Ed Atkins’ Performing Avatars–Generative Technology in Contemporary Art–Tate Survey Exhibition

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Episode......................................................................

Contemporary artist Ed Atkins’s survey at Tate Britain is best described as an existential theatre with avatars, CGI, motion capture technology, traditional figural drawing, Unreal Engine, filmed performance, experimental writing and much more. 

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Architect and first-time guest on the podcast, Nick Taylor, and I, get lost, fall into the temporary exhibition through a faulty door, rush through the show to watch the timed film, return a second time because one of us went to Tate Modern first, discuss exhibition-visiting methods, critique wall texts, and reflect upon our own relation with time, narrative, devotion and death.

If you enjoyed the episode, you may enjoy my essays on Substack: ⁠⁠https://joanaprneves.substack.com⁠⁠

Across all technologies, we've asked the same questions: 

…are we spectators or actors? 

…contemplative or engaged? 

…are images and the people in them dead? 

…and if so, why are they moving (both as a verb and an adjective)?

Hailed as a pioneer of digital technology, Ed Atkins' work found its groove in early experiments with video-editing. These quickly migrated into the world of gaming, with its motion capture and CGI animation, and their striking similarity with live performance through timed duration, but with a complicated relation with the physical world and real, fleshy bodies.

For behind the scenes clips and visuals follow us on Instagram: @exhibitionistas_podcast

We discuss: #parenting, #audience #engagement, #theatre spaces, fear, #vulnerability, #narrative building, #virtual realities, #self-representation, #identity, spatial dynamics, #modernism, #existentialism, #mortality, #parenthood, #theatre, #experimental film, emotional detachment, #intergenerational connections, #illness, #family dynamics.

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Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Setup

02:31 Memories of Tate Modern

07:07 Pivotal Moments in Ed Atkins' Career

14:03 A Few Points Of Reference For Ed Atkins' Work

18:21 When The Artist Writes Their Own Wall Texts

22:35 Narratives On And Off The Screen(s)

27:17 The Exhibition as Experimental Writing

32:07 Narrative Building in Art Experiences

37:33 Theatre Without Actors

41:03 Self-Representation and Identity in Art

46:19 Spatial Dynamics and Human Scale in Art

53:23 Modernism and Its Absence in the UK

55:31 Life As Utter Devotion, Art As Its Awareness

01:02:36 The Disconnect Between Generations in Art

01:07:18 Reading Emotion: Ed Atkin's New Film With Real Actors

01:11:40 The Journey Through Illness and Art

01:16:51 The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Spectators

01:22:16 OUTRO

About us: If you enjoy the podcast If Books Could Kill and You Are Good, you will enjoy Exhibitionistas, where artists are unveiled through current and pertinent angles, and through thoughts and feelings. These podcasts were a great inspiration for our format because they're nerdy and engaging, researched and approachable. The co-host and the guest co-host engage in a conversation informed by an accessible and lively presentation of the subject, through which you can reflect on a show you've seen or discover it if you can't go, learn or re-evaluate artistic topics crossing over into our everyday lives.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
I'm Joanna Pierre Nevis, your host, and this is exhibitionist
this. I'm an independent writer and
curator with a wide-ranging 2 decades career in contemporary
art, from commercial galleries to art fairs, from research to
curating, from Lisbon to London through Paris.

(00:28):
But when I'm asked what I do outside the out world, the
inevitable reaction is, oh, I don't know anything about
contemporary art. Ouch.
So call it a midlife crisis, call it arrogance, but I gave
myself the task of trying to fill that gap with Co host
conversation Episodes centered around a genuine exchange of

(00:51):
thoughts, feelings and precious context around solo exhibitions,
interviews and special episodes based on a particular topic to
keep you alert and on your toes.If you want to read further into
some of the topics discussed in the episodes and more, you can

(01:11):
also find me on Sub Stack under my name, Joanna Pyroneves.
All right, so we're talking about the Ed Atkins exhibition
at Tate Britain. Today.
The Tate has several buildings, so there's Tate Liverpool,
there's Tate St. Ives, which is a marvel of

(01:33):
modernist architecture in Cornwall.
And then in London you have two Tates.
So you have Tate Modern, which is dedicated to contemporary
international arts and then you have Tate Britain, which is
modern and contemporary arts forartists based in Britain or
British. So that's where we're headed
today. And today I have a newcomer, a

(01:54):
new Co host. He is my favorite type of Co
host because he is an exhibitiongoer, but he does not work in
the contemporary art field. So Nick Taylor is here with me.
He's an architect. He did study Fine Arts.
He's he's cheating a little bit,but he's now an architect in
West London. So if you're nearby and if you

(02:16):
need an architect, he's your person.
So Nick, how, how are you feeling about this?
I'm excited, I'm great, I'm happy to be here.
You make me sound like a Ghostbuster.
Why? If you need if you need someone
to help. Who are you going to call?
I seem to remember you telling me that it's your favorite Tate
and even your favorite Museum inLondon.

(02:39):
Yes, it's definitely my favoriteTate.
Whether or not it's my favorite Museum in London is slightly
because you have, do you classify the Barbican as as a
museum? There's a museum in the
Barbican, So yeah, it probably falls short on the museum.
But in the rankings of tape buildings, the the tape Britain
is by far my favorite. Yeah.

(02:59):
But being an architect, that sounds weird to me because I
would think that you would choose Tape Modern as opposed to
Tape Britain, which is kind of this imperialistic old building,
although it has been renovated in 2013.
So why? Why is it so special to you?
Yeah. It's a good question.
So if you were, if you were speaking purely from an

(03:20):
architectural point of view, if you were to show me the drawings
or the models or the renders anddescribe the project from a as a
as a as a project, then the tapemodern is by far the best
building of the lot, I think. And OK, so I'm going to do more
on masters and almost created a new genre of art gallery with

(03:41):
the Tate, with the Tate Modern. It was this amazing thing on the
on the South Bank in London. But being a Londoner, my
experience is personal. And I started going to the Tate
Britain before the Tate Modern was even there.
And so my connection to that building is deeply personal.
And it was the Tate Britain was my was my joy space that I would

(04:04):
go to when I needed time alone, time to reflect, time to expand
my mind. I have, I have many personal
memories of going to this building and leaving a better,
happier person. So for that reason, purely
romantic it is. It's my favorite.
But then, having said that, it'salso a great building.

(04:25):
It is. It's a great.
And then I think the the dialogue between the traditional
building and the new architecture is so each time I
go there, I find it so successful.
It's one of those successful exercises, I think in
architecture. I mean, I don't know if you, I
mean from an architectural pointof view, do you agree with that?

(04:45):
Absolutely. Yeah.
The, the, yeah, absolutely. When you have a, when you have a
building that's so rich in heritage and, and, and obviously
of its era and its time and it'ssuch a stand out building in
itself. I can't imagine the pressure as
an architect, you would have to then create something new onto

(05:06):
that. And and what they've achieved is
just, is amazing. By the way, you know, the Tate
is 25 years old, So the Tate Modern, do you remember because
I wasn't here, Do you remember as a Londoner the Tate kind of,
you know, the decision to establish it, the the building
or building it and then the inauguration.

(05:29):
Do you have any memories of that?
No, you, you. You would have been 18 or 19.
Yeah, I would have been in my late teens and and I would have
been a typical teenage chasing silly things and just not
concentrating. On not aware on things.
Coming. Up so say who in?
Fact. The Tate, the Tate Modern kind

(05:50):
of just landed. And for me it was, I wasn't even
aware of it being under construction.
And I think I think it opened when I was probably in my first
year at architecture school. So it was this spaceship that
just landed in London. And even at that stage, you
know, I was incredibly naive anddidn't know anything.
So who's it designed by Herzog and who Herzog?

(06:12):
And, you know, it was a completeeducation for me at that point.
Yeah. And of course, because it was
such a big deal, we then went, visited, studied it had a look
and. And.
Yeah. And so I kind of I grew into
architecture as the tape modern was emerging on the on the
consciousness of of everyone whovisited.

(06:33):
So it's kind of I think maybe our paths are quite are quite
similar in that sense. Shall I go and introduce Ed
Atkins to you and to our listeners?
So Ed Atkins is a British artistwho is a child of the 80s, much

(06:54):
like yourself, Nick, and he cameof age in the 90s.
He now lives in Copenhagen with his partner and his two
children. But he grew up in a small
village near Oxford called Stones Field.
He's a really great writer. I'm reading his book Flowers, so
his last book. He talks a little bit about his
childhood, also his compulsions,all that glitches in his body.

(07:18):
But one of the things that kind of stuck with me while I was
researching him was that he would sit at the top of the
stairs when his parents left home.
He would itemize the number of ways in which they they could
die and that he could lose them.You know, by all accounts, an an

(07:39):
anxious kid whose parents were quite, well, not your regular
parents. So his mum was an arts teacher,
his dad was a graphic designer. And he, he has a sense of a
certain sadness coming from thembecause his dad kept insisting
that you should follow your vocation, that you should always

(07:59):
do what you like for work. You, you should earn your money
and your life through the thingsthat you like doing.
Because they were both artistic and they both sacrificed their
work in order to have a steady job.
He talks about his career as being a way for his parents also
to make it to take Britain, let's say.
And so his education was very steeped in arts, in arts of all

(08:24):
kinds. So apparently they would watch
lots of great films that wouldn't be mainstream films
particularly for example, VernerHerdog films.
His mom played the piano really beautifully.
His dad loved jazz. And in 2009 he was working with
Christian Markley. And so Christian Markley is an

(08:45):
artist who was then producing a Seminole work called The Clock,
which was a 24 hour film that was in real time, so 24 hours.
And the time was counted in the film through found footage of
clocks in films. So what's Ed Atkins was doing

(09:10):
was trying to find footage of clocks in everywhere.
And so he says that at a certainpoint he would he he exhausted
everything of the culture aroundus and he went into Eastern
European films, Russian films. So he watched everything and
that was really crucial in his work.
Another thing that happened was that he was asked to produce a

(09:35):
video and while he was still at Slate 2009, and he was a bit
tentative about it. He doesn't know why he agreed to
it. And when he started looking at
images and editing, he found thedeepest of pleasures like he
found home. And that was a real pivotal
experience for him. And he still sees himself as an

(09:57):
editor in some ways across all his work.
Then another thing happened which was also more on the
existential side of things. And the really sad event which
is that he lost his dad to cancer.
And at the same time he was producing work.
He was very prolific as soon as he finished his MA and in 2011

(10:20):
he showed his work at Tate Britain, actually in the Art Now
section. So Tate Britain has a room along
the other rooms of the permanentcollection where young artists
are invited to do a presentationof their work, to do an
installation. Then he went on to be, I think,

(10:41):
writer in residence at the Chisenhill Gallery in London.
And it was while he was producing the work for that
particular gallery that he had another experience with
technology, which was to associate an Xbox Kinect with a

(11:01):
software from a startup called Face Shift, which was facial
capture and this motion trackingvideo device that he used to
film himself. And while he was filming
himself, he was being rendered in terms of animation.
He was really taken by the ability of that those devices to

(11:26):
capture something of the liveness of a performance
somehow and at the same time to create a piece and a detached
video piece that he could show later.
And in 2014, so really quite young, he had a sort of Seminole
exhibition because of what he showed there at the Serpentine

(11:46):
Gallery, a multi screen installation which features for
the first time an avatar for which he used himself, not as
the visual, the the final rendering of the character, but
he used his own body to kind of create that avatar named Dave.
I've seen that exhibition. And for me that was kind of a

(12:08):
turning point as well, I have tosay, because I remember visiting
it and really intensely disliking it.
So it's a white dude in a sort of a digital basement.
He looks a bit like a Skinhead slash troll in Cell, Proto in

(12:29):
Cell, but at the same time he's so lonely.
He's smoking, he's drinking, andhe's deflate.
At a certain point the characterdeflates like a balloon and
falls on the table. So you kind of feel for that
character and you're filled was with a sort of contradictory
paradoxical emotions. And then my mind kept going back

(12:52):
to it after having visited it, and I realized that I was really
taken by the exhibition. It was a real shift of kind of
learning how to look at something new, actually
something that I've never seen before.
I don't know if you felt that inthe exhibition.
I find it very effective. There's a connectivity in in his

(13:13):
work that I don't see in other video.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's really, it's really
interesting to hear that back story, having seen the
exhibition, but not knowing thatbefore going in.
Because as you're speaking, I'm thinking of the things that I've
seen in the show. When you're talking about Dave

(13:35):
and this guy in the basement, immediately I'm thinking of the
guy who, who is in the apartmentin the bed, who, who falls
through the the floor into this sinkhole.
But the idea that this guy is low, he's lonely.
So you, yes, you're drawn into an emotional response where you
are you're feeling for this person.
You don't know why he's sad or why he's feeling like this, but

(13:58):
as you're watching it, you can'thelp but but get emotionally
involved. And there's also another moment
in his work, which is really important.
It's a film called Refuse or Refuse both work, and it's done
on purpose. And it's the first time that he
uses Unreal Engine. So Unreal Engine is a 3D

(14:23):
computer graphics game engine. It was developed by Epic Games
and it was first used in 1998, which is weird.
I was kind of surprised to know this.
For the purpose of the exhibition, I would say that
what I kind of can present as being the main reference points

(14:47):
for him would be the editing aspect.
And I would venture this and I, I'm interested in knowing what
you think. I think the edition part is
really important. And I see the exhibition as as
an edition, as an edited form ofcreating an experience for a

(15:08):
viewer, a spectator. Then there's the liveness
aspect. So that experience he had with
the Xbox and the the facial motion capture rendering in
animation of a live moment and the fact that he chooses gaming
as opposed to film. So he really chooses a specific

(15:32):
medium that for him is interesting not only because of
the liveness aspect of it. So the interaction with what
you're creating as a creative but also as a gamer, you have a
duration to it, which means thatyou start a game, there's a real
time duration, something happensthat is reflected on the image.

(15:52):
So you have an impact on the image, but also it ends and you
can start over. But when you start over, it's
never the same experience. I went to Take Modern and you
know, realized when I was there that it was at Take Britain.
So I had to go 2 times and it was interesting because it is
true that something's change as you cross, as you go through the

(16:16):
exhibition. And then to end on something a
bit different is the reference and the interest he had in
experimental theatre. So he he did drama at school.
So there's this whole line of a specific kind of experimental
theatre across the end of the 19th century and the 20th

(16:37):
century with Alfred Jarry who created Yubu, King Yubuhua.
He was really considered a pioneer even for Dada
surrealism. And then there's Anton Artur
with the Theatre of cruelty. So notion of theatre as not
having to be based on text and and being based on the presence
and the interaction between what's going on on the stage and

(17:00):
the spectators. And then you have The Theatre of
the Absurd with Samuel Beckett, who is very well known with his
piece Breath, which was based onon, On the Breath on Breathing,
but also Luigi P Randello with his famous play called 6
Characters in Search of an Author, and also Beckett.

(17:21):
So you always have this idea of absence in the theater of the
absurd. So Godot is not coming in
waiting for Godot in Pirandello,characters slash actors are
waiting for the the author who doesn't materialize.
And there's always this idea of boredom and and waiting, but
also this idea of absence. And Ed Atkins talks a lot about

(17:43):
loss, which is obviously connected to things and events
in his life, but also as a spectator.
You agree to look at something, but you're losing an aspect of
it. So if you're watching film, you
lose the three dimensionality ofit.
If you're watching theater, you lose the connection and the

(18:03):
reactivity. When you're looking at a person
who's talking to you, you can't talk.
And finally, there's film. I think I will invite you to
lead us into the exhibition. The first space you move into is
immediately, it's a dark room with music.
So it's a nice sensory experience as you're warming up

(18:24):
into this thing. And then you the first
installation is the I don't knowwhat it's called, but it was
the, it was like bedding. It was.
Embroidery. That's cool, I think.
Material with. Yes.
With the words very, very, very,very small.
So did you read that those were the writings of his dad's?

(18:47):
Yeah. Sick Diary.
And I was, I admit I was acutelyaware that there is a 2 hour
film at the end of this where I will have to listen or have to.
I will listen to this diary being read and.

(19:07):
So how so the thing How did you know that there was that film at
the end? Because when because I'm not a
member of Take Britain, I have to, I have to buy the ticket.
And when you're, when you're on the website buying the ticket,
it has show times for that film.I had to plan my visit to the
exhibition knowing that OK, there are three show times I

(19:29):
want to get there for one of them.
And so working backwards, what time do I need to arrive?
So it's a completely different way of going to see an art.
Show where absolutely I was an innocent bliss because I have
the the tape membership card. They scanned the card, didn't
say anything. But that's a completely

(19:49):
different experience then, because yes, I I was regimented.
Yeah, but we'll we'll talk aboutit.
We'll talk about it. So we're still on Death Mask 2,
The scent and Kerr of 2010. So this these are his kind of.
Experimentations with digital editing.

(20:09):
Film montage with yeah, so high definition videos basically.
And he's, am I right in saying that he didn't, he doesn't want
to display his work in any kind of chronological order.
Yeah, he said that he doesn't like the idea of a
retrospective, which, you know, kudos to him because I mean,
he's 42 years old, there's no reason.

(20:30):
But it's a survey exhibition. It's a mid career survey
exhibition and that's how we sawit.
And not to bury the lead, he didsomething.
You can see that he's uncomfortable with the exercise,
but he's very good at deconstructing the rules.
And So what he did is, for example, the text at the

(20:52):
entrance usually is written by someone who is the person who
writes the text for exhibitions.And for those of you who listen
regularly to this podcast, you know I have a bone to pick with
them. They're usually like the
blandest texts. So the text that you read at the
entrance is him, and the first person he's talking to you is.

(21:12):
That a bit of a cheat code because really, so this is him
saying this is my show, this is my work.
This is how I want you to experience it.
This is how you should read my stuff before you go in.
So whereas if if he's not sayingthat, then he has to do that
work through his, he has to do that through his work.

(21:35):
Is it not a bit of a cheat to say go into my show, look at it
and feel like this or experienceit this way?
I read a few interviews before going to the show, and I knew
that he had kind of fumble the game.
So I can tell you what the text says.
So it says my life and my work are inextricable.
How do I convey the liveness that made these works through

(21:58):
the exhibition? Not in some factual,
chronological, biographical way,but through sensations.
I want it. So the more you see, the richer,
more complex, less authored, less gettable things become.
And it's signed at Atkins. And then you have the Tate text,

(22:20):
which I am not going to read. Maybe he used this text to kind
of to, to disrupt the following texts.
I guess in some ways because when you read, yeah, it is
because when you read his text, you don't have a sense of the
exhibition at all. So you go through a corridor and

(22:44):
then you get. 2 with What was the name of this piece?
Hey, Sir. You've got three screens of
different sizes. They each screen is one behind
the other, maybe about 3 or 4 meters away from each other,
increasing in scale as they go back into the back of the room,

(23:06):
which was I don't know why actually I, I didn't, I didn't
even question why that was. I just chose the screen and
watch that one but. But you chose the screen.
Sorry. Interesting you chose the
screen. I did, yeah.
I chose the middle screen because it.
Made like this the. Wall.
Really, because I, for me, was really playful, so I moved

(23:30):
around and I liked to see the repeated image because it's
always the same film. It's not one of those video
installations where you have different videos going on, which
always confuses me. I think, yeah, I just, I was
focused on the content because Iknew that there was there was a
narrative in this. So I wanted to understand the
narrative and see, OK, what what's happening, those more

(23:54):
kind of morbid thoughts. It's the fourth pattern of what
would it be like if if a sinkhole just swallowed me up or
swallowed someone up and that was the way you went So when you
were. Talking so the the video, so the
text tells you that this is based on the sort of fizzy there
that he read about that happenedin Florida where this person

(24:18):
when it was in a room and his whole house was swallowed by a
sinkhole and the person just disappeared.
So you so you know it's not going to end well, you know this
OK, this is going to be a a thing where eventually someone's
going to get someone's. Going to get, yeah.
It's like, it's like seeing, it's like going into a horror
film. Yes, which is which is really

(24:38):
interesting, right. So I'm sat there and I'm
watching it, but in also in the back of my mind, I'm thinking,
knowing now what I've read aboutthe technology and about playing
with the reality and the I kind of felt like, OK, so this
doesn't look like realism. This is, this is almost, almost

(25:02):
like naturalism. It's it's a man in a room, but
he is alone and he is sad. He is.
You get all of this stuff. And there's a soundtrack as
well, which also pumps these emotions into you.
So you know what? You know what?
What you're watching. And yeah.
And there are close-ups on his face.
So he's singing a song, this this sorrowful song.

(25:26):
And you don't know why he's singing it or who he's singing
it to, but just the emotion getsyou.
I forget the name of the cards. The psychologists would.
Famously used Oh, the Rorschach tests you would have
interpreted. Yes, he's holding exactly.
You're seeing a closer. Sit.
That's. It and you can see his thumb so

(25:46):
you know he's holding it, but the card is kind of oscillating.
Yeah, it's it's. It's vibrating.
He's holding it. He's not holding it still and
watching it, I think. Is he jerking off to one of
those cards? Me too.
I thought the same thing. And I thought, how can you show
a person holding a card and immediately you know what that

(26:11):
person's doing? Yeah, in an animation that is.
You hate yourself for thinking it.
You think? Not me, I.
Think, have I got? Is there a problem with me?
Why am I thinking this? And then and then you go and
then it pans out and think, oh, I was right.
That is what's happening. For me it was more confusing
because I don't have the appendage so I was even more.

(26:36):
It's an abstract. Disturbed because I was
thinking, how do I know how subjectively that?
Looks so so you see him at his most intimate and he's naked a
lot of the time he's got his clothes are on the floor and I'm
you're not sure is it daytime? Is it in the middle of the
night? You don't know because the
curtains are pulled and it's allartificial light.
And then it's and. But then it happens.

(26:59):
The sinkhole eats everything. Out and it gets pretty violent,
yeah. It's really, and also not in the
dark anymore. It's very white.
And you see the third room and also there's posters.
There's stuff on the walls. So there's a drawing, there's a
poster that's really weird of a dog placed upward and it says

(27:24):
fear. And then there's a quote by
Helen Keller about fear, which Ican't remember, but I took a
picture. It says avoiding danger is no
safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing, which
sounds in the face of what happened to that poor bloke.

(27:44):
You have a glass wall so you cansee into the other room where
there's two beds and the poster of a little kitten holding on to
a branch saying hang in there, which is so cynical.
And then you go into the experimental writing, there's

(28:04):
wood panels that will punctuate this first half of the show.
And it's called Contemporary ArtWriting Daily.
And you think, oh, what is this?And so it just says these texts
are by the anonymous writing projects, Contemporary Arts
Writing Daily CAWD. So it's an entity that's
anonymous and and writes on Commission.

(28:25):
And so he commissioned texts to them.
And then he says that he described the videos and the
thinking behind the videos, sentall of these via e-mail and
asked them to write whatever they wanted in response.
And he describes the text by writing.
They sent me a backwash of institutional ventriloquism,

(28:47):
Wikipedia entries, grotesquerie and humor.
The texts are laser burnt into off cut bits of museum trash, so
this is a real commentary on theinstitution of the museum if
ever there was one. I'm.
Glad you've explained it to me because that went over my head.

(29:07):
Did it? Yeah, it's another layer of the
exhibition for sure. Yeah, because there's.
I loved his, I loved his description of what he got back.
But in terms of what it what it meant in that on that layer, I
didn't get it. So interesting because it really
is a discourse. I mean where he writes about

(29:29):
what he received could also be adescription of museum texts.
Basically sort of ventriloquism,Wikipedia entry and then the
text. Like for example, he has a
discarded MDF sort of pulpit on the wall and he and engraved on

(29:49):
it is the European output of manuscripts from 500 to 1500.
And then there's a graph and that's it basically, which I
find so funny. And it has a lot to do also with
technology because the book was kind of this first mass media
technology of communication and information.
And so of course it's silly and it's stupid and no one would

(30:13):
ever put that. But that that's what I would
dream to have as exhibition texts.
And I don't know if I said this on the podcast or not, but I was
really thinking about this and Iwas thinking I would just love
that one person in the museum really worked with the artists,
found out what the project was and just had a go at it.
I think you you need that kind of Comic Relief when you at the

(30:39):
end of this room, which you clearly did not have and.
Yeah, completely. Yeah, because it's such a
breakaway from anything you you've just seen to go into that
completely different space. Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. So you didn't read the text, did
you? No, I not really because it
because it was. There are also many.
Yeah, there's just too much. And also going back to the whole

(31:01):
time thing. Oh, you were.
You were in a hurry. Yeah, If I was just wondering
around, maybe I would have read them, but I'm thinking I have
another hour and a half before the film starts or another
night, you know, I need to move on to that maybe.
I'll come back. To this but I never did.
So because for me the experiencewas very much an editing
experience, as in you go in, youlearn about the that's cancer.

(31:25):
So each screen, each lone standing wall is covered with
those embroideries. And so you regularly come across
the the Sick Diaries and then you learn about that.
And when you're in that that piece Hissa, where the person's
going to be kind of eaten up by a sinkhole, you have next to it

(31:49):
2 beds, which were a play that he actually created with someone
else. And I forget the name of the
person. Apologies for that, which were
just two beds with a device under the covers, under the
duvet that make them makes the duvet move as if breathing, but
also as if a very little body was underneath it.

(32:13):
You don't quite know exactly. So for me that was kind of the
the sick bed, the surprise of death.
So I was kind of also doing my own film in my own head.
And it's the same bed or a similar bed to all the one on
the. Screen.
Yes, the white bed. The poster that's on the wall
that you mentioned, but the fearthat poster is also in the film

(32:34):
as well on the wall of the guy. Does that maybe make you start
to feel maybe vulnerable in that, well, this guy had no idea
what was going to happen to him,what was going to and, and that
physical connection of the poster in his room that's now in
the room that you're in. Are you potentially in the same
scenario where who knows what's going to happen in 20 minutes

(32:56):
from now for you? Exactly.
Those kinds of fidi ver are those kinds of things that you
do your best to practice your best cognitive dissonance on
because you don't want to think about those in order to keep on
living right? You have to ignore that shit
happens and that you may not be here in 30 seconds.

(33:20):
So that kind of brings it home. Of course, bringing it to your
own space of course includes youbecause my theory is that we are
the actors of this play. So I mean, one of the
possibilities of experiencing the work, because I think it's a
very laid exhibition, one of thepossibilities is you are the
actor in this theatre of the absurd that he's creating.

(33:43):
Because Dave, that character at Serpentine was for me the white
male threatening dude that you don't want to cross paths with
when you're going back home in the dark.
You know, you want to avoid thatperson.
But it's also a projection of projection of projections

(34:06):
because it was also he was also using his face.
And so there's a a thing of otherness and of, oh, he's
dealing with his own white males, cisgenderness, whatever.
And then here it's no longer that that's we're, we're really
not in that sort of more societal exploration of identity

(34:29):
and, and we're completely in another space for sure.
So we have. So we move on to the other room
that we can see a little bit of and it's really full.
It's so crowded. Yeah, so you're so you're
snaking through this zigzag mazelike route and these costumes

(34:53):
there must, there must be, I think 3 layers going three,
yeah, three teams of of closed rails with so many costumes and
right the way up to the ceiling makes you feel tiny.
But you do feel like you're walking through maybe the the
back of an Opera House, these but so many costumes.

(35:16):
And then, but whilst you are, whilst you're walking through
your SO, your gaze is forced into the the path that you're
travelling, and there are screens at the end of each of
these corridors with what looks like a 90s computer game, or
maybe an early 2000s computer game.

(35:36):
Early 2000. That the right?
Is that the right passage? Of time I.
Don't know times, but yeah, but you're confronted with these
computer games effectively, which kind of they look like
they are the the computer games that my older brother-in-law
would have been playing when I was younger.
And they are those kind of fantasy worlds where you have

(35:57):
your own avatar and you and you have friends who are online and
they are also other people in their bedrooms somewhere playing
this game, living another an alternative life.
So it's a, it's a false reality and it's kind of a bit medley
medieval and the costumes that you're walking.
Around are also. Medieval.

(36:17):
And so, yeah, so you're walking around and you're trying to make
sense of of what you're seeing. I didn't watch that many of
those screens for that long. And again, maybe this is my own
anxiety because I've got to get to the end really in the next 45
minutes. So, So yeah, so I kind of, I
tried to understand as much as Icould walking through it and

(36:38):
take in what I was confronted with.
But at the same time, again, that clock was ticking.
These films are in a sort of a loop and they so the idea of
these films is that these are characters that are so old men
and children who are crying and they have these viscous tears.

(37:00):
They're disgusting. They look like snot coming out
of their eyes. There's a parallel being made
with theatre. So again, the reference to the
theatre of the absurd where he'salways interested in making the
either exploring a technology toits extreme and pushing its
boundaries or the the rules of the game.

(37:23):
And so you're not supposed to becrying viscous tears for ages
and arriving at a a cottage and the fire, but nothing's
happening. But then you have behind those
beds, you have the refuse refusevideo, which is cut in half.
So he tells you that actually the whole video is really

(37:43):
interesting. It's the first time he used real
Unreal Engine, which was for hima theatre with our actors.
So there's this floor where things fall constantly.
And the idea was to study how different objects would behave
when hitting the pile of objectsor the floor and making sure

(38:07):
that the machine could get them right.
And each time the video plays, it's a different version, so it
keeps changing the order of the objects the way they behave.
It's completely played for. It's very playful.
It's what I would do as a kid, but in real life.
There's an intersection between infancy where you just drop

(38:31):
things. Also babies, and he has small
children. They drop things to, to, to, to
know what happens when you when something's no longer in your
hand. But then there's also the
reference to Marcel Duchamp. You know the peace three
stoppages where he took a meter long thread and then dropped it

(38:56):
from a meter high and then indexed rulers to the shape of
the three fallen pieces of yarn and then presented them in a
little box. So there's this idea of dropping
something. Apparently he fudged that.
So apparently there has been some crazy, some nuts tried that

(39:20):
and it's impossible for the the the the yarn to or the threads
to fall like that and create those shapes that sounds.
Like an outrageous claim that that an artist has has lied.
It happens all the time. That's that's the basic of
creation is you lie. Architecture.
That's no, no, I think it's we have, we share that with you

(39:43):
guys. One day you come back and you
explain that theory to me. And also what is really funny
about this thing is that apparently so there were lots of
glitches, there were lots of problems creating this off
camera. There has to be a fish rotating
endlessly for the program to work because whenever they took

(40:05):
the fish out, the program would crash.
So. There's some fish out there
holding it all together, and theidea is to replicate gravity.
And of course it does and it doesn't.
So there's this kind of indecision between this thing
that you gain and this thing that you lose in this theater.
So and then at the end of the corridor, there's another video

(40:27):
of a sandwich being endlessly made with layers that kind of
floats and then fall on the bread.
Then the bread's compressed and it's real food, and then it's
just toys and stuff that make the sandwich.
He has a really weird relation with food because this whole

(40:49):
installation is called Old food.But so after this room, to your
despair, there's another video that you had to watch from
beginning to end as well. Yeah, yeah, this is the piano.
Piano Work 2, which is from 2023, so a COVID work and it's

(41:16):
again, it has that layer of embroidery.
Then you go to the other side and I was a bit like you this
time because I wanted to watch it from beginning to end.
And I did notice that people would sit, watch for a bit and
then leave. And he did the show really well
because of course I know what helooks like because I've seen

(41:36):
videos of his and I've done research on him.
Da, da, da. I work in the art field, so we
kind of know what he looks like.But your regular museum goer
doesn't. And so the the Polaroids, as you
call them in the entrance, show his face.
Then there's drawings all acrossthe exhibition, Red drawings,
self portraits of him, either inreally awkward positions,

(42:00):
usually his head, like he's dead.
It's a bit cadaverous kind of drawing.
Or on spiders, his head, on spider bodies.
And then here you finally meet him whole.
It's the whole Ed Atkins, but rendered animated.

(42:22):
So he had to sit in the room in Berlin in during so the pandemic
with a team on in the other roomwearing a sort of onesie, really
uncomfortable. He had to have an iPhone kind of
on in front of his face. And it actually is a

(42:44):
performance. So he performs the, it's a
minimalist piece of music that is like 486 times the same note.
And you have to count the silence in between each note.
So he's very nervous, but it's not him, but it's him.
Yeah. So.

(43:04):
But did you get to watch the whole video?
Not the whole thing. I couldn't watch the whole
thing. So I was one of those people who
walked in and sat down for a bit.
I recognised it as him instantly, which is great.
And that's really clear, the waythat you've described how he did
that. Because I, without even
realising, yeah. And you instantly, you know, OK,
this is him and I, and I did remember in the in the foyer

(43:28):
before you go into the show, yousee a photo of him with the
iPhone on his head. So, you know, you know, I know
how he how they created this. It's not a secret.
Yes. It's part of it.
And again, just the emotion, thefacial stuff.
It's a human being and it is him.
But it's it's him. Yeah, but it's not and it's I, I

(43:53):
liked it, but I didn't love it as much as the other the other
stuff. But again, it was it was just
another layer, but it moved me on to the next room, which then
I really liked. So I have, I have a quote of his
about about seeing himself. So that's from flowers from his

(44:14):
book. So his last book that he just
published, he it just came out. And so he says the final
renderings very like me. But unlike with a photo, I don't
find it paralyzingly repulsive. I find it, I find it
fascinatingly so. And the difference between kinds
of repulsion is very important to me.

(44:36):
It describes me, the double S and effigy I want to make suffer
in my steed. I find it liberating to be able
to do something about the repulsiveness rather than be
stalled by my being inside of myself and incapable of
apprehending myself. So it's really interesting
because he talks about this ideaof being in imprisoned in your

(44:58):
own body, which I very much relate to.
I have a very peculiar relationship to having a body.
And my daughter actually has she, she kind of records
sentences of stupid or funny things we say.
And there's one of me saying like, ah, I hate the material
world. Why do we have to be material?

(45:19):
Like a rant of some kind that that I very regularly go on.
And also this idea that he talksa lot about, which is that he
loves not working with actors because these characters, you
can, he can make them suffer. They can be his victims.
Is he talking about an urge to want to make someone suffer that

(45:41):
he has, or is he saying that we all have this urge?
You're in a world where the rules are different and so like
making a painting, anything can happen.
And he says in an interview recently in Freeze, technology
can enable access to a differentversion of yourself.
So you can play out your fantasies, but those fantasies

(46:02):
also exist because there's this virtual world.
So. But.
So. Yeah.
So you skip that really quickly.And then you moved on to the
following room and to your, you know, increasing despair.
There were other films and. This room was dominant to me.
This room was dominated by the big empty ply box that was in

(46:25):
the centre of the room. Oh yes.
As you move in there, there's just this big empty void, which
was fascinating for me because it's a room in a room and I'm a
sucker for anything which is spatial architectural.
So I'm drawn to this and I want to know what is this?

(46:46):
Why is this here? And then you can't step into it.
Yeah, I read that. I, I, I walked right up to it
and then read on the floor. Do not touch.
And you're like, this is not architecture.
That's the limit of the exercise.
It's contemporary art. Exactly, and I'm trying to
remember the name of the artist and it's completely, completely

(47:08):
escaped me incredibly. The name of the artist.
T Gormley. Oh yes, a bit Gormley esque
because you're in the tape. You don't.
You don't think so. In the tape all the buildings
are the rooms are huge. Of course they are.
The ceiling is about 6 metres away from your head, and within

(47:28):
this space you've now created a smaller space that relates
directly to your human scale that.
Automatically. Where you are feeling like this
small entity moving through. Now you're a big thing in this.
I see. In this one so yeah, to me that
that brought me right back to OK, now I'm I'm my human scale

(47:48):
again. And that was that was my first
experience of that room. We're seeing this.
Thing that's so interesting because I've seen that piece
before. So this is the installation of
the video worm. So it's a there's a projection
on the other side that we'll talk about that you experience
as an empty room before coming in.
And I saw the I saw it for the first time three years ago or

(48:10):
two years ago in at cabinet, hisGallery in London.
And I remember not really getting it, like not, you know,
not the not gettedness of it. And it's funny that you on the
other hand, kind of go and go like, oh, I read this, I know
how to read this. This is what it's bringing me
back to my own scale. And I honestly did not get that

(48:33):
at all. That's.
Maybe I just got lost in the in the familiarity of it, and
that's my own failing, no? No, no, no, no, no, no.
Everything's valid as an experience.
Well, it's just that you didn't get lost in any point.
Everything is challenging is is challenging me to to understand

(48:53):
or to read into some or or to perceive something, but it's
work. You can't.
You're not just completely relaxed as you're walking
through your thinking and you'reand you're and you're trying to
engage with something. And then I come into this room
and it's like maybe this was my my relief in that, OK, I can I
get this. I can.

(49:14):
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(50:44):
And then there's this. This film, old film called Voila
La Verite, which is which was really painted by him and he
hired actors to make the soundtrack, which is just
mastication noises and size and and, and noises like that.

(51:05):
So I was really taken by that and sat down and watched it.
And I think that's where he mentions Antonachto, the Theatre
de la Cruelty, Theatre of Cruelty, very important for
theatre, experimental theatre, figure of the beginning of the
20th century. So I was there.

(51:25):
I was kind of like going back tohis references.
Then you're right, the empty stage.
So I can't remember. I know that someone said that
theatre is amazing, the problem of the actors.
And I've been trying to fight because when I was in the
exhibition, that's what came to mind.
I thought it was Alfred Jaffe, but I'm not sure who said that.
Or maybe it was just a friend ofmine.

(51:48):
I don't. Know it's a great quote, I love
it. Guys out there please in the
comments tell me who said this. I can't find it and I know it's
French so it's back. It's back in my front days.
So some French friend told me this.
I've never heard it. And listen, I'm maybe now is the
right time to confess I have a theatre studies A level.

(52:10):
No. So maybe.
I should do it. You do though.
But here in the UK modernism didn't arrive.
That's my theory. And people like you and Nick are
very isolated. You are a modernist architect or
of a modernist inclination. And modernism didn't arrive
here. You study Shakespeare.

(52:30):
I mean, you don't study Beckett.Modernism still hasn't arrived
in the UK. We're still waiting.
I mean, it's still waiting. We, we have a very gothic
mindset. That's our, we have a romantic
gothic notion that we, that we just are, we, we can't help
falling back to that. And modernism, I think is a.

(52:50):
Is the gudu. It's the gudu of England.
It's we're still waiting. It's untrusted.
It's untrusted. Because it's foreign and.
And oh, it's German. Yeah, it's it's.
So we are. We are.
It's not of us. It's not British.
But why are we talking about modernism?
Because I was talking about the theater of Creotte and the

(53:12):
Antonachto, and I did ask myselfto what extent people would
connect to the reference to Antonachto.
Because for me, it's a given. I studied in a French school.
I'm not sure that it would be familiar.
A little bit like his childhood.Who were the kids watching
Herzog films? I mean, to be honest, I did do
the same with mine. We watched the grizzly bear film

(53:35):
together. But he was watching Herzog films
with his parents in the 90s. No one, like no one would be
doing that. So he, he had a sort of a, a
very peculiar and unique, I think, upbringing and, and
education and. References.
They didn't have a Herzog section in Blockbuster.

(53:57):
No they they didn't have experimental film from German
weird dudes. The the the most you would have
would be David Lynch. I think that would be the the
most extreme. Yeah, yeah.
That, that would be the video that's always there.
You can guarantee and you could get that one out.

(54:18):
Yeah, exactly. So, yeah.
So I was kind of thinking that and I stopped and I looked at
the film and watch the film of of a film director that I didn't
know. And so it is a weird moment of
like suddenly being extracted from this very ultra
technological setting. And then you go into the next

(54:40):
room where there's this huge screen vertical that kind of
disrupts the cinema screen and just creates a line and where he
cuts refuse refuse into two. So usually the film is a unique
setting where you see the thingsfall and then they land on the

(55:04):
on the ground. And here you just see them fall
and it's as if they Pierce the floor, the real floor of the
Tate, and suddenly disappear into another dimension.
So there's this kind of fantastical, kind of a miracle
side to it. Yeah, yeah, this was for me.

(55:24):
This was the space before the space because I saw it, but then
I was so taken with what was behind it, behind the big screen
with the falling objects is a isa gallery space with, I'm going
to guess maybe 25 frames of a roughly A2 size white frames.

(55:45):
Each frame is filled with post it notes on a grid.
Just simple post it notes with hand drawn sketches, doodles,
etcetera on them. And it's 3 walls that you look
around and he says that these were post it notes that he was
that he started during the pandemic in 20/20/20 I think it

(56:09):
was. Yes, 2020.
He would make these little hand drawn sketches, almost as little
I love you notes to his daughter.
He'd put them in in her lunch box and then kind of slowly
dawned on him that these postingnotes didn't really mean that
much to her. She wasn't aware of the real
value of what he's doing for her.
So he started to keep knowing, realising then that actually

(56:31):
they probably mean more for him than to her.
But I think it's kind of. So if I understand it correctly,
he's talking about the at that strange time when a lot of
people found that they had more time on their hands and and the
world shrank, say his world shrank down to these posting

(56:53):
notes because his work more. I don't know if his work
stopped, but he found he had more time and he could.
Some of these drawings would have taken a very long time.
They're not simple quick doodlesof a stick man or a whatever
person doing these are mini pieces.
I love them. And you can only really do that

(57:13):
during lockdown unless, unless that was your, unless that was
your job to do that. I mean, I, I loved it because on
one level absolutely loved it onone level because of the
richness of the work, just the, the breadth of what he's drawing
and the randomness and the trying to understand where is

(57:35):
this image come from? Why is it?
And then realising maybe you'll never know where that came from.
And he may, he probably doesn't know it's a, it's a mind dump.
And that's what's also lovely about it is the care and
attention that's taken into these drawings is beautiful.
And it's for something as simpleas a little note that you're

(57:56):
going to put in your child's lunch box.
And So what I, the elements of it that I really, really loved
and elements that I, I question.So the bits that I love is this
idea as a parent, because I havethree children myself, where you
will go out of your way and, andyou will go beyond what you need

(58:20):
to do for your child. And it's like a you're, you're
doing it for yourself, you know.So even lunches, for example, I
make my children's lunches still.
And it's like a little moment I have every morning where I get
to be a bit creative and do something.
I'm not really doing it for them.
I mean, I want them to enjoy thelunch, but I'm doing it because

(58:41):
this is me telling them that I love them.
And so I completely relate with what he's doing with the post it
notes in that sense. The bit I slightly question is
that at what point did he realise that the post it notes
meant more to him than to his daughter?
And at what point did he decide I'm going to start keeping these

(59:04):
in that little folder and and preserving them?
And then from that point onwards, when he is drawing his
post it notes is are they still the same thing or does he know
that he's collating something for a show?
That's the bit that I'm wondering about.
The genuine. There's an awareness and he I'm

(59:26):
sure he must know this will be great in the tape Britain in
five years when I have a room and I'm going to put all these
post it notes in a frame. I I just maybe that's the
cynical part of me that mean it robs it of its IT robs it of its
innocence because he's completely aware that yeah, I

(59:46):
mean, he's keeping them. If if he had if he had created
these drawings, given them to his daughter and then not known
what happened to them and she collected them and put them in a
folder. And then after however many a
year or whenever gave them to him and said, I kept all of
these by the way, they don't mean anything to me, but you may
as well have them. And then he.

(01:00:07):
Put them on display. That would that would for me,
that would have meant more because I think he's aware of
the value of these things and he's aware that.
So, So what I'm trying to get tois I think that in that
awareness, they completely stop being notes to his daughter.
They are now pieces for a show or pieces for himself.

(01:00:29):
It's funny you say that because he, I, he says that this is his
best piece for him. It's the best work.
And I wondered if it was becauseit was a moment where he wasn't
making art in my mind. I thought, oh, he liked these

(01:00:50):
because of course what you're drawing is always informed, but
you're making jokes to yourself,obviously.
And so he's informed by, it's still informed by the same
things as the other pieces in the show are.
I like that moment of awareness,first of all, because it's a
father talking about being a dadand being a good dad, which is

(01:01:11):
so rare in any exhibition in anyfilm that you might watch.
They're like good dads or dads that just do you know something
for the enjoyment of it and not because their wives told them to
do. It's so rare that that in itself
is is a beautiful thing. And also it's a parent like his

(01:01:31):
dad and his mom who's communicating with the daughter
through his own passion because he loves drawing and also
through the passion of his parents.
So it's almost a generational thing that he's giving to his
daughter. And I think the piece is about
the disconnect. He said he talks about this

(01:01:52):
gesture as utterly devotional. That's the the expression on the
wall. And for me, the show then
shifted and it became about him as a son, as a child and as a
parent now, and us as the children as well, or the
parents. And suddenly you're playing

(01:02:13):
another role because you're everyone has a carer or the
absence of a parent. You might be a teacher.
He has a connection to the othergeneration.
So for me, it became about this utter devotion that you have in
certain moments of intense consciousness or of obligation

(01:02:33):
or responsibility towards others.
And I also saw the exhibition ashis responsibility towards his
parents, which is a a displaced and defensible, indefensible
responsibility, but that he has nonetheless because there's a
painting of his dad in the exhibition and the next work is

(01:02:56):
also his mom's voice. So at this point it became too
much about him. I wondered.
My question was, I am so full ofEd Atkins's pathos, like do I
want to carry this person, this person's pathos as much?
But then, so how did you move inthe?

(01:03:18):
Because this is the last bit of the show.
I guess you go from my memory. You then go into the Sky News
room into the. Room.
No, there's the film. There's a film before?
Or is it the Sky News? You have to walk in and then out
the spaces at this point, right?Yeah, yeah.
You go in and out of the posted space and then there's the major

(01:03:39):
space and then there's a featurefilm and I have no idea where
where that was and how I got there.
Well, I. And then there's a Sky News.
Trying to get out because. I me too.
Oh, OK, it wasn't just me. But you know what happened to me
in the Hissa room? OK, so I leaned onto the wall as
you would do when you were watching the screen.

(01:04:01):
And then suddenly I fall into the next room of the temporary
exhibition. The the so I had my sinkhole
moment where the door dematerialized and suddenly I
saw Damien Hirst sharp, which very appropriate by the way, for
this the theme. And then I kind of come in the

(01:04:25):
room again and, and being the good student only child's that I
am, like closing the door and kind of like not even trying to
understand what happened at thatpoint.
Just kind of like Alice in in inWonderland trying to not be
Alice and closing the door. And then I see this security
dude coming towards me and he just go like, did you lean on

(01:04:47):
the wall? I was like, yeah, I did.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, Yeah, I thought so.
And I was just like, what? There's a door that if you lean
on it just takes you to the other.
Side of the exhibition whilst watching that whilst watching
Hissa. What?
Yeah. Through a wall.
Yeah, that was a kind of butterflies in the stomach
moment. Yeah.

(01:05:10):
Brilliant. Tell me about the I'm really
curious about the end of your exhibition experience.
In my mind going to the show, I knew this was the thing that I
had in my mind. I am going to sit through two
hours of someone reading throughan account of a diary of their

(01:05:32):
cancer experience. So that's not easy.
And I didn't, I didn't anticipate it was going to be
easy. So when you know that's coming
up, it kind of, it starts to dominate your, your mind as as
you're getting closer to it. So I get into the space and I
make sure I've got the best seat, which I think is the best
seat because there are three rows of sofas.

(01:05:55):
It's like a cinema. It's a nice, lovely big black
room with great acoustics, a huge screen at the front.
And then there are, it's like a posh cinema, 3 rows of black
sofas. So I of course am sitting on the
back row at the centre of the screen, get myself comfortable
and the film stops. And so the film's called Nurses

(01:06:17):
Come and Go, but none for me. It was produced by the Hot Wig
Art Foundation, and it has actors like Real.
Great actors as well, I love Toby Jones and Saskia Reeves.
Toby Jones. Yeah, both amazing.
I love this. So that relaxed me as well

(01:06:38):
because it's a, it's like your aunt and your uncle have just
walked in on the screen and you,you know that you're going to be
looked after. They're going to take care of
you. But they're also playing a sick
joke on you. I know.
Yeah, there is, there is that, but it yeah, yeah, there is
that. So I discovered it.
I was like, oh, there's a feature film.

(01:06:58):
I see the times I'm like fuck again.
Like I need to come 1/3 time, you know, because this was my
second visit and I was just like, shit, got, you know, got
had again. I need to come back.
I don't have two hours ahead of me because the film lasts for
two hours, right? I mean, or an hour and a half
for it's a feature film and it'sthe so it's a performative

(01:07:20):
piece. And that's, there's a reason why
it's so long. It's the actors performing for
six or seven or eight people, young people in front of them
sitting on chairs. So it's Toby Jones reading the
sick Diaries and Saskia Reeves in the back.
He just said that he creates these animations so that he

(01:07:41):
could do whatever he he he wantsto them.
And now he has real actors was as if we've come to a point in
the technology that it's everything is so the deep fakes,
you know, everything is so realistic that it it there's no
point anymore and using that technology.
And so now you go to real bodies.

(01:08:03):
But that's yeah. But then but they're playing.
But they're also playing a very different role to the characters
in his earlier films with the with the technology, because
they're they're not really showing the emotion.
They're reading the emotion or Toby Jones is reading the

(01:08:24):
emotion, but it's not his emotion.
So he's just relaying to you and, and actually quite a it's
very clever because what he's saying is very moving, but he's
not moved. Saski Reeves is.
Did you see the beginning of thefilm?
No, I saw the end where they play, so there's two bits.

(01:08:47):
So they read The Sick Diaries and then the end is Saski Reeves
is actually his daughter and they perform the games that Ed
Atkins plays with his daughter, which is the ambulance games or
something. She's the nurse and he's the
patient. Yeah, yeah, so but at the very
beginning of the film you see them welcoming in the the

(01:09:10):
younger, the audience is very young.
I would say they're probably midto late teens, maybe yes, early
20s, I'm not sure. But there's definitely, they are
the children in the room, if youlike, and, and the grown-ups in
the room are Toby Jones and Saskia Reeves.
And you see them, welcome them in and it's all very polite and
nice. And so in that sense, you're

(01:09:30):
what you are. You are presented the two
grown-ups in the room as the host.
With the artifice, yeah. Exactly.
So they are then automatically they are the parents in my mind.
And so I found Saskia Reeves response to the the retelling of

(01:09:50):
the diary or the reading of the diary really interesting in
contrast to the audience, the younger audience that you're
watching, hearing it. Because if she is the mum, or
maybe she's not the mum, maybe she's just another grown up who
is closer to the experience justby her age and her stage in life

(01:10:12):
than these younger people. Listening to what becomes quite
a it starts off being sad, it starts off being a bit desperate
and then it becomes a bit more horrific.
At the beginning, the bits that the young audience find are
funny, they start to look because he's talking about poo

(01:10:32):
or things that are quite childish and you think like,
yes, OK, he's talking about, he's talking about emptying his
bowels or whatever. But is it I, I don't know if
it's funny. Maybe it's because my stage in
life and I'm closer to this. So I see it as as what it is,
whereas they see it. Maybe the whole thing that he is

(01:10:53):
discussing is you can see it's it's more abstract to them
hearing it. Whereas you see Saskia Reeves is
behind them. She's not facing him, she's
facing side on. So he's facing the people
listening and they are. It's like story time.
They're they're gazing at him. Saskia Reeves is listening, but

(01:11:15):
she's staring 1000 yards away, sometimes smoking a cigarette,
which I thought was interesting,and sometimes.
Because Ed Atkins smokes and eats junk food, but he talks a
lot about that in flowers. He has these.
Really disgusting habit. Yeah.
The Silk Cut cigarettes in the worm video is his.

(01:11:37):
He has these very unhealthy habits.
Jeanette as a film, I went in there with, I'm going to say
trepidation, but certainly wondering of how I'm going to do
this, how, how am I going to fare in this.
And it was remarkably, I'm not going to say easy.
It was remarkably possible you could do it.

(01:12:00):
Yeah. And it's OK.
And you did. By the end of it, you, you, you,
you went on the journey. It's, it's literally, it's just
a guy sitting on a chair readingdiary entries from how he feels
every day and the treatments. And sometimes it's going into
details about the certain nursesthat he likes or the nurses that
he doesn't like. So you get the, you get the
day-to-day sense of what he's going through.

(01:12:22):
And of course it gets worse and worse and worse.
And then they play the game. So it was and the game, I think
the last part of it is about maybe 20 minutes, the ambulance
game. OK, so there's, there's what I
have a huge question that I, I've not really, I haven't found
a suitable answer for myself, which in, in that game.

(01:12:42):
So the whole way through the whole retelling of the diary,
you're watching Toby Jones read the diary, but you're also
watching the audience, the camera, because again, it's
great editing the way that it's shot.
So you're watching the close-upson the people as they're
responding to what they're hearing.
And then they play the game and it's kind of more of the same

(01:13:03):
thing going on, but it's an absurd piece of acting because
they are now children. I suppose.
Toby Jones is playing an older person play, pretending to be a
child, if that makes sense. If he's the dad.
There is a moment in the ambulance game where, so maybe I

(01:13:26):
should just briefly explain. Toby Jones is lying on the floor
saying what's wrong with him? He has got a problem and, and
Saskia Reeves, the ambulance driver, stroke medic, stroke
nurse, stroke doctor, surgeon, physician, whatever, is looking
for all these various cures for all these things that are wrong
with him. There is a moment where she

(01:13:48):
covers him because she realizes this is bleak and there's only
one treatment left for you. And she covers him with these
paper towels almost like he is deceased, He's dead.
In that moment when she's doing that, as the camera kind of pans
out, you realize the room is nowempty and the younger audience
are no longer in their chairs. And I'm thinking, has he died?

(01:14:12):
Is this, is this, is this a preparation for someone for
burial or whatever? And she does that, all of that.
And then as the camera then pansback out to another view, you
see everyone's back in the room again.
So for that brief moment the room was empty and I don't know
why. I think it's about this missed
encounters in presence. You're with the person and then

(01:14:35):
that moment when they're not there is a moment where it's the
sinkhole moment, isn't it? Is that singularity where as as,
as because those Diaries, mind you, were read to the family.
So the family would read them orhe would read them to the
family. So it wasn't like a private
diary. They, they were an incredible

(01:14:57):
family. They, they kind of could connect
like that. And then it's also the portrait
of this intergenerational impossibility of ever really
being on the same level. So I don't know, there's this
kind of disconnect and the singularity, the moment of death
where it's it happens to you, it's not going to happen to
anyone else. But it's also absurd.

(01:15:18):
The thing in the exhibition and,and we talked a little bit about
it before, but to make it quick,is that you didn't know, you
were a bit befuddled by people'sbehavior in relation to moving
image and the exhibition. So it's a, it's a, it's a
problem, I would say, where it'san issue in exhibitions because

(01:15:40):
when you go to the Tate, you kind of feel like, OK, I'll be
there one hour tops. You kind of go through the
rooms. Poor people, you went there and
then decided to have lunch together.
They will not because they won't, they won't have time, you
know. And The thing is that in
contemporary art, and you asked me the question, and I was
really surprised about that because I thought it was a given
you're not supposed to watch from beginning to end.

(01:16:02):
And it was so cute when you said, like, I was so lucky I got
there in the beginning of the video, which for me is not an
issue at all because there's this kind of tacit rule of this
is for you to experience, go through, come back if you want,
stay if you want, watch the whole thing.
But then I got to piano work too.
And I thought, this is a performance.
You have to watch it from beginning to end.
Makes no sense. So there's the intersection of

(01:16:24):
cinema and performance through theatre and I, I was a bit
annoyed when I got to the end and I was like, I don't have
time to watch the whole of it. And I really want to watch it
whole because being bored is part of it.
It's part of a performative piece.
That moment where you're kind oflike and you're almost falling
asleep and then something wakes you up, you feel real time.

(01:16:46):
That's the purpose of it. And in that way, it's a very
traditional piece of avant-garde, you know, theatre,
film, Warholian, if you will, whatever.
And it's the second time that I'm kind of led to say in the
podcast, like this ticket. The same with Marina Abramovic
to the Royal Academy. Should be valid for three visits

(01:17:10):
because then you have one and then you have Sky News Life with
no, without sound and with no. I thought there was sound,
subtitles. Was there sound?
There was sound. Oh, there's sound, but there's
no subtitles. Yeah, I think that's the thing.
I I thought the Sky News thing was really interesting in the

(01:17:33):
context of you seeing it before you go into the the film about
the dad, the two hour film and then seeing it.
You have to see it again when you come out.
Yeah, because the very thing, the very the very thing about
this rolling news that never sleeps, it never stops.
It just goes round and round andround is this monster that will

(01:17:58):
never sleep. And then you go into watch this
film where someone dies and thenyou come out and the monster is
still there. And this idea for me, I always
feel that when you die, the world should stop.
The world should at least pause,but it never does.
You know, the day after you die,everything carries on as if you

(01:18:19):
were never here. And and that that idea for me
of, you know, when someone dies,for the people connected, it can
be the most either horrific or seismic thing in someone's life.
It could be a marker in, in their, in their life.
But for the world, it's just another day.

(01:18:40):
There's no, there's no mention of it.
There's no, it doesn't change anything.
And so that for me, that Sky News being where it was and the
way you experienced it before and after, was it just it, it
highlighted the things you that you already know that this thing
is this thing is relentless. And also the Sky News or any

(01:19:04):
like news channel glitches because there's a moment where
it either repeats, but also there's moments where you need
image. And that really annoys me.
And that's why I don't watch news.
Most of that I read it's you have to fill in the holes like
you have either to produce a completely absurd image that has

(01:19:26):
nothing to do with what you're talking about.
And then you have the the scrolling text it's underneath
that has nothing to do with the news.
And there's this glitchy body ofnews and that takes me to
something that I didn't say about Ed Atkins, which is that a
lot of the things that you see, he doesn't do him.
He's not a geek. He has people do the stuff for

(01:19:49):
him. So he's not committed to this
technology. For him, the technology is like
the body because the body of hisdad was glitching like it was
all so dysfunctioning and it andand he talks about a problem he
has on his right hand where. He it, it spasms and so many

(01:20:09):
times he's like in a restaurant carrying something and the hand
spasms and he spills his drink all over himself.
And again, it's interesting thathe's because it really looks
like something that might happenwhen you're playing a game,
those old games where suddenly awall is no longer there or
suddenly you can go through the door, but you shouldn't be able

(01:20:30):
to or. And for him, he really talks
about these technologies as the interesting sort of delirium of
what the body can be and do, andalso the and, and carrying the
same flaws and the same defects that you will find in a body,
but in a completely different context.

(01:20:51):
That then kind of creates a critical distance or as an
emotional distance or a sentimental distance.
But then that distance is filledwith melancholia.
Was it a tell me? Was the exhibition an enjoyable
experience? Was the podcast an X-ray?
Will you be back? I loved it.
I've loved every element of that.
I, I think that it was a very enjoyable experience because

(01:21:18):
when is it not enjoyable to go to an art gallery?
Even the ones that you don't connect with, the whole thing is
still enjoyable. Surely that's why you go because
it's not guaranteed every time you go that you're going to love
what you see. So you're not going there, from
my experience, you're not going there to love something or to
you're going there to ask yourself questions.

(01:21:40):
So even the fact maybe the question was it enjoyable is
irrelevant because it's always enjoyable, I think.
And As for talking with you, it's a delight.
Always a delight. Ah, there I was fishing for that
one. You have to say that.
And while you're being recorded,I don't have the the true talk

(01:22:01):
behind it. But anyway, thank you so much,
Nick. Thank you for doing this with
me. It was a real pleasure.
And thank you, listeners, for being out there and sticking to
the very end. This was a very long episode and
yeah, well thank you. Thank you all.
This episode was recorded on the12th of May of 2025.

(01:22:23):
My Co host was a lovely Nick Taylor and we talked about Ed
Atkins's exhibition which has Notitle, it's just his name, Ed
Atkins. It takes place at Pay Britain
and it's on until the 25th of August, so we have plenty of
time to visit it. The research assistant for this

(01:22:45):
episode was Sahej Malik, and themusic is by Satan.
As ever, thank you so much for sticking with us.
Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter.
Follow us on Instagram if you want to see images.
If you want to see the backstageof the podcast, I won't tell you
more. Go and check it out.

(01:23:06):
There's a lot still to discover that you don't get just by
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(01:23:27):
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So thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for supporting us and take care.
Bye bye.