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Read my talk with the great Bonnie Camplin on the ArtReview site. Part 2 of this talk will appear soon in the first print edition of Manhattan Art Review.
Here’s an excerpt from the ArtReview talk:
RS I’ve heard you used the phrase ‘the invented life’ to describe your work. What does that mean?
BC Oh, that’s not even my phrase. So, in the 90s I was in nightclubs where I was doing my creativity. That was the context. I was doing it for about 11 years. Me and my closest pals, we were all from non-materially-privileged backgrounds and so it’s a real precarity situation and we’re in financial poverty a lot. But we’re doing the best club nights and going to all the best parties and everything. We looked amazing and raw and so on, but we didn’t have a lot of cash. If we ever did have loads of cash it would be in a plastic bag ’cause we had done a good club night. And we were sitting around and doing that thing where, you’re really just trying to affirm and encourage yourself and each other along. I can even name the people, Sarah Churchill and Andrew Aveling. And we said, “We don’t have a plan, we just live in the moment of the invented life because we are literally having to make it up as we go along. We don’t have financial support. We don’t have a destiny. We might not even make it.” We didn’t think we were going to make it to age thirty. We all thought we were gonna die. That’s what we had in common.
RS And you did nearly die, right?
BC Yeah, I did have a near-death experience. But it’s also an attitude to life, which is now how I would understand that everything is sacred. Everything is alive. You’re creating it from moment to moment, even if you think you aren’t, you actually are. And so now I have a bit more grounding in those esoteric principles about the holographic nature of reality – and how it’s not a static thing. So now I can do a little bit more of an impeccable attitude, rather than a kind of under duress attitude, does that make sense?
RS Something like animism?
BC I’m of that tradition, I would say.
RS Can you say more about your near-death experience?
BC Well, at a certain point I tried to commit suicide. I took an overdose and went into a coma and it’s a miracle that I survived, apparently. And I just had this massive epiphany during the experience, and it had everything to do with the nature of time. There was some kind of ‘spiralised-transactional-pass’ event that took place. I don’t know if I got swapped out or something, but something… spiralised. I just basically realised that the universe is conscious, that I’m part of it. And so I sort of got shot out the other side, kind of born again.
RS As what?
BC Well, I would say I was probably brought up with a homegrown pagan-animist cosmology from my father, who was more of a space cadet, more of a Toltec than my mum, who was more of a staunch atheist, rationalist pragmatist. These would be the closest things I had to a model of the universe. So I was born again, not as a Christian, but as animist, I suppose.
RS And had the suicidal compulsion faded?
BC Gone! Gone!
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I was admiring this new shoe by the fashion label, Eckhaus Latta and thought I’d send out a list of recommendations I discussed with them a few years ago.
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Listen to the new episode of Subject Object Verb, featuring two multimedia artists, Deniz Gul and Nour Mobarak, who both work with sculpture, music, and language. Mobarak discusses her new work, Dafne Phono, an audio-based adaptation of the first known opera, translated into the most morphophonologically complex languages in the world. Gul presents an essay from her most recent book, an excerpt on the somatic philosopher, Moshé Feldenkrais, along with an exercise for listeners to try at home.
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I have added paid subscriptions, if you’d like to upgrade.
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And here is a print by Bonnie Camplin, which is now hanging in my home. She made it while practicing remote viewing.