those with whom you look intently

8/9/2019 Those With Whom You Look Intently

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Those with whom you look intently

Those with whom you look intently are very particular companions. Together, searching,

with difficulty, you dart glances at one another, snatching a glimpse, receptive to each

others endeavours and travailles: supportive, competitive, critical and occasionally

suspicious, even hostile. You are equals. This support often involves a judgement of sorts,a continuous assessment as ally and combatant. Such relationships are essential, since they

stem from the unavoidable reality of working in close proximity, whether desired or not,

with people you have not chosen and who have not chosen you. I speak not simply ofcontemporaries in era, but of those with whom the location and situation of working is

absolutely contemporaneous.

In this case influence is determined by circumstance and the people you are are surrounded

by. It is within this context that one finds true peers - individuals caught up in the same

stream. You literally peeratthem, in combinations of curiosity, animosity, and admiration.

Over time, this scrutiny evolves into some form of trust, respect and exchange. At a certain

point your peers are simply down to potluck, but with good fortune this becomes, at leastfor a time, potlatch, during which an open exchange of ideas, tools and skills can happen.

These occasions have occurred sufficiently frequently that to attempt any exhaustive

account of my own personal peer influences, and the specific people and situations

involved would be an unworthy undertaking here. But risking very swift shorthand, I willtry to convey briefly an account of one such grouping in which a remarkable freedom of

exchange took place.

In the autumn of 1993, I began a course of study at the Jan Van Eyck Akademie in the

City of Maastricht, Holland. To the newcomer, the term city will resound as a clanging

misnomer, since this capital of Limburg Province is tiny. This is not to diminish it anyother way than size, for it comprises several districts, a wealth of history and extantartefacts - a Roman bridge, the red tower of Sint Janskerk, as painted by Bosch, a

contemporary art museum designed by Aldo Rosi: a blue plaque on a side street reminds

doubting tourists that even Karl Marx saw fit to bed there for the night. It is also thebirthplace of the Euro, the Treaty of European Union having been signed there in 1992. But

why am I shirking my duty? Despite its sophistication, Maastricht is a model village

located somewhere between the fine lines of the franking on a picture postcard: forurbanites it comes as a shock - a confrontation with the diminutive.

The Jan Van Eyck Academie, a white modernist spacecraft, hovers off centre from the city

square, secreted within a maze of narrow, cobbled streets. Lurking at night like a pale giantwho is slowly falling asleep in a toyshop, the architecture never appears quite earthbound.

As is the case with many institutions, it has undergone several transformations, although

the JVEs reincarnations are perhaps a little more radical than most.

At my time of arrival, the Academie wore a freshly manufactured skin, grafted on by thepolicy-speak of its new director, Jan Van Toorn, whose vision was focused on a parity


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between the three graceless gorgons of Theory, Design and Fine Art, a triumvirate without

hierarchy, somewhat harking back to the institutes origins as a catholic arts academy. The

aim was to scrutinize accepted visual and theoretical values, questioning their content,context and dissemination while re-figuring the three disciplines, through research, critical

debate, risk and a high degree of social awareness, all to be consolidated in practice.

At first I felt like a wet-eared ignoramus press-ganged into a crypto-Marxist commune. But

I speak brazenly and far too flippantly, for the policy was truly visionary, radical and

challenging, if not always able to effect its goals in reality. Despite some pedantry and archdoublespeak, the ideals were of the highest and it is a great misfortune that art schools now,

particularly those in Britain, will no longer be open to such adventurous and open ended

forms of practice and enquiry, until and unless there is an unforeseen and, sadly, unlikely

revolution in education. The vitality of the Academie arose from its participants ability topuncture and expose some of the more dogmatic and ridiculous assertions of its director, in

the most provocative and startling ways.

All of this is an aside, for the hard-line ethos of the institution was not my primary concern.

It was the presence of Jon Thompson as the newly appointed Head of Fine Art that drew

me there, and his extraordinary vision of an intensely discursive community of artists,working together in a shared enterprise, grounded in studio practice, critical debate and

transparency of communication; a coming together founded on mutual respect and thecollective will to make real discoveries through all the activities encompassing the arts.

Key here was a willingness to open out ones self and working methods to rigorous

analysis and interpretation via penetrating group critiques and exchanges of perceptionsand insights. Theory and conjecture, however, were never permitted to take precedence

over actual practice, and materiality, process, presence, and even unaccountability, were of


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equivalent value. Hasty explanations for any activity were eschewed and viewed with

circumspection. In short, to be involved in such a project was a highly serious commitment.

The apparent restrictions of Maastricht actually proved to be critical in producing a

very special approach to circumstances, creating a seedbed of activity, group interactionand an attuned sensitivity to the actuality of making art: one had no other choice. The

majority of participants could not afford the luxury of apartments outside of the institution

walls, and had to bed down illegally in the building, thus the activity of research andmaking work was intensely bound up with the activities of cooking, eating, and hygiene.

This rough approximation of hybrid domesticity, in the most unlikely environment, meantthat a high degree of social interaction was largely unavoidable. One had to reassess ideasof private, public and social space immediately and to adjust very quickly. Opting out was

not a feasible strategy for any extended period.

Difficult though they were, these conditions created a very, lively and passionate form ofcommunication in which art was never put to bed for the night. Conversations would

continue into mealtimes and social events, while working routines, collaborations and

further talk would go on throughout the evening, often until dawn. As should be the casemore often, the action of making art was not separated from the day to day concerns of

living a life. Of course this was a situation that could not sustain itself endlessly, for

obvious reasons, and others more complex. It could become highly unpleasant, evenalienating, but that is a whole other tale that waits for an as yet unwritten History of the Jan

Van Eyck.

I mention my experience here because Im considering Peer Influence, and under theseunrepeatable conditions peers were everything and never to be dismissed lightly.

The video studio, as is so often the case in institutions, was an tight environment where one


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could not avoid human contact, either in the form of individuals working alongside you;

those engaged in the filming of studio pieces, making transfers of footage and copies, plus

others arriving for the next slot, or pirates trying to usurp your present booking. Thus suchinteractions, desired or not, would lead to the exposure of ones material and being exposed

to that of others, right from its very inception, either in filming or simply in lay-off. Where

headphones were not in use, one would hear the repeating strains of words, music andsource sounds of whatever your co-workers were experimenting with.

By these circumstances alone, the relation to others material and methods of working wasalready extraordinarily intimate. Given the often very complicated and mind-boggling

patch bay required of analogue editing, those in the video studio were always assisting each

other in re-formatting the wires and plugs. In short, these actualities always led to a strong

level of communication and interest in discussing the technical frustrations of work and itscontent and aspirations. Propinquity resulted in a free exchange of opinions, ideas and

impromptu critiques of each others undertakings. This became, after a time, practically a

given condition of working practice.

During this time I worked beside several people. I will mention those that Ive had an some

opportunity to see evolve through time by further exposure to their practice as it continuestoday, and perhaps in so doing, explain indirectly the inestimable value of peers.

Susanne Loehr, who had previously studied in Hamburg, surprised me in her workingmethods and the committed social and political approach her research involved, most

notably in her work concerning the psychological and architectural space of the Bank. Her

interest in the transactional boundary between bank employee and bank user was delineatedliterally in her making of a glass-screened kasse, which stood to the lazy eye as a

minimalist sculpture. It was in fact more of a prop, but in the most dynamic way; a prop


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that informed strongly determined power relations and strict roles. On arriving at the

Academie she had brought with her the most astonishing collection of surveillance

photographs of masked Bank robbers captured by security cameras, some wearing carnivalmasks, such as clown, witch or tiger, others muffled or veiled with scarves or disguised by

hats and sunglasses. These images highlighted the bank as a place where action and

behaviour are dictated, usually under the strictest control. The uncanny masked figuresdisrupted this order, appearing as transgressive phantoms in the act of breaking both the

law and the prescribed terms of engagement.

Susanne took the kasse sculpture to a German prison as a staging device with which to

interview a notorious bank robber who was happy to work with her in the confines of his

cell. Together they made a video in which he re-enacts his crime, replays his motives and

thoughts, while also responding to Susannes questions. In addition, she interviewed thechief police investigator who dealt with the case, and also one of the Cashiers from the

bank where the money had been stolen. Her approach was not unlike a private investigator

exploring the motives of all actors within the drama, the crime now almost an aside.

Not easily seduced by her heavily loaded material, she worked with it closely, slowly

drawing forth meaning and refusing the easy route of theatricality, or overt voyeuristic

spectacle. Despite the highly charged documentary visuals she had amassed, these werenever considered as an easy route for justifying her research, or indeed of being works in

themselves. In fact, all of the footage I have described became merely an investigativeresearch tool. The final piece, if ever there was one, became a very careful collaged audio

interview, combining all of her subjects voices overlaid upon the shot of the interior of an

empty bank at night, where minimal action is occurring. The occasional car passes by whilethe voice of the cashier talks over it. The space remains unperturbed, the site of many

dramas and container for varied associations and possibilities.


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This stark economy startled me, as it did many others. It acted as a reminder to hold back

from obvious, literal depictions that appear to give meaning too readily but, in fact, elidetheir subject entirely. Watching Susanne work through the material in the edit suite,

stripping it back and refusing easy resolutions, became excellent instruction on the powers

of restraint. Exacting a severe deconstruction of her own work, she was an extremely hardcritic, and brought her background in feminism, philosophy and political activism to bear

on her critiques. She assisted me greatly in the making of many works during that period

through insistent questioning of my process and. with her wide knowledge of theoreticalwritings and experimental texts, expanded my reading. Whilst working on a piece, which I

shall mention later, she offered up the stanza:

When you fall like a stone, one must not think. If one thinks then one must not fall

Despite her rigour, Susanne was no stranger to intuitive practices, play, humour and

unexpected strategies. In a piece called Sisters, a scene emerged of two women talking inGerman, standing in the kitchen of a high-rise apartment. The camera slowly pans across

the room as an English voice-over reads a short passage from DH Lawrences Women In

Love. Gudrun and Ursula are sitting in the kitchen As the voice over continues, thecamera reaches the window, revealing the outside view and the block opposite.


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The scene repeats itself

Gudrun und Ursula are sitting in the kitchen. They are sisters. Gudrun is 25 and Ursula is26. They are mostly silent, only occasionally talking, as their thoughts stray through their

minds, and leaving long pauses. Ursula looks at her sister now: she thinks her so

charming. She admires her with all her soul.

"Why did you come back ?" she opens another conversation.

(Warum bist Du zurckgekommen?)

Gudrun knows she is being admired. "Why?" (Warum?) She repeats. "I have asked myself

a thousand times." (Das habe ich mich selbst Tausendfach gefragt?)

"And?" (und?) Ursula insists gently. Gudrun: " Its like stepping back, in order to have abetter leap." ( Als trte man zurck um anlauf zu nehmen)

Ursula: "Where can one jump to?" (Wohin kann man denn springen ?)

Gudrun: "That does not matter , Gudrun replies. "One is bound to land somewhere if one

just jumps over the edge."(Darauf kommt s nicht an. Man muss doch irgendwo landen, wenn man ber die Kante

springt)

Ursula: Its all nothing but words. (Das sind doch alles nur Worte)

As the lens reaches the view one more, the skyscraper opposite suddenly explodes and falls

to the ground. This was not achieved by any digital effect, but by absolutely perfect timing

during an explosives demolition operation in the neighbourhood. The cataclysm is

inexplicable - a concatenation of the psychological tension between the women, the voiceover, and the explosion and confounds the viewer in its play with drama and

documentary, fiction and reality.

It comes as no surprise that later Susanne went on to work with the documentary in most

vivid ways as a journalist and arts correspondent for the German division of the Franco

German cultural broadcaster ARTE. I had the pleasure of assisting her as cameramanwhilst working on a piece about the Dutch painter Marlene Dumas, in 1999. In other

projects in the following the years, Susanne has explored the art-scenes and working

conditions for artists in Middle East, such as Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, Israel and Palestine

and investigated interactions between art and philosophy, most notably in an acclaimeddocumentary about the philosopher, Jean Baudrillard.


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I had known Knut Harald Asdam from Goldsmiths, but not at all well. Yet during a very

brief conversation there, it was he who planted the first seed for the beginnings of my

journey to Maastricht, by mentioning its potential scope. Knuts work had always displayed

a core interest in the power of architecture, especially that of the institution, to control,inform and displace subjectivities, however whilst in Maastricht this pre-occupation

became a far more refined exploration of liminal spaces and thresholds in relation to the

body. His practice took many forms, and whilst continuing to work with sculpturalinterventions, he began to explore the possibilities of video to expand his concerns. It was

through talking and listening to his ideas that I became aware of Deleuze and Guattaris

writing, most particularly A Thousand Plateaux,, and the concept of becoming, a queeringprocess which is always ongoing, always in transit, never completed and absolutely not

determined by the directive notion of outcome;

as in the assertion of Woolfs, Mrs. Dalloway, 'I am no longer this. I am no longer that.'

To this day, I can say that I have never fully gotten to grips with the real underpinnings of

A Thousand Plateaux, but nonetheless reading it has opened up a great fluidity, not only in

my thinking and working methods, but also in my way of living, inhabiting andunderstanding the many apparitions of selfhood. I am indebted to Knut for not only

introducing Deleuzian concepts to me, but for making them accessible and negotiable via

discussion and through the making of works. We worked together several times, eitherassisting with the making of each others work or directly participating within it.

His approach to video making was no less exacting than in his 3-Dimensional work,

retaining an acute awareness of space and setting, shots were prepared and lit with extremeprecision. At this point he was chiefly preoccupied in creating spaces of disarming

neutrality or others, which implied a flatness or irreality in which to place the body, by this

time his own, often prone or in positions denoting a state of vulnerability.


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I assisted Knut as camera operator in the shooting of a piece, titled Come To Your Own.

Having considerable prior experience of video, I found it rather galling to suddenly be

learning further skills concerning lighting and set preparation, from someone only justbeginning to explore the mediums possibilities. The space, while notionally acting as

analysts room, film set and painted backdrop, was in fact almost a dead zone, a form of

cancellation, a non-space. I watched as he placed himself within it and began like ahypnotherapist, inviting the viewer to become aware of their presence and go to an inner

space and then gradually return: Come to your own in your own time come to your

own. Looking through the viewfinder and listening to his slow, soft and steady directaddress to camera, I felt an alarming collapse between the recording image and the scene-

taking place before it, an indefinable folding inward of space and temporality. This

invitation / invocation / incantation, was to the viewer but there was no space to come to.

Watching I witnessed the strangest act of becoming. Remember, at this point the work wasnot made, it was in the process of being made, with no conceived parameters or certainties,

yet already it was forming itself in the passing of every second and the gradual repetitions

of each phrase. The hypnotists insistent suggestion of an inner private, interior place to

return to, conducted in this setting and under these conditions, implied every possible spaceimaginable yet also a voidness of any space whatsoever. Gradually, head falling

backwards, he himself appeared to be falling into a trance, while intoning the instructionsfor this return.

During this time I had become interested in ideas of a libidinal economy, the performing


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body and the excitation and exhaustion inherent to autoerotic rituals, in which the action

and actor would become gradually worn out by repetitions. Implied in the behaviours or

scenarios was some possibility of transcendence, always denuded and weighted down bynarcissistic propensities and the draining of physical and psychic force. At a point during

this process the body appears as a site for competing drives and anxieties..

As an experiment, I began skipping to exhaustion, but was uncertain where to proceed with

this act in terms of performance or the moving image. Through discussion and an exchangeof ideas with Knut, I began to think more about where this activity might be located. In

sharing an interest in the toil of the body exerting itself, while more or less jumping on the

same spot, we decided to collaborate together. Thus began an arduous and circular labour

together that proved after many struggles to be very fruitful.

It was Susanne Loehr who introduced the possibility of language:

When you fall like a stone, one must not think.

If one thinks then one must not fall

This drew the figure into realm of subjective awareness but caught by the phrasing of a

self-reflexive and tautological riddle, which describes yet undermines the action.

In considering different types of activity, both gainful labour and useless toil, we decided it


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might be interesting to stage the action of skipping within the space of the Bonnefanten

Museum on the outskirts of the city. It was currently under construction and populated by

builders and carpenters. The idea of a huge space coming into being, and the collectivework enabling that seemed a potent setting in which to perform on the spot skipping.

Despite the scale of the space and its post-modern austerity, such dimension did not

translate well into the medium of video. Again we chose a different space, counter to ourfirst choice, a derelict theatre in the centre of Maastricht, this time corpus as ruin. We had

to run the camera off Knuts car battery. Once again the setting proved insufficient.

As is so often the case with investigating the true nature of a piece, it took these laborious

and demanding try-outs to realise that the architectural component of the work was a

decision to be considered after shooting, by positioning the completed video on a monitor

in a variety of architectural settings. This decided, we filmed the one-hour ordeal at the topof a staircase with a very tight cropping. Dimension and depth were conveyed acoustically,

while once again the figure appeared groundless, in another non-space.

The process was far more draining than it sounds, and in this case it was the condition ofcollaboration, which saw it to its end. Commitment and trust between collaborators is

always imperilled by doubt or looming exhaustion. Each collaborator has a differingenergy, stamina and way of coping with stress. The strength of our collaboration was in

being able to support one another on a dip, and to challenge each others misplaced

enthusiasms: in a series of reciprocal responses the work came into being.

Such intense collaboration exacts a lot, and I have to confess to being quite ungracious for

a time afterwards, something I still remember now with a degree of shame. Nonetheless

Knut kindly helped in the realisation of other work and thought, and was unafraid to puthimself in the frame, both discursively and performatively, in very difficult situations.

Right from the very outset, he was able to embrace the queering of subjectivities,

sexualities and spaces. I greatly admired this ability to make ones self fragile, inert and attimes almost disappear, in a form of self-erasure. This occurred probably most notably in

his piecePlay Dead, in which his prone body lay upon a slate grey floor, lit with such

shadowless brilliance, and shot at a vertiginous angle so that the body seemed to sink intothe ground. However, this work like many others to follow was not without a subtle, but

detectable humour. On another monitor appeared a repeating clip of two puppets rushing

across the screen in never-ending pursuit of one another.

It is very reassuring to encounter Knuts present work. His methods, articulations and

investigation of the dynamics of subjectivity and space have persisted, refined and evolved,

through increasingly complex uses of the media of photography, sound, video and film. Inan exploration of highly volatile, mutable, threshold spaces, in which his models are

temporarily sited, often just passing through, he captures the flux, displacement and

becoming of a highly unpredictable world. These settings are neither coded as benign ormalign, they are merely temporary and unstable zones of occupation, in which something

and nothing can happen.


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Johan Grimomprez arrived at the Academie fresh from the editing and completion of hisvideo workKobarweng or Where Is Your Helicopter? This video approached the problems

of anthropological representation, the conventions of documentary filmmaking and the

legacy of colonialism via multiple strands and visual material. Johan had studied at the

Whitney Program in New York and prior to this spent research time in Irian Jaya, PapuaNew Guinea. The enquiry Where is your helicoper? was derived from the first arrival of

anthropologists in the region thirty years before, descending into the villages by

parachuting from helicopters. Sensitive to his own alien presence and to the voices of thepeople around him, he began collecting oral accounts of this historic and baffling moment,

when men fell from the sky. The piece subtly delineated the collision between the two

cultures via the combination of these voices with the original footage of the landing, shotby anthropologists.

Johan brought with him a strain of enquiry and political awareness that enlivened, enrichedand expanded the discursive climate within the Academie. His eagerness to share and

expound his theories and working methods challenged any latent propensity to forget that

there was indeed an outside world beyond this cloistered institution. His work acted as a

reminder that every image presents a complex history from the moment of its making,reception and dissemination, offering multiple interpretative possibilities and identificatory

readings as it moves from context to context.

As well as a varied background in anthropology, dance theatre, the Belgian art scene and


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the theoretical syllabus of the Whitney, Johan possessed a wide range of knowledge and

contacts that he was very willing to share with others where it might be advantageous in the

development and propagation of their work. It was via his agency that several remarkablevisitors attended the Academie as guests, including the American filmmaker Tom Kalin,

who directed the notorious Swoon, Belgian video curator Dirk De Witt, and artist Lesley

Thornton, who gave one of the most generous and honest introductions to her work I haveever encountered.

Johan began reconfiguring his work onKobarwenginto a more complex new work,It Will Be All Right If You Come Again, Only Next Time Don't Bring Any Gear Except A

Tea Kettle whilst also developing a publication, expanding some of the themes in terms of

research and interviews. This was an awakening for me in terms of realising that the scope

and breadth of material in the making of a project is often so rich that it requires moreattention and expansion than can be possible within the frame of one work alone.

Watching him set about the task was both fascinating and revealing, as he exhibited a

willingness to consider his own experience as a maker and participant within the formerwork and to question this in the making of the present one. He was extending the terms of

reference in order to expose anthropological presumptions, and to explore the perceivedothers view of those who scrutinize their culture. The anthropologists had bizarrely

screened The Sound of Music to the villagers after their arrival. This event proved a rich

source for Johans research, and to question the film document in terms of fiction, realityand viewer identification. Interestingly here, he experimented with the installation form,

utilizing several monitors to present material of different but complimentary registers. We

talked a great deal about this and shared our views on the effectiveness of such a

spatialising method. Later I assisted Johan in the first manifestation of the piece at thePalais des Beaux Arts in Brussels.

It is this kind of experience that I continue to value, for assisting another in thepresentation of an artwork allows one to take the necessary distance in relation to the

process of presentation, often impossible to achieve in ones own working patterns. One

learns from sharing thoughts, and I learned a great deal about my own thinking and spatialconcerns in doing this. Johan returned the gesture a thousand-fold in his support of my own

particular dilemmas.

The final work was shown on three monitors, showing the footage of New Guineaalongside scenes from The Sound of Music, and shots of Johans tea-kettle boiling over in

his New York apartment. The combinatory effect was to create overlaps of signification

and association between cinematic fantasies of Austrian landscape, the terrain of thevillagers, and the video-makers interior space of private reflection.


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At the Academie, Johan gave a series of seminars concerning artists and filmmakersworking with the language of documentary to createPseudomentaries, works in which the

use of appropriated footage, re-enactments, retellings, competing interpretations and audio

disruptions created a blend of fact and fiction; a blurring of the authentic and the parodicthat exposed any claim to truth posited by the concept of documentary. This ranged widely,

from established practitioners in the field, such as Chris Marker, towards more obscure,

delightfully surreal works, uncovered by keen research.

This research evolved into the Video Library Prend Garde! A Jouer au Fantome

that offered viewers a very specific viewing situation in which to select from an extensivearchive of video works, and to view them in conjunction with available texts and

manifestos by their makers and critics. With its focus on the current obsession with alien

abduction and conspiracy theories, the project perfectly captured the manner in which

cinema, popular culture and real events inform one another. This expansive undertakingwas certainly a starting point for Johans seminal and terrifyingly prophetic

work D-I-A-L HISTORY, dealing with media articulations on terrorism and sky-jacking.


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In my final year in Maastricht, I watched Johan undertake his research, a gruelling task that

I did not envy. Each day he would watch endless news footage from CNN and otherstations, which he also had to record and log. In addition, he went through the laborious

task of trying to seek rights to use the archive footage of airlines and TV networks.The workload alone was enormous, but also the psychological impact was incredibly

stressful. Being exposed continually to such highly distressing news reportage and visceral

images of fatalities on a daily basis was a grinding ordeal! Yet Johan sat there each day

facing the material. It was this stamina and unflinching eye, which allowed the work tocome into being.

What I recall about Johan, other than his generosity in sharing ideas, was that he was quitea formidable, at times fearsome opponent in a disagreement concerning the

issues at the centre of a work and how they should take form in their presentation and

installation. At the time, I did not always enjoy these confrontations, partly due to the factthat he usually proved to be right. I now value them greatly in hindsight.


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Imogen Stidworthy was also in Maastricht during my first year at the Academie.

At that time she was primarily working in the field of installation and photography, using

sculptural interventions in charged spaces, the work often sited outside of the building.In one case she made use of the abandoned Starkebaum Theatre to create an installation,

boarding up a long window in the building and in doing so implying a restraint of speech, a

form of gagging. The underpinning of her research was a strong preoccupation with thebody in relationship to language, and how this body is articulated and defined by it, often in

the stutters of pain or inhibition. Soon her objects began to address this more succinctly in

the casting and making of curious forms that suggested at once the human throat, medicalinsertion instruments, mouthpieces and even microphones. Her practice was extremely

experimental and cross-disciplinary, accessing many presentational strategies to evolve a

hybrid form of abject sculpture that appeared to function as a tool waiting for the viewer to

discover its use.

It was only a matter of time before she would begin to work directly with both video and

sound. I assisted Imogen in the making of one of her first videos, the beginning of a very

long and rewarding working relationships and later collaboration. In this particular instanceshe used a transparent gum shield to stop up her mouth. The shot was very tight and

carefully lit so that the strange Perspex shield glistened with salvia, giving the closelyframed mouth the appearance of monstrous, grimacing jaws. Strongly reminiscent of an

unworded adaptation of BeckettsNot I, the mouth appeared to struggle to expel the

restraining gum shield. Sound was as important as image here as the mouth emitted a softseries of slurping, sucking and glottal noises, until finally the impediment was spat out.

What had been latent in the previous sculptural objects was suddenly actualised in the most

extraordinary manner. It is always revelatory to witness someone make a breakthrough in

their process, and to share that excitement. The final work was titled Glory Hole, alludingto the mouth as oracular orifice while referencing homosexual slang for the aperture bored

into the wall a toilet cubicle to facilitate cocksucking.

During this fertile period, Imogen began recording sound - primarily voice and

conversation. In an arresting piece, using sound recorded whilst talking over the phone,

she cut out all the legible conversation, leaving only the nervous utterances and non-verbalexclamations revealing a vulnerable and pre-linguistic sounding between words. The work,

mounted on a wall with headphones was aptly namedBut.

What I found exciting in watching Imogen was her ability to make things relational,not only in her thinking, but in her capacity to bring seemingly disparate things together,

to create a resonance close to a dialogue or a form of conversation, via association or

proximity of placement. Very daring in her leaps of imagination, she was capable ofmaking extraordinary links between different reference points in order to bring ideas and

materials together. I recall her showing me three postcards; one, the carved stone faade of

a cathedral, another, a bleating lamb, and finally a man cutting into a tree, letting its whitesap run down the bark. She managed to interlace her interpretations of each image into a

remarkable consideration of the flow of language and stoppage of speech. Later she

constructed a large ball made from molasses and filmed it slowly melting and running onto

the floor. Afterwards she placed the footage on a monitor at the front of the Academie and


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close by a sound recording of a voice. TitledLump, the conjunction of the

two processes provoked a succession of shifting propositions about voice, until the

recording had hushed and the ball had completely melted away, leaving a blank screen.

Imogens way of thinking was extremely instrumental in terms of my own development

as an artist, as were her exhortations for me to take risks, but it was her thorough andinsistent questioning of the operations of my footage itself, which were most helpful.

She would often confront me at the outset of a work to consider over-stepping the obvious

and to seek out what was really at stake. In long, and detailed discussionsthroughout the making of each others work, a great understanding and appreciation of

what the other was trying to do evolved and from this arose the most acute ability to advise

and assist in this capacity, through very free and improvisational response.

Of note is one particular evening during which we both surprised one another in facilitatingthe realisation of two works that seemed to more or less ready to make themselves within

the space of an hour, under the right conditions of receptivity.

We cycled together over the Belgium border, which was only half an hour - maybe less -

away from Maastricht. I had some notion to film myself ducking into a bowl of water.

Previously I had experimented with holding my breath under water within the confines ofthe Academie but hadnt given the act any real weight or consideration. Always willing to

help, Imogen had agreed to be my camera operator.

And so we set up by the side of a canal and prepared to shoot. Once ready Imogen gave me

some information about the framing of the piece and continued to readjust the camera

accordingly by describing what she could see to me. Nervous and cold, I deferred to herjudgement and we started filming in earnest. I began putting my head into the basin and

under the water, remaining there until my lungs were airless. This continued for quite some

time until I became aware of distant but violent shouts which were gradually growing


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louder and more violent. A gang of boys on bicycles were approaching on the other bank. I

could hear them screaming and whooping as they came nearer and then as their breaks

squeaked to a halt they began a volley of abuse and catcalling. At this point a very softvoiced intoned, Just keep going Michael. Thus I persisted in my underwater bows as the

boys screamed, until after a time they became bored and moved on. Meanwhile I continued

ducking my head into the basin.

Afterwards Imogen and I retired to a small bar in a local village for a beer and hopefully

unwind a little. We sat in silence a while a little tired and vaguely traumatised by ouradventure. The patroness of the bar put some money in the jukebox and the most

sentimental, emotionally overblown chanson began to play. At this point Imogen was

rubbing her left eye in the strangest way. I snatched up the camera and began filming this

eye manipulation, which in tandem to the awful music evolved into an impromptuperformance. Quite unperturbed by the remaining customers in the bar, Imogen continued

to poke and rub at her eyeball in the most intrusive and painful way until the song had

ended. This unfolded as a kind of erotics of the eye, and was based on an incident Imogen

had witnessed in a club in Rotterdam. In enacting this memory she conjured afeelingratherthan aseeingeye.

Thus were bornAll My Little Ducks andIntimate in the passage of time before dusk.

The manner in which these works came about was completely predicated on a level of trust

and an understanding of each others principle concerns. This allowed us to act quickly andspontaneously from moment to moment whilst exercising a surprising degree of formal

rigour and a very precise sense of timing. Together we had become attuned to the moment

and knew that we must give ourselves over to it, while maintaining minimal but significant

control of the situation.

Imogens work continued to develop at an extraordinary rate and her technical ability to

use sound advanced accordingly. One of my favourite pieces from this time was the use ofa recording of her father reading the self-immersive Beckett text The Unnamable.

The monologue is of a man immobilized, waiting for support, trapped in a doorway.

Imogen found two very small speakers and adapting them with movement sensors placedthem in two pollarded trees. When approached by curious passers-by the sound would shift

to the other speaker fixed to the opposite tree, setting up a failed encounter in which the

voice cried out for acknowledgment, while those attempting to listen would dart backwards

and forwards between the trees.


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My contact with Imogen has endured, leading us to work together several times In her later

installation works, such as To and the hauntingDummy, (in which she employed the

services of a female ventriloquist), speech and spoken narratives are revealed to unravel

subjectivity even as the speakers use their routines to constitute themselves. Her currentwork remains totally committed to an exploration of language in increasingly complex and

relevant ways. In many works she details acts of cognition and listening, deftly revealing

the underpinnings of inter-subjective relationships and the self within the speech act.Perhaps most poignantly she explores the use of language, its formation, learning and

usage, in her research on Aphasia and through thoughtful collaborations with the

remarkable people living with this condition, that choose to work with her.

From Epiphany to Epilogue

I by no means have a honey-eyed vision of my sojourn in Maastricht, nor of the Jan Van

Eyck Academie. At times it was a highly disturbing, even alienating environment to be

stranded in. Living and working together in such close confines was often analogous to

being an inmate in a sanatorium, or even a lunatic asylum for errant egomaniacs. A strong

sense of collective awareness could morph swiftly into collective hysteria, akin to that ofthe convent of Loudon. My own taste for drama aside, you will find that I am not the only

person to speak of it in such seemingly exaggerated terms. There is always the danger insuch pressure cooker climates of unexpected overspills. However, there was somehow an

inner regulating system that accounted for outbursts or failings, and equilibrium was

eventually restored. Whatever the difficulties, the experience was a seminal encounter thatinduced real critical engagement and responsibility. The institutions aspiration and

philosophy offered an opportunity that I now realise was incredibly rare, increasingly so


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now, as bureaucrats and administrators take the upper hand in centres of Art Education.

Artist Susan Hiller, speaking very plainly in 1993, anticipated this erosion well in advance

of its widespread occurrence:

Already a great many people involved in art education in schools and colleges in this

country (Britain) as administrators and as teachers, have no actual experience in artpractice. From my point of view this seems as peculiar as it would be to teach French

without being able to speak a word of it.

The moral and ethical concerns of Jon Thompsons Fine Art Program in Maastricht were

based on the absolute necessity of open-ended relationships between participants, founded

on respect and care between peers and a decisive commitment to the overall project of

experimental learning, as a mutual, collective endeavour. The remarkable staff, comprisingof Willem Oorebeek, Yehuda Saffran, Avis Newman, Mona Hatoum and the sadly missed

Andrea Fisher, and of course Jon, did not patronise their tutees, but spoke to them in

earnest as equals, and openly presented and discussed their own working practices with

total frankness. The current system of Art Education in Britain today, in neglecting andmarginalising teaching by artists, encourages students to become divisive, solitary and self-

obsessed to the detriment of their development. This is nothing short of an appalling andsystemic betrayal.

Alexander Tzonis remarks further on institutional bias towards something masqueradingunder the term -Research Culture; Pressure to generate high personal research profiles,

together with rapid change and economic recession, may well reinforce the tendency

towards professional narcissism.

In concluding this brief account of interaction with so-called peers, I hope that I have been

able to at least convey how intensely vital this kind of communication is in the making of

art. Without it there is no questioning, no enquiry and no life. It is in the fluid interchangebetween others that ideas, forms and expansive thinking emerge and move forward. In the

right conditions the giving is completely unconditional, because the commitment and

respect is far beyond any mere concern for the individual; instead it exists and is fuelled byan enthusiasm for the ongoing process of illumination. I will say nothing further now but

ask that you read closely between the lines for hints regarding the value of peer influence

and the ways in which it exerts itself in acts of support, exchange and indeed the act of

love.

those with whom you look intently

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