Interview|Stuart Middleton
[Mr. Qiao]
This is your first time having an exhibition in China, how do you feel?
[Stuart Middleton]
We were just talking before about when I first made the film, I decided to make it in a very large format and make the puppy itself like the size of a normal dog. It is disappointed that when we were making the ICA show, the screen itself would be about half the size of the photographs that we used to make animation. So to have the opportunity to show it in this format in Qiao’s space is a really amazing opportunity because I never saw the world would be able to be shown like such perfect. Also, there is no language in the videos. It is one of those things that is like testing the universe. The image of the dog and the noise that the dog made is the same in China and in England. That is built in the work in a way. It is really nice for me that there is like a strength in that. Because a lot of those works, specifically the snail and the dog, are about trying to imagine what is it to be without language and how you can perform this thinking or communicating.
[Vanessa Carlos] It looks like he is exiting in a vacuum. It’s like all the emotions of existing and all the emotions of…suffering? (said by Stuart Middleton ) [Stuart Middleton] [Vanessa Carlos] [Stuart Middleton] [Stuart Middleton] [Vanessa Carlos] [Stuart Middleton] [Vanessa Carlos] I always think there is a kind of social implication, like making something that just was there. [Stuart Middleton] [Mr. Qiao] [Stuart Middleton] [Vanessa Carlos] [Stuart Middleton] [Mr. Qiao] [Stuart Middleton] The dog it just stare. There is the tail which just left to right. Really direct relationship I quite keep it [Mr. Qiao] I don’t mind actually. I think it’s quite nice if there is not too much explanation. I am happy for them to experience the works as just they are in this context. [Vanessa Carlos] [Mr. Qiao] [Mr. Qiao] [Stuart Middleton] [Mr. Qiao] [Stuart Middleton] [Vanessa Carlos] Only the sculptures that are not used in the animation be going to the world of sculptures. But the ones that are used in the films, they are like…. [Stuart Middleton] [Mr. Qiao] [Stuart Middleton] [Vanessa Carlos] [Mr. Qiao] [Stuart Middleton] [Mr. Qiao] Not really no. In Glasco, the art scene is definitely secondary to the music scene. The most interesting creative voices are music in Glasco for sure. I think sound is increasingly like make… when thinking about the installations, even the ones not included in the videos. Like you were saying at Adrian’s space, the echoes, the nature light of that also kind of intrines it into the atmosphere of that work but in a seamlessly way. Thinking about what kind of materials to use in these installation is like thinking about how the space is going to feel which also includes how it is going to sound like. I guess it is really important. And also like with the animation integrating that into the space, into that sound, into this kind of sculptural entity. It is not music though, it’s the sound.
I always think of the dog video is like, existential, is like the movie, “Waiting for Godot,” but a dog version.
There is a lot of idioms in the English language about suffering, like for dogs specifically.
When I moved to England, I didn’t know that “suffer” does not just mean suffering but also has a deeper meaning, a deeper political meaning.
Suffering was like a ‘vote’
It’s also like a way of looking it as extensionalism but a bit humorous because the idea of a dog is like the existential crisis but without language.
How would you talk about the making of them? Your handmade thing and the sounds you made with it?
The sounds are all made with my mouth. It is digitally affected but there is no sound effect over it. So it is kind of like a self-portrait in a way. They are all made out of things that are very common but it is processed with CGI. The process itself is kind of retrogressive also. The dog is made of fur coat and with aluminum foil. The technology of it is very low.
Why is that important to you, is it like your autonomy of being able to make something like that, which is technically super skilled but also like unskilled?
Again, it goes back to how it is being shown here, it is like to take something that is very accessible, and then put it through this processive transformation where it comes to a quite monumental thing, in a really straight forward wayLike a kind of sticky, like a kind of ten-mile mound. It is a really simple trick, something anyone can decode.
So you normally create with images and videos right?
Yeah, the videos are made of stop- frame photographs basically. So the snail is like 48-thousand photographs.
Because the snail moves so slowly, it is also a reason of trying to make the snail because it can be one of the most difficult things. You can’t move too fast, that is also like one of the value (laugh).
The slime of the snail is actually Vaseline. It is melted with a hairdryer. It looks like it is liquid but it is actually solid, like a gel.
It is supposed to be like a parent and child.
But it is also from making the video of the dog, I was thinking a lot about how an animal in fictional, in culture, can be used as something to project human emotion, to support different kinds of ideas. Snails don’t have gender, they have both genders. There is no relationship between the parent and child. They can hatch, both lay eggs of their children. I thought they could be one of the furthest creatures away from our understanding of relation or family. Also, they have this kind of cuteness you could amplify to make this kind of toxic relation between these two figures.
All the films have been shown in museums in Europe before.
The dog was in ICA. The snail was in Graz. The boy was in kunsthaus Glarus.
Stuart tends to work project based. And I think it is a really nice opportunity to bring them all togetherThe set of practices and the story of animations.
Mostly like the snails and the dog- this kind of integrated installation,the sound of the snail is installed throughout the installation. It is like a kind of spiral. When you are walking through it you have kind of like this monstrous sound, the sound is like a kettle box, but then when went into the final room, there is this video of the snails moving around. The downstairs of the ICA was like completely empty and the upstairs, there was this ???, integrating into this narrative installation in some sense.
How come for this exhibition you chose to have two speakers instead of having surround sound?
For the dog it was always just.., and for the snails it would be on headphones I think. It is just a kind of constraint of showing them all together. It is like a way of thinking about how to re-imagine them also.
Do we need to have text and explanation for the works?
I always think that they communicate through a mood more than something literal. I always think he thinks like a writer somehow, so for me, the most poetry, like the way the images come together. So I also think it’s nice to have it really open.
But there are some texts. We can provide them if you need.
If we got people asking questions, we want to be able to answer.
Can you tell us a little about your experience? Like where did you study and how did you start creating art? 可以稍微跟
I studied in London and I studied in German. My parents aren’t interested in art or anything like that. I am from a small village, which got about only 10 or 12 houses in it. I’ve just always been interested in art, representational art, and then just through art school and reading I guess, that’s just my vibe.
But overtime it becomes about how to use that or think about representation as a kind of scale that you can apply. You can choose how clearly you represent something basically. The dog was like a very clear representation. The installation tries to directly represent an atmosphere, but in a way that is very ambiguous, much less clear.
But it is very well presented, visually.
The stop-frame photos can be works as well.
And the puppets as well. We have like a complicated relationship with the puppets, because the puppets themselves have like a character to them since they have been used to make these videos. But at the same time, their value as an object is very different, like a sculpture in some sense. So it’s quite hard to resolve that. It is like they exist there, but it is almost inconvenient to me, in terms of how I think about the work, the work is the video, but also the puppets are very beautiful to me. I am very attached to them. They sentimentally exist as well, like a family member.
Remember about having the puppets by their own, but then Stuarts made these other sculptures that were like from the same something. It’s weird.
But it is a nice way to work. It frees you up from the iconography of a single individual work, a sculpture in space, meaning it puts the focus much more on the process of creating things, which is great for me. But when it comes to present, it could be kind of difficult.
Where is your studio? Is it in London?
It is in Glasgow.
It is an old prison.
I have been there.
It’s in an old prison from the 18s.
Does music play an important role in your works?