Language Image Sound Object

How did changes come about proceeding from your early work, leading you to develop new approaches, and how did text figure in those developments?

I first read poetry on the academic circuit (1966), image-based work as in Obituaries and Celebrations (1996), eventful texts, re-creations of, for example, five conversations going on at once, portions of each partly heard. A quiet event poem I would surround with silence to give space, or deliver a poem in such a way as to underline an irony, yet fitting a fairly conventional reading format. By the time I joined up with WHSSHT (we were several artists from various backgrounds—John Latham was central to the group) in 1967, I had already some experience of the potential for transferring text to event. First I provided text in collaboration with the sculptor Peter Dockley. At one performance with our seven male/female voice team moving on a floor plan with words/volume changes according to where they were placed, a hippie who thought it was “participation” shouted from the sidelines, drowning the words. I decided next on a Silent Poet artwork, using body/being as conveyance for communication. That artwork had virtually no language apart the image of my body and my “being there.” In the last work with WHSSHT I decided to protect my body, so made a semi-transparent box in which I grew very old over a period of four hours.

Text resurfaced strongly in my multimedia artworks (1969–71) which had three levels of processable-by-viewer data. For the verbal I followed the line of a zany art-lecture, speaking topics from a depth midway between a character drawn from subjective experience and a lecturer. I made notes for texts before these enactments, with room to develop them on the spot. Many aspects of the topics were outside the scope of the academic, quite strong stuff, on aspects of human psyche, war, violence, leading right to an edge. The visual basis was projected slides of collages, made from contemporaneous newsdata/personal notes/photos, which would affect the speaker (me) by their dramatic content. From minimal notes I would then ad-lib, prodded by the visuals. Text development related also to a feeling for the audience and their reaction to the content of visuals: an interface.

The last of these works I performed on the stage of the Royal Court Theatre in London, where it became possible for me to speak in alexandrine-rhymed couplets. I’ve never been certain the couplets suited the Kabuki Samurai-Self character the lecturer had by then become—the couplets had a Euro-court ring. The creations were each like a shelter in which I could discover/ express/meet a challenge. These artworks as “shelter” apply to the way I use language, in that the artwork is the context giving me the rules. The text notes I take off from are part of equipment for going into the unknown.

Was this way of working improvisation? Would you call it that?

I learned through experience to demand a presence from myself, not acting, but self-regulation in regard to spontaneous developments. This was not precisely “improvisation.” I had learned through the creations to work out of my subjective self. By the time I formed Monkey Enterprises INK, ¹ under which aegis Monkey Theatre evolved (1972), I knew I might find other artists able to hinge in with my ideas, who could know or learn to use responsible selective initiative, and to create language from the arts which they would bring to each work. In relation to subjective work you’re best off if you know how to observe yourself, and know about your potential reactions. This is so that a development may have reciprocity between the performer and the performer’s uses and choices of language, and between performers each to each. Monkey Theatre was a “mutuality” experience of “laterality” between worker-performers. Experiencing of the situation by the performer was as valued as the possible experience for the audience. Monkey related back a bit to the People Band, an outfit of...