-> scroll down for transcript
I was carrying a Kodak Ektar 35n with Ilford HP5 ISO 400 film
Zarina’s website is here
Zarina wanted to send people here after listening
[Gabrielle]
The erm, the Baltic is a thousand metres away.
[Zarina]
A thousand metres -- [laughing]
[Gabrielle]
Let's go.
[Zarina]
For some reason saying a thousand metres, rather than just, oh a kilometre, or ten minutes --
[Gabrielle]
Yeah true, I forgot about the word kilometre [laughing] How are you today?
[Zarina]
I'm good. That's it. [laughing]
[Gabrielle]
You hate being interviewed.
[Zarina]
I don't hate it. I just, I think there's something about being erm -- knowing that you're being recorded that just makes me feel -- it's like when there's a mirror in the room and you can see your reflection out the corner of your eye.
[Gabrielle]
Yeah like when you eat in Wagamama's.
[Zarina]
Yeah [laughing]
[Gabrielle]
Hello, my name is Gabrielle de la Puente and welcome to the very first episode of the Art Dates podcast. I'm 31. I'm 170 centimetres. I'm like minus 4.5 in both my eyes. Erm, I've got two cats. What else do you need to know?
I think the most important thing is that I've been writing about art for ten years. And in that time I have met like a shit tonne of interesting people. And like these chats, their ideas, like being in proximity to them, going places with them, seeing their reactions to these things that we share in common, have like completely filled a container that would have been empty without them.
I now want to use this podcast to record conversations with those people and also use it as an excuse to have chats with people that I still want to know more about. And like maybe asking to go for a coffee with them doesn't feel like enough of an invitation [laughing] I'm using this podcast as an elaborate device to make friends. To go on dates, if you will.
And this isn't romantic dating. This is cultural dating. Because I think all the time like, do you reckon there's someone in the world who has the exact same taste as you? And I mean like the exact same taste. Like they love the things you love and they hate the things you hate.
And if each of you had to make a list of like your top song, your top artist, your top sculpture, your top video game, your top book, like, do you reckon anyone in the world would have the exact same list as you? Because I'm desperate to do that research.
And maybe this is all coming from a place of having been pretty sick for five years. I've mostly spent that half a decade, Jesus Christ, in this house alone and my sense of community has like, moved online, which I love and I think I always will. But I think putting myself in front of people and going to new spaces will bring a sense of serendipity that I haven't gotten from online spaces. And maybe I need both. Maybe we all need both.
But I will say, this podcast is not going to hit the ground running. If you're listening to this and thinking, these microphones aren't quite right, then yeah, they're probably not. Because I didn't even read the instructions before me and Zarina filmed this episode. I just wanted to do it. And sometimes it's just better to get the thing done rather than wait to learn how to do it perfectly. Because then sometimes I wait too long and just never end up doing the thing. So this is the pilot episode. And I filmed it with Zarina Muhammad, the only person I would ever film a pilot of anything with, because she has been my collaborator for the past ten years. And it's funny, you know like, I won't even show my boyfriend of ten years a text that I'm halfway through writing. I will only show Zarina because she's the person that I feel the most trust with creatively.
And also because art dates came from my relationship with her. So ten years ago when we started our website together, thewhitepube.com, which was a play on the white cube, we started to get readers and we were like, who are these people? Uh, this is so weird. And we got followers and that was even weirder. And we decided, let's start asking to meet these people. Let's ask if they want to go on art dates with us and we'll go to an exhibition or we'll see a play or we'll go to the pictures. It was a way for us to make peace with the sense that we had a following on the internet. But as a result of it we also built this incredible community of people who inspire us, but are also like couches we can sleep on if we ever go to Aberdeen or, I don't know, Hong Kong. I think it's a real privilege to have that community and I really hope that this podcast will share a sense of what that's like. But maybe selfishly for me, I wanna keep the party going. I haven't been able to do it for five years. I'm using the stamina that I'm just getting back now to meet more people, and you're going to come with meee.
[Zarina]
We like to use the excuse of the website and criticism as a mechanism to meet with people that we wouldn't have met otherwise. It's just nice I think. So many other critics must go to these cities and have to figure out what's going on by themselves. Just like talking to the rest of the press pack. And we have an automatic button that we can press that says, Hello everyone, tell me what your life is like.
[Gabrielle]
Yeah, I think that was the point. It was like, what is it like to be an artist in this place? Because we don't have a clue.
[Zarina]
And I think, I don't know about you - no, I know about you [laughing] I know you think this as well. I spend so much of my time thinking about what other people's lives are like. Like, where do you go home -- Where do you go home to of an evening? What do you do?
[Gabrielle]
Who do you go home to of an evening?
[Zarina]
What do you make for dinner? What do you think about in the privacy of your own head? I just want a holiday home in other people's minds.
[Gabrielle]
Which is also just what a date is. Do you know what I mean?
[Zarina]
What kind of dates are you going on? I'm flirting.
*
[Gabrielle]
I think the other point of me doing this podcast is that I don't know if I like art anymore. Yeah. Right. And I have a lot of conversations with people about everything except art and I want to ask people if they still like art.
[Zarina]
You want to do an art vibe check?
[Gabrielle]
Yeah. And I think you'll have a good answer because you're quite -- because you still like it for the most part. You go to a lot of exhibitions.
[Zarina]
I feel like at the moment now I'm increasingly encountering my boredom. I don't know if I've just reached a point where I've seen too much.
[Gabrielle]
But that's what I feel. Like ten years, I've ran out of art.
[Zarina]
Nothing's exciting to me anymore. Nothing's exciting? Do we want to go into the castle?We should go into the castle.
[Gabrielle]
I don't know if this is a castle. This is just like some bricks. I think this is something else.
[Zarina]
I like it when you go to a historical thing and there's people in period costume acting.
[Gabrielle]
That's my worst nightmare.
[Zarina]
I think that in another world, that would have been my dream job.
[Gabrielle]
Do you think?
[Zarina]
Yeah.
[Gabrielle]
For what period? What castle are you like, you know, trying to cosplay?
[Zarina]
General medieval time. Gabrielle, I keep saying that if I get married, I want a fancy dress wedding. And I'll get married in a suit of armour. I've told you this.
[Gabrielle]
What??? But what will the other person wear?
[Zarina]
The other person is not enthused about my fancy dress wedding idea. So I think I need to find someone to get married to that's in on the idea.
[Gabrielle]
What was the last thing you saw that you were like, oh, fuck, this is it. This is what I come to galleries for.
[Zarina]
I don't know if it ever lasts that long or ever feels that big. The last thing I saw that I was like, whoa, was that, what's his name? Was it Joe Moss at Cabinet? I walked into the room and then these drones came flying out and they were doing drone ballet. And I was like, oh, amazing. Who'd have thought of that? Only an artist.
[Gabrielle]
Was there music?
[Zarina]
Yeah. And there were these two moving image works on these screens. Where are we going?
[Gabrielle]
This is so dramatic. Can I take a picture? Wow, look at this beautiful view. So that's the other part of this podcast for people who are here with us on the very first episode and don't know what's going on is: I want to take film pictures as we go through the date. And that is the supporting material. There's no video. There's audio. There's a transcript. And there's beautiful film photography. Stand there, please.
[Zarina]
I appreciate the analogness of this, the no video. Shouldn't it be, like, candid? Like I don't really know that you're doing this.
*
[Gabrielle]
Take It Easy Lab, an independent film development company in Leeds, have agreed to give every one of the Art Dates listeners 10% off if you use the code ARTDATE10 in capitals, which I highly recommend. And I've been, like, a loyal customer of Take It Easy Lab for four years, I think. I got an old film camera off me nan, and when I got pictures developed for the first time, I just had this moment where I realised, like, oh my god, if you take a picture of someone with a film camera, they look more like themselves than they do if you take a picture on your phone, and that made me so suspicious, and I feel like that suspicious feeling is only going to get bigger now that, like, AI is just well and truly changing what cameras tell you they can see. Oh boy, I don't like it. So I take film pictures all the time. Take It Easy Lab's great. I will finish a film roll, I'll put it in an envelope, send it to Leeds, they'll develop it, and then they send me the film prints back as well as digital scans. I'm going to be keeping a film camera on me when I go on these art dates, and then you can see all the pictures from them on artdates.co.uk or on all the social medias in the world. I really recommend it, and I'm really happy that they've given a code, so it's artdate10 to all our listeners.
*
[Zarina]
But even then, as I'm saying that, the drawing ballet, I was kind of like, it was only 30 seconds of the thing, and I was like, whoa, and then it ended.
[Gabrielle]
Oh, it was only 30 seconds? That's a bit disappointing, isn't it?
[Zarina]
Yeah, I want Swan Lake, I want the whole thing. I want a 90-minute performance with the drones, and I don't think that battery life lasts that long. So even then, I was like, only 7 out of 10 wowed. It was interesting.
[Gabrielle]
But you're still talking about it now, which says suttin.
[Zarina]
I have thoughts. Okay. I don't know if I've seen anything that's made me -- that's reaffirmed my career decisions up until this point.
[Gabrielle]
To become an art critic.
[Zarina]
Yeah.
[Gabrielle]
How many exhibitions do you go to a week?
[Zarina]
Three, four?
[Gabrielle]
That's quite a lot. If you didn't have to hunt for stuff to write about, what would you be doing instead?
[Zarina]
Nothing. Watching YouTube, reading a book, sat on my arse. So I don't think it's a bad thing that I'm compelled to go. There's still desire involved.
[Gabrielle]
Because you want to date the art.
[Zarina]
I don't know about that. I'm in a long-term relationship with the art. The honeymoon phase has worn off, though.
[Gabrielle]
Yeahhhh. That's what I feel like. That's why I'm doing the podcast. This isn't actually to get to know people, it's to try and fall back in love with art.
[Zarina]
Dual purpose. Yes. Meet new people, have fun, be myself, and also get to the heart of a philosophical question that we have been asking for ten years.
[Gabrielle]
Which is?
[Zarina]
What is the point? What is art? Why do we do it? And I always say, I feel like this is one of my stock phrases. I have stock phrases that I just churn out without thinking. And it's like, oh yeah, art is quite weird. Humans are the only animals that make art. But that's not true, because those pigs do paintings, don't they?
[Gabrielle]
Yeah, but don't people make the pigs do paintings?
[Zarina]
They still make the paintings.
[Gabrielle]
It's not the same. That's like getting commissioned by a gallery to do some shit. You're the pig. You didn't want to do it.
[Zarina]
Yeah, but you're still doing it. You're still the artist. The pig's still on the wall text, you know what I mean?
[Gabrielle]
Philosophically, I don't think that counts as desire. It's not a desirous act.
[Zarina]
We don't know if butterflies do little dance patterns in the sky for the pure pleasure of it. Ah, the interpersonal space between people! You never know! You can never have a holiday home in someone's head.
[Gabrielle]
I think the philosophical question of the White Pube project, being like, what's the point in any of this? Why do people make art? It's also partly like, why do we then go and see what they make? Why do you go and see what people make?
[Zarina]
Is that a direct question or is it rhetorical? There is always the hope that I will get enjoyment from it. Yeah. I think it's like, Ay, have you ever read Bell Hook's All About Love?
[Gabrielle]
No, I haven't.
[Zarina]
I find the story around how she wrote about love quite interesting. The narrative around it was that she was quite romantically unlucky, yet she still wrote about love as this thing that she was constantly in hope of, in hope of it as a practise that meant something. Like, practising love with people is a good thing. But, right, there's always that hope that practising something in that same way will be of benefit to the world. I think it's not that I believe in the transformative power of art. I just think if we... I just think it's about curiosity and constantly practising curiosity in the hope of a payoff of some kind. I think it's a good practise. Remaining open to the world and the people within it. God, I sound like a... That sounds cheesy.
[Gabrielle]
I don't think it's that cheesy.
[Zarina]
... but I mean it sincerely.
[Gabrielle]
Zarina Muhammad is 5'6" and when I asked her what her eyesight numbers were, she said, 'I feel like this is a phishing attempt, I won't tell you my mother's maiden name.' But honestly, I don't think either of us can see because we looked at Google Maps and we still took 30 minutes to get from our hotel to the Baltic when it should have taken like 10.
We got incredibly lost. Like, the buildings got further and further apart and the cars got so much louder. So like, the entire conversation we recorded just became so inaudible that I am going to have to relay what we said.
And it was just like a conversation about whether or not we think it's better to go to exhibitions on your own or with someone else. And on paper, I want to go on my own so I can concentrate more and not feel like I'm in a rush based on what the other person wants to do. But at the same time, if I go to a show on my own and I don't like it, I just immediately default to feeling like I've done something wrong. Like, I'm a naughty exhibition visitor and I don't get it and it's my own fault for not understanding things and that's why I haven't connected with the art.
Zarina was saying to me like she just prefers going with other people because then if you both don't like the exhibition, it feels like you're teenagers at the back of the bus, and it's not like you're rebelling for the sake of it. It's a rebellion in which you reject the authority of the museum that tells you you have to enjoy the thing it's putting on for you. You know, say thank you, bow your head. The rebellion is actually showing you that no, you don't want this. You want something else instead. And that teaches you something about your own taste, and maybe your standards as well.
And I like that because I really like thinking about what it means to go to a show that you don't like or to get 40 pages into a book and then just bail on it. Like in my 10 years of writing reviews, all of my favourite ones are the ones where I haven't liked the thing I'm writing about. And I'm still trying to figure out what that means about me and if I'm evil.
But all these cars were going past and they were playing music so loud because it was like the first nice day of the year, and Zarina was saying to me like, Do you find satisfaction in complaining about things? And I think I do. I think that might be why I'm a critic. She was saying that like her boyfriend's therapist says that quote, your soul witnesses you speaking the truth. Meaning like it's important to say the truth out loud even if it's not accepted. And it's important to say it even if it doesn't change anything.
You know like the person who wrote the book you didn't like, it's too late for them to change it and the museum's probably not going to do anything either. But in saying those complaints out loud like, you say it for yourself and you state your position and maybe your position is like part of your identity and then in saying those things out loud you like, affirm your place in the world. And I get that. I definitely feel like criticism is a way to feel like you've got both feet on the ground. So with that in mind we finally, finally, finally entered the Baltic.
*
[Gabrielle]
I've just had a pure flashback to the last time we were here -- I sat in that cafe, Baltic cafe and wrote the Liverpool Biennial Review, and it was like 6,000 words.
[Zarina]
Oh my god. What year was this? 2018? I'd just broken up with someone. I remember we came to Newcastle, I'd just had a breakup and I'd sent them a really long email and I was like this is going to feel... my soul will witness me speaking the truth.
[Gabrielle]
Oh my god. Okay, should we go straight into the gift shop? Yeah.
[Zarina]
I'm looking at other books while Gab is off. I'm looking at Olivia Laing, Funny Weather and I think this is the worst book about art ever published because it's so long and so boring.
[Gabrielle]
Hello. My book is in your bestsellers! Poor Artists. Thank you for selling it.
*
[Gabrielle]
I knowwww. But I'm leaving that interaction in because me and Zarina popped into the gift shop and we saw Poor Artists on the bestsellers section in the Baltic and I think it's important to speak to booksellers, especially if you're the author because they're your curator and they've got your art and you want to make sure it's being cared for, I think. But also, more than that, it comes with a good tidbit.
So, mine and Zarina's relationship completely revolves around thewhitepube.com, this website where we take turns posting texts every Sunday about a cultural thing that we've experienced and it might be a review or an essay and it might have something to do with art but sometimes it's games or books or films, or last week I reviewed a protest. So, whatever. Just like a thing that's happened that we care about and we want to say it out loud.
But after years of doing that Sunday text routine, we did get to a point where we were like maybe we want to write something longer and you know what, if we want to write a longer thing, like a book, wouldn't it be so special to share all of those experiences we've had on art dates with different wise, wise people all over the world? Because often the conversations we get into with people are like, you know, how do you make it work? How do you afford to keep art in your life, or do you not afford to do that and you don't get to have a creative life in the way that you want to?
So, we started writing a book called Art Dates which took all those conversations and not just people talking to each other but people in conversation with each other, you know, thinking about things outside of themselves and helping each other to like move forward into the future. But, a few months into writing it, we were like, wait. What we're actually producing is a lot less romantic. It's a lot more critical and anarchist and concerned with the economy. So actually, we ended up publishing a book about a year and a half ago called Poor Artists and it came out with Penguin and now it's in bookshops and like, love that. It's good. I'm very happy it's still out and visible in places and it's having what looks like quite a long tail as they say in the industry.
But when we were in the writing process, I actually bought the domain artdates.co.uk because I thought that was going to be the title of the book and it's not. And a few weeks ago, I got like the GoDaddy domain renewal email for artdates.co.uk and I was like, I really need to do something with that. And guys, this is what I've decided to do. We're bringing the art dates back. We're going to have those conversations again and it's so satisfying to me to just make these things actually, finally.
*
[Lift]
Door opening.
[Zarina]
That's more like it. Look at this. Dinosaur skeletons. Fantastic.
[Gabrielle]
What are we looking at? We've walked out into like a mezzanine looking over the gallery.
[Zarina]
And we can see some sculptures made of coral. Some crystals. Some neons of a jellyfish.
[Gabrielle]
Blue paint all across the walls. Low lighting. A lot of the works are like, spot lit.
[Zarina]
I have something to say. Upon entering a gallery, I realise that I'm not in the mood to look at art. [laughing] I'm like, urghhh. I'm looking at it all and feeling tired. And I'm like, oh. What do you do? Like, do you just -- you're like a person that walks out of the cinema. I am not.
[Gabrielle]
What do you do in your spare time when you're not working?
[Zarina]
I've started painting again. I like to go for a walk. I like to watch YouTubes. I like to spend time with my boyfriend and my friends.
[Gabrielle]
Okay, but go back to the beginning. What are you painting?
[Zarina]
Ohh. It's a secret. Not for you. Oh no. Who cares actually. I'm copying loads of medieval miniatures from manuscripts at the moment. A lot of the time I'm not interested in painting the figures, I just want to paint the architecture. So I'm having like a De Chirico revival personally. But, oh, I've got that oil painting short course in two weeks.
[Gabrielle]
Have ya? What's your oil painting short course?
[Zarina]
As a UAL employee, we get free access to the short courses. Well, one short course.
[Gabrielle]
Do you feel like a desire at the age of 31 to skill up?
[Zarina]
Yeah.
[Gabrielle]
So do I.
[Zarina]
But I think it's like, I want to skill up, but I don't want to show anyone. I don't want to exhibit these. I call myself to other people, I'm like, oh yeah, no, I'm like having a Sunday painter revival.
[Gabrielle]
But don't you think Sunday painter is the perfect person to be? You don't want to be a Thursday painter. You don't want to be like having to do it every day because like --
[Zarina]
Yeah, because your gallery's yelling at you down the phone saying, five more blue ones.
[Gabrielle]
For Frieze!
[Zarina]
The only person I've got to please with this is myself and maybe I want to show my mum and have her go, oh that's nice. You know what I mean?
[Gabrielle]
That's the right scale. Yeah. Because you're just doing it because you want to. You're not doing it because you have to.
[Zarina]
But then I showed my friends, Katya and Chanelle from Somerset House and they were like, this is so nice! And I was like, oh no, but you're not allowed to see. You can see a little bit. No. And they were like, maybe you're shy about showing people. Don't be embarrassed. And I was like, I'm not embarrassed! I'm just -- I am embarrassed. But I just kind of, I think that's quite a nice place to be in. When you're like embarrassed about the thing that you've made and you're like, oh I can't show people. Oh my god, I should show people. I don't want anyone to see.
[Gabrielle]
I feel like that with Spanish. I've been learning it for two years but I feel embarrassed to whip it out. I'm like, nooo.
[Zarina]
Meee? I don't speak Spanish. Not really, ohhh. But you speak it with Carlos?
[Gabrielle]
Yeah, I've got a friend I speak Spanish with. But still, it has to be in a gentle, sensitive space where he knows I'm learning.
[Zarina]
He's the mum you're showing it to.
[Gabrielle]
He's the mum I'm showing it to. That's so true. What else are you going to skill up in? Make yourself valuable to me as a date.
[Zarina]
The direct!
[Gabrielle]
What's your CV?
[Zarina]
Something about me where I've got counterwill and I'm like, I have no skills now because you're asking me to.
*
[Gabrielle]
What was the last good book you read?
[Zarina]
Infinite Jest. How long have you got?
[Gabrielle]
The rest of the episode, let's go.
[Zarina]
Okay, so it's about -- there is a video by an experimental filmmaker called Infinite Jest. It's a film that's so entertaining that people watch it and they just want to watch it and watch it and watch it and they don't want to watch anything else. They don't want to do anything else. They just want to keep rewinding the tape to the beginning until eventually they die. They expire from catatonic bliss.
[Gabrielle]
If you could watch the Infinite Jest film, would you watch it?
[Zarina]
Absolutely. I want to be so entertained that --
[Gabrielle]
I die.
[Zarina]
I wanna experience pure entertainment. I am so terrified of being bored ever. I hate feeling bored. I think, I was reading something interesting the other day, can't remember what but -- it said something interesting about the suburbs and boredom. So many people in the 20th century -- so many interesting people that made things in the 20th century came from the suburbs where boredom was a thing. I think there's something about the suburbs and the boredom, the specific boredom that emerges from the suburbs. There's nothing around. It makes you create your own culture because there's nothing to do. Boredom drives you to creative places. To creative ends.
[Gabrielle]
Are you bored?
[Zarina]
I'm not bored now but I think that's why I would watch Infinite Jest, because I just think I am always trying to escape a kind of boredom.
[Gabrielle]
Yeah? But I thought you famously weren't bored because you lived in London.
[Zarina]
Yeah, no, I'm never bored because I live in London and the entire world is on my doorstep. It's fantastic. This is why I can't live anywhere else because otherwise I would be bored. I rarely experience boredom and when I do I hate it. I don't know why anyone would choose to be bored. I can't meditate. Boring. Have you ever tried meditating?
[Gabrielle]
I don't think so.
[Zarina]
Fucking horrible. What do you mean clear your mind? What do you mean think of nothing? Let the thoughts just pass you by. I have a thousand thoughts a minute and they're all aggressively demanding my attention. Impossible. Even just amusing myself within the privacy of my own head, that is un-boring. I can't not do it.
[Gabrielle]
Do you think I should read Infinite Jest?
[Zarina]
I don't know if you'd like it. I don't know. I think so much of it was hilariously kind of boring. So it was like, you know Murakami does that hyper verisimilitudes. So much of it was like deconstructing the minutia of like a person's internal thought process and like every scene was stretched out, not every scene, but so many scenes were stretched out to like bullet time. Like there were moments where I'd read it on the tube on my commute into work and I'd just be reading pages and pages of the same scene with like Don Gately, this adviser or this counsellor in a drug rehabilitation halfway house, and like him just like having this like internal thought process while doing paperwork, that I was like -- this is kind of boring.
[Gabrielle]
So why did you read it then, because you hate boredom?
[Zarina]
Yeah, I'm thinking about that, I'm like I hate boredom, but I think I found it quite interesting, because I do also wonder what's going on in other people's heads, and I found that quite interesting. Like nothing was happening, but it was interesting. It doesn't make sense.
[Gabrielle]
Is he trying to bore the reader?
[Zarina]
I don't think he's trying to bore the reader. I think it's like a, it's a literary thing, it's postmodern. Feels postmodern, where he's trying to do a thing where he's like getting in someone's head, extending the time, extending the moment, stretching an entire day across a thousand pages. It's not an entire day, it's like a couple of days.
[Gabrielle]
Look at that naked cat!
[Zarina]
Is this a cat cafe?
*
[Gabrielle]
We'd left the Baltic at this point, and I don't know if you noticed, but we said absolutely nothing about the exhibition. And I couldn't tell you now who was in it, or what it was about, or what it contained. And like, oh man. I think it's because so much museum [programming] now is geared towards kids' school holidays. Like families come in, they're more likely to spend money in the cafes, I think. So that's the audience that all of these spaces are aiming for. It's like that Miffy exhibition that was in, I want to say Nottingham last year.
And I get it, but it would be much more easier to make peace with if there was a wider arts ecology to experience. Like, I say this thinking about what Liverpool was like 10 years ago, and I know that Newcastle was very much the same, where there were like independent art spaces, artist-led activity, and all that stuff on the perimeter that like, when you would go and see it, it would be so weird that it would just make you shut up because you were like trying to contend with culture that you had no words for. And obviously like me and Zarina just walked around the Baltic, just chatting shit because the art didn't make us stop. It didn't do anything to us. It might as well not have been there.
And like, I want to criticise museums, but at the same time, they will never probably hold the kind of culture that I want, which is so far away from the mainstream. So it's like, why do I even go there? And I actually said to Zarina, I was like, next time we travel, can we just go and see a film or something? Because it would probably be more meaningful. It would probably leave us with a conversation to have. Museums are just never a surprise, unless probably you are a tiny child.
*
I don't want to make too many promises with what these episodes are going to be like because I don't know yet. I do know that I'm going to be going to some interesting places this year, and there are some flights booked... But I don't want to put like a strict format on, you know, every episode being the same because it's nice to leave room to figure these things out and maybe the best format will appear to me in episode five or something. Maybe the first four will be pilots. But one thing I do like in the podcasts that I listen to is like somewhere to go once the episode is done. So I've asked Zarina here at the end, of all the writing that she publishes on the website, is there a text that she would want people to read? And this is what she said.
[Zarina]
This is hard because I think so many of my texts, I feel like, I like, I like the vibe of it. But there's no like complete text. There's no one perfect text that I'm like, I would hold that up as an exemplar. I'll tell you what, okay, maybe one version of this that I think -- this is a text that I think didn't get enough feedback, or I didn't hear from people about whether this was doing what I thought it was doing. The Rise of Creative Industry Group Incorporated.
[Gabrielle]
Tell me about the text first.
[Zarina]
Okay, it is a work of art criticism as dystopian business science fiction.
[Gabrielle]
Yeah, and what happened in the text?
[Zarina]
Well, I invented a new genre, which was business science fiction. Corporate sci-fi in the same way that Severance is corporate horror. I read a report from the Arts Council around the turn of the millennium. They commissioned this guy to write a report about the future of creativity, knowing that like Y2K internet shit had happened, and it was really interesting. He was predicting things about neoliberalism that I think have and are happening.
[Gabrielle]
Like what?
[Zarina]
He was talking about the creative art-trepreneur.
[Gabrielle]
Art-trepreneur? What a word.
[Zarina]
Yeah, an art-trepreneur, the creator-preneur. Like the idea that artists will kind of function like entrepreneurs. There's an entrepreneurial creativity that will be something of material monetary value. And that's like a product of neoliberalism, right? Like rather than our idea of like art as something that work isn't, it's art as something that provides the same value as work. Art as only work. Artistic thinking as business thinking.
[Gabrielle]
Like me starting an art dates podcast.
[Zarina]
[laughing] No, I also think the end goal of this is still to have a conversation that maybe doesn't have a productive end goal. Yeah. Like you want to...
[Gabrielle]
It would be great at some point to find a sponsor and earn some extra income.
[Zarina]
But that's circumstantial. That's not... you're not providing shareholder value. This was like artists will be used to provide shareholder value. Anyway, so that entire text is written by Robert Peston V, business correspondent for the New Financial Times. And it's like a dystopian future where the Arts Council has become Creative Industries Incorporated or something.
[Gabrielle]
You're messing.
[Zarina]
What? Nooo.
[Gabrielle]
Look at these stairs. Come on. We've just turned the corner and it's like stairs like Edinburgh.
[Zarina]
I thought that was an interesting thing. It's an interesting thought experiment for me as a writer to be like, okay, what would happen if that actually existed? Like what if the Arts Council was a corporation and artists weren't freelancers but employed and like what if in that scenario of like entrepreneurs, what is the labour of making art? Like what is it making? And this guy was like, yeah -- oh, fuck me.
[Gabrielle]
I'm so tired.
[Zarina]
Do you want to sit down? His answer was that artists create meaning. And that felt like a satisfactory answer. What artists make. They do make meaning out of like bizarre objects and they create meaning in the images and it's... that's nebulous enough for it to feel universal. Yeah. I felt quite compelled by that at the time.
[Gabrielle]
But maybe you didn't get the reaction from it that you wanted when you posted it.
[Zarina]
I would like renewed interest in it to basically tell me if other people think business science fiction is a thing.
[Gabrielle]
Do you think you want to write more stuff like that?
[Zarina]
I thought I did, but I think the pressure of writing things like that became prohibitive to writing stuff like that. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like I've always enjoyed whenever I have had a thought that feels like, oh yeah, art criticism is fiction, but I can't churn that out every week. I don't live the kind of life that would allow that. No, there are more steps. I can see them.
[Gabrielle]
I think we're nearly at the end though.
[Zarina]
I hate you. I can't believe this is the route we've taken.
[Gabrielle]
We got so lost on the way there and now we're doing stairs on the way back.
[Zarina]
This is a five hour long podcast of us just being out of breath. We should go for a run next time.
*
[Gabrielle]
Let's leave it there, guys. I think this is enough for a pilot episode. For my own sake, I've learned a lot. I think there's a lot of stuff I will do differently next time and not to brag or anything, but I have looked at the instructions for the microphones and now I know how to use them. I'm also definitely not going to film next to busy, loud roads. I'll, er, take that into consideration more next time. Just sort of thought the microphones would be invincible and do exactly what I wanted them to do, but it was a skill issue this time.
Don't forget that the transcription for this episode and the photos from the art date, they're both on artdates.co.uk. Me and Zarina carried on through Newcastle. We found some lunch ahead of our four hour trains back to Liverpool and London. I was listening to the Master and Margarita audiobook on Libro, which is fucking great. I'm really enjoying it; and Zarina, she had A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing in her bag but I don't even think she opened it. I think she just said she fell asleep for the entire trip, which I mean, good for her.
Thank you again to Take It Easy Lab for developing the photos for this. Don't forget there is a code for ARTDATE10, capitals, I'll put it in the description in case you forget, for all listeners to get 10% off. And then you can have beautiful film pictures in your life too. I'll see you on the next episode.
Bye!
*
[Gabrielle]
How do I wrap up the podcast so that I can eat me lunch?
[Zarina]
I don't know. I think we could talk about nothing forever [laughing] There's no narrative resolution, we just never stop talking.
[Gabrielle]
Maybe that's the end of it [laughing]