Douglas Gordon

Interview by Liam Gillick

from Audio Arts Volume 14, Number 2, 1994

Transcript

Liam Gillick: In a bar near Leeds City Art Gallery talking to Douglas Gordon.

Douglas Gordon: It’s one of three wall drawings, which are a similar scale. I made the first one in Germany. I did the second one in Germany. I did the third one in Rotterdam and I’ve done the first one again in Leeds. They describe, the three states of desire for amnesia the one in Leeds is ‘I cannot remember anything;’ the other two are ‘I have forgotten everything,’ and ‘I remember nothing,’ which is quite a positive desire for a state of nothing-ness.

LG: I’m quite curious about this as an idea in relation to your work: whether or not the manner of presentation is coming from pragmatic decisions or whether it’s much more complicated than that.

DG: I suppose a bit of both. Like you I don’t have a studio you work on in your bedroom, in trains, on buses, in planes, in hotels so you have a fair idea of what you want to make. Almost always the work isn’t prefabricated, it’s done on the spot and, for instance, in Leeds I telephoned them and said: This is the pantone number that I need. Paint the wall. I want a three-meter band running across the wall from one edge to another edge. Centre it on the wall. If it doesn’t look good centre, drop it it doesn’t matter to me. I just wanted to turn up with it done. Another company made some text in vinyl which I could stick on in six hours, as quickly as possible. There are pragmatic decisions as to what has gone into the presentation. It is pure pragmatism which leaves you free to be able to play kind of psychological games. To go back to that idea of why we’re working on walls. There’s no particular reason why. It’s not a commitment to that medium in absolute terms. Because I’m not making wall drawings about why I’m not painting.

LG: Could you talk about this whole idea of presentation?

DG: I probably don’t talk about it because I don’t think about it very much. I’m not meaning that to be blasé. I’m probably going to dig a huge hole for myself here but, there’s a certain kind of vocabulary that I’ve got in terms of a ways to present an idea and it’s never been an issue with me. It’s never been an interest of mine to try and break that vocabulary. You make appropriate modifications to the way you are with people, depending on the situation. And that’s exactly the same as what I do with, with the ideas I’ve got. If it’s appropriate to have it as a telephone call in a bar then that’s the way we do it and if it’s appropriate for a letter we do it that way. I’m lucky enough to get support with all these things.

LG: Good. The subject of a letter find it’s way into a wall drawing, and could the subject of a wall drawing, fall into a performance?

DG: In terms of the details no. But then the similarity between what you might call the language content of that wall drawing, which says, ‘I cannot remember anything’, and compare that to, say a letter that I did in New York last year, which says: I remember more than you know. Compare that to a telephone call, which said: ‘I won’t breathe a word to anyone’, there’s overlap there in terms of what you might pick up on. It’s like the frequencies overlap and I’m happy with that. They’re kind of different frequencies, but all on the same wavelength.