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