ART at the heart of Eternity

[Laughter]

[Music]

uh

hi i’m al

now

how do you feel about ted talks because

i guess

in a way they seem quite almost like the

polar opposite of your

not um of what has traditionally been

your creative practice

evil evolving even more positive for the

future

hi i’m al

no thought in my mind that this would

end up as a ted talk

for one reason or another the film or

the video thing becoming a possibility

was like

this actually kind of feels more fitting

that it could be

more in keeping with the aesthetic i

have

curated over my life that the talk will

be the thing that pulls together these

disparate ideas and impulses it will be

a a montage of stuff

good morning everybody you’re talking

son how’s that sound

take care bye maybe it

would be nice to

for the sake of argument have a

have a run at this in another

two or three locations we could even

take the chair

and put it in the middle of

town

hi i’m al i’m an artist

what does that mean well it means

essentially that

i like to share i like to share

what’s all around and i like to share

what’s

inside

i want to tell you a story that starts

with al

about three and a half years old sat on

the steps

behind the house where i grew up

with my teddy bear looking out and

feeling like there was something all

around

a kind of a fizzing cluttering

shimmering

jittering energy

in the grass in the wind in the leaves

that i couldn’t quite understand or hear

but that i knew was moving all around

[Music]

i could hear it in the voices of the

people as i walk the corridors

in the house where i grew up and i could

see it out in the world

as i started to meet people look listen

this feeling continued only to amplify

and i had a sense of urgency that i

should be preparing for something but i

didn’t know what

it was like there was an echo and behind

the echo was a scream

and it was a scream of all nature trying

to get to me

i just couldn’t quite understand it

these are like all the notes that i’ve

made

since starting the dialogue like

trying to draw out how i thought it

would look delivering

this speech and then it all went

colorful and then i started drawing on

the notes and

i mean the preparatory work obviously

from

years past is

look at this notes of an absolute maniac

so this talk is kind of does it feel a

bit like the culmination of something

you’ve been wrestling with

every time i sort of went to try and

wrap it up

it would be it would like slither away

again and be

something else and where we’ve got to

with this

is finally being able to be sort of like

the the hawk hovering

over the prey it’s seen

i could see it now

as i started to go to school this

continued that in every class i would

take and every situation there would be

i’d always be thinking that there was

something else bigger

greater more profound

tapping on the windows reaching for my

shoulder trying to

get my attention when i was meant to be

sitting and

concentrating on this thing and this

thing and this thing and this thing

and i would seek it out and sometimes in

classes i’d be told about a

play or a poem or a piece of art that

would

suddenly start singing and communicating

this thing that i was feeling

and i would think that’s it there it is

everybody look come look it’s here and

then we’d have to move on

[Music]

so i started to look for it in my own

life

and i found it in the structures of

culture

in music in paintings i could look at a

painting and see the colors and think

this is what i mean this may be your way

of saying it but i understand that

you’re

saying something about this feeling

and i could take a cd and put it on

sit cross-legged in front read the liner

notes

listen to the music and follow along and

think yeah this is communicating

this person is expressing their

feelings of the life they’re living and

the life they’re living

seems to connect somehow

[Music]

the artistic temperament is quite

capricious it likes to just jump

from thing to thing and magpie like

i need to do this i need to do this i

try to write a novel

based on the marvin hills i tried to

write a film screenplay

that was i planned the whole thing out

i wrote a theater play i think i managed

to write about a third of it

it was just ridiculous what nonsense

writings and paintings combined it’s

like this

slightly strange odyssey this is the

artwork i drew

to put on the front of an application to

get this the british antarctic survey

a three-month trip where they had a spot

for an artist to go along

and my wife supported me silently as i

applied and

tried to get to be an artist on a ship

you know to antarctica for three months

insane

my desire to move from thing to thing

it’s my responsibility to link them

together it’s not like i’m

not completing that or that or that it’s

that i see that there is a connection

between that and that and that

so it’s my responsibility to connect

them together and do that

so this fizzing crackling energy was

trying to communicate and connect and

conduct

this life force around via the things

that i was

finding in my hands the more i got to

focus on creative things

the more i felt that i was finding my

way

in the world so i would combine words

and thoughts and ideas and i would paint

yeah they always kind of come out much

more sort of trippy

then i’d think that they should be a bit

more sort of

sincere or representational

but they end up being sort of quite

quite far out i guess

it’s this route of following digressions

chasing

rabbits down rabbit holes seeking out

the thing that will

inspire and spark my attention that’s

what i’ve continued to do

on the path to becoming an artist maybe

i needed

to see this

irrespective of its relevance beyond

that point

i needed to see this i needed to make

this for me

and then you get that kind of flickering

light bulb

that’s what the artist does either in

their actions

or in their studio they set up a space

where they can

test out what they’re doing in relation

to life as a whole

they can test it once twice they can

test it yesterday today

does it make sense in the same way does

what i do today with each mark get me

somewhere else for tomorrow

it’s a kind of research program of the

south

the person creating art or making music

shows like

the trial and error of responding

to their situation and it’s not possible

for everybody in their walks of life to

be doing that

but everybody in their walks of life

integrates created things which help

them do what they do

[Music]

the wider world you and i know today is

a world that’s

much more complicated and confusing

and that’s brought home this whole sense

of the fragility

of modern life into our homes

we didn’t have now the luxury to think

what we’re going to do next month or

next year

it’s what are we going to do here now

today

that can give our life meaning the

artist does this

in a controlled environment but they

know deep down that won’t lead

them to feel they’ve made a masterpiece

it’s in the acts themselves in the

gestures and the marks and the strokes

of pain

there the artist is focused

engaged by taking the chance

to find ourselves in our actions

i feel that we let that scream of nature

into our very core

one instance of this for me was when i

was holding my

baby son not long after he was born

and i would hum to him a two-tone hum

something like this

[Music]

and suddenly all this fizzing crackling

noise that had followed me all those

years

fell silent and something inside me

started to open up

in stillness and flow

and i had a deliverance an answer

as to why i was where i needed to be

i am a piece of all

creation and through all the things i’ve

done right or wrong

that moment was where i had to be

the idea of this thumb of energy around

you i felt this real compulsion for you

to like name it

i wanted you to coin a name

i kind of i mean we got to a working

title of

the supercharger which was that was like

that was the feeling i had it was almost

like

biting into a live wire of of

existence and awareness and it was just

like it just lit me up like a candle

and that’s where the supercharger thing

came from

you know that feeling when you feel most

like you

that’s that’s life as a whole

passing through you that’s the

supercharger

these were pictures that i made when i

looked and i was like what

is that i never made anything like this

so it’s like spatial illustrations of a

dynamic

and it was like this passing of energy

from one space to another

and like

the presence of

understanding a figurative feeling

whilst being an object in space and i

was drawing these

trying just to render my sense of

understanding

but at the same time i was looking at

thinking this is some of the

oddest stuff i’ve ever made and

i’m glad i made them and then i got this

idea of

like this consistent

beam of either understanding or life

passing through

the figure and that’s kind of what it

feels like

i think really and i did sort of several

of these

they started to end up looking like

trees with ears

but i don’t know

[Music]

i try to keep that feeling with me at

all times and carry it

so that whatever i’m doing wherever i am

and whoever i’m with

i check with myself and with all the

selves i’ve been

that i’m where i need to be and i’m

doing what i need to do

both for the me now and for the me sat

on the steps

in the house where i grew up

whether we like it or not life is trying

to interact with us via

every possible channel all of this

realization of this stuff is like

discovering what the higgs boson is

of life it’s what is

everything

i think it’s via exploring our actions

that we almost begin to turn our

attention outside

to all of that potential coming in so

when it comes to expressing what it

feels like to be

amidst that i think it makes art

quite a fundamental necessity

we are existence

experiencing itself happening

[Music]

and this brings finally a sense of

connection

with all of this energy that’s been

fizzing around that’s been peaking its

head up through

records and books and words and ideas

and experiences and it

plugs it in to me and you

and what we do with every action

every mark we make

and via our awareness of this process

happening

we can be conscious of our place

in this baffling

marvelous miraculous expanse of

existence

you are all supercharged by life itself

and i am all supercharged

and i am ow here now

and all the owls i’ve been right the way

back

[Music]

and through every mark that i make i’m

expressing

all of existence and through every act

you make you too are a channel for

all existence and we together

via our consciousness of our place can

reach up

and explore eternity

see you there