Audio Arts: Volume 16 No 2

00:00:01 Cornelia Parker soundwork Brushes with Fame or Seven Little Frictions includes: 1) Wood on Stone: Tapping on the Rosetta Stone with a pencil 2) Metal on Metal: Freud's keys rattling 3) Steel on Plastic: The sound of a record that belonged to Hitler 4) Satin on Wood: Margot Fonteyn's ballet shoe tapping on parquet 5) Skin on Silk: Rudolf Nureyev's silk shirt being stroked 6) Nylon on Nylon: Vivien Leigh's petticoats rustling 7) Atmosphere on Hessian: Marcel Marceau's hat (silent) 00:03:35 Gillian Wearing interviewed by Jean Wainwright. Gillian Wearing's second solo show at Interim Art continues her fascination with the uncontrolled moment. Using people that have previously participated in her work she creates a space for them to reveal their hopes and desires. Asking them to write about what the next four years leading to the millennium might hold for them, she uncovers intimacies that are often startling. The resulting diptychs provide a frisson between image and text which is often uneasily voyeuristic. In this conversation, Wearing discusses her scopophilia and her working methods. Interview by Jean Wainwright. Recorded March 1997. 00:20:55 Georgina Starr soundwork. The first version of Mentioning was released in 1993. The lyrics for the song originally came from a conversation recorded on the London Underground. 00:23:15 Rodney Graham interviewed by William Furlong. In discussing his work Children's Trolleys 1993, installed in the Lisson Gallery, Rodney Graham raises the issue of its reference to Minimalism and the modular Judd works of the late 1970s and 80s. Moving to the downstairs main space, the artist discusses his work, Scheme: Complications of Payment which comprised a video lecture/performance with Graham explaining a related large painting/diagram. This represented a flow chart of payments arising out of a series of complex negotiations aimed at settling a debt owed by Freud to Joseph Breuer. An underlying reference to the recurring motif of circularity is echoed in this work as is a fascination with the products and protocols of the 19th-century European culture*. This is echoed by the next work discussed on the tape entitled, Camera Obscure Mobile 1996. Finally the artist talks about the work, Coruscating Cinnamon Granules 1996, which is a short 16 mm film loop projected within a darkened space. Interview by William Furlong, February, 1997.

00:00:01 Georgina Starr soundwork titled, 'Ode to Daniel'. "During the summer of 1996 I met Daniel. After spending time with him I discovered that he had four personalities, which I named; Ernest Dan, Ginger Dan, Daniel Rose and Dan Pussy. Recently I received four packages in the post, each had a compilation tape inside from all four personalities. After hearing all the songs on the tapes I decided to make my first response to Daniel". 00:02:37 Sarah Staton interviewed by Josephine Pride. Sarah Staton puts her name both to work she produces as an artist individually for exhibition and to the variously vast superstore projects she realises, where she assembles for sale work produced by others. This discussion underscores some of the working conditions and ideas she encounters in and across each area. Interview by Josephine Pryde, 1997. 00:17:33 Alan Johnston interviewed by Mel Gooding. At his exhibition at the Lisson Gallery in October 1996, Alan Johnston reflects on the 'loop' of work that began with his installation at the Haus Wittgenstein, Vienna, in 1994, and continued at Inverleith House in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, in 1995. The personal importance of Wittgenstein to Johnston derives from his sense of the philosopher's architecture as an major manifestation of thought as 'plastic' or 'tactile'; the significance of Inverleith House has to do with its associations with Scottish Enlightenment and the philosophy of 'common-sense': in both houses Johnson made characteristic interventions, intuitive adjustments to the fabric and the space. His installation at Lisson he sees as a kind of coda to that cycle, at a site significant for its promotion of art as a form of enlightened 'tactile thought'. Interview by Mel Gooding, October 1996. 00:35:12 Franko B interviewed by Gray Watson. Franko B is one of the most extreme performance artists working today. Using his own naked body- sometimes with such medical materials as bandages, a wheelchair or catheter bag, sometimes covered in his own blood - he creates performances of shocking intensity which may be seen as deeply perverse or as modern purification rituals. But like that of Francis Bacon - whom he admires and whose name his own uncannily resembles - his work is no anguished cry for help but a carefully crafted aesthetic product. His aim is to make the unbearable bearable, to create, out of material that might normally be considered horrific, images of a haunting beauty. Gray Watson talked to him about his life and art, which for him are inseparable, at his London flat near Waterloo, whose walls are decorated with pictures containing images from his performance, as well as images of gay SM fetish and medical emergency. The interview was held at Franko B's house in Waterloo, London. Introduction by William Furlong; interview by Gray Watson, March 1997.