Conversation about Art
https://vimeo.com/38731583

I re-enacted Bas Jan Ader’s “Amsterdam Fall” as a way of trying to understand it by experiencing it and also because I believed that I should do things outside my comfort zone. When I cycled into the canal in Amsterdam I became interested in the loss of control: from when I started to fall until I hit the water. I started filming having buckets of water thrown at myself and others.

I did a few videos of me throwing a bucket of water at Dawn in Hackney:
https://vimeo.com/15536660

When Brian told me that Dawn was going to perform her Tranny Manifesto at a fundraising cabaret night at The Colony Room Club I asked him if I could make an intervention and he liked the idea. It worked for me as it would be a continuation of throwing buckets of water; it would be an exploration of the trendy art world I felt I belonged to and did not belong at the same time and it would also be outside my comfort zone.

I thought it was going to be quite straight forward: Dawn would do her Manifesto and at the end when everybody would be feeling a kind of love and understanding for Dawn, I would throw the bucket of water at Dawn and shout my insults and everybody would be a bit shocked and then once they realised it was planned, they would all have a laugh. Janko was going to film it and all would be cool.

Things didn’t go according to plan.I patiently waited through all the other acts with my bucket of water and at the end of Dawn’s performance when I was in mid flow with my bucket I realised that behind Dawn was some expensive sound equipment so I sort of splashed her from the side instead of strait on and most of the water hit the faces of there artists and performers. They didn’t take it well at all and ganged up on me kicking and punching and shouting and insulting me. I remember face on the ground think that it would make great video. The Dawn was saying “it’s part of the performance”and then the compère told the artists to let me go. One of the artists, who sang a song about being a prostitute in France asked me why I did that and I sheepishly said that I thought it would be fun. She shouted “You F**king C*nt” and threw her gin and tonic at me but she threw it from below and I remember it entering my nostrils and burning.

Janko then told me he filmed almost to the end but didn’t film when it got rough. When I saw the video, it was all filmed up to the point when I threw the water and then the camera is on the floor filming a foot and a hand-bag but you can hear it happening and also someone shouting “You F**king C*nt”.

It was a pity that I had no documentation but it made me think of something Jo Melvin said about the artist Bill Beckley crossing the Delaware river: his plan was to paint a line across the Delaware river, he took paint pots and brushes to paint the line and a camera to document the performance. Half way through, he realised it wouldn’t be possible and dropped everything including the camera. He made it through to the other side and discovered that was pretty much the same spot where George Washington crossed. With no photographic documentation, Bill Beckley recounted the story and the documentation of this performance took the form of an anecdote.

A few years later I went to a talk at the Tate Modern by photographer Jeff Wall and he talked about one of his photos “Mimic”

Mimic [9] (1982) typifies Wall’s cinematographic style and according to art historian Michael Fried “characteristic of Wall’s engagement in his art of the 1980s with social issues”.[10] A 198 × 226 cm. colour transparency, it shows a white couple and an Asian man walking towards the camera. The sidewalk, flanked by parked cars and residential and light-industrial buildings, suggests a North American industrial suburb. The woman is wearing red shorts and a white top displaying her midriff; her bearded, unkempt boyfriend wears a denim vest. The Asian man is casual but well-dressed in comparison, in a collared shirt and slacks. As the couple overtake the man, the boyfriend makes an ambiguous but apparently obscene and racist gesture, holding his upraised middle finger close to the corner of his eye, “slanting” his eye in mockery of the Asian man’s eyes. The picture resembles a candid shot that captures the moment and its implicit social tensions, but is actually a recreation of an exchange witnessed by the artist.

It made me think about truth and photography: why was a still taken at the moment perceived to truer than a re-creation of that moment. Maybe a re-creation could be closer to the truth.

Anyway, I decided to document that performance at the Colony Room Club eight years after the event. I decided that it should take the form of a graphic novel. Initially I did the illustrations myself but I wasn’t happy with them as they did not have the language of the graphic novel. I then asked (and paid) a proper French illustrator, Emmanuel Cerisier, to illustrate it for me. I sent him my illustrations, some photographs of people and locations and the text and gave him carte blanche. I said that if he could, I would love to have someone punching me on the face, that didn’t happen but I thought it would look cool.