0:04

well thank you very much that was a great introduction thank you for having us and thank you for hanging our work

0:10

and giving it a home it’s really it’s quite a great opportunity for us normally work because we are an

0:16

installation artist well most of the components end up in crazy places they don’t all end up together again ever

0:22

again so yeah it’s great for us to sit here and actually you know see its entirety so yeah it’s a good experience

0:29

we’re gonna do a overview we’re going to have to move through it fairly quickly but we just want it to give you a good

0:35

sense of where we come from as as a shared authorship we’ve been working

0:41

together as filmmakers and doing other collaborations for each other since 1979

0:46

mostly with narrow gauge film or super 8 this particular installation is our

0:52

first formal installation in a commercial gallery in 1982 this is the adesso gallery when it was in Toronto on

1:00

Queen Street and you can kind of see when you say cinematic sensibility we really are acting out the cinematic

1:06

sensibility and then this particular piece that this is called snow she bones and I think the gallery was 75 feet by

1:13

30 feet wide kind of a long used to be a bowling alley when before adesso took it over in a second floor concrete floor

1:21

which was great high ceilings good skylight um this sum was about Canada and being from a resource-based economy

1:29

and I think we we sort of gave ourselves the Maddox and then we would make work around that so each one seems to be like

1:35

a mini thesis or an essay about that you would explore the talk die yeah and the

1:41

evening we would know keep going it was mesmerizing can I know you want to get

1:49

through all these slides where five slides behind just you know your productivity targets are rampant okay

1:55

this is a post-apocalyptic landscape this is we were called Friends of s and not transvestites at travis tights

2:02

because we were we were somehow trampling on the great canadian dream of the group of seven because this is a

2:08

post-apocalyptic tree me there’s the fire the fluorescence it’s very punk aesthetic because we come out of the

2:14

late 70s we came out of art school and University in like 75 76 77 that time period so it kind of makes sense that

2:22

we’re engaged in kind of an expressionist form fluorescent paint obviously there’s a lot of flocking died

2:30

worked in a hobby store his model making materials kind of a real sort of promiscuity of materials happening and

2:36

in the evening we would arrive at around midnight and we would film from about

2:42

midnight till four o’clock in the gallery where we were basically making a

2:48

zombie film yeah with Frank yeah I worked out well actually oh we should go

2:53

through that um this is being held up with pulleys this is a corrugated steel not really using regular art materials

3:00

we really couldn’t afford our materials lots of tar lots of pigment things that were fairly transitory this particular

3:07

painting still exists those one thing that has survived the years from 1983 to now so that’s kind of remarkable but

3:14

that’s corrugated steel for you because it’s in a barn asst the only thing raccoons don’t know how to eat or

3:20

destroy it yeah there I love fine art paper raccoons are our curators yeah

3:26

okay we have to move on yeah okay moving on you can ask questions about some of the materials and so forth later I think

3:32

the quman days later okay um this is chua died this is um this is at the

3:38

banff centre yes and mostly dry wall we used to use a lot of drywall because we were pretty adept at um because we were

3:45

the first warehouse people in Toronto well you know drywall became your your material so we were always sort of

3:51

branding bits of drywall around so the love these pieces are made out of drywall rock salt I’ll qualify your

3:58

remark we weren’t the first warehouse people we were the first people to sleep in the warehouses where people used to

4:04

work yes exactly we call a nice the warehouses in Toronto single we start at the condo industry that’s right one flop

4:12

at a time like so um at this point we’re not on bicycle we have a vehicle we’re

4:19

collecting birch bark from dead trees were cavorting with beaver so to speak we’re camping where we’ve got lots of

4:25

time we’re are collecting lots of natural materials we’re moving we’re kind of hybridizing our installations with natural materials

4:31

and urban sort of you know industrial materials because we’re coming from the you know the industrial zone and where

4:37

you know you should explain that in terms of cavorting with beavers we

4:42

solved the ethical crisis of how to get a tree into the gallery by arranging for

4:47

beavers to chew down trees for us and then we would claim them exactly and it

4:53

would take a month sometimes to get them to chew down the tree we were interested in da way ya with poison ivy we would

5:01

lure them closer by feeding them apples on twigs of the tree we were interested in and then they’d slowly get closer and

5:08

closer and then they discovered this tree was in the way and then yeah they

5:14

were keen on the birch trees but this is again in the gallery the same gallery it was quite a great opportunity dessel

5:20

would give us the space for August so we have a month to install so in this

5:26

particular case we moved in 90 sheets of 10-foot drywall drywalled the space cut

5:31

a new door and then work the space with clay and pigment chlorophyll lots of

5:37

chlorophyll we were grinding chlorophyll plants on rocks and really inhabiting the space more than we ever had before I

5:44

think we were I with this shall we were trying to peer cancer we were very much involved in holistic come healing and

5:50

and we actually help you know when did that age you you take on big endeavors

5:56

so this is the otter spot this was our constellation this was the souvenir

6:01

painting we were trying to make something that he does it could sell so we made a souvenir painting of the experience and this is the actual

6:09

painting this is the real deal but this ended up in the dumpster and lichen and

6:14

clay drywall and their shadow paintings you can see the constellation and shiloh

6:20

formation and our roxburgh grinding chlorophyll and it’s actually it’s a large if you did an aerial view it’s a

6:26

snowman motif which reoccurs in a lot of our work over the years chlorophyll in

6:33

the little pond rock salt so these first

6:38

three exhibitions we did it I desis were all based on an important text we had in

6:44

grade school which was called breastplate in buckskin so this was our

6:51

post-colonial interpretation of being exposed to that text which was extremely colonialist I would have to say so we

6:59

invented a kind of post colonial discourse through materials so at this stage here we’re reinventing cosmology

7:06

you know naming constellations creating working with sort of simple materials so

7:14

drywall can be reduced to gypsum plant materials can be reduced to chlorophyll which at the same time is a postmodern

7:23

ploy on also the modernist education we received when we were children through

7:29

life magazine and so forth and still making films in the evening in the

7:35

gallery so this time though we’re stacking all our props behind this one painting so as each night is finished

7:41

you see an accumulation of materials that were it takes even in this room we

7:50

essentially created coffins that were

7:56

they were initially based on sarah bernhardt coffin yeah presentation open

8:02

lid coffins but they look very much like boats because we’d actually had made a kayak in our studio and it had been

8:08

ridden kayak trip so we used the nautical motif for these in fact the yeah Winnipeg art gallery not the wind

8:14

pic with the Vancouver Art Gallery owns these as well as the souvenir painting which was a yes they own our coffins a

8:21

one-hour cause Ricky that’s true so

8:27

here’s another this was the last tree that we convinced beavers to chew down for us this is the chewier dipole and

8:35

we’re also mimicking a standard Northern Ontario system in the Canadian Shield you can’t really put a telephone pole in

8:42

the ground so you use a section of culvert fill it with rocks we have a similar electrical system in the sense that

8:49

we’re running wires through the gallery through the offices didn’t see the wires running through the tree they go from

8:56

the back room and I said through the office which is the office was always positioned between the galleries and

9:01

then right through to the front room and they’re hooked up two of them a sure sure sure sure shock sher shah cattle

9:09

sensor which is on chickens done we’ve actually stepped it down a little bit so

9:14

there is a current running through it and it’s like a river running like a

9:20

river running yes right and so the all the wires end in the copper chandelier

9:25

and in the the armature wrapping on the quartz crystals and the ground wire runs

9:30

along the side of the gallery and you can see the little bit of wire they just catch a little bit here and it’s in this

9:37

matrix of salt and lemon juice on what we call the sex table the therapy table and if you put your hand on the salt and

9:44

you touch one of the rocks the current runs through you can get that little tickle and it’s sort of a massage little

9:50

so it’s about you know statics and the legs are the legs are constructed you

9:57

can’t quite see here they’re wax filled copper tubes and in the center we create

10:02

our dental signature by chewing around it so we just mimic the beavers and how

10:07

they approach that so it has our not only our dental signature but we also had an audio link to this too it’d be

10:15

difficult to explain however one of the installations did have an audio component we had noticed at the time

10:21

that a lot of intellectuals were positively terrified of new-age just

10:27

because of the sheer irrationality of it so we often work some of these systems through that kind of panic oh yeah this

10:35

is uh this is the birch girl this is birch bark lipstick and shoe polish and

10:41

this is the version of what you saw on the wall at the desk a gallery in the true or Die installation with the

10:46

earring this is a more brutal version amor that we did in Sicily and to do

10:52

this in Sicily we went to honest dads and but large suitcases and brought birch bark back to

10:57

kind of recolonized okay we have to move fast I just pinched me so this is Sicily this is what you want me to do talk

11:05

about no it’s going to say that this we now switch to a rules-based type construction wear whatever we made had

11:13

to fit into a certain size of suitcase so there’d be no shipping and any materials that we used had to be found

11:19

at a pharmacy so in this case all the black materials of shoe polish all the

11:24

red is lipstick the adhesives are strange concoctions we made using

11:30

vaseline and some other facial products yeah which we in a small Sicilian town

11:36

we didn’t have Shoppers Drug Mart but it worked out that’s good this is actually the Sicilian national bank that was

11:42

being renovated yeah that’s good and we’re actually also quoting a phase of synthetic cubism here and this is a one

11:50

of my favorite anecdotes about the difference between Europe and say North America there were two security guards

11:56

with machine guns because we’re actually right next to the National Bank and both of them actually discussed a period

12:02

between Braque and Picasso in synthetic cubism does anyone see the anomaly there

12:11

I’ve never heard a security guard in Canada even grasp a period of early 20th

12:19

century I know got artists on their money this is the Cenotaph this was done

12:24

I guess 87 86 87 this the beginning of the AIDS crisis major homophobic

12:31

violence happening in Ontario this is massage for Harvey Milk Kenna seller

12:37

seller harvey milk and an an on him so

12:43

we kind of we took mattresses box spring mattresses you missed the number third person anonym ralph Fred’s burg roff

12:50

Redford yeah that was so the idea here was to start off with a figure that everyone would know from you know North

12:58

American politics and then move downwards to a guy that you wouldn’t know about who was just beaten to death

13:04

in your local park you know too before and then we propose this as a Cenotaph so that there would be

13:10

different because we come from Ottawa and there’s a lot of War Memorial

13:15

infrastructure we were proposing a kind of provisional infrastructure for

13:21

different types of violence like domestic violence sexual orientation violence and so forth so beds became

13:27

didn’t go over very well good ground for that yeah i think the iconography was a little bit to arch but you know we were

13:34

pretty it was a proposition of the proposition now here we’re in the this

13:39

interestingly this factory floor was the last place where a television set was

13:45

actually assembled in canada general electric electric building lansdowne in

13:50

dupont toronto and we colonize this this was a you know filled office space we did a large group show and of course

13:58

there wasn’t really much electricity so we made her own chandelier so that’s a candle chandelier and we did a mock-up

14:03

of a of a still that’s the and again we’re using the rules that everything

14:09

that we made the work had to come from the materials we found in the space so all the plywood came from the shelving

14:16

the paintings we constructed came from the wood the the pink comes from local

14:23

stores so this beehive is painted in what was that spell that’s gasoline and curry curry yeah that’s curry powder

14:30

anyways we should it smelled really nice ok keep rolling we gotta get through this ok these are very much like tarot

14:36

cards they’re 5 feet by 7 feet you know stressed plywood and we’ve done mixed

14:41

media and and they all concerned different biological and geological

14:48

interests that are completely conflated with cultural interests lotsa we might

14:54

have yeah we might have a little diatribe on reverse polarity in the

14:59

Earth’s magnetic field connected to something to do with ratios philosophy

15:06

it’s also a cure yeah so this is in Montreal yeah here we’ve done a

15:12

translation project and also an electromagnetic project so we’ve translated most of our texts

15:19

to syllabic Cree this of course is the nice play in Montreal at the time there

15:25

was some tension over translation issues so we raised the obvious gambit of like

15:30

well who’s going to translate decree back into English and or French we

15:37

didn’t get any volunteers on that one and this is another iteration of the

15:42

same piece so the syllabics on the on the right have a sort of a bit of a philosophical concept to it which is

15:49

this is the literal translation for a conservation officer or an agent of the

15:55

crown in control of fur bearing animals which translates literally to Beaver boss so the point we were positioning

16:04

here is like well who actually is the boss of beavers and in this is a in

16:11

Japan where so here’s another connection to beavers for this particular

16:19

exhibition which was a garden exhibition and another cultural exhibition tied together the Ontario government had

16:25

proposed that they were going to have six beavers in this pond and they died

16:31

of some kind of bacterial infection on their way over this is a landfill in the

16:37

water they actually there was a mock-up of Niagara Falls that yeah I’m the right there’s a 16 on every day so the water

16:42

would go from ankle-deep you know to your thigh deep but somebody made the connection that they needed a quick

16:48

replacement for six beavers and we were available so we and we had a tree that’d

16:54

be we had a work of art that had been chewed by a beaver so there’s the kind of approximating yet so this is the passive lightning rod it’s just a

17:01

lightning conductor we have a Faraday cage in 11 place and the the lightning

17:06

the pass of the pass of electricity and or lightning when goes through the wire through her bellybutton to the pole to

17:14

the Faraday cage which is over on the shoreline actually like this sub particular pavilion was called big

17:20

nature and it was like a Japanese version of the log cabin it was quite odd and it all connects to the belly

17:27

button of the figure here the mythological figure because there’s a Emily there’s a standard story too

17:33

air shield children and Japan about lightning stealing your belly button it

17:38

doesn’t translate that well we can just go with this is in a library oakville

17:44

galleries we were doing projects about irredeemable animals so this is about leeches and we did a two month project

17:52

where we would hang out in swamps in wetsuits collecting leeches yeah that

17:59

didn’t go over too well either I’m high on either side of some animals are

18:04

irredeemable yet aesthetically they have nice lips if we could very nice lips I

18:10

wasn’t some interesting patterns this is a temporary public art project next to

18:16

the sky dome in a park that’s built on a railway bridge though it’s all steel steel girders with styrofoam and then

18:22

soil and grass and we put this birch hive piece or we designed it for this

18:27

particular location it stood there for two years and it has an eel a for an

18:33

extremely low frequency generator inside we chose this location because of the

18:40

subversive potential of it actually functioning as a giant antenna because the steel girders for this connect to

18:46

the sky dome so we were using the ambient properties of all the steel in the sky dome in this particular location

18:52

and we collaborated with a radio astronomer I’m Stevens in lobsta vents

18:59

tickin to get the tuning on this so that’s the that’s the interior like a

19:05

lot of our work has the sort of it’s a peepshow effect where you look in you see the root ball of the white pine

19:12

that’s at the top and that’s the copper the copper antenna that’s going in

19:19

circles around this is the same Burt I’ve that this perch I’ve came from the still that you saw in the previous

19:25

exhibition so this cut it in pieces and then we refurbished it with birch bark and then outfit is it with the e LF

19:31

there’s the LF generator there looks like a stereo cabin it’s pretty kind of corny but it was putting out a nice big

19:36

big square wave the politics of these extremely large waves are that United

19:42

States Navy at the time and they still do they have a large loop of wire essentially around Lake

19:49

Michigan and they use that to communicate with submarines that are deep underwater in the middle of the

19:55

Pacific so we were using a carrier wave which is basically the same thing as saying every strike of lightning on this

20:03

planet creates a wave that bounces up to the ionosphere we use that as the cover for our signal but the idea was to

20:10

encroach upon the signal of the US Navy and see how long it would take for them

20:15

to notice that it wasn’t an entirely natural signal and we reckon it took two

20:22

years yeah because that’s when we were suddenly has to take it down and paid a bonus to do it very quickly we had to do

20:29

it in three days so that fits into conspiracy theory thought right now this is um this is a black light etching

20:35

edition that we did too as a kind of a sideline yeah its glow in the dark paper with vegging there’s a condition again

20:42

we were commissioned to do this by open steam open studio printmaking

20:48

cooperative essentially and again we used the rules-based thing of local

20:54

materials and at that time dayglo shorts and sportswear was very populist but I

21:00

know where they were still making some clothing so this is all taken from scraps of clothing we would find in

21:06

garbage bags and then we made the paper out of it and the glow-in-the-dark principles that made us think oh well we

21:12

can make the whole project you know black light this is another black light

21:17

installation called honky town and this was in a very akka an artist collective gallery called the purple institution so

21:24

we painted all these paintings only at night using ultraviolet lights which

21:29

proved to be damaging to our daytime perception

21:35

the Wishing Well is actually a bass speaker it’s a large drum speaker that’s pointing downwards and it actually

21:40

vibrates the wishing well there’s a it’s a 32-inch like Bay speaker mounted in the bottom so the whole thing sort of

21:47

shimmies around through the vibration there was a hockey town soundtrack that went with it yeah a mission you point me

21:53

to the panel’s this is a laser dart contemporain in with you know Claud

21:58

Gosselin and the crew in Montreal and this was an envato but ecology there was

22:04

it was like a big think tank for scientists and we had to do a lot of question years about how we would save the world and so forth before we and you

22:11

know the great group show was had a lot of First Nations people which was kind of great finally you know for a 19 when

22:16

since nineteen ninety nineteen ninety it actually opened at the same time that

22:21

the oka crisis was happening so it was pretty highly charged so apparently our peace was going to be controversial

22:27

until that took over the headlines because we were lampooning quebec hydro

22:33

and its relationship to aluminium production and so forth and we had another proposition which is we said to

22:40

the organizers that we wouldn’t participate in any of these other conferences unless they could prove to

22:45

us they could keep an office plant alive for six months so you can guess that

22:51

they didn’t manage to do that right because it’s too tricky keeping an office plant alive so that’s the Quebec

22:57

hydro logo and the interior again was a black light installation we used the same panels from the purple institution

23:04

only again we’re back to the stars again we’ve got the the northern hemisphere at

23:10

that time of year we’ve reconfigured the stars to form a lemma foot measure which is a major skunk skunk major with the

23:17

Milky Way being pushed out of its butt back so we were yeah a little bit aggressive we took an oil barrel and

23:23

took it turned it into a Shanda leer it was a lot about done symbols and trying to resurrect and sort of reclaimed

23:29

symbols and at that time we were pretty busy with the Aryan symbol and the Sanskrit symbol of the swastika as the

23:36

as it is originally configured which is the Big Dipper moving around the North

23:42

Star so if you look at that you’ve seen the Big Dipper constellation and the North Star is where the cauldron is

23:47

just full of salt so we’re trying to actually purify it you know in a very straightforward and there’s text on the

23:52

piece on the left in Sanskrit translated back and forth but yeah I mean that was

24:00

a bit difficult to explain in a hurry but this is easy to explain because this is in Madrid oh yes so easy this is a

24:08

shipping container it’s Madrid it’s a it’s a group show and it was during the

24:14

quinn centenary year and a Quinn centenary celebration of the discovery of America and so we’re in Spain where

24:22

there’s there’s no irony about it it’s it’s a celebration so we they asked us

24:28

to pick a site and they wanted us to pair us off with a an early left wing

24:36

cafe but we chose this abandoned lot next to franco’s favorite basilica so

24:42

we’re actually we’re in a fascist neighborhood essentially but we’re in this no-man’s land space where you can

24:48

dump things temporarily so we basically had a legal electricity coming to this

24:54

container and we decorated in at that time they had a campaign about say C to

25:00

Spain which was a tourism campaign we’re using kind of yeah so we’re using the

25:05

pattern of a poison poison poison arrow frog combined with a sort of Miro

25:12

modernism and in will show you the pairing is this is in London England

25:19

where we will show you the deli neighborhood which is now at Brick Lane which is not quite you know poncy but

25:26

1992 is it was pretty much a straight up working class bengali neighborhood period and this was a little farm that

25:33

was uh yeah next to the rail except again translating everything into bangali didn’t go over well with the

25:40

english organizers and also they had this presumption that the bengali

25:46

residents were interested in what do you call it so the british affliction of

25:52

like cuteness to do with animals and so on but they are more of an entrepreneur

25:57

class and they see farming as something for peasants you know so class issues built into this and in the

26:04

center we have a immature there’s a black light installation the iconography in the back is north and south america

26:10

on its side and then that’s you know the classic you know open heart bleeding

26:15

heart sacrificial you know in our case we’re using the dissected frog because

26:22

we see the well we’re going back again to a shared experience of our high

26:28

school education we’re dissecting a frog is an important sort of step it’s a kind

26:34

of an initiation I’m sorry however there was a lot of there was at that time we linked this to a paper that were showing

26:41

that these kind of experiences had nothing to do with science it’s more about power dynamics relative to humans

26:48

in the natural world that would be the minimum descriptions no one really has a memory of the anatomy of frog but they

26:54

they they understand the experience to be you’re allowed to penetrate you’re allowed to you know I know what I’d say

27:00

here’s a good reduction for that okay this is sort of trying to explain instrumental reason in its most sort of

27:06

simplistic metaphors yeah that’s yeah

27:12

this is after being in Paris for a couple of months where we were studying

27:18

musial adji or a display technique so we created a whole display around this and

27:23

this at the same time we had just got an inkling that probably North America

27:29

would ban smoking indoors so we purchased the smoking earn a sander in

27:35

this way album yeah and then of the standards we have this yeah we had this

27:41

sort of notion of repressed desire in the future where we would show these different kind of campfires so the idea

27:47

of fire and then have a an urn for cigarette smoking but of course you wouldn’t be able to smoke so it have

27:53

these conflicts built into these are three there’s a teepee fire the log cabin fire in the Starfire with hardwood

27:59

and you know birch bark and cedar and there’s all museum numbering on them so they can be we can again this comes from

28:05

early childhood instruction in sort of boy scout ideology you keep going

28:13

these well how do you explain that you know those are candies we purchased at the airport in Japan because apparently

28:19

in Japan they have no problems with young children sucking on kandi cox and

28:25

maybe is let’s see etc and we thought yeah that’s good ah crew portrait this

28:32

is a crew portrait we em where I’m built a a photo studio based on 1950s

28:38

technology and then we built wardrobe and we learned how to do makeup and

28:46

parkdale library served us well yeah yeah we learned it all for how to cut hair from that yeah yeah and then we

28:53

created the characters for our version of Star Trek because you know there’s so many spin-offs on Star Trek so and this

29:00

was proposed for the Koffler center gallery which is in North York and we were struck by the fact that they were

29:07

the last gallery to have wall-to-wall carpet and we related that to Star Trek because in Star Trek they always have

29:13

wall-to-wall carpet and office plants often in the corners near elevator curved walls to it was actually pretty

29:19

earth well it’s like the bridge so this is our crew and so there you see the carpet in the gallery and we have office

29:25

plants again and we’ve designed our chairs so they’re all soft chairs one of

29:32

our critiques of Star Trek is they always thrash around and hit hard Danish style furniture when they’re having

29:41

problems it would be much better if it was just you know beanbags and soft things and we’ve also extended the kind

29:48

of liberal ideology of Star Trek in the sense that we’ve now privileged animals as part of the command structure so we

29:55

have two bags for cats in the front and they actually are the primary the

30:01

navigators the primary navigator poison when they get the Cowboys yeah it’s so

30:07

we put together also a multiracial crew based on our friends who are artists so

30:13

this is jin han co he’s one of the members of instant coffee and he’s a

30:18

squeegee officer we’re we did their security in horticulture with the awesome he just cleans windows all day

30:26

this is the loading yeah the other side is the loading bay now at the Koffler

30:32

there was a little bit of controversy about our work so a rabbi came to see us so we are compromised which we said oh

30:40

no there’s not going to be any controversy the stars in our galaxy are going to be all stores are David yeah I

30:46

will avoid the five-pointed star so there you go see we can accommodate any

30:51

kind of difference and then we’re black like paintings obviously we should keep rolling this is appended ok this is on

30:56

the center for the fine arts in Miami were there for six weeks no action was

31:01

only three weeks it’s um an 18-foot snowman tar snowmen so we welded rebar

31:08

and bought you know melted tar and made this piece for the it’s a Philip Johnson

31:14

building actually it’s kind of a crazy sort of Spanish galleon prison kind of

31:20

architecture and yeah there it is and we also grew a hundred years of black corn

31:25

in the planters and painted and eclipse Oh was about snowbirds but the sort of

31:30

reversal that kind of you know you can get it it’s pretty straight up and to get the corn we flew to Mexico City and

31:37

we negotiated in the witches market for a particular kind of black corn that you only get from a certain area and then it

31:44

was used in a food piece by Antony meralda I think i vanish artist who does like feast food feast donated it to him

31:52

whiskey anyways yeah uh yeah hockey hockey witchcraft this is our second

31:58

most popular religion which is hockey so here we’ve just conflated it this is a

32:05

classic penetration move that you use in which hockey yes notice the overstressing of the blue

32:13

line on the left there public art woodpecker column Metro Toronto

32:19

Convention Center 100 and 100 feet high and a three degree angle a 17-foot

32:27

pileated woodpecker of yellow-bellied sapsucker stained glass snowman actually

32:32

the Snowman our bronze which is very cool and it’s still it’s still there it’s um this all came from an article we

32:38

read about NASA hiring three ornithologist because they’re wrapping problems in Florida with the Space

32:45

Shuttle with flickers to naturally seek out the tallest thing that has a certain

32:50

kind of echo to send out there they’re sounding they’re sounding so they were basically destroying the insulation on

32:57

the space shuttle they hadn’t thought about that they were invading the territory of flickers and that’s just

33:04

constructions we can yeah we like to show slides that you know the show that we actually make stuff we’re always a

33:10

kind of amazed too because what it is is a material bit anterior based culture

33:16

with the pickup truck we’re driving to Toronto houses a lot of illegal

33:22

fiberglass shops it’s great for all kinds of pirate activities yeah we learn

33:28

to do it ourselves so we’re just put the air supply masks on in point this is

33:35

that the actual site where the the woodpecker is landing on the column that we build this is awesome glazing all the

33:44

windows we’re installing stained glass in this industrial so all the aperture holes are all stained glass and they

33:50

approximate the holes that I yellow-bellied sapsucker would bake if it was me because we’re working off a pileated or philly ated and the SAP

33:57

sucker as the two models and that’s what it looks like at night and that’s the CN tower on the right we figure it’s the

34:03

most expensive piece of full cart in existence yeah

34:09

it appalled the architect oh yeah architects don’t like us and this is the

34:17

bronze snowmen arriving and Toronto forged yeah we did a serious traffic

34:23

where feet of Tourette’s a floor based on frog eggs and tadpoles and we saw an

34:29

opportunity that the last generation of the master craftsmen of terrazzo were

34:34

about to retire so we got together the team of the last guys because you know basically you do this kind of work your

34:41

knees are shot your hand bending all of the the the outline wire I’m specially

34:48

mixing the mortar and the pigments in that and then sanding and sanding and sanding to get it it’s like it’s pretty

34:53

brutal so here we’ve got a version of the it’s upon the Raven leaving with

35:02

this Christian you’re the video Oh says there’s other little narrow some Old Testament mystic mixed in with biology

35:09

well the nice part is you’re in a tall elevator coming down so you get to actually you know see the entirety and then you get to have the close-up so

35:17

this is Toronto in the the topical event here was this was the summer where there

35:23

was a great deal of controversy about whether women were allowed to be topless or not and it went through the legal

35:28

process but it was endless speculation come on the breastal we did a nice this is yeah the power plant this is the Anna

35:35

Kao it called anakata happiness happy to save the world yes and this is a continuation if we run virtual

35:42

corporations as part of our practice and we were talking before about redeeming irredeemable animals so we gave up on

35:48

leeches but snakes we had still tried maybe five different projects and people don’t really like snakes we learned this

35:55

but we invented a snake call Anna Kao de which is a snake that has a lot of

36:00

nipples that can replace an entire herd of cattle across with a dairy cow yeah and you can have different kinds of

36:07

milks and lactose products produced by this so it fits in with instrumental reasoning but we figured no one can say

36:14

no to breasts and nipples based on you know the kind of attraction our culture has it again no one really bought into it the

36:21

only ah here we go this you can’t save snakes apparently ok Hawk 33 this is the

36:26

Mississauga Arts Center this was on we had yeah we had the depth kind of

36:32

rotunda insight as the council chambers the merrily council chambers in Mississauga and so we have the walls to

36:40

work on and we decided to use raptors and bird outlines we have this but we

36:47

also have you there’s a version of the Canadian flag and a version of the American flag because essentially the

36:54

treaties to deal with migratory birds were the first in in north america were the first international treaties of

37:00

their kind because it was obviously recognized that you can’t control birds don’t recognize these boundaries

37:06

political boundaries so that was one aspect of the project and then the other aspect of this project is survey work

37:15

that we were doing at the time based on different types of surveys so we would travel around to different artists when

37:20

centers in Regina Saskatoon we did one where we would pick a topic and then go out and survey dressed as witches you

37:28

know in classic which attire and approach people and ask the particular questions about the occult we have you

37:33

know particular themes involved and then we would compile all of the data afterwards in this case we wanted to do

37:39

a bioethics survey and a little bit because when we were in the US years ago

37:44

when we were first doing our car trips and doing rock mining and Arkansas we used to really love the wild turkey and

37:50

we also loved wild turkey the drink well at one point Canada they started to UM

37:55

they had a project to repatriate the turkeys and they were doing a conservation program where with you

38:01

bought wild turkey bourbon they took one dollar of that and they put it towards conservation so I mean as an when they

38:07

traded X amount of turkeys for moose that would go to upper state michigan

38:13

yes right so there was an exchange that happened so now we’re living in the country it’s been 16 years literally you

38:19

know three-year overrun with her get turkeys we had everywhere just turkeys we can look out our window there’s

38:24

turkeys jumping up in the air and you know picking you know indiscipline like

38:30

this project is also just on Ducks Unlimited a lot on which

38:35

we originally thought was a disagreeable organization but then we noticed that they actually get things done they

38:40

actually recoup a lot of wetland because they’re into the nuts and bolts of I guess they need more wetland to be able

38:46

to shoot more ducks so what’s the swords that ethical problem there we found that most people in the arts wouldn’t agree

38:52

to any form of advertising no matter how much it helped habitat yeah we’re not

38:57

sure what that I think it’s a hard sell when you put the Nike swoosh on on a vulture but there was a little bit of

39:03

humor in that as well and this is us doing the survey work this is a coven of

39:09

stars on the American flag a little bit of it’s obviously a you know a quote to you know a Nodwell its way to Hammonds

39:16

of course there was also that the point where there were only 13 states yeah 13 states that we like it there another

39:23

space cherry almond tree all again um there’s no way you can explain this no

39:29

it’sit’s another it’s another spaceship we just decided to decorate our spaceship the way we liked it it’s

39:34

called coven 11 with modernist works and also quotes from the french revolution

39:40

in the iconography actually the bridge girls i know there’s not many close-ups sorry about that if you have questions

39:46

you can maybe ask I’m just worried that we’re not gonna so this is another iteration again we’re working on the

39:52

modernist motif here but this we’re gathering the materials just from signage in a ten-mile radius of where we

40:00

live now in the country a lot of signs will just stay up whether they’re relevant or not so you’ll see actual

40:09

signs of children going to school and they’re caring they almost have a cart a buggy with a horse in there caring like

40:15

yeah leather book bag another book bag when we went when we first were thinking

40:23

of being hired at the University of Guelph they asked us to do a project based on what we consider the most

40:31

community that existed there well we put we positioned it as what’s the biggest scientific cliche of the 20th century so

40:40

we were vying between DNA representations and or computer representations and we

40:46

went with DNA so this is our helix in the center which we’ve built with abandoned lab armature materials you

40:54

know the exterior has a nucleic proteins you know there we always come back to the peepshow in terms of our public art

41:01

then stained glass helix a little bit about where and we’ve invented them

41:07

heraldic genetically modified animals go along with different molecule

41:12

constructions because we basically told Guelph we were interested in working

41:18

there because they’re basically a science museum and we said which they thought was ironic that we want to be

41:24

where the monsters are being made but we’re quite literal about that blood and

41:33

squashed by Captain X this is the kind of store front projector we rent with Andrew Harwood and various collaborators

41:40

so how to explain this so here’s a fountain we have that’s constructed with a mug that we bought from a biker who

41:47

was having to give up on his tit mug because he was getting married and it’s

41:53

not what fountain and it’s a fountain that purifies money so we have lots of lucky horseshoes and people bring money to be washed so it’s a money it’s a

42:00

lucky money washing fountain and this is a felt-tip tattoo parlor I’ll me it opened it was open for a week it was

42:07

like a dropping community center and when people came in we would do felt-tip marker tech tattoos on them and we did

42:14

this some performance in many places in the New York City a few times Brooklyn and we are another opportunities we got

42:21

all this WWF fabric because they just lost their lawsuit with the World

42:27

Wildlife Federation that’s us in

42:32

operation there oh and this is the house of bangs this is a same same location storefront house of bangs we decided to

42:40

cut hair so we cut hair we learned from a VHS tape from our rural library well

42:47

that was from yeah oh yes so we learned how to do nails hair and what else did we do looking down

42:54

here so we would this was the extension yeah these were endurance based products so we would cut hair for 36 hours

43:00

straight so at night we would only cut by candlelight to which is another challenge that’s philip munck getting us

43:05

he’s getting hair extensions he didn’t want to hear cut yeah this is at the CAG this project is based we were in

43:13

Canadian Tyron we noticed they had these kind of lame sort of hip-hop gangster

43:18

decals for putting bullets on your cars bullet holes on your cars and we wanted

43:23

to expand it for our pirated project we thought would anyone recognize cannon holes because it would be perfect for a

43:30

gallery a modernist I we go so we did a collaborative ink drawings of the entry hole in the exit holes we thought they’d

43:36

be very different like the impact so so there’s a drive-by shooting I’m the cat right by shooting contemporary art

43:43

gallery in Vancouver which is also a play on a piece done by Jeffrey farmer commenting on the film industry and its

43:50

importance in Vancouver in the interior with our smoking cannon there’s our

43:55

cannon made out of some sewage pipe we found on the side of the road this is a touring exhibition donkey ninja which

44:02

and it came out of a residency that we did at the a art gallery of York University and it’s fairly pretty labor

44:09

intensive and it’s a recreation of a lot of these storefront exhibitions he sort of social exchange exhibitions that we

44:14

were doing and it went to three places did plug-in gallery the contemporary art

44:19

gallery and of course egy you that’s one of the there’s some serious

44:25

institutional string art there we were exposed to string art when we were

44:30

children also so you see what happens when you contaminate children with these practices

44:36

come back to haunt you and bangs we had mirrors so that people could you know

44:41

line up with their face to sort of you know figure out what kind of hair do they want it so we did dumb us you know will the one foot by one foot glass

44:49

mirror module is it really you can get that in any city in North America so but

44:54

we can just create new hairstyles wherever we go using black mark look we’re also using is a lot of white

44:59

pegboard we’re using that kind of crappy pegboard that you can’t use for anything you people have them in their tool shops

45:05

with black outlines but the tools never end up going back there so we you know repurposed a lot of this in fact we

45:12

still we have a barn full of white pegboard now because pegboard kind of again perfectly explains the modernist

45:20

desire for the the unit of order that can replicate all necessities and then

45:26

of course it ends up being a piece of masonite jump and this is some yeah the

45:34

keg this is the CAG version so each version is very different like some of the yeah some of the pieces were and

45:39

videos and video projects are integrated into these in different rooms and so forth and a lot of which iconography

45:46

obviously ikea mirrors the full moon merest because the whole duration of the show we usually did the mirrors all the

45:52

moon phases around the top of the wall to correspond with how long the show was giveaway posters i’ll always give away

45:59

posters yes this this project here is made with X number of bras from honest

46:06

em that were made in Romania web and a gusset web of panty web so that

46:11

represents one of the failures of state-run industry because these bras were literally unwearable they would

46:18

just hurt you and that’s the endless panty column that’s made out of giant Underpants that are sewn opened up and

46:24

sewn in interior too and on the left is a painting about neural nets and how

46:29

many what the cutoff point is for neural connections like how many neural connections do you need to achieve say

46:36

consciousness in a nervous system so there’s a sculpture made it a pipe cleaners that demonstrates that

46:43

and here’s one of those exam room the video rooms who we were talking about called blood clock in this on one side

46:49

we’ve collected at auctions access and size on one side and the other side we’ve collected horseshoes and dildos

46:58

the dildos come from Toronto with the mediating point being the only haven’t seen any of those at our farm auction

47:03

yes maybe our farm yeah well we don’t know we’ve got a lot of them now of

47:11

course they’re in a barn being chewed on by record yeah exactly being curated

47:17

currently yeah and they’re fairly under provision this is usually the next day after we’ve been cutting hair we’ll

47:23

leave the hair and we’ll compiling but yeah Winnipeg they’re a very intense

47:28

party crowd their martinis are ya I’m good idea an opening they don’t start

47:37

with a couple of beers they start with the martinis there was a lot of Shaving so after one hour this is the kind he

47:44

this guy’s got in a chest massage had half of his hair cut off and he’s happy he’s really good no it was great it was

47:51

good yeah oh that’s tail on so we’re

47:57

going to enter / some cat portraits now because these were used in a project in the the subway system in Toronto where

48:05

just going to jump around our plan we run the ident a shin she’ll back to the tabs that’s what the tattoos was someone

48:12

got to tattoo so basically people request what they want as a tattoo and we try and do it this is a volcano

48:21

dragon a request we learned that when people

48:26

get drunk they often want to show off parts of their body while they’re getting tattooed this is a new york city

48:33

Leona Cleo Connick projects it’s a show called ridiculous this person wanted a

48:40

mirror cami unicorn I don’t know if people know this story we’re referencing here he’s nominated for nobel prize yeah

48:49

I’m doing re him was also doing Cardinal Karol readings we’ve done Tarot performances where we’ve trained people

48:56

to read tarot we did them and we blush with tarot readers and did 800 people in one night which was and our tablecloth

49:03

and a lot of our stuff is our version of acid wash because we were exposed to that as a fashion crime at one point

49:09

we’ve never gotten over it go quickly on our walls yeah keep going quickly people

49:16

is oh that’s touching I guess but that’s

49:22

really touch thanks Marge hi Jane the

49:29

three-way gone wrong yeah so all are I

49:35

should mention that all our cats are barn caps that basically arrived at our place and these are three brothers the

49:41

orange guys that’s the third brother there he’s tensed little tensed but he’s

49:49

blessed because he can tell he’s under that ring back yeah I’m jarang Obama’s

49:55

inauguration our cats celebrated on

50:00

their new cat tree okay if you should go through here this is Ireland go in Ireland we also introduced the cat tree

50:07

there and we started a Facebook site to link up different cat groups yeah and

50:14

then we got this new product the cap cabin at the bottom there a painting

50:21

show people were asking us about what our position was on painting because you

50:26

know most installation artist don’t think kindly towards paintings because it’s I don’t know a commodity the paint

50:34

are really good to look at when you’re working out so we made paintings for working out to their oil paintings there

50:40

they’re all based on one one of our favorite paintings eyes in the storm by

50:46

Jackson Pollock that’s in the peggy guggenheim collection Anna’s in Venice

50:53

keep going got a couple oh and the pegboard of course without the yes pegboard more pegboard lucky pegboard

51:00

these are what some of the paintings look like these are oil paintings so i should mention we 80 tie-dye we do yeah

51:07

we actually do a lot of painting but we do it for our own entertainment we don’t usually exhibit them a lot and then this

51:16

was our favorite painting in that series so then the real thing is to make a

51:23

Kleenex box that has the painting motif on it that’s the real work of art so

51:29

this is what we sold for sixty dollars yeah we sold we sold one of those one that’s all we have to know we also sold

51:35

the cold wind pegboard yeah cuz luck cells that we found it look and that’s

51:40

more of the ongoing pegboard series that we do a little more discreet than full

51:45

walls benke benke codes eat for free like that kind of we invented the dildo

51:52

ninja and the cables yeah okay back to the

51:59

cats during the inauguration which is a live event for them

52:05

afterwards they’d seen achievement of a liberal milestone they celebrated their

52:13

a little let down now

52:24

you can see by now we’re four years into Obama’s first term they’re not quite as

52:29

pleased anymore showing some signs of distress now this is a project Kim has

52:38

always had a dream when she was young girl that she wanted a work of art in the albright-knox so we had an

52:45

opportunity to pitch this proposal for them of an an owl that would go on their

52:50

roof to keep pigeons away so it’s 11 feet high fiberglass and it has railway

52:56

crossing LED lights and there it is it’s

53:01

in a nice gun metal that’s transcendent

53:09

we told them that only Gauss sculpture could ultimately keep pigeons of the future away this was before I got

53:17

actually installed on the roof so it’s quite large that’s a that’s in the courtyard there more passive okay this

53:26

is our proposal drawing just to show off our graphics like our jack oh yeah that

53:36

could be anything right that’s as grabbing at all grabbing a screenshot off of someone’s light keep going to no

53:42

tourist photo of the entrance lab okay sukhpal this is one of our Wilder cap

53:48

she only shows up every four or five years this is an exhibition also in

53:55

Toronto the end on this one writer yeah pretty close your eyes pretty close yeah so you get the political message last

54:02

year um we decided to do a catnip grow up in the gallery this is Paul petrol so

54:09

there’s our grow up tent it has three different varieties of catnip that we started off in the country and we’ve

54:15

moved we’ve got out so the rules based limitation here is everything has to be

54:21

able to be ordered via the internet so everything in this exhibition came from

54:27

the internet and this the central part came from the internet right there was a cloning machine we’re cloning of the

54:33

catnip we’ve got a drying racks we’ve got another cat column in the corner on the pegboard now is is steel is found

54:41

stainless steel pegboard and there’s more cat portrait stereo okay back to the yeah LED lights were beautiful they

54:49

really are have quite a wonderful spectrum and again everything we learned about growing we learned from the

54:54

internet from different sites for medical marijuana and so forth we just translated it to catnip which was part

55:01

of the pharmacopoeia that arrived here with Europeans and the floors has passed

55:08

the ASP and these portraits here are based on a science fiction story that

55:14

goes along with the exhibition that deals with inter dimensional beings it’s

55:19

by cordwainer Smith who’s a very well yeah well known nice picture that’s dragon wagon tail on and these cats

55:27

perform what I what we do is we set up the cat tree and I just use an iPad with the stereographic function so there’s no

55:35

after there’s no after-effects done we don’t ever use photoshop’s than any of our work we don’t know any photoshop so

55:40

these are performed some little more

55:46

extracted and we’re kind of conflating you know free Riot with lost cat posters because wherever we travel were

55:52

always a photographing free cats lost cats and this is our bronze cat litter

56:01

box and it’s um the cat turrets or bronze and they’re in a matrix of what

56:07

those called their own meteorite tourmaline Emmaline’s black traitor and meteorites it’s very so I should explain

56:13

what this is we have the security camera we have a toilet plunger we purchase from home hardware and then we have a

56:21

motorcycle lift that we purchased from Princess Di’s it with customized and then we’ve cast a cat litter box out of

56:28

bronze and polished it lovingly for months and then we’ve cast cat turds on

56:33

a bed of meteorites we ordered online we sold a toilet plunger again we’re

56:41

really work just because we recognize that this could be a gay motif in the

56:47

right neighborhoods right it’s rather nice so here’s some cat turds in our

56:53

specially fetishized box so here’s a cat turd we made the cat turns out of wax so

57:00

we taught some grad students also they weren’t quite as good at it because you have to study we did a cattery workshop

57:05

where we had a stack this high and we had to go through and do quality control here was booze pretty great we had to

57:10

explain to them that you have to have been to at least you know ten years of cat boxes in your life had to really

57:16

understand what you had to do you actually had to fool a cat with a cat turd so these are the ones that one and then some of them became select

57:23

jewellery for people who achieved the highest levels of cat mimicry captor gimmickry this is a process of public

57:32

art again where we semele cynically proposed for a what do you call it that

57:39

the condominium a condominium that’s what they’re called it’s a 36-foot high unicorn horn with the frog in this case

57:45

it was just a straight-up green frog somehow we won this usually happens so now we have to make it so this is how

57:52

you make the world’s largest unicorn horn but you start with cedar keep going

57:58

in selection at times this is where we live

58:05

now we’re covering it with foam now we’re cooking up some wax now we’re

58:12

building a building to the Ute do the other part in it what do you call those

58:17

Quonset hut quantitate yeah yeah now we’re cutting the phone with hot wires

58:23

now we’re roughing in the Frog now we’ve got the eyeballs from ikea salad bowls

58:30

perfect now we’ve got some of that low

58:35

expansion foam from Home Hardware it’s working good we’re getting closer almost

58:45

done no now we got to put wax on it so this took a year to do and now we’re

58:51

putting the warts on the Frog this is a tree frog this is highly versicolor the gray tree frog or copse tree frog which

58:59

actually we’ve been planting trees now for 16 years and we have quite a few tree frogs that are shown up surprise

59:07

here we’re working on we’re detailing the bronze cast version of which was

59:13

cast maybe a month ago and now we’re just approaching the finishing deadline it’s going to be installed on end of

59:18

October beginning of november so it’s all all that’s happening right now and now at the same time the horn was being

59:24

worked on which was a lot more trouble than we thought and this is what it looks like in bronze yeah who hasn’t

59:31

been moved on yet this is just really rough right out of the molds and cast and we have tadpoles and frogs swimming

59:38

with different types of currency in their mouths this is just to show you what our place looks like in the

59:44

wintertime that’s where that ended guy we mainly do this because we were giving this slide show in Latvia and we want to

59:52

let them know that’s not all sunshine yeah it was well you need the right there I think we’re over no there’s

59:57

spotty you had a note and here’s our Latvia presentation yes free Riot

1:00:03

okay and this is the mayor of Reykjavik that’s right which again that’s the

1:00:08

difference in Europe yeah anyone here imagine the mayor of Kingston

1:00:14

dressed as riot loka on a standing on that is a feat in itself

1:00:19

yeah so I guess we’ll end with that that well that’s pretty much up to the present we were in in riga latvia doing

1:00:27

that I mean not with him but just in September so that’s up to the present the frogmen unicorn horn will be

1:00:35

installed we’re working on something else now and a show and we’re yeah so we’re it’s constantly happening not

1:00:42

necessarily in bronze would you like to move on to question snack because we’ve obviously gone over time trying to show

1:00:49

30 years of work yeah or ten minutes we left out lots we save some for tomorrow

1:00:55

though for the the class yeah don’t go thinking you’re gonna see the same thing

1:01:01

again no we got lots of stuff well thank you so much for a really engaging and

1:01:08

thorough presentation so we’d like to open it up to questions from the audience and we like to ask you to just

1:01:13

raise your hand if you have a question we’re going to bring over a mic because we’re recording this for posterity so

1:01:21

the background here is our political manifesto from 2007 yes all things

1:01:28

probably not readable is it oh wait depends on your age group and how good

1:01:36

your can you you can’t read it cuz you don’t wear glasses are you sure

1:01:42

witchcraft is an old resistance and liberation theology an ancient cultural

1:01:48

nation that shares with the modern hip hop nation a creative can’t stop won’t stop compulsion to exceed boundaries and

1:01:56

limitations to move beyond the narrow constraints of nation race etc towards

1:02:02

the diverse plural and hybrid the bountiful and beautiful polymorphous and poly cultural abalone the which national

1:02:09

anthem is a song about individual freedom and the price of universal liberty do what you will harm on to none

1:02:16

in which culture personal freedom is a participation and positivity economy

1:02:22

enhance the liberty of others and you prosper constrain free will and you suffer

1:02:27

into which world others are understood to include all peoples animals plants the vast web of life the universe what

1:02:34

have you done for your donkey today donkey is a slang word that we use what

1:02:41

was the definition for it the lowest level of unrewarded babe labor so that

1:02:48

would be cleaning the toilet that kind of stuff Nikki did you read on the

1:02:54

screen that you’re gonna read up there I can read from that too I know you can is it a test no no any questions from the

1:03:02

audience will endeavor to respect you

1:03:08

will receive a free microphone it’s very nice um I was interested just in probing

1:03:17

a little bit your comment I think you said about the unicorn horn and the Frog

1:03:23

sculpture you’re making for a condominium that your proposal was kind of a semi cynical is that no we’ve

1:03:30

always wanted to make it unicorn worried but but deck oh yeah no that’s not cynical cynical only in that public

1:03:35

artisan well strange no I can i yeah no III guess I’m just when I want my question you know at the it’s because we

1:03:41

have to go to a lot of meetings with people and at this one particular meeting they were asking as well is this

1:03:48

is this lasting will it will it have any value and we were basically saying

1:03:55

usually we’re talking to people that have never bothered to take an art history course or anything in their life

1:04:00

so we’re explaining to them that because it’s cast in bronze it will outlast the building by quite a bit and then we were

1:04:07

explaining about this culture called the Greeks and how we have a lot of their sculptures but not a lot of their houses

1:04:13

or infrastructure available to look at because of this exact problem well the

1:04:18

cynical part would maybe the fact that you have to build in all sorts of narrative structures into into public

1:04:24

art because you’re not supposed to trust that people can actually see that there is there could be a connection between a frog looking up at a 36-foot high

1:04:30

unicorn horn so we had to build and sort of little clues and narrative bits and pieces ie like the little tadpoles and

1:04:37

the coins but I’m a don’t mind that we don’t mind kind of it to that extreme I mean that’s fine it

1:04:42

wasn’t really where we would have gone it you know it could do enjoy doing it so and i were selling paganism to aliens

1:04:50

that’s not yes correct I don’t you know but it’s good luck it’s good for sex it’s good for money it’s good for flow I

1:04:56

mean I mean I think that I think people in that building will probably you know enjoy it they’ll benefit from it I think

1:05:02

yes we’re hoping they’ll work that exactly into their advertising campaign deserts if you have a unit in this

1:05:09

particular condominium you will have much more your libidinal economy would

1:05:14

just be out of control yes yeah that would be severely in control there’ll be

1:05:21

ten thousand shades of grey and blue and black you’ll occupy a section of the

1:05:28

rainbow that’s exclusively dark don’t think of you I’m going to use this boat

1:05:34

yeah your art is protein and prolific where do you get your ideas do you hit

1:05:41

off 11 another do you troll a lot areas

1:05:46

I can tell you exactly we use basically

1:05:51

we use algorithms at this stage I just just you keep basically we use actually

1:05:59

we have an explanation for that we use evolutionary algorithms so we have lots

1:06:04

and lots of ideas and then they’re running a constant competition to see which of them become a cute actualized

1:06:11

okay and that’s what we do we both run separate portfolios and we pitch them against each other and then there might

1:06:17

be an incremental improvement and that goes into another set of competitions and sometimes they just become a running

1:06:24

joke that comes up you know and we were together all the time I mean we actually are a professor we’re not two professors

1:06:30

we share the position you know it’s kind of we’re fifty one percent each so we’re a little bit unusual in that we’re

1:06:36

together pretty much all the time so too you know so the language is easy you know yes we run in a constant discourse

1:06:43

about anything that we’re proposing and that yeah so it’s a little bit different

1:06:48

than the short kind of subjectivity of an individual art the thought experiment is ongoing so to speak yeah and the kind of

1:06:56

proliferation that you’re talking about it comes naturally out of this kind of well out of evolution itself is a form

1:07:04

of perfusion right that then gets tested does that make sense yeah of course it’s

1:07:13

easy yeah any final questions it’s it’s

1:07:22

common out for artists to use really kind of low popular cultural motifs and

1:07:28

stuff and I thought you guys did reached a really nicely low moment when you

1:07:33

started using using cat photos and then you took it a step further and use cat

1:07:38

turds which was I don’t know if you can get further down than that so there’s

1:07:46

this kind of transformative energy you have for just the detritus you know

1:07:51

disposable ideas and so on and it’s a you know a lot of artists work that way but I wondered if you could comment on

1:07:57

maybe why well I should want I should say that we come from pretty low where

1:08:02

we’re white trash at the sort of thing we’re bog Irish you know what that term

1:08:10

means I guess you’d have to understand some of the the distinctions in the

1:08:16

lowest level of class warfare I am so

1:08:21

both myself and Kim come from a working class or lower middle class with

1:08:28

pretensions yeah there’s there’s class politics running through a work of course you know you can feel that there’s kind of a pride to using you

1:08:35

know cheap materials and transforming them you know and in giving them a place and then letting them really resonate so

1:08:42

what for us it’s kind of amazing like to do like when I make a joke about that’s the most expensive you know piece of folk art I’m quite proud of that and I’d

1:08:50

like it there’s there something because that’s that’s transgressive to me but but it’s not transgressive in that I put all I put

1:08:56

Lina how many three years of my life making that like sitting in board rooms which were incredibly uncomfortable for me to do public art it takes literally

1:09:04

we had like three months to make that but we had to talk about it for three years you know and and for any artist to

1:09:11

have to do that is as unbelievably said the restraint is you know it kills you and how does that fit into the

1:09:18

transformations question from low to high what a high well that with the idea of a full cart and then trying to

1:09:24

elevate it emits a kind of a strange principle like you really shouldn’t be doing it I mean obviously not but but

1:09:31

for some reason we find yourself in a position where we are doing that quite often like the unicorn taking the you

1:09:36

the owner car horn actually came out of a thought experiment um where we didn’t know what was called an impossible workshop weekend where a group of us got

1:09:43

together on our property for three days and came up with ideas that were impossible to make and when one of our

1:09:50

smaller subgroups which included us was to was the unicorn horn and unicorn

1:09:56

and some kind of really crazy sort of vision that we had as a group and no one

1:10:01

would he wanted to take it any further so we sort of kept making different versions of what this unicorn horn and

1:10:06

the ship could look like and we’ve done a few versions where we have it in different types of aggregate because we’re kind of in love with rocks and so

1:10:12

forth and so this was like the key tip the tips have a tip so this was like the

1:10:18

kind of a classier version of that and so it’s a very tarnishing theory it all comes down to you know value is always a

1:10:26

contested thing yeah particularly in capitalism so we just work those dynamics for example one of the unicorn

1:10:32

horns is constructed around a mulch tip and I don’t know is anyone here a

1:10:37

gardener if you say mulch to gardeners they understand immediately what a completely powerful material goal they

1:10:44

see a resident yeah but it’s really just rubbish she barked but it’s a mic war z old gold mine and it what it does for

1:10:50

the roots of plants is fantastic so some people look at it they’re going really this is the kind of stuff I want to

1:10:56

sweep up and get off to the dump right away and other people are looking at it with lustful eyes to see what kind of

1:11:02

perfusion of growth can come out of that opportunity you know what I mean so it’s

1:11:08

like that but it also plays into those kind of business jokes you know where it’s always about you know you’ve been given lemons let’s make lemon juice or

1:11:15

something lemon shoobs yeah diamond chips okay that’s a new york or joke where the guy to prisoner say one

1:11:24

of those gang life gives you lemons make lemon oh yeah yeah yeah that’ll go with

1:11:32

the kingston i’m using penitentiary museum yes right lemon ship display I

1:11:39

think would be best now is if we just I’d like to him first of all I think

1:11:44

fast worms or the wonderful presentation for sharing their work with us this evening it was wonderful and I’d like to

1:11:50

invite you all to join us for a reception there’s food and drink and you’re also welcome to go into the galleries and check out superstition and

1:11:57

the other shows that we have on view so thank you so much thank you

1:12:07

you

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