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?

Nicola Lane pictured with Jack Birkett (The Incredible Orlando).

Nicola Lane’s 2006 film SPLITSCREEN funded by Arts Council England will be showing throughout April 19th –20th at the Lighthouse, the Chubb Building, Wolverhampton, as part of the 2008 Wolverhampton Disability Film Festival.

www.artsunwrapped.com
www.kingsgateworkshops.com
www.adornequip.com

Matthew Stone and friends interview Nicola Lane.

• Matthew Stone : What is most important to you?

Nicola Lane: Love for my family and friends and making art.

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

NL: The world is being changed all the time- change is the engine that drives the universe. What needs to be done is more thinking about change: can we co-exist with each other, other animals and environments?

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

NL: To me being alive means consciousness and I remember the moment when I was 4 years old and realized I was me and nobody else. It was very strange and wonderful. One theory is that consciousness is the firing between connections in the brain. Whatever it is, it is marvellous and I do not know why it exists.

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

NL: The planet is having a mid-life crisis.

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

NL: I think that the moment of death (perhaps as long or as short as a dream) is a journey away from consciousness and that the journey is meaningful.

• Matthew Stone: What question should be added to this list?

NL: What does success mean to you?