Raising Sand [VINYL]

so thank you verymuch for being here. we're really delightedthat liam gillick is with us here tonight. liam doesn't know ithimself, but actually i've been hoping that we would haveyou here for quite some time. we have some mutualfriends, and i was hoping to be able to usethem before to get to you. and so i'm very happythat you are here. i think in the contextof our school, it's--

in a way-- i think quite exciting, quiteinteresting to have liam here. because in some waysliam deals with color, with sites, with relations,with words, with juxtapositions, with lights, withmovement, with perception, with elements of art. and many of the things thatliam deals with, in some ways, are very architectural. in a way, they aredesigned based.

and yet, maybe it's not exactlyarchitecture what you're doing, nor is it exactly design. but some of theactivities i think there is a resemblance towhat some of the people do in this building. and inasmuch as there isso much on the kind of-- the relationship of elements,and in terms of rethinking the whole space of exhibition. it seems more andmore it's getting

to have parallel analogieswith architecture. and yet, i think it'sreally productive that it is something very different. and i hope that that will besomething that, liam, you will talk about during your lecture. it's also reallyastonishing the kind of range of collaborations andengagements that liam has had. and beyond his own sculptures,installations, exhibitions, to be so involved with writingabout contemporary art,

and collaborating with somany people on the topic. liam's, work asyou probably know, has been also exhibited in anumber of significant locations and events, including[inaudible] at the venice, berlin, and istanbul biennale. and he somehow has managed torepresent germany in the 2009 venice biennale, despite thefact that he's not german. which is also veryinteresting that he did that. he's also had solomuseum exhibitions

at the museum ofcontemporary art in chicago, the museum of modern art innew york, and at the tate in london. and over the last 25 years,in terms of his writings, he's contributed to artforum, october, freeze, e flux journal. and is the author ofa number of books, including a set of essays ofhis own, and also writing. in a way.

on the history ofcontemporary art practice. which i suppose one ofthe key things about it is the degree towhich it actually does engage with socialpolitical issues of the day. and the role of theartist as someone who's deeply engaged inconditions of everyday life, and is very much participatingin those situations. i'm really delighted thatliam is with us tonight, and i look forward tohearing your presentation.

please warmlywelcome liam gillick. good evening. it's good that you cametonight, with the new weather. so what i'm going to dois to try and give you some information, somebackground, about what i've been doing. and to give you aframework for that. and then try and talkabout some of the ideas in the book that i publishedlast year, which is a kind of--

an attempt to lookat the history of the contemporaryarts as a figure really, much morethan contemporary art as a discipline. it's to look at an attempt toaddress the question of how do we end up with thisfigure in society that seems to represent something? that's often hard toput your finger on. it's often an implicated figure.

it's a person that can beaccused of things, like being a driver of gentrification ina kind of vague way, right? a purveyor of the-- in a sense a kind of middle browkind of nonsense, in a sense. a super self-consciouspurveyor of ideas, yet we're not quite sure whatthose ideas are leading to. a kind of prime hypocrite,in a way, in society that maybe forms-- has the same role rightnow as being a poet

might have had inthe 1960s, right. a kind of-- youknow, my parents they had friends who decided todrive 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 acontemporary artist would be. a bit-- he'd clearlyhad some basis of ideas. he had some consciousnessof modernism

and the history of poetry. he also was completely deludedabout his role in society, in a way, and his importance. he felt he had a connection tosomething urgent, in that case it was popularmusic, rock music. he was also cool inan indefinable way, and felt that time for himwas different than time for other people. i'm not saying you canmake a direct analogy

between these twotypes of figure. but you can also say that fora contemporary artist, as it were, the same fate potentiallystands in front of them as the fate of the poet, kindof a hip poet in the 1960s. so we'll come tothat a little bit. so this question ofarchitecture came up at the beginning-- in theintroduction-- which is good. and i have-- i'm nervous in a way,because my kind of weakness

is my admiration forarchitects and people who think hard about planningand building and doing something in the world. the analogy i gave topaige earlier about this, over the years i've considered. which is, i thinkart and architecture is like apples and bears. which means that it soundslike you're saying apples and pears-- which are related--

but it's actuallyapples and bears. it's a misheard thing. so, in fact, there is a greatgulf between these disciplines. and over the yearsi've thought-- and i've been involvedin tons of talks about art andarchitecture or art as architecture orarchitecture and art. and, obviously,the idea has been to encourage thisidea there should

be a melding of these things,or a kind of crossover. and over the years i'vethought more and more there shouldn't be a crossover. there should be more differenceand more discrimination. in a sense, betweendifferent practices. and in a way what, therefore,has happened in my work over the years is i've comevery close to things. and it's very differentcoming close to something, having proximity-- in the sensethat a [inaudible] would talk

about proximity, for example-- is very different fromcollaborating or merging or being together. so i'll try to get to thepoint and show you some images. and it's always ascary one to show because it's you start to think,oh, god if he's showing this, we'll be going throughthis like year by year. but this is the firstand last painting. this is from 1987, ittells you something.

it's a portrait of adi dessler. and adi and his brother rudywere sports shoe manufacturers in germany. one founded puma, andone founded adidas. and this was the sort of worki was doing as i left college. which was greeted witha resounding two one-- if anyone knowswhat that means-- in british terms. and it's a tea tray.

and in walden twoby b.f. skinner you notice the mentioning oftea trays, better tea trays. so i leave artschool, and then this is the first exhibition in 1989. and that was veryimportant for me. i wanted to-- ithought maybe one day it would be good to be ableto say i was an 80s artist. so in 1989-- in 1989, iwas running out of time. and i had a chance to do anexhibition, and i jumped at it.

and it was in december 1989. and i had no moneyand no materials, but i had a mac se30 and a printer. so what i'd been doingthrough that year was every day i would workon a parallel activity. in this case i was workingon the facades of buildings. and i'd use the firstdrawing program on an airport to design facades of buildings. and i'd do maybe 80a day, or 100 a day.

and in the exhibitioni made 84 of them. and we handed themout at the opening. and people would look at them,and then they could buy them in boxes like that. this is jumping-- thankfullythere are these big jumps-- to a little bit later. this is a room inthat exhibition in frankfurt in 1999. and i decided to give overone room in the exhibition

as a space for aconference on criticism. and so you cansee, again, another of this kind of parallel. it's like working in parallel. and the room was used forthree days to talk about, of course, the word that goesvery well with criticism, which is crisis. the crisis of criticism,especially in germany. and it has a joke by matthewmodine about steven spielberg

and stanley kubrick on thewall to remind the people while they're havingtheir conference on the crisis of criticismmay 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 wellwith architects, of course. it's a joke, you know, thatsteven spielberg dies and goes to heaven.

and st. peter meets him atthe gates and says, you know, we love your films. you're great. if there's anythingyou need, just ask us. and he says, well, i alwayswanted 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 onand on, and he never

gets to meet stanley kubrick. and finally one dayhe sees this old guy with a beard riding around on abicycle in an old army jacket. and he says, hey,look that's him. that's stanley kubrick. and of course the punchline-- which is the old joke-- is that's not stanleykubrick, that's god. he just thinks he'sstanley kubrick. so it was good to have thatjoke there for three days,

because it reallystarts to be irritating. but it did have someeffect on the discussion. oh materials, dyed jute-- or hessian theycall it in england-- and chipboard, and vinyl. again, showing thiskind of weak materials. this is a prototype manuscriptfor a book i wrote around that time callederasmus is late, which is about the meetingof secondary individuals

over time. this is a hall outsidethe porticos in frankfurt that i dug with another artistcalled angela bullock that was during an exhibitionabout football and karaoke. so we decided we wouldtake capri football-- prior karaoke position-- and instead considerourselves medieval. so we did a project called weare medieval, which involved digging a kind of pig huntinghole outside the porticos

and sitting in it, and notentering the museum at all. so, again, you havethis parallelism. in this case, the sense ofnot wanting to be included, the kind of bertrandrussell-esque sense of not wanting to bein the set of all the artists who are obviously into karaokeand football in the 90s. another similar typething that shows itself in a slightly differentway, which is a clock. what, i guess--

i don't know-- ingermany i think we were calling it [? lampin ?]technique or something. you know, where youhave light bulbs. and the clock, in this case, isflicking in time between 1810, and 1997. and it's telling you where-- it's telling you localtime before railways. introduced a kindof universal time, as it were, andthe time in 1810.

so of course wrong interms of the railway, and then right interms of the railway. so you have thisflickering with time, without using atime-based media. so what you can seewith these things is a kind ofintegration in a way. like a response toconditions, a certain lightness of touch, a useof just a big ream of paper with some printing on it.

things beingprototypes or parallel, not actually having aprimary way of existing. and around this time i startedto produce more recognizably abstract sculptures. and here we see some in probablythe early 2000s in london. and you see this statement inthe background, the commune itself becomes a superstate. so one of the things that wasalluded to in the introduction is this sense ofthe relationship

between the individualand the group. which is always acomplicated one, in terms of art historyand art practice. the fact, for example, thatat an art school like the one i went to, you couldn't workin that group very easily. all the critics, all theassessments were based on your individual practice, . on your individual work yet through this periodwhen you're seeing--

and i'm doing it myself-- these individual works, they'realways done in the context. there's always otherartists around, there's a museum around,and importantly there are curators around. what i started to do by makingthese works is what i now understand is a kind ofschizophrenic practice. but that's a misuse ofthe word schizophrenic. i think it's more--

excuse anyone here whohas issues like this, it's hard to make allusionsto things without using certain terminology-- let's say an irreconcilablerift in the work between a kind offormalist you could say, or abstract practiceon one hand, and some of the otherthings i was showing you. all right. so these i've worked onfor the last 20 years.

and they're, in away, a more precisely abstract secondary function. they're screens, fullceilings, wall panels, small freestanding screens. i call them fins. and these things-- which whatthe hell do i call them-- elevations. so this is where it getskind of complicated. and here we can see somepeople enjoying some platforms

and benches. so what's going on? there seems to be this kindof unresolvable problem between these small gestures,these collaborations, these moments ofdelicacy sometimes, and these clearly built,constructed, fabricated things. the thing is thetitles of these works always give something away. some of the overhead platformsi always called them, well,

first platforms ratherthan full ceilings. discussion platform, but alsomaybe development platform or revision platformor a deviation screen or conciliation screen. basically the wordingand the vocabulary from-- in a sense the things thatbecame concrete politically under clinton and blair-- and especially theaesthetics, and the attitude towards cultural policythat came out-- especially

under people like tony blairand the third way politicians. and there's a wholebody of my work that happens both delicatelyand very precisely that plays with the coding ofrenovation, compromise, rejuvenation, clouding,secondary components. and if you could say thatcarl andre's work, right-- and he has written andtalked about this-- the use of plates on theground doing what plates do. or lugs, you know,lumps of wood doing

what wood does come fromthe influence of being around the rail yardsin quincy, right? my work comes from beingaround that moment. being in that moment. being in my early 30sduring that moment, and trying to developa language that was appropriate to my timethat would be critically conscious of the conditions ofproduction that were around me. and here we see a quarterscale model of a public project

for a plaza in guadalajara. and here we see whathappened quite quickly as people wouldsay, ok, you seem to think about these things. so maybe you can helpus with our problem. this is the interior ministryor home office in london. a project from2002 to 2005, when i was brought in to a publicprivate partnership which had all the accompanyingideas that you have to spend

a percent on the art budget. but there was a crisiswithin the architecture of the building, which isa terry farrell building. he's not a veryfashionable architect, but is actually kind ofan interesting person. so i basicallywork on all aspects of the facade of thisbuilding, and introduced some of the thingsi've been playing with about with theother work, kind of

to emphasize these things. here we see a shot of the front. and like a treatment of thefacade, which was in order to stop them putting those logosthat they put on government buildings with the kind ofswoopy thing or to rebrand it. to make it very hard to rebrandand remark the building. and you can see-- where is my laser-- here, this is thesign for the building.

it says the home office. there's another one up here. and then this thing,these are designated as artworks within thecollection of the government art collection. so to have them removedis very, very difficult. so when different governmentscome and go in britain, when the conservativescame in a few years ago, they really wanted to put agreat big kind of big shield

thing with like rampant lionsand or maybe a swoopy thing going to the rightand up to the right. but they can't do it withoutgetting a special order to remove the artwork. and as i was jokingearlier, though, probably the most importantpart of the project for me was being in the conversation,in the discussion, in the room. and it was the use of the colorrahul 9035 for the building. where i would oftenfind myself in meetings

with quite serious people. and finally, someone turnedto me and said, well, what color should it be? and i knew it shouldbe rahul 9035, which is the kind of thing thatonly an artist can sometimes say in those situations. i didn't have to proveit 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 thefairmont hotel in vancouver. and it has a workon it that probably explains things the best. which is stainlesssteel lettering that says, lying ontop of a building, the clouds look nonearer than they had when i was lying on the street. which, in a way, is anextraordinary gesture

of canadian sophisticationor duplicity to allow this comment togo on the building that critiques the building. and, yet, makes the buildingcool at the same time. this is a buildingin guadalajara, in mexico, that i workedwith with an architect called rodrigo gonzalez villasenor. and it looks likewe 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 artworkand art commission and not architecture. including what you couldimagine, this kind of stuff, but not the carpet, notthis, but these things. i would go on thesite as an artist, right, with a studioof people that came who were oftenthe same people who were building the building.

except, nominally, nowthey were making art, so they are paid differentlyand acted differently and spoke differently,even though they were doing the same thing thatthey'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'dbasically weld things together and put them together on site.

and i'd come and have a look. it was extraordinaryfree way to work, and highly unusual, andoutside most of the parameters of with the building planningand coding for the building. but anyway, this is a model. this comes to venice now. i'll show you a fewphotos of venice biennale. i try not to getinto it too much. but i got invitedas that 90s person

that i mentionedearlier, the one who'd thought hard aboutthird way post war conditions and aesthetics. and also it's a sacrifice, in away, because you get brutalized doing the german pavilion. i mean, that's theway it should be. it should have acritical culture and a critical environment. in this case, whati did is i moved

my rather ellipticaland secondary thinking one step across. so the abstraction became moreprecise, and more referential. and the voice becamemore singular, and more-- less general. so i started by raisingmoney for the project by making a model of theunbuilt german pavilion from the 1950s that would havecompletely erased, in a sense, the nazi renovation of theoriginal bavarian pavilion.

i then worked on the great unit,which you will probably know and probably shouldbe working with, which is the kitchen cabinet,which is 60 centimeters by 60 by whatever 75 varying heights. and i spent a lot of timesitting in the frankfurt kitchen in the makin vienna that was made by the great[? architecturan ?] margarete schutte-lihotzky. and as a tribute to herattempt to make a better

life for people and to have agood 20th century as a german, i put bug blinds in thedoorway of the german pavilion to attempt to domesticateand de-nazify this building. and a kitchen inside-- a kind of a cheap kitchen-- butan ideal kitchen in a sense. the unit that'scommon, that you can find in ramallah orbolivia or the [inaudible] store in downtown cambridge,if there is a downtown here. and then on the top of thecabinets, they put a cat.

and the cat is obviously dead. and the cat has-- the cat speaks. and the cat tells a storyabout a speaking cat. the cat as the kitchen cat. the cat who surviveseverything, and the cat who sees everything and experiencesevery trauma and tiptoes through rubble, for example. and the cat is sad oneday, because it's--

you know what, you canfind the story online. but i had a lotof fun doing this. and i have to say no good deedgoes unpunished in germany. so, of course, i did feel likeyou probably feel sometimes, completely misunderstood forthe first time in my life. and i only have myselfto blame for that. so there you go. the one good thing-- i don't know if anyone'sfamiliar with the tv program

sabrina the teenage witch. but i am a big-- artists like many of youprobably at some point go through a big phase-- iswhat's pre-internet really. so watching daytime tv. so i was a big fanof clarissa tells it all and sabrinathe teenage witch, and charmed, because theywere always on in the morning. and, of course,there's a speaking cat

in sabrina the teenage witch. so i always wanted to work withthe wise, wry, ironic speaking cat. but the nightbefore the opening, i realized that this cat tellingthe story about speaking cat going in this circularself loathing story, having been accused of stealingpeople's breath while they sleep, turning back on thehumans, turning back on people and reminding them it's theythat steal people's breath.

it's they that take away joy. it's they thatdestroy everything. i took the gallery guide,which is this thing, it's here. it's the gallery guide, right? it's the thing with alittle bit of information saying that i did documenterand i did a show here and a show there. and i screwed it upinto a bow type shape, and i jammed to themechanism of the cat

by stuffing it in its mouth. but it still was trying tomove like [? westworld. ?] it was still kind of [grunts]. so i got a long nailand waited till everyone had gone-- this is thenight before the opening-- and got the nail and stuffedit through the piece of paper into the cat's mouth, whichfinally jammed the mechanism. and i remember walking awayfrom the building as fast as possible thinking,i've just done

the most evil thing in history. so i can't reallysay more than that. it's just thereare these moments-- and i'm sure youhave them-- where you realize you may havedone something bad without. and it's to do withthe kind of-- it's to do with a weird combinationof aesthetics, gestures, references, and implications. collaborative work lawrencewiener for a museum in antwerp,

which involved making an entirefloor working with [inaudible].. no other things, noother signage, nothing. this is a big project. i want to bring you to thiscollaborative thing quickly. in arles in france, ashow that i put together with philippe parreno calledto the moon by the beach, where we imported 150lorry loads of sand to the roman arena. and that's the finalstate of the moon.

but basically we've started-- we based thisprinciple on the idea that it's always moreinteresting to watch other people workingthan do it yourself. so we had these sand geniusesfrom holland come and work all day, transforming thesand from a beach scape to a moonscape, andnever stopping working. and while they weredoing this, other artists intervened and didthings around it.

again, this secondarything, this parallelism. here's work by elvire bonduelle,a young french artist who made these lunar materialaircraft, space material umbrellas. this work by dominiquegonzales-foerster that i didn't understand. work by lawrence wiener whokept saying that the thing-- i don't know if anyone'scome across him, but is worth lookinginto if you haven't.

he kept saying it'sall about washers. you know, likeeverything was about-- the whole world is heldtogether by washers. you know what i mean, thethings between a nut and a bolt? and that's what you needto think about in the world is washers. so he made some. and then we havea space man who'd walk around playing a harmonica.

and here you see them working. and this is the work thatwas the most notable there by pierre huyghewhere he paid an actor to wear a rubber mask that itwas an exact copy of his head. and then in bees wouldhive on his head every day. and the man would walkout blinded by this into the center of the arenauntil he fell to the ground or fell to his knees. and then quickly, thelast few slides just

to show that a certain kind of-- that in all these practicesif you could say that there are these things, right? there's collaborationat one level. there's a certainkind of commitment to that kind ofabstraction on another. a desire to expresssomething that's hard to express through form. a kind of muted form.

and then there's a kindof delicate interventions and so on. there are also thesemoments of contradiction that come out of other things. and that's what i wantedto show you at the end. so this is a one year showi did last year at the museu serralves in porto. and it's a caesar building,a [inaudible] ceasar building from the 90si think, or the 80s.

kind of a great building,and they've restored it. it had gotten tatty. because those buildings get-- southern europeanbuildings start to look kind of ratty aroundthe edges quite quickly. but they fixed it up again. and i did a show there ofthese works that are kind of-- can't be accounted forin my normal narrative. so this is a piano that playsgrandola, vila morena, which

was the song thatwas played to signal the start of the portugueserevolution in '74. meanwhile black snow falls. and it's me trying toremember the music, trying to rememberhow the song goes. it's a very melancholic,evocative word. but it comes from me sayingto phillipe parreno years ago when we didn'thave ideas, right-- and in film schoolyou could always

say if you have no ideasthere's always tarkovsky, right? in architecture school you couldsay, well, there's always-- years ago maybe or evennow-- you could say, well, there's always[inaudible],, right? there's always something tofall back on, if in doubt. to acquire taste and resonanceand meaning and significance, and even grand ambition. with us we realized, maybeit's a piano and black snow. this would carry enoughin the art context.

here's my first proposedart work, which brings me-- i'm trying to get to the endof my explaining everything. the trick to thisapples and bears thing is don't build a building. never try and build a building. artists who buildbuildings are great, and artists who buildtheir own houses are great. but artists who build otherbuildings for other people, i don't think, are that great.

and i've never-- infact 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 buildingthat i proposed in 1992 for the city of milanfor a new public housing project where they wantedan abstract public artwork. and i realized they didn't.

what they needed was acenter for young people. and already at the ageof 28 i was feeling not that urgently young. so i figured what iwould do is i'd propose a center for young people. there would be a free zonewhere no one can go in apart from young people. and i would seed thisbuilding with the two contradictory libidinous urgesof the male psyche, which

is ac/dc and joy division. the kind of crotchthrusting idiocy of ac/dc and the shoegazingseriousness of joy division. and by doing that, set up aimmediate argument that could be overwritten and over scored. they weren't interested. they were so uninterestedthey didn't even reply. they didn't even respond. it just got dropped completely.

from that point on, inever proposed or built or attempted to eventhink about a building ever again, which has beenvery, very good for me. and that's a model of it. and here's a kindof phantom model of it combining thesetwo contradictions, which i think is ratherbeautiful in its own way. and here is a work whichis a large version of-- guy debord, towardsthe end of his life,

decided to mainlywork on war games. and so this a largeversion of a war game, similar to one that he designed. just to show you howthis play with form and touch and lightness andcollaboration has developed. and then my last show,just now in berlin, which is modeledon the apartment i used to stay in in vienna frommemory, s is a great street. one of the greatestnamed streets

in the world, which is called[inaudible] and [inaudible] which means kind of hit the skyor punch heaven or touch heaven in a way, firmly. touch heaven firmly. so i did this. and it's basically mygraphic work, which i've-- i know it's an important partof what architecture students do and art students--but i realized i had produced a lot of graphicsand a lot of secondary work.

which i-- a bit like thesign on a building, right, the signage that tells youthe name of the building. is that like-- it's like thatdirect engagement moment, right? which i realized i'dtold more stories through the secondary orthird level or fourth level or fifth level minorgesture than i ever did through a collaborationor the work or whatnot. and that's thelast image of that.

this is sort of the end of part1 and 1/2, because we are-- i'm going to now-- i'm going to develop this abit, but not for too long. but i just show you thisto give you an idea, right? so we've seen thesevarious things. and i think thisis always the thing to look out for for yourself. because you realizethat you've-- so a magazine cover saying,were people this dumb before tv?

a print for a belgianguide that says tobac, it's like a tobacco factory. different states of a publicartwork for your tract. a poster that idid for a magazine. a series of posters thati 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 theformer secretary of defense robert mcnamara. a design for taxii did in vienna that you can use as aruler or a measuring device because it's broken downinto 10 centimeter things. and this mercedes used todrive around vienna as a taxi, and he could use it tomeasure buildings with. a public poster i didanonymously in paris that got put up all over the canalon the way to villette.

a print about speculation andplanning that you will find very useful, any of youwho think about planning. because it just is statesof speculation and planning in percentile shiftswith no logical change. so you get the idea. designed for a billboard, right? a design for the vietnamsaigon biennale in maybe 2000 so you start to get a muchbigger picture from here. ok, so what we see seems toshow a lack of direction.

and i would arguethat's exactly right. there is very little direction. things do not lead easilyfrom one to the other. there's some self-consciousnessin all this work. there's some-- things arederived from, but not a lot. a lot of it's to do with play. it's to do with suburbanupbringing and whatnot. there's very little citationin the work of other things, there's a lot of response,call it response.

the artist is a useful person. a useful person that can providethese things that cannot be quite touched, or you can'tquite put your finger on. what it is is thisquality of being in the world that isn't quite-- you can't quite doit in other things. so coming back to thehome office building, this ability toplay with the facade and designate thatas an artwork changes

the relationship andthe way the architect can work in relation tothe client and the city and designation ina different way. but it's a verysoft, subtle thing. what i noticed, though,in the last few years is something that's always beenthere, which is an increasing rupture in the art context. an increasing rupturebetween the people who are interested, in a sense,in context, in organization,

in art as a kind of placewithin which to do-- in which to agitateat one level. but also in which to come upwith a replacement for what they stronglybelieve is a failure on the part of architects,planners, urbanists, especially politicians more so. to actually provide human spacesthat are not just smoothly glossed over bya neoliberal kind of wash of, like,some nice landscaping

and some gentrification. so you have quite profoundlyagitating structures in the art world, whichare very in parallel to the agitating ones withinthe edge of architecture and planning. they often crossover. you get the same theoriststalking to both sets of people. this clearly creates a rupture. and those people areoften completely against,

or uninterested in anything thatcould pass for a discreet art object, right, the historicalart object, the late modern art object. in the same way thatyou have architects and architecturaltheorist who would say, we are completelydisinterested in anything that constitutes a built practice. and these discussions,of course, were circling aroundthe aa and places

like that beforewhen i was in my-- you know, i was just an idea. so what's happenedis there's a kind of strange convergence atone level, of an attempt to be outside, right? and at the same time, a kindof increase in the idea-- with the rise of contemporaryart history as a discipline-- the rise in theidea that you can talk about there having beenan origin of contemporary art.

this is the reason i wrote thebook industry in intelligence. because i wanted tolook at this rupture. like, this schism inart has become as deep as the reformation or something. it's as extreme. there are people thati know, have worked with for nearly 20 years now,who would never, ever set foot in a private galleryor the tate gallery or the museum of modernart, because it is not

a repository of anythingthey recognize as interesting or as art. ok, they might sneak in tothe last day of a [inaudible] show or a [inaudible] show. but generally speaking theysteer clear of these places completely. on the other hand, youcan get a very elevated-- almost catchy in a sense--kind of formalist way that you can find exemplifiedaround some press releases

now, right? so you could talk about ayoung painted dude, right, and he's doing hispaintings, which looked like a kindof race to the bottom to see who can do themost slack painting. and the press releasewill say something like-- let's call him joshvanderbilt. josh vanderbilt interrogates hisown subjectivity while probing at historicalmodes of painting as a form.

and this is great. i mean, i agree this is avery sophisticated practice probably. but it's a veryparticular one, right? and it very much signals things. it signals a certainkind of affiliation or a set ofconnections or desires. so what you've gotright now is something that's happened over theyears at different moments

in architecture andvarious other fields, but just at different times. it just happens to behappening right now. so what i wanted to-- however what happens,because contemporary art's the longest-- i'm kind of going towind this up really, because we can talk about itin a more conversational way. however far you tryand step outside,

unlike architecturewhere i think there were moments where youcould step outside and say, i'm now a theorist ori'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 anothertype of human being. the art world-- because of it'svery particular relationship to capitalism, and it'sparticular relationship to exchange--

tends to be able to absorbwhat tries to step outside it. so a good example-- and i have to gobackwards, because, like, this is what happens becausei'm not a specialist. ok, it's clear thatcertain attempts to step outside the currentdiscourse in architecture are partly the natureof architecture itself. that's partly whatone is studying. at the same time it's--

while things do leak intokind of the built mainstream, it happens throughcertain figures or through certainpeople carrying that, or it leaks in and kindof secretes itself. what happens in the art world-- to a certain extent-- is these contradictoryor broken kind of sides can all be absorbedwithin the art world, within the art context,within the art market even.

so however hard youtry and step outside, you can be absorbed within it. and this is a really-- it's quite close to what we allthink about art historically, but it's particularlystrong now. so i tried to writea book about what are the technical and geologicaland historical political reasons why we have this thingcalled contemporary art, which has been the longest lasting--

in a sense, if you exclude likea phrase like the renaissance, which obviously is kindof idiotic to think. i'm talking aboutpost time 1900. contemporary art'slasted the longest because it's the onething it's not a self-- no one calls themself acontemporary artist anymore. i'm not sure anyone sayscontemporary architect, either. but it's a descriptionof a kind of thing that you kind ofknow what it is.

you can smell it and tasteit, but it's not a movement. it's a kind oftemporal descriptor that will do toencompass anything. it's an amoebic thing thatcan keep growing and absorbing things. and i wanted tolook at what were the historical technicalconditions that allowed that to happen. how did that happen?

even in the face of [inaudible]. even in the face of-- or maybehe's the fault, in fact-- but in the face of robustcriticism, robust self- consciousness, howdoes that happen? so just to-- because i thinkif people have questions we could do that. so i'll just give youa quick indication of some of the chapterheadings, because it tells you-- it sums up everything.

then we could have questions. so contemporary artdoes not account for that which has isplacing it's very true. i spend my time with peoplewho don't make any work. would never-- they'drather be shot. they'd rather have theirface eaten by weasels than make anythingresembling anything. but not only that,they don't consider hanging around and havingtea, or doing nothing

to be doing work either. they are outside. there's a new communityof critical consciousness that is used as akind of art umbrella under which to operate. it's a kind of useful umbrella. for that which is taking place. protection andparallelism, these are the two things that arethe most profound things,

in my opinion, that allowcontemporary art to retain this kind of strange position. it projects towards something. it's constantly heading forsomething just out of reach, and it's inherently parallel. it's always in parallel. i can never get blamed forthe sins of an architect, because i work inparallel to them. i never am taking ontheir responsibilities.

then i dealt withfour specific dates that i won't go into detailabout, because it's too long. but i-- there's alsosomething temporal here about asap future,not infinite future. so art became more andmore closer to the present, like the way developedcapitalism became better and better atcapitalizing on the recent past and the near future. are also came closer andcloser to the present.

it was one of the thingsthat could do that. abstract, you have totalk about the endurance of the idea of a kind ofabstraction as a mark of art. the complete curator,which is a text i wrote which is in thebook about the idea of the curator as a figure. and this should neverbe underestimated. every time you see a dopey bookor a stupid article or a thing online about curating yourself--or even hans-ulrich's book

about curating-- it's hard to underestimate whatthe complete curator means, and how it changed everything. the arrival of the curatorialvoice, or their demands. the ethical demandsof advanced curators now run so far inadvance of art itself that it's impossiblefor any artist to possibly keep upwith that demand, right? so you get-- allyou 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 iswillem de kooning came to america whenever,1946 or something, and is thought of as an americanpainter within about 18 months, as far as i can make out. i moved here 20 years ago, andi'm quite rightly a british--

in a way british-- and with a bit of irishthrown in-- artist. now, that's very important. because it's important--because for many people it's important to know whereyou came from and who you are and where you stand, right? and the world worked very wellfor male artists in america at that point in the late 40s. so of course de kooningbecame one of the guys.

he became an americanartist, and he stated that he wasan american artist with his heavy dutch accent. i'm doomed. i will never be anamerican artist, like i'm not the german artist. that's why i could do the germanpavilion, because i'm not one and i can't be one. i'm kind of stuck.

but the return of theborder, ironically, you know, it's an issue thatwe can all discuss. ok, the last three arethe experimental factory. the idea that art can giveus experimental models is, or the gap between the ideathat contemporary art can gave us an experimental ora living model of practice. and the realityof art is actually a withdrawn melancholicand self-loathing practice, is what's reallyinteresting to me.

that's what i lookat in that chapter. nostalgia for the group. the relationship between theindividual and the group. this is something i came tothe [inaudible] opening night on friday-- thursday-- which was ostensiblyabout management and models of work and how partnershipsand things are done. what you find is that this isa very coherent and stated-- it's very--

it's structurally part ofarchitectural practice. within art, allinteresting moments start as a group, right? because you're a bunchof undefinable people of a generation,maybe from a place. they then become more refinedand more discriminating and more broken down. and then when things returnor become interesting again, such as the picturesgeneration in new york,

it starts to becomea group again. now this also happensin other fields like literature,architecture, and music. it's particularly strongin contemporary art, this idea of nostalgiafor the group. and it's partly to do withcuratorial and critical approaches. because it becomesinteresting if you start to understand the group--

again the nostalgiafor the group-- you can return to the groupand find the people that were excluded from the group. and this i look atalso in the book. and finally, the finalchapter is called, why work? which is really aquestion trying to-- it's really a section tryingto address the accusation. the artists are the ultimatefreelance knowledge workers, that they are reallythe guilty ones.

that they're the ones that havebeen responsible for creating a model of existencethat has dragged us into this kind of relativisticrenovated kind of nowhere, dystopia. the cappuccino-izationof all moments of life. and i kind of refute this. i dismiss thisaccusation, in a sense. but i do it as amatter of principle rather than reallybeing able to do it.

but i think you'd have to readpierre bourdieu to really get further than that on that one. i think it's alreadybeen covered, in a way. so i would ask if thereare any questions. and it's always a tricky one. i don't know if you want tocome and help mediate that. so, liam, thank you very much. really-- [applause] you've leftus with a lot of questions, a lot of issues.

i know there are quite a fewpeople who would like to-- or i hope that they willengage you-- in conversation. just to push you a little bitabout sort of apples and bears. because i think-- i mean, maybe thisis very unfair. but, i mean, on onelevel you are the artist, you are the curator,you are the critic, and you kind of do all ofthose things simultaneously. i suppose part of it--in terms of the book--

is to ask to what end. in the sense, what'sthe purpose of the book? to construct a new artist? to develop a criticismof contemporary art? you know, so whatis the relationship between theproduction of the book and really the status of theartist and how it helps you? so one question relates to that. but more specifically onthis apples and bears.

i mean, i feellike, ok, when you are doing pieces that resemblescertain kinds of design activity, assembly of things, acolor 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 collaboratingwith terry farrell, and you make part of afacade of a building.

and you then say,well, i'm the bear or i'm the apple, whatever. but, i mean, i thinkmy question to you is at that at that momentthere is a level of complicity in the work where youcan no longer claim to be the artist so independently. even though it may bethat from the perspective of the ukgovernment's, you know, designation of the differencebetween architecture and art,

the piece can be protected. but to a passerby who isassessing and perceiving that building, thatcould also easily be seen as ornament,for example. and so i'm justtrying to figure out how you can participate tothat degree in the fabrication of a piece of architecture,and at the same time claim a kind of innocence, whichyou try to do to some degree. so--

yeah. it's a good question. but it cuts tothe heart of the-- what i try and getto it in the book. which is it's-- none of thesethings are a problem for me in a sense. when you said, well, itcan become like ornament, for example, or it canbecome like sort of-- maybe even go further and saykind of an attractive design

solution that sort ofgets around the problem of a slightly clumsilyexecuted attempt to do kind of acertain form of-- a certain kind ofaesthetic that we can recognize in that buildingwith 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 lookat it, especially as a student. i was still taught--

and this is where it comes downto some of these differences are about teaching. we still have legacygreenberg teachers, meaning a few grumpy menwho were abstract painters. and they believed in muscularpainting, whatever that meant. and they believed inthe idea of truth. truth to materials, truth-- truthiness in theway of addressing in a muscular way, the pushand pull of the painting

or something. and this, for them, waskind of outside the concerns of everyone else,outside the mess of life. and it did, of course, createextraordinary moments in art. it was also funded bythe cia-- a lot of it-- and especially the talkingabout it and the showing of it. and it was also very malein a very straight, male way and with some exceptions, goodexceptions like grace hartigan, and other artists who werevery good and interesting.

the point is that they usedwhat struck me in the mid 80s as very gendered accusations. so if i was very interested in-- like my-- if wego-- well, we won't. the first thing-- the teatray with the colors on it-- which now suddenly makes sense,the portrait of adi dessler. i was told this wasdesignee inductive by one of these grumpy oldmen 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 involvedin this world of, in a sense, lures. using things as lures, and usingthings as secondary things. mainly what happens inthat home office building is i replace materials. it's a very kind ofpostmodern thing to do. i kind of look at what wecan do with the glazing, and i go to the factoryin [? tour ?] in france,

to [inaudible][inaudible] or whatever-- and see if i cantalk them into doing a fritting on the glassfor the same price as just making the glass. so i become-- i use what artistsare really good at, which is being just you, withanother person or a few people. and trying to talk theminto doing something, or try to get something done.

so it's all about roleplaying, yes, i agree with you. it's about role playing. it's about complicity. everything for me isabout implication. i wrote a text once calledthe implicated player, which is about this idea of theartist is the implicated figure. and that's really what alot of the book's about, is about the history of howdid we get to this point? well, it's because we have theright conditions in society

to produce this kind of figureof the contemporary artist who is, in a sense, thisimplicated player. and it won't belike that forever, but it's like itfor a brief while. they represent something. but part of that comesthrough technology and through theapparatus as much as it comes throughtheory and [inaudible] and the rise of westernmarxism and the desire

to be in a subculturalframe and things like that. none of those thingsare enough to explain why we have these odd figuresaround who are supposed to fulfill certain roles. so maybe otherpeople will comment. but, i mean, that'swhy i wanted to mention the book and the role ofwriting and criticism. because in someways, i'm wondering what your reaction is to thefact that in some sense then

i could say-- again maybe this is not fair-- then why are you so insistentin controlling the reading of the work? because by being both the artistand the critic simultaneously, in some way there is a sensethat the reception of the work is also something that you seemquite intent in being part of. and so, like, what is the roleof the thing, the person who is not so familiar with the work?

because part of your workrelies on a kind of knowing. and it seems like nobodyknows it as well as you do, to some degree. right. so that bit is sort of like-- i'm curious aboutthat involvement. but we have otherartists in the room here who i've always been a fanof who've also written, and have a tradition of writing.

and i was always drawn toartists who try and either make an account of themselves, orthe conditions under which they attempt to produce work. and i try to do myversion of that. for a period which is nowincreasingly under scrutiny-- certainly in academic writing-- in sociology primarily,which is around the formation of theperiod in the 90s, and the rise ofthe new third way.

the collapse ofsocial democracy, in a way, ineurope, which is now leading thatcollapse via the rise of the third way, tonyblair and a new kind of attitude towards therole of culture in society and what it should do. access, engagement, whatare the other words? because this is our time, right? these good things-- andhow they are affected

and an understanding of the roleof art and culture in society-- a lot of my workis deeply embedded. this is a bettertype of tea tray that is a picture of someonewho ended up making shoes that you wear to signify howmuch leisure you're having, and how specialized the leisureit 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 portrayof adi dessler, which is a kind of corruptedmondrian done in kind of contemporarysportswear colors on a tea tray. so my writing isnot necessarily-- i'm not trying to writeabout my own work. i'm often writingabout other artists, as steven's done and otherpeople in the room have done. in my book i'm trying towrite an account of my--

what i see, right? so any-- please. there's the mic thati think is going to-- hi. may be a very sillyquestion, but i just wonder why are you feeling thecounters of the [inaudible] phases every now and then? yes. i don't know if anyone'sfamiliar with an open sourced

software called blender. and blender is oftenthe gateway 3d software for people who don'thave money and they don't have access to artschool or architecture school facilities. and it's actually kindof interesting, blender. because it's-- like a lotof 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 blendernow on and off for years, because it keepsgetting improved, like all open sourced software. and once you workout the kinks in it you can get things donein it that you can't quite do in cad and in the otherones that are more proprietary. also it doesn't catastrophicthe update itself

in ways that become annoying. it sort of justgradually changes. so in-- there's two reasons. it's hard for me togive short answers. but the first reason is if yougrew up in the 1970s before the internet-- and when therewas only three channels on tv, and most of them weren'ton most of the time-- i spent a lot oftime in the kitchen filling in the ds and the as andthe os in my dad's newspaper,

because i was sobored in the suburbs. that i had-- i just rememberdoing that a lot. and i did it in bookswhole books, whole books that i would do that to. and on the other hand, blender-- when i would start to workwith blender-- was very bad. when you turned thetypeface 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 inthe arse to get rid of them all by triangulating themesh and trying to pick them all out one by one. so i decided insteadof fixing the problem-- which is a very particularway of doing it-- i thought i would insteadin a font building program make my own versionof helvetica that

had filled in-- somefilled in characters, and you could also randomize it. and so that's the answer. so it's this kind ofclassical combination. hello. i was kind of interestedin what you're talking about interms of implications and being complicit. and, i mean, you talk aboutyour work as very contextual.

like it's always like, ok,what was happening in 1987 or what was happening then. and you can try tocapture that instant. and i would say that, like,architects and designers also draw upon these sort ofcultural implications, and try to bringthat into their work. and it's like-- i guess i'm wondering like howdo you shape your work based off of these contractual--

you know these culturalcontexts and things like that? no, i agree. i don't really do research. i found there was a pointwhen art became more serious. and some peoplein the room would have recognized this, too. where you'd arrivesomewhere 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 didthis word suddenly come from? why am i-- i'm justactually just in milan. and i will make an exhibitionof what i want to make, not researching. but what's happenedis partly the-- it's slightly thewikipediaization of things. in the sense that things haveto have a paper trail, right? or they have to-- you have tobe able to prove that they--

to a certain extent. more and more there's a lotof highly interesting artists where you need to be able towork out where it comes from. it leaves a paper trail, right? as if there's a simple rift inart between a kind of dionysian figure on one hand who randomlyjust kind of does this, and then the people who havedouble checked everything. in fact, life's much morecomplicated, much more. and art's morecomplicated than that.

all i would say aboutwhat you are asking is that i'm notresearching, right? so i'm not goingto look at the way that tower, the terribletragedy of that tower, the grenfell tower in england. that's right-- i knowthat area really well. and i remember themdoing that kind of thing. my work-- a lot of it--refers to this process of manic renovationand [inaudible]

that started to take place inthe 80s and 90s and onwards. that attempted to givea new kind of sheen to these brutalist buildingsand these apparently failed buildings. that instead ofknocking them down, you could rebrandthem 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 supposedto make them better buildings. they would now bewarmer, insulated. i think they were probablydone with good intentions. so what i'm trying to say isthat when i mentioned carl andre, carl andre claims hisminimalist art from the 60s is influenced by seeing thetruth of materials sitting as they fell, laid,were laid down on the ground in therail yards of quincy.

my work is made underconditions of having emerged at a period when people were[inaudible] things, rebranding them. arthur andersen and co. accountants becomeslike [inaudible] or [inaudible] or something. everything-- or [inaudible]is philip morris, right? isn't it, or something? things start to get theseweird medical sounding names.

i mean, you've grown up with allof this, it's kind of normal. but i watched that moment ofturning from this to this. and as a suburbanperson brought up bored shitless right nearwhere george micheal is from, that's exactly where i'm from. and he killed himself. you know what his boyfriendsaid he died from? he just wore himself out. his body just gave out.

and i know exactlywhat he means. we're the same age. and i grew up in thatarea, and it was so boring. all you could do is think ofnew ways to wear out your body, because there wasnothing else, in the way. and i'm a product ofthe suburbs in the 70s. and i have a combination ofdelusion and distraction, so i didn't have a vision. other people i wentto college with

were interested in sex or death. other people were talented. other people were even a genius. some people couldn'thelp themselves, they just had todo doors all day. other people had apolitical 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 anythingthat i started to realize thatthere was a kind of-- there was something inthis condition that i had, or this condition of origin orthis beginning point, right? and this could bethe subject, the work that i heard move into. i could-- this sense ofdelusion and distraction

could be the thing. it kind of halfanswers your question. i don't live in aworld where people like me are the onlypeople making work. this would be very, very bad. but there's-- i realized after25 years there was something that i had seen, i think, that-- when i saw that tower onfire i went really cold. because it's such agraphic representation

of a misplaced gesture towardsthe transfer of aesthetics over a kind of reality, right? that that's very, verycomplicated and, you know, hasn't been worked out. and you are the generationwho needs to-- in a sense, there's suddenlythis big, in a sense, project to think aboutthese relationships again without usingthe old terms. like the old men who wouldcome up to me and say,

well, this is not true. like, what you'redoing is a lie. it's decorative and designy. and somehow there'ssomething in here. so the book is catastrophicallyself-absorbed at times, and doesn't have manypoints of reference or very-- you can't verify it. but there's-- it'sa [inaudible].. it's got bits and piecesin it that if-- there's

some lines in it thatare good, i think. but there's something in here. and i don't go ontoo long because-- but i'll give a goodreason 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 studioteaching anymore, but i do

keep in touch with a muchmore important group of people than artist, which is curators. so i go and do-- i'm on the graduate committeeat bard college, which was one of the first curatorialstudies programs in the world. so it's very good,and very interesting. and all the people who go toit kind of hate each other. it is a competitiveenvironment and it's curating and it's very fraught.

and i realize they-- i don't really teach but they-- i realized that they askedme would i do for a class. and i thought-- i realized whatthey didn't do is they didn't do a class oncontemporary art, which i thought was really funnyfor a curatorial program. there must have been examplesof architecture schools where they didn't actually teachthe history of architecture,

of course. but-- yeah. but i thought itwas kind of cool. so i thought i'd inviteall the people i respected as new generation contemporaryart historians to come to bard to talk to us about theorigins of contemporary art, like, where it comes from. and the thing is i didn't tell-- most them were too busy, butthen i've got a lot of money

so i could paythem really well-- so i didn't tell them that ihad invited the other ones. so for eight weeks-- one went one weekafter the other-- a fairly distinguishedperson like alex albero or i don't know-- a bunch of people, ok,really good people-- and explained what the originsof contemporary art were. and what was really interestingis at least five of the eight

said the same thing. and i didn't actuallyknow this was true. i didn't realize it, theorigin of contemporary art is john cage talkingto the art historians-- something inpasadena, and someone talking somewhere incalifornia 1957 or something. i mean, john cage-- i was around in the 80s and 70s. john cage is actually the--

i never heard his namementioned once until-- i mean, he is animportant figure, but this was never discussed. his name had nevercome up before. so this is a new-- i don't want to get argued with,but this is relatively new. the idea that johncage is the origin, in a sense, of contemporaryart, this is a kind of new one. so the students gotreally irritated.

because it's a bit likeif you're coming here and you waste your time. one week you have someonecoming in and saying, well, you know modern architecturestarts with this. and then the next week anotherperson comes and they sort of say the same thing. it was sort ofirritating for people. so i asked the students if theycould come up with a better term than contemporary art.

because what's happeningis these people are professors ofcontemporary art history, so they have to thinkabout where it comes from, otherwise they're kind of stuck. so if we can think of anotherterm, we can move ahead of them and save contemporary artand keep the amoeba growing and keep includingmore and more things in a kind of cynical way. now, that's quite difficultand quite dangerous.

so no one did anything. so none of the studentscame up with a better term. so i gave them all ac, because that was the only thing they had to do. and i got this callfrom tom eccles, who's the head of bardcollege and the museum exec. you can't give thema 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 ofthe talk, by the way-- i said, ok, give them allan a. they've got to go on a cross-country run, andthen they can all get an a. and i don't-- i just want tosee one photograph of one person looking as if theycould 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 muchfore listening. we could. but, you know, i'm just tryingto 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 wewould engage more of you in a conversation. but maybe we cando it informally. anyway, thank you so much,liam, this was great. i know that this is anongoing conversation. so we will continue tohave this conversation.

you have the micready, rearing to go. but come and talkto liam down here. thank you again very much. sorry, i'm bad--

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