The Inside Out Method
Interview with Natasha Conland
Underlying all mystic states are corporeal techniques,
biological methods of entering into communication
with God. – Marcel Maus, “Les
techniques du corps,” 1960
For a critic to give up his distance meant
being corrupted by the art world and neglecting
his professional responsibilities: This demand
for disinterested art criticism in the name of
the public sphere is the assertion of Kant’s
third critique, the first truly important treatise
of modernity. – Boris Groys, “Critical
Reflections” 1997
Throughout Dane Mitchell’s practice as an
artist, he has attempted differing forms of revelation.
Targeting subject, in the manner of the modern critic
and pursuing answers, often by engaging the language
of his subject — in disguise as museum visitor,
Jo public, archaeologist-in-earnest, investigator
or empirical researcher. The goal it seemed, as for
the aforementioned, was the truth behind façade,
an honest unmediated response, to expose for the
public (as one is no longer prepared to do) the artifice.
However despite his stated methodology, even at
the outset Mitchell played his hand by employing
the tenacious skills of the trickster, whether via
humour or errant logic. On closer inspection his
tactics were deceiving. His deception was not in
order to discredit, but as a diversionary strategy,
he generated unease and uncertainty around both the
subject under scrutiny and the role of art to communicate
something of social or political clarity.
When moving his subject from museological enquiry
into an examination of mystic and new age practice
the trickster softens still further, and the artists
status in relation to the material becomes even less
decipherable. What might have been treated as insider-status
humour, or a tautological search for the ‘other’,
quickly feels misleading at either end. Despite the
employment of strategies for the pursuit of knowledge,
his critical distance becomes erroneous, instead
he practices what might be described as ‘strategic
discommunication’, and neither positions his
strategy of or for the subject. As viewers, we wade
into the material with an uncertain guide, slipping
up on our old habits and unlearnt superstitions and
desires.
Q. Your work has proffered an outsider’s
perspective on the mysteries of the inside, often
with keen wit. With the introduction of what might
broadly be described as mystic content, it’s
much harder for the viewer to get a measure of
the humour in these works. Is that a deliberate
step on your part?
A. In the past I was engaged in secular
critique of secular institutions, now in part I’m
complicating that through my engagement with the
internal rules of spiritual practice. I’m
implicated in the work’s subject matter in
a way that I haven’t been previously, partly
because I’m literally carrying out the spells,
but it’s more complex than that. When I’m
following a set of instructions to carry out a
curse, written by a third party, of course I’m
implicated in it, and it makes it difficult for
me to be anything but respectful of that body of
knowledge, and in particular, the knowledge of
the unknown.
Whereas perhaps an authorial smile was more apparent
in my previous work, here it’s not, and it
makes it more difficult to read. While I’m
involved in the casting of the spells there’s
more complexity around a skeptical position in either
the making or interpretation. The level at which
I engage the audience’s belief varies radically,
and affects their response, this is in part the nature
of belief. I’m ok with the assumption that
my position entails some unresolved humour, but it’s
quite limiting for the work, and also misinterprets
the challenges for the viewer. Somehow it’s
easier for the work to appear comedic in its retelling
when the viewer isn’t in front of the material.
So for me there’s a responsibility attached
to the retelling.
Q. …So do you mean to maintain a
position of neutrality?
A. Yes, insofar as I ensure there’s
little division between first and second hand experiences
of the work. It’s verbal retelling is important
to the work, and the subject matter is also implicated
through the manner of its retelling and hearsay.
The artist’s joke should be
taken at face value unless of course his face is
difficult to see. The implication here is that when
you see a smile, you know when you’re supposed
to laugh. The concealment of humour is one of the
most frustrating experiences for the recipient of
a gag. You are left powerless in the face of a potentially
serious comment, and fooled by a message not evident
on the surface of the picture. It’s like not
seeing clearly.
Q. If comedy is an entry point can it also
be a form of concealment?
A. Well, things that are funny are also
tragic too. The previous works (like the letter
to the gallery director requesting change from
the donation box) were comic but the flipside was
also what they revealed through their immediate
humour. There was deliberate manipulation and playfulness
in my use of the format of bureaucratic communication
systems and institutional engagement. The way we
engage with a written letter and even it’s
navigation within a bureaucracy, into the in-tray
of official channels and the language of response.
They reflect upon a reliance on ordered systems
of communication.
The spell work in Basel Haunting (Anna Göldi),
2008, does this as well. It utilises and exploits
a set of instructions and rules. For example, for
the spell to be executed I follow a set of instructions
outlined by the administering witch or practitioner,
then in the space of the exhibition I employ known
museum language and schema, cordoning off an area
and designating it “off-limits” to exhibition
viewers.
Q. Throughout these early works and your
recent enquiry into mystic practice there is an
interest in penetrating beyond a surface, whether
that is into walls, the structures of the museum
or the operations of the unseen. Do you think that’s
a fair comparison?
A. There is certainly a consistent enquiry
in the mood of these early projects. It came from
working over the tone of each letter and coming
across something seemingly facile, silly or redundant,
which might otherwise be overlooked. My hope was
that the response would play into this, but at
the same time I never knew what would come back.
The spell works have the same affect for both myself
and those who view them by moving our expectations
into the unknown. For example at a very literal
level, by flying on a plane to Basel to carry
out a spell, then getting on the plane to come home
again I’m subjected to the basics of superstition,
almost without design. Although it’s cordoned-off,
the question is always how much does it spill over
and how abiding are the laws of witches to those
of the museum.
This is where science comes into play. Their’s
is an outsider’s point of view, and from a
determined position of objectivity, it’s an
attempt to measure the probabilities of the trick
and the truth.
Q. In 2006 Mitchell made one of his most
ambitious projects to date, using a combination
of methodological processes and diagrammatic rendering
loosely based on archaeological observation and
applied them to local museums. He used these pseudo-analytic
tools to investigate site, staffing structures,
support networks and operational outcomes, with
the guise of illustrating in-depth informational
analysis, instead he mis-applies his methodology
to points of surface orientation. So for example,
a soil-stratification drawing is applied to a museum
logo, and a plaster cast of an archaeological dig
reveals desk-top detritus.
Q. And were the archaeological drawings
in your 2005 project Present Surface of Tell an
attempt to use or misuse the language of science?
A. The drawings are the application of real
archaeological processes overlaid with processes
for diagramming systematic relationships, and through
their combination they become inventive. They are
diagrammatic explanations of complex human or business
relationships, which explain the world in a logical
way. In combination, these diagrams of business
relationships alongside other organic systems,
like the stratification of soil, have the potential
to open things up.fig.2 Through their combination,
they may open up the nature of one or the other,
or close them down. When I began using these models
I was thinking of the Situationists who used a
map of one city to navigate another city in an
attempt to open up variant possibilities and interpretations
of a site. The idea was that you might hit on something
new but also find an alternative way to describe
it.
Q. And what about the immeasurable qualities,
the accidents of any taxonomic system?
A. The work deals with this too, because
the end result doesn’t rely on the rationality
of either system. Through their combination the ‘results’ or
answers becomes less clear. The plaster cast reliefs
of museum rubble don’t draw from specifics
either, they’re also accidental histories.
The material captured in the plaster through mock-archaeological
process reveals that which is deemed redundant
or worthless rather than useful to the purposes
of explanation or interpretation.
Q. So how did the first work involving a
spell and a cursed gallery space emerge from your
analysis of museum taxonomies?
A. It was through an invitation to participate
in a group show dealing with the notion o invisibility.
I enjoy responding to a specific premise and this
time I wanted to take the opportunity to do a work
which responded to the particulars of the site.
I was thinking about the interior of the gallery,
which has this slightly odd space under the stairs,
a space which had largely been ignored in previous
exhibitions. I wanted to draw attention to this
difficult space by utilising it. Making this invisible
space active. I liked the idea of ‘charging’ its
invisibility, and therefore making it completely
unusable thereafter. I eventually managed to get
in touch with Paula (the practitioner) through
various means and we agreed that she would and
could help. I assumed it would be a matter of finding
a witch who was interested in taking part in the
project. It was a process of elimination, following
leads, links on websites, phone numbers, recommendations
and conversations.
Q. Your next project was made whilst artist-in-residence
at the Rita Angus cottage, using a spirit guide
(or medium) you called up the spirit of the artist.
How did you approach the often-sacrosanct history
of an honoured but voiceless artist?
A. It depends on how the project is framed,
how you talk about it and why. I approached the
subject through the site and identity of the house,
it wasn’t my intention to interrogate the
history of the artist, but the active memories
instated in the cottage. I wanted to approach the
house in the same way that the psychic approaches
the house, no prior relationship to the person
and with no prior reading. This lack of prejudgement
allows for a greater risk of returns. You could
say that I don’t want to make a project with
prior knowledge of its outcomes – it’s
also more interesting for me to suspend my belief.
Q. For Basel, Mitchell has focused the tools
of his spiritual enquiry on the memory of the last
person executed for witchcraft in Europe. Executed
during the age of the enlightenment, Anna Göldi
is now the subject of a new museum in Mollis, Switzerland.
Using a combination of corporeal matter supplied
by the museum, and the procedure written for him
by a witch in New Zealand, Mitchell will call up
Göldi’s spirit presence. Enacting the
process in person, Mitchell uses a combination
of science and witchcraft to draw out a visible
and/or experiential manifestation of Göldi.
In its reception, the project will likely elicit
the inadequate polarities of anxiety and skeptical
disdain. In this climate, Mitchell himself is said
to evade the critical responsibilities of the artist
to communicate a social position, and give voice
or shape to something other than the polarity within
which it is seen. It’s up to us to concur
whether this strategy of designed malfunction has
a core or essential relationship to the subject
of either belief or museological disclosure.
Q. Because you are handling belief largely
undone since the enlightenment — and perhaps
because of the broader cultural sensitivity to
belief at present — is there a greater degree
of risk-management required by the institutions
that host these projects?
A. Well again, for these reasons the question
of belief is not interesting if I’m laughing
at the subject. I’d rather work in the space
between skepticism and earnest enquiry. Interestingly
enough, at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne,
the gallery staff asked for a spell to protect
them from the possible leakage of spirit during
the exhibition. They do and don’t believe
in it, but the not knowing allows people to experience
the grey area between belief and disbelief – even
if it’s an irrational space.
Q. Another line of enquiry in your work
is the self-help guides, in Aid to Sight, 2008,
which is made for Basel, you’ve applied a
helpful mantra to engage the viewer’s ‘insight’ into
the work, is this it’s primary function?
A. Aid to Sight, 2008, is instructing the
viewer to see beyond what is there, beyond the
formal properties and materials and their connotations.
It has to do with pacing as well, the voice within
the work asks you to slow down. The work was made
with the context of the fair in mind, instructing
you to give more in the context of this frenzy
of looking. It connects to the notion of invisibility,
to seeing the unseen, but in this case, tells you
how to do the looking.
Q. OK, so are you implying that there are
a set of ingredients or codes to any work, spell,
system, and that getting them would require something
akin to decoding?
A. Possibly it’s the first work you
see in the space, so it could be interpreted as
a guide in this way.
Q. The object that the sound emerges from
is reminiscent of an object used in Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey, what attracted you to it?
A. The work was made with the context of
the fair in mind, I wanted the landscape in the
frame to seem unnatural to the fair and the work
itself to be at odds with the landscape. In the
film the object is a monolith, but here it’s
behaving as an ‘asport’. An asport
being the transference of an object to an unknown
location via unknown means. It’s connection
to mystic thinking is the invocation of a liminal
object – a moment or point of connection
between the spirit world and the physical world.
In the film the monolith appears at moments of
key change, and these changes represent evolutionary
or technological shifts which enable humanity to
move forward in some way. It’s also a self-reflexive
object, which has been described literally to represent
the proportionate scale of film itself.
Q. So ultimately does the project facilitate
knowledge, or is that presumption itself erroneous?
A. I use the phrase ‘other ways of
knowing’ to identify forms and practices
that manipulate, counter or utilize knowledge systems.
Measurable mystery is another form of knowledge.
Like ‘unknowing’, it foregrounds absence
and the validity of that position. In part my interest
in this territory is directed at the persuasive
power of the new, and the predicament of being
all knowing through artistic practice.
↑ Back to top of page
