I don’t necessarily believe in a linear development of a practice. I can’t believe in ‘a path’ that an artist can follow from student, to emerging artist, to established artist, to mid-career artist, to dead artist, trailing along in another’s footsteps, gauging where you stand in comparison to colleagues and heroes. It is difficult, then, to compare myself to someone like Angus Farquhar, because we have had such different trajectories, influences and failures. However, I suppose ‘a path’ is a good way to begin some form of discussion, especially considering Angus’ and NVA’s work, which in its recent inceptions have involved massive ‘land art’ projects such as The Path in Glen Lyon in 2000 and The Storr: Unfolding Landscapes in Skye, in 2005. Developed over long periods of time and with a collaborative structure, they are performative interventions into both a community and landscape. Similarly, I use performative and collaborative strategies in my work, though mine usually result in the kidnapping of city councillors or putting mayors in holes.

Ruth Barker, who commissioned this article, said: Angus’ work definitely has a kind of meta-existence in terms of both a legacy that comes after the work for the people who were involved in it, but also as a kind of mythic event that becomes told and retold both by the participants and by those who have never actually been a first-hand viewer. It seems as though some of your work may function in a related way, Anthony… And while NVA creates new relationships with landscapes and I, inevitably, fire people out of cannons, I do notice points where our compasses share a similar direction, where we do tread a similar trail.

I suppose these bits of conversations looks at the different paths we take in ‘performing’ public art. At first, I wonder why to choose that strategy over another – why not a structural practice, or more permanent objects? What are the pitfalls of this strategy? In some ways, that discussion is moot – we do the things we do because we do them, and each person experiences different obstacles – but in other ways, I realized the conversation we had highlights some things that are often so obvious we forget to see them – its useful to look at them again, in a different light.

Listening back over the tapes of the interview, I drift off into an imagined stride through the landscape of our conversation, Angus’ disembodied voice like a rocky trail, some thin and barely worn thread of a direction. I follow along after his certainty; my conversation like an inexperienced lowlander to his Sherpa, trying to sound sure of my footing and direction, tripping on every second root and rock.

Your Past Is Tied To You Like A Large and Heavy Precious Stone

>*Anthony Schrag* – It seems that [in your work] you very consciously put people into a real situation – not a pretend or representational or mediated experience – i.e., watching something on a gallery wall. It’s very much about a real time experience, and how that creates the stories in the work itself. Was it conscious of you to create a situation like that, or did it just feel right to do it that way?

>*Angus Farquhar* – I think that certainly, early on, when I was working in a much more urban setting in London in the 80’s in a music collective called Test Department, we had become interested in the importance of ritual in public. Not so much personal ritual as public ritual. …and that led me to do a lot of research into the last rituals that I saw throughout Scotland, particularly older agrarian festivals and ways of marking time and place in very traditional settings. And that whole body of research probably influenced me to encourage a heightened sense of self in the work. So you wouldn’t just be a passive audience. Yes, sometimes you’d have people witnessing work, but this should take it to a step beyond and it should allow people the chance to experience a more heightened sense of reality, if they so chose to… the reasons you do what you do are often rooted in what you did first, and I came from an extremely left wing music collective where we presented almost no character on stage at all – it was quite hard to distinguish who was doing what. And that just seemed very important at that time as an anti-statement against celebrity or the selling of work on the basis of work on the basis of character. But that has led me to carry on that way, and of course, the imprint of your character is there, and I think that most creative people have to draw from what drives them in the first place. I suppose the question is whether or not they share that in an interesting or engaging way. When the work works well, it is engaging. When not, its full of ideas and great concepts, but it doesn’t necessarily work for the audiences.

Know Thyself (And Thy Audience)

In that imagined landscape, I follow the thinning track; the dark of the sky is dancing on a horizon that used to be wide and open, but now is jagged and indefinite. Even the stars refuse to collude and are useless as compasses in their changing luminosity…Any sight of people are gone now, and only the peat footsteps of someone else guide me. The only public here are the moss and rocks – a community of inerts: what would public art be to them?

It strikes me that “Public Art” is an odd media to work in, if only because it lives so tenuously in a world where disliking art seems to be a national pastime. And yet, still, its primary goal is to make work for everyone, for the public…

So much depends on how an artist chooses to relate to those who are consuming their work, and in what way and circumstance. How far do you travel towards an audience and how far do you ask an audience member to travel to you? What is accepted and what is right? And what is most useful, and for whom? Again, there is no succinct path that offers these answers, but perhaps in questioning it, I hope, we’re at least travelling in the right direction…?

>*AS* – You [often ask] people to make a big commitment when they enter the work…

>*AF* – Yes, physically, you have no choice. You can reject it for any number of reasons or love it for any reason, but as with any experience that touches on a chance for a more profound reading of space, a more profound meaning of place [it involves a choice] – some of the reactions from audience are absolutely embedded in people’s memories as one of the most important things they’ve done. For other people, they perhaps might open up just a little bit, and that’s as far as they’ll go. And for other people still, they won’t enjoy it at all, as they’re not really interested in asking those questions, and so – as often happens with art – they can feel that there’s not much there. It comes down to that circular argument with any modern artist that isn’t based purely on an obvious representation of the artist’s skill, people will always say: Well, anyone could do that and anyone could place that object there. And of course, the argument is that it’s the act of being decisive, of creating that opportunity for people [to enter into the work].

>*AS* – Is that the key consideration when you’re making public art? In the sense that you’re asking a public to make a choice…?

>*AF* – It’s not a driver, no. There’s something slightly unusual about when I talk about NVA’s work: I talk in first person. And I quite often use “our” or “we”. NVA is an interesting mixture when I often come up with the original choice of place or a particular set of constructs or approach, but then it is very collective in terms of how the work is developed and within quite a wide creative team, from a mixture of disciplines. But certainly from a very personal perspective I often have “visceral” or emotional or instinctive response to a particular place, and then in the act of walking and going there again and again, what the research opens up – whether that’s through history or local discussion – I just often think that if I can communicate that first moment that drew me there, that for me is the key.

Know When To Hold Steady, And When To Break Ranks

Walking in the dark seems easier when you expect to fall. The trail of our conversation dips into the darker valleys – at least the peaks were lit by a moon and I could see other settlements of discussion I could walk towards; other society of concepts. Now it feels too dark to walk without tripping.

Walking has an entrenched history as an act of discovery and resistance – Fluxus, Francis Alys, NVA – there is a litany of artists who have used this strategy to speak of power, narrative, history, indeed, so much of society is wrapped up in the simple act of perambulation. It is amazing how placing one foot in front of another can say so much about the world. It’s never been named as a strategy or (as far as I know) advocated as a way of working with communities, so I often wonder when this type of work started being called “Socially Engaged Practices.” Indeed, where did the first urge to name and classify an inclination to work with people as opposed to for or about people? And if that is necessarily a less-egoistic way of developing work, or even if it should be held up as a beacon of good practice? Is the modernist notion of ‘artist as priest of culture’ anachronistic in today’s culture of community engagement? Should it be? Who are these ‘keepers of culture’?

My thoughts in this conversation seem to be wandering dangerously – teetering towards the edges of cliffs I’d rather not tumble down. When walking, we tread in another’s footsteps – this is how paths are made. But I wonder, when doing that, aren’t we just in danger of sinking deep into their muddy foot-shaped puddles, instead of breaking new, dryer ground?

>*AS* – It is quite interesting you should mention performance training, and that relationship with the audience, because I similarly feel that [that relationship] is the integral, instinctive point where I often come from. But I wonder, to play devils’ advocate, does it make it right that one person can say: I’ve had this experience – for example yours with a landscape, or myself with an object or situation – is it then right to say: I’m going to tell you guys about this. Is there a sense of ego in that act that isn’t conducive to public art?

>*AF* – I wouldn’t deny that there is a sense of ego there at the beginning and there’s always going to be that drive. As a reference, back at the beginning, one of the reasons our work has been so successful is that that “I” becomes less visible as the work becomes presented, and it becomes much more invisible in the sense of discovery. You mentioned the theatrical and the performative and because my background is not in fine art – my background is completely self-learned through having performed since the age of 19 or 20, I was in a band for 10 – 11 years who were very experimental and raw in what they did. And I think that sense of ‘an audience’ and that communion and witnessing that is a very strong factor in what I do, because that’s what I’ve grown up with, so, that sense of choice is integral to the work. I wouldn’t say that I made an intellectual decision to drive it that way; I think it’s an inevitable consequence of coming from a performing background where you always had a very strong relationship to audience. And where you’ve always seen the importance of that being a really active relationship

Know Your Creation Myths

I find a sturdier step when I use this strategy of creating a new path of my own. It is more difficult, yes. But conceptually it makes more sense. Still, there are things I don’t know – directions that are still new and not even considered; unknown sounds in the dark; the names of places I don’t recognise, and only known in myths and stories.

Culture building and mythology seem to be entwined with public art more heavily than other art forms, and there seems to be a strategy that pushes that as model of working. This, I think, is new territory for all of us – it’s a landscape that is drawn on a map with certainty but the shape of the beasts within it are less well known.

>*AF* – [Art] can just make people more confident to make decisions down the line – which may not involve work on a similar scale or even anything to do with art, but is part of building a social framework that is very positive. So it does have a huge social function…When our work has worked really well, it is when I’ve stood next to people talking about the work and I or NVA no longer exist, they have completely inhabited it – the stories they tell about the work are very clear. Really good work can stand 10, 20 years on and still be very clear because the intensity of the experience people had that you allowed them to put certain things in place.

>*AS* – Should that be an intention for public art? Where you set out – in whatever medium you’re using – to achieve that sort of goal?

>*AF* – I don’t know. It’s very hard, isn’t it? Because if you’re too proscriptive – and this comes down to funding issues – then it doesn’t necessarily make the best work… I’ve seen a lot of ‘average’ public art where more engagement over time could have made a better piece of work. But REALLY good public art, work that is really inspiring can still inspire people without ever having to be engaged, because it was a great choice. This is often because the person commissioning the work was bold enough to make take radical decisions on behalf of that particular area, region or community. So, I’d say: average work can become better, but really good work is going to be good, anyways. And that’s a very obvious statement, but sometimes to have to have to look at the obvious because there is a lot out there that is going to miss the mark. And it’s a difficult field. And its actually still a fledgling field – its not one that is that well documented yet, or that well understood in terms of its successes.

Art as Ouroboros: (The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail Will Only End Up Swallowing Its Own Shit.)

My imagined walk drifts like our conversation drifts. Slowly, I find the certainty of my own footsteps and my own direction, no longer treading in the puddles of another’s boots. I make a path that, for now, runs close to Angus’, but is clearly my own. There, I think, is a confidence of motion when you’re forging your own trail in a landscape of a million others. It no longer becomes a linear progress to compare oneself to, but a web of different crossovers and strengths, individual paths that keep crossing and veering away, running perpendicular and parallel. It must look beautiful from above – the sketched image of some giant beast, like the Nazca geoglyphs in Peru, only visible from the sky: swirling lines of a monkey’s tail, hummingbirds, lanky-legged spiders. Perhaps the one we make would be the true face of Public Art – the monsters within the map – the one we cannot see from this vantage, but is so clear from another distant position.

>*AS* – One quote of yours was that: Artists can become conduits for a change in culture that allows unusual dialogues to open up. Are you consciously setting out to make art as a tool of social change? Or is that an instinctive drive for yourself? I know that I have always been involved in community politics, so that when did end up coming into ‘art’, that was a foundation that was with me already, quite heavily. And I didn’t necessarily read about ‘socially engaged practices,’ it just happens to be that that is the term they use to describe the thing I want to do…

>*AF* – We’ve been talking about this recently that one of the things that really defines the company is its attempt to have an ethical approach. And by ‘ethical’ I mean in the way we work together, as a collective. And I think what we’ve realized over time, we have developed some very specific and quite successful ways of working with people, and there are many kinds of examples of that – and here we come down to the word ‘ownership’ – as to how people own the work and how they participate within it. There is a definition of community art that I always found quite destructive, which is that the means justify the ends: it doesn’t matter how good the quality of the art is, as long as people participate and have a good time. And as a result, it became a much-maligned term, as it led to a lot of bad art paraded as being worthwhile because the public were doing it.

>*AS* – You also mention this idea of [public art] being such a new thing and this concept of an ‘output driven society’. That ‘output’ – whatever that means – it a new term: what are we actually talking about? In some ways that it is quite exciting, because we don’t really know what we’re talking about, because its new. I like that idea because it has so much potential. But you worry that you’ll get to a point where there aren’t enough of the brave commissioners you mentioned to make those brave decisions, and it becomes formalized and boxed so there is a right way to make public art, and it ticks the boxes we need it to tick… and then what?

>*AF* – Well, by its very nature of it being public art, the person who is making the work has to work with a much wider rage of people that if they might do otherwise and particularly, as I’ve found over time, you may have to work with people who don’t necessarily respect your practice, and they will start from a position of scepticism or antagonism, so the trust is hard-won. Now should that burden be placed on an artist? You may say no, but on the other hand, we’ve kind of earned our reputation. Again, a lack of clarity or not being good, often [artists] are their own worst enemies…

>*AS* – Well, I would feel that, yes, it should be placed on the artist, because you should be able to defend yourself and your ideas to a general public who may not have had art training or interest in contemporary art…. to say: Actually, if you’re willing to enter into a conversation with me, I know we might be coming from an alternate perspective, but I can talk you towards a place that is common. And in someway, that relates back to the question I was going to ask that when you consider that most of the “popular” art world in the media that has folks like the Tracey Emin’s and those type of characters – the kind of artists where it may difficult for a public to access them because of either the gallery situation or the education set-up or the media or plain elitism… Do you then just set up a different circumstance where you don’t call it ‘art’? Where you just give it a different name? Or is the label of Public Art important?

>*AF* – I think you have to decide what is important to you, personally. Its difficult, because one of the reasons we’ve been successful is we’ve been fairly seamless or chameleon-like in putting different skins on depending on who we’re dealing with and what their agenda is and the end result we want to get to…And to answer it in a wider way…all the different bodies and local organizations that you deal with will have a different way of seeing what you’re doing and where its going to go on and what the end result might be, and at various times you may have to ‘colour the wool’ to find a language or give people a point of understanding. And all the time ring-fence the creative, poetic inspiration which should not be touch, and completely inviolable, so that whatever is going on, underneath those layers there is the core creative act and the core creative visioning of the work.

The recording ends; our conversation ends and so does my imagined walk. I find myself in my room, not a rocky outcrop along a path of my own making. Is it useful to consider this sort of discussion; this kind of meandering? I suppose the questioning and the not knowing is always important – it keeps things evolving and changing and that can only be good.

Listening back on our conversation, I occasionally hear the thumps of footsteps in the background – can you hear it too? When we spoke, we were in an office that was empty aside from us, and I do not remember hearing any noise when we spoke. But it certainly there when I listen to it now – the ghostly steps of a small giant – as if there were a secret body that we couldn’t see, only registered by my old machine and broken microphone. I cannot apply too much meaning to it, as it would discount a whole history of existentialism, and it’s far too late in my development to switch paths now. So the sound will have to stay, with its unseen heavy steps. Invisible. But certain in its presence.

Editor’s Note: for more information about NVA, visit: http://www.nva.org.uk/
For more information about Anthony Schrag visit: http://www.anthonyschrag.com/