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[Music]
our next speaker is Louise Ashcroft
Louise is working with performances
writing videos sculpture radio and
participatory experiences and describes
her art as an attempt to disrupt social
bureaucratic and economic systems which
have power over us
Louise credit graduated from the Ruskin
School of Art Berg back and studied
sculpture at the Royal College of Art
she has exhibited widely for instance
@bq Berlin Latitude Festival or on BBC
Radio Louise's co-founder of the free
art school alte FMA M teaches art at
Goldsmiths College today she introduces
us to her work or let's say ways of
speaking fiction to power let's give a
warm welcome and applause to Louise ash
[Applause]
so I'd like you all to find an object
that you've got in your bag or in your
pocket then hold them up whatever you've
got the most interesting thing it
doesn't have to be that interesting I
mean I guess there won't be anything
really unusual and you might want to
hide it if it is too unusual and then I
thought we could try to link them
together to open-source a narrative of
some kind
what okay we've got a photo of a photo
of is that you hugging a dog okay photo
someone hugging a dog the last drop the
politics of water how might those two
things link together
so you've got the dog there's a last
drop would you give the dog the last
drop of water before you drank it if
there was he comes first you or the dog
there's some kinda there's something
about water this is something about dogs
what else have we got is this what is
that a cigar or a pen or I liked it it's
a knife
okay go nice
will the dog be eaten if the I mean this
is clearly an apocalyptic scenario who
something is happening with the knife
and there's only a bit of water left
what have we got here
pills right that's a really good object
expecting like water bottles okay so
that what's like trays is what does it
do okay for drinking about so you can
drink milk if you have those but you
can't if you don't I didn't even know
they existed so we've got of the water
and that may be a chemical reaction
might happen if we add something else
what's this here oh right a tea but it's
very acidic there's a kind of alchemical
chemistry maybe we're trying to make a
new material there's are they earmuffs
to help to drown out the sound of the
barking from the dog as the experiment
that whatever is being done to the dog
with the chemicals and maybe the dog is
going on some kind of a trip so
psychologically or physically we don't
know what Oh an inhaler okay to calm
things down perhaps and this is a
reflector for when it with a there's a
is that a horse or with a horse or
reflector for a horse so there's now a
horse and the dog I think we just need
two more things because otherwise it
will be the whole talk and listen right
hermit and is that another hammer or
what is this a socket wrench okay so can
someone please do some of the work what
what would this it may be for testing
the reflexes of the dog before it goes I
on its excursion and and this also for
sockets maybe just to tighten up some of
it ligaments we'll have one more oh
maybe this is kind of nice and isn't
there and glad that you've got that on
you just in case so perhaps this will be
how it does fire but it's got its
passport there as well we don't need to
finish the story
but I just wanted to you can do that
yourselves afterwards or you can do that
in your heads but I think it's quite
nice that you could open-source a story
or a film maybe there's someone who can
fund that film and we'll talk about it
later I'm quite liked the idea was sort
of hacking the audience and when I use
the word hacking I use it wrongly in the
superficial way that somebody who has
really very little knowledge of
technology might have liked me so I
apologize if I kind of continually use
this fairly superficial idea of hacking
which comes from a very non specialized
position of an artist he's very much
involved in physical things I did
promise that I would bring a load of
props today but then I realized that I
couldn't really get them in my luggage
and I decided to bring pants instead of
all the objects and that's why I sourced
them from ela and they were much more
interesting objects than what I had of
usually a year's quite a lot of props in
my practice and I use them to kind of
intervene in public space in different
ways most of which reveal the futility
of the individual trying to confront big
capitalism or or state control and often
they fail to really change the world but
maybe just for a moment they change the
psychological space of being in public
space so I describe the sort of tactic
as a narco comedy I suppose playing the
world wrongly to create moments of
confusion and that confusion can be
resistance to power so for example this
up at the top corner I started
collecting the surface of Mayfair which
is an area of London which is very rich
and it's owned by Gerald Cavendish gross
actually he's died now but his son the
UK's most eligible bachelor apparently
this kind of aristocratic landowner
owns Mayfair and so I'm collecting the
surface all of the receipts and rubbish
and dust and everything and posting it
back to the landowner who lives in
Chester in the north of England so that
he'll receive all the detritus and kind
of physicalize Mayfair
which to him is just an asset on an
Excel spreadsheet so thinking about how
you might kind of directly connect an
owner of land with the the sort of grid
of that place by literally posting it I
always think about who owns the land
beneath your feet and in England that
often is some aristocrats or some public
school some which means private school
confusingly so some kind of rich person
and it hasn't really changed for a long
time and even increasingly public space
is being sold off to to big companies
and hedge funds and pension funds and
and so is actually getting worse these
vegetables here there's an intervention
that I do where I buy the most
unusual-looking vegetable that I can
find from local market and then I take
it into a supermarket and I try to buy
it along with the rest of my shopping
and the cashier doesn't know what it is
often their colleague doesn't know what
it is their supervisor doesn't know it
is the deputy manager and then the
senior manager and in some cases I've
been lucky enough to meet the main
manager of the Marks and Spencers food
store but what I really wanted to do was
to take that flow of the way things work
in a quite mechanical way with the
humans as part of that machine and to
open up conversations
to give agency back to the people so
that well mainly the conversations were
about the taxonomy of vegetables and
whether it was a carrot or a marrow or
whether they should put it through as a
carrot or a marrow and I did spend quite
a lot of money on it
I think I've donated a lot of money to
Tesco's and Sainsbury's so this
aesthetic and an aesthetic but it's just
a switch that I carry around with me and
when it's on anaesthetic things are
slightly duller and it is like a placebo
really and when it's on aesthetic things
just brighten up a bit a lot of these
things are more for me like this trowel
and the top corner it's sometimes if I
feel like completely powerless I might
dig a hole in the ground and put my head
in it so that I can imagine wearing the
entire earth as a giant head but other
things have more of a tangible political
impact like this is it's seeds that
attract bats and because obviously you
know the 18:27 Wildlife and Countryside
Act which prohibits building work to
take place when there are bats present
so if you attract bats to a building
that's about to undergo like renovation
or become a luxury apartment which is
pretty much every industrial building in
London bats are a really good way of
resisting what artists do which is
gentrify areas so I'm kind of canceling
myself out I like to think with that
this was a mask that are used so I
started building these belts which had
extensions and I would go on the the
underground train and
attempt to stop crowds from forming so
would keep this distance the personal
space boundary from myself it was an
anti crowd belt but then it didn't
really work people just crushed it
instantly and when I wore this mask
instead people kept an average of about
two meters away for that works a little
bit better at the top there there's some
perfume quite kind of stereotypically
feminine perfume that I carry around a
nice spray on all the statues in London
so if you do get to London and smell
some of the stonework of the statue
you'll find that the sort of patriarchal
macho quality of the statues is started
slightly reduced by the feminine scent
that it's radiating so really it doesn't
do much but just create moments of
highlighting the structures that are
there already and playful ways I think
these was yeah this is a bouquet that I
regularly make bouquets of flowers from
like hotels and banks and corporate
flower displays so kind of taking what
maybe graves as well not always great
and make these corporate bouquets that's
a Santander red from outside born in
Liverpool Street and I I like pointing
this photography glove is actually just
to remind me that pointing is really the
new photography or the new old
photography and really all my work is is
just pointing like yeah I don't really
like to do it but you can create quite a
lot of tension by pointing at someone
now or in public space and
three-year-olds do that all the time but
we forget that pointing is really
powerful and I would sometimes do this
walk where I would start and Greenwich
in London and I would walk into the
Docklands where all the big bank
buildings are the tallest building in
Canary Wharf one Canada Square
it wants to be looked at it deliberately
tries to stand out but I'd walk pointing
towards it from a mile or two and then
it would always be in my line of sight
and it would always be commanding the
attention of the skyline and as I got
right up to the building the security
guard would inevitably cover my my
finger and I realized it wanted to be
looked at from afar but as soon as you
looked at it on the ground
that was a terrorist threat so they've
done lots of pointing at buildings and
seeing how long it takes before I'm
stopped
I find that when you say that you're an
artist you can get away with a lot more
than because you start explaining the
concept to the security guard and they
really have very little experience in
dealing with a sort of philosophical
question that you might ask them there
isn't really a protocol for that and so
I start to have interesting
conversations with security guards as
well and they start to have that
creative moment in their day I guess and
I think being knowingly naive is a
really good strategy for for sort of
hacking reality because the idea is very
powerful
I mean jesters for for like hundreds of
years jesters have been used to even
commissioned by kings and queens to to
question authority even their own
authority so almost like the Jester is a
vent for power and I tell the stories of
these things at gigs and comedy or art
or performance nights and I didn't
really want to record me actually doing
these things because it felt like then
it's just videos of people looking at me
doing something weird it kind of coops
it
easily whereas when you use it as a
rumor it becomes more of a recipe for
something that anyone else could do like
this ladies definitely thinking of doing
it herself
and I do need all the help I can get so
if you could all start doing some of
these gestures and find your own as well
that would be great and that's for me
again telling some people about
something so other gestures that I've
done my friend was having an exhibition
in her house so I took some of the
carpet from her front room and started
to occupy little parts of space this is
on the street where the Bank of England
is thread needle Street and so this is I
think another Bank building so there are
little there are sort of legal
necessities for so yeah there needs to
be a gap between two buildings because
of some kind of planning thing and so
these are little in-between spaces
become places where people smoke or
where homeless people might shelter or
where I might kind of occupy with the
carpet from my friends house I quite
like the fact that there are these
offcuts which they are magnets for like
marginalised activity so I wanted to
really like highlight that again and to
kind of claim the bits of space that are
really some of the only bits of space
that are left in in London because
everything is so corporate and this is a
gesture that I did where I've been
collecting land from all over London
particularly in these former public
spaces that are now privatized and
posting them back to their international
land owners who have probably never been
there but who owned parts of Kings Cross
or yeah this Qatari sovereign wealth
fund
it's cost quite a lot of money to be
honest that I haven't been able to do
all of them but you know it's for the
cause and the the fact that they might
just get part of this land like it
I want to reveal the absurdity that's
inherent in advanced capitalism because
sometimes like my mom might say oh well
you don't want to be too extreme you
know you've got to live in the real
world you know this is reality the fact
that Jeff Bezos owns like more than than
a bunch of countries this is this is
just the real world but actually when we
think about it in a comedic way it
becomes an in a literal way it is
actually a ridiculous idea that that one
person might own so much I did a
residency at Tate Modern and take
written big public galleries and they
are trying to get more children from the
schools around the local area who often
they haven't been to galleries before to
come and visit and so I was one of a few
artists and residents who were working
with the schools visits for a year and I
would write to the prime minister with
them this is a former prime minister and
we would take the newspaper of the day
and we would cut it all up and make
nonsense stories with it and then send
it to the prime minister and they came
up with some really dark stuff but this
is a very posh girls school actually we
had a variety of different types of
schools I really liked that they signed
it with Ruby and Lottie and Phoebe and
Imani and muddy and Daisy and all names
that end in E and so I asked them I said
do you think that confusion could be
political and they were like oh we we
feel confused by the gallery or we don't
really like it or we feel like we don't
understand it it makes us feel stupid
and by the end we talked more about
confusion and there
Oh knees with confusion around art and
they decided that actually every group
really decided that confusion did have
this really powerful kind of resistance
inherent in it because if you send the
Prime Minister that they don't think oh
they want us to spend a bit more on
education they have to think what do
what does this mean and like that is not
a passive position that's a very active
position when you have to take
responsibility for your own
interpretation of something so I think
ambiguity and confusion and chaos maybe
that's where that sort of anarchic
quality that the hacking can have
relates to what I do and vice versa and
I made these pocket squares you can't
really see but I was doing a project in
Croydon in South London and there was
the Youth Court where all of the naughty
young people go to have their trials and
they'd scratch their names in the door
at the back bit where they go out to
smoke and so I photographed that and I
thought I really liked it because it was
a naughty little playful moment of
resistance where they even at the court
they'd scrawled their names in and so it
sent it to the new council reps who had
they just had a new a new team employed
because the record of youth care was so
bad in the borough that they'd had to
sack everyone and get some new people in
there paying in them an absolute fortune
and I thought to go with their luxury
Savile Row suits they might need a edgy
pocket square featuring this design of
the graffiti to just kind of remind them
I guess of the the physicality of what
it means to be a disenfranchised youth
in that area this is
a piece that I did where I took
investopedia and the urban dictionary
and found words that were similar in
both or the words actually the same in
both but I just put the definitions
together often I use collage so this is
a kind of collage conceptually taking
two things and putting them together and
seeing what happens when you read one
through another and I'm not really sure
what happens apart from that it reveals
that specialist language is alienating
and if we if we removed specialist
language from a lot of things then it
would be way more accessible so I really
wanted to reveal the humor in that as
well as that like we can see that slang
is is humorous and sort of playful but
also this becomes nonsense and I wanted
to use them to I wanted to take the
power away from the investment language
by showing as equal to this this
colloquial language queer inquiry and
confusing we talked a bit about that but
the these are the sort of deep dives
into particular spaces that I've been
doing particularly spaces of Commerce so
I did a project in a shopping center
unofficially but I spent a few months in
residence in a Westfield Shopping Center
in London and I led these retail therapy
walks so people could come and I
advertised that online and strangers
came and I do these walks where we would
reclaim the mall as a almost like a
studio for creative practice that
involved writing stories
dressing up in costumes imagining what
people would have been like that lived
there hundreds of years ago when it was
an agricultural area
a grime track with a local rapper but
the space where he used to rap was no
longer there because a lot of the
community spaces and the recording
studios and things that were there
before the mall came had sort of pushed
people further out we we wrote to CEOs
of we wrote nonsense letters to CEOs of
some of the shops there was a tattoo on
the leg of this model in this photo it
says trust no one on the tattoo
I noticed things that I wouldn't have
noticed that were kind of ominous about
the marketing apocalyptic advertising
like this woman with the tattoo she's on
TK Maxx and she's got just cracked earth
like a desert of cracked earth behind
her as a kind of stylish backdrop and
the more that I looked into the space of
the shopping center the more that I
realized there was this kind of
apocalypse chic and the t-shirts were a
source of great inspiration I'll tell
you a bit more about in a second
but I made a mall game a kind of is not
really like monopoly but it sounded nice
and I could use a logo perfectly by
chopping it up to make this new logo the
Westfield Shopping Center logo and it I
handed out these games that were
instructions of how to use them or in a
different way two people in them all so
they've got loads of coffees if anyone
wants and just just contact me and send
me like a stamped addressed envelope
because my bedrooms got quite a lot of
them it's getting really annoying that
I've handed a lot out but so yeah
suppose I wanted to because in
acceleration ISM the idea of
overthrowing big capitalism by taking it
to its extreme like get loads of credit
cards max them out by everything do
it wants you to do but in an extreme way
so it employed sort of a bit like that
like if you love the products and in the
shopping center and you use them and you
play with them and you get excited by
them but you don't take them out of the
shop then you you do everything that it
wants you to do but you don't kind of do
the final thing which is give profit to
shareholders and so I'm interested in
like the rules and then using the rules
to like mess with the aims of those
rules loopholes and rules and gaps in
rules that's kind of what I'm trying to
do and during my residency I noticed
that there were loads of t-shirts with
like phrases on them and then next to
the shopping center there was a boating
community along the river Lee which is
in the Olympic Village in Stratford in
East London so I realized that there
were connections between the slogans on
the t-shirts and the slogans on the
boats so that one and then this skate
plan liquid lunch I'll be there in a
Prosecco there were loads of open
seconds we only say mainly about
Prosecco and feminism but like they were
all made by H&M and yeah like made in
sweatshops
so yeah this and grow like you couldn't
even go inside have made that connection
the there were boat names that you'd
never have thought of there was one
called me just Emmy and there were lots
of t-shirts about sort of
self-centeredness and it was like I
couldn't I think when she make a
connection things just sort of appear
and I did a workshop with some with like
local people where we painted slogans
from the shopping centre but in this
traditional boat style really as a way
of slowing down the fast fashion rhythm
and like focusing on what it might mean
to be totally over it and what happens
if you play one idea through another
idea or one voice through another voice
change the accent of of the shopping
center to the accent of the of the
boating community and then I did some
big ones because if you have a gallery
exhibition you have to do some big ones
and put them on the wall and the mall up
early things were shown on these and
then there were some t-shirts and there
were also some videos of my fieldwork in
the shopping center and the speakers
have the grime rap track which I made
with a local rapper
we took the Argos catalog which is a
shopping catalogue and we took words out
of it we combined them into a kind of
poetry and then he rapped I'm not gonna
do I don't always feels inappropriate he
won't come he's got he's much cooler
he's got better things to do this is I
don't think I really need to show any of
just kind of she's got that don't judge
me by my t-shirt off her chest he's just
checking regulated wildness he chase
your dinner around the plate to trigger
primordial pleasure points keep chasing
werewolves fierceness yearning for your
inner animal but he's gone to habitat
the Great Indoors
wild quotations that don't stand up
anymore disorientated conglomerate
landscapes kicked over by unicorn hoof
shadows but you're in 24/7 365
luminosity the lights don't even go out
here you're applying photo filters that
transplant nocturnal sources where your
aging eyes were cuteness epidemic
postcode poriyal interspecies offspring
screen size so more can fit in the ark
when the waters rise for the closer you
get the further the ark appears farther
and farther pigeons a rainbow-colored if
you look up close let's get out of here
then somewhere anywhere only aliens
believe in us now they say the first
stage is denial
[Music]
immortal skins on skeletons Elizabeth
the first kept a unicorn horn in her
cabinet her fake probably a narwhal tusk
who was a big market for them then
serious explorers scoured the globe
hunting for mythical beasts gotta
catch'em or divide all the matter in the
world at printing unicorn shaped chunks
second phase is acceptance swap the
fantasy for firearms capitalist
masochism we are warriors rebels
uncapturable free with a giant barcode
on the arm and the brand-name
supply-and-demand
brands brazenly quoting the economic
strategies that they've used to verify
your life ours Oh leave it just you can
watch more my but this kind of selling
of rebellion and selling of like the
outsider I think it was quite
interesting because the the unicorn as a
sort of I guess it kind of like queer
symbol or like kind of outside a symbol
that's co-opted and there was unicorns
it was a proper epidemic of unicorns in
that shopping center the whole time as I
mean I love God that don't judge me by
my dog love unicorns and everything but
I just kind of kind of over them now
I've seen so many and so I also took
deep dives into other spaces so made
some radio programs where analyze and
overanalyze call center culture and AI
as well there's a bit and that you can
actually access them here it's not just
in the UK its it plays here as well and
the algaas catalog which is a shopping
catalogue kind of rereading it through
the lens of the Whole Earth Catalog
which is a sort of 60s counterculture
people say that it's a precursor to the
internet and the call center I was
reading that through was it religious
paintings of purgatory so like kinda
yeah making spurious comparisons between
things I have to hurry up so I then did
in the house clearance section of a
market and Southland in which just sells
all of the stuff it just takes stuff
from dead people's houses and then sells
it without filtering at all like this
because I thought it tells you a lot
about capitalism there's Bob's but his
hole puncher was worth a lot it was
priceless when it was his and he was in
the office and no one could touch it and
now that Bob's dead it's in the House
Clearance section of that foot market
and it's not really worth anything that
maybe 50 P at Peter's stall at by the
Alban E but then when we discover that
it's Bob Marley's then its price goes up
exponentially and so all the time it the
prices of these things were shifting
according to like what someone needed or
who happens to be passing or if it was
raining they would all get rained on and
then the umbrellas would go up in price
I have to be faster but so lots of times
I'm talking through these objects that
have just found kind of almost a moment
before and trying to kind of analyze
them and also using them as ways of
shedding my own subjectivity and kind of
becoming someone else like opening up
there's something really nice about
going through the house clearance
section because you really really kind
of can shape-shift through those those
people's family photos and there's like
that their funeral pamphlets and that it
feels really inappropriate in terms of
like identity and in the way that maybe
ownership of identity becomes
particularly relevant in the digital age
but in depth of market there is no
ethical rule it is literally anything
from those houses is there and it and it
becomes anyone's would and my students
had a like a pot of scabs like from like
bodily scabs that they just they bought
at the market and so I recommend
is better than the shopping center I
need food kind of stuff in a second but
there is a video that you can see on my
on my website of me kind of going
through the shopping sense and there's
some fish I'm gonna not show you that I
do he's just saying some fish change sex
so you could maybe investigate that
another time really quickly just to say
that of ending these one-hour holidays
which a group of people go on a kind of
fictional holiday together over the
course of an hour trying to find ways of
creating moments of togetherness where
of so fictional social scenarios can be
enacted and the same with this piece
which involved it was a development of a
project where I go to strangers houses
and do the cleaning with them and we
plan how we would spend the rest of our
lives together during that hour of
cleaning and this was a version of it
which was playable by two strangers and
they sorted socks while they planned how
they'd spend the rest of their lives
together using this questionnaire to
make it a bit less awkward and because
when you're cleaning it isn't awkward
when you're cleaning in their houses
because there's something to do even
they've invited you there and you don't
know who they are and it's probably
quite dangerous and then I got props
from this is in a art center where there
was a theatre prop room and so after
they'd filled in the questionnaires
together I would get props that related
to their fictional or speculative
futures I think I need to kind of stop
there but there's lots of other things
that I mean it's it's just a sea monster
committee that it was I'll finish by to
really quickly talking about listen so
far no tourism is like a thing where
people dark tourism where people want to
go to places where bad stuff has
happened or scary stuff so the Loch Ness
monster makes millions of pounds for
Scotland and in Hastings where this
project was commissioned it's quite a
run downtown and it has an art festival
and they commissioned me to do something
and I thought well we need to attract a
seaman
to Hastings because it's by the sea and
there are so many committees trying to
regenerate Hastings that the first the
first thing to do would be to do a
public survey to find out what sea
monster they all wanted like a focus
group so this is a sea monster committee
where they felt inside of the pillow
case of objects and that was a way of
mining their unconscious for what sea
monsters they might be able to feel and
then we wrote them down and then we did
a little we finished by doing a kind of
ceremony where I talked were kind of
chanted the descriptions of the sea
monsters with some of my friends who
were playing instruments and we were on
top of a toilet block overlooking the
sea and we had we didn't we're not sure
if we attracted one but we think it's
kind of still on its way and so yeah
that's that's me there's a lot to say
but you can see on my website and it's a
kind of hacking practice but I really
don't know how to use a computer so if
anyone wants to collaborate with me then
just contact me thank you very much
thanks a lot please
we do have time for two questions maybe
so if you have one please go to the mics
1 2 3 here in the room mic number one
place hello
I am personally also working with like
heck in public spaces and I was
interested in like when you're in these
situations like how you interact with
the people I like to do you wear like
that do you keep in being in that
artistic role or do you like reveal
yourself as an artist and like how do
you engage with the people if they they
talk to you if they say like explain
yourself or something like that yeah
like most of the time I don't appear to
be and even I question the usefulness of
that because it could it could be so
many other things but it's I guess when
people do ask what I'm doing I sometimes
say I mean artists because I think it's
ambiguous enough and non-threatening
enough for people to let you in there's
a sort of respect for artists but also I
think people who are not from an art
background don't feel like an artist is
superior to them they think more like
they're a kind of unusual slightly mad
character and there's something really
generous about the way that people treat
an artist doing something unusual and
they don't close down they kind of it is
an invitation to play I think so I do
try to talk to people I don't really say
I'm an artist and less it becomes
necessary to do that I'd rather let them
be quite uncertain as to what it is like
on the train for example people didn't
know what it was really and it was quite
tense because it's quite a poor area and
there was people in the morning
drinking cans of beer and saying they
didn't want me to talk to them people
thought I was like begging for money or
a charity or they really didn't know who
I was and so the question mark as to
what my motives were always a little bit
it fell a bit dangerous or weird or
antagonistic in that situation but
generally it seems like being an artist
can it opens up more and allows for a
kind of outsider ish position that
people warm to mostly unless you're kind
of being a [ __ ] and sort of like
authoritarian about that I think being
the sort of artist Widow is a really
great or being the idiot I think being
an artist and being an idiot can be a
really nice combo there are a lot of
time so please a very short question oh
okay well I just met you and I love your
work yeah
that's 30 days - girls are wonderful
just I really want I think it's quite
isolated is real quite isolated as an
artist I think tech culture has way more
collaborative stuff going on and I think
like the art world really needs that and
it absolutely doesn't have that and that
much in London so just get in touch and
even just to share ideas and bounce them
around so yeah
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