Oh yeah, you know, the minute that the internet, you know, something, not even Web 2.0, but the minute that the internet started to become mainstreamed, I loved it. There was a video, there was like an internet cafe on the main road in my hometown. And I used to go there and play, well, log on to something which was called World's Chat, which was also kind of like an avatar chat, a bit like Second Life.

And now I think that the interface must have been extremely basic, but I liked it. I also liked computer games, I liked point and click. And there was something really exciting about that for me.

Well, no, I think it's totally, that's a very legit reading. I mean, maybe you know that when I started out in the, you know, art world proper, I did not make objects. But mainly I wrote texts and I used social media and I sort of like turned my back on, I suppose, a certain audience and a certain reading of those things as work. I mean, the texts were kind of work, if you like.

And in one of my texts I wrote, and it was kind of widely quoted at the time, every artist working today is a post-internet artist. And that for me, you know, just holds true. And in that sense, there's also nothing that interesting about the condition of being post-internet. Or, you know, it's by now so much a sort of, I won't say universal, but it's so widespread an experience or a condition that, you know, very quickly I realized that the kind of, you know, the attitude of newness and radicality around it was just in some way reactionary, kind of celebratory of the wrong things, you know, was sort of techno-philic and even a bit fascistic in terms of what, what was found to be exciting about the possibilities of the space.

And indeed, some of what that discourse grew into was what I call sovereign paranoia, which is when, you know, mainly white, cisgendered, and often heterosexual men, who are also middle class, kind of realize, oh, my body, my data body, or my etheric body, does not belong to me. Without my consent, it's being, it's being parceled up, bought and sold. I'm being gazed at, I'm being surveilled.

And then they evoke things like the commons, once this all was grass, a kind of, like, primordial, you know, yeah, a primordial, the garden of the internet, when, before all the conglomerates moved into town or whatever. And to some extent, I'm sympathetic to the gentrification of the internet discourse, but on the other hand, I'm like, look, what commons?

You know, you grow up as a woman, as a trans person. You grow up as a black person or a person of color in a white supremacist world. And the commons is not where you're safe. You're continually surveilled. You're continually gazed at. Your body, in a sense, does not belong to you. And the history of the enslaved and colonized is, is, you know, also a history of, of, of, of personhood, despite the fact that, you know, the body was not one's own property, or at least was someone else's property, that what is the history of the body as property, right?

So this is not unprecedented. And I absolutely reject, um, the outrage in some way, even though it's a real thing that conglomerates are, you know, doing whatever they want with our data. But again, like post 9-11, there was a whole new world of surveillance came in, but not for those white guys who write about it. And largely they ignore that when they're writing about it, you know? So, that's one thing I would say.

This is also, I guess, informed my turn away from those discourses that I found it all so fucking basic after a while. Basic, reactionary, and bourgeois. And I think that's changed now. And of course, the, like, most interesting discourses around the internet are not, are now not being produced from that perspective or subjectivity.

American artists, I think about Nora Khan. You know, there are a lot of people who are like, you could also say Cameron Rowland, who's working in fine art, not necessarily talking about the internet, but just talking about, I suppose, like how, how, how property circulates, and it does, in a way, refute this utopic commons. Certainly Nora Khan has, I think, explicitly written about that, and plenty other people too.

And I think that I, I guess that, you know, on the subject of technology, I remain really fascinated with this category. Um, you know, techno, that which is made, uh, and I think, as I always say as well, you know, hammers and nails are technology as well. Bicycles, condoms, um, hormones. You know, like, to, to think about technology as the automobile and the airplane and the drone and the computer is also like a partial history of, of human, you know, tech, technology.

And, of course, it, it's an imperial history, it's a patriarchal capitalist history. And so I also kind of want to, I just, that is very much something that informs my way of working and way of thinking. It's like anti-accelerationists. I'm an anti-futurist. But that doesn't make me an anti-technologist. I'm not at all a Luddite. I'm really interested in pretty much every aspect of technology. It's like a kind of magic, magic in, in action, you know.

Sure thing. That's great. But you know what I mean, though? It's like... We, we understand, but we don't, we never understand enough. I also think that this attribution of the radical break or the, or the sudden technological advancement of the West is a, is basically a kind of racist narrative. So I would also say, like, provocatively, that, you know, playing cards are a technology. There's pretty much nothing that we do that is not. And that's the interesting thing.

Yeah, totally. Totally. And what's interesting as well, and I found this out when I was researching a show a few years ago that I made with the artist Phoebe Collings-James, that basically certain, certain technologies that we use now have been in use for, like, sometimes hundreds of years. Um, while other things just keep on upgrading, you know, your Apple products and your Android products and whatever else, your Nike sneakers and the various new kinds of machine weaves and whatever.

But we've been flying the same airplanes since, um, you know, for probably now, like, almost a hundred years. And dildos haven't changed so much in hundreds of years. I mean, you know, like, there's, there's so many counter examples. And the one that I really like to use, which I learned from a book called, uh, I think, The Shock of the Old, which is, which is kind of, um, a kind of pop history book, which counters the whole accelerationist perspective. There were more horses than tanks in World War II.

I think so, but I think I don't think about it subconsciously. I, I keep on thinking and thinking about the fallibility or collapsibility or fungibility of things, systems, bodies, ideas, and civilizations. And, and, and although it, um, I, although I find this frightening and also sometimes sad, I kind of take comfort from the idea that nothing's too big to fail and that really everything is, is dying.

Especially right now, everything's dying around here, you know? Or, like, whatever, this, the, the epoch is really, uh, this particular, um, phase is well on its way out. So that the pendulum's shifting and there's something new coming in. And it may not be pretty, but it is certain. And I think, and I think, and I think on some level, you know, in the body or whatever, I think basically everyone knows that. And people are going, you know, are reacting in all kinds of ways, put it that way.

And I, I think that, um, the object is not to keep standing necessarily. Um, when it comes to the idea of a prop, you know, we default to, to, to, to getting back up and we default to dragging ourselves along and to basically to, to trying to keep standing, which is what we do. I think there's a, there's a tendency towards survival or at least trying to survive and it will be in the end always thwarted, but we try.

Um, and in this trying, a lot of things happen, you know, you could say that is literally what, what the human condition is, is trying to survive where we will certainly fail. So this, this metaphor of like precariousness is, it's like, um, uh, yeah, I, I mean, that's how I experience life. That's all I know of living actually, that like nothing stays, you really, you must never get too comfortable because, uh, you know, you come in, come in for a fall.

And I think that this is like, when I think about making sculpture, I want to say that, but I also don't want to say that the fall is, is tragic. That's just part of it. You fall and you get back up and you try and you try and sometimes you fail and ultimately you always fail.

No, it's not, it's not a home. It was a swimming pool. It was built as a swimming pool. It's not really subterranean, but, um, it, it, it looks that way. So you walk in, it's like street level, but there's also a balcony at the top and the balcony would be just like, you know, I mean, it was the third Reich. So the balcony from whence you can surveil or gaze upon the, the perfect bodies or the, you know, imperfect bodies of your fellow swimmers, like very reef and style, you know, but you walk in that place and it's got these big, um, like, you know, this sans serif fascist columns and the swimming pool balcony.

And it, and it really just, you know, it, I just thought, damn, you know, it's also huge and the institution doesn't have a lot of money. And so this was also a problem of site specificity. Like what can you do without much money in a really huge place that, that is somehow not too polite. You know, I felt like I really had to engage with what the architecture there and not just pretend that like I wasn't in standing in a fascist swimming pool and make some nice stuff.

And the rollercoaster, you know, steel is cheap. And my labor was, I think like the people who worked on it with me probably got paid more than me or made more money out of it so far than I did, which is, that's fine. It's the way it's the way it should be. But because I was going to be what making it myself, it wasn't like, um, fabricated it. So that was the way to do it. And we just built it without any CAD drawings or like sketches. We like literally built that thing in the metal workshop bit by bit and then put it all together. And that's what it looked like.

Like normal, uh, you know, show length, but very few people saw it, which was fine. But, you know, the thing about the rollercoaster, talking of technology and, you know, this, the affect of the moment, I learned so much about rollercoasters when I was, I wanted to make this rollercoaster. And then I started learning as I was building it.

And it turns out that, well, Gravity Road was the first rollercoaster in Pennsylvania. And it was extrapolated, as you can imagine, from the mining train. Um, and it's very literally leisure as a history of extraction. And, um, I'm sure it's controversial to say this, but when I look now at what's happening in Silvan, in Jerusalem, which is being kind of cleared to make way for a theme park and people being evicted by the military at gunpoint and made to demolish their own homes. Um, there is also something about the history of extraction and settling, which seems to, you know, which continues and continues. There's this modernity, um, and steel, of course, and metal ores are a big part of that history.

Well, um, I think, I don't know, I'm actually still trying to work it out, like what it means for, for me, what it means for, um, a certain generation, not so much my generation, but who comes after. Um, you know, there's things that I feel like I can't, I can't fully understand about it. This is where the, you know, it does become a bit generational, because it was not quite like that when I was growing up. But it is really like that now. And if I know a bit about it, it's because I've, um, been working as an artist.

And because I've been, you know, among other things, let's say, you know, a sex worker or an emotional labourer or another, you know, I've like worked some, some, some jobs which you would say tend to be gendered labour. I think a lot about the way that parenthood is taken up, I should say motherhood, um, even though I don't feel interpolated, but it's taken up as, um, this extremely alienated, uh, and indeed extractive process, um, uh, in which, like the child ends up being like the product, because there's no other product to show for this labour.

And, I mean, it's kind of classic Marxist model, trickle-down oppression stuff, but this is now being understood as, as like, you know, this is, this is now mother culture, you know, particularly online. And I have a lot to say about that, and I'm very critical of it, but I think I'm not going to do it now, I'm still trying to get the right words, because it's kind of a sensitive issue. I mean, I don't care particularly about offending people, I just want to say exactly what I mean, and I'm still trying to work that out.

Well, the first question, or the last question I can answer very quickly is that I did used to think about myself as a performer, and I started making the objects, because I was becoming, you know, overly extracted, over extracted, I was kind of flying around all the time in the emerging artist shuffle, you know, nice hotels, but very small fees, always on a plane, um, I didn't pay for the trip, but I paid for it in energy. And I would always have to front up and be myself, you know, like, on the road as the travelling preacher slash emerging artist, um, JD, and it was just exhausting, and I just thought, I can't do this, I cannot, I'm not strong enough, I'm not man enough to do it, and I, I'm, you know, not good enough at what I'm doing to do it. I'm not a good enough performer, I have to admit. And not charismatic enough, and all the rest of it, so I started making these objects, and then I thought, they can do their little turn.

And in my first experiments with steel, I really was thinking very much about, like, what, how can I, like, fix these guys, these bodies, these steels, in this most uncomfortable affect. And they can just stay there, they can stay there, they can stay like that, it won't hurt them, and it won't hurt me. But there will be this sense of, yeah, you know, this is what it looks like when someone's gotta be doing this eternal, curtsy, pirouette performance of the self, always, always, always on. And, you know, I mean, it's been much more recently only that I realised that you don't really have to do that. You don't even have to attend the opening, or the dinner, or whatever, and I, and I, and I don't. So that's that.

And I think that, as to the question about performance, it's a bit of a fraught question, because, um, I feel like my performativity was in some ways tied to a, I don't really like the word dysphoria, but I suppose I was trying to make the best of, um, a gender position. And I don't have the same position now, and, like, hormonally, probably, you know, mostly, well, I'm not, I don't feel very, I don't feel interpolated into the feminine these days. And increasingly, the way I'm being taken up in the world's also changing, which is ambivalent and complicated, and, you know, also a bit difficult.

But it's at least different, and with, the less femme I look, and I am, and maybe it's an age thing as well, the less I want to put myself, um, in public. And it's really, like, something like the opposite of shame. And I don't know how to talk about that very well, except to say that, you know, doing porn at the age of 17 was not the thing that began it. It was, like, a symptom of, like, um, you know, the way I was living anyway, the way I felt like I had to live, the way that all girls have to live. Which is kind of always in public, and always, in some sense, conscious of what is, um, of, of, of the, of the performance that you're giving, and how, how good an account of it, you know.

So I think that I, um, you know, I enjoyed some kind of online performance, or, like, the persona. And then after a while, people started to talk about it as a persona, you know, my Twitter, or my Instagram. And, and then I got pissed off, and I said, it's not a persona, it's just, I'm just having fun online. Like, everybody's got a persona online, like your cousin, your granny, the guy at the fish shop. Don't make it a whole thing. I'm just like anybody else, which I also think is true. And I said that it was a sexist and reductive reading, that nobody talks about. Warhol's diaries, or Vojnarovic's diaries as performance. There was just some kind of, like, a, a secondary practice of, of, um, you know, of a larger art project. And I said, it's just like that. Don't, don't get it twisted. Don't get hung up on it. And indeed, that seemed to, you know, that, that was a corrective.

And then, yeah, that, like, the work Antigone is, like, the one work of its kind. And, hey, maybe I'll do it again someday. But what was really fun about it was that it wasn't really about me. It was, there was a lot of other people, um, in that performance. And, um, yeah, I mean, also controversial. I was trying to respond, um, to the 9-11 myth, through the myth of Antigone, who, of course, like, yeah, she is going to be punished for having insisted that her brother, like, the two brothers fight. One of them's buried, the other one is arbitrarily chucked outside the city gates to, to rot, because, you know, somebody has to be, uh, an example. And Antigone says, no, I'm going to bury him. I want to mourn him. And the king says, well, then you're going to die for it. And she says, like, all right, I'll die for it.

And I thought about, again, very on the nose, the Twin Towers, the two brothers, and who we are allowed to mourn. And, um, you know, yes, several thousand, a couple of thousand people lost their lives in New York on that day. And subsequently, in Afghanistan and Iran and Iraq, many, many, many more thousands, you know. And those who didn't die have had to pay for it in other ways. And, you know, it's, again, this question, which I often think about is who gets to be innocent, which is related to this sort of surveillance paranoia that I think about as well, you know.

Yeah, you know, I'm really trying to do, um, I'm really trying to keep my head down a little bit at the moment. Um, well, while keeping my job, kind of thing. Uh, I, I'm really, I really want to take some time to read and research because I'm, I want to actually think more about this history of extraction. I want to think about something like, I, I think it has something to do with the, the European project to banish death. And I think that extraction and exhumation have something in common. And I think that the question of who is innocent is also related to the question of who gets to die slash who's allowed to die slash what is allowed to die. Which is also a history of monuments, which is also a history of monuments, which is also a history of mines.

And yeah, all right. So as you can hear, it's kind of a big thing, which as you probably also hear, I, I'm really just pulling together really big swathes. And I need to sit down and think, uh, pretty hard. Um, and I want to do it just because it feels like that's the thing. Like there's a lot of like half formed, but strongly felt ideas that I have. And, um, certainly it's time for me to, to start working in a different way.

I feel like I, I have been basically like the, the self extraction of my biography, my body and my own experience has got to stop. Um, one reason being that I'm just not as young as I used to be and I'm tired. And the other reason being that it's just not that, that interesting. And I don't want to go deeper into where I haven't gone already because it's, uh, you know, some things have to be private. And so, um, I don't know, inevitably I'll find that it's autobiographical anyway, in some way. But yeah, so I'm, I'm, I'm about to do a research fellowship, I guess, which is a kind of a ceramics fellowship. But I took from that, um, no, I don't want to think about ceramics. I did want to think about clay. Then I wanted to think about digging. So that's, you know, thinking again about mining and quarries and pulling things out on the ground.

And, you know, um, I don't know, I, I, there is some shows coming up. Um, I'm working on a show for the Drawing Centre next year, which also, again, I don't really know what that's going to be. But it's exciting to, to think about drawing as part of my public practice because it's quite new. But I, I'm also supposed to be bringing out a book sometime next year. And the book is supposed to be a kind of, um, I joked and said it was a nonograph, like, uh, like a kind of retrospective, but mainly of, of texts and written work. No, no docu and no, like, exhibition pictures or whatever, because no one cares about that.

And, uh, I'm trying to, I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to figure out how to, um, I'm, I'm thinking a lot about writing at the moment. And, you know, I used to do, I used to do it much more. And then I really make a very strong promise to myself and to everyone else. Again, I did it in public, like I do bloody everything or I did. And I said that I would, no, I would, there would be no more contributions to the discourse. And I kept up this promise. And then the discourse kind of changed. And I'm, it's not that I feel now, like, that I must contribute to the discourse. But I only ever wrote and spoke, um, when I thought that really I had to say something because I didn't see it being said. And I'm starting to have that feeling again. That there's a few things that, uh, I just, I'm like, all right, you know, waiting for someone to articulate what I want to hear said. And no one's said it yet. And if they do, then, um, then great. I don't have to do it.