Unlimited Free Space: Comprehensive Waterfront Plan
The interrogation continues
| BK |
Do you think that unlimited free space always ends in some kind of solitude? Is it just an experience you can have without any other people? |
| ND |
Do you think that beyond the personal free space of meditation, that there can be an unlimited social free space - although, we hate to call it that but, for the question, we will. |
| VJ |
An experience to share that unlimited free space with other people... |
| JCB |
I don't know. |
| BK |
You never had such experience? Unlimited free space as a situation among people? |
|
JCB |
Yes. It's not because you're alone or among people or sharing. I don't know. A good trip is - a good acid is a good way to share unlimited space with people. No? |
| BK |
Do you think unlimited free space can be planned? |
| JCB |
Yes. Let's do a good drug party tonight. |
| ND |
Do you think we could do it without a drug trip? |
| JCB |
No. In fact, if you are thinking about something more geographical and architectural - |
| ND |
Not necessarily. |
| JCB |
What's the question? |
| ND |
Do you see a limit to the unity or the creation of a unified free space? You believe there is some limit. |
| JCB |
No, there is not. But, the point is a very individual question. It's hard to do something collective at that point. If you do the most biggest space you can in your mind - in your life around you - then you can share it with people who are in that position or so. It's freedom, yeah. The freedom you can get in your mind. but - |
| ND |
In the urban milieu and collective milieu, you think it's difficult and not really possible. |
| \
JCB |
The street is like that. The street is free man, in fact. You can walk and come back, walk and come back. But, it's boring - the point. Unlimited space without any goal, it will be boring. What can you do with all that space? Okay, I give you all the space. You have all the sky and all. You have space. You can have as much space as you want, you know. It's enough. You just have to leave the city, you will have it. Nobody even. If it's not yours, you can enjoy it. Everywhere on the earth. And on boats, it's the same - the sea is the same. So, you can go in the mountains. You will have all the place you want. You can have as big as NY State if you want. Just going and saying, "Okay. I have this space." So what? |
| ND |
You're saying there's not a way it can be shared with other people. |
| JCB |
I don't know, it's a tricky question. Because if I have a private home - and it's not mine - so, you can share it until the point when somebody does not want you to share it anymore. So, that's the question of always the stupid point: that the freedom of one is beginning - is finishing - at the freedom of the other one. |
| VJ |
Didn't you say before that you could share a space with people of the same mindset? What do you think that takes? What kind of space would people want to share? |
| ND |
How would you describe a collective acid trip? How would you describe its collective free space? |
| JCB |
Acid trip is interesting because it's a moment where you need space. In the sense, if you want to be able to relate. Either you can share or you're not obliged to share. Maybe at one moment, I want to share this experience with you. I know for me it is not that there is unlimited space, but I know that I can go out from a certain space I don't want to share anymore. I think there is a kind of limit by meeting others, by the others to me. In this sense you're- |
| VJ |
[laughing] He's trying to find a space to take a shit! |
| JCB |
Really? |
| VJ |
He stopped at the tree and looked around and then he decided to try - and then he looked around again and decided it's not possible. |
| JCB |
That's a good illustration of what we're talking about. He wants some solitude. He doesn't want to bother us. So, he needs enough space to do that. |
| ND |
Do you think that that's a necessary condition? Is that the way it always has been and will be? |
| JCB |
No. Maybe we will become more cool. More tolerant. More open. And we will be able to share more. I know there's a very cultural aspect to that. If you go - speaking about shitting - in the toilets of the central station in Moscow, there's no doors. There isn't. I don't know now but, ten years ago it was just some holes and people shitting all together. So, that's a good example of our friend running away to escape from that. And this is very controlled. Of course, there are a lot of different civilizations where people are completely - if you go to the pygmies, they are sharing everything and they don't really care. They have all the forest. So, there is very cultural aspect to this question. |
| VJ |
But you also talk about the unlimited shared space as something temporary. You mention that if you don't want to share anymore or, if somebody doesn't want to share anymore, it's over. It's as if there's a possibility for shared space for a period of time. But then at some point, something happens and somebody decides that they don't want to share anymore for whatever reason - and then it's over. Can you imagine a space where it was not temporary? A space where there's no reason why somebody would say 'I don't want to share anymore'? What do you think that would take? |
| JCB |
What do you think? For me, my answer would be the end of the individuality, of the egoistic point of view. The complete acceptance of all that occurs. The complete - in that sense, I can understand it. And I can imagine that. But, what wisdom we have to get to be at this point! And is it a question of revolution or is it - for me - a question of interior personal relations before- |
| VJ |
You mention that you don't want your girlfriend to pay the whole rent. So, there's an issue of money here. Is money what makes people say they don't want to share anymore? Is it a question of economy? |
| JCB |
Of course, it's a question of money. |
| ND |
I think that - |
|
JCB |
Tu es sur qu'il y a pas trop de vent dans le micro? Parce que la, il y en a beaucoup. [ND hands headphones to JCB] Can you speak? |
| ND |
You can hear yourself, you can hear me. Right? You can hear anyone perfectly fine. |
| VJ |
You can hear me, too. |
| JCB |
\ Yeah, but there is very, very a lot of sound about the wind. |
| VJ |
Yeah. But, that's okay |
| JCB |
Huh? |
| ND |
That's okay, you can still understand the voices. Right? If you can understand it here, that's the way it will sound. There's a way, if I made this less directional, and I shifted it here - to 120 - then it picks up even more of the wild sound around. |
| JCB |
Yes. But I'm not sure that people in the gallery will understand something. I don't know. Eh? |
| ND |
I'm sure that they'll understand something. [laughter by all] |
| VJ |
Also, we are not interested in the quality of this sound so we can present it in a gallery. For us, the experience of communicating with you is much more important than the sound quality of this tape. Because ultimately, we will end up with like a hundred hours of tape that we can never present in a gallery. We're talking to people and maybe we'll use some of this sound in some way or the other. You're not on a direct television program to Europe. |
| JCB |
OH FUCK YOU! I'm losing my time! [laughs by all] No, it's just I have kind of a professional reflex. When I see a big mike in the wind, I have this kind of bad feeling that something is wrong. But if you tell me, "Oh, we want it like that" I can understand very well... |
| ND |
If we were to speak about our own concept of how to present unlimited free space, it means the way things are. It doesn't mean trying to take our experience and this waterfront filled with dirt and automobile sounds and wind and weeds and Bernd's shit and however many other peoples' and piss and rocks and sky and - We can't make that into the white box so that it fits into some legible thing that makes the white box feel like a white page in a white book. |
|
VJ |
Our whole approach to technology includes the failure in technology. We have this recording technology and it records - Maybe it's not a failure. It's not a sound studio. It's not a perfect sound but, it is the sound that this recording device is capturing. Which is not the same as this experience but, a kind of way to represent it. And it's inclusive. It includes all the mistakes and all the lack of clarity. |
| ND |
Our mistakes and the manufacturer's mistakes, nature's mistakes. |
| VJ |
Not even mistakes but, ingredients. |
| ND |
On the other hand, the search for unlimited free space becomes like the technology. We don't say that technology is wrong. Because it's part of the search for perfection. If all of this is part of the search for perfection, unlimited free space is part of that search - and so, however wrong we may be, we're on the same track. |
| JCB |
Maybe it's just about skills. When Vibeke makes pictures, she knows how to do it because she has done a lot. And she knows what she wants to get. |
| BK |
Then again, you have a very elaborated laboratory. In your space where you have all those instruments. But we are in the city. If we took care of all the mistakes that could happen, nothing would happen. Because everyone would be concentrated on technology and perfect perfection of representation - and that's not the point. |
| ND |
Even with the photographs, she takes thirty six
photographs and you see eighteen of them. She's aware of certain
techniques - and of making certain judgments. What gets presented -
just as what gets presented of this tape - will be the most expressive
part. Capiche? Now, if the economic activity of Manhattan were moved somewhere else, what do you think would occur? |
| JCB |
I would like to be able to walk on the Indian path called Broadway. But, I don't know if it's possible anymore. |
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Modified May 23, 1997