Caroline Locke interviewed by Nicholas Zurbrugg

nz
To begin with how would you describe yourself as an artist – are there any characteristics that you feel best indicate what you’ve been doing lately?

cl
I think that most definitely the term interdisciplinary comes to mind, the fact that I look to various disciplines… sculpture, dance, sound, theatre, science, engineering, domestic plumbing… the list continues. The fact that I borrow from all these kinds of disciplines, I think that’s the characteristic that initially comes to mind.

nz
What was it that made you want to bring all these different things together? It’s a rather surprising mix, perhaps- I mean particularly domestic technology along with all these others.

cl
I think it’s part of my background really. As a child I was taken from one extra-curricular activity to the next – tap dancing, hand bell ringing, swimming training, ballet class, guitar and piano lessons, choir practice, tennis practice – there were at least two classes a night that I attended from the age of about 6 right in to my early teens, and I think that kind of vigorous routine and desire for different input/information is something that’s stayed with me… I was given a very broad kind of experience at an early age - I tried everything and learnt to shift from one discipline to the next and wander between.

nz
You quite like to use hi-tech materials and everyday materials in some regard, so that in a way you’re not an austere minimalist. could you say a bit more about your choice of materials and how you see the work relating to everyday life or just to available possibilities?

cl
I’m very intrigued by my surroundings –I see everything - I don’t miss little details and I find myself staring at washing machines or watching a tap drip or watching a crane move across a skyline or looking at those nice Dyson hoovers and watching the fluff whir round, and I’m intrigued by this … I think to take these little machines or elements that we take so much for granted in our living situations… to extract them and put them into a gallery or into an environment and combine them with other elements to in some way redefine them or give them a voice …or definition… that’s my challenge in a way- to raise them from their quiet corner where they’re doing their thing… to take them out of that and to put them in a new situation where someone else might notice the amazing thing about the way that fluff spins round inside the vacuum cleaner or the rhythm that a washing machine has … I think that’s what I’m trying to do with these machines.

nz
What’s the vibration theme - how have you been exploring that?

cl
I’m interested in physics … more specifically the idea that everything vibrates (siren sound in distance). It began when I was looking at Debussy’s opera Pelleas and Mellisande and Debussy’s obsession with water. This is a story of a love triangle, very passionate, very tragic the earth moving for these 3 people. I used vibration to capture those moments when your world trembles, and you fall in love …everything’s thrown up in the air… it’s like an earthquake. I wanted to make something vibrate and I chose to use water – I attached motors with off center cams on them to 3 steel tanks, so that when they span they shook the sides of the tanks causing the water to be disrupted … to vibrate and to shake!

nz
How did you determine the scale of the work?

cl
The films were projected as large as they would possibly go..
Everything’s large scale ..,.it has to be big. I’ve always worked on a grand scale… I like the idea of the epic … I particularly like large images whether photographic or video – I loved seeing those incredible billboards in New York…. beautifully huge images!… TAKES YOUR BREATH AWAY SOMETIMES THE SIZE…. that’s always remained- when I project films -always large. But that might change, maybe I’ll try taking it small, see what happens.

nz
Does it worry you that there are certain elements in your work, in an installation, which don’t cohere, which aren’t as apparent as you’d like? Do you sometimes find there are some elements that are very obvious or that some elements are more muted, slightly to one side?

cl
It is a worry of mine because there are always so many layers within a work. I would like people to stay in the gallery long enough to link the elements together so that suddenly, after a prolonged period of looking, listening, feeling… they put all the pieces of the puzzle together… from a spectator’s point of view, it’s satisfying when you can do that… When I go into a gallery that ‘s what I look for, I look for hooks and I try piecing all the elements together. I enjoy that experience and I think that’s what I’m trying to do for my audience / spectators, so, yes, it is something that I constantly think about. For instance at the beginning of the year when I did the Pelleas and Melisande project with Opera North, I would stand in the gallery and watch to see if people noticed the tanks vibrating on the floor because they were set up on timers and the timers would go off every five, ten minutes… but sometimes people would just walk in and look at the videos and they’d miss the fact that the tanks vibrated because the timers didn’t happen to click in at that particular moment . That would frustrate me … I wanted to run up to them and say – ‘did you notice that the tank was?…’ Of course I never did that, but, yes, it is important that I raise the elements high enough for people to really see… and for me that’s what distinguishes between good and bad art.

nz
That raises one other interesting issue – it reminds me of an American composer called Kenneth Gabora talking about Samuel Beckett’s play which is called ‘Play’ and Gabora had his own ensemble and he produced it… what he concluded was that if you just try to listen to a language you’re going to miss the gestures or the music or the sound etc, and that Beckett had somehow generated another sort of language, another sort of rhythm which was peculiar to the coherence and the mixture and the linking of all the elements together in this new totality, and it seems to me there might be some sort of parallels there – even if utopian ones, with your work - in the way you bring it together… again I was interested when you said that you’d like the spectator to spend sufficient time to understand how all the things link up… does this make your work both performative but also perhaps contemplative because you’d like the spectator to rise to the complexity of the interacting works but perhaps also to see the simplicity of the totality?

cl
In a word…yes!. The contemplation is important – I would like people to go there with me..and to be aware of the juxtaposition between the complexity and simplicity in the work.
The performative aspect is so important - I think that’s another reason why I use machines – it does link to my dance background, my theatre background – these are actually objects that are doing things while you are witnessing …they are in fact the performers…these are things that are moving and, yes, they are doing a little dance in front of you and so yes that performative element is so important to me.

nz
But what if I said nonsense, this is an inhuman artificial practice because if you say you’ve a dance background can’t I say you should be ashamed of yourself, if you’re capable of dancing physically, how on earth can you replace your presence with spin dryers and water tanks?

cl
I’m not replacing it though I’m mirroring it, being playful with it…and really I’m there right in the middle of it all.

nz
Or choreographing it perhaps. But do you feel a loss in terms of the apparent absence of physical human performance - is that something you miss from your work?

cl
Yes it is – I am very intrigued by the notion of presence and I often want to place myself more physically within the work. It can be difficult to combine the live presence within the arena that I create because it could easily seem like a token gesture. We tried to do it with Pellious & Melisande – Kerry Nichols was dancing – we did one live performance with her working around the space and on some levels it worked and it was nice to have that elevated time for an audience and a performance, but in other ways it didn’t quite gel. I think it had something to do with the nature of the work, the projections were so huge and Kerry got lost a little in there… it’s something that I try and compensate with video: I bring the human presence into those situations through video.

nz
Is there anything else you’d like to add regarding this piece that’s going to be shown in Leicester?

cl
The rhythm idea… I’m trying to explore rhythm and relate that to life – relating to a kind of body cadence and the fact that life exists around rhythm- that is the core of everything – silent rhythm – and I think that relates to me showing people the sight of sound. That, and this silent rhythm, work together.

nz
In a way I find all this very welcome because a lot of cultural theorists have said since the 1890s that once we live in a mechanical world we lose contact with our own identity and that somehow machines alienate us from a sense of how and what we are, and what you seem to be demonstrating is the way in which orchestration of machines and other materials actually allow us to amplify our self awareness

cl
Yes …isn’t that fantastic!….there’s a nice twist there!….
The idea that science is the new religion interests me and that constantly new technologies are pushing human lives into a completely new place .I tend to use less new technology and focus more on old technology … that’ s a really important part of my work – I’m rejoicing in the beauty of old technology. I like you to see how one cog links to the next and the fact that it’s logical - I can read it because it’s logical and so that’s why I use it.

nz
Perhaps you’re art isn’t saying that we’re living in a complete age of breaks but looks at certain sorts of continuity, certain ways of reassessing the recent past and showing that things that might have seemed alienating 30 or 40 years ago are now really rather cosy and nostalgic but also at the same time provocative and entertaining and amusing, but also in a way a source of beauty or a source of linking different experiences because that again is quite interesting… that somebody might say that the technologies of the 50s and 60s are junk but perhaps what you’re saying is that in actual fact …

cl
They have a sense of honesty to them and that’s what I love – if you were to hold up a simple motor and cog system against a piece of computer circuitry and ask which one excites me – it’s the motor with the cogs… because of its honesty – one thing locks into another thing which makes something do this (spinning her hand around) which knocks that ….. I think that I’m linking that to people and trying to simplify things and get things back to some kind of basic level….look at this, or hear that, or touch this ……and that relates very directly to my choice of materials.