Christian: Welcome to The Insight. My name is Christian Hansen. Today, I'm joined by Mr. Martin Derbyshire, an art and TOK teacher at the Western Academy of Beijing. Mr. Derbyshire, could you please elaborate on more of what I've said, and could you provide a more in-detail explanation of who you are as a person and also the topics that you'd like to address for our conversation today.
Martin: I'll try my best.
Christian: Yes.
Martin: Who you are as a person isn't always an easy question to answer. I'll start with some information and some details.
Martin: Well, I'm a person who has lived and worked in China for 31 years. I have a deep love for this country and I came here initially out of curiosity that I had about China and an interest in traditional Chinese philosophy and art, which first developed when I was an undergraduate student. I try as much as I can to approach my life as a project within which I strive for coherence between the different facets of it so for example in your introduction you mentioned that I teach art and TOK here at WAB one of the things that I try to do is to, instead of approaching them as two separate subjects, I try to find as many connections as possible and to use those connections to mutually enhance the teaching of both. Now you also mentioned my life outside of the classroom as a visual artist.
Martin: And this is, again, I see an opportunity there for a link to be made between what I'm doing in the classroom and in the studio here at WAB and what I do within the private space of my own practice. and very much it's about, we could say, the generation of knowledge and insights and the sharing and the transference of those between contexts and across related domains. I'm interested primarily really in this connection between knowledge and social action how the world of ideas and the world of thoughts is the origin, is the source of the actions that shape the world that we live in. So many of the thoughts I'll be sharing with you today will be related to that core idea.
Christian: Thank you for the introduction. I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to interview you today and I would like to start off with the first question to kind of lead into how we look at the world today. First question being that when you look at the world today, what do you think we are failing to see clearly and correctly?
Martin: What we're failing to see clearly and correctly is the unity of reality how interconnected every facet of it is and i feel that we are we have become accustomed to view the world in a fragmented and fragmenting way, almost as if we're looking at it through a lens which is cracked. So we see, we gain glimpses, we gain insights, we see parts of reality, and sometimes we see them with great clarity, but what we're missing is the connection. We're missing the connections and the relationships and the fact that one aspect of reality is the way it is by degree because of the existence and the influence of another one. So in a sense what I'm talking about is a holistic way of looking at reality.
Martin: And I think the most important place to start, because what I just mentioned I think is quite abstract, is with us, is with the human race. And I think we have to acknowledge this most fundamental and at the same time alarmingly seemingly most elusive reality, which is that there is only one human species.
Martin: And we're missing this. We're focusing on differences. and there are many reasons why there are differences and I think that differences are we have the potential to see differences as necessary and as positive and as things to be celebrated but ironically or paradoxically this is only possible when we take off that fragmented lens and we approach diversity from the standpoint of unity. Because the differences that exist between us, I think we can agree that they exist really on a secondary level of our being.
Martin: And they can also be understood to be diversified, personalized, unique even expressions of our common underlying humanity.
Martin: So cultures and individuals have their own characteristics yet what they are expressing through those characteristics is essentially at its core human experience and human reality. I believe that unity on its essential level is not something which can be contrived or engineered.
Martin: It's pre-existent and it's constant. So it's not something new that we have to create. It's not that we were separate and we were fragmented before, and we have to create a unity out of essentially separate pieces. I believe the opposite to be true. I believe that the reality is that, in essence, we are one and everything is connected. The Persian poet Rumi had a line in one of his poems where he talked about reality being like a mirror that had been thrown up into the sky and then crashed down on the ground. And what people do is they discover those fragments of broken mirror and they look in them and they get a little glimpse of something and they think that's the whole thing. it's similar again to the old story of the five blind men and the elephant where each one feels a certain part of the elephant's body and so one for example feels its ear and says okay it feels like a fan therefore an elephant is a fan
Martin: Another person feels the elephant's tail and says it's like a rope an elephant is like a rope each one takes a part and mistakes the part for the whole and I think that's what we do when we fixate on differences or on those unique expressions of something which is actually underlyingly shared and common if we look at these relationships if we look at relationships in general if we stay on that secondary level of difference or variegated or individuated expressions of humanity. We discover that that's where the conflict begins. And again, when I say this, I don't mean, well, let's get rid of the differences and then there'll be no conflict. I'm saying that if we mistake the superficial by comparison or secondary aspect of what we are if we mistake the outer form for the inner reality then we see only difference and that can blind us to the possibility of there being something common underneath that.
Martin: And I see that sometimes there is this conflict between,
Martin: This disconnect between what we are and what we think we are. what we are is human and this is one of the very few things that we can be certain of things like nationality ethnicity these things we can be less certain of I mean if we do a DNA test we discover that our ethnic maker may be far more complex than we originally thought so our attachment or our self-identification via a singular ethnic label or nationality, this is not as solid as our reality as human beings, which is non-negotiable. The others are by varying degrees and to certain extents negotiable. We can change our nationality. Again, our ethnicity can prove to be more complex than we thought and so on. And I think that really our task is to allow this consciousness of our essential humanness to inform the thoughts, attitudes and policies that we create and we act upon on that secondary level, if you want.
Martin: On that level of being in, let's say, diverse communities, every interaction, even if there were just two people, two people from the same family even, we're also talking about two individuals, right? So even within that narrowed-down context, still there can be massive differences in terms of interests, orientations, character, values, and so on.
Martin: So I think to allow that consciousness to inform how we approach difference, I think, is one of our core tasks at the moment. And I think that's what we're failing to really notice because it really requires a tremendous shift. previously I think our sense of who we are of what our essential reality is was defined by those secondary characteristics of gender, of ethnicity of nationality, of language we can keep splitting this infinitely I was born in the UK and in London for example there are gang wars which are related to the postcode that is attached to whichever area you are living in so people can keep splitting and splitting and finding differences and I think that again in the past we took these things as being representative of the totality of what we are.
Martin: And we would self-identify almost in opposition to whoever else we were with. Somebody who had characteristics which appeared to be different.
Martin: We would perceive to be the other, and we would treat them as the other. And in a sense, we would feel we had also acquired a more solid understanding of who we are. But again, this is definition by difference rather than by looking at what's beneath that. And I think that something that surprised me is a resurgence of this way of thinking.
Martin: So, you know, we have the politics of identity and this philosophy of identitarianism. which I think is ultimately reactionary and retrogressive I understand its emergence and I think in some contexts I think it's more understandable than others and its emergence has a validity a greater validity than it does in others so for example communities which were historically excluded or discriminated against or persecuted,
Martin: I think the motivation to identify themselves, to present an identity and to define themselves by it seems more justifiable because they were ignored, they were not included in history, their histories were erased their voices were missing from the stories told about the world so in the name of inclusion I think that's understandable and valid but I think we also need to look further and also look deeper and I think we need to get to the cause of you know the things that led to individuals and populations being excluded from groups and from society at large.
Martin: And I feel that, you know, in a sense, this brings us to the concept of justice. and I believe there is a strong connection between the understanding of unity and the understanding of justice in a sense I feel these things are mutually interdependent and inseparable and I think that what I've been talking about this push and pull this assertion of individuals and groups and this reaction against that on the part of other groups. In a sense, especially when we think about legitimate injustices that have motivated these kind of movements, it really makes me think about a concept that was introduced by a Brazilian educator called Paulo Freire which he called the pedagogy of the oppressed
Martin: So Freire explained that two forms of oppression are enacted upon oppressed individuals and populations by oppressors. and the first is specific immediate and consciously experienced by those who are being oppressed they're being oppressed and they know it it's obvious so the brutality of colonial occupation is an example of this as is the denial of civil rights and due process and the violence that stems in all of its forms from prejudice is, whether it be psychological, physical, or as is probably, we could say, always the case, both. The impact of this form of oppression, or let's say this level of oppression, it registers immediately, and as I mentioned, consciously, so with the person or with the group that's being oppressed. The second, however, could be said to be, in a sense, the more severe or invidious form of oppression. And the reason for this is that, like a severe
Martin: But asymptomatic illness, its damage is profound, but it's not consciously experienced. and what I'm talking about and again this is Freire's concept it's the idea that the experience of oppression imprints upon the psyche of the oppressed the idea that there are only two conditions possible for a human being to be in this world that of the oppressor or that of the oppressed. You're either one or you're the other. And it's either through fate, circumstance, whatever the cause,
Martin: Everything has been reduced to that.
Martin: So life really becomes reduced to the struggle to either maintain or to invert this relationship. so if you are the oppressor if you're on top all of your effort goes into staying on top and maintaining that if you are the one who is being oppressed then your life struggle is to liberate yourself from that oppression and your goal is to essentially within the framework of that view of reality that you're either one or the other. Your goal is to invert the relationship.
Martin: And your thinking is really, the only way for me to not be underneath the boot of the oppressor is for them to be under my boot.
Martin: Those are the only options.
Martin: When we think about it, within this type of situation, and I believe that this type of situation is endemic.
Martin: And I think we see it play out in extremely dramatic, violent forms. But we also see it play out in very, very subtle forms in everyday life, within situations that would be deemed as peaceful and stable and normal and just everyday. so you know the scope of life has been totally reduced in this context to two things only the quest for power which is seen as the means of escaping subjugation so if you're the one who is being oppressed and perpetual conflict between two entities that see each other as perpetual antagonists.
Martin: So again, if we examine the sort of characteristics of that worldview, you not only is it narrow and extremely reductionist, but also it is very rigid and inflexible. so the two parts within the relationship there's no possibility within that situation to imagine the other side as being anything other than the enemy
Christian: Right
Martin: Or to imagine oneself to perceive oneself as anything other than the victim.
Martin: So no matter how the circumstances change,
Martin: Again, those self-ascribed identities within that fixed relationship, again, they're believed to be permanent.
Martin: So even if I am on top, even if it is my boot on top of the other person, I feel justified because it's payback. they deserved it and within this limited scope for change where you're either one or the other then okay, it's fair that now it's me it sounds like hell to me I mean, you know it sounds like the worst possible scenario and the bleakest scenario I think it is the lived experience of many people, sadly.
Martin: And I think such a condition cannot but force us to question the nature and purpose of life.
Martin: And ask whether this is what it is.
Martin: And whether this is all.
Martin: Could life be something else? And indeed, should it be?
Christian: Mm-hmm.
Martin: So, you know, I'm talking about, I'm thinking about the possibility of it being something else, but also the possibility that it should be something else, that there might be an underlying purpose which is very different to this, from which this is a deviation. I think also if we think about this scenario we also need to think about the participants in this really Sisyphean game this one minute this one is on top and the other one is underneath and the roles reverse and they keep reversing this endless perpetual cycle of domination and subjugation.
Martin: And I wonder, you know, I think, again, I think this connects to your initial question about what are we missing? What are we failing to see?
Martin: In a sense, what questions are we failing to ask?
Martin: I think one of the questions is, could antagonists become protagonists?
Martin: Could people whose relationship has been traditionally based on enmity be transformed into one which is based on amity?
Christian: And why do you think we avoid asking these questions in our everyday life do you think humans avoid these asking these questions or do you not this is just a question for me like this
Martin: Well first of all i mean if for those who are on top they're not going to ask those questions because things are going fine for them within the framework of their understanding of what fine means, a good life let's say they're also going to make sure that nobody else asks those questions as well so you know again Paulo Freire's book the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, really his view was that the only way out of this vicious cycle is education.
Martin: I think there are other reasons why people don't ask this question. and I think that again in some cases it's because of beliefs about identity so just believing that for example well I'm from the north and she's from the south obviously there's going to be friction we're not going to be able to get on and so on and I think we'll find Wherever we go in the world, we'll find some kind of regional variation of that, or some justification. And again, it comes back to difference, and our failure to really understand and appreciate it.
Martin: I think also there is a fear of change, and there is a fear of being an instrument of change. I mean, we're paradoxical in the sense that we clamour for empowerment, and yet we're actually terrified of taking a step, any kind of step towards empowerment, because we know that, when I say we, I mean everybody, knows that if they feel they need to take a step towards empowerment in order to, let's say, introduce justice into an unjust situation, there can be unpleasant consequences and I think there's also a fear that if we often human beings I think we find ourselves trapped in relationships in which both sides are actually suffering and it could be two individuals or it could be two countries.
Martin: Both sides are exhausted and tired of fighting and they realize that they are becoming weaker due to all of the energy they're putting into this. Both sides would love it to be over but at the same time each side is terrified to be the first one to lay their weapons down or to extend a hand of friendship because there's a lack of trust there. There's a fear that it will not be reciprocated. And by exposing themselves, by making themselves vulnerable, they're inviting the other side to attack.
Martin: So that's an issue of trust. and again if we think in quite realistic terms it's very understandable because if we have had ongoing relationships built on over many generations built on injustice and oppression then there is trauma and pain there that influences individuals and communities in ways that often override their... or they undo their efforts to rationally understand the situation they're in as well as their aspirations.
Martin: So they desire for things to come to an end. they desire to move on with the other side and yet the past is there the issues have not been resolved the healing has not taken place if you like so that is quite understandable but it's not an excuse because I mean again if we have a situation of stalemate in which each side is too terrified to take the initiative to enable both, or let's say many sides, if there's many parties involved, to reframe the relationship as something which has the potential to be cooperative and collaborative and a space within which friendships and love can grow and develop. unless somebody is willing to make an effort then it will never happen so there is a fear there there's distrust and there's fear and I think those are things that need to be overcome if we're going to transform relationships that have traditionally been hostile
Martin: I'd say, into ones which are more harmonious and built on bonds of friendship and affection.
Martin: And again, I don't think this is possible.
Martin: Not only possible, but I don't think there's even a point for it. There's no rationale for it unless, again, one has a different conception of reality.
Martin: So if one's conception of reality is, as we were talking about before,
Martin: That it's intrinsically unified, that unity and reciprocity are the natural order of things, if one doesn't have that understanding then one doesn't really have the motivation or the imagination to think beyond how things have been it's the old is-ought argument I'm sure you're familiar with it you look around and you see the world is a certain way and you say, well, because, okay, this is the way it is, therefore this is the way it's meant to be.
Martin: And often you find variations of that way of thinking when people say, well, that's life, or, well, that's just the way things are.
Martin: And often, you know, this is really a defeatist attitude, which on the one hand seems to be just a passive acceptance of how things are. But on the other hand, it's actually not. It's actually... You're contributing to keeping things the way they are. You're actually... By not challenging things, by not proposing an alternative, by not entertaining the possibility that things could be different, you are further entrenching the ideas and the practices that are already there.
Christian: So avoiding a lackadaisical approach to this would be valuable is what you're getting at?
Martin: For sure, for sure. But this requires tremendous courage. And I think, you know, not just the courage of a particular moment, but a coherent life which is made up of courageous moments. and in a sense what I'm talking about when I refer to courage is recognizing that one has both the right and the responsibility to independently investigate reality for oneself and that by abdicating that right and responsibility one is in a sense one is failing to contribute to the betterment of the world and one is merely just adding to its opposite it's a funny thing isn't it, I mean like we think well sometimes I've had this quite often this situation in the studio or in the classroom where I know a student is off task and I say what are you doing and they say nothing and I say congratulations I don't know how you've managed to achieve that all my life I've tried to do nothing and I've failed, I always end up doing something
Martin: Because in reality it's impossible to do nothing meaning to be existing is to be doing multiple things to be occupying a space to be making a noise to be breathing out to be breathing in etc and then of course really interactions how one uses one's time it's impossible to do nothing so the question is what are we going to do based on that understanding then the idea of choice comes into play and so what am I going to do I need to then think about what are the needs what are the issues what are the things that if you like need to be done what are the options what are my capacities what can I do practically speaking what can I do and again how we identify these things to a great extent will depend on the lens that we bring to the situation so for example if we look through our history we have had so many examples of people who have stood up and have said you know I'm going to do something
Martin: I'm going to make the world a better place and they've dedicated themselves to economics let's say they've said in their mind they have identified the economic issue as being the issue that needs to be resolved others have focused on other aspects of life and said no this is what needs to be done but again as I think we were talking about in our last conversation, again, there can be, not only can we have people working away in bubbles, um, and their contribution kind of being minimalized by that. They're in a sense all, they have a shared goal of trying, to improve the world, but there's no sense of connection between what they're doing because, um, they're working within different fields they're working within different subjects they have different capacities and capabilities and they may think that the thing that they're directly addressing and working towards improving or bringing into being or
Martin: Eradicating is the only thing that matters
Christian: And again as we
Martin: Talked about previously that also can become an opportunity for conflict and contention between people.
Christian: I mean, you coined it as a catalyst for conflict. I think people focusing on what they deem to be important in their occupation and how that provides conflicting views of the world and how that, again, catalyzes conflict. but why do you think we choose to focus on singular tasks or why do we place so much importance on one issue rather than focusing on something more holistic and why do you think that prevents unity and interconnectedness between us humans
Martin: It's a great question.
Christian: Great.
Martin: Well, I think it's the old thing of not being able to see the forest for the trees. I think perhaps, and I don't know enough about this to be able to speak with any authority, but I think during the earlier stages of our development, of our experience as a species, we lived in an obviously more threatening environment, immediately more threatening environment. so we became very much primed towards looking for threats trying to detect a threat in the distance on the horizon so whether it be a huge ferocious animal or an unfamiliar personal group of people I think that may be one reason but I also think that there has been within academic circles I think there has been a drive towards specialisation and there has been if you think about analysis it involves taking something apart and examining the component parts of it to see what it's made of and how it all fits together and I think we in a sense we became
Martin: Obsessed with this or our belief that it would lead us to a solid and complete understanding or whatever we were examining led us to just continue to slice and cut and to dissect and to narrow our focus increasingly believing that again perhaps the more completely and clearly we saw the part, the greater would be the insight we have into the whole.
Martin: And it's actually when you break things so it becomes more manageable, right?
Martin: What you're doing, though, is you're simplifying. And what you're losing is complexity.
Martin: Now, there's a difference between something being complicated and something being complex, right? So if something is complex, it means it's organically so. There is an organic, natural, innate complexity within its structures and functions. if something is complicated it perhaps naturally has a more simple structure and we complicate it we turn it into something else we start adding stuff to it we start playing around with things and manipulating things and covering it up and all sorts of things and I think it's a belief in that if you like analytical method that I think has put us in this situation where people are viewing, they make a single issue, the kind of raison d'être, the whole purpose of their life, and they commit themselves to that. Whereas it may in fact be a very small piece of something else.
Christian: Because it's more manageable, it's easier to address.
Martin: Yes, you can become an expert in it. I think maybe it was about 25 or 30 years ago, maybe even longer, the educator Howard Gardner, who conceived of, you know, his big concept was multiple intelligences rather than just, you know, intelligence. he argued that the generalist will become the specialist of the future or will replace the specialist because we seem to have placed so much faith in specialists and if we look at for example the field of medicine it's almost like a rush to get to see the specialist when we have some kind of ailment the general practitioner will be the one that we almost begrudgingly have to go through in order to get to the specialist to be referred to the specialist but again the dangers of this are that we fail to see the connections between things we fail to see how something that shows up here may have its origins somewhere else.
Martin: I think, I mean, those are just my views on why maybe we've become accustomed to approaching things in that way.
Christian: Um i mean i think also us as students we have this preconceived notion that in order to perpetuate an academic field you need to have specialists that focus on very specific things but then it is in their collaboration and in working together um that they actually help advance a certain field an academic field right yeah absolutely um but then i do the point that you made about how you fail to see the connections if your specialist resonates with me and i think that is also why it is important to be a generalist but then there's also obviously a trade-off because then you can't go deep enough exactly um so do you think that there is i mean if you could briefly respond if there's a sweet spot or if there is um this perfect state that could be achieved or do you think that there will always be this trade-off that we'll never be able to get
Martin: Rid of? I think there is, but I think it's always going to be something that we are working towards. And I think it's always going, it's dynamic, it's a moving target, to use a pretty crude metaphor. And I think, again, it comes back to our basic conception or understanding of how things are. So if we see things as just one big undifferentiated field, then one thing is more or less the same as everything else. And if you know one thing, then you think you know everything.
Martin: You fail to see the differences between things again. and again you're missing something huge there because again the clue could be the answer could lie in that slight difference between two things which seem to be very very similar in appearance or function but there's one thing which is barely perceptible but you miss it the specialist again is just focusing on that very very narrow thing and ignoring everything else but I think again it comes back to this idea that unity and diversity if you like are not they're not opposites they are in fact the same thing so in order for there to be unity there must be diversity and diversity cannot exist without there being unity I'm going to say more about that because that sounds probably very abstract
Christian: Yes.
Martin: So I am going to go into that and try to make sense of it.
Martin: But I think that this, I believe, is the key to finding, to moving towards that sweet spot that you're talking about.
Martin: What it actually looks like in practice, Again, I think this is something for humanity to figure out through experience and reflection on experience.
Martin: But what I'd like to try to do now is to come back to some of the thoughts I have here. Because I think they will lead me to a point where I can elaborate on the point I just made.
Christian: Okay.
Martin: About unity and diversity being the same thing. or both being dependent on expressions of the other.
Martin: I think maybe the easiest way for me to explain this is if we use the metaphor of the human body.
Christian: Yes.
Martin: So, if you think about the human body, it's made up of multiple systems, right? The respiratory system, the digestive system, etc. within these systems there are also individual unique organs that have specific functions right and their functions are not interchangeable they're all part of this overall system which is the human body. These systems, these functions, are part of the human body as well.
Martin: They're diverse and individual, individuated in the sense that the digestive system cannot do what the respiratory system will do. It hasn't been designed for that. And, you know, if you try to...
Christian: Good luck.
Martin: Yes. Similarly, the heart cannot replace the liver, the brain cannot replace the kidneys, and so on and so forth. These things are not interchangeable. They exist within a whole as part of a design. And each one has its unique characteristics. So size, shape, function, and whatever other characteristics we can identify. and yet they're all dependent, mutually dependent on each other.
Martin: And they are mutually dependent, they are dependent on being within that whole, within the system.
Martin: So the liver cannot suddenly decide one day that it wants to become independent and say, to hell with the rest of you. I'm tired of having to put up with the heart and it's beating. I'm tired of the brain bombarding me with signals all the time. I just want to separate and do my own thing. No, that would be the end of it, right? So the individual organ needs to be part of the whole system in order for it to exist and for it to live.
Martin: At the same time, the whole the body as a whole system, an integrated system cannot survive without the inclusion and the functioning of each of those individual component parts
Christian: Very much dependent on each other
Martin: Very much dependent on each other and so these individual entities, which have their unique characteristics and functions, their capacities and capabilities,
Martin: The question of unity comes into the picture when we consider their relationship with the other organs, when we consider their relationship to the body as a whole.
Martin: And then when we consider human life as the goal. So all of these organs, all of these systems, these limbs, cells, everything that make up the human body, they are united by a single purpose, and that purpose is to keep that body alive.
Christian: But I also find it quite interesting, because we humans often fear unity, because we misinterpret misinterpreted as conformity or uniformity actually. And I think looking at the example of the human body, it's like saying that there's only hearts in the body and therefore it won't function.
Martin: Exactly. You would die.
Christian: Yeah.
Martin: So,
Christian: Yeah. And why do you think we, misinterpreted that way? Why do you think we have this rigid belief? Why do we fear uniting with, or why do we fear the notion of unity?
Martin: Yeah.
Martin: Again, I think it's because we don't understand, we don't have a vision of the whole. So we don't have a vision of, again, if we stick with this metaphor of the body.
Martin: So there's a single underlying purpose, which is the perpetuation of the life of that body, right? You could also argue that there is a higher purpose, which is the expression of human consciousness and the body is the means by which consciousness is expressed.
Martin: And I think, first and foremost, we don't have a sense of a shared purpose to which we are all called to contribute and from which we all derive meaning and joy and everything that is good in life I think we again we either believe that we're either arguing about purposes or we're saying there is no purpose or we're saying, well you have your purpose, I have my purpose or all purposes are just relevant and I think that makes us difficult it makes it difficult for us to get our heads around the concept of the concepts of both unity and diversity I think we misunderstand both and again if we return to the metaphor of the human body there are things which cannot be understood in isolation from each other in separation from each other so we think about when we think about unity I think often we haven't been thinking about unity we've been thinking about singularity
Martin: We've been thinking about one thing and that means the elimination of all other things or we've been thinking about uniformity which means that again if we stick with the body it means that if the heart claims the right to be the most powerful, to be the ideal, to be the model, then all the other organs get forced to be like the heart.
Martin: I think it's due to misunderstanding,
Martin: Especially in the West, we tend to think in dualities and binaries. this wasn't always the case and in many other cultures around the world it wasn't and it still isn't the case but as the west became globally dominant unfortunately well
Christian: It just
Martin: It happened Right. That dualistic way of thinking about reality became promulgated throughout the world. and took root in cultures where previously it didn't have a place. Traditional Chinese thought is not as dualistic or binary.
Martin: It's just not that way.
Martin: And if we look at other traditions as well, we also see, again, you could actually say well it's a western problem that was then exported that was globalized through colonialism and various other things because I don't think that many other cultures and perhaps even western culture hundreds and hundreds of years ago saw the world in this dualistic and binary and fragmented way I think there was a much more holistic understanding of things and I think you know I think much of this confusion can be traced to a very specific situation which was essentially the argument between Galileo and the Pope about the geocentric versus the heliocentric universe or model of that. and what happened with that was a rupture and a bifurcation the beginning of conflict between science and religion whereas previously that was not the case
Martin: And if we look at, and again, this is a very, very specific situation that took place within one of the religions of the world during a particular time.
Martin: And what it led many people to believe is that science and religion are inherently incompatible. they in essence are in conflict and that is a very Eurocentric way of looking at both science and religion because again if we look at other religious traditions we don't find that ironically many of the scientific advances that took place within the West came as a result of the influence of Islamic scholars philosophers and scientists who not just through their own works but by translating the works of Greek of Jewish and Greek and Roman philosophers into languages that were more accessible to the Europeans.
Martin: They enabled them to have access to a body of philosophical and scientific knowledge that they had been denied during the medieval period.
Martin: So the notion that these two things are inherently incompatible is, I think, it's a misconception.
Martin: And it's taking one very specific event, one specific argument, and then generalizing it and applying it across the board. and I think that's an issue because again if we think about the knowledge that we can acquire through science and the knowledge that we can acquire through religion then again it makes perfect sense to see what happens when we put them together.
Martin: And this is what we see happening within, I think, some of the more progressive areas of science, that scientists are actually gaining insights and forming conclusions about the nature of reality which align with those that have existed within different religious traditions for millennia.
Martin: So, you know, before we were talking about this, vicious cycle of oppressed and being oppressed and daring to imagine a reality beyond that, bigger than that, and other possibilities.
Martin: And I think in order to do that, we need to examine our fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality and to get into deeper questions such as whether we believe reality to be something which is predetermined whether we see life as being a blank slate that we can just write on in whichever way we feel are there limits to human agency is there an innate purpose embodied within human life or do we create it which was as you may know
Christian: The theory of the existentialists
Martin: Which is that life is absurd it has no inherent meaning we have to make stuff up
Christian: Right
Martin: Which sounds kind of appealing but people have different ideas about what to make up and sometimes they make up horrible things you know in that vacuum in that void if there is no meaning then anybody can jump in and say how about this and it could be something which is awful um these questions themselves are binaries and i think that in order to answer them and see how they relate to the earlier questions we must again as i said a few minutes ago we need to learn to think beyond binaries and dualities and we need to recognize their limits so if we study physical reality it's clear that it's actualization like the very possibility of physical reality coming into existence it's functioning and it's sustainability it's all of these things are dependent on the operation of precise laws it's not like more or less it's like exact for things to exist and the slightest deviation has massive consequences
Martin: And we could argue that you know a deviation in the calculations in the maths if you like at the beginning if one can conceive of a beginning may well have made the possibility have rendered the coming into being of physical reality as an impossibility if things were slightly off if the numbers were slightly different none of this could have come into being so you know some people may argue that alignment of the numbers or the right numbers being reached or everything being in the right position, everything being aligned, was just a result of chance or accident.
Martin: I think it's a very hard argument to support because we know from our experience that precision within, let's say, engineering is always preceded by an intention.
Martin: The expression of will. We always have a goal, there's a purpose.
Martin: And without that, even the possibility of a design is inconceivable. There would be no reason to even entertain the thought. So in a sense, physical reality can be said to be the embodiment of will, of an intention that unfolds at least as long as physical reality itself endures.
Martin: Proceeding it, it would also be reasonable to assume that the source of the intention, so every intention has an intentioner, for want of a better word, behind it, right? There's a subject behind that intention. intentions don't come out of nowhere there's always a source of an intention so again if an intention proceeded to come into being in the physical world then it is possible that the source of that intention would also endure beyond the physical world since it preceded it. So what we have here is, if we look again at the physical world, the universe, we have the embodiment of free will in principle, law and calculation,
Martin: And nature is the expression, the effect of a cause that it lacks the ability to become conscious of. now that inability to become conscious coexists with its complete lack of independent agency so everything has been in a sense programmed to work in a certain way to live according to a design but when we consider human reality we find that we not only have the ability to become conscious of the forces at work around us and within us, but also that this capacity is accompanied by and could be said to be the source of our ability to choose whether to align ourselves with what we know or to choose not to. So a simple example of this is that many people choose to smoke, right? despite being in possession of the knowledge that it's harmful to themselves and to other people.
Martin: If we examine human behavior, we can see clearly that actions have consequences, so we're now in a position to acknowledge that there are, in a sense, principles or laws at play within human interactions, but that we also have the freedom to decide where we stand in relation to them. these principles or laws are the substance of morality and on an abstract essential level consensus has been reached as to what they are justice fairness reciprocity, kindness trustworthiness, honesty, etc most people would agree when we talk about morality these are the things we're talking about
Martin: Reality, of which the human body is an element, we've identified that its existence, its functioning depends upon the operation of certain laws.
Martin: And I'm wondering if moving away from the physical aspect of life and in human terms moving away from the human body into let's say the non-physical aspect, so consciousness morality the elements of our being that many have argued again throughout the millennia have argued to be distinct from the physical to be outside of the physical realm if they too also have a relationship to laws.
Martin: And the difference is that physical reality unless we interfere with it runs according to these laws. It's been said. I observe this within my cat, the way she behaves. I admire her for, you know, I think, you're so beautiful, you're so graceful, you have all these things. I realize that, well, you're not aware of them. And it's all instinct. You're driven by instincts.
Martin: Whereas things become complicated for us because, yes, we have instincts, but we also have consciousness as well. And within this consciousness becomes an awareness of our ability to make choices.
Martin: And we're not programmed. We're not automata or robots that just behave the way we've been designed to behave.
Martin: If we did, then we would probably all behave in the same way.
Martin: And it's hard to conceive of somebody designing something that would intentionally screw up or screw itself up. So, again, the things that we started off talking about, conflict within the world and antagonisms and polarisation, these things wouldn't exist we would live in a kind of lobotomised and again this is why you asked before why are people afraid of unity and I think people are also afraid to a certain extent of the idea of peace because they imagine it as this, it would be very boring and I think again that shows a thorough misunderstanding of peace I think peace is perceived in this way as merely the absence of war rather than a proactive state in which people are as engaged, as energetically engaged in things which are constructive and positive as they would be if they were engaged in war.
Martin: The orientation has changed. All the energy is directed towards that core.
Martin: What are we failing to notice, or what question are we not asking? could it be possible that there are a series of that there are a set of principles that are would not only in practical terms enable us to build a better world but which have their origins in the very structure of reality itself.
Martin: Now, I'll try to clarify that by saying what I don't mean is what I perceive to be its opposite, which is somebody invents a bunch of things and says, wouldn't it be great if we did these things? So a utopian vision of things where people make stuff up and say, well, we have this, we have this, you know, and put together this perfect package in their imagination and say, okay, now let's apply this to reality. it never usually works and very often it results in its opposite so these utopian ideologies and systems have after a period of time in many cases turned into their opposite, they've become dystopias but the question I'm asking really is just as I think we can agree that within physical reality there are laws and principles that are embedded
Christian: In its very heart
Martin: In order to, first of all, bring it into being and secondly to sustain it.
Martin: I'm also asking the question could it be that within the, let's say, the moral and behavioral,
Martin: Even intellectual or spiritual domains of our being,
Martin: Could there be a set of principles that are at their very heart that we, rather than invent, need to discover?
Martin: And could they perhaps be the key towards enabling us to overcome the difficulties that we're having, the tragedies that we're creating for ourselves in the world today? I believe so. I believe, yes, there are.
Christian: So Mr. Derbyshire what has artistic practice allowed you to discover about reality that you might not have reached through purely analytical thinking
Martin: Um i think that uh many things um but the way in which things relate to each other and the fact that the connection between things is not always something that can be contrived it's not always obvious It's not always what would make sense. Sometimes, for example, within a drawing or a painting, one can have a large form of a particular colour that occupies a particular area of the surface.
Martin: And that same colour could show up somewhere else. within the painting or the drawing, occupying a tiny area, and it could have a different form. It could just be at the subtlest of marks.
Martin: And yet there is a relationship established there that links together two parts of a surface that would otherwise be quite far apart from each other. So we very quickly start to make associations between things and I think the way we and I think artists can facilitate this quite consciously depending on how they work the way we experience paintings is our eyes tend to try to take in everything at once. We're moving around the whole painting all the time.
Martin: So what artists can do is can leave clues and traces that hint and suggest and allow the viewer to associate one thing with another. And they may be quite different within themselves, but they somehow have a trace of each other.
Martin: And for example, you might be working with different materials, with mixed media, and you have a hand-drawn line which ends at a certain point, and then somewhere else in the image, physically, you have a physical piece of wire that comes out of the surface.
Martin: I think, again, in a sense, we're primed to find connections. I think we've been educated not to, but I think we are primed at our core, really, to find connections.
Martin: And when we see a painting or a drawing or any artwork, I think we're very good at filling in the gaps. So again, there's that drawn line and then there's a piece of wire. And because they have something in common with each other, we're able to fuse them together in our mind and see them as being related.
Martin: And I think that the image or the object, let's say if it's a three-dimensional piece of work, or the sequence, if it's a form of moving image, it's able to allow us to experience things in a shared context.
Martin: If we were to encounter those things outside of that context, we might not find connections between them. We may see them as being separate.
Christian: It but i think also what the artistic process does very well is that because we're talking about the notion of unity i think it illustrates it very well um even when i visited you in the art studio there is just so many different things that you would not on its own on their own uh connect with each other they're very different right but in the artistic process as you've mentioned with the line and then the wire you're taking all these different individual pieces that we require for unity right because in order to have unity there needs to be difference cultural differences like we discussed earlier but here differences between pieces so do you think that kind of process that you've been engaged in for over 35 plus years has shaped your
Martin: Thinking and your opinions around what unity is supposed to look like um i think it has um but it's given me um it's been a very personalized um how can i say it hasn't given me a model which can be um which i can point to and say this is what it looks like it's one iteration of it or it's
Christian: One it's one variation of it it's one example of it but wouldn't you say that artists are generalists because if you're looking at specialists like we discussed earlier if you're focused on a very specific topic you miss out on all these other details whereas art you kind of look from further away you need to be you're connecting all these seemingly individual parts together so does that give you a more general view and if
Martin: Well I think it does both I mean I think you have to use both convergent and divergent thinking in your approach to making art so you have to think about you do focus on details you do certain things to be exact and certain things to be precise but not necessarily everything.
Martin: You want there to be a richness within the work and richness is something which comes, again, from variety, from diversity.
Martin: For example, if you're drawing, the richness will come from different types of marks, so soft, delicate marks next to very, let's say, fast and hard, gestural, almost aggressive kind of marks, let's say. and it's the coexistence of those things and the way in which each one can bring out the character of the other when they're put together within one context and when they're related to each other. The notion that, for example, a line can begin as something which is scribbled and very rough and then can become something which is very fine and faint and elegant and graceful. and yet it's still the same line.
Martin: So I think artists are both specialists and generalists. In a sense, that's where I find the sweet spot.
Christian: Yeah, I was just going to ask you about that, yes.
Martin: That's one of the places I find that sweet spot because it's, again, all of these things which we would see as being opposites, they all come into play, and they all, they're all necessary. They play a necessary role within the coming together of a piece.
Christian: And that takes you back to the example of the human body and for sure and how they support each other because then again i mean i'm no artist myself but if you took away one element of a painting then it would destroy all the other elements or it would weaken them
Martin: Absolutely and I remember I was reading through some time ago I was going through an old sketchbook of mine and I came across a page where I'd obviously been thinking about a piece I'd been working on and I wrote one sentence which was just certain parts must be weak that may seem like a very strange thing to write it's like certain parts of the song should sound bad or certain parts of it should be rough or unfinished
Christian: Why is that? to emphasize the good?
Martin: Exactly, so within the whole spectrum of possibilities if you have some strongly defined forms if you have some other parts which are which appear to be unresolved which appear to be indistinct or again ambiguous or only partially rendered unfinished, abandoned the existence of that uncertainty and possibility next to the certainty and the kind of definite quality of a very strong form. Again, not only do they bring out each other's qualities, but I think they point towards what it is to be human, that we are those things, that we can go between those things, or we can simultaneously be in states of certainty and states of uncertainty, states of confidence and positivity and states of doubt and questioning.
Martin: So you're absolutely right. I mean, when something works, when a piece works, it does very much have to do with again this concept of unity and it is exactly as you say everything that needs to be there is there and if you take one part out or if you add one part something else it won't work it will dilute it or completely throw it off and when I say everything I mean literally everything it could be the smudge just on the corner that you accidentally made when you turned the paper round and you had charcoal on your finger or whatever that animates that little area of space and that somehow connects it to what's happening somewhere else in the image
Christian: That leads me to another question why do mistakes matter so much in the artistic process? Because obviously there are some artists who may be perfect in their craft, although I doubt that. But why are the mistakes so crucial? Why do they matter so much?
Martin: I mean, I don't think they're more important than the intentional outcomes.
Christian: Or a better question is, do they matter in the artistic process?
Martin: They do matter.
Martin: And I think there's a couple of reasons that come to mind immediately. One is that, first of all, you find yourself confronted by something that you hadn't anticipated. so you have an opportunity you have something to figure out which means that there is a possibility for the piece as a whole to go somewhere else to move in another direction or for there at least to be a small area of innovation within the piece that maybe will become significant later on but I think in a more philosophical sense perhaps, it's the idea of when a mistake happens,
Martin: Another way of describing that is something that you hadn't anticipated, something that you didn't have control over, something you lost control over.
Martin: When that happens, you have a moment to reflect on your relationship to the work and what it means to be an artist. And the idea of the artist, there's a difference, I believe, between mastery and control. and I think again we tend to conflate the two terms and we think that mastery means having full control over something. I don't believe that to be the case. I do believe it means having control over the things that one wants to have control over.
Martin: But I think mastery also means being able to accommodate and see how things that one didn't control actually can fit into what one is working on and can enhance it.
Martin: And also can make one open to the idea
Martin: The making of the work is, one could argue, not completely in the artist's hands. The artist is the main character, if you like.
Martin: You could argue, and that's the traditional argument. But also one can say, you know, if we think about the idea that artists are inspired, artists are influenced, it means that there are other forces of work, other forces of play, that the artist becomes a channel for those things. And I think when accidents occur, when the material behaves the way it wants to behave, or the medium behaves the way it chooses to behave at that moment, it doesn't take place in isolation and there are always other things at play which influence it the artist that I've always been most inspired by are artists who have been very, very comfortable with that. There isn't the kind of egotistical attachment to the process of making and to the final outcome and that desire for total control over it.
Martin: And I think, again, it's also about seeing oneself as being involved in the making of a piece of work. One is involved in it.
Martin: And what matters is that something good emerges from it.
Martin: Now, if part of what makes it good is the fact that the dog ran across it at that moment and made, you know, the dog's paw prints made a certain pattern,
Martin: Okay, so be it, that's fine.
Christian: But then, hearing this, could we say that in the most abstract sense art encapsulates human life because as an individual going through life you're painting the canvas and you're talking about mastery and having control but then there are all these unanticipated things that are coming your way and i think that you've just emphasized the human ability to adapt to change and i think now thinking about what i'm going to do after this podcast exploring more artistic ways of expression might make me think more about that aspect of life which leads me to another question because i think from what i've been hearing from you art can really open your eyes how can artistic practice help us move beyond rigid categories false dichotomies and like you mentioned earlier binary ways of thinking how do they expand our perspective beyond that fragmented one that we the fragmented lens that we had earlier on
Martin: I think one way it does is because the work of art, it simultaneously exists as different things. So it is a thing in the world. It is an object. it is an image, it is whatever form it's taken, it's a video.
Martin: It is that unique thing within itself.
Martin: But at the same time, it's something that suggests other things. and by looking at it we make associations with other things.
Martin: It can symbolize other things. It can describe other things.
Martin: It is both itself as a unique thing in the world which has its own qualities but it's also something it's something we look at but we also look through it we want to know what it means we want to know what that is the other day I pinned up a drawing that I'd been working on in the studio and one of my students asked me what is it and I said it's a drawing because that's what it is and that's the most honest answer I can give and the next question I knew what the next question would be and it was what is it a drawing of well it wasn't really a drawing of anything it was a drawing of itself it was itself and it had certain forms within it had certain qualities within it that one might be able to connect with other things in the world it suggested other things and it might suggest different things to different people now artists can decide how far along the line they want to go how explicit they want to
Martin: They want to refer to something else or invoke something else and they can go from really wanting to there's some art which is quite didactic and the artist has a message they want to communicate it's like a visual slogan other artists want to work entirely in the opposite way. They don't want to do that at all.
Christian: More implicit.
Martin: More implicit and sometimes the work itself, not all work has an intended message or some works can be a record of an exploration that an artist has undertaken.
Christian: And if I'm correct, that is in the realm of abstract art, in a way?
Martin: Yeah, for sure.
Martin: Though you could argue that all art is abstract, and you could argue that even figurative art or non-abstract art is also very much what you're actually looking at is the record of the artist's journey through the creation of the piece.
Christian: I find that so interesting because I used to draw when I was 12 or 13 on canvases and oftentimes when you're planning what you're going to make, the initial plan and the final product are very different. And I think what is more important is the process because again uh as a 13 year old boy i was making plenty of mistakes on the artwork and that made me alter certain things change things add things remove things try to remove them um but it was it is very much a journey and that resonated with me um but when you say that all art is abstract what do you mean by abstract how is it an abstract thing
Martin: Because it's, for example, the most detailed representation of something, a portrait or a still life or any subject, it's always going to be an approximation. First of all, if it's a painting or a drawing or a photograph, then it's a flat 2D response to a 3D subject. so already there's a level of removal there
Martin: I would argue that it's impossible for human beings
Martin: To use a faculty in isolation. So, for example, I could be looking at something and trying my very best to represent it as accurately as possible. but things like memory and emotion and imagination they're constantly running I don't think we can switch them off and they will always be there somehow there will always be some trace of those things within the work which means that we will never be able to capture that tangible, concrete, discrete object. Therefore, whatever we produce will be an abstraction by degree. And it may be a very small degree, if you like, but still it's an abstraction. I mean, I don't know if we can even talk about degrees of abstraction. But I also think that it's possible to, if you like, to read figurative, non-abstract art in an abstract way. so for example you could look at let's say a painting by Rembrandt and you could be absolutely fascinated by the brush strokes
Martin: And the textures that he has created in his portrait of a self portrait or portrait of somebody who sat for him the fact that it's a face the subject itself may become of lesser importance to you than the brush strokes, the marks, the traces of the artist's hand, or the contrasts of light and shadow within the painting, for example. One may appreciate the work for its colour, and in that act, one is abstracting, one is taking things out and one is moving into the realm of generality, which is the realm of abstraction. So one is, I appreciate the painting because of the way the artist has used red. Okay, so it's about color. I don't care that it's about some major historical event or whatever. it's this visual or formal quality so that is possible there are so many ways to look at works of art ways to view them and also these ways of viewing them again are influenced by the expectations we have there are things that
Martin: Again might not be considered to be works of art in certain cultures or within the same culture during a different period we would look at it differently once we know it's a work of art I think we're primed to look at it in a certain way
Christian: I just got another thought
Christian: But you mentioned focusing on certain aspects of art and very early on in the beginning of the podcast you were talking about how there is conflict in the world because we are hyper focused or each individual is hyper focused on one specific thing right are the are those two
Martin: Very good question. What you choose to focus on. Yeah. It's a very difficult question to answer, which I think means I think it's an indicator that it's a very good question.
Martin: Okay, so I'm looking at this area of blue curtain here, right? And it's part of a much larger scene here, you know, and then we can keep expanding out. and so I'll see you sitting there and the table and everything else.
Martin: I can zoom in on this, which means I'm losing everything else.
Martin: But by zooming in on this, and if you like,
Martin: Figuratively speaking, putting it out, isolating it, I am at the same time connecting it with every other blue thing.
Christian: That's true.
Martin: Right? Or every other curtain, like form or blue curtain like form so I think it can go both ways and I think that can work in art which makes me wonder well can it work in life can we reverse it I think we can and I think again it puts me in mind of another beautiful quotation and it's part of the same Sufi mystical poetic tradition that Rumi was part of and it says split the atom's heart and lo within it thou wilt find a son and I think that's the interesting thing that within the micro one can find the macro within the macro one can find the micro so by zooming in on the tiniest thing if we examine something under a microscope the tiniest things, we find a universe there.
Christian: On the ground you're learning about it all.
Martin: Right, again, there's another quotation from the same tradition. It says, do you reckon yourself to be a puny form when within you the universe is unfolded? Beautiful poetry, but yes, the whole universe is within us when you think about it. Everything that has gone into the creation of each one of us over time all of the elements and everything then yes we carry so much more than we appear to so I think we can go from the part to the whole but perhaps maybe the precondition is that we have to have an understanding of this relationship and maybe you know let's say hyper focused hyper-specialized investigation if it's informed by an understanding that what one is doing relates to everything else and can offer an insight into everything else or things beyond the granular subject one is examining then I think that will change how one approaches it.
Martin: And one will see implications beyond the thing itself. Which I think is interesting. And I think that's the alternative to just okay, now I know about this.
Martin: That's it. Don't know about anything else.
Martin: Yeah.
Christian: Considering the interplay between micro and macro is very important otherwise you have a skewed view of the world or of the painting exactly another example that just popped into my head before we conclude is that if you were to bring a hundred people together and inspect a piece of art and told every single one can you please identify something that is wrong with this right they hyper focus on one thing but obviously everyone has different things that they may notice but then in asking them to collaborate and correct those issues to create the perfect art piece and that causes the conflict and i think in connecting that to what we were saying earlier this is something that popped into my head um that would be a very interesting um social experiment that would be yeah because that is the notion of what you said earlier it's people hyper focus and everyone thinks one thing
Christian: Is very important yeah um but not everyone has those same opinions that's it so i think now we've brought this to a full circle moment and i want to give you an opportunity to kind of make all the connections for the audience that you wish that they retain um and kind of
Martin: Tie all together? I'll try my best. So I think we've talked about how dividing the world up into categories, oppositional, binaries, dualities, is not particularly helpful when it comes to understanding the nature of the world, how it is and how it works. Going beyond that, perceiving the world in a fragmented way in which we mistake the part for the whole or we believe that what we see at a particular moment fully captures everything that something is and could possibly be that is not only unhelpful but also leads to conflict and argument. and I think what we're desperately in need of is a framework which allows us to integrate diverse perspectives the insights that are gained from specialist inquiry
Martin: But I remember many years ago a friend of mine talking about the concept of detachment and the importance of being detached and he said it doesn't mean that you are indifferent to things you don't care or you have no feeling for things or you give away everything to be detached or to be not attached to things especially one's own thoughts one's own perceptions he said it really what it really means is not losing sight of the goal in other words keeping the bigger picture in mind and what that brings is the humility that allows one to see the things as they are to feel how one feels about things but not to see those things as being absolute and final and being everything to understand how these things become how they are part of something bigger that is connected
Martin: I think, again, coming back to art, I think one of the things that it enables us to do is to discover commonalities between things which appear to be very different. They appear to be dissimilar. and I think being able to see the opposite of something or the near opposite of something within something I think we need to learn to be able to do that because things are bigger they are vaster and more complex and deeper than we've been accustomed to thinking about
Christian: I think we
Martin: Need to develop the humility to be able to, and the imagination, to be able to, instead of completely embracing something and saying it's correct, and completely rejecting something and saying it's incorrect, we need to be able to look at diverse ideas and perspectives and to look at them for what they are, to try to see them as clearly as possible, to then start to find connections between them and things which may be categorized as being in opposition to them or very different to them, to start to discover these threads of connection. And instead of, again, saying, yeah, this idea was right and that idea was wrong, we need to see that it's more of a case of this idea, there's an insight here which is valuable and it can enable us or it enabled another insight to appear.
Christian: Similar to plotting things on a canvas. They need to work together.
Martin: Exactly. And again, the connection might not be obvious, but if it's approached in a spirit of openness to possibility, then things do become more obvious.
Martin: They do become more apparent.
Martin: You see, I'm not talking about a sort of anything-goes kind of non-judgmental, purely relativistic approach to things. For example, within the process of making a drawing.
Martin: I'll give you a more concrete example. In 2004, I had an exhibition in 798, you know the art district in Beijing. So it was the first solo exhibition that anybody had had in the whole district. And it was in the most, at that time, the most famous building in the whole district, 798 space.
Martin: Well, this exhibition, which was a huge installation,
Martin: My goal was to create something within a vast space that visually and even conceptually had as seamless as possible a connection with its environment, with the space. So people couldn't draw a line between the space and the artwork. They would just walk into this environment and they'd experience it as an integrated reality. so the materials I used and the things I created they all had connections to the space itself and they looked like they belonged there now I didn't have any usually when you go to an exhibition there's an artist's statement or there's a curator's statement and it introduces the work there's some context given and some background and stuff to help people find their way into the work I didn't provide anything because I didn't want there to be that separation I didn't want people to come into this space and think okay this is an art exhibition all of those behaviors and attitudes get triggered
Martin: By that, they adjust themselves I wanted them to come into a situation that had not been defined for them and to try to define it for themselves, figure out what it was. Now, many of the people who came in were workers from the nearby factories, so they'd come in in their lunch times and they'd just say, oh, here's an open door, let's see what's inside here. They'd come in and they'd see this.
Martin: Now, there was a second-floor landing and I sat there in the corner and I would watch people come in. It was a big space, so I would not be seen.
Martin: And because there were no labels and there were no instructions and there were no titles or anything,
Martin: People found themselves in a situation where they had to decide what to do or they discovered they had the freedom to do what they wanted.
Christian: To interpret.
Martin: so what would happen is i mean i had for example like metal table like forms that i've made and then i had wooden boxes and some of the boxes were closed and some of them were open some of them had objects inside some of them didn't some of them couldn't be opened suddenly there was a box that was missing there was just like the dust around the box or you know whatever so what people would do is they would start to open the boxes, and sometimes they'd pick up the objects. So there might be a box, and then next to it there's an object, and they'd pick up the object. There's a fragment of an object. They'd try to figure out what it was, or what was the connection between this and that. And there might be one half of an object, which is here, and another half, which is way over there. is one thing. Again, we talked about connections between things which are not adjacent or obvious.
Christian: Super explicit, yes.
Martin: Yeah, actually. By the time you got from there to there, you may have forgotten that it existed. But it existed. It was there. It's real. It's there. The connection's there.
Martin: And I decided that as people were moving things and the work was changing, they were participating in the making of the work and changing the work, I had three options. One was I could just ignore it.
Martin: Two, I could,
Martin: If I liked the changes or some of them, I could keep them. If I didn't like them, I could try to move things back to where they were before. But I understood that this would be impossible, because it would never be exact. It would be an approximation. The third option was, I might get a new idea and decide to move something somewhere else.
Martin: So those were the options that were available to me. but there was a rule and this was the point that I wanted to make that when we're talking about the making of a piece of work and accidents and unintentional things happen the rule is that whatever happens it has to integrate itself or you have to find a way to integrate it within the system, within the whole.
Martin: Otherwise, it doesn't work.
Martin: So, all kinds of changes could take place within that environment and within that artwork. But if it broke the essential unity of it, then that didn't work. You see? So, it's how flexible is something, how vast is something to be able to accommodate, you know, what is the scope of something? How much can it take under its embrace? How much can it integrate within its system? What coheres with what's already there?
Christian: How much can it encapsulate?
Martin: Yeah. And the way in which it relates to those other things. Again, if it brings, if it enhances them and thereby enhances the whole, then it works.
Martin: Yeah.
Martin: Yeah well no thank you that's very kind of you and this is one of the things that happens you know we get inspired you know so if I trace things if I didn't need to go for a pee I wouldn't have had that second thought and I came back and it led to another thought another insight another memory what's happening also is I'm getting very tired so I've been up since five something I'm not feeling today I didn't feel great physically or emotionally and now I'm tired and what's happened what happens sometimes when you find yourself in this state and I'll tell you another story in a minute, it's related is that the mind it loosens you're freed from some of the habits you're less self conscious and things happen. And I find this when I work. If I'm working late at night and I'm really tired and most of my work at the moment is video so it's me looking at the screen. I'm really tired.
Martin: I'm thinking, you know, what to do? And I just think, oh, I don't have any great ideas right now.
Martin: What about if I just do this? maybe I'll just drag and drop this still image onto the timeline here and then just see what happens and play with the opacity and see what happens 9 times out of 10 that's it that's the moment you have to be at that state you can't be in that conscious very intentional state where you say I am going to do something really good here, you know, or I'm going to solve this now. It doesn't work within the creative process and I suspect more generally within life as well. Of course we have to be rational and we have to be organized and practical, blah, blah, blah, but when it comes to certain things, maybe the deeper things, we need to, I think, to reach a higher state, we need to reach a higher state of consciousness and that involves going beyond where we normally are and certain factors can contribute to that such as being tired or whatever. I remember my teacher when I was 16.
Martin: She's now 80 or so, and we still keep in touch.
Martin: And she said to me at the time, she said, don't take drugs, okay? Don't take drugs.
Martin: I said, well, why not? And she said, look, if you want to stimulate the imagination, if you want to access things that you normally couldn't, you know, in your rational state of mind,
Martin: Just stay up all night or don't eat for a couple of days and see where you end up. And it's really true.
Martin: I have experienced this.
Martin: And, for example, through fasting and things like that, you, it does unlock pathways that provide access to ideas that you normally wouldn't be able to, that you couldn't conceive of.
Martin: So you had a great question for me before, and I was racking my brain for an answer. You know, the usual things that you do when you're trying to answer a question didn't get very far.
Martin: And I think it's being able to there's another quotation I really love
Martin: We need to see the end of things now that's very hard but what it means is I think partially seeing the potential within something seeing where something can lead seeing the possible implications of something and I think if we learn to do that then we'll be much kinder to each other
Christian: Much more flexible
Martin: We'll give people the benefit of the doubt we'll have the humility to say I can't see the full picture you're asking me about this person who am I to say all I know is what's been presented to me and what I've been able to figure out so again I think in terms of transference or things that can be learned and I would argue that we could probably we could switch from art to science or any discipline and we could say there are these transferable things that can come into life that can be beneficial to life. So you mentioned flexibility and open-mindedness. I really think I can't imagine
Christian: A great scientist to be inflexible and narrow-minded can you cannot be rigid you have to be willing to change adapt yeah those are all qualities that i think if uh this is a little bit speculative of me but i think if they were uh more prominent in our society i think we wouldn't have as many conflicts i think being able to listen being able to adapt exactly i think in the curation process as well especially in building something like the insight for example being able to listen to feedback constructive feedback especially is super helpful because you have if we look at it there is a multitude of opinions and different perspectives that people as we said earlier have on that one art piece if there's just one person taking that assumes the pejorative to make all the changes then you're risking or you're hindering your growth and potentially damaging a good product and i think looking at
Christian: The website if i had the pejorative if i could make all the decisions then obviously it wouldn't grow as much and i think being able to take the different insights pun intended yeah um and using that to craft something is crucial and i think that also like you mentioned is key in the artistic process um and also how are you losing the inhibitions and that kind of structured thinking the linear way of thinking when you're more rational when you're awake and being in a more drowsy or tired state and that really uh opening or what would you say like opening or making you more creative or bringing you to new heights yeah yeah i think yeah it's
Martin: I think it loosens you up somehow. It sort of, it puts you in a different space.
Martin: Things feel more porous.
Martin: The boundaries and barriers between things seem less defined. So that gives one greater flexibility and possibility for movement. You know, you're willing to try out different things. and you're not so quick to dismiss things either.
Martin: You're willing to sit with something to give it the benefit of the doubt for a period. I remember I went through a phase where I was doing a lot of drawing and I would draw something and I would think, oh, that's great. I think that, I'm so excited about that. Wow. Then I come back the next morning with thinking, oh my God, what a piece of garbage, you know, this is awful. I should just destroy this, and sometimes I did.
Martin: came back a third time,
Martin: And the third time I looked at it and I thought, well, it's not great, and it's not garbage either. It has elements of greatness within it. These things are really working quite well.
Martin: These things not so.
Martin: And then it became a case of, well, two thoughts emerged from that. One was that my perceptions and judgments are not stable.
Martin: They're conditional. They're provisional.
Martin: And we do need to give something the longer look. but we also need to be again not oversimplify and generalize and say it's great or it sucks let's be precise what's working and what's not working and then it's a case of what happens when I deal with the things that I'm not satisfied with again how will that affect the things that I am happy with because a change over here is going to cause a change over here.
Martin: In Chinese, they say, 切一发而动全身 It's like you cut one hair and the whole body moves.
Martin: And it's true. And sometimes you would fix it here, and then you'd look up there and you'd think, oh God, that looks rubbish now.
Martin: And you'd think, well, maybe I shouldn't have bothered. And sometimes it is a compromise. it's like okay I can't touch this without ruining that and I want to keep that so I live with it this is not the best piece I've ever done but it's got something in there and I'm going to keep it and maybe that you know will I can bring that to life somewhere else and something else you know
Christian: Very well said and it applies to all the concepts and ideas that we were talking about earlier as well i hope so yeah it does do you have um any other things that you'd like to leave the audience
Christian: with i know that you've tied so many ideas back together through anecdotes and examples
Martin: And yeah final yeah love is the only thing that matters love is the thing that holds everything together everything the atoms, the hearts, everything that is it, that is the force of attraction that brings everything together, holds everything together and so if we talk about unity well again it's impossible without acknowledging love so love is
Christian: Love is the glue that keeps the puzzle pieces together
Martin: Exactly, it is that is the thing that bonds and connects everything
Christian: Thank you so much for being the first guest on our new segment
Martin: I'm honoured
Christian: Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join us we're truly honoured to hear your insights
