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Hannah Hull
251 Plays6 years ago
Very excited this month to debut an episode with Hannah Hull - an English artist and musician (check out her TED talk entitled Mad Love!) Two approaches to explain her work - “I make situation-specific art and undertake social research. My practice catalyses dialogue & change for socially-excluded and at-risk groups. My approach is dynamic and responsive: an open mechanism that allows things to be made, reformed & challenged. The outcome of this process might be an action; it might be an object; or it might be words.”
Also - about Burning Salt’s music - “Burning Salt is a collaborative music project headed by Hannah Hull, singer-songwriter and artist. Hull is known for her startlingly honest songs and distinctive low-register voice. Fans have described her unusual vocal style as ‘scraped out of an ashtray somewhere in the early 90s,’ and ‘Friday night meets Sunday morning.’ Poetic, raw and alive, Burning Salt’s sound draws on folk, country and blues. A genre-bending approach in the vein of PJ Harvey, Nick Cave and Tom Waits. Burning Salt is an independent project releasing on Hull’s own label, Lullaby Records.
https://burningsalt.com/about/
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Balante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
Philosophical Approach to Art
00:00:12
Speaker
Of course we're not live and I'm just starting to do this so you know one of the things and I'll tell you right off the bat and just seeing how you present and just kind of with your responses back to me how you're just like yeah just ask questions. You know I'm a trained philosopher and there's a
00:00:29
Speaker
There's a pretty good vibe I can pick up from you as far as questions that challenge.
00:00:36
Speaker
that challenge things or maybe asking the right questions. Do you view yourself to think in a philosophical way about what you're working on? You know you actually sound like a philosopher who's, it's probably just me being very general with accents, but there's this guy that does a philosophy podcast that I listen to.
00:01:02
Speaker
Well, maybe we end up with this in our academic training ended up sounding the same. I always had a working class accent when I tried to pronounce some of those Greek words. So I'm sure I didn't quite fit the mold myself.
Existential Questioning
00:01:21
Speaker
But underlying this whole podcast is the question of the podcast name is something rather than nothing.
00:01:31
Speaker
Just you know as I get into the questions with you, um, you know, I never need to answer that question Nobody can quite answer that question when it comes down to it But I also want you to think about it in the context of you know, obviously Historically is like why is there something in the universe rather than nothing? but also I think when we create artistic objects and and why and
00:01:56
Speaker
you know, why do we create something out of what comes before? And that's kind of like the underlying backdrop for what I want to ask you. But do you mind if I just launch into some questions for you? Yeah, that's fine. So let me just check those. So you're just interviewing lots of different types of people. Is that right? Or many creative people? Yeah, and I'll tell you some of the folks and I'll send you some links too, because in my mind there's some sort of connection amongst it all.
Nicole Georges and Queer Artistry
00:02:25
Speaker
In Portland, there's this great graphic novelist. Her name's Nicole Georges. She wrote a book called Fetch, which was about a relationship with her dog prior to that. She wrote kind of a best-selling book called Calling Dr. Laura, in which she, as a queer artist, in discovering herself, kind of contacts right-wing ideologue and kind of this jarring event.
Identity as Artist and Musician
00:02:55
Speaker
a couple painters. I have somebody who does, who's a sculptor. What's an EDO log? Just like in the sense of like kind of doctrinaire right wing, or it could be left or right wing politically, but just like kind of their behavior is motivated just by ideas in doctrine. Uh huh. Yeah.
00:03:24
Speaker
But yeah, I'm looking at various approaches and I actually have two poems as well. So it's kind of like entering from different directions. But for you, you're a singer, you're a performance artist, you engage individuals in questions. If somebody asks you what type of art you do, how would you answer them?
00:03:50
Speaker
Well, I'm an artist by training, so that's my sort of day job. And then the music is also part of that. So if I'm asked what type of art I do, I would normally talk about my broader art practice. But do you want me to speak from the position of a musician? Whatever is comfortable for you.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, so I don't know really, I mean, I've sort of fallen at the first hurdle, because I don't know, because you know me as a musician, is that right? Primarily, but what I've delved into, well, let me ask it this way, you know, I delved into your projects via your website, and I gotta tell you,
Socially Engaged Art Projects
00:04:44
Speaker
Over here in the States when when I see some of the work that you're doing which is kind of dedicated work Connected to communities in project in place. I'm just kind of astounded That that that works take put that work takes place and it's it's a deliberate intention We have much less deliberate intention here around that and it seems like you enter into a world of
00:05:13
Speaker
connecting with people and create a bunch of artists for them to connect to their experience. Is that how you see some of that work you do in those projects such as Longbridge Public Art Project, which is something I was going to ask you about? Yeah, so I think there is socially engaged art is what is the kind of term that's most commonly used to just describe the kind of work that I'm doing.
00:05:42
Speaker
And there is quite a big tradition of it in America, but it's interesting. Maybe it's not as, yeah, I've never been to America, so I don't know what it's like on the ground, but there's certainly a lot of great writers and artists who have written about their work that I've read from America. But yeah, I suppose it's probably all on the kind of basis of investing and everybody as an artist.
00:06:11
Speaker
so kind of believing that everybody is an artist. And I suppose for me,
00:06:18
Speaker
That is, you know, it's a very radical act to kind of encourage people to be an artist. I kind of see art as the dustbin of life, of all of those thoughts and ideas that you have that don't fit into your regular life, that you can't express at work, that you can't express necessarily in your relationships, that you can't express
00:06:42
Speaker
in the way that our kind of social lives are kind of mapped out for us the type of activities that are normal to do and I find that when you're working with people and asking them to think about creating an artwork all of these in between thoughts come out all of these kind of bits that have been stored somewhere in a dustbin in their mind that just haven't been able to be
00:07:06
Speaker
expressed in any other aspect of their life. So I think it's really exciting and really radical to open that bin with them. I love that. I love the dustbin. It's such a poetic way to put it. And I think what I've seen as far as who you encounter when you're doing these projects is some of that stuff is rather dusty. And I think without some jostling, if I can guess,
00:07:34
Speaker
that they might collect dust forever. And you're helping these communities find a way to express themselves. A question on that, do they need to see themselves as artists in order to get started, or is that something they become?
00:07:53
Speaker
See, yeah, I don't think that anyone necessarily has to see themselves as an artist and I've definitely met people in my life that call themselves something else and I believe that they're an artist. Yeah. I think it depends how sort of creatively liberated the person has been able to become within their own world. So that's just sort of, yeah, I like the term artist, I think it's useful.
00:08:19
Speaker
But yeah, I do, it's definitely my intention that the people that I work with see themselves as more of an artist afterwards. And I get a little bit frustrated because a lot of people see art as these traditional skills of making. But for me as a conceptual artist, it's very much about the craft of how you think about things and how you express yourself
00:08:45
Speaker
in any kind of form and so I really try and encourage that and I think that allows people to see themselves as artists more readily because they don't have to have a kind of room full of technically very good sculpture in order to see themselves as an artist. In doing that work with
00:09:08
Speaker
with folks and going into these communities. I see community in place as being really prominent as far as ideas and things you move into.
Artists' Social Responsibility
00:09:18
Speaker
Is there some sort of duty for an artist to, do you think there's a duty for an artist to do art or to engage individuals in the way that you do? Or is it a, you see it kind of as a choice that you make in order to help
00:09:33
Speaker
create more artists or help people connect to their experience again that might not fit into other ways. So do you feel a duty to do that or is it an intention that you've created for yourself? I mean I've always been very socially orientated and kind of cared a lot about how other people are living their lives and wanting to support that but I think over the past couple of years as I've become more
00:10:01
Speaker
I've sort of been more involved in my music practice and encouraged to develop that a bit more and that's much more introspective and so I think there's there's two sides to it so I think sometimes it's quicker if artists are happy to just get stuck in with society but I also think that self-exploration and kind of
00:10:26
Speaker
sharing that self exploration with other people is also can be very socially transformative. So it's a, you know, kind of less indirect way of kind of looking in and then sharing the products of that type of kind of work. Yeah, I think I don't think artists really have a duty to do anything apart from be themselves. And that is true of everyone. So yeah,
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I thanks for answering that question. I it's one that I you know, I think I didn't know the answer that that you would give and wouldn't want to know. And so I was like one of those questions I was really fascinated with how you responded to it because I know it's sometimes artists say like this is what the artist must do in society. I didn't I wouldn't anticipate, you know, not everybody's going to be doctrinaire about it or even believe that. So
The Band - Burning Salt
00:11:25
Speaker
Now about the music and about burning salt, now of course you're a wonderful singer and have just a lovely style. You play the piano and what other instruments do you play? I imagine you might dabble.
00:11:44
Speaker
Yeah so guitar and I have a kind of classical guitar that I play very badly and I also have a piano that I play very badly but yeah I think singing is my main instrument really and the instruments just sort of support my songwriting.
00:12:03
Speaker
And I love the the the name of the banners course is something that I looked and I thought I might knew what it is. How important is that name and you know that the act of burning salt? Can you just tell me what that means for you? So I was.
00:12:23
Speaker
I started recording with my musical collaborator, Bobby Williams, and it sort of became obvious that I would have to think of some kind of name. I suppose partly because I've got my art practice and I go into my name and I felt that this stuff was much more personal and
00:12:52
Speaker
and maybe needed a little kind of name. But so Burning Salt, I was flicking through a book about witchcraft that my friend had lent me. And it said had this little section about burning salt and how this was kind of an act of expulsion and purification and a way to cast out demons and
00:13:19
Speaker
And I just thought, oh, that's how I feel about singing, about writing songs. And because I don't, I've never really sat down with the intention of writing a song. And they sort of just sort of come out when I need to process something. And that's how I yeah, just for me, they just kind of describe the
00:13:41
Speaker
what it is that I'm trying to do by writing the song. It is kind of an act of protection or clarification or trying to expunge something. And so that's why we're called Burning Song. Yeah, it was an evocative concept. And I think for me, it just drew me in as far as what that process means.
00:14:08
Speaker
My my son has exploded into playing music. He's 15. And so it's caused a shake up for me as far as thinking about music and watching people perform it. He's he's he's it's pretty incredible to see. But
00:14:24
Speaker
you know, my, my, so what was he doing? And what was the? Yeah, I'm interested. Yeah, yeah. So all of a sudden, about a year and a half ago, you know, he's, he's a kid, you know, that that that struggles, you know, 14, 15 years old, and just kind of finding your place and got him a guitar. And he started playing and never really took any formal lessons. But you know, the great teacher of us all YouTube,
00:14:53
Speaker
Um, or Ted talks as well, you know, on YouTube in your case, but, um, he, uh, you know, he watched, watched that and started to pick up, uh, you know, acoustic electric guitar. Then he kind of self taught himself, uh, bass guitar and drums, and then started playing, you know, covers of, you know, joy division. And he loves metal, heavy metal, like I do. Um, uh, kind of, you know, a lot of alternative music and, um,
00:15:22
Speaker
you know, is playing in a band and expressing himself and throwing so much into that. And I and I love music. And my my my project's a little bit more modest. I'm practicing deaf and doom metal vocals with the video because my my voice or what I've learned about my voice leads me to believe I can move into doom or death metal vocals.
00:15:52
Speaker
more easily than other things. It's a modest entry point, but at least I'm looking at that. Had you been in a band or played music prior to formally doing this with your collaborators in Burning Salt? No, I haven't. I've always written these songs since I got my guitar when I was 13.
00:16:22
Speaker
But it's only been the past couple of years since putting the band together that I've played publicly, except when I was at art school for about six months, we had a punk band, all-girl punk band called Bad Sex. And I was the bass guitarist
00:16:51
Speaker
for that. So that was fun. But yeah, I don't remember a lot about it. Okay, so let's, let's try to move over to something that I, that I loved on your site.
Community Impact through Karaoke
00:17:10
Speaker
I'm sorry, I'm just getting over a bit of a cough. Oh, no problem. You're recording by coughing every five minutes. This is this is
00:17:19
Speaker
It most everything sounds wonderful and we will we'll edit as see fit. I want to talk about karaoke though. Carrie and what I saw there. I love karaoke. I love what people are trying to do with it.
00:17:41
Speaker
Did you have an idea about karaoke prior to kind of getting into people who do it as a, you know, that kind of maybe primary form of expression for themselves? What do you think about karaoke? Yeah. So you're talking about every shalalala, the short film I did about karaoke singers. So that was filmed in a kind of northern town in England that's quite depressed and economically deprived. It used to be a big mill town.
00:18:11
Speaker
And yeah, I did a very long residency on and off for about four years on a housing estate, a very poor housing estate up there. And I just found that, so I always work in an open briefway, so I don't say what I'm gonna do before I start. So it's entirely process-based and it entirely comes from the community that I'm working with and the people that I'm working with.
00:18:40
Speaker
So it's a case of waiting to see what arises and what feels like it's important to create. And I discovered that there was karaoke happening on this small estate. There's about a thousand houses on this estate three times a week, which is quite a lot. And they were just
00:19:05
Speaker
good singers and not in a kind of, do you have X Factor there or The Voice or something like that, some kind of talent show on the telly? No. Well,
00:19:18
Speaker
factor, you must have something. It's like America's got talent. Yeah. Is there one that's just singing? Is there one that's just singers? Yes, exactly. I think it's the voice, yes, your testimony here. So it's not, I mean, it's a very long winded way of saying it's not like that kind of thinking. They are not kind of trying to get attention or wanting to be famous. It's
00:19:47
Speaker
They're good singers, but they're just singing because they like singing and it's a kind of community thing. And I think it kind of just came from the kind of old singing around the piano in the park. And then that kind of stopped and then karaoke was invented and people already sang a lot. You know, this everybody that we spoke to who were doing
00:20:12
Speaker
were doing these karaoke sessions said oh I just you know I was used to sing with my gran and there was always singing in the house and we used to
00:20:21
Speaker
So it was just I think it's just a continuation of that kind of community bringing people together type of singing. But no, I'm not. Personally, I don't really do karaoke. But my collaborator on that film, who's also my musical collaborator, Bobby is a big fan of karaoke. So that helped. Yeah, karaoke is rather big in Portland, Oregon. And even if you came in contact with some of the
00:20:51
Speaker
the wacky and wild in Portland. It wouldn't surprise you that karaoke is big here. It's a big event. I haven't been in a while and I'm always a bit nervous to do it, but I do it. What's that? What's your chain?
00:21:12
Speaker
What's your song? I would have to say I have two of them. One is Been Down So Long by The Doors, very bluesy off the album, LA Woman. And I am a sucker for Smith's Ballads, the Smith's Ballads, you know, which, to be honest with you,
00:21:37
Speaker
I don't try to, you know, do the vocals quite correctly. I throw everything into the theatrics to create the, you know, the magician, you know, creates the illusion over on the side. Watch the hands. I throw everything into the theatrics because I do not sing like Morrissey.
00:21:57
Speaker
I've never been able to whenever I do because I've got a very similar range to Morrissey because I've got such a low voice. And the thing I struggle with with karaoke is that the girls songs are too high and the boys songs can be too low. But Morrissey is just about right. And I really I've never been able to find hairdresser on fire. That's the Morrissey song that I always want to do. And I've never been able to find it. And it's just perfect for my range.
00:22:27
Speaker
I would love to hear that someday. Fantastic song. I can't say that I've seen it, but I know I will look for it. I'll look for it now. It's a fantastic song. It's about trying to get a haircut in London. Wait a second. It's off of Bonadrag. At least that's what that album was called. No. Yes, it was called Bonadrag here in the US. I think it might have been released around his singles. I'm not sure if it has the same name.
00:22:57
Speaker
over there by you. But I wanted to talk about Mad Love in that Ted Talk. And... Well, you know, I gotta be honest with you, Hannah, you know, sometimes like you say, well, I'm going to do research and then
00:23:21
Speaker
Then I am I just went down these threads that that you have out there and I'll tell you what I was connecting to just kind of so you know I mean when you're talking about the the you know the the folks that we talked to and the community that you in we're in with them.
00:23:39
Speaker
with the karaoke and that residency that you had and talking about, you know, depressed mill town. I've always, over time, from what I understood, connected to the down and out and gone mill town of England and particularly the north. I grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which
00:24:00
Speaker
is just outside of Providence, Rhode Island, and was a preeminent mill town prior to me being born. I'm 46, so in the 40s, 50s, 60s.
00:24:13
Speaker
birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution in Pawtucket, with the mill that they put on the river, with plans that were stolen from the British, not American ingenuity, or at least American ingenuity in the sense of how to get the best plans and take them. That's fine. Steal what you like. We stole a lot. Just steal it. So they were stolen. But that's where I grew up. In my, you know, background family, they come down from Quebec and they Quebecois.
00:24:44
Speaker
and mill workers and so I can connect to the working class components rather quickly or understanding people talking about what used to be, what isn't, and what's left behind. So I've had a kind of an emotional connection to
00:25:11
Speaker
England in those those mill towns and in the north and that's why I think I've so closely followed some of your explorations in talking to folks. I work in the labor movement. So
00:25:28
Speaker
I gotta tell you the the idea equivalent to the labor movement here. Same name. I don't know. Let me tell. Let me tell you. I work for the teachers union. I represent 2000 workers in kindergarten through 12th grade public education.
00:25:45
Speaker
And the labor movement and expressing that here be kind of an amalgamation of all the different type of labor movements and the federation being the American Federation of Labor, Congress of Industrial Organizations, AFL-CIO. So I infer into the labor movement as a kind of like the labor movement as a whole. I know over there in England, you have that term or the concept
00:26:14
Speaker
tied to the Labour Party. Is that the best way to understand that? Well, yes, because the Labour Party, yeah, no. So historically, there's the Labour movement out of which came the Labour Party. So yeah, you know, generally, I would say we regard it as one in the same, but I'm not. I'm not. I wouldn't. It's not my area. I won't speak to
00:26:44
Speaker
Well, well, yeah, but I see you. The main thing is I see you, you know, of around, you know, working class communities. Yeah. I mean, I think probably I would be described as kind of very radical left wing. But I just do my work. I don't. I'm just waiting for, you know, the dismantling of the entire system while I get on with my work. Absolutely.
00:27:12
Speaker
I had separately started to move towards the idea of art as disruption and connected to movements. In one of your workshops I watched the video for, I knew very little about the Dada's and that disruption and what was happening there. And I just love that story. All my politics really comes through art history and through direct work with people. So I don't kind of
00:27:42
Speaker
spend a lot of time thinking about party politics. I'm very interested, you know, in bits and pieces, but I think I know my work is extremely political. And that's, you know, I think I'm kind of as political as I can be. And I'm as active as I can be, because my work, you know, is that. Yeah, so and the Dada movement, of course, is was very,
Art as Disruptive Force
00:28:08
Speaker
and trying to disrupt the societal norms and trying to show people that they were kind of getting into a trap. And that sort of I'm interested in those movements that kind of do this. They're directly engaging in society in a way that is trying to help and radically kind of change the way that we're living.
00:28:37
Speaker
It was, I'm just going to dive more into that. It fit perfectly with what I've been come in contact with is, you know, art is disruption in creating questions and thinking at that point. But to Mad Love, I have questions that come out of that that I just thought it was
Redesigning Psychiatric Spaces
00:29:08
Speaker
so radical and so simple in the idea of what you were presenting and that you had worked on with other collaborators of the idea of health at the basis of the asylum and some of the historical meanings of what an asylum was to be. One of the questions that you have in there, and I believe you mentioned specifically, I was really wondering if you could expound upon an answer to this question.
00:29:39
Speaker
You had asked, what will it take to have madness accepted as a normal part of the human experience or part of somebody's experience? Yeah. Do you know what I mean by that question? So you're asking me that question. Yeah. Okay. I think that's one of our questions. It is. It is.
00:30:08
Speaker
It is. Oh, you're asking me one of my own questions. Yeah, so we're talking about Madlib, so that's been a really successful project that's ongoing. We've been doing myself and one of my other artistic collaborators, James Ledbitter, and we both have personal experience of mental health problems.
00:30:34
Speaker
And we're focusing the kind of change that we kind of want to see around the idea of redesigning psychiatric hospitals. But we're using the term asylum. So we want to reclaim this word that's become unpopular because it was associated with mad people and lots of bad Victorian kind of practice and reclaim it and to mean what it actually means, which is a safe space.
00:31:02
Speaker
and so we're calling it a designer asylum, mad love a designer asylum and yeah this question about you know we want to create a safe space to go mad so fundamentally it seems that the kind of system in place to help people who have kind of extreme experiences of mental health is actually trying to prevent that experience
00:31:27
Speaker
rather than asking if there's a way for that to be experienced more safely. So to answer your question, you know, how do we get to that point where it's accepted as normal? I think that
00:31:50
Speaker
So from my sort of personal journey, you know, you have a lot of negative things can come out of having bad mental health. And I think that it's taken me many years to realize that the answers to the problems that I'm facing lie within the experience. So I'll give you a really practical kind of example. So I have panic attacks.
00:32:19
Speaker
And what I've learned to do over the past couple of years is when I'm having a panic attack to go into the panic attack and see what what my subconscious thinks is happening. So it will literally show me images if I'm looking of where it thinks I am. And so for me, the experience of a panic attack is like a sort of flashback. So something triggers my subconscious to think that something that happened in my past is about to happen again.
00:32:48
Speaker
and by actually looking at that and looking at the images that I'm being shown I can take that into therapy and I can talk about it and I can kind of unlock it and kind of rationalize with that with my subconscious and kind of have a friendly relationship with it and say you know actually that's not happening anymore that was a very
00:33:08
Speaker
specific thing that happened to you and it's really unlikely to happen again. It would be really bad luck for it to happen again. And I can kind of start to dismantle this. Whereas if I was experiencing a lot of panic attacks and maybe went into hospital, they'd probably medicate me for that to stop my experience of the panic attacks. But I wouldn't actually have access to what it is that those panic attacks are trying to show, you know, trying to show me.
00:33:37
Speaker
and I wouldn't be able to kind of dismantle it and they may give me other tools to help me dismantle that but there is a heavy leaning towards sort of medicine first psychotherapy second and it's taken me a long long time to sort of get to this point of self-understanding and everybody's experience is different so I don't want to sort of recommend that anybody comes up what medication they're on if they're having terrible panic attacks and
00:34:01
Speaker
even if they drive my approach, it might not be the right approach for them. But it's just an example of how me being allowed to safely explore my experience of something that looks very scary to other people and is very scary to me has actually, in the end, it's helped me to get better.
00:34:25
Speaker
Yeah, and Hannah, that's your experience through it. One of the things, a question out of just what you said, just kind of just go deeper on one point is, it seems that you described that experience more in visual or some of the images and try to work through what you see. Is your intent in maybe going through that process,
00:34:55
Speaker
to understand those images or be able to maybe more draw upon them later on. You know what I mean? Are you trying to interpret what that experience is or what you're seeing or you're allowing it to flow out and let it be a little bit more?
00:35:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's both of those. So I think in a way by being able to just express that fear that I had in the past that has been sort of repressed, you know, helps that sort of past version of me that's hidden in this subconscious.
00:35:35
Speaker
to kind of, you know, let go of some things. The images themselves are kind of
Mental Health and Society
00:35:41
Speaker
flashback images and sometimes I know exactly what event it was and sometimes I'm like, but I can't remember why am I in that particular room of that particular house.
00:35:52
Speaker
with that particular person there, I can't remember something bad happening. And in that case, I would sort of take that into therapy. But yeah, it's sort of more like, it's like mining. And then I kind of collect these little jewels of information. And then later when I've recovered from the panic attack, I can kind of, you know, analyze them and kind of try and put this kind of jigsaw of my subconscious together.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah, and I wanted to thank you in watching that video for your bravery within that. But what I found so moving was just your confidence and talking about it. And I was just drawn in.
00:36:34
Speaker
to something that felt very liberating and very radical in the sense of like, okay, this is the way we've been doing it historically. Where are we now and are we doing this completely wrong a lot of the times? And to reimagine what things could be.
00:36:54
Speaker
One of the things in some of my studies in philosophy about ideas of what's normal or how the world is perceived is a lot of philosophers like Michel Foucault and others just kind of took the radical step instead of rather than proceeding from what is rational and normal, those processes
00:37:21
Speaker
Rather than proceeding from that, can we proceed from the point of, if we look inside a prison and see what's happening to those who are imprisoned, if we look upon people who are called mad, what is going on from them and move out from that point rather than from what we would call the normal looking in?
00:37:45
Speaker
So the starting point for exploration was inside the asylum, was inside the prison, was inside those who might be institutionalized. And it was a completely different direction for philosophy. Would you say that was part of your approach as far as looking there and then looking out?
00:38:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think I do a lot of work with prisons as well, and there's a lot of growth between the secure psychiatric and the bridge as well between mental health and the prison work that I do. And I think that that's exactly it, the whole of the dirt EP, which was an EP that I wrote about.
00:38:35
Speaker
women who had been in prison at Holloway Prison, which is a very big, famous prison here that was shut down a couple of years ago, was more about exploring the texture of their experiences and trying to create empathy with those women.
00:38:57
Speaker
So it's sort of asking the question, well, what exactly do you expect a woman who was born into a paedophile ring to do with her life? You are in prison now because one thing has led to another, but, you know, you can't demonise somebody who is a victim themselves. And my experience of working in prisons is that the majority of people are victims before they are perpetrators.
00:39:25
Speaker
And I think this is the same thing with mental health. I think historically people have been quite frightened of displays of madness and have wanted to keep that away from the general population. But of course the question needs to be, you know, what happened to you? You know, why are you having this experience? And so many things can be kind of
00:39:49
Speaker
And there's lots of really, really great practice happening within prisons and psychiatric hospitals that do attend to this, that realize that people need to develop self-understanding in order to move away from their current behaviors. But there's still this kind of, yeah, this kind of
00:40:12
Speaker
sense of those are the bad people and you know we're the good people and we need some separation and that's one of the things that I love about working with mental health is that it is a spectrum and actually when people start talking about it everybody can identify with the experience of somebody that has poor mental health and obviously you have some very extreme cases where it can be very difficult to
00:40:37
Speaker
to connect with people. But generally, you know, when I talk about my mental health problems and I do have a severe mental health disability, you know, everybody can connect to them and everybody can also see that the things that help me and the things that would help them have even more improved mental health for themselves, even if they don't regard themselves as having negative, you know, really bad mental health.
00:41:02
Speaker
Yeah. And the concept that you mentioned is more of the ideas of rather than either, you know, in or out in the category is more of a spectrum of experience and over time. I think that could be really helpful for folks to kind of get away out of that dichotomy, right? Ill or not. And have it be more of understood of a range of experiences that humans would have. Would you agree?
00:41:31
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. There's also been research done in prisons that shows that the majority of prison has also suffered from mental health problems. So, you know, it's all kind of linked together. All of these people that we put, you know, over there. Yeah, there just needs to be much greater empathy and helping people to understand themselves, you know.
00:41:52
Speaker
It's the prison crisis in the United States with over, I believe, 2.2 million prisoners and just incredibly repressive. The United States a few years ago, when you talked about per capita. I think we've got 100,000 and your population is six times bigger. So that would be 600,000. So you've got almost four times as many
00:42:22
Speaker
prisoners as a percentage than we do here. What are they all doing? It's the implementation of an infrastructure around the drug war and collecting people into a system that is monetized where you have
00:42:48
Speaker
prison stocks on Wall Street, which could be invested in. I could go in right now and invest on a private subcontracted prison company that if I invest in it, I would want it to make a profit and profits are derived from prisoners and it's a perpetuating money machine.
00:43:11
Speaker
legalize a few drugs and probably get rid of a few guns as well and he'd be sorted. A lot of progress towards that. There is a movement now away from the kind of far reaches of incarceration of all crimes, but the mental health issues which I've studied that go on in prisons, you know, captive labor, you know, basically prison labor mills, you know,
00:43:40
Speaker
So there's a host of problems within the kind of collectivization, the negative collectivization of people in incarceration. Yeah, so some significant problems there, obviously.
Funding Community Art Projects
00:43:58
Speaker
Now, within your work, and just going back to the question so I can
00:44:07
Speaker
understand when you delve into the community a bit more, when you work on a residency. Where does that come from? Where does the funding from that come from? Is it a deliberate idea in working with communities that come out of more public projects or is it more philanthropic or is it both? Yeah, well, we're very lucky here. I don't know what the situation is over there, but
00:44:36
Speaker
At some point, I think in the 60s, there was a big kind of the government decided that art was very important and that that needed to be something that was kind of integrated into public funding and kind of
00:44:54
Speaker
very securely. So we have really, really fantastic funding. Of course, everybody complains that there's not enough funding still, but we do actually have really, really great funding. So we have the Arts Council, which have funded a lot of my work, which is kind of national body that sits adjacent to the government. So it's independent, but it does receive money from the government.
00:45:24
Speaker
and other sources as well and then we have lots of yeah there's lots of kind of philanthropic kind of funding bodies as well that trusts and so on that are dedicated to creative practice and there's also kind of one area that I've also received funding from is that whenever a new development is built I mean this is kind of a bit
00:45:53
Speaker
because it's still tapped into the idea of kind of the that's too long to get into. I'll just go back to what I was saying. But also whenever there's, if somebody wants to build a building,
00:46:10
Speaker
of any type part of the permission of being able to build that building says that a certain percentage of the cost of the development has to go towards some kind of community benefit. So that's kind of a source that can be tapped into as well. But the issue with that is it's kind of usually tied in with ideas of regeneration. So you can get a little bit, yeah, you can get a little bit
00:46:39
Speaker
too close to some of these more capitalistic ideas, basically. Yeah, I was very interested in that.
00:46:50
Speaker
I think in the 80s, a lot of that more public directed funds here, which was always kind of underfunded in the States. The 80s and kind of that kind of Reagan reaction really cut into that. And I don't think it's really recovered in the art community. So I think that's kind of how it played out here. An issue that we do have, which I imagine is sort of shared, is that there's this constant
00:47:20
Speaker
attempt to sort of justify arts activity financially and I think I'm quite happy to talk about sort of numbers and quality of experience and so on but yeah there's always this kind of yeah sort of cost per head of things but you know it's the nature of it. Yeah I have a couple of the bigger questions I wanted to ask and they're just kind of
00:47:50
Speaker
So just a couple more questions. I mean, I do want to make sure you get enough rest as well with that cold. I want to respect that. Sorry again as well for delaying the cold. This is a thrill for me, so no worries. So these are the bigger questions, and I just kind of want to hit you with them.
Motivation and Influence in Creation
00:48:21
Speaker
Why do you create? Well, sort of just from talking to you and trying to sort of join the dots up, I suppose that I think it does come down to a desire to kind of create change at some level. I think that's probably what motivates me.
00:48:48
Speaker
And I think that, I think you could probably say that that's true of all creators and of much activity more broadly than that, you know, it's this desire to kind of create change and, you know, I think, and kind of contribute, you know, somehow to how we are, how we're living here together on this planet. Do you,
00:49:16
Speaker
When you're creating something, do you feel you're creating something from something else or do you feel you're creating something out of nothing? Sorry, just say that again because my phone went off. Sure. Yeah, when you're creating, do you feel that you're creating something from
00:49:39
Speaker
something else that's there, an adaptation of it maybe? Or do you feel you're creating something, when you create something, you're creating it out of nothing? Oh, I think everything is kind of, you know, we're not created from nothing away, we're created from what's already here. And I think everything that we create is, you know, we feed ourselves all of these ideas and conversations and experiences and
00:50:05
Speaker
and the work of other artists or whoever inspires us. And yeah, I definitely feel like it's kind of, I don't really believe in originality. I think pretty much we've done away with any pretense of that, although intellectual property law has not. Well, yeah. But it is, it is actually changing.
00:50:33
Speaker
Um, yeah. So now I definitely feel like it's, you know, I feel very close to my work and I feel like, you know, everything I make is like my little baby. Um, but even a little baby is still a product of everything else. So yeah. Um, no, that is, uh, that is, that is great. Uh, uh, made of stardust or something like that. Yeah. My art is made of stardust.
00:51:03
Speaker
That is just beautiful. The final self-serving question I want to ask you, since I have you on the line, a bunch of the Dadaists in the little presentation I saw you had, they're all guys. Is there a female equivalent of the Dadaists, or is there kind of an outsider?
00:51:31
Speaker
Who is that? And when is that? Yeah, this is one of the I mean, it's it's everywhere, isn't it? You know, you just have to listen to the the white man. And there were female Dar Darists and and
00:51:51
Speaker
apparently there were female disciples of Jesus and there's females everywhere. They've been written out. But yeah, I think one of the female daughters was called Hannah, but I can't remember her surname. But yeah, that's actually one area because I'm doing my PhD at the moment and I need to
00:52:18
Speaker
do a little bit extra lady seeking to try and balance things out. But yes, there was definitely women around. I don't know, I think I made a joke on the talk that maybe you saw about how all of the women must have not gone on that trip that day. But of course there were women. Yes, the ongoing.
00:52:48
Speaker
Final academic question, what's your thesis on for your PhD?
PhD Thesis on Art History
00:52:56
Speaker
It's practice-based, so it's about my work, so it's trying to demonstrate that my work is original, in fact, or an original rehashing of things that have gone before. So yeah, so it's kind of
00:53:15
Speaker
how I see the history of socially engaged art, which is pretty much, as you've seen it on my talk, going back to the Dar Darists and those art movements that tried to radically change society in a very direct way. And yeah, so it's practice-based, it's about socially engaged art and the history of it. And my music comes into it as well, through The Dirt Project.
00:53:41
Speaker
I don't have a clear question at the moment. I know they're supposed to be. I'm just trying to wriggle around that. I'm like, what is the question I am asking? It's my PhD. But it's something about social engagement. I did have a question, but that question has been long forgotten. Yeah. As long as you know, it's in there somewhere. I've always been influenced by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's
00:54:11
Speaker
statement that a philosopher's job is not to answer a single question ever, but to only ask questions. That's the only job of the philosophers, not to answer any, but only to ask. I think there's a provocative piece to that, and I do hope you find the question that I'm sure you're pursuing for your academic work. I think there's many questions within my practice, and I just have to figure out which one is the most interesting
00:54:41
Speaker
to place over the last kind of six years of my work and what will be most, you know, useful to other people as well, because I think, you know, PhD obviously can be very introspective, but you are trying, I think, I think a lot of academics forget that you are supposed to be helping other people out by thinking about this stuff.
00:55:05
Speaker
Um, so I want to make sure that it's kind of the most generous question that I can ask as well. So I'll have to just kind of, it's pretty much the meat of the PhDs done. And I just have to kind of tweak the filter that I'm placing over the, over the work that I've done. And that's really what the question, why the question is still kind of in question. Yeah. And well, I, I really wish you the best of luck on all that and, um,
00:55:31
Speaker
I hope we can keep in touch just so you know about the podcast. I'm going to be recording over the next few weeks and I really think you'll enjoy and I'll get you some information about the other guests.
00:55:48
Speaker
It kind of makes sense in my head, although everybody's from a very disparate approach or geography. But I will put a lot of that stuff into your ready hands for you to see fit. And any of your free time away from your PhD and all the other work that you're doing. But I got to tell you, it's such a real thrill to talk to you.
00:56:18
Speaker
Hannah, and given the tone in the, you know, what I'm trying to do with the podcast, do you have any questions? No, I think it just sounds like a really interesting, a really interesting project. Yeah, and I love that it's interdisciplinary and that you're going to be pulling these threads across different practitioners.
00:56:48
Speaker
Yeah. And if we had more time, then I would want to just interview you and find out more about you. We could totally do that sometime. And yeah, I hope you feel I hope you feel better soon. And I really appreciate you taking the time and doing this again. My my deep thanks. I was
00:57:12
Speaker
thinking about this abstractly a day or two ago and feeling nervous. And then as I got closer and closer, I'm like, I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I want to get on the phone right now. So then you know, you're having fun with what you're trying to do. And I appreciate you helping to make that happen. Oh, thank you. Very kind. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks, Hannah. And I'll be in touch.
00:57:44
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing.