Doug Fishbone

Interview with Doug Fishbone exploring site-specificity and context, high art and low art, audience and culture.

MP Michael Pinchbeck
DF Doug Fishbone

MP I've seen your work live at the Powerhouse and at the Angel Row annex. Site Gallery on my own and Beacon project with my parents. Different contexts. Different content. Different locations. Different audiences. Different responses. How do you edit / rearrange the content to suit the location or nature of the showing - live or recorded, gallery or theatre? How definite is the structure - i.e. do you have a narrative thrust that you can achieve with different material or does it vary?

DF Not sure exactly here as you are talking about two distinct projects. In Sheffield and at Angel Row I showed a video work, as opposed to the live performance. The video and performance work share the basic gesture of spoken word and still images but they are distinct projects with different intentions and modes of operating. That being said they are strongly linked, as my style in using this type of gesture was developed out of an artist talk/slide lecture I did on my MA, which was the first time I ever played with found imagery in that way. That being said, I have only been doing this performance work for a short term so it is too early to generalize. I make some local variations depending on cultural reference - It started out in Lincolnshire, and then I made a slightly more vulgar variant for London, since I was showing it in a gallery space as opposed to the more open community based idea at Beacon. The London version incorporated a few dirty jokes and a smattering of pornographic images. I have also performed in NY and Milan. The basic project is the same, though I have added bits and bobs here and there. In NY I changed a number of the British references that would not have made sense to an American audience and added a few more US specific jokes. The vulgarity remained as well, and it was fun to present the work in a nightclub environment. Given the importance of stand-up comedy in the conception of the work, it is a coming home of sorts.

Using the stand-up model for construction, as I do, things can be added and changed around, more in a syncretic way than a standard approach to narrative might allow. That is a strength and potential weakness in the work, as it sets the stage for allowing it to go all over the place. I play with this looseness quite often, allowing things to go off the rails at times. That is a general feature of my mode of storytelling since I wanted to adopt a framework to allow for maximum flexibility. I am planning future work that will be much more literary in tone, which will need more coherence visually and narratively than I have been working with up until now. In terms of changing content based on context, then I would say it shifts somewhat based on location then, to allow for different cultural reference to make sense, and on other variables - the Beacon guy asked me to keep it cleaner than I might normally. The performance is not meant to be seen recorded, so the live/recorded issue is not one I confront. That is a video versus performance issue which is a whole other kettle of fish. And that being said I have only worked through the one performance, so I hesitate to generalize too much about a new project.

MP How did the preparation for the Beacon performance in the village hall differ from this in terms of the audience you were expecting? How did their reception of the work differ from an urban audience and from your expectations of their response?

DF I did not factor the audience into the preparation except in a generic kind of way. I wanted to write the piece and perform it, that simple. My interest was in developing a live way of working with similar devices that I use in my video. It was more of a pre-conceived intention that I was glad to have a venue to try it out in, than a site-specific, purpose-written thing as it were. The audience at the point of reception was quite different in that there were many children and older people who might not normally visit galleries, and they would not have known about the work in much detail in advance, whereas a London gallery audience might have more idea what to expect given my other work. It was interesting to see how the edgier political bits went over in the Beacon - people laughed at some of the racist humor more than I expected. However, people have tended to laugh at the same points as they did in London or NY. The London version had a few extremely nasty jokes that would necessarily change the reception of the piece, adding an element of confronting the audience that the Beacon version might not have had, but all this is mediated by the self consciousness of an art audience watching an art project in a gallery. Things are taken immediately as art, which certainly affects the vibe. So how might a porn-infused thing have worked in Beacon? Or how much does it change the flavor to make only a few changes but have them be dramatic - such as the inclusion of vulgarity? Not sure.

MP What discussions did you have with John Plowman about how to engage with the audience within the Beacon project?

DF None of any note. He offered me a platform and I decided to develop the performance. We discussed issues like my panhandling (which John actually did, shaking the hat), but he had no editorial involvement in the creation of the work, except as mentioned, in asking me to be generally aware of a certain sensitivity - ie no porn.

MP You say in the BAS brochure that you are 'investigating the language of mass media to critique some of the more problematic aspects of our culture... by using its own delivery of imagery as the basis for the work.' How much is the language and your critique of it cynical - and if so - can it be aligned with Oscar Wilde's view 'A cynic knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.'? Does your piece not cancel itself out - like the Chinese proverb about the fish?

DF It is certainly cynical. I see myself primarily as a satirist, so that would be hard to do without cynicism. In terms of investigating media language, I aim to reflect the kind of visual overload and bizarre visual juxtapositions that we are bombarded by and exposed to at all times. I think it is important to note that I don't identify a particular agenda. Sometimes the narrator seems pc and fairly wise, sometimes vulgar, offending the very ethnic groups he seems to be a part of. It is a mirror of sorts. Whether that cancels itself out, I cannot say. I think not, because I think the work has a very ethical and political stance because of the way it operates. The evenness of tone in the voice over is very studied, and it is actually a gesture to highlight thing rather than minimize them, but through the act of minimizing, there is a point in one video in which I am talking about a whole series of very significant things as thought they were merely simple lifestyle choices. As though obesity and bulimia were equivalent choices with cannibalism and shit-eating and people rooting through the garbage for trash in Indonesia. Clearly eating trash is not a lifestyle choice in the same way a sexual fetish like shit eating would be. However placing them all in the same framework allows some of the dichotomies between developing and developed world to be shown - gross excess versus deprivation, and so on - in an unexpected way. Evening them reveals how truly uneven they are. It is cynical, of course, and one might question the exploitation of images of suffering of others. The broader question of whether art is politically effective, or makes any difference in any larger way, even social critique of this nature, is a different story, of course.

But I think using the tones and gestures I work with does allow for a powerful cynicism that has a distinct if not blatantly stated message. That is my intention and my means of operating. The cancelling out is very studied, and is its own critique of how that process operates on a larger media level. My work is meant to be viewed many times, though, as it is tightly designed and the various stories and jokes tie together. So what might come off as gruff indifference or whatever in one viewing shifts when the viewer gives the work more time. The quieter way it operates reveals itself.

MP You said in your talk at Nottingham Trent University as part of the British Art Show that you don't want your work to be just a one-liner - how does a piece of work that is a string of one-liners fit into this ambition? Where does it sit between political satire, stand up comedy and academic lecture? Why?

DF I would say the same as above. Stand-up is a stylistic influence - the huge range of topics, piece-meal approach to form, ability to change directions without any real segues. The formal use of still imagery relates to a wider range of contexts - academic lecture, business talk, and so on. I am interested in the authority that obtains when still photographic imagery is used. Because of the various associations with different contexts of information delivery, it allows for a lot of fun - things stand out against the formality in some cases, in others the format can be exploited to different effects. My point about the conceptual tightness of the material - in particular in the video I have in the BAS - is to say that it is not merely a string of one-liners. The jokes all reflect the broader themes of cultural misunderstanding and relativity between different world views. So they reflect my broader points about the arrogance of Western thinking and the fluidity of notions of scientific truth, or what have you, and are not a series of empty one-liners. I cannot of course determine fully how people take the work, but I can explain the intention behind its creation. It adopts many conventions of stand-up but isn’t fully that, since it tries to fail at times, tries to hit walls and derail its own momentum, things that traditional stand-up would not risk perhaps. I see it as operating fairly fluidly between a number of modes - nor do I see any necessary distinction between political satire and comedy.