UTS Assembly

Hello and welcome to UTS assembly. My name

is Stella Rosa McDonald and I'm the curator of

UTS Gallery and Art Collection.

I'm speaking to you from Gadi Nura Sydney, and I'd

like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation upon
whose ancestral lands the

UTS campus now stands.

I'd also like to pay respect to the elders both

past and present acknowledging them as the

traditional custodians of knowledge for this place.

I'd further like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of
the various ancestral lands from which

our other attendees join us today and pay my

respects to their Elders past and present.

Thank you for joining us for UTS Assembly a live

lecture series that invites leading creative minds to

reflect on the conditions that shape our everyday lives.

I'm thrilled today to welcome Nato Thompson to deliver the

inaugural lecture on cities.

You're welcome to submit questions for Nato in the

Q&A box during the session and will seek to

address them at the end of today's program.

Nato Thompson is a curator author and

cultural infrastructure builder. He's the former

chief curator and then artistic director of Creative

Time in New York.

For those who aren't familiar with Creative Time, for over

fifty years it has commissioned and presented ambitious

public art projects with thousands of artists throughout

New York City across the country and around

the world.

During his tenure at Creative Time, Nato developed projects with

artists that underscored the civic role of

art in shaping society and public space.

Nato's exhibitions and projects included Paul

Chan's production of Waiting for Godot in

post-Katrina New Orleans, Kara Walker's A

Subtlety and the itinerant Creative Time

Summits amongst many other projects.

Nato has worked as artistic director at Philadelphia

Contemporary and MASS MOCA and is

the founder of The Alternative Art School, and the co-founder

of the blockchain platform Art World.

Nato's work brings particular focus to socially engaged

art and its intersection with civic

life, politics and media in

local and global contexts.

It's for these reasons that I'm thrilled to welcome NATO today Nato.
Thank you for joining us. I'll stop

talking and hand over to you.

Nice intro. Thanks Stella really

appreciate that and

Hello everybody. I'm gonna share my screen .

We'll

just get into it. I was thinking, like, let's talk about cities.

You know, there's just been this thing called a pandemic and
it's really changed idea of

cities here. I'm going to start share.

We're gonna do two things.

So let's start the share. I'll start here. I decided

to call this lecture that I'm gonna present

to you also

Metaverse urbanism. Okay. Here's the deal.

I know you hate the term metaverse. I hate it

too. I hate it. Who wants to borrow a term for Mark Zuckerberg

of Facebook? Certainly, not me, but it does.

I have to say I feel like it does actually describe something in

that matrixy way.

Of disappearing into the internet and you know,

I will just tell you that I
have made a life out of art and politics

and doing stuff in public space. I even had

the joke that was people love
art because it isn't the

internet.

So it is ironic to say the least

that I

that I actually have disappeared into the internet. I

put all my chips on the internet and I will talk about it

and I'm gonna talk about two projects. So what I want to do in this lecture is

I'm gonna talk about two different things my art school, which

is all online and my Art World

project which is a blockchain NFT project with artists

both of which exist around in here.

That said I have a deep affinity for

public space and of course, ironically or

interesting this lecture ultimately be about cities.

But it's funny because I was asked to do a lecture on

cities and I thought oh my God cities. I've been

in this computer for three years. Am I the only one? So we're
gonna think about what happened to that city while

we were all in here. Let's think about it. All right.

So here we go.

Let's move. Oh, come on. Oh, I

gotta go in here. Pandemic

occurs. Oh my God, there
we oh, that's why I got to hit.

Social distancing takes place, as you know.

You know when the pandemic first came about I don't

know if you remember.

Yeah.

I remember when in the United States when everybody was wearing gloves, but
not masks. Do you remember this? I was taking pictures

of gloves all over my city of Philadelphia. Anyways, then

the term social distancing came about and this

kind of giant retreat from the social into the

home.

And while that was happening, I began in
my own kind of deeply needing socialness

way. I started doing interviews with artists on
Instagram, on Instagram live.

And I started like thinking. "Oh my God, I can

like

talk to people all over the world like, live." I mean it's a

dumb realization. But certainly I would say something about the web is

you always it's almost like you get to know it again every like

10 years you get to know over new version of it like "Hello again

internet. How are you?" Oh anyways, so

I was like, "oh my God, I could talk to artists all over the world.

I can have a community.

All over the world." Okay. This
is what everyone slowly starts realizing

and I had a friend Zane who said to me. He said,

you know, what at the very beginning of the pandemic he said,

"think of this pandemic

as a boot camp for the world

on the internet the whole world

in the next year is gonna get a boot

camp.
On social networking and internet life." Yo,

ain't that the truth into the

metaverse we go. There's

The pandemic create demand for both video game

consoles and cloud gaming.

In first part of 2020 Nintendo reported 73%
year over year increase in

revenues much of which attributed sales and Nintendo Switch. Well Cloud
Gaming revenue grew by

nearly a billion from 2020 to 2021.

St. That's all of you know, this is a tech school so you guys know this

more than I do but you know, certainly I come of the

age where music and film where the dominant cultural

forms and there was a essay by

these guys Horkheimer and Adorno in the mid

20th century about the travesties of

the rise of music and film as

the new cultural forms away from theater and operas.

They hated the idea of jazz, but we are in a new

cultural revolution. As you know, where video games by

far topple music and

film as the number one cultural influence

on the world and why is that important? Because the
world of the metaverse is radically shaped by

video game culture and a lot of the technological instruments
that are used that shape our social being

come out of that culture as you know, yo, I
don't know how many of you hang out in these spaces.

I think they're totally intense, but there

we go. We're all in we're all in the metaverse. And then I don't know how many

of you been to a Esports Stadium,

but I'm down. I think it's cool.

I don't know if any of you bought land in decentraland

the metaverse space where land is for

sale. I just talked to a guy yesterday that sold a

plot of land for 1.8 million dollars two months

ago. What? I don't know. Simultaneously, online
learning. I started art school in 2021

75% of schools are planned to

operate online prior to this 57% volume

for equipment digital tools 40% were elementary

students 64% some Middle School 63% for high

school students 80% of schools of purchase or are preparing

to purchase additional technology for students. What am I talking about? Yeah, you're

in school. You already went through it, you know online learning became

a reality.

I'm going to talk about my online arts school. But if

you can't it's it is a such a profound shift
in the way knowledge is being

disrupted, and I know that you have

I know that you have experienced it in your

own University setting it probably led to a lot of frustration for you

for faculty, in person, masks
whatnot. But this shake-up will

forever radically transform the land

of education.

And then finally D5 Bitcoin, I

know two weeks ago Bitcoin went Brroww!

But not as much as the global economy went Brrrrow!

I would love to hear from any of you crypto miners, crypto people

crypto critics, crypto kitties, crypto punks.

But the whole "De-Fi" decentralized finance
revolution that came out of cryptocurrencies of

blockchain technology has radically shifted the

notion of a trustless economy not regulated

by banks, totally internet environmentally disastrous
and profoundly shifting culture

and finally something I also want to talk about: NFTs

non fungible tokens, digital assets

secured through but not through blockchain technology often
associated with these artists. I don't know if

you're familiar with the Bored Ape Yacht Club on the left

Seth Green. Apparently the famous. Is he

a famous actor? I'm not sure why he's famous lost his

Bored Ape was gonna do a whole TV show about how to

stolen out of his wallet.

I dunno if you read that, and then here's Beeple, you

know, this is the artwork by the artist who made

an artwork every day. These are this is 5,000 of

his first drawings. That is it was

put into one image. It's called the first five thousand

days sold at Christie's for a whopping 69

million dollars.

Oh, not that long ago less than a year ago and completely

blew everyone in the traditional art world's mind that

this thing called NFTs could sell for that much.

And finally remote work.

The idea that one could work from home in an

office? And while there was

in the United States a profound moment called the Great Resignation

where people and I'm part of it decided they

never wanted to go back to work and they were ready to shift

their life and wanted to work remotely.

While that isn't the rule it is certainly a
big part a big percentage of

that has happened.

So I want to talk about two projects. I've started I want to keep mindful of

time. We're doing good. I'm gonna talk about

two online projects and then I'll talk about some public art too. And then we're going

to talk about the kind of tensions between these spaces

and you know, I'm a curious soul. I must

say I started as a curator whatever that is

a person that chooses art and works with artists to make

projects happen. I love that. I got into it only

because I loved hanging out with dreamy crazy people and I
always feel like my job and life is to make impossible dreams

happen in physical spaces, but
now I make impossible dreams happen in digital

spaces. But nevertheless the idea is to make wild dreams
come true and that's sweet. It's kind

of like two parts PT

Barnum one part Karl Marx, but I feel like

this art school... So I

was a curator and then I got done working for people. I

got tired of having a boss.

And as much as being a curator is great, there's always a boss

above you can't handle that anymore. So I started two businesses and one them is

two businesses and one of them's the The Alternative Arts School and I'm not like a neoliberal.

I'm like, it's not some Libertarians

like money rules everything. I'm more like

interested in intentional uses of the money in order

to produce new worlds. And certainly the intentional uses

of resources is a way in which

you can make a world and the alternative art school which is to be

simple is an online art school. We have a lot of artists actually

from Australia at the school.

But the alternative art school I have a film I can

show you a little bit we'll show promote it. Let me promote it to you.

Do you believe that your

voice has meaning?
I believe that artists have some really

important information to give the rest

of the world.

Artists that attend this school are building it with us. We're constructing a

new world literally together.

um
today we're going to take an image of the different

rooms in our homes and make a kind of collective
home. Which room

am I supposed to be? Oh, let's get the kitchen table.

Okay, so everyone ready?

If somebody wanted traditional teaching they

wouldn't be going to school called the alternative

arts school make a video that addresses something
that impacted your

identity. Eat food in the shower.

Create a depiction of Labor.

Has me thinking about language

language relative to enslavement there are very few places where you

can actually find a platform it
is we call AM where Billy

is in Thailand that allows so much difference to

be in the same room. I would like to show you

how is it like in my neighborhood?

They open space for really personal
narratives and how the personal

is political too.

I'm a fifth

generation longshoreman.

This school has been like a miracle for me.

I don't feel like a misfit. There's the

first time I really feel like I'm home.

artists around

the world

teaching artists around the world. The idea

of art bringing people closer together is becoming
more real to me. So I think everyone came

for school and they stuck around for a community recovering conceptual
artists. That's good.

All right, that's cool. Anyways, so

I like that Viola. So basically, you

know that school which is kind of a dumb idea which is producing into
what I realized is. What is a school?

It's people coming together in a space and learning from

each other and something that you can on the Internet. It's a I

always think the best ideas are really obvious and you

can produce

exchanges between people across race, class,
gender, sexuality, geography

and our artists that attend many of them are in

their 30s 40s and 50s. They have life experience. They're more

like colleagues sharing ideas, working

artists and it is profound because

the artists that come a) they want to be there b)

everyone that knows that has gone to a grad

program, the best teachers are your fellow students

and the fellow students that are also your

community from around the world. It's such a crazy dumb

idea. So currently we have 99
artists attending this last semester from

26 countries around the world. So it's

a profound range. It's been going for two years and it

is entirely online. So that's the first project. I took on during

the pandemic.

What's next? Oh, well. Yeah,

there's some of our classes. Okay second. I launched

with the artist Wally brought another guy named Josh Goldblum a

NFT platform called Art World happy to

talk about NFTs with you. Certainly. I want to say this

on in the short of the long. First of all, let me introduce an artwork that

we've just commissioned by Walid Raad is an artist that's from

Beirut who teaches at the Cooper Union School.

in New York, these are

this is a birthday cake for

Omar all Bashir.

It is one artwork of 20 that

we've made. These are all from a project called Festival of

gratitude.

These are a series of birthday cakes for dictators tyrants
princes princesses, sheiks, sheikhs,

CEOs and goats.

They are NFTs that

allow that allow one to purchase.

They're one of ones which is say one of each available online

on our platform that we're just launching and we have a sale
with Christie's that allows one to buy

a birthday cake for Vladimir Putin as he turns

69 years old all proceeds go to Ukraine now, but it

is a project that really celebrates the

tyrants and dictators of our era and just like the

early 20th century that ushered in

both Dada and Surrealism. We are

entering the 21st century in a world where democracy is

becoming a really tenuous project and

the autocrat dictator right-wing forces

of the world have come to bear in places like Brazil,

Hungary,

Turkey, Russia, the United States,

England, I don't know we can go on, India.

It's a very very fragile world and the

democratic project is terrifying and what better way to acknowledge

it than to celebrate the dictators who don't seem to ever

go away. In terms of that, I will say this about the

NFTs and my foray into the net which is

While there's been a lot of bad art. I actually think

a lot of bad art is great news. I do think a lot of young people in a

space getting excited. It's great news. And I don't

think the bar has ever been lower in the art world

in terms of its contributions economically to

the broader culture. Most people think of the

art world... I've worked in the art world for nearly 30 years and I've

gone to art fairs where there's money going on all over

the place and none of it seems to make its way into

the alternative spaces or the artist friends that I

have. It seems like just like Junior High School.

There's some party for rich kids that you're not invited to

and seems like life is always this story

called "you're not invited". You watch passively

as the world goes by and you're out there watching it

happen unable to understand why you're not in it.

Well,

In my mind at this point for me as a political

person if I don't tackle the art world's economics

straight on then what are we doing? Just being

jugglers at the side. Well in the

NFT space you can actually build economies a)

artist can get royalties and secondary sales,

which is never before happened. And what we're doing

is attaching artist projects to the alternative spaces

in the world. So that money is actually in perpetuity transferred
over to an art world we

actually believe in. And intentional economics are

in fact possible in the NFT space. It

is not I would say a given and I think most

people's de facto mode is to hoard all the money for themselves and

rationalize it. As my uncle told me man is

not a rational creature man is a rationalizing creature

and never more so than the nft space where

the entire rationales and cash grab but that said

besides the cynical sardonic view of all

humanity. I would say that the intention

use of resources and the capacity to build

audiences with art

is profound and I am a huge believer in

building alternative art worlds in there with the art world

in the NFT space as with the online arts school. If

I was to go building physical art school, I'm gonna

go get bricks.

And I'm gonna go put some cinder block down. I'm gonna get some air

conditioners and I'm gonna hire a security guard

and a gardener and then we're gonna build this

whole I mean, what's the what what is my

startup money to be able to build a university

campus?

But on the internet...

I just get good teachers and Zoom and I have a university! What?

And here I couldn't get a physical

gallery. Go to Chelsea and like pay all
that rent and then have someone sit there.

I couldn't do that. But here I have a gallery. I've got

the best artists in the world.

What what? All right.

Oh space. Let's talk briefly about public space too. So while saying

all this is the lecture about cities.

I haven't talked about cities at all.

Well, let me ask you this. I want to talk about a little bit of public art.

I don't have a lot of time. I'm really mindful of time, I'm a very punctual person.

I want us to ask what about cities? I'll tell you one thing. That's

interesting about the pandemic and I know for the record I have.

I've in a besides being glib. I'm kind

of glib the pandemic has been a disaster. I have a lot

of friends that have lost friends. I've gone through

a lot, a lot of you have, so a lot of sympathy it's

not some funny thing. I understand that. It's

also radically shifted the way cities work

profoundly. So and in fact all my favorite theorists
about cities all got it wrong. No one

I read ever said there's gonna be a pandemic and it's

gonna completely reverse this the globalizations of

cities as you know it. Nobody wrote that.

Everybody up until the pandemic said that

people are gonna move into the cities that like proximity to

power resources and the main Global cities of London, New
York City Hong Kong Sao

Paulo. Like this is the

way the World's gonna Bbe shaped. Is these mega cities.

Now what? Remote work.

62% and workers age 22 to

65 claim to work remotely at least occasionally 44% of

companies do not alone remote work of any kind.

There's a real battle going on.

What else happened?

Last summer in the United States, we had a March

for Black Lives. It took over the whole city after the ongoing and
continued assaults on Black people

not just by police structurally politically economically
the kind of teeth of structural racism

and bending exhausting and painful for people

of color. Not just the United States, but globally

And there's been movements, marches for that that literally erupted cities.

What's crazy is it was a lot of youngins... you

remember this? I dunno maybe you guys participated in it. The cities

are erupting with like protest movements and the

older folks like me

don't want to catch covid and nevertheless. There

was these March these massive protests disrupting cities.

I was this oh, I know what this is. Yeah. Okay. Wait, I'll
go back. I'm gonna do that real soon. Hold on.

That almost time. Um, hey, do you can

you guys um real quick? Okay in the United States, um,

there was a group and I'm from Philadelphia There's a

group called Monument Lab that decided in during

March for Black Lives, there was a lot

of taking down of monuments. In the United States was like Civil War monuments or

monuments from the kind of era of slavery. So like Civil

War generals on monuments that are often encouraged like

white supremacist white leaders

were torn down in certain cities and this group Monument Lab

was there to kind of produce art experiments with artists

to think about what other monuments we could construct. So this

is a pick with a fist of resistance by the artist Hank Willis

Thomas. Here is a monument
that are Tanya Brughera produced called Monument

to New Immigrants.

And here is a monument where the artist Karyn Olivier

actually took a monument that was in a neighborhood

which was a war monument and then built mirrors
all the way around it with people reflected people's

own thoughts. I'm hoping

that our esteemed crew wouldn't mind sharing that video

now of Kara Walker that I'll end on so, okay.

Can you guys do that or how do I do that?

Yeah, I'll help you out one second.

Do I stop share?

Oh you do that. Okay, cool. Thanks.

Is an elaborate sort of marzipan or sugar sculpture

made of sugar paste to kind of fondant that typically in

these large Banquets that would have been thrown in the

Medieval Era at the court of King Henry.

They would have had main course and then a sugar

subtlety and then people would eat it. So handle this kind

of power of ingesting that this desirable precious
substance, but also you're

sort of ingesting the power of the king. Anyway, when I

heard the term subtleties, I was a goner like, oh

I have to make a sugar sculpture. It's like oh, of course.

I'm really proud that Creative Time is undertaking this

extremely ambitious project.

It's not just ambitious and scale. It's ambitious in

terms of its content. Kara Walker is encouraging

us to look at things that are so visible in our society

that we wish were invisible. Our histories of slavery

and our contemporary relationship to slavery, immigration,
migration, mythologizing of

black women's bodies.

And it's our belief that Creative Time, that public art

creates a space to engage in those difficult

conversations.

I'll just

give you guys on what you're looking at here. It's okay.
Let me just talk about it. It's okay with the building.

It's here creating the context and it is like the

sculpture is kind of the subtlety to make a

piece that would talk about this as well and Echo it and

alright. Yeah, maybe we

can just turn the sound off and I'll talk over it. So basically what we produced is

a project with us ours Kara Walker, which was a massive sculpture
literally about two city blocks long. I

don't know 60 feet tall.

Made of well, it's actually made of Styrofoam with
a sugar slather around. So it's

entirely encased in sugar and this was

in the Domino Sugar Refinery which is to say

this is the oldest, this is one of the oldest sugar

refineries in the United States. It's the place

where literally they took the sugar cane from

the Caribbean.

And made sugar white and this

was the room they did this in and they refined it

and when you walked into this space, which is this massive cavernous space

was like a evil Willy Wonka place and the

walls were like encased in this like gross
old molasses smell

and you could still smell it and it was just all

over the place almost look like an Anselm Kiefer

painting everywhere.

and in this

she had produced the sculpture that looked like a

kind of caricature of a Negress

who's also part that like
a mammy figure that had also

become a sphinx like a sphinx of Egypt.

And almost at that scale.

Shouldn't and there was a kind of some exaggerated female
genitalia in the back. It's very

sexualized very big and it lorded

over the space in this room.

Where of course

not only was sugar refined but the sugar sale

of sugar was the part and

parcel of the slave trade what was

called the Triangle Trade where British ships went

to Africa they bought slaves they brought them to the

Caribbean where they made sugar they brought the sugar

to the United States the money went back to Britain to get more

slaves and this is called the triangle trade and this is

the you know, the foundation of the United States economy.

Was built on slavery and the lives

and all that happened directly because of it in

this room. I tell that story and this

is a big public artwork and it's I also joke, this is

like, this is my this is the year 2014 I think

of this is my public art platinum album. This
is pre-pandemic. This is public space but it

also has an internet tie-in and I know I'm running a

little over but I'll just I'll be quick and that project

which I want you to see a picture of I'll

find a picture. Um, but that project happened
the same

year that a film

12 Years a Slave came out

and it won Best Picture and it's buying an artist came

out of the artist. He's a filmmaker named Steve McQueen and it

won the Oscar for Best Picture and I

was thinking so you have this Oscar winning film about slavery.

And then you had this Kara Walker project about slavery and

that project what was interesting is people came to it.

And then this is really early social media

and people began discussing: what

was the proper way to look at
the artwork? So the

artwork and then all this internet chatter and

all these chat rooms and all this

Twitter stuff just blowing up and everyone's getting angry

and fighting with each other and people being to being

accused to being disrespectful and then there's white privilege.

And then suddenly like what I realized is unlike a

movie where you sit passively and watch a film and

then leave and have dinner talk about it.

With the artwork you don't just look at

the artwork.

You literally look at people

looking at the artwork and then read the

tweets and read the social media phenomena that inform the

artwork itself and that there's this profound synergy
between public space

and the internet social that creates this massive

catalyst that is quite profound. I say

that because I do believe wholeheartedly all the

kind of ingredients that went into March for Black Lives

in so much is the energy the Zeitgeist around a
social media platform getting a critical discussion that

feeds the public energy happened.

I want to leave on that note. I have another project. I wanted to

show you guys so much. It's short by the artist Simone Lee.

We did a whole project around a health clinic

called the free people's medical clinic, but

I just want to say in short when it

comes to cities and I'm not resolving much.

But I am interested in all of these projects and I'm interested

in radical redistributions of wealth. I'm very invested

in how we can think about decolonialism but also

systems of equity and

and and and and acknowledging dispossession
and extraction whether

it is through colonial projects whether it is through slavery,

whether there's through patriarchy but not not but

I want to say this and this is my big big but.

I want to build a world. I don't want to critique the haters.

I don't want to critique the Trumps. I don't want to critique the

right. I want to build with people I love. That's

what I want to end on and that's what I want with the cities

and that's what I want on the internet. And that's why I want with NFTs. I

want to build an art world worth inhabiting with people

I care about I invite you all to do that with me. Maybe that's

what I'll end on.

Also, maybe I could take questions.

Nato thank you. That was incredible and a beautiful

articulation of the

You know, the that art is a part

of everyday life. It's it's just one of the threads the
ties together. So

thank you. There are a couple of great questions.

One is as we

re-emerge into the public realm and the

pandemic continues, what should artists bring

from what they've learned in the

online space to public space.

What? Okay, so that's into me.

That's the question and I do think this

is what I think is like I mentioned like there's a

maybe I wasn't articulating it well enough but I'll

say this there is a profound dynamic between people interacting and

discussing something and art.

And I say that because

it's not just art. You know, they I did I wouldn't when I

worked at Mass MoCA the Museum of Contemporary Massachusetts. They did

this Harvard research on one of my exhibitions and they learned

something which is very funny, which is people learn more

about the show in taking a survey

about the show, which is the more

people talk about art together the

more they learn about art together. And so
I think having a space whether

it's a Discord Channel whether it's a

Twitter space but digging in to art

that excites you but also building a critical discussion make
sure you mature about it and then finding

ways for that discussion to land in public

space to find ways that has tentacles out there

in the world, you know, and there's all kinds of mediums for you

to be as little as like you need to do an AR thing. You can

literally just meet up on a corner and talk but I

think like what you guys all know this like people always get

like "Oh the metaverse there's nothing

like real" everyone gets so reactionary like you're like," I don't

want to live in the world anymore. I just want to live in

the internet." I'm like dude. There ain't nobody that just wants

to live in here. Like people do like a shower.

People like a hot tub, you know what? I mean? There's things in the physical world

that a little better than in here. We all know that so like I

think it's about finding cool ways to connect these things.

And the other thing I'll say too about class that I'll just

say that this at my school. Something that I realized was crazy when they

talk about community in the United States. I don't have the

language is the same Australia, but people always say what about the community?

I realize what they mean is broke people that don't travel.

Right and it's often bounded by like race, class lines, but
what was wild to me is on the internet you can

travel.

Like like a lot of people don't get on

planes and go visit people like famous art

people. Do you know that's a real privilege to travel so

much but like when you take communities that never travel

and they get on Zoom and meet diasporic communities like

them or like make Indigenous community connections

across vast spaces to build new cultures.

That shit's profound, and making those

things hit the ground whether it's like a little exhibition here or

there or ways that come in. There's this we're in

uncharted territory for human sociability. So

I think baby steps make it things out in the world's cool. What

else?

I think that brings up really interesting

considerations about

public space as undemocratic,

you know and and thinking
of how we can take the language of

the internet to public space. There is another question. I suppose

it relates to the documentation and

preservation of public art and the

question is will today's public artworks be

tomorrow's toppled monuments?

I mean

it's different, you know, I'll say this.

A lot of the artworks. I'm sure they contemporary always are very

temporary.

And the ones that tend to be permanent, you know,

it's a different kind of.. I allowing it to bureaucratic, but the

ones that are being toppled right now the way they come to life

is different and I mean that in so much is the ones that are getting

toppled or either war memorials,

right, so they're literally like to generals or people

that fought in wars. That's one style.

The other is extremely wealthy

benefactors, like power, demonstrations
of power like Sir Walter Blahblah

and there's some statue of him, but back in

the day if you gave tons of money or you just own the town you pay

for statue of yourself to go in the center of town

and they'll come up with some reason why you're there but it's just because you

were the you were the baller that had all the cash and you

made a monument to yourself.

Or your friend did, but like that's a lot

of monuments and that's just to say that's a

different mode than the way Contemporary Art is
put in public space. Those are different financial models

and

Increasingly cities don't do a lot of permanent
public art because it's much more contested.

There's not many arts budgets anymore.

You know, I mean

God bless Nan Goldin who totally took down the Sackler family

who's produced Oxycontin, but you

know in front of the Metropolitan Museum is one of

the most egregious families of carbon emissions called the Koch brothers.

They have a water fountain right there in front of

the Metropolitan Museum the Koch brothers water fountain. People

throw stuff in there and yada yada, but

I mean in general, I think the wealthy have started

getting a little skittish about throwing their name

everywhere because the hordes, the angry hordes come

after them. And and so I don't

know I think it's a different kind of model and you have to be specific about where the

funding is coming from and what that Monument does.

Do you see a relationship between blockchain, you
know crowdfunding, independent of

those models of

arts funding from people in power. Do you say connection there?

I mean, here's the deal. I'll say this there are

these things called decentralized autonomous organizations

or called DAOs. They're basically giant pools

of money, often crypto money. So a ton of

ether, a ton of Bitcoin, pooled together by a bunch

of artists or groups of people.

They think of them as under trustless groups

or self-organized.

They're popular and they buy as you can imagine

groups of people buying art together nfts buy Art
differently.

Than people trying to decorate their house.

And that I mean just to be simple most aren't

sold in the world.

On the below $20,000 level.

Is Art to decorate homes?. And so

I I don't that's the commercial part of that

and for the record just to get you my sense.

I've always been into art you could never decorate a

home with. So, you know when everybody thinks all art is

about decorated homes online.

No, I'm so I'm ass backwards. I thought

like I never understood what all that art that decorate homes is

for. Like that's house decorations. That's art, but

nevertheless I would say that because the economy of
buying things in a group is very different. Now

does it totally change the funding structures?

No, but does it does it

change the landscape somewhat? Yes, and I
do think this, I know the

physical world that analog world of arts funding is pretty static.

It's not changing very much out there. I've been

in this field a long time. It seems pretty stable and

boring but do I think this world

is changing all the time. Yes every
month. It's a new world and does that mean

there's new possibilities? Yes, and are

you tired of gatekeepers and people telling you you can't do

things? Well, I am and and there's it's chaos in

here. It's almost exhaustingly chaotic, but there's not

as many rules. I think that's cool for art. You know, I think

I'm game on for that.

Nato we're going to finish up, but I think your

work really speaks to the
way that art intersects with

our social life and the way that it can exist not
through public monuments necessarily, but in

our collective memories, and I lived experiences, so thank

you for being with us today. It's great

to have you here and have your awesome presentation for
audience. So, thank

you everyone for joining us online, please thank Nato.

Through your screens. Right on awesome. You guys

are awesome. Join us on July 29th to

hear from Gaetano Pesche discuss How Art and

Design can shape Futures. Thank you Nato.

Cheers guys. Take care.

Stella McDonald: Hello and welcome to UTS Assembly my name is Stella Rosa McDonald and I am the curator of UTS Gallery & Art Collection. I’m speaking to you from Gadi Nura, Sydney, and I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation upon whose ancestral lands the UTS City campus now stands.

I pay my respects to elders, both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this place

 i'd like to acknowledge also the traditional custodians of the various ancestral lands from which our audience and speaker joins us today and pay my respects to those elders past and present.

Thank you for joining UTS Assembly, a lecture series that seeks to detail the richness of creative practices across the humanities, visual arts and design by inviting leading creative minds to reflect on the conditions that shape our everyday lives.

I'm thrilled today to welcome Camille Henrot to deliver the third lecture in the series on Technology.

This lecture is pre-recorded early on the morning of the twenty first of October, while it's the late afternoon in New York, where Camille is currently based

Camille Henrot is one of the most influential voices in contemporary art today. Her critically acclaimed practice encompassing, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation photography video and film examines what it means to be both a private individual and a global subject.

The relationships between objects, language and desire and the superstructures that contain and define knowledges are a defining concern of her multimodal and singular practice.

A two thousand and thirteen fellowship at the Smithsonian Institute resulted in her film gross fatigue for which she was awarded the Silver Lion at the the 55th Venice Biennale

Gross fatigue, a poetic and breathless film that Camille has described as an experience of density, brings together diverse creation, myths, sciences, and anthropologies to tell the story of the creation of the universe in thirteen minutes, set against the backdrop of a computer desktop and a spoken word narrative.

Subjective and intuitive, the work relates the universe to the internet and points to the impossibility of a unifying system of knowledge

Camille has generously offered the audience today the opportunity to view Gross fatigue, and a link will be provided to you along with this recording.

She elaborated ideas from Gross fatigue to conceive her acclaimed two thousand and fourteen installation The pale fox at Chisenhale Gallery in London,

 in two thousand and seventeen Henrot was given carte blanche at Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, where she presented the major exhibition days are dogs.

She's the recipient of the two thousand and fourteen Nam Jun Paik Award, and the two thousand and fifteen Edvard Munch award, and has participated in the Lyon, Berlin, Sydney, and Liverpool biennials, amongst others

Camille welcome to Uts Assembly, and thank you for joining us.

 Thank you very much. I'm very um honored to be invited to talk with you today.

 Well, preparing this today I was a little bit like confused how to approach the topic of technology.  The first question I asked myself, is like

 um. Am I a relevant person to talk about this topic? And and what would be my angle? Because the truth is, I know very little about technology. I am myself

 very technically, unfit to the use of computers and telephone constantly. I don't know how to do very simple updates or struggle with extremely simple operation. What I do

 understand, though, is uh, and what i'm interested in is how humans relate to technology and the

  so the pre technological model that I relied on. What i'm interested in is actually what is not technical, but technology, but what is rather like psychological, the psychological implication,

  that that um

  technology as a role to what direction of that is social, that is Gregarian. The psychological implication

that this environment that we call social media has created in terms of like reproducing models of the family, models of control, models of sovereignty, models of help. So often in my approach.

Uh, I start with problems. Uh, I start with failure. I start with a feeling of inadequecy

So one of the works I thought would be a good start is a series of work I made in two thousand and fifteen, two thousand and sixteen that are called Bad Dad and Beyond they are a series of inter phones and telephones with a multiple choice  that explore the perversity of help. Basically How when we seek for help,  especially online, we are met with control. And we are met with other expectation. We are also confronted to our own

 desire to be seen, but also to be respected, and the different implications of that, and how much that positionof seeking for help, but being received with surveillance is echoing

  a specific childhood memories and feelings of powerlessness that comes from childhood.

  My analysis was that we expect too much from technology, and what we receive is not what we expect.

  So there's a combination of

  the fact that we expect too much also make us harder in our judgment towards the

  um

  the being that provide help. Um, but also it creates a feeling of powerlessness that is itself also creating a certain kind of self hatred, of self devaluation.

  Um. The very fact that we are also confronted to our own research. So how technology, when seeking for help, is acting as a mirror and and instead of

  answering with a specific response. It's confronting us with a mirror of ourself, with other people with the same questions, same interrogation, and not much more solution,

  which is basically the principle of the Forum. You know the principle of the Gregarian impulse and sort of like open conversation.

  So just to come back to the work itself. Uh, it's a series of nine machines. Some of them include the screen, some of them don't

  The first one that I can see was called Bad dad and beyond and was a machine that would combine the

  traditional problem with fathers, with traditional problems, with computer or Internet or Wi-fi. So typically

  I researched historical bad father's. There's many of them

  it seems that bad father's have the existed since historical time. So it would be like taking the example of Agamemnon, who killed his daughter to change the weather forecast, to get a good weather for his war

  combining with problems you get on your computer. So it would be "if your

  father killed your sister and deleted files without your permission, press one."

  That would be one of the example of the question you would get. There would be also a question that

  typically you relate to, like privacy. Um, this is, for example, is coming from a telephone which is called Um,

  um.

  Sorry "easy cheating". It's another little cell phone call is the cheating that would typically start asking you question; "when is your birthday?"

  "How much money do you make you?" "Do you receive psychiatrics?" "Is Google right about you?" "Do you have children?" "Why don't you have children?"

  "Do you remember your mother birthday?" And the more it would progress in the question, the more it would triggering, filling up shame and guilt.

  It's a little bit the principle of Rosa la rose; The idea of suffering the consequence of your own impulses. So by trying to spy on someone you are being spied on basically

  Another one was called splendid isolation, and it would be more like a traditional voice over with not so many choices, using psychiatrist's classical questions to

  fast track intimacy with their clients.

  So yeah, all these different works had in common a sort of like relationship between humans and technology. And how technology is not something completely new. The technology by we often associated

  associate technology with the future and with modernity. But um, it's still made by men and women who have a reptilian brain who have escapist impulse,

  and who have drives that are also very primal. So

  the ideas that actually in there,

  in that structure, these different tools that we have around us, they reproduce um um system of power and system of domination that are inherited from a very ancient past.

  And this is why, you know, it's for bad dad and beyond. But it was very much a way to address problems of authorities through technology and problem of autonomy.

  And what happens when a need for help is met with control.

  There's another aspect of emotional and psychological aspect, of being confronted with a mass number of information that I explored in my work. It was from a work that is coming

  before, and it's work from two thousand and thirteen. So a few years before bad dad and beyond, the work is called Gross fatigue.

  It's the film that was presented at the Venice Biennale

  and that you will be able to access online.  I will provide a link. The film was made during a Residency at the Smithsonian Institute.

  The Smithsonian offered a residency, and one of the advice I received before applying for this fellowship was, please focus on one topic

  But the Museum itself, the Smithsonian Institution, which is not one museum but a very large group of museums, doesn't focus on anything. It's quite the opposite, very much it's the conglomera of museum that has a sort of universal scope,

  and the museum itself, in the way it has been created, as we all know, was created under the model of the Cabinet of curiosities. Which was very much the idea of gathering everything. And it's actually interesting that

  each department of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum is calculating how the percentage of species they believe they have in their collection in regard to the totality of species they believe exist. So they would say, for example, we own

  the specimen of sixty percent of fish that exist. So this kind of attitude, it tells me, really related to the way the Internet has been conceived,

  and and also navigating the website of the Smithsonian inspired me to the idea of

  the way the internet can function, and the way it's a continuation of the museum, and especially of the Universal Museum.

  Uh, and

  it also felt that

  Through this universal impulse there was some kind of madness behind. I was interested in the neurotic aspect of this impulse of gathering everything at the same place,

  gathering everything online, doing the database, gathering everything in the storage, displaying everything in an exhibition. This whole idea of like bringing together everything in the same place in the same basket. That was something that I felt like we

  are living with that since a long time that it seems natural to us, but it's not something natural. It has also a certain drive. And what is the drive behind it. To me it felt it was a death drive.

  It felt like It's the fear of death, of our own death, but also the fear of disappearance that is driving this project. It's interesting, for example, that the

   during the Indian War in the United States was

  the years where the most object were collected for the Natural History Museum. So at the same time there was a genocide organised

  that was also the driving force for the museum collection. So literally, not only were objects collected  on dead bodies, but also the death was both the excuse, and the drive for the collection. We have witnessed that as well in Europe in the nineteenth century where a lot of

  animal species got extinct because of the competition between the Natural History Museum in Paris and the Natural History Museum in London.

  When they they were competing to get the last specimen of the dodo, for example, which which causes the dodo extinction.

  So this is a a little bit of a parenthesis,

  but is to illustrate that the

  extinction and the extinction itself is both the, how do you say, the the the taboo, the thing that is  rejected, and also a sort of secret goal.

  Because, of course, when something is extinct, the collection of the museum becomes more precious. So there is a lot of ambivalence around

  that aspect which I was hoping the film can capture. I know that aspect that the film wanted to capture is

  the dynamic between the personal and the global, which I think is the dynamic we experience every time we open a web browser.

  Um,

  maybe I um move a little bit now to sorry I didn't organize the talk at all in a chronological way I it's more like organized towards thematic which I saw relate.

  So the last chapter of this presentation, I thought, could be around as a series of new work that I just produced last year. But that

  are somehow connected with gorse fatigue which is a work from two thousand and fourteen

So basically ten years later

  During the pandemic I was invited by the Sigmar Polke Foundation

  to conceive a group of work for the anniversary of the death of Sigmar Polke

  and it was a very special moment, because it was a moment where I did not have a studio anymore. I was stranded in France and couldn't come back to New York, which is my home,

  and I was staying at my mom's place. I was trying to make some space inside the house so that I could work and basically trying to declutter. So I sorted out books, and the first book I put in the pile to the trash

  were books about etiquette.

   So what to do when you're invited to dinner, manners for women, dos some don'ts

  for young girls. There was actually a lot of them from different times,

  most of them in the French, but some of them also in English

  and um,

  and at the same time I was also considering Polke's work, and his irritation with patriarchal models and systems of authority

  one work in particular really inspired me, the idea that maybe it was wrong putting this etiquette book in the pile of the trash.

  So I went back into the trash pile and found them at the very bottom and recuperated them, and started to read them and select excerpts of those books that I was particularly interested in.

  Some of them I scanned, and I also printed, and it became some kind of collection of

  a fragment of paper which are fragment of advice about how to reply to an invitation to a wedding, how to reply to an announcement of birth, how to pack your luggage for a weekend

  how to write a note when somebody has lost a dear person their family. So all this different situation,

  and going through them, I realized that they have a lot in common with

  um

  the phone and telephone piece of bad dad and beyond, I realized that somehow my interest with this book had to do with how they themselves kind of

  form some kind of code a structure and a code. And this code being obviously connected to a social class and gender,

  but also and culture. But also this code somehow being something that is still present today, but in a more invisible form,

  because those books seem to me really obsolete and really coming from an old time at first when I found them. But you know it's the same way with this telephone and inter phones. It's often when technology seems obsolete to us that it's actually relevant,

  It's not clearly useful in terms of a day to day approach. But it is maybe, or maybe it has become as the image of something that exists now, but in a different form, and maybe it becomes a good object to talk about something else. The same way

  The telephone and the inter phone

  were a way to address the relationship with

  the state, the police, the patriarchal system's relationship with politics, relationship with doctors, and all the different situations where abuse of authority and abuse of power can happen the same way. Maybe this etiquette book

  is an image of the same thing as social media. It's neither

  malevolent, neither benevolent, but it's not neutral, either. It is a cultural product. It is shaped by culture. So I started to collect images that I found were relevant

  online that in a way, I felt was a product of those etiquette books and

  also reading more about the books, I started to kind of have a sort of like tenderness for them. I sometimes wished that as a child I would have been given some of this advice. So they were

  the same as the Wiki-how advice online. There is one part that is positive, and then another part that is a bit negative, because it becomes, intrusive, or because it also confronts us systematically with the fear of failure. But

  it's  an ambivalent character,  the same way a parent is an ambivalent figure.

  So I saw that there was interest in bringing together the error message

  the

  um the etiquette advice and um, the systems of

   creating social categories online

  In the past. Um,

  we were identified - I mean as a member of the Human Society - we were identified and framed by the way we speak. By the way we dress,

  and also by the way you write or manners basically

  and this will very much the way you would recognize, uh, you would differentiate social class. This is  the purpose of those etiquette which was actually to bring the manners of the upper class to the working class and I  think that most of them are written with a democratic impulse,

  even though they reproduce prejudice and class caricatures, they were written in the idea of bringing connection.

  But now, the system that identify us is way more sophisticated. It's a system that looks at the way

  not only the way we dress,

  but it looks at the friends we have, the music we hear. It looks also at our escapist self, the things that we don't even

  are aware that we are looking at, and so it became very clear to me that there was a really interesting aspect of bringing together those two things

  and the process, the technical process, of bringing those two things together became also something that I was very interested in.

Um. The printer of Sigmar,

  which I discovered also started to work with Sigmar because of of an accident. I broke my arm also at that period, so that was also was triggering for me the interest in using print

  and using  tools like Photoshop and procreate, and apple pen; tools that were reproducing and mimicking the gesture of

  drawing and painting, but on the computer,

  and

  the same way etiquette is about mimicking, and imitating the manners of somebody else, the same way those applications imitate and reproduce the manners and the custom of craft. So what became really interesting for me is to confront them and combine them. And uh, it becomes a little bit of an infinite

  game of imitation where I scan some of my brush stroke and then digitalize them, vectorize them, use them as masks,  printing around them. But then

  turning them away.  I could reprint again, applying a different type of pigment, some of them iridescent and with different color this is those images are showing a little bit the process something which is taken from the studio,

  as you can see here the color are changing according to the light, so it's an effect called interference that I was really interested in. That Sigmar Polke also used a lot.

  Another technique that is a little bit specific that I did a lot for those works was the idea of trying to reproduce the hand gesture of drawing on a digital palette, but to enlarge it and do it manually and

  one of the techniques that I was very fond of was using the

  pastry tools, tools that people use to make cakes, I want to make cake decoration.

  There's something so flat about the digital image that it constantly  try to recreate volume artificially. But then it also makes too much volume right. I don't know if you noticed when you using Photoshop, the people who are graphicdesigner here or people are artists using photoshop. You probably have noted that all the effect of texture and effect of shadows and , three dimensionality online are kind of like always a little bit of a caricature of what you see, with the eyes

  so I was really interested in using the artificiality of those techniques and turning them

  around so that with the hand, I would imitate the computer, and then with the computer imitate the hand in sort of like a conversation. Here, for example, in this painting of The Old Rule

  What seems to be a paint splash with the brush is actually real paint, but it's according to a vectored drawing of it. So

  every different step is a little bit not exactly what it seems to be.

  Obviously, there was also a lot of experimentation in this process. I realized now that i'm talking about it, it looks like I knew exactly what I was doing, which is not the case. I was improvising a lot, and that was also an aspect of the production and the technique that was very interesting

  it was interesting to the printer of Sigmar as well. So we experimented with

  printing first, and painting after, or painting first, and printing on top of it, using the mask and he used them in different places. We also experimented with very precise placement, as you can see in this images. This was like an indication of how to place

  an element of collage from the etiquette book.

  But sometimes also we used the idea of approximation, and actually like wrong placement. In the works that were just a little bit before. If you want to slide back, maybe two or three image before with the image of the dog.

  Yes, for example, on the left part, the image with the picture of the child, this image

  is printed inside a mask, but the mask was actually overlaying it. It had moved a little bit while printing. So this is why you kind of like see a shadow

  like it's the same shape has moved. Because there was a mask for the preparation of the canvas and there was a mask for the prints, and they didn't perfectly overlap

  the same here on the right, I did not plan to have this edge on top, but once it happened, actually

  I really liked it so. Because the presence of this edge would enlight how the brushstroke is in the middle of the canvas. So there was a little bit of...everything was a conversation, I would say a conversation between techniques, but also a conversation between

  the different people and expertise involved in the making.

  This is another example where the original drawing was also made with the graphic palette, and procreate or apple pen system,

  and another part of the element is the actual drawing on paper with water colour that has been scanned,  and then combining those different elements with elements I took from the etiquette book, I would

  then on top use this system with a pastry line.

  You can see here also an image of how the masking looks a little bit like when you work in 3D, the scan of the space you see on your screen when you

  fabricate 3D shapes, but was made just really DIY.

  um.

  This work 'Cells'

  is probably one of the work that I was thinking about when I said

  that we are categorised by the music we listen to.

  In this case I integrated my spotify list,

  and I confronted it with the image that reproduced the sonogram

  and then by other images from my library.

  There is always a element of a randomness in the way I associate images, and the reason why they come together is not always

  um

  accessible with words to me at first, it may become more clear as the work exists. There was something about the echography and pregnancy,

  and the spotify playlist that

  to me made a lot of sense.

  The presence of water, the idea of a basket, the idea of carrying something with the idea of also transparency of skin, and all sorts being transparent.

  This is example of other works. All of them had been kind of conceived during two thousand and twenty during the pandemic, so you can see, maybe through the news

  and the connection between a pandemic and the state of pregnancy. The idea that there's something inside of the body that is not visible,

  and has a lot of consequences. And

  the way the apps now see inside our bodies. This is something that I, especially through health, I mean, we've seen now in the US also the get the catastrophic implication of those apps, especially the period tracking apps.

  But during the pandemic

  the relationship with our body had changed. All of a sudden there were so many articles and so many testimonies online about heartbeat accelerating and different symptoms. I think a lot of us

  became a little bit paranoid about "Oh, what's happening in my body? Do I have it this virus, or do I not have it?" I mean, I remember that feeling before the test even was invented.

  And so there was a certain state of projection into our bodies, and also the idea that skin is a bit new to the layer of privacy. But is it really? That's a little bit what those works were exploring. I used images,

  and you see, that was an images of my last trip

  coming from New York to France, and after that trip I was never able to return to New York before at the end of the pandemic being on a visa. So

  there was a sense of melancholy but also a sense of panic in those images.

  I don't know where we are in terms of the time line. Um,

   maybe I can see a few more words about the

  the different layers. I thought that we didn't talk exactly about the different steps, but there was more than thirty three steps for each  painting. So it was really a layered process,

  and very often creating the final image was a little bit of like a peeling the skin off  in some parts. So the skin, and the effect of the skin was also kind of a pattern that you can see in the images themselves like the dry earth

  or when the paint's dry and it creates some kind of skin. I don't know if some of you are familiar with this text of Kristeva, the power of horror, where she is talking also about the skin of the milk.

So these were sort of like inspiration, a little bit in the background. They are not direct references, but I saw in the process itself of making the work

there was a relationship with uh the idea of skin and the idea of like peeling and different layers, and uh a bit like an onion. There is a Neapolitan expression that says a head is like an onion, and it's something I really like this expression, and I think it relates very much also to the way technology functions as well, with the windows opening into each other.

So through this exploration of these different layers of skin and the different layer of transparency and privacy, maybe the common connection would be

  the loss of privacy, but also this: the fact that this loss of privacy is also not something new. This feeling of being seen in control of surveillance, also connect us to our child itself, as well as the feeling of inadequacy and the feeling of failure related to the use of the computer, which also, I think relates to the feeling we have when we are

  confronted with the hotlines. I mean, especially if you are a foreigner and you're using a hotline in a different language than your mother tongue.

  I wanted to maybe end on a little commentary on this sort of new variation around surveillance and taste which is the suggestions that we now receive; suggestion things we should do in our emails. But also of songs

  we should hear, or books we should order, people we should follow. It's a little bit of an element I didn't pay attention to initially,  and it's the consequences, of course, of like framing us into a category. But

 I wanted to explore a little bit the the reason behind the irritation. I was wondering if it was only the irritation of being spied on, or of being under the gaze of a machine, or of it was something more. And

  I was trying to find a phrase that would describe the feeling, and, like the disagreeable feeling I had when I received ads about an object I've consulted online and that I ended up not buying, and it felt to me that it's a little bit like having dinner, and

  the day after coming back, and at the table is still the dirty dishes. It's a little bit like being confronted to our own déchets, our own detritus. And this concept also actually is exploring the powers of horror, Julia Kristeva, this idea of what is rejected
 in the trash basically. The things that we don't want to see. They are not fresh. They are corrupted.

They are not desirable anymore. And so, there is also something about being confronted to our dirty self. There's a lot of Google searched we do that we don't like to be reminded of and a lot of our impulses are coming from a place of easy satisfaction, or is escapism, and being tracked and being reminded of it, is sort of like slightly disgusting, and maybe a little bit guilt tripping at least.

There is something very logical in the algorithm. But we are not logical as people, and this is also why it's irritating to be confronted with our trash, so to say, like the things we've seen, the object we wanted, the friend we might like.

  We are not.

  We don't know who we are, and we are not the same person one day and the day after. I feel like one aspect that maybe technology, and especially social technology, and the way it's target advertisement has maybe not understood, is the inconsistency of us human beings. We are not consistent. We may one day want to donate to save the Amazon forest, and another day not even be able to sign

a protest in our neighborhood to save the local garden. There is no logical, or there is not only logic in all behaviour, and one of the reasons for that is obviously that

we are mostly driven by all feelings, and all feelings are extremely volatile. Uh, this is why I decided to end this talk with a quote of Marcel Proust that doesn't have anything to do with technology, but has a lot to do with how we humans are able to deal with our emotion and the expectation we have towards others.

Thank you,

Stella McDonald: Camille, thank you so much.

At the beginning you referenced, You know your sort of confusion around being invited to speak on technology, and I think you articulated exactly why we invited you. Because there is something very strongly in your work that

almost articulates an ambivalence towards technology, against the way that I think it's commonly perceived. But I think what your talk today did, and what your work does as well is, it looks at the ineffable in and also the complexity of  technology. The way it induces anxiety in us, the way that it is a mirror of the human body and human movement and choreography.

The sort of the metaphorical language you use around it as well, technology as an onion, privacy as a skin is so wonderful to hear. So thank you so much for joining us and making the time

to join us and for everyone watching as Camille mentioned, there will be a link to view Gross Fatigue, and I believe other films as well Camille, is that right?

Camille Henrot:  I could also send you a link to the film Saturday, which um is a little bit a different topic, but also has to do with um expectation towards technology and activism and a better life. The idea of like fitness, religion aesthetics, how the expectation ofbeing good looking, but also a good person are transformed into and used in the technology. How technology is a product of religion basically

Stella McDonald: Cleanliness is next to godliness perhaps. Well, thank you so much um for joining us, and I wanted to ask. I I mean you don't have to answer this, I'm really curious to see what you're working on next

 Camille Henrot: right now I'm working on building a house for myself and my family.

Stella McDonald: How wonderful!

 Camille Henrot: That's really occupying a lot of my thoughts. I'm really interested in domestic space. How really small detail of domestic space can be full of meaning and full of sensation.

Yeah, I'm very interested in what brings pleasure in daily life. What gestures bring pleasure in daily life. It's a very Epicurean project. So it's the main project. I have another exhibition at the end of June, but I still don't know so well what I'm going to do. I just know I want to use car parts, that's it.

Stella McDonald:  And is your ebay addiction still strong?

Camille Henrot:  It's less strong because ebay is way less interesting than it used to be because it

  The beginning of eBay was very much like a second hand market, like a flea market, and a lot of it was pictures were made by the user and some of them were really bad pictures or really funny picture. And I think now most of ebay is a lot of it isn't actually second hand project for real. A lot of people are using a standard images, like a commercial images, so it's not as interesting as before, and to be honest I'm glad that i'm healed from that addiction, and that ebay is less interesting because it was very invading. Um,

Yeah, The last thing I I need right now is more object in my house.

Stella McDonald: Well, thank you Camille.

Camille Henrot: Thank you very much.