Testudo - CrONICAL

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Testudo CrONICAL April 28 2006

Discussion between David Simpkin (artist and Conical Commitee member), and four representatives of Conical: Adrien Allen, Jason Maling, Harriet Turnbull and Katie Lee.

AA: (Adrien Allen) David, for the sake of providing a bit of context, can we talk about the relationship between this show, Testudo and Red Buttons (David’s last show at Conical in 2005)? Quite a few people who have come through had seen Red Buttons last year. A few have said to me over the last few weeks, that slowly your practice is becoming slightly more accessible.

DS: (David Simpkin) As far as I’m concerned, it’s still as inaccessible as it’s ever been. I don’t do it on purpose, it just happens to be that way. It’s just that the reason that they’re connected is that I haven’t shown anything else since that last show, so the last memory of my work in public has been the Red Button’s show, so maybe there is a natural connection anyway. So, okay, it fills the gap. It is the gap.

AA: I guess the with the video sketches here in Testudo… there is seemingly more to engage with…

DS: Slowly the projection of my work is getting bigger, and obviously what part of the body I’m showing is obviously a bit more literal, well not literal, but easier to … you’ve got that option to converse with it. You can’t converse with a foot and a leg in the same way. So if the head’s out there, then the temptation to see if you can get some dialogue on that and that just equals accessibility. Even a gesture, there’s so much body language… if I’m a bit snoozy, or even just looking away, depending on where the body needs to sit in that time, it can rest in a number of positions, but one of the ones it can do, is it can look to the side quite comfortably at the pizza boxes, and then someone comes in from the other side, they don’t see the head until later and then when they do see the head, their face reacts before mine, and there is the first bit of accessibility. You know we deliberately hid it up there you know that was the tactic to relate to the fireplace piece again. Last show the fireplace piece was the little green man, the little beret guy, and so I was trying to mimic that so that obviously you know… Both were based on movies…

JM: The beret guy did you say?

DS: Yeah, the little green soldier boy (inaudible walking? falling?) down the fireplace and he had one of those nightlights on him and I picked him up on the streets in Paris.

AA: We’re talking about the 05 show: Red buttons.

DS: He had a broken leg and I glued the leg back on, and then I got the idea, okay, it’s about … Red Buttons is an actor, and was in The Longest Day, and one of the scenes in the longest day was the 101’s airborne soldier, who was invading Normandy the day before and he doesn’t make it onto the ground, and falls into a church, on top of a church, and his leg hangs out of the church for the whole of the film, The Longest Day and you don’t see his face…

JM: What was the cinematic reference in this one?

DS: It’s Rio Bravo It’s a scene where, it’s about, um… the vases are being made in response to Angie Dickinson and she has this scene in Rio Bravo where she has to throw a vase through the window to create enough of a decoy so that John Wayne is given the opportunity (from? Inaudible) Ricky Nelson. Ricky Nelson and John Wayne are having this conversation earlier, just the start of the day. They are in a siege situation…

JM: I’m kind of intrigued that I’ve never really realised or picked up on these references.

DS: Nearly all of my work is based on a movie.

JM: I realise that and I’ve often looked for the reference, but I’ve never found it necessary to actually engage with the reference. I’ve always found the work strong enough in it’s connections that I’m offered - independent to the reference - to go where you want me to go. You are using these references as beginning points. How important is it - in this realisation - to reference back again? Do you depart from it? Or is it a starting point for you?

DS: The starting point for the show was the vases. So between Red Buttons and Testudo was making the vases - when I’ve got time. So mainly it’s about: how do you have a practice when you haven’t got the time? So you go up to the studio and you convert all these boxes, 2000 boxes, into vases. So you go from the box head or from the box masculinity to the feminine shape, so you get the vase through there. But it just so happens that there is a slightly seductive scene between Dickinson and John Wayne that is appealing - and also the siege situation.

JM: Right. Well the way that I encountered Testudo for the first time is similar to the Red Buttons show, in that I had absolutely no relationship or understanding as to why you’d put the vase in, but I liked it and it had a relationship to… it just seemed to sit, there was a certain level of comedy to use this as a device, and then when you go into it, you realise that they have actually been specifically… I initially thought ‘oh he’s popped down to the 2 dollar shop, and got all these vases’, but after a bit of investigation I realised you hadn’t and that you’d actually constructed this, so then I started to wonder, okay what is the reference point here? And I felt, you know I didn’t feel I needed the connection to see this as another example of the… Having seen a selection of the pieces you have done, it’s more like a sensibility where there is a specific quirkiness, but it’s not self conscious and it’s not considered and somehow because you are drawing from the same point of reference and all of your decisions are obviously being made within the context of the show it gets to a certain point where it is abstracted, where it is abstracted far enough that I don’t care anymore and it seems to work anyway and it starts to interact with another language altogether.

AA: Sometimes that language is quite familiar anyway, because somewhere lurking deep inside your practice is quite a refined modernist aesthete. It’s not something that you’ve ever denied personally, but a lot of people when they’ve come to your work, don’t necessarily bring that to it at first, so they’ll ask questions like ‘Why the vases?’ And I almost feel like saying, ‘well, why not the vases?’

JM: That’s what’s so curious. It’s like you’re following the logic and you’re committed to the logic, whatever the result, so the endpoint would never have been consistent with someone who is saying, ‘okay…vase…pizza boxes,” you know, you are never going to arrive at that, and that is what I find so engaging. You know, you are making these connections, they are conceptually sound, but they are operating in a dialogue with each other which is where you began.

DS: I’m a big fan of Guattari and Deleuze’s rhizome theory and there is an element of that. I will always come back to where it’s this idea that it’s the weed that poisons the tree. So there’s always this idea of force vs. power. So I’m tyring to suggest that power might be the walls that we put up and that force is the thing that needs to work its way around it, and so I’d be more interested in the force that needs to be applied to get these things to work. So one of the things that I’ve decided to do is go, is I’ll use the force of time, but I’ll also carry the weight of the floor boards on my shoulders. So if I move the whole gallery falls down essentially. And I’ll take a mythological approach, and then I’ll try and take a fun approach and an idiotic approach and at the same time be as comfortable as buggery, no pain involved! As was mentioned today, ‘is it about endurance?’ No, it’s about being enduring. Making a memorable moment.

JM: Well that’s the contradiction, you engage with a level of absurdity, but you take it to a point where the absurdity demands a level of engagement that is beyond that. So you set up punch lines that are undermined by the clear decision making made in the show, or the level of commitment you make with the way you perform. One of the critical questions that I wanted to ask you in this context was, what was your relationship to the body and the performative image, if you like, which we engage with when we engage with your show?

AA: And that’s a crucial point because we engage in a way that suggests the game play between force and power is more active than in Red Buttons.

JM: Why do you think that? Because of the head?

AA: No, I think on a literal level, because we are physically disembodied ourselves. For example, we are talking about the possibility of one viewer standing in the gallery space, the other with their head cut off by the chimney whilst sitting in the massage chair and David’s head over there -making up a whole. So you’ve got this mind/body split where the viewer becomes the body, then David is literally the head and then there’s this other viewer looking at this whole puzzle trying to come together. The viewer is implicated in this loop - that’s a response that I’ve been seeing. The viewer activates the connections between David’s head, the projections of David, and David’s looking at us and the viewers looking at all that…

JM: It reminds me in a funny kind of way, the making connections thing, the lightness vs. the performative intent, reminds me a bit of the French Fluxus artist, Robert Filliou.

DS: Robert Filliou and even George Brecht.

JM: A certain lightness, but at the same time a separation that belies it’s lightness

DS: Those guys have always been interesting to me, I was interested in the Dada guys, and then you know, ‘where can I find a contemporary reference?’ and the first one I learnt about was Fluxus.

AA: It’s interesting that you’ve suggested that you’re supporting the floor, you know holding up the building rather than being subsumed by it. There’s a lot here about visibility and invisibility I think. We talk about force and power, I get the suggestion of a critique of the powers that be…

JM: I’m not following this ‘thing’ where is the force and power?

AA: David’s talking about it thematically, in that he’s working with…

JM: I understand it in a decision making sense…

AA: OK, lets forget about the force and power and let’s think about the idea of say, visibility and invisibility. David in the video ‘sketches’ you are basically locating yourself in various cavities in and around the gallery space (fireplace, cupboard below the sink, tool cabinet, the space between the plaster board wall and the brick wall) but you are not spending a great deal of time in there…

DS: Well, with these sketches I was just looking for one that was comfortable and not as dependent on it as I was with the leg one (Red Buttons). I spent all of the gallery days in the mezzanine. And that had a lot about landing, it was about coming home. It was about coming back, I’d been estranged, and what would be here for me? So my feet hadn’t touched the ground at that stage so it was really quite a natural response, to get off the plane and the first person I saw was Adrien and you were sanding, and I hadn’t talked to anyone or anyone I know or family or anything like that and just start the show straight away, you know, so it was lovely to just step of the plane and get to the gallery, go and buy the satellite dish ‘round the shop, you know, I’d already ordered it from Paris, got the badge guy, ordered him in Paris to do the job and I picked them up in some little flat in Preston…

JM: David’s currently talking about the past show Red Buttons.

DS: Yeah, but I’m talking about it because obviously a year later those ingredients have now changed so that means the visibility has now changed. But at the same time, with this equation of force and power, the stepping stone still remains. So it is a fortress pattern of practice, and so you move to the village, force, you move to the village, you get into this maze, so you go to - I’m talking about others now - not the chips on my shoulders but the chips on others shoulders (see Testudo media image). They move to the next space, we know the artists that work here, and they use it as stepping stones to the next one, but what happens is they go to the next vehicle, the next ‘village’ and they’re finding a new block every time. It’s not a gridded situation, it’s a zig zag, it’s a diagonal if you like. You get to the corner shop where the gallery is - the Via-N map - and it’s another set of parameters. You’re always flying up hill. Two things: up hill, and on the diagonal. You are never able to sort of use the same pattern and repeat the pattern in the next space, because it won’t allow you that.

HT: (Harriet Turnbull) But that also… um, I’m confused.

DS: The force has to be more…

JM: To do what?

DS: There’s no ambition, this is more the objective thing.

HT: Is that where the title comes out as well?

DS: Yes! Testudo – It’s a mobile vehicle. It’s the vehicle that carries the ammunition to the village and pushes it into play.

HT: But it’s also a turtle - Testudo.

DS: It’s a military strategy, it’s also symbolic.

AA: You certainly don’t get a feeling of respite watching you go into these cavities because it seems the entry is as important as the exit. The occupation doesn’t seem to be … it’s just a necessary condition between the entry and the exit, and I find that a quite interesting strategy in relation to say, 70’s endurance performance art, which has been brought up a whole lot in relationship to your practice in terms of endurance, where being in there is the point. But here this is clearly not the point.

JM: And also you negate process as well, which is another obsession of those 70’s artists (Acconci, Burden for eg). One of the curious things is why you always present performance - well in the case of Red Buttons and this show - as a frozen moment in a sense. You ask us to be connected in a way or maybe to understand what... You put yourself in the cavity here and you remain static but you’re presenting the entering into or trying to find, or negotiating with, and I find that sort of weird. On the one hand, one is a trial, and the other hand one is a static image, it’s like the opposite.

DS: This is a still life. (? Inaudible) … more like Sam Taylor-Wood’s, Rotting Fruit Bowl, The oranges are now begging for a month. They are the ammunition. If you want to roll one, feel free to roll one, but you know, they’re in the vases now.

HT: They’re inside the vases?

DS: They’re in the vases, the ones that have been rolled. So they’ve been there since day dot, and the idea is - remember last year I had the bowls of water with the Molotov cocktail suggestion? - it’s just the Molotov’s taking a different shape. What’s required now is to, you know, define… It’s not defining me, and it’s not defining what I want the reader to know, I’m just sort of saying, ‘it’s not the art for its own sake’. It’s just essentially… it’s not you either, it’s not the power in this instance. I’m asking the reader to take a bit more responsibility.

AA: Yeah, that’s evident.

DS: And then I’m sort of saying, ‘I’m here forever, if you want to talk about it, you know that’s okay.’ It’s a talking head.

KL: (Katie Lee) How did you feel about when you weren’t in the space? Did that change…

DS: It was a nervous problem for quite some time, you know… what would happen with the ‘gone fishing’ scenario, and we talked about a few things. And you know the thing with this one was that I’ve had a lot more input from board members about what might be a workable strategy. That’s come through working with Rob and the projections, and that’s been happening, when we cut the hole and certain things that have triggered the right move. What would be the move that might make it work? So we decided after the opening that we needed to have a film, which connected things, that got things joined together. When I was first there, the first night, I thought what would be really good, was a bowling alley! I already had that idea, but I wouldn’t have had that idea without sitting in the hole in the first place. And then I already had this fruit reference in my work from the container project (2004 Next Wave Re-Verb – see archive), which I wanted to claim, because it was necessary. So I got the watermelon back. Because I wanted to have this back, in this situation.

AA: Back in 2004 David drilled 3 finger holes into a watermelon, which was in a shipping container, in the first container project for Next Wave Festival. Now David, I’ve had to deal with the viewers who have felt disgruntled or even ripped off by the fact that you are no longer here. But I had an interesting comment today, by a person that came in when you actually were here, yet they felt ripped off that they’d missed out on the oranges (viewers were not privy to the oranges being bowled - a video was presented as a document).

Laughter.

DS: Where did they know about the oranges from?

AA: From the (video) sketch. Because the sketch really is the ‘gone fishing’ sketch. You know this is in place of David, although you keep it running even when you’re in the floor.

DS: Yeah, yeah, exactly right. And then I’m able to sort of play with that, as the directors cut, where I smile a lot, and I smirk too much, and just continually look ugly. Which is quite nice with this, so you have these 8 sketches, where you have these things happening. But I played that sequence in Rio Bravo the next day, and I played it in French, because I was still trying to cling onto something with those sketches that were there on the opening night, and three of the seven films were French films, or one’s that I’d made there… so I slowly let them go and the process has been to slowly let those go. So whereas it was still really up in the sky last year, I still had a semblance of it back here in the fireplace but it was going from here and going out the chimney, hence the in-out. So you want to see where I’ve been? I’ll show you I’ve been here back out here, and I’m trying to get things together. But at the same time, it’s this single thing, where okay, this is the shell, my head’s just out, it’s getting close to not getting out again… so it just emerges again, it comes out. But really it’s close to saying, ‘geez this has been hard’ You know, it isn’t any easier.

AA: And there is the proneness and the vulnerability. There is an implication of perhaps kicking your head. And the oranges hit you – sometimes hard. I find a tension, between you claiming to ‘support the space’ yet at the same time you are in an incredibly vulnerable sort of situation. Not only you in the floor, but also your image in the sketches. There is a tentativeness to the whole thing that sort of belies the fact that you really believe that you are supporting the space.

DS: There has been a few times when there has been no one else here (invigilating), on the Good Friday, and I’m in the hole, and you have this element of the issue downstairs happening over those days, and no one is in the gate (the office), and they just come in, and you know, ‘well I’ll kick him in the head and I’ll just steal the projector and…’

AA: There was an attempted burglary over Easter during this show.

DS: And a pretty close attempt!

AA: I’m quite interested in a component of your work that is quite self-reflexive – in that you and I have been here from the beginning (David has been on the Conical committee since its inception in 2001), and you would remember very well that we had an interview with Sandra Bridie for the 2nd Artists / Artist – run spaces publication (available from the gallery) and in that you stated very clearly, “I wouldn’t show here for nothin’” That’s what you said!

DS: I wouldn’t show here for quids! But it’s good to be in a house band now Adrien. There’s a few other house band people here I notice.

AA: I’m really intrigued as to your first 2, no, 3 responses (exhibitions) were in the stairway - Clearway. (the title given to Conical’s stairwell space run as a semi-autonomous exhibiting venue from 02 – 05 by David & Kate Fulton). It was often seen as a responsive space, often a critical response to what was happening in the main space. It was the off-Broadway. So I’m quite interested now that you’re in the space, you’ve actually created…

DS: Yeah, but Broadway was initially my Masters show, which was to line the whole roof with square boxes, but that didn’t happen!

AA: But what I take out of this show, more that the last show is that you’ve actually made a series of Clearways.

JM: So, do you see David’s work as sort of slowly succumbing to a necessity?

AA: No, what I’m saying is that he’s gradually worked out a way, to flag a critical responsiveness whilst being on the main stage. All the sketches to me, and the hole, to me, all talk about Clearway like gestures. And what we mean by that is a sense of coming in and out, of quick response and a stripping away of any sort of pompous or pretentious presentation, which was the whole basis for the Clearway program.

DS: It was very much supposed to be a hit and run.

JM: So what’s changed for you?

DS: Well, I’m just able to use this that way. I think the other thing I was quite conscious of was of trying to sort of historicize the other works that have been in here over the 5 1/2 years. I was pretty keen to reference the chair works, there have been a lot of chair works (Nick Mangan, Cate Consandine, Sarah Lynch, Pam Clements for eg.) And it was really great that David (Keating) was able to let us use this wall (stud wall behind us). The given readymade. Take that on again.

JM: So how important is it when you’re referencing the history of the space that people know about that?

DS: Not at all. There’s not a blurb sheet, there’s just a set of matches (The Testudo flier is a set of souvenir type matches with various images from David’s archive on the outside and the text: “There are flies on me and you can see where they are” on the inside fold).

KL: The head has quite a cinematic reference as well in terms of the sight line you have down there - the video-shot from the floor angle.

DS: A lot of the work over the years has been shot from that point of view so it’s a hierarchy issue. It’s making a decision what end of the broom you prefer. I like the straw end not the handle. I find the straw end a bit more honest. It doesn’t pay as much, but it’s much more in my keeping. Its always the hierarchy that I have to deal with, so a lot of my stuff has been shot from the floor.

KL: It must have been interesting after that amount of time, at that level…

DS: Yeah! Well I’m still at that level. Well a lot of people have been saying to me - people who have seen the work right from the start - Norbert Loeffler (stalwart Art History lecturer at VCA) came in and said, ‘you’re still here, with this battle, with this problem, with these issues.’ And he’s sort of talking about 20 years now. John Neeson - same. He was around when I was doing more performances that had more ‘endurance’ in them, and he’s sort of going, ‘you’re still here like this!’ and I said, well, that’s the house style, that’s the way I work.

AA: As thought - there is a sort of suffrage there. It was quite apt that you decided to show over Easter.

DS: I did a few Good Friday ones, where I stayed overnight in a silo of wheat. I set myself on fire in a glass box reading an article on Mike Parr in Art & Text No 28. Slowly getting scars, and just thinking, ‘oh well, just keep reading this Art & Text and I might understand it one day’ - meanwhile I’m smoking and my shoes are on fire and I’m getting lacerations. I’ve got to give that away.

AA: Well, I think you have given that away. I’m interested in your comment that, ‘I’m not a performance artist, I’m an object maker’.

DS: It’s another fortress.

AA: Clearly this past is what you’re talking about, performance - as we know it historically.

JM: This is a proposition to manipulate. It’s no longer necessary to be in itself..

DS: The other thing that’s been noticeable in this show, is that they (the viewers) see it as a video work. So the first thing that they address is not the performance element, but they come in and address screen. And they stand in the film position, and then at certain moments in the sound, when the sound lulls, they see there is a sound in the fireplace. Today when 10 or so boisterous students came in - you know 19 yrs old or so - it wasn’t until the 10th person came in, that they actually saw there was a live head. The first 9 had already come in and made a (connection) – they’re doing a video art thing, we know what the condition is, we’re going to plonk and read, and watch.

JM: This relationship is a weird one, in Melbourne we encounter it a lot - we don’t often see people dealing with live propositions. We often see live propositions filtered, mediated and reconstituted, as something else, as if it has the same connection, and it just doesn’t. That you are juxtaposing this, as you call it, ‘still life’, with a record of itself, and at the same time your head actually sets up something in the space - that is essential work.

AA: But don’t you think that Testudo sets up the problems of representing any type of performance presence? I mean this is something that goes back to Red Buttons and Dominick Redfern’s OW (shown concurrently with Red Buttons – see archive) - where Dominic’s work was a video of a performance that he’s done prior, which is a way of dealing with performance that we’re fairly familiar with…

JM: I don’t think it is performance essentially.

AA: Whereas David’s practice is not privileging any one method of mediation.

JM: But it has an understanding…

AA: And even the performance itself is reduced to…

JM: I see things like that though, and I feel the same with Sarah Lynchs’ show (Waiting for… Conical 2005) and just think, it’s a live proposition - do it live. And this is an issue or this is a work that resounds with possibilities and why water it down, or pretend it is something else? And that’s what I like about this work (Testudo) - there is always this element there.

AA: And it is an element – all of these things are thrown into the mix and nothing is privileged, but a live event is basically privileging one thing – the live event.

JM: No it’s not! Not at all! That’s what I think is so interesting about live events now is that they are and that’s why I see David’s work in a much broader context and it is some of the only work you see where someone is actually dealing with that as an element. And yet so often you don’t get people; They privilege a video. Or they see that performance to be documentation of some kind of image extension of something, as such a powerful element, which is so often neglected or second guessed or…I don’t know but to see something live in relation to something recorded sets up a really interesting dynamic.

AA: I think of it in terms of collage.

DS: I’m still doing it. That’s the thing I do. I make stews. I make stews.

AA: It’s Picassos piece of wicker in a way.

DS: Stews

AA: Well you know you have reference when Picasso stuck on that piece of real wire, a complete clash of languages which I think is quite akin to the relationship between that video piece there and this presence in space, we’re in the space with him, as well as looking. And the fact that he’s placing the viewer in a situation that could suggest empathy. The chimney lintel is trying to talk about the mind body equation.

DS: Even though the chair can be comfortable they are less comfortable than I am.

AA: If the viewer is sitting somewhere between the representation and the collage, I find that quite an interesting targeting.

DS: Without sitting on the chair: some people drag the chair out to watch the video. Or they do the other thing which is even more contorting and bad for your back, which is they look up underneath. I’ve obviously bought a very expensive chair, and put it against a very cheap hand made object. It’s the straw broom thing. That counter balance. And then you’ve got this lovely thing where we’ve got two more found objects and blocked up the chimney here.

AA: I found the install week a really quite an interesting proposition for me. There really wasn’t a lot concrete going on, the hole wasn’t there, we had a chair, we had someone else’s stud wall. The whole thing felt really in flux and teetering on the edge of failure.

DS: I was really conscious. I was really feeling it.

AA: and the fact that we’d worked together in the past, had a lot to do with me feeling less nervous about it. There was a great deal of trust going on. And also it really showed me that if there is that trust, then these things can just come together in the last minute in a way that so many of the preconceived things that we do here the guarantees of interesting art, safe show, don’t. So it was really interesting 3 or 4 days. Red Buttons seemed to be more strategic and considered in terms of what was going into the space.

DS: I always think of the African mandate.

KL: It’s interesting to think about the relationship between this show and Red Buttons, where you’ve come in through the roof and gone out through the floor.

DS: This was one of the concerns too. There was a nice remark made, they were worried that with the leg coming through the floor, well that this piece could easily become red buttons, but red buttons for downstairs!

KL: It’s interesting as well, with the turtle reference. You’re pulling your head down, and then you’re gone. Is it a departure from the space?

DS: Yea! Well if you’re talking about visibility and invisibility, we’ll put the head right in the middle of the space. If you draw a diagonal line right through, (the gallery) it’s probably about here, (indicating to the hole). But the beauty is that we still have this hinge wall that’s so prominent in our space and so interesting for one of the films I did make, was the ‘shout’s cathedral’ that I showed on the opening night, was the front door, shutting and the noise it made. Now I didn’t carry that film through, we had some technical issues and we made another decision, but that was like a catalyst to this 1250 hinge, up against our hinge. And that was initially going to be place in context with the fireplace and that all had to be changed around when that really ugly object came in. And then played off against the beautiful object, the pizza boxes and the speakers.

AA: People have politely avoided talking about the ugly object, and by that we mean the fibreglass cast of a fireplace behind the stud wall. The fact that it’s plastered with failed TAB tickets is sort of interesting in the light of the vulnerability we were talking about before as well. And perhaps one of the things that we haven’t spoken about before in relation to these shows is the sort of diaristic element that creeps into it as well.

DS: Well obviously that object with all those lost tickets on it, is actually worth more than the chair. When you add up all the losses, it actually costs more than the chair. I’ve enjoyed watching the projections and how they make this ugly object change. It refers to the reem hotwater service and some of the stacking that goes on in the clearway. IN some ways it begins to make the clearway again.

JM: The chairs a very direct entry point as well, and the idea of proportion to me.

AA: Or possibly comfort.

HT: It’s quite uncomfortable though

JM: Yes. There’s people who are standing back and don’t know they’re going to get on it. It’s not a natural way to sit, they have to have a certain level of commitment.

DS: Once they make that commitment, they benefit from that commitment. They won’t make the commitment because they’re still in the idea that it’s a projection work of a performance event. And so some people will stand there for the thing. I’m not going to sway them. If you don’t want to go further, then I’m not going to. I don’t get anything off them, essentially. They walk out, I don’t hear nothing much. I have to be a bit responsible to form here you know. Reclaim the role of the author.

AA: It’s interesting the people who have seen this show, who have followed our program right the way through, pick up on the playful way you’ve dealt with the site specific and place bound issues we’ve dealt with here right from the start. You know, there’s defiantly a critical element going on there, but also a playful homage and I suppose it’s almost touching in a way, because I think about a comment that you made awhile ago, that it’s given me a place to practice. And I really hope that that’s true and if it is true, then I think about the notion of place bound in a really positive light. In terms of a context.

DS: I’m an incredibly regionalist. I’ll turn the biggest city into a path. I walk this way at this time, I turn left here. I’m looking for this. In that way I’m very slow. That’s the other element of Testudo that I really enjoy. In that the nature, of the way I make my decision is really quite slow. So it really fits into that sort of mythology.

AA: Slow but determined.

DS: Yes, but also fiercely independent. You’re not going to put your finger in front of the tortises head.

AA: Ongoing relationships. It’s one of the things I like about the commercial system is the notion of a stable. The ability to work with someone 3 or 4 times is really really beneficial. Given evolving committees I hope we can keep that rolling along. Because it really flies in the face of classic career development. You know CV building. 2004 Conical, 2005 Conical, 2006 Conical. There is nothing particularly careerist about Conical full stop.

JM: It suggests an interesting kind of thing. In some ways the response to David’s show has been quite positive and you are receiving more public response. Where do you go with that?

DS: Nowhere. You just go on. The only club I’m actually in is the ? club. It’s the most elaborate club I’ll ever be in. You know…

JM: Is it getting easier to make practice, to make art?

DS: No it’s hard. I’m feeling older.

AA: You’re not Robinson Crusoe.

Red Buttons, 2005

Testudo, 2006