Simon Clark is an artist and lecturer working at FSA, currently building a more collaborative approach to the art making and information gathering relationship between teachers and students.
Simon chose to disrupt the usual format of the artist talks to present his work in a more experiential, surprising way. The students were led across campus to outside Belmont House, where we shouted "Is there a turnip there?" at Jonty's instruction.
Confused, we called out our chant to a seemingly empty space, with a sudden bubbly reply coming from a green container full of water in the small courtyard.
We quietly watched a performance that oscillated between comedic, urgent, and somewhat meditative, with a constant sense of curiosity in the moment.
The performance engaged deep observation from its audience, trying to find a thread of sense to hang on to to explain what we were seeing and hearing.
The urgency of the rhythmic voice coming from within the murky water, distorted by its submergence, was punctuated by breathy sprays of water coming from an unknown source.
The performance ended with a lid being dragged over the entrance of the container.
The presentation that followed was a series of short videos of Clark's earlier work, spanning from brutally explicit songs about death in "Surrender to the worm", to a misleading collaborative performance "Melancholic wet patch" which inferred premature ejaculation, but really referred to the uncontrollable expulsion of melancholia in a moment of intimacy. While the video's played, Clark discreetly changed from wetsuit to clothing, discarding the identity enacted in his performance, and returning as an articulate, intentional being.
Having built a practice around using the mechanism of pop music to dissect taboo subjects, Clark's new work enquires how he can use non-normative forms of song making in his practice.
His recent experiences of snorkelling, and interest in deep sea life calls to question how languages can wordlessly be formed across species.
Simons talk, and his curation of information in his lectures shows a unique perspective on how one can gather information and material for art making, broadly questioning the human experience and how our constantly transforming actions and desires can be informative to an art practice.
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