print for a Belgian
guide that says tobac,
it's like a tobacco factory.
Different states of a public
artwork for your tract.
A poster that I
did for a magazine.
A series of posters that
I did for a magazine
in the Netherlands.
Another one here, Dear Editor.
A kind of plea.
A poster for a film that I made,
about a very short 1 and 1/2
minute film I made about the
former Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara.
A design for taxi
I did in Vienna
that you can use as a
ruler or a measuring device
because it's broken down
into 10 centimeter things.
And this Mercedes used to
drive around Vienna as a taxi,
and he could use it to
measure buildings with.
A public poster I did
anonymously in Paris that got
put up all over the canal
on the way to Villette.
A print about speculation and
planning that you will find
very useful, any of you
who think about planning.
Because it just is states
of speculation and planning
in percentile shifts
with no logical change.
So you get the idea.
Designed for a billboard, right?
A design for the Vietnam
Saigon Biennale in maybe 2000
So you start to get a much
bigger picture from here.
OK, so what we see seems to
show a lack of direction.
And I would argue
that's exactly right.
There is very little direction.
Things do not lead easily
from one to the other.
There's some self-consciousness
in all this work.
There's some-- things are
derived from, but not a lot.
A lot of it's to do with play.
It's to do with suburban
upbringing and whatnot.
There's very little citation
in the work of other things,
right?
There's a lot of response,
call it response.
The artist is a useful person.
A useful person that can provide
these things that cannot be
quite touched, or you can't
quite put your finger on.
What it is is this
quality of being
in the world that isn't quite--
you can't quite do
it in other things.
So coming back to the
Home Office building,
this ability to
play with the facade
and designate that
as an artwork changes
the relationship and
the way the architect
can work in relation to
the client and the city
and designation in
a different way.
But it's a very
soft, subtle thing.
What I noticed, though,
in the last few years
is something that's always been
there, which is an increasing
rupture in the art context.
An increasing rupture
between the people
who are interested, in a sense,
in context, in organization,
in art as a kind of place
within which to do--
in which to agitate
at one level.
But also in which to come up
with a replacement for what
they strongly
believe is a failure
on the part of architects,
planners, urbanists, especially
politicians more so.
To actually provide human spaces
that are not just smoothly
glossed over by
a neoliberal kind
of wash of, like,
some nice landscaping
and some gentrification.
So you have quite profoundly
agitating structures
in the art world, which
are very in parallel
to the agitating ones within
the edge of architecture
and planning.
They often crossover.
You get the same theorists
talking to both sets of people.
This clearly creates a rupture.
And those people are
often completely against,
or uninterested in anything that
could pass for a discreet art
object, right, the historical
art object, the late modern art
object.
In the same way that
you have architects
and architectural
theorist who would say,
we are completely
disinterested in anything that
constitutes a built practice.
And these discussions,
of course,
were circling around
the AA and places
like that before
when I was in my--
you know, I was just an idea.
So what's happened
is there's a kind
of strange convergence at
one level, of an attempt
to be outside, right?
And at the same time, a kind
of increase in the idea--
with the rise of contemporary
art history as a discipline--
the rise in the
idea that you can
talk about there having been
an origin of contemporary art.
This is the reason I wrote the
book Industry in Intelligence.
Because I wanted to
look at this rupture.
Like, this schism in
art has become as deep
as the Reformation or something.
It's as extreme.
There are people that
I know, have worked
with for nearly 20 years now,
who would never, ever set foot
in a private gallery
or the Tate gallery
or the Museum of Modern
Art, because it is not
a repository of anything
they recognize as interesting
or as art.
OK, they might sneak in to
the last day of a [inaudible]
show or a [inaudible] show.
But generally speaking they
steer clear of these places
completely.
On the other hand, you
can get a very elevated--
almost catchy in a sense--
kind of formalist way
that you can find exemplified
around some press releases
now, right?
So you could talk about a
young painted dude, right,
and he's doing his
paintings, which
looked like a kind
of race to the bottom
to see who can do the
most slack painting.
And the press release
will say something like--
let's call him Josh
Vanderbilt. Josh Vanderbilt
interrogates his
own subjectivity
while probing at historical
modes of painting as a form.
And this is great.
I mean, I agree this is a
very sophisticated practice
probably.
But it's a very
particular one, right?
And it very much signals things.
It signals a certain
kind of affiliation
or a set of
connections or desires.
So what you've got
right now is something
that's happened over the
years at different moments
in architecture and
various other fields,
but just at different times.
It just happens to be
happening right now.
So what I wanted to--
however what happens,
because contemporary art's
the longest--
I'm kind of going to
wind this up really,
because we can talk about it
in a more conversational way.
However far you try
and step outside,
unlike architecture
where I think
there were moments where you
could step outside and say,
I'm now a theorist or
I'm a paper architect.
Or, I'm not even an architect,
I think about human relations.
Or, I know what I am.
I'm just another
type of human being.
The art world-- because of it's
very particular relationship
to capitalism, and it's
particular relationship
to exchange--
tends to be able to absorb
what tries to step outside it.
So a good example--
and I have to go
backwards, because, like,
this is what happens because
I'm not a specialist.
OK, it's clear that
certain attempts
to step outside the current
discourse in architecture
are partly the nature
of architecture itself.
That's partly what
one is studying.
At the same time it's--
while things do leak into
kind of the built mainstream,
it happens through
certain figures
or through certain
people carrying that,
or it leaks in and kind
of secretes itself.
What happens in the art world--
to a certain extent--
is these contradictory
or broken kind of sides
can all be absorbed
within the art world,
within the art context,
within the art market even.
So however hard you
try and step outside,
you can be absorbed within it.
And this is a really--
it's quite close to what we all
think about art historically,
but it's particularly
strong now.
So I tried to write
a book about what
are the technical and geological
and historical political
reasons why we have this thing
called contemporary art, which
has been the longest lasting--
in a sense, if you exclude like
a phrase like the Renaissance,
which obviously is kind
of idiotic to think.
I'm talking about
post time 1900.
Contemporary art's
lasted the longest
because it's the one
thing it's not a self--
no one calls themself a
contemporary artist anymore.
I'm not sure anyone says
contemporary architect, either.
But it's a description
of a kind of thing
that you kind of
know what it is.
You can smell it and taste
it, but it's not a movement.
It's a kind of
temporal descriptor
that will do to
encompass anything.
It's an amoebic thing that
can keep growing and absorbing
things.
And I wanted to
look at what were
the historical technical
conditions that
allowed that to happen.
How did that happen?
Even in the face of [inaudible].
Even in the face of-- or maybe
he's the fault, in fact--
but in the face of robust
criticism, robust self-
consciousness, how
does that happen?
So just to-- because I think
if people have questions
we could do that.
So I'll just give you
a quick indication
of some of the chapter
headings, because it tells you--
it sums up everything.
Then we could have questions.
So contemporary art
does not account
for that which has is
placing It's very true.
I spend my time with people
who don't make any work.
Would never-- they'd
rather be shot.
They'd rather have their
face eaten by weasels
than make anything
resembling anything.
But not only that,
they don't consider
hanging around and having
tea, or doing nothing
to be doing work either.
They are outside.
There's a new community
of critical consciousness
that is used as a
kind of art umbrella
under which to operate.
It's a kind of useful umbrella.
So contemporary art
does not account
for that which is taking place.
Protection and
parallelism, these
are the two things that are
the most profound things,
in my opinion, that allow
contemporary art to retain
this kind of strange position.
It projects towards something.
It's constantly heading for
something just out of reach,
and it's inherently parallel.
It's always in parallel.
I can never get blamed for
the sins of an architect,
because I work in
parallel to them.
I never am taking on
their responsibilities.
Then I dealt with
four specific dates
that I won't go into detail
about, because it's too long.
But I-- there's also
something temporal here
about ASAP future,
not infinite future.
So art became more and
more closer to the present,
like the way developed
capitalism became
better and better at
capitalizing on the recent past
and the near future.
Are also came closer and
closer to the present.
It was one of the things
that could do that.
Abstract, you have to
talk about the endurance
of the idea of a kind of
abstraction as a mark of art.
The complete curator,
which is a text I
wrote which is in the
book about the idea
of the curator as a figure.
And this should never
be underestimated.
Every time you see a dopey book
or a stupid article or a thing
online about curating yourself--
or even Hans-Ulrich's book
about curating--
it's hard to underestimate what
the complete curator means,
and how it changed everything.
The arrival of the curatorial
voice, or their demands.
The ethical demands
of advanced curators
now run so far in
advance of art itself
that it's impossible
for any artist
to possibly keep up
with that demand, right?
So you get-- all
you have to do is
study, for example,
the last documenter
to find an example of that.
The return of the border,
which of course in art
is very important.
A good example is
Willem de Kooning
came to America whenever,
1946 or something,
and is thought of as an American
painter within about 18 months,
as far as I can make out.
I moved here 20 years ago, and
I'm quite rightly a British--
in a way British--
and with a bit of Irish
thrown in-- artist.
Now, that's very important.
Because it's important--
because for many people
it's important to know where
you came from and who you are
and where you stand, right?
And the world worked very well
for male artists in America
at that point in the late 40s.
So of course de Kooning
became one of the guys.
He became an American
artist, and he
stated that he was
an American artist
with his heavy Dutch accent.
I'm doomed.
I will never be an
American artist,
like I'm not the German artist.
That's why I could do the German
pavilion, because I'm not one
and I can't be one.
I'm kind of stuck.
But the return of the
border, ironically, you know,
it's an issue that
we can all discuss.
OK, the last three are
the experimental factory.
The idea that art can give
us experimental models is,
in a way--
or the gap between the idea
that contemporary art can
gave us an experimental or
a living model of practice.
And the reality
of art is actually
a withdrawn melancholic
and self-loathing practice,
is what's really
interesting to me.
That's what I look
at in that chapter.
Nostalgia for the group.
The relationship between the
individual and the group.
This is something I came to
the [inaudible] opening night
on Friday--
Thursday-- which was ostensibly
about management and models
of work and how partnerships
and things are done.
What you find is that this is
a very coherent and stated--
it's very--
it's structurally part of
architectural practice.
Within art, all
interesting moments
start as a group, right?
Because you're a bunch
of undefinable people
of a generation,
maybe from a place.
They then become more refined
and more discriminating
and more broken down.
And then when things return
or become interesting again,
such as the pictures
generation in New York,
it starts to become
a group again.
Now this also happens
in other fields
like literature,
architecture, and music.
It's particularly strong
in contemporary art,
this idea of nostalgia
for the group.
And it's partly to do with
curatorial and critical
approaches.
Because it becomes
interesting if you
start to understand the group--
again the nostalgia
for the group--
you can return to the group
and find the people that
were excluded from the group.
And this I look at
also in the book.
And finally, the final
chapter is called, why work?
Which is really a
question trying to-- it's
really a section trying
to address the accusation.
The artists are the ultimate
freelance knowledge workers,
that they are really
the guilty ones.
That they're the ones that have
been responsible for creating
a model of existence
that has dragged us
into this kind of relativistic
renovated kind of nowhere,
dystopia.
The cappuccino-ization
of all moments of life.
And I kind of refute this.
I dismiss this
accusation, in a sense.
But I do it as a
matter of principle
rather than really
being able to do it.
But I think you'd have to read
Pierre Bourdieu to really get
further than that on that one.
I think it's already
been covered, in a way.
So I would ask if there
are any questions.
And it's always a tricky one.
I don't know if you want to
come and help mediate that.
So, Liam, thank you very much.
Really-- [applause] You've left
us with a lot of questions,
a lot of issues.
I know there are quite a few
people who would like to--
or I hope that they will
engage you-- in conversation.
Just to push you a little bit
about sort of apples and bears.
Because I think--
I mean, maybe this
is very unfair.
But, I mean, on one
level you are the artist,
you are the curator,
you are the critic,
and you kind of do all of
those things simultaneously.
I suppose part of it--
in terms of the book--
is to ask to what end.
In the sense, what's
the purpose of the book?
To construct a new artist?
To develop a criticism
of contemporary art?
You know, so what
is the relationship
between the
production of the book
and really the status of the
artist and how it helps you?
So one question relates to that.
But more specifically on
this apples and bears.
I mean, I feel
like, OK, when you
are doing pieces that resembles
certain kinds of design
activity, assembly of things, a
color juxtaposition of things,
installation of elements,
that could be at once thought
to be the model of something.
But yet they're not.
That's fine.
But when you start collaborating
with Terry Farrell,
and you make part of a
facade of a building.
And you then say,
well, I'm the bear
or I'm the apple, whatever.
But, I mean, I think
my question to you
is at that at that moment
there is a level of complicity
in the work where you
can no longer claim to be
the artist so independently.
Even though it may be
that from the perspective
of the UK
government's, you know,
designation of the difference
between architecture and art,
the piece can be protected.
But to a passerby who is
assessing and perceiving
that building, that
could also easily
be seen as ornament,
for example.
And so I'm just
trying to figure out
how you can participate to
that degree in the fabrication
of a piece of architecture,
and at the same time claim
a kind of innocence, which
you try to do to some degree.
So--
Yeah.
It's a good question.
But it cuts to
the heart of the--
what I try and get
to it in the book.
Which is it's-- none of these
things are a problem for me
in a sense.
When you said, well, it
can become like ornament,
for example, or it can
become like sort of--
maybe even go further and say
kind of an attractive design
solution that sort of
gets around the problem
of a slightly clumsily
executed attempt
to do kind of a
certain form of--
a certain kind of
aesthetic that we
can recognize in that building
with the [? louvers ?]
and the different components,
the different forms.
And I would say, yes,
they're exactly the things.
And the two ways I would look
at it, especially as a student.
I was still taught--
and this is where it comes down
to some of these differences
are about teaching.
We still have Legacy
Greenberg teachers,
meaning a few grumpy men
who were abstract painters.
And they believed in muscular
painting, whatever that meant.
And they believed in
the idea of truth.
Truth to materials, truth--
truthiness in the
way of addressing
in a muscular way, the push
and pull of the painting
or something.
And this, for them, was
kind of outside the concerns
of everyone else,
outside the mess of life.
And it did, of course, create
extraordinary moments in art.
It was also funded by
the CIA-- a lot of it--
and especially the talking
about it and the showing of it.
And it was also very male
in a very straight, male way
and with some exceptions, good
exceptions like Grace Hartigan,
and other artists who were
very good and interesting.
The point is that they used
what struck me in the mid 80s
as very gendered accusations.
So if I was very interested in--
like my-- if we
go-- well, we won't.
The first thing-- the tea
tray with the colors on it--
which now suddenly makes sense,
the portrait of Adi Dessler.
I was told this was
designee inductive
by one of these grumpy old
men who then just stomped off
to go to the pub.
And I thought, yes, it is,
and it's deliberately so.
And I wanted to be involved
in this world of, in a sense,
lures.
Using things as lures, and using
things as secondary things.
Mainly what happens in
that home office building
is I replace materials.
It's a very kind of
postmodern thing to do.
I kind of look at what we
can do with the glazing,
and I go to the factory
in [? tour ?] in France,
to [inaudible]
[inaudible] or whatever--
and see if I can
talk them into doing
a fritting on the glass
for the same price
as just making the glass.
So I become--
I use what artists
are really good at,
which is being just you, with
another person or a few people.
And trying to talk them
into doing something,
or try to get something done.
So it's all about role
playing, yes, I agree with you.
It's about role playing.
It's about complicity.
Everything for me is
about implication.
I wrote a text once called
The Implicated Player, which
is about this idea of the
artist is the implicated figure.
And that's really what a
lot of the book's about,
is about the history of how
did we get to this point?
Well, it's because we have the
right conditions in society
to produce this kind of figure
of the contemporary artist who
is, in a sense, this
implicated player.
And it won't be
like that forever,
but it's like it
for a brief while.
They represent something.
But part of that comes
through technology
and through the
apparatus as much
as it comes through
theory and [inaudible]
and the rise of Western
Marxism and the desire
to be in a subcultural
frame and things like that.
None of those things
are enough to explain
why we have these odd figures
around who are supposed
to fulfill certain roles.
So maybe other
people will comment.
But, I mean, that's
why I wanted to mention
the book and the role of
writing and criticism.
Because in some
ways, I'm wondering
what your reaction is to the
fact that in some sense then
I could say--
again maybe this is not fair--
then why are you so insistent
in controlling the reading
of the work?
Because by being both the artist
and the critic simultaneously,
in some way there is a sense
that the reception of the work
is also something that you seem
quite intent in being part of.
And so, like, what is the role
of the thing, the person who is
not so familiar with the work?
Because part of your work
relies on a kind of knowing.
And it seems like nobody
knows it as well as you do,
to some degree.
Right.
So that bit is sort of like--
I'm curious about
that involvement.
But we have other
artists in the room here
who I've always been a fan
of who've also written,
and have a tradition of writing.
And I was always drawn to
artists who try and either make
an account of themselves, or
the conditions under which they
attempt to produce work.
And I try to do my
version of that.
For a period which is now
increasingly under scrutiny--
certainly in academic writing--
in sociology primarily,
which is around
the formation of the
period in the 90s,
and the rise of
the new third way.
The collapse of
social democracy,
in a way, in
Europe, which is now
leading that
collapse via the rise
of the Third Way, Tony
Blair and a new kind
of attitude towards the
role of culture in society
and what it should do.
Access, engagement, what
are the other words?
Because this is our time, right?
These good things-- and
how they are affected
and an understanding of the role
of art and culture in society--
a lot of my work
is deeply embedded.
This is a better
type of tea tray
that is a picture of someone
who ended up making shoes
that you wear to signify how
much leisure you're having,
and how specialized the leisure
it is that you're having.
And this is from 1987, right?
So you've got to think what,
else is being made in 1987?
And certainly--
around in England--
no one's making a portray
of Adi Dessler, which
is a kind of corrupted
Mondrian done
in kind of contemporary
sportswear colors
on a tea tray.
So my writing is
not necessarily--
I'm not trying to write
about my own work.
I'm often writing
about other artists,
as Steven's done and other
people in the room have done.
In my book I'm trying to
write an account of my--
what I see, right?
So any-- Please.
There's the mic that
I think is going to--
Hi.
Hi.
May be a very silly
question, but I just
wonder why are you feeling the
counters of the [inaudible]
phases every now and then?
Yes.
I don't know if anyone's
familiar with an open sourced
software called Blender.
And Blender is often
the gateway 3D software
for people who don't
have money and they
don't have access to art
school or architecture school
facilities.
And it's actually kind
of interesting, Blender.
Because it's-- like a lot
of open sourced software--
it's a little tricky.
The interface it's a bit like--
I mean they all are, right?
But you don't get--
it's a hard one.
But I've used Blender
now on and off for years,
because it keeps
getting improved,
like all open sourced software.
And once you work
out the kinks in it
you can get things done
in it that you can't quite
do in CAD and in the other
ones that are more proprietary.
Also it doesn't catastrophic
the update itself
in ways that become annoying.
It sort of just
gradually changes.
So in-- there's two reasons.
It's hard for me to
give short answers.
But the first reason is if you
grew up in the 1970s before
the internet-- and when there
was only three channels on TV,
and most of them weren't
on most of the time--
I spent a lot of
time in the kitchen
filling in the Ds and the As and
the Os in my dad's newspaper,
because I was so
bored in the suburbs.
That I had--
I just remember
doing that a lot.
And I did it in books
whole books, whole books
that I would do that to.
And on the other hand, Blender--
when I would start to work
with Blender-- was very bad.
When you turned the
typeface into a mesh,
it would tend to fill in the--
an extruder a little bit.
It would tend to fill them in.
And it was incredible pain in
the arse to get rid of them
all by triangulating the
mesh and trying to pick them
all out one by one.
So I decided instead
of fixing the problem--
which is a very particular
way of doing it--
I thought I would instead
in a font building program
make my own version
of Helvetica that
had filled in-- some
filled in characters,
and you could also randomize it.
And so that's the answer.
So it's this kind of
classical combination.
Hello.
I was kind of interested
in what you're
talking about in
terms of implications
and being complicit.
And, I mean, you talk about
your work as very contextual.
Like it's always like, OK,
what was happening in 1987
or what was happening then.
And you can try to
capture that instant.
And I would say that, like,
architects and designers also
draw upon these sort of
cultural implications,
and try to bring
that into their work.
And it's like--
I guess I'm wondering like how
do you shape your work based
off of these contractual--
you know these cultural
contexts and things like that?
No, I agree.
I don't really do research.
I found there was a point
when art became more serious.
And some people
in the room would
have recognized this, too.
Where you'd arrive
somewhere to do a show--
to do something--
to do an exhibition
or to make some work.
And people would say, oh,
are you here researching?
And you'd think, where did
this word suddenly come from?
Why am I-- I'm just
actually just in Milan.
And I will make an exhibition
of what I want to make,
not researching.
But what's happened
is partly the--
it's slightly the
Wikipediaization of things.
In the sense that things have
to have a paper trail, right?
Or they have to-- you have to
be able to prove that they--
to a certain extent.
More and more there's a lot
of highly interesting artists
where you need to be able to
work out where it comes from.
It leaves a paper trail, right?
As if there's a simple rift in
art between a kind of Dionysian
figure on one hand who randomly
just kind of does this,
and then the people who have
double checked everything.
In fact, life's much more
complicated, much more.
And art's more
complicated than that.
All I would say about
what you are asking
is that I'm not
researching, right?
So I'm not going
to look at the way
that tower, the terrible
tragedy of that tower,
the Grenfell Tower in England.
That's right-- I know
that area really well.
And I remember them
doing that kind of thing.
My work-- a lot of it--
refers to this process
of manic renovation
and [inaudible]
that started to take place in
the 80s and 90s and onwards.
THAT attempted to give
a new kind of sheen
to these brutalist buildings
and these apparently
failed buildings.
That instead of
knocking them down,
you could rebrand
them with aesthetics,
right, a certain aesthetic.
And it was done,
of course, with a--
what do you call it--
like a sprinkling
of ecological consciousness.
Because it was also supposed
to make them better buildings.
They would now be
warmer, insulated.
I think they were probably
done with good intentions.
So what I'm trying to say is
that when I mentioned Carl
Andre, Carl Andre claims his
minimalist art from the 60s
is influenced by seeing the
truth of materials sitting
as they fell, laid,
were laid down
on the ground in the
rail yards of Quincy.
My work is made under
conditions of having emerged
at a period when people were
[inaudible] things, rebranding
them.
Arthur Andersen and Co.
Accountants becomes
like [inaudible]
or [inaudible] or something.
Everything-- or [inaudible]
is Philip Morris, right?
Isn't it, or something?
Things start to get these
weird medical sounding names.
I mean, you've grown up with all
of this, it's kind of normal.
But I watched that moment of
turning from this to this.
And as a suburban
person brought up
bored shitless right near
where George Micheal is from,
that's exactly where I'm from.
And he killed himself.
You know what his boyfriend
said he died from?
He just wore himself out.
His body just gave out.
And I know exactly
what he means.
We're the same age.
And I grew up in that
area, and it was so boring.
All you could do is think of
new ways to wear out your body,
because there was
nothing else, in the way.
And I'm a product of
the suburbs in the 70s.
And I have a combination of
delusion and distraction,
right?
So I didn't have a vision.
Other people I went
to college with
were interested in sex or death.
Other people were talented.
Other people were even a genius.
Some people couldn't
help themselves,
they just had to
do doors all day.
Other people had a
political consciousness that
was so more elevated than mine.
And it wasn't until I read--
which is always good--
like Pierre Bourdieu or
[inaudible] or Foucault--
weirdly enough--
more than anything
that I started
to realize that
there was a kind of--
there was something in
this condition that I had,
or this condition of origin or
this beginning point, right?
And this could be
the subject, the work
that I heard move into.
I could-- this sense of
delusion and distraction
could be the thing.
It kind of half
answers your question.
I don't live in a
world where people
like me are the only
people making work.
This would be very, very bad.
But there's-- I realized after
25 years there was something
that I had seen, I think, that--
when I saw that tower on
fire I went really cold.
Because it's such a
graphic representation
of a misplaced gesture towards
the transfer of aesthetics
over a kind of reality, right?
That that's very, very
complicated and, you know,
hasn't been worked out.
And you are the generation
who needs to-- in a sense,
there's suddenly
this big, in a sense,
project to think about
these relationships
again without using
the old terms.
Like the old men who would
come up to me and say,
well, this is not true.
Like, what you're
doing is a lie.
It's decorative and designy.
And somehow there's
something in here.
So the book is catastrophically
self-absorbed at times,
and doesn't have many
points of reference
or very-- you can't verify it.
But there's-- it's
a [inaudible]..
It's got bits and pieces
in it that if-- there's
some lines in it that
are good, I think.
But there's something in here.
And I don't go on
too long because--
but I'll give a good
reason why I did it.
OK, I'll tell you the truth,
because I now have a beard,
and I'm a man.
I'll tell you what happened, OK.
The reason why I really did it.
Because I don't do any studio
teaching anymore, but I do
keep in touch with a much
more important group of people
than artist, which is curators.
So I go and do--
I'm on the graduate committee
at Bard College, which
was one of the first curatorial
studies programs in the world.
So it's very good,
and very interesting.
And all the people who go to
it kind of hate each other.
It is a competitive
environment and it's curating
and it's very fraught.
And I realize they--
I don't really teach but they--
I realized that they asked
me would I do for a class.
And I thought--
I realized what
they didn't do is
they didn't do a class on
contemporary art, which
I thought was really funny
for a curatorial program.
There must have been examples
of architecture schools
where they didn't actually teach
the history of architecture,
of course.
But-- Yeah.
but I thought it
was kind of cool.
So I thought I'd invite
all the people I respected
as new generation contemporary
art historians to come
to Bard to talk to us about the
origins of contemporary art,
like, where it comes from.
And the thing is I didn't tell--
most them were too busy, but
then I've got a lot of money
so I could pay
them really well--
so I didn't tell them that I
had invited the other ones.
So for eight weeks--
one went one week
after the other--
a fairly distinguished
person like Alex Albero or I
don't know--
a bunch of people, OK,
really good people--
and explained what the origins
of contemporary art were.
And what was really interesting
is at least five of the eight
said the same thing.
And I didn't actually
know this was true.
I didn't realize it, the
origin of contemporary art
is John Cage talking
to the art historians--
something in
Pasadena, and someone
talking somewhere in
California 1957 or something.
I mean, John Cage--
I was around in the 80s and 70s.
John Cage is actually the--
I never heard his name
mentioned once until--
I mean, he is an
important figure,
but this was never discussed.
His name had never
come up before.
So this is a new--
I don't want to get argued with,
but this is relatively new.
The idea that John
Cage is the origin,
in a sense, of contemporary
art, this is a kind of new one.
So the students got
really irritated.
Because it's a bit like
if you're coming here
and you waste your time.
One week you have someone
coming in and saying, well,
you know modern architecture
starts with this.
And then the next week another
person comes and they sort of
say the same thing.
It was sort of
irritating for people.
So I asked the students if they
could come up with a better
term than contemporary art.
Because what's happening
is these people
are professors of
contemporary art history,
so they have to think
about where it comes from,
otherwise they're kind of stuck.
So if we can think of another
term, we can move ahead of them
and save contemporary art
and keep the amoeba growing
and keep including
more and more things
in a kind of cynical way.
Now, that's quite difficult
and quite dangerous.
So no one did anything.
So none of the students
came up with a better term.
So I gave them all a
C, because that was
the only thing they had to do.
And I got this call
from Tom Eccles,
who's the head of Bard
College and the Museum Exec.
You can't give them
a C. You can't do it.
It's going to cause chaos.
People are going to fail.
And I said, OK.
I said-- this the end of
the talk, by the way--
I said, OK, give them all
an A. They've got to go
on a cross-country run, and
then they can all get an A.
And I don't--
I just want to
see one photograph
of one person looking as if they
could go on a cross-country run
if they felt like it.
And I never got that photograph,
and I gave them all an A
anyway.
And that's the end of my story.
That's will be in volume two.
Thank you.
Thank you very much
fore listening.
Thank you.
We could.
But, you know, I'm just trying
to stick to the schedule.
Well, we'll do it after.
No, no, no.
Well, we could.
We'll do it afterwards.
Anyway, thank you all very much.
I was hoping that we
would engage more of you
in a conversation.
But maybe we can
do it informally.
Anyway, thank you so much,
Liam, this was great.
I know that this is an
ongoing conversation.
So we will continue to
have this conversation.
You have the mic
ready, rearing to go.
But come and talk
to Liam down here.
Thank you again very much.
Thank you.
Sorry, I'm bad--
