WEBVTT 00:00:00.660 --> 00:00:04.781 I'm going to tell you about why I became a sculptor, 00:00:04.781 --> 00:00:06.836 and you may think that sculptors, 00:00:06.836 --> 00:00:12.125 well, they deal with meta, they deal with objects, 00:00:12.125 --> 00:00:15.083 they deal with bodies, 00:00:15.083 --> 00:00:19.626 but I think, really, what I care about most 00:00:19.626 --> 00:00:23.674 is making space, and that's what I've called this talk: 00:00:23.674 --> 00:00:26.281 Making Space. 00:00:26.281 --> 00:00:30.689 Space that exists within us, 00:00:30.689 --> 00:00:32.758 and without us. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:32.758 --> 00:00:36.927 So, when I was a child, 00:00:36.927 --> 00:00:38.938 I don't know how many of you grew up in the '50s, 00:00:38.938 --> 00:00:44.350 but I was sent upstairs for an enforced rest. (Laughter) 00:00:44.350 --> 00:00:47.697 It's a really bad idea. I mean, after lunch, you're, you know, 00:00:47.697 --> 00:00:50.777 you're six, and you want to go and climb a tree. 00:00:50.777 --> 00:00:52.666 But I had to go upstairs, this tiny little room 00:00:52.666 --> 00:00:54.441 that was actually made out of an old balcony, 00:00:54.441 --> 00:00:59.596 so it was incredibly hot, small and light, 00:00:59.596 --> 00:01:03.011 and I had to lie there. It was ridiculous. 00:01:03.011 --> 00:01:05.619 But anyway, for some reason, I promised myself 00:01:05.619 --> 00:01:07.872 that I wasn't going to move, 00:01:07.872 --> 00:01:09.809 that I was going to do this thing that Mummy 00:01:09.809 --> 00:01:11.736 wanted me to do. 00:01:11.736 --> 00:01:15.409 And there I was, lying there in this tiny space, 00:01:15.409 --> 00:01:21.799 hot, dark, claustrophobic, matchbox-sized, behind my eyes, 00:01:21.799 --> 00:01:25.864 but it was really weird, like, after this went on 00:01:25.864 --> 00:01:32.577 for days, weeks, months, that space would get bigger 00:01:32.577 --> 00:01:36.241 and darker and cooler 00:01:36.241 --> 00:01:41.111 until I really looked forward to that half an hour 00:01:41.111 --> 00:01:45.218 of enforced immobility and rest, 00:01:45.218 --> 00:01:49.872 and I really looked forward to going to that place 00:01:49.872 --> 00:01:52.434 of darkness. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:52.434 --> 00:01:54.890 Do you mind if we do something completely different? 00:01:54.890 --> 00:01:56.926 Can we all just close our eyes for a minute? 00:01:56.926 --> 00:01:58.574 Now, this isn't going to be freaky. 00:01:58.574 --> 00:02:00.196 It isn't some cultic thing. (Laughter) 00:02:00.196 --> 00:02:03.444 It's just, it's just, I just would like us all to go there. 00:02:03.444 --> 00:02:05.592 So I'm going to do it too. We'll all be there together. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:05.592 --> 00:02:09.427 So close your eyes for a minute. 00:02:09.427 --> 00:02:12.537 Here we are, in a space, 00:02:12.537 --> 00:02:20.009 the subjective, collective space of the darkness of the body. 00:02:20.009 --> 00:02:24.064 I think of this as the place of imagination, 00:02:24.064 --> 00:02:27.364 of potential, 00:02:27.364 --> 00:02:30.264 but what are its qualities? 00:02:30.264 --> 00:02:35.561 It is objectless. There are no things in it. 00:02:35.561 --> 00:02:41.512 It is dimensionless. It is limitless. 00:02:41.512 --> 00:02:46.102 It is endless. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:46.102 --> 00:02:48.648 Okay, open your eyes. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:48.648 --> 00:02:52.857 That's the space that I think sculpture -- 00:02:52.857 --> 00:02:55.925 which is a bit of a paradox, sculpture that is about 00:02:55.925 --> 00:02:59.269 making material propositions -- 00:02:59.269 --> 00:03:01.390 but I think that's the space 00:03:01.390 --> 00:03:06.058 that sculpture can connect us with. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:06.058 --> 00:03:10.243 So, imagine we're in the middle of America. 00:03:10.243 --> 00:03:13.115 You're asleep. You wake up, 00:03:13.115 --> 00:03:16.462 and without lifting your head from the earth 00:03:16.462 --> 00:03:21.900 on your sleeping bag, you can see for 70 miles. 00:03:21.900 --> 00:03:25.151 This is a dry lake bed. 00:03:25.151 --> 00:03:29.393 I was young. I'd just finished art school. 00:03:29.393 --> 00:03:31.565 I wanted to do something that was working 00:03:31.565 --> 00:03:36.717 directly with the world, directly with place. 00:03:36.717 --> 00:03:39.780 This was a wonderful place, because it was a place 00:03:39.780 --> 00:03:41.997 where you could imagine that you were the 00:03:41.997 --> 00:03:44.331 first person to be there. 00:03:44.331 --> 00:03:49.240 It was a place where nothing very much had happened. 00:03:49.240 --> 00:03:52.485 Anyway, bear with me. 00:03:52.485 --> 00:03:56.270 I picked up a hand-sized stone, 00:03:56.270 --> 00:03:58.363 threw it as far as I was able, 00:03:58.363 --> 00:04:00.434 it was about 22 meters. 00:04:00.434 --> 00:04:06.772 I then cleared all the stones within that radius 00:04:06.772 --> 00:04:10.574 and made a pile. 00:04:10.574 --> 00:04:12.978 And that was the pile, by the way. 00:04:12.978 --> 00:04:16.475 And then, I stood on the pile, 00:04:16.475 --> 00:04:20.344 and threw all of those rocks out again, 00:04:20.344 --> 00:04:25.562 and here is rearranged desert. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:25.562 --> 00:04:27.540 You could say, well, it doesn't look very different 00:04:27.540 --> 00:04:29.659 from when he started. 00:04:29.659 --> 00:04:30.862 (Laughter) 00:04:30.862 --> 00:04:32.496 What's all the fuss about? 00:04:32.496 --> 00:04:33.864 In fact, Chris was worried and said, 00:04:33.864 --> 00:04:35.258 "Look, don't show them that slide, 00:04:35.258 --> 00:04:37.217 because they're just going to think you're another one of 00:04:37.217 --> 00:04:39.883 those crazy modern artists who doesn't do much. 00:04:39.883 --> 00:04:42.253 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:42.253 --> 00:04:48.962 But the fact is, this is evidence 00:04:48.962 --> 00:04:52.497 of a living body on other bodies, 00:04:52.497 --> 00:04:58.336 rocks that have been the subject of geological formation, 00:04:58.336 --> 00:05:03.350 erosion, the action of time on objects. 00:05:03.350 --> 00:05:05.872 This is a place, in a way, that I just 00:05:05.872 --> 00:05:09.353 would like you to, in a way, look at differently 00:05:09.353 --> 00:05:13.024 because of this event that has happened in it, 00:05:13.024 --> 00:05:15.079 a human event, 00:05:15.079 --> 00:05:18.631 and in general, it just asks us to look again 00:05:18.631 --> 00:05:21.190 at this world, so different from, in a way, 00:05:21.190 --> 00:05:24.461 the world that we have been sharing with each other, 00:05:24.461 --> 00:05:26.887 the technological world, 00:05:26.887 --> 00:05:31.581 to look again at the elemental world. 00:05:31.581 --> 00:05:37.290 The elemental world that we all live in is that space 00:05:37.290 --> 00:05:41.678 that we all visited together, the darkness of the body. 00:05:41.678 --> 00:05:45.343 I wanted to start again with that environment, 00:05:45.343 --> 00:05:49.013 the environment of the intimate, subjective space 00:05:49.013 --> 00:05:52.839 that each of us lives in, but from the other side 00:05:52.839 --> 00:05:55.447 of appearance. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:55.447 --> 00:05:57.871 So here is a daily activity of the studio. 00:05:57.871 --> 00:06:01.510 You can see I don't do much. I'm just standing there, 00:06:01.510 --> 00:06:04.237 again with my eyes closed, and other people 00:06:04.237 --> 00:06:08.764 are molding me, evidential. 00:06:08.764 --> 00:06:12.412 This is an indexical register of a lived moment 00:06:12.412 --> 00:06:15.595 of a body in time. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:15.595 --> 00:06:21.318 Can we map that space, using the language of neutrinos 00:06:21.318 --> 00:06:26.104 or cosmic rays, taking the bounding condition of the body 00:06:26.104 --> 00:06:31.579 as its limit, but in complete reversal of, in a way, 00:06:31.579 --> 00:06:34.202 the most traditional Greek idea of pointing? 00:06:34.202 --> 00:06:37.990 In the old days they used to take a lump of Pentelic marble 00:06:37.990 --> 00:06:42.648 and drill from the surface in order to identify the skin, 00:06:42.648 --> 00:06:44.100 the appearance, 00:06:44.100 --> 00:06:47.361 what Aristotle defined as the distinction 00:06:47.361 --> 00:06:49.384 between substance and appearance, 00:06:49.384 --> 00:06:52.451 the thing that makes things visible, 00:06:52.451 --> 00:06:55.506 but here we're working from the other side. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:55.506 --> 00:06:59.551 Or can we do it as an exclusive membrane? 00:06:59.551 --> 00:07:05.509 This is a lead case made around the space 00:07:05.509 --> 00:07:08.974 that my body occupied, but it's now void. 00:07:08.974 --> 00:07:12.848 This is a work called "Learning To See." 00:07:12.848 --> 00:07:19.132 It's a bit of, well, we could call it night, 00:07:19.132 --> 00:07:23.582 we could call it the 96 percent of gravity 00:07:23.582 --> 00:07:27.143 that we don't know about, dark matter, 00:07:27.143 --> 00:07:30.688 placed in space, anyway, another version of a human space 00:07:30.688 --> 00:07:33.601 in space at large, but I don't know if you can see, 00:07:33.601 --> 00:07:39.670 the eyes are indicated, they're closed. 00:07:39.670 --> 00:07:43.133 It's called "Learning To See" because it's about an object 00:07:43.133 --> 00:07:47.465 that hopefully works reflexively and talks about that 00:07:47.465 --> 00:07:51.284 vision or connection with the darkness of the body 00:07:51.284 --> 00:07:56.257 that I see as a space of potential. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:56.257 --> 00:07:59.332 Can we do it another way, using the language 00:07:59.332 --> 00:08:02.518 of particles around a nucleus, and talk about the body 00:08:02.518 --> 00:08:04.448 as an energy center? 00:08:04.448 --> 00:08:07.506 No longer about statues, no longer having to take that 00:08:07.506 --> 00:08:10.567 duty of standing, the standing of a human body, 00:08:10.567 --> 00:08:13.897 or the standing of a statue, release it, 00:08:13.897 --> 00:08:18.155 allow it to be an energy field, a space in space 00:08:18.155 --> 00:08:24.976 that talks about human life, between becoming an entropy 00:08:24.976 --> 00:08:29.720 as a sort of concentration of attention, 00:08:29.720 --> 00:08:34.789 a human place of possibility in space at large. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:34.789 --> 00:08:38.565 Is there another way? 00:08:38.565 --> 00:08:44.664 Dark matter now placed against a horizon. 00:08:44.664 --> 00:08:48.699 If minds live in bodies, if bodies live in clothes, 00:08:48.699 --> 00:08:51.829 and then in rooms, and then in buildings, 00:08:51.829 --> 00:08:57.531 and then in cities, do they also have a final skin, 00:08:57.531 --> 00:09:00.164 and is that skin perceptual? 00:09:00.164 --> 00:09:02.786 The horizon. 00:09:02.786 --> 00:09:05.287 And is art about 00:09:05.287 --> 00:09:11.215 trying to imagine what lies beyond the horizon? 00:09:11.231 --> 00:09:19.852 Can we use, in a way, a body as an empty catalyst 00:09:19.852 --> 00:09:24.603 for a kind of empathy with the experience 00:09:24.603 --> 00:09:29.951 of space-time as it is lived, as I am standing here 00:09:29.951 --> 00:09:35.345 in front of you trying to feel and make a connection 00:09:35.345 --> 00:09:38.651 in this space-time that we are sharing, 00:09:38.651 --> 00:09:42.207 can we use, at it were, the memory of a body, 00:09:42.207 --> 00:09:45.031 of a human space in space to catalyze 00:09:45.031 --> 00:09:48.754 an experience, again, firsthand experience, 00:09:48.754 --> 00:09:51.761 of elemental time. 00:09:51.761 --> 00:09:56.285 Human time, industrial time, tested against 00:09:56.285 --> 00:09:59.281 the time of the tides, in which these memories 00:09:59.281 --> 00:10:04.240 of a particular body, that could be any body, 00:10:04.240 --> 00:10:09.130 multiplied as in the time of mechanical reproduction, 00:10:09.130 --> 00:10:13.515 many times, placed over three square miles, 00:10:13.515 --> 00:10:17.169 a mile out to sea, 00:10:17.169 --> 00:10:21.524 disappearing, in different conditions of day and night. 00:10:21.524 --> 00:10:24.793 You can see this work. It's on the mouth of the Mersey, 00:10:24.793 --> 00:10:27.950 just outside Liverpool. 00:10:27.950 --> 00:10:31.415 And there you can see what a Liverpool sea looks like 00:10:31.415 --> 00:10:34.241 on a typical afternoon. 00:10:34.241 --> 00:10:36.943 The pieces appear and disappear, 00:10:36.943 --> 00:10:39.006 but maybe more importantly -- 00:10:39.006 --> 00:10:42.939 this is just looking north from the center of the installation -- 00:10:42.939 --> 00:10:47.276 they create a field, a field that involves 00:10:47.276 --> 00:10:53.038 living and the surrogate bodies in a kind of relation, 00:10:53.038 --> 00:10:57.999 a relation with each other and a relation with that limit, 00:10:57.999 --> 00:11:01.745 the edge, the horizon. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:01.745 --> 00:11:04.247 Just moving on, is it possible, 00:11:04.247 --> 00:11:08.930 taking that idea of mind, body, body-building, 00:11:08.930 --> 00:11:12.335 to supplant the first body, 00:11:12.335 --> 00:11:14.315 the biological body, with the second, 00:11:14.315 --> 00:11:17.233 the body of architecture and the built environment. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:17.233 --> 00:11:21.824 This is a work called "Room for the Great Australian Desert." 00:11:21.824 --> 00:11:23.442 It's in an undefined location 00:11:23.442 --> 00:11:26.523 and I've never published where it is. 00:11:26.523 --> 00:11:28.413 It's an object for the mind. 00:11:28.413 --> 00:11:31.834 I think of it as a 21st-century Buddha. 00:11:31.834 --> 00:11:33.764 Again, the darkness of the body, 00:11:33.764 --> 00:11:36.827 now held within this bunker shape 00:11:36.827 --> 00:11:40.311 of the minimum position that a body needs to occupy, 00:11:40.311 --> 00:11:42.427 a crouching body. 00:11:42.427 --> 00:11:45.414 There's a hole at the anus, penis level. 00:11:45.414 --> 00:11:48.151 There are holes at ears. There are no holes at the eyes. 00:11:48.151 --> 00:11:52.405 There's a slot for the mouth. It's two and a half inches thick, 00:11:52.405 --> 00:11:54.744 concrete with a void interior. 00:11:54.744 --> 00:11:58.927 Again, a site found with a completely flat 00:11:58.927 --> 00:12:03.623 360-degree horizon. 00:12:03.623 --> 00:12:07.947 This is just simply asking, again, 00:12:07.947 --> 00:12:12.535 as if we had arrived for the first time, 00:12:12.535 --> 00:12:16.671 what is the relationship of the human project 00:12:16.671 --> 00:12:20.784 to time and space? NOTE Paragraph 00:12:20.784 --> 00:12:24.357 Taking that idiom of, as it were, 00:12:24.357 --> 00:12:29.350 the darkness of the body transferred to architecture, 00:12:29.350 --> 00:12:32.925 can you use architectural space not for living 00:12:32.925 --> 00:12:34.638 but as a metaphor, 00:12:34.638 --> 00:12:38.415 and use its systolic, diastolic 00:12:38.415 --> 00:12:43.234 smaller and larger spaces to provide a kind of 00:12:43.234 --> 00:12:48.906 firsthand somatic narrative for a journey through space, 00:12:48.906 --> 00:12:52.202 light and darkness? 00:12:52.202 --> 00:12:57.724 This is a work of some proportion and some weight 00:12:57.724 --> 00:13:02.610 that makes the body into a city, an aggregation of cells 00:13:02.610 --> 00:13:05.022 that are all interconnected 00:13:05.022 --> 00:13:09.854 and that allow certain visual access 00:13:09.854 --> 00:13:12.653 at certain places. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:12.653 --> 00:13:19.356 The last work that I just wanted to share with you 00:13:19.356 --> 00:13:23.158 is "Blind Light," which is perhaps 00:13:23.158 --> 00:13:26.418 the most open work, 00:13:26.418 --> 00:13:28.553 and in a conference of radical openness, 00:13:28.553 --> 00:13:32.561 I think maybe this is as radical as I get, 00:13:32.561 --> 00:13:36.824 using light and water vapor as my materials. 00:13:36.824 --> 00:13:39.210 Here is a box 00:13:39.210 --> 00:13:42.752 filled at one and a half atmospheres of atmospheric pressure, 00:13:42.752 --> 00:13:46.791 with a cloud and with very bright light. 00:13:46.791 --> 00:13:50.212 As you walk towards the ever-open threshold, 00:13:50.212 --> 00:13:58.124 you disappear, both to yourselves and to others. 00:13:58.124 --> 00:14:00.280 If you hold your hand out in front of you, 00:14:00.280 --> 00:14:02.134 you can't see it. 00:14:02.134 --> 00:14:05.400 If you look down, you can't see your feet. 00:14:05.400 --> 00:14:12.402 You are now consciousness without an object, 00:14:12.402 --> 00:14:16.295 freed from the dimensionful 00:14:16.295 --> 00:14:22.181 and measured way in which life links us 00:14:22.181 --> 00:14:25.271 to the obligatory. 00:14:25.271 --> 00:14:30.248 But this is a space that is actually filled with people, 00:14:30.248 --> 00:14:32.218 disembodied voices, 00:14:32.218 --> 00:14:36.332 and out of that ambient environment, 00:14:36.332 --> 00:14:40.262 when people come close to your own body zone, 00:14:40.262 --> 00:14:44.325 very close, they appear to you as representations. 00:14:44.325 --> 00:14:46.545 When they appear close to the edge, 00:14:46.545 --> 00:14:51.129 they are representations, representations in which 00:14:51.129 --> 00:14:54.997 the viewers have become the viewed. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:54.997 --> 00:15:00.848 For me, art is not about objects of high monetary exchange. 00:15:00.848 --> 00:15:06.253 It's about reasserting our firsthand experience 00:15:06.253 --> 00:15:09.144 in present time. 00:15:09.144 --> 00:15:12.585 As John Cage said, 00:15:12.585 --> 00:15:17.672 "We are not moving towards some kind of goal. 00:15:17.672 --> 00:15:22.353 We are at the goal, and it is changing with us. 00:15:22.353 --> 00:15:28.789 If art has any purpose, it is to open our eyes to that fact." 00:15:28.789 --> 00:15:30.826 Thank you very much. 00:15:30.826 --> 00:15:34.993 (Applause)