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I'm going to tell you about why I became a sculptor,

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and you may think that sculptors,

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well, they deal with meta, they deal with objects,

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they deal with bodies,

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but I think, really, what I care about most

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is making space, and that's what I've called this talk:

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Making Space.

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Space that exists within us,

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and without us.

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So, when I was a child,

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I don't know how many of you grew up in the '50s,

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but I was sent upstairs for an enforced rest. (Laughter)

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It's a really bad idea. I mean, after lunch, you're, you know,

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you're six, and you want to go and climb a tree.

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But I had to go upstairs, this tiny little room

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that was actually made out of an old balcony,

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so it was incredibly hot, small and light,

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and I had to lie there. It was ridiculous.

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But anyway, for some reason, I promised myself

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that I wasn't going to move,

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that I was going to do this thing that Mummy

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wanted me to do.

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And there I was, lying there in this tiny space,

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hot, dark, claustrophobic, matchbox-sized, behind my eyes,

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but it was really weird, like, after this went on

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for days, weeks, months, that space would get bigger

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and darker and cooler

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until I really looked forward to that half an hour

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of enforced immobility and rest,

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and I really looked forward to going to that place

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of darkness.

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Do you mind if we do something completely different?

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Can we all just close our eyes for a minute?

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Now, this isn't going to be freaky.

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It isn't some cultic thing. (Laughter)

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It's just, it's just, I just would like us all to go there.

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So I'm going to do it too. We'll all be there together.

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So close your eyes for a minute.

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Here we are, in a space,

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the subjective, collective space of the darkness of the body.

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I think of this as the place of imagination,

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of potential,

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but what are its qualities?

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It is objectless. There are no things in it.

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It is dimensionless. It is limitless.

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It is endless.

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Okay, open your eyes.

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That's the space that I think sculpture --

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which is a bit of a paradox, sculpture that is about

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making material propositions --

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but I think that's the space

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that sculpture can connect us with.

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So, imagine we're in the middle of America.

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You're asleep. You wake up,

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and without lifting your head from the earth

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on your sleeping bag, you can see for 70 miles.

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This is a dry lake bed.

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I was young. I'd just finished art school.

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I wanted to do something that was working

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directly with the world, directly with place.

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This was a wonderful place, because it was a place

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where you could imagine that you were the

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first person to be there.

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It was a place where nothing very much had happened.

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Anyway, bear with me.

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I picked up a hand-sized stone,

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threw it as far as I was able,

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it was about 22 meters.

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I then cleared all the stones within that radius

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and made a pile.

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And that was the pile, by the way.

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And then, I stood on the pile,

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and threw all of those rocks out again,

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and here is rearranged desert.

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You could say, well, it doesn't look very different

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from when he started.

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(Laughter)

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What's all the fuss about?

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In fact, Chris was worried and said,

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"Look, don't show them that slide,

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because they're just going to think you're another one of

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those crazy modern artists who doesn't do much.

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(Laughter)

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But the fact is, this is evidence

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of a living body on other bodies,

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rocks that have been the subject of geological formation,

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erosion, the action of time on objects.

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This is a place, in a way, that I just

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would like you to, in a way, look at differently

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because of this event that has happened in it,

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a human event,

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and in general, it just asks us to look again

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at this world, so different from, in a way,

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the world that we have been sharing with each other,

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the technological world,

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to look again at the elemental world.

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The elemental world that we all live in is that space

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that we all visited together, the darkness of the body.

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I wanted to start again with that environment,

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the environment of the intimate, subjective space

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that each of us lives in, but from the other side

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of appearance.

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So here is a daily activity of the studio.

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You can see I don't do much. I'm just standing there,

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again with my eyes closed, and other people

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are molding me, evidential.

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This is an indexical register of a lived moment

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of a body in time.

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Can we map that space, using the language of neutrinos

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or cosmic rays, taking the bounding condition of the body

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as its limit, but in complete reversal of, in a way,

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the most traditional Greek idea of pointing?

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In the old days they used to take a lump of Pentelic marble

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and drill from the surface in order to identify the skin,

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the appearance,

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what Aristotle defined as the distinction

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between substance and appearance,

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the thing that makes things visible,

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but here we're working from the other side.

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Or can we do it as an exclusive membrane?

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This is a lead case made around the space

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that my body occupied, but it's now void.

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This is a work called "Learning To See."

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It's a bit of, well, we could call it night,

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we could call it the 96 percent of gravity

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that we don't know about, dark matter,

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placed in space, anyway, another version of a human space

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in space at large, but I don't know if you can see,

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the eyes are indicated, they're closed.

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It's called "Learning To See" because it's about an object

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that hopefully works reflexively and talks about that

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vision or connection with the darkness of the body

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that I see as a space of potential.

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Can we do it another way, using the language

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of particles around a nucleus, and talk about the body

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as an energy center?

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No longer about statues, no longer having to take that

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duty of standing, the standing of a human body,

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or the standing of a statue, release it,

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allow it to be an energy field, a space in space

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that talks about human life, between becoming an entropy

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as a sort of concentration of attention,

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a human place of possibility in space at large.

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Is there another way?

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Dark matter now placed against a horizon.

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If minds live in bodies, if bodies live in clothes,

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and then in rooms, and then in buildings,

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and then in cities, do they also have a final skin,

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and is that skin perceptual?

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The horizon.

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And is art about

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trying to imagine what lies beyond the horizon?

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Can we use, in a way, a body as an empty catalyst

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for a kind of empathy with the experience

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of space-time as it is lived, as I am standing here

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in front of you trying to feel and make a connection

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in this space-time that we are sharing,

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can we use, at it were, the memory of a body,

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of a human space in space to catalyze

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an experience, again, firsthand experience,

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of elemental time.

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Human time, industrial time, tested against

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the time of the tides, in which these memories

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of a particular body, that could be any body,

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multiplied as in the time of mechanical reproduction,

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many times, placed over three square miles,

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a mile out to sea,

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disappearing, in different conditions of day and night.

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You can see this work. It's on the mouth of the Mersey,

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just outside Liverpool.

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And there you can see what a Liverpool sea looks like

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on a typical afternoon.

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The pieces appear and disappear,

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but maybe more importantly --

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this is just looking north from the center of the installation --

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they create a field, a field that involves

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living and the surrogate bodies in a kind of relation,

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a relation with each other and a relation with that limit,

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the edge, the horizon.

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Just moving on, is it possible,

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taking that idea of mind, body, body-building,

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to supplant the first body,

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the biological body, with the second,

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the body of architecture and the built environment.

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This is a work called "Room for the Great Australian Desert."

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It's in an undefined location

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and I've never published where it is.

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It's an object for the mind.

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I think of it as a 21st-century Buddha.

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Again, the darkness of the body,

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now held within this bunker shape

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of the minimum position that a body needs to occupy,

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a crouching body.

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There's a hole at the anus, penis level.

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There are holes at ears. There are no holes at the eyes.

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There's a slot for the mouth. It's two and a half inches thick,

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concrete with a void interior.

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Again, a site found with a completely flat

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360-degree horizon.

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This is just simply asking, again,

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as if we had arrived for the first time,

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what is the relationship of the human project

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to time and space?

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Taking that idiom of, as it were,

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the darkness of the body transferred to architecture,

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can you use architectural space not for living

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but as a metaphor,

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and use its systolic, diastolic

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smaller and larger spaces to provide a kind of

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firsthand somatic narrative for a journey through space,

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light and darkness?

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This is a work of some proportion and some weight

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that makes the body into a city, an aggregation of cells

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that are all interconnected

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and that allow certain visual access

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at certain places.

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The last work that I just wanted to share with you

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is "Blind Light," which is perhaps

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the most open work,

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and in a conference of radical openness,

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I think maybe this is as radical as I get,

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using light and water vapor as my materials.

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Here is a box

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filled at one and a half atmospheres of atmospheric pressure,

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with a cloud and with very bright light.

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As you walk towards the ever-open threshold,

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you disappear, both to yourselves and to others.

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If you hold your hand out in front of you,

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you can't see it.

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If you look down, you can't see your feet.

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You are now consciousness without an object,

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freed from the dimensionful

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and measured way in which life links us

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to the obligatory.

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But this is a space that is actually filled with people,

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disembodied voices,

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and out of that ambient environment,

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when people come close to your own body zone,

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very close, they appear to you as representations.

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When they appear close to the edge,

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they are representations, representations in which

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the viewers have become the viewed.

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For me, art is not about objects of high monetary exchange.

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It's about reasserting our firsthand experience

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in present time.

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As John Cage said,

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"We are not moving towards some kind of goal.

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We are at the goal, and it is changing with us.

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If art has any purpose, it is to open our eyes to that fact."

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)