In the Studio with Tasman Richardson

INTERVIEW

Published Feb 26, 2021

Tasman Richardson, Sphere of Influence, Circle of Protection, 2015-2019, Video multiplier, projectors, broken mirrors, camera strobe flash, midi to voltage converter, speakers, MacBook, external audio interface, wood, cloth, paint, Variable dimensions (Photo credit: Romain Guilbault)

Your upcoming exhibition Kali Yuga makes reference to the last phase in the Hindu cycle of time. What drew you to the stories of Kali Yuga?

I think I've had this concept in mind for a long time, ever since I heard Carl Sagan mention it on Cosmos when I was a kid. But the thought hadn't fully formed until much later when living in a post-broadcast world I could see how everyone and everything was becoming fragmented, hyper-dividual, and a bit of an echo chamber. I don't know if you meditate but I do sometimes. When meditating, you make a kind of feedback loop with yourself. It's like you're aware of being aware. When I'm doing that, I sometimes feel like I or the person I think I am is on the surface and underneath that veneer, there's an elemental self. When you feel that, it's as though being your everyday self is just a fragment, a channel. So we're all fragmented channels, on top of the base, elemental primer. That's how I interpret Kali Yuga, as an era of waking up from a fragmented surface dream and becoming aware of the elemental primer underneath, the dreamer of the dream.

Your manifesto, The Jawa Method is rooted in the idea of video being a visual language, and that editing is the method in which we communicate that language. What are you saying through your editing choices?

The way I edit is the same as how a writer writes. I'm saying all kinds of things depending on the piece. The important thing is, an equal amount of attention goes to the visual composition, just as much as the auditory composition. But because the sound and image are from the same source, the edits affect two parts of the audience at the same time. The visuals connect with the central nervous system because of the flashing cuts and the rhythmic edits connect with the heart rate. Having both of these effects simultaneously creates an anxious focused quality to the experience. Like a dictionary, all the words are defined, it's just the arrangement that gives it meaning and context. The same goes for footage in that-we don't need to shoot everything that's already been recorded and defined. Just take it, cut it, arrange it. I think Jawa is very prescriptive and dogmatic but it's rooted in practices like Gyson's cut-ups, or Dada poetry but it's not about randomness, it's very precise and deliberate communication.

How has your reading of The Jawa Method changed since its inception?

Primarily, the method began in the studio, at a non-linear editing suit. As hardware and software have evolved so have the capacities for executing the edits faster and with more fluidity. What used to be constrained by frames per second restrictions i.e. 30fps has been freed into any possible trigger point. It's like, you were moving between telephone poles, driving along, and you could only make a decision to show or hide a clip when you were next to a telephone pole. Then, along came Ableton Live for example, and you could make that edit decision anywhere in between. Then came faster, better, portable laptops. What had to be straight cut in a studio can now be performed and composited live on the fly in front of an audience on multiple screens all at once. The method is the same but the output is so much more robust. Like the difference between a typewriter and a word processor.

You make very clear references to the panopticon in your work. How does the modern growth of the surveillance state, both digitally and physically, continue to inform your practice?

What informs my work the most is ourselves, our own role as the surveillance state. I think the combination of anonymity with surveillance will always lead to the most extreme expressions of sensual spectacular info porn. It's as though being on-screen places our minds in a slightly separate field of being, apart from our body. In this space, this "new flesh" can observe with impunity and I think, naturally seeks out the sensual spectacle which is missing because of the body's minimized involvement. I've said this before but when we think of a Panopticon as the guards and the prisoners, our current internet existence is stranger in that, we are both prisoners and guards. We take turns being both, watching from an anonymous shadow or exhibiting to the watchers we hope are there to validate our existence. I keep revisiting this theme because it's so difficult to unpack as a feeling that no single artwork I've made can effectively address it.

In 2017 you curated a program of media performances titled The New Flesh, in which you asked the question “What does this soul without a body mean for performance?” How did you address this question with the artists, and what was their response?

This was the second time I put on the event The New Flesh. In this instance, I wanted to bring together talented artists from diverse backgrounds and at different stages in their careers. The important thing was, the names of the performers couldn't be known until the end of the event. I didn't want this to be a cult of personality or trendy names. The artists were asked to remove themselves and to let the signal do the performing. When I say video is a soul without a body, I'm talking about that signal. In a debate with Ryan Stec in Ottawa, we wrestled back and forth with this idea of defining video, and then I tried to defend it, as a current, ongoing, and living medium. I had to challenge this idea of it being a container, television, videotape, or even youtube. I had to insist that video is unlike painting or film. You paint a painting, you film a film, but video is a transport medium. This means it exists independent of the format it is carried on. It moves from place to place, and still, its packeted transport is part of what makes it the thing we call "video". So, you can debate whether video formats are dead, but video is everlasting. Amen.

Are you currently working on any new projects?

I just finished making a window installation for Drew Simpson's gallery The Drey in Berlin. It's a kind of very basic collaboration with the gauGAN AI landscape generator. We've all been indoors so long, and I work at my desk for my day job from 9 to 5 before working on art projects in the evening, mostly at the same desk. It makes screens and windows start to feel so much alike. When I finally get out for a walk, most things are closed so it's just windows and screens again, outside looking in, inside looking out, and not much interaction. At night I found I could relax better by making these simple childish drawings and then having gauGAN interpret and generate a realistic, surprisingly atmospheric result. I'd then respond to the result by drawing the same thing again, but there were always slight differences, imperfections, etc. I saved each drawing from this exchange that went on bit by bit each night. In the end, there were 1200 drawings, with a kind of animated narrative that showed my thought process and frustrations. I would build up a scene, a whole world, and then knock it down with a fog, flood, drought, etc. Like reading someone's browser history but entirely as an "exquisite corpse" drawing. That piece is called Twenty-One Improvised Extinctions and it's being exhibited now for as long as the Berlin lockdown continues.

I have another project in the works with Jose Andres facilitated by Scott McGovern. I'm trying to give people an out-of-body experience in the third person. So, wearing a visor you move around a space, untethered and wireless but your visor is getting a 3D feed from a lightweight camera suspended on a body harness, behind and above your head. I think the feeling of moving around freely while keeping the sensations of gravity, temperature, touch, while your mind projects it all onto an external view of your own body... it's exciting. I hope this will help drive home this other, base primary awareness that I mentioned earlier. It's still in the early stages but I have absolute confidence in Jose and the technical knowledge he brings to this project. There's no name for it yet but I'm thinking I might call it something like Astral Projection? We'll see.

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