1995
TAPE 3A
Interview 12 August 1995
No, I think you know you may be misled in this idea that the jumping out of time was just a practical necessity for the motivation to jump out of limited group of people. Just because that is the way I function you know, in my descriptions how I build these pieces, I don't know where I am going you know but I am going something, I mean each, of them demonstrates a distance it has nothing to do with my process and that's the real, I don't know how much to articulate it you know that that this idea that I feel that the best way to work, the only way, one of the just techniques to tap your intuition is in fact to keep yourself from knowing what you are doing otherwise your analytical mind will like kind of take over and for and I think I imagine that most artists have, many good artists have, this technique I mean that's the real technique of being an artist knowing how to tap your intuition and tap it under pressure and it is easy to do when I wake up in the morning I have nothing to do and you talk to your intuition and another thing to be on a fucking line and I would say (back there subconscious products) and so, no, because I see it now in a way I am looking back at these sound works, I am able to see what there identify this idea of terrain and then this idea of texture and all these things which its really putting words to my intuition (after the fact, right), of course, otherwise it's no that's an illustration of a fat mind fat, (yeah) and that's the whole problem we deal with in this. (But I think that this), this intuition we deal with in this over articulated world. (But then I think that needs emphasising that in order, in making each work, you have to think in a, you are beginning to think in a non musical way, right, in a way that's not characteristic of music that is to say you have to do something other than build a series of sound events in time. I mean take first of all drive in music, the different transmitters, are they, what were they transmitting, just continuous sound?), yeah, (So it was the passing through this series, right?). That's came with the bridge because it's moving from the works still was placed in time but it was placed in time it was heard in time nobody stopped in the middle of the street because it wasn't one texture wasn't very interesting, you know, but it was place in time by the listener and I placed it in space, so it's like one foot in music and one foot in installation and then Fan Music was the break, complete break of that, there was no (Well Fan Music is another good example because the, each of the fans although sensitive to acid of the sun and amount of light is nevertheless a kind of single source like the single transmitters in drive in music), Yes, except that you know (little variation) no, not perceptible variation because it was so slow, unless a cloud came over and then something changed but, you know, the changes were not of the perceptible kind, if something changes over 10 minutes in sound you sure know it changes that's the whole basis for the time piece technique but the difference in drive in music is that the path was specified, there was, it was and that's why it's also a passage, you could only drive through this thing in two directions you had some kind of variation in speed or things like that but it's completely different situation to be in an open terrain (Ready to move around.) well you move anywhere, you know, so that's kind of why it also is in between, it's a bridge between music and place sort of speak. I was fascinated, I mean this idea also came from reading scores as a percussionist, graphic scores, you know, and seeing, you now, what I did when I was the person in the car, you know, as a performer, you read left and right to left and then, you know, in the case of “staccasm” you could read, turn it, over and read it, left to right (Talk a bit more about that because I am not, I know about reading scores but not percussion scores.). Well it's not just contemporary music scores I mean I think Cagen “staccasm” meant (What did you say the meaning regarding to turn it over that you could go either way in this road.), yeah, yeah, but also I mean what “déclassé” this piece and other pieces were written in such a way that you could read the score either way one way that time is going this way and the other was going the other way, of course. I mean, you are always reading left to right but if you turned it over you are reading the other way and so I, you know, I was, it was the whole thing was “Maxfeed” this object that I made that made that I sold to people that allowed them to make these feed back sounds complex feed back situations that I was doing on stage it was in a way and a lot of this, the talk about my percussion realisations was placing a listener in the position of the composer what composers had done before me was place the performer in the position of the composer and I was going a step further (Yeah, yeah) and I was taking another step with this by getting thing we don't need to be in a concert hall but in “Maxfeed” I was saying OK, you're the listener but you're the performer. One of the titles of those percussion record review when the listener is the performer or when the listener is the composer so I mean there is a continuity there (But what you're saying is that there is preparation within music itself for your step out of music in the sense that even though in Stockhausen there is a series of sound events in time you can be read backwards, like there is already a weakening of the, let's say weakening, of the business of progression so that it doesn't matter where you're going just one way, one way in time even though are go the opposite way). Well, on the other hand I mean if Stockhausen get the idea from Cage and he has always regretted it, you know, this idea of allegoric but he interpreted it in German way, where Cage, his scores are about really catalyst for performers to make their own music, they're drawings that can be interpreted in many different ways, you're free to, you know, you follow some rules but what comes out as sound is not something John conceived. He conceived an activating process for a performer basically, after those early metal pieces but Stockhausen of course interpreted this as a variable composition and “dichrous” is a very complex puzzle that you have to put together which allows these choices of where to place elements in time within certain confines depending on the structure and all the symbols are reversible when you turn them up-side down they look like the same, I mean, there if there is a staff there is another staff upside down on the other side of the line so it reads that way, always. It was his very Germanic way of reacting to this chaos of Cage in his mind, you know, and so one of the most outrageous, you know, of course, it's a scandal too, in a musical world that can turn the score, each score upside down because it's joke, it's, you know, oh you know, doesn't even have the music right side up, you know, in fact the result was that one person, everybody played it the same way I was the only one to turn it upside down and play it both ways (Which shows how at that time both the music is a line in time was central to music but also there was, you know, a beginning within music to step beyond that). Not really to step out of time at all, it was being different ways of functioning in time (That it could be turned upside down), that just meant, you know, that it was different order but it did connect, I mean, but of course I know I was working on a two way street it was obvious that the order of these sounds could be in two ways but that was something that was brewing in there but even Cage never stepped out of time his idea about silence was, what it did to time, and it was always I mean, he was interested in, there was, his talk about, in a way he was trying to step out of time by saying, listen to the sound and making so much silence around so sounds that a sound event would stand out on its own but there were always events and you can never jump out in an event (Yes, but the sound events in that big event of time are in a sense random, the coughs and so on of the audience, and that could be played backwards, I mean, they could come anywhere in that space). Did you ever hear a cough backwards, it's great (no, no, I don't mean a cough backwards, I mean that cough A and cough B), could be displaced but that's more, but that's just manipulation but it's still in the time domain and it's about time nobody was thinking you know nothing happens you know I mean 433 is not really typical of Cage's work it's just the most well known, I mean, it does through everybody, almost general public knows this idea because it was so, so beautiful but, I mean, on this, again on the surface it was a scandal to take the best pianist in the world and have him sit at the piano (But you referred to the other category of Cage's sounds where he brings things from outside, I mean, that is something, the first experience I had of Cage's like that just playing whatever was on the radio is about accompaniment **** and Cunningham was good catalyst in that too because contrary to normal practise he didn't wait to create the dance until he had music he made the dance and said, look I need 10 minutes of sound here and that's what Cage would come up with). Not really, it was a strange kind of mix, I mean, I know the dance, dancers are always entitled to a piece of music and that's such a deep tradition because you're dancing, in the beginning you were dancing to the music that's what made you dance and Cage titles were titles of *** dances at least up to a certain point but the amazing need that I saw there was that they realised that it wasn't very interesting to make music to dance to and their agreement was only that they would both work in the same place at the same time and nobody ever, nobody from the stage ever thought of taking a queue from what's going on. These were two different groups, we didn't talk to each other we just, I played in the band a few times before I stopped performing and that was a wonderful thing that this this very clear agreement that these very, two different people would work in two mediums at the same time in the same place of course the audience read it as together but that was there (But that simply from the habit of inherited tradition). Exactly, but you know it was in no way a collaboration that's what, that's what basically made it so beautiful that it wasn't this idea of Marse's bedroom to have two artists working together for a gazumped work (It's a collaboration in a minimum sense that, you know, that Marse says I am going to dance for 10 minutes and I need, you know, 10 minutes of staff ie you need to do your bit). I am not so sure I don't think so (No more and no less), no I don't think it was ever said you know I don't remember, I mean (You were in it) was 20 something years ago but I don't think we had the time but it was clearly I mean Morse dancers danced as long as he wanted to and you know if, if he finished before somebody was finished doing something that they were doing in the pit they kept going and finished and, you know, dancers went on the stage or they were on the stage or all those kind of things occurred you know (Let's talk about Villa Celle in this context as to it's relation to time or not, it's not a two way street but it's more than a two way street isn't it?). Well, also yes, I mean, it was a field of sound, sound field (A place to walk around I mean were there paths?) No, it was wooded grove but I mean sound field and *** (there) it was this wooded grove on a hillside that this path was going along up above a lake about 10 metres above a lake and running through this, there were main roads through this, there are main roads through park but there is this little path a kind of short cut down to the lake but you didn't really see it from the road you had to, kind of, find it but it was a very clear path it even had a bench on it. This is a very strange park, it was like, you know, like built with shovels by some pope who happened to have the land and it was total artificial, the lake was artificial, the waterfalls, the bridges, none of it was really just dug it out shovel by shovel and made a Disneyland of their time. It had *** groves it had, you know, just like, but this particular hillside was in tact there was also another path from the main road that started in a clearing in the tree and then diverged off and came down and met this other path in a kind of “T”. There is a working drawing that's also a print that shows the four sound sources and how they function, kind how they mix together but I am slipping back into yesterday's technical mood (Is the intersection past the centre of the work?). No, (it's 120 x 60 m) so there is a stretch that went around the hillside and there is this path that went down. There were four sources kind of in the row and every other one related to, there were two pairs but they were interspersed and two of them grew very gradually and died very gradually and extended out of the grove into these pathways I mean to the roads, so that if there is a lead there is again like the bells of Sankt Cäcilien it wasn't the work, but an announcement of the work, they way of announcing it so if you were not in the woods when you heard it from there but you said what's going on on this grove it could you lead you to find this path, this place. (And the other). Those were two constant pairs, that's more like how do you get this thing to work, I mean, the (but then you took your queue, as it were, from the typical sounds of the place, was that in terms of Pieche(?) or in terms of the difference between recognisibility and non recognisibility) It was part of this general concept of working with the plausibility of a sound in a place and making it just implausible enough to make the shift happen, but not so implausible that it becomes a thing on it's own leaving it attached, attaching it to the place but causing the shift to happen (but in terms of loudness in relation to existing sounds, are they the same loudness or less). The thing that these announcement pair did was grow and subside, so the growth extended this piece out into the road where you could be curious about it but also it was a loudness pattern that related to the things happened with insects, with sound, that they go up together and they come down again, so there was this similarity in pitch and similarity in loudness contour which related to that but again it was much more complex. I never set out, I mean, it's very easy to make a sound exactly like a cricket, the thing that I tried to do is make you imagine a cricket, evoke the cricket but going further in this case it was evoking sounds, insects that you never heard before, made you hear insects which were other wooded life (Yeah, yeah, I mean you heard something which you know very well was not a cricket). You heard it and you didn't hear it, again it was on in at a level it's loudness level was that ambiguous point too. But, you know, when I built it it's whole structure, I'm not saying that I'm going to make it a little louder because that sounds, you know, it's just this, I'm the instrument, I go, I start, I finish, I mean, I had no idea about, I didn't in my mind, in my process in tapping this *** this, this instrument of this intuition person who doesn't talk directly to me, I can't ask him questions, he had quite a mind of his own and I review him so, I mean, but in fact the result can't be the result is it's own character and it can't be analysed in except in a kind of very large ways that we're doing which area, general contour, loudness contour, overall level, big descriptions, big generalities about this sound character, but (The, it's also to do with again the sense of place that is the sounds that are there and the sounds that are added in order to shift you to another place and that's why we are taking literally about crickets because it, that has that certain pitch, certain loudness and you know, take queue, as it were, from that but it's not in order to) No, they were continuous sounds too, crickets are *** (Yeah, you would describe as a terrain rather than a texture). No, no, it's homogeneous you didn't find something different at one end of the path or another even though it had a terrain in it that wasn't the perceptible part of the piece it's own field (and if you sat on the bench, was the bench. a place where you could hear it?). Yes, oh yeah, (what did you hope to hear if you're sitting, still looking down over the lake?). Well actually the bench faced away from the lake although it could have faced towards the lake but *** behind it were taken away. No I think it's with difference of the chairs in Five Russians, allowing the possibility of passage because the path led to passage but also the possibility of listening while sitting. I was happy to find it and it's in a drawing, working drawing afterwards. (Now, Basel is the same year, 83, how did that happen?). Jean Christophe came to ***, came to ARC and heard that piece, which he describes (right) and that, then he came to New York to my studio *** worked together and then he asked me to make a piece in the fall (and this piece is again not a terrain?). No it's, it's more, it's more bringing that room to life in some way, to a life of it's own and after having been a vehicle of exposition and built conceived as a classical vehicle of exposition huge, big white walls, very formal, very, but turning it into a room again, reforming it as in a sense of reformed free market. (Well, say more about that as it's a word you use in the text). Well, yes, it's a double meaning there to reshape, right, but also to reform as in a reform school, I mean, make this take it better, well to, I mean it's in a way (to restore it) but I mean to reform it is a little ironic something so proper and so, so it's such a place made for reverence (and in a sense the sounds are irreverent), well, yes, of course if I take what they, one of the fears Christophe had was this terrible floor, which made sound, how can I make a sound work in there, nobody would make electronic music concert in there because floor creaked. I said delicious, you want to hear it creek, No, it's quite special because again they weren't sounds of the heating system or the floor or outside, but they evoked those things and the only real anomaly they were close to that, they were close enough so that you could say was that the heating system or was it the pipe going bang, or was it the anomaly and the dimension of plausibility was built by density, if nobody was walking in the roof and you could hear the floor creek you heard several creeks and it was this walking to the space and there's much more going on then should be if this room was completely empty and by itself. (Did you think this room was haunted?). No, no it wasn't that, no, because it was much more subtle, you know, it wasn't, I'm sure I mean, many people may have not consciously realised that's why that happened, because it was that subtle but still the organism registered and I mean your ears are constantly saying what's you know, they know the normal environment in the whole psychology is about sensing very subtle shifts in change in environment, that's how we survived, you know, something new happened here, curious, alert and that's the level the whole idea of plausibility works on, you know, that this something different here, smells different even though the person can't identify may be what it is. (But with the tension could you stay in the shift in place, there must be a point in which you say, well that's not the heating system I'm going to listen to it). Well, I mean it was the sound work, it was built as a sound work and at the last minute Jean Christophe panicked and had all the drawings that existed sent from New York and hang them in the stairway because he realised the room was empty, this, this it's amazing, I've seen it happen so many times, you talk to somebody and tell them there's just no visual element, there is nothing to see and they see you building this, putting resources behind something then when you finished they visualise, this room is empty, what am I going to do. (Well, but it's also the work is so, so minimal), maximum, my friend (all right, maximum, but I don't mean minimalist at all that you perhaps thought it would be something both louder and more recognisable). Why should it be, after experiencing ARC which many people insisted wasn't there at all as it's texture was so, so fine and Time Square they had those too which is laud, rolling bridge but in it's context just as subtle as ARC (Did he, so he got cold feet but did he reconsider that at all, he was on for couple, a month or so) normal exhibition probably 6 weeks, oh, no, he (he didn't take down the drawings?) oh, no, no and you know, I didn't mind as long as the drawings were also shown at Sound Line because of the same reason, in a room behind the big space, in the last 2 weeks, it was (What they got cold feet and insisted on having drawings?) I mean, it's another reason why I don't insist that now that I'm showing drawings I don't want the sound work there (yeah, yeah) I mean, it's no it's just this some relation (when is the first diptych as introduction). I think it's Georgio's piece? (Yes, that's what you said yesterday but is the, in arriving at that, is it, there must have been before because it must have been in Hamburg, there must have been something in Hamburg). There was this little text as a label on the door but just the text and often I use the text (When was the first time you used the text in that way, what I am interested in is, is this, you know, we just discussed this thing happening twice, when they wanted the drawings as an introduction, is this in any way, that they the other people's initiative and you know, at some later state of your own initiative you used some kind of introduction to this sound work which is outside ***). First time it was Montmarte and I remember making work out of the labels inside, I mean all labels for every work in the garden had a special form very precisely designed, back faced, engraved and I don't remember what I did with that, but it was sitting next to the great and it was a verbal announcement (but all the drawings from these things at the time are working drawings really). They are statements how I made it. (Come back to Montmarte, because you told a story yesterday of *** sitting there hearing nothing, did that have anything to do with the label?). His reaction, no, I expected, I placed him in a place where he wouldn't hear anything I was really diabolic (No, no, but your making a label was that his insistence or was it part of the beginning?. No, no, I think, it's part of museumography, his job as a curator, he said, now what about the label and I said oh - the label, poor kid. (But then I guess further question is in regard to the use of in both cases just mentioned that's to say). But let's follow this trail of verbal or other kind of announcement (well drawing announcement especially) in the MCA Neff came to me after the piece was done and said we are being a specialist in for signage in the museum and he said I think it would be a very good idea if we put footprints on the Stairway, I mean, such a strange, I didn't realise he is very sensitive, I mean, he know exactly but in I don't remember may be in early 80s the museum decided to buy the working drawings and in spite my very clear agreement that nothing could be in the Stairway except the sound work itself, they hang the working drawings in the stairway deliberately and they stand there as deliberate violation of what I want to do. Nothing I could do was own the drawings, was own the piece. Five Russians, I don't think Brown, no there was the catalogue but it doesn't count, Villa Celle, no, ARC, no, Basel this was the first time that somebody (that's part of what I am interested in is that in any way a prelude to your creation of the diptychs that's in using the drawings). No, because they were not, I didn't have any objection to it because they didn't interfere with the experience of the work, they were about process and they showed a range of works (I don't think it's objectionable). I didn't object to it as long as it wasn't in the piece and they were all sensible enough to know that. It's you know, it's balancing the plausibility I can add something like the bell being the announcement in Villa Celle, I mean in Cologne and in Sankt Cacilien or has small plaque or a strange label in exactly the form of the modern except something was very different about it you know, all kind of (the ways of toying with it). Well, shaping it, adjusting it, adjusting the entrance in some way (But again these are things to do with galleries running public spaces, outdoor public spaces) well, Sankt Cacilien was in the park, outside, and it wasn't a verbal announcement it was sound, the fact that you heard the bell, but what you heard the bell, it wasn't the piece, it only drew you to the piece (but that strikes me as relating to Villa Celle). It is but I also is an announcement and what I am saying that I sometimes announce, let the piece announce itself by having on dimension that goes outside it as in Celle and as in Sankt Cacilien and sometimes I announce a piece by a plaque, a little text, for me it's in the category of announcement, the fact that it's a piece that I managed to do two things with the same sound is one thing but it's not any better, any worse it's what applies (2 things) how many **** get across the bridge (Two things occurred to me the remarks you made in regard to Hamburg that is the difference between people's expectations with regard to painting it's visual arts however subtle it might be and their expectation with regard to sound art). Exactly (right, but then the other thing) I mean this was one man show so people going there know that they were going to sound work, there was a huge group show nobody without catalogue would know there was a sound work in there and it was totally in the context, so, again, the context (but it seems to me if) taking on the context no matter what it is (that's important, you know, because what people's expectations are and the novelty of the work, right, but the other thing that occurred to me is that in both, if the work itself, if the work in its sense announces another part of itself then wouldn't you say there is a terrain there in both cases of Celle and Sankt Cacilien). No, because you're outside the piece for the announcement and all it does is draws you into the piece, the piece doesn't happen when you hear the announcement (fair enough), I mean, in Herr *** text where he talks about the piece being this bell means that he hasn't heard anything except the announcement (and yet he watched it being made. Well, we'll come to Cologne, well, I mean, is there more to be said about Basel? Well their might be an opportunity to say). It was also first form of catalogue, formal publication on the ignored creation of the sound work. There was a publication, very hurriedly done at ARC but it's worthless, very bad pictures (that's good, it means a certain kind of achievement in establishing sound worker's art form) yeah, and the back part of that publication is that this time piece edition which later I did as a print because I felt that I have pushed the concept of place work, it was solid, but what I was missing was this other half of the time piece was much harder to state and I was using every place I could to, at the same time, to propose this idea, propose this concept so it was the first, let's see, when was the Biannual time piece ARC type 83 or so (the ARC type Witney, it's in volume one) when was it, Biannual was in the fall (same year) busy, busy, (well, all over the place). OK, but bell was first because it was really done in 82, wasn't (Sankt Cacilien), no, Brown Dog Gallery (no that's 82) so it's listed here under 83 because it went on (when it was made) the spring was, yes, I remember what happened now after that I went to Italy to see the place, around Christmas, New Year and on the way back I came through Paris, met with Suzanne Paget and she proposed that, yes, I make a piece, for the spring at ARC and Biannual was in the fall and I built that piece in the summer at one point in time for, no, I built it fairly close to the opening so I must have built Celle before that and Carter must have come to Italy during that summer (I take it in the volume of the time piece in the future we will have lists of time pieces to solve the chronology with the places) Oh, yeas, where were we (I think we should move on to the Promenade, how did that come about). Well it was a group show. I was invited to participate in group show so they brought me to the site to look around you know, it was a park of mixed things, on the lake but the highway dissected the park and so the connection between the lakeside and the parkside was this pedestrian tunnel, very square shaped and I remember this argument after the bell rang, when I saw this tunnel, it was square you know, funny and very plain, just cement and didn't smell badly, pedestrian pissing in there but, and completely out of nature, just cement walls, and I told these two ladies who organised the thing, OK, it's a tunnel. I make a piece there. They said “Oh no, you're working in the tunnel in Paris and we don't want the same piece”. I mean, it is this problem that many, many people still consider me a conceptual artist and the concept is the place somehow, the place I choose to make the sound work in the most advanced ones, in the most primitive ones a concept is that sound installation, that's one piece. The last time a curator proposed a piece of mine to MoMA which I think was at the beginning of 80s, she called me back and I said, well, what happened, she said, no, tell me really what, what's happened. She said, well I have to say this to you Max but they feel that your work just hasn't developed. I said, when was the last time they heard work of mine. Well I don't think this was malicious or anything, it was just perception that it's conceptual art and he keeps making these sound pieces, over and over again. (Well, it's again contrast between, you know, a painter and his ****, right, and someone who has to go around all these sites in order to make the things, it's musty people who are going to sponsor the work themselves go round to the sites and hear substitutes done, they're not going to know it, right, they can't see photographs (SIDE 2 OF THE TAPE) but even so books are useful but even so (books are useful because they show the work you done, surely in the application in relation to possible second MoMA piece, is that, you would have indicated what work you were doing and had done so they would have had the equivalent of the book but they still would not have heard any of the work). They wouldn't have the equivalent of the book because the drawings did not exist. I haven't found this way of circumscribing the work which makes it clear what they are ( and their difference from one another). Very much so, the reaction of the drawing exhibition is almost too many ideas, it's very dense, they're shocked and then most of them insist what you can't now all these things have been realised, right. But as I was saying yesterday this 31 represents probably 310 site surveys, proposing of a site and some, something going wrong with the process (so, I mean that is interesting as it's extremely, you are extremely busy with works at this time, but also works that finally were realised, but also you know, look at other possible places for further works). No but I am always doing that, I mean, it's very hard to explain to people that, I said MoMA was travelling, where are you travelling. Only the last sound work you did was 1983 (Well that makes it double ironic, isn't it, that MoMA should say that because that). I think it was Bill *** not quite gone also (yeah, it's well enough about ****). Wont you go home Bill Bailey (to come back to Promenades there is a sound, suddenly disappears when you exit the tunnel, why did you do that?) Again, I shouldn't go back into the process because I don't know why I did it (what about the place, what about business of, you see I don't know the site, what about the business of going from one end to the other). Exactly, I mean, the sound was again a wooded sound, an imaginary wooden sound and when you're walking in the tunnel you're whole, because it's dark, this one didn't have much lighting at all, what you're focused on is the exit, it's the light in there and that's where you are going and you are probably going to say but why is this passage but (I can see it as a room, a long room) but there is only one, it is you don't walk back and forth in it, you don't stand in the tunnel, you walk through it but in fact the piece wasn't in the tunnel, the piece and in this case the sound wasn't an announcement for the piece but it drew you into the piece the fact it, it I made it so that it's loudest, if enters the tunnel at the entrance and it was directed down the tunnel in such a way that it seemed to come from the walls of the tunnel itself, so along with this gradual approaching visual image of light at the end of the tunnel there was a sound which, as you approach the light, became louder and louder so, automatically inside you were saying, your organism was saying well this sound is where the light is and even though you may hear the sound or may not hear the sound your organism knows these things are together and then, all of the sudden, when you reach the light, the sound disappears so that, I mean, it was the space, the space was outside the tunnel (what about the plausibility of the sound, did what I mean is, did, when you enter the tunnel, did you begin to think that you are hearing the echoes from place you just left?). No, you didn't really, didn't really hear I don't hear on any level until you were at least third way down the tunnel (right, so associated with the other end). Of course, you heard nothing there. (I mean, say you've been in this tunnel before, well it doesn't make sense, well, again it's question of plausibility of the sounds, I mean, what were they like in terms of, you know, what you were expecting to see when you came out of the tunnel?) **** so it could much more resemble shape of a cricket but not a cricket at all (What about the fact that you can walk either way in this tunnel?). There was no way to get to the lake side except through this tunnel so no one could walk for the first time from the lake once they walked through it (Right, it's useful clarification. Let's push on. The piece you did for Eric. How did you meet him?). I met him in Geneva because I was working with a terrible woman who found me at the Villa Celle one day after I was working she was sitting outside, her name was Mary Louise Jeanna and she run a gallery in New York, a known crook and she had this centre in **** in Piedmont which was a group of houses that she bought and fixed up for art studios and she insisted that I come there and take studio for a year, it also helped me stay *** stay in Europe because I had this studio there (Where again?). Oysanno(?) which is near, not far from Genoa in between *** and Genoa (On the Rivera?) but up in Piedmont. I think it was Oysanno(?). But Eric being the other gallerist there came to the opening there and it was clear that he understood ***. She was just *** (She came to the Promenade?) No, he came to the opening, I did a drawing show with her and I did some additions with her which she forced me to sign and then stole and never paid me and I had to go to court and learned Swiss justice which is very simple - they don't do much work in courts in Switzerland, when there are two people, one Swiss and one isn't, the Swiss wins; until it's gets complicated with two Swiss arguing. She had no case whatsoever, I had it on paper, 35,000 Swiss francs, cunt. (Eric however found you there?) Yes, the whole gallerists are crooks basically, some more crooked than others. He has relatively fine, upstanding reputation (What was his gallery like, he hasn't got a gallery now?). No, he gave it up in Geneva about a year and the half ago. It was a typical like ground floor apartment with high ceilings, a typical Genevan with two big exhibition rooms and then a small room which he used as an office but he also had works in there as many galleries do, they put most important works in the office so they can shut the door. (But he talked to you at this drawing show and was interested?), also I mean many people, many gallerists from Neil Castel onwards wanted me to do a piece in the gallery but it wasn't about being really interested in the work, it was technique of having the galleries; of problem is how do you get people into the gallery; and to do concert Paul *** has developed it in a finer sense but Leo was doing concerts also in early 70s **** but you know I didn't feel like being a publicity agent for Castel (London was like that too, in fact Tony run a gallery at that time in Covent Garden in the, in addition to performance art there was) Tony who? (Tony Stokes whom you met in December. There was musical work performed in what was really an art gallery). The problem is that the exhibition is not an event and they utilise everything they can from the opening which is social opportunity and even on the most basic level of feeding the organism, or getting drank, they use every gimmick they can to get the folks in the door and make it into something special, I mean, to make the artist who is not by nature a public figure or celebrity, make him into a celebrity using the performer as a way of connecting in with the performer therefore he becomes the performer's kind of natural celebrity because he has to stand on stage by himself, the artist isn't. I say it always as marketing and always rejected it. I did, I learned it kind of actually by doing by-product in Pola Cooper's gallery which I made by-product of Steve Rice music before I realised that I was totally used in this situation by Steve Rice who no one ever heard of in New York and by Pola Cooper who no one heard of either. (They have now both.) So I was really, you know, it was one of those days. I would say, oh shit, you know I am not going to be, I also realised that after being in the *** that serious collectors are rather interesting people and why not think about doing work for one person, I mean, again and also contradicting this idea that I was supposed to be political champion of public art and art for the masses and all this, bring up this issue, again and that's why the time “work for one person” you know, and No 1 because I had vision that this would be, I mean, there was no, I also realised there was no way gallerist could sell work of mine, there was no documentation in the mid 80s (Did you talk to him about that, that's about work that was not, I mean the work, I mean works in the exhibition spaces like, say Basel, are for that space and we cannot really take it anywhere else but you were doing in Geneva for the first time in creating a form of a work that might sellable and realisable in a different space to it?) No. not really if was more of an example of a work on a personal scale (Right, then why is it, why is the issue of saleability come up?). Well, the galleries are not funded, they have to function no matter how much they're interested in art, unless they are philanthropist but then they are art galleries. So for me that was a way of Eric doesn't talk much and he doesn't like to talk on the telephone even if it's a local call he tries to say six words and get off the phone and he hates the telephone, he is a very shy person but, but **** (No, no, he is hard but he is shy). May be, may be that's it, I never been able to I just kind of compensate for his form and try not to dent it too much. (So it's really what's the conception of the work). Well, my conception, I was at that point I was really fascinated by this idea that of making the presence of making sounds as a presence and it came, I mean, it was in the rooms piece it was the beginning of that. I wasn't interested really in having the sound heard, it was more that it should be an entity, a spirit in this room (a shape?). No, in fact I mean, Eric's piece is portable because I had to , I had this thing where I didn't want to superimpose on any other work and so my solution was to make it, I didn't want it, I also didn't want it to have a switch because then it would become a piece, a piece of something that you could turn it on and would relate to turning on a record or a light, let's turn on the sound piece now, OK, sit down there, here we have a sound piece, so my solution was to let it turn itself on when it was ready, and everybody knows that in darkness your whole mind just goes, your eyes start to adjust but all that's going on is coming through your ears and so your all mind shifts focus changes and so this combination of letting it turn itself on when any visual work in that space wasn't there any more, as the room was dark and that all perception was focused, heightened, was perfect and it was also because of this dealing with this incredible focus of listener, automatic focus, I can go on with this idea of *** where I could really make a subtle sound so I also made it, so it didn't come on immediately if you shut so it wouldn't come on unless you gather all that light out of the room and you couldn't see anything any more it just wouldn't come on, when you did it didn't come on immediately, you had to sit there for 3 minutes or so and very gradually it appeared as present (was there an opening?) No, and Eric, Eric is kind of funny because he is a collector and he comes from a very wealthy family and I think he is half collector, half gallerist and he, you, know, it's a mixed thing, I mean, to be a gallerist and the collector is also a very good way to be a collector because you get all the, you are part of the group and you get all the deals but also he is so much more genuine then that, he picked very carefully who he showed and he didn't show anybody he didn't like and when he liked someone he did everything he could for them and that's still the case.