‘I’m a true believer in collaboration’ sais Luke Jerram in an interview with the festival's artist in focus Luke Jerram. Ingrid Commandeur (free lance art critic and publisher) interviewed Jerram about his work as an artist.
Ingrid Commandeur: On your website you call yourself ‘A color blind installation artist, who fuses his artistic sculptural practice with his scientific and perceptual studies.’ Where does art end and science begins, and vice versa?
‘For me it sometimes intertwines. Because I’m colour blind I’ve a natural interest in perception and how we see the world. Art can question that. I often speak with scientists because they are interested in how we perceive the world as well. They are able to provide me with interesting perspectives. A lot of my work is made in collaboration with scientists and engineers, because we are both interested in phenomena and how things work. You can go to a vicar or a priest and ask questions: why is the sky blue? You’ll find out there are just multiple interpretations of the same question. My experience is that artists and scientists are often interested in the same thing. We both have a fascination in how the world works and how things function, and although the methodology of a scientist is very different from the way an artist works, there are certainly crossovers. I was going to be an engineer but decided to do art instead. That was about fifteen years ago. Now a lot of work I make involves both art, engineering and science. At the moment I have a research fellowship at the University of Southampton. One of the projects that I’m working on is to create a building that will resonate and sing with the wind. It involves a great deal of engineering and has funding from both the Arts Council of England and The Engineering Physical Sciences Research Council.’
The relationship between art, science and education is a much-debated subject in Europe. It’s been applauded but also criticized. Rendering knowledge and having an educational purpose would provide art an ‘alibi’ for it’s usefulness and economical value to society. Artists are pressured to get a scientific degree because this would offer them better career opportunities. What is your opinion on this matter?
‘I’m absolutely aware of this trend, but I not sure whether I would relate this directly to my own work. I realized for a while that I’m not an academic. I’m just better in making art works rather then writing and theorizing about art. And for me what is important is how an artwork is perceived and communicated to the public. Some artworks are very academic, you need a page of text to be able to interpret it. I generally don’t enjoy artworks that can only be understood in this way. I try to make artwork that is of value to the academic community but that is also accessible and can be appreciated in different ways by everyone, whether they are a child, scientist, grandmother or fellow artist. It makes creating artwork hard!! I like to sort of skirt around the edges of academia most of the time, but I’m not really an academic, I’m an artist.’
For the Watershed Media Centre in Bristol you developed a project called The Dream Director (2009), a new media installation that investigates the effects of sound on sleep. Someone said about this work: ‘his approach is less about gathering specialists from divergent fields to inform his work, than it is a gathering and sharing of knowledge and experience. His practice is inherently collaborative’. Would you agree on that?
‘I like to think my work involves both of those things. I like working with people and building small teams of people together to make remarkable things happen. Actually if you think about it most of the things in the world are made through collaboration. My phone here for example: maybe as many as a thousand people have been involved in designing it, before it arrives in my hand. It’s only in the twentieth century that the artist is seen as the sole creator. I am a true believer in collaboration; by working together with specialists anything is possible. Working in this way is very exciting. I’ve no idea what sort of art I’ll be making in 5 years time. My whole practice revolves around using creativity to solve problems. For the festival ‘De Wereld van Witte de With’ I generated about ten ideas and the organization choose one out of this list. The work is about a very common, but beautifully designed object that will be re-used for the festival in different ways, and will sort of act as the common denominator around the festival terrain. To make any large-scale project, you need to collaborate with a lot of people and that also involves inspiring people to take ownership of the project.’
Putting up 60 pianos in the streets of New York City and in numerous other cities of the world for your project Play me, I’m Yours defies the boundaries of the established art world. On the other hand your glass sculptures of viruses (Glass Microbiology) were made as a reaction to science communication. You stated that you wanted to ‘make people ask questions about virology and the nature of data they see in the media.’ Are you trying to escape the arts as well as science?
‘I like to make art in the public domain. Play me, I’m Yours is certainly an example of this. It’s a very pervasive project and a nice way to reach a huge, broad and diverse audience. People don’t have to go to a museum or gallery: I’m delivering an artwork to their house, their doorstep. I like to do that. But I make a whole range of different artworks, which find their own audiences. The glass sculptures of the viruses are more suitable for a museum or gallery, for instance, and others projects are presented outside. I just get on with the making of the artwork and trust that the work will find its own audience a place in the world. The virus sculptures go back to my interest in perception. The fact that I’m colorblind makes me very curious, but also slightly distrustful of imagery. Looking at the scientific images of viruses you find that they are often been artificially coloured. Because viruses are so small, smaller then the wavelengths of light, they don’t have any color. Scientists photograph a virus with an electron microscope and then others photoshop them up, adding color to the imagery. With this color there’s an inherent emotional content added to the photos, and I have a problem with that.’
It has everything to do with representation…
‘Yes absolutely. We end up with this toxic dangerous looking virus, which many people believe, are scary brightly colored red, yellow things. So my sculptures provide another voice. I represented viruses as three-dimensional, transparent glass objects. I turn them into very beautiful objects, which is again problematic as a tension then arises between the beauty of the artwork and what it represents. So I’m replacing one problem with another! I think the sculptures kind of draw you in because they are very beautiful, and then when you realize what they are, like HIV, they kind of repel you. I think that’s what gives the sculptures their power and presence. The sculptures are also made for the public to contemplate the global impact of each virus.’
The interesting thing is that the images of your glass viruses are copied over and over in the media as well. They are widely spread on the Internet and adopted by newspapers around the world. I saw an image of virus sculpture on the cover of a scientific magazine. Do you make a deliberate use of the media as an integral strategy to your work?
‘Yes, I see it as a part of my work. Using the press is of course a way of getting free advertising, I make the most of it. I don’t sell a story; I only provide the right information. It’s probably just something that I’m good at. I like to talk to journalists and as an artist I do think I have to handle this in a professional way ’
But the way the media is involved in your works goes far beyond that. Not only do you create different, elaborate websites for different projects, but also you have a huge presence in the media. When I googled you’re name I ended up at a CNN report on Play me. I’m Yours: one of about hundred news reports on your work.
‘Yes, that’s interesting. Certainly with the street piano project it’s very important that the people know where the pianos are in the streets, when they are coming et cetera. So when they arrive people know all about it and already saw at TV. But as far as the huge interest of the press concerns, I’m not entirely sure what happened really. I think I’ve learned how to express complex ideas through accessible artworks, which can be described using simple words. That’s a powerful thing.’
