Photos: Matthew Stone

Matthew Stone and friends interview Katsunobu Yaguchi: 

Matthew Stone:  Do you hope to be remembered and what for?

Katsunobu Yaguchi: I don’t know, but if I so, I think I become an American president then people remember me.

MS:  What do you have faith in?

KY: I do faith in myself but I strongly do not faith in myself same time. I think this is a rule of belief for surviving in this world.

Ebe Oke : What unique gifts do you have to offer to this world?

KY: For today. Cancellation of a cellular phone and an internet.
If it’s possible I want to experience the world without a cellular phone and an internet once more.

Todd Hart :  What is the best example of art really changing the world for the better?

KY: I do not know. maybe love, maybe carry on delivery child.

Norman Rosenthal :  Why are we alive at all? It is after all a very strange state to find ourselves in.

KY: I think this is because, we are living in society, not living in the earth.

MS: What question should be added to this list?

KY: How and where do you want to get your death?

Matthew Stone and friends interview Catherine Borra.

Matthew Stone: What is most important to you?

I don’t know, it depends on what level you are asking! I think there is no one single thing but big groups (or symbols) of values/objects/behaviours and people reflecting into each other that I put together and love. Among these, I think the most important for me is blood.

MS: What do you have faith in?

I believe that people will always go forwards, and even if sometimes it seems that all energy has gone and that this is “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution” (Francis Fukuyama), I have faith in cycles and I know that it is going to change again.

One kind (I don’t know if it’s the BEST example) of art that I think can change the world is Jiri Kovanda’s series of slight and persevering actions, aimed to reach that space in between invisibility, memory and oddness - or everyday surrealism, and Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit book as well as other of her works. This is because it’s important to me to revive faith, even just for the sake of it, and creativity as a consequence of it; because faith is an extremely important factor of life although currently tends to be discarded.

Norman Rosenthal : Why are we alive at all? It is after all a very strange state to find ourselves in.

I’ve just finished reading a book by J.G. Ballard, one of his catastrophe series about a drowned world (The Drowned World, so to reference it). Time and space after it, seem to be an even more relative set of dimensions to rely upon, because being alive involves an immediacy between past and future that can just not be grasped (by me, at least). In his book, he depicts these human beings that are undergoing the process of rotating their memory so that, because of the environment they are living in, their immediate recollections - or their most recent past, is the revival of their biological memory from millions of years ago, leading to face regression as a prospective and almost as an acknowledged aim. This crashes the present time of subjectivity to something totally irrelevant in the face of the universe and of the infinity of misperception - I highly doubt that we can state with precision that we are alive at all!

Iphgenia Baal : What is the one thing about you that undermines all the opinions you have made above?

They aren’t opinions, it’s true! All, apart from the question regarding the best example of Art really changing the world for the better, and the one about being alive (that is a confusing subject anyway).

MS: What question should be added to this list?

Matthew Stone and friends interview Terence Koh.

• Matthew Stone : What is most important to you?

Terence Koh: THAT IS AN INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT ANSWER TO ANSWER. IT SAT IN MY BRAIN FOR A FEW DAYS LIKE AN ALMOST DEAD CAT TRYING TO FIND TUNA. ULTIMATELY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS TO FIND SOMEBODY THAT LOVES YOU AND THAT LOVES YOU BACK. AND TO HAVE IT FOR ETERNITY. LOVE FOR ETERNITY.

• MS: If you could say one sentence to future generations, what would it be?

TK: TO GRASP THE CONCEPT OF THE ETERNAL.

• Todd Hart : What’s the best example of Art really changing the world for the better?

TK: THAT’S AN INDIVIDUAL THING REALLY. ART CAN BE ANYTHING. BUT I CONCLUDED THAT MY OWN ART I WANT TO AFFECT PEOPLE SO THAT THEY ARE HAPPIER. NOTHING COMPLICATED ABOUT THAT, TO DO SOMETHING THAT MAKES THEM FEEL GOOD. ACTUALLY TO MAKE THEM FEEL LOVE. AND YOU KNOW WHAT LOVE IS, ITS JUST THAT THING YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHEN YOU FEEL IT. ITS ALMOST AN IMPOSSIBLE AIM.

• Nicola Lane : What does success mean to you?

TK: THE OPPOSITE WHAT YOU SUPPOSE IT SHOULD FEEL. I ALWAYS THE MORE SUCCESSFUL YOU GET, THE MORE YOU SHOULD BE TORTURED.

• Norman Rosenthal : Why are we alive at all? It is after all a very strange state to find ourselves in.

TK: NORMAN YOU KNOW WE CAN’T, I CAN’T ANSWER THAT. CAUSE WE ASK OURSELVES THAT VERY QUESTION EVERY SECOND. AND OBVIOUSLY THAT’S SOMETHING WE CAN’T ANSWER. AND YES OF COURSE ITS COMPLETELY STRANGE. WHY ELSE WOULD WE SOLDIER ON IF WE DIDN’T FEEL WEIRD, IF WE FELT STRANGE, IF WE FELT QUEASY. ITS A FEELING THAT EXISTED SINCE WE KNEW WHAT THE CONCEPT OF, I, WAS. WE ARE ALIVE BECAUSE YOU KNOW AS AN, I, YOU ARE THE ONLY REASON FOR BEING. BEING COMPLETELY A SELFISH CUNT.

• MS: What question should be added to this list?

TK: NOTHING MORE NEED BEE SAID?

Matthew Stone and friends interview Sir Norman Rosenthal.

• Matthew Stone: What do you have faith in?

Sir Norman Rosenthal: Love, art, music and letters.

• MS: How can we change the world and what is there to be done?

NR: By converting everyone in the world to love, art and music.

• MS: Do you hope to be remembered and what for?

NR: I believe in the ephemeral, which is why I like making exhibitions. They disappear as everything will sooner or later.

• Todd Hart : What’s the best example of Art really changing the world for the better?

NR: I don’t really believe in the concept of best, except at the subjective moment of confrontation with a work of art when maybe there is an illusion of “best”. My tastes in art happen to be very eclectic as they also are in music.

So one minute before doing this little blog for you I was listening to Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and if everybody would listen to that simultaneously it would change the world for the better, but equally it might be a drawing or a social sculpture of Joseph Beuys.

Photo by Scottee

Matthew Stone and friends interview Kate Moross

•  Matthew Stone: What do you have faith in?

 Kate Moross: Space, time and complex carbohydrates. Right now they are the only three things I trust. I am not a spiritual person. Instead I indulge in science and theory to satisfy my curiosities and answers to life’s questions. Carbs, carbs are amazing, if they didn’t exist myself and the rest of the human population would have withered away.

• MS: How can we change the world and what is there to be done?

I have no interest in all this global-warming-save-the-planet bullshit. Its going to happen. Yes the world will end. I’m sure “destroy the earth” is written into our genetic code. We are the selfish race after all. So I say, lets go DIY, and start at home. Say please and thank you, be nice to the bus driver, care for our old, care for our young and our sick. Its simple really, the only effects we can really have day to day are through the little things, the beauty is in the details, right?

• Steph Raynor : Are we anywhere near where we need to be?

I’d say, Yes. If we substitute “we” for “human race” I think we are pretty awesome. Focus on the bad things, corruption, war,bla bla bla and you are likely to think that we are a complete mess. However look at what good is happening, it seems that as a race, collectively, we are reaching even higher levels of Maslow’s pyramid. I think there are a lot of amazing investigations and experiments ongoing in science and the arts, that make me proud to be a human. You only have to watch a handful of the TED talks to realise that it is genuinely really exciting to be alive.

• Todd Hart : What’s the best example of Art really changing the world for the better?

Art will never change the world. It may nudge it and morph it in places, but like matter it can never be created or destroyed. Art it is formed out of what is going on and is then eventually reabsorbed, in one way or another.

• Boo Saville : What do you think happens when we die?

 Sweet Fuck All. We die. We get eaten by worms, and then we make the grass greener. Dying is simple. Its the grieving thats the hard part.

• MS: What question should be added to this list?

Kate Moross: If you had the choice between either being able to manipulate space or time which one would you choose, and what would you do?