Interview With Rachel Potts and Marcus Coates for Garageland Magazine

Rachel Potts , Garageland Issue 6: Supernatural , March 8, 2008
Interview with Rachel Potts and Marcus Coates for Garageland Magazine issue six ‘supernatural’ 2008


1. What I’m interested in how you deal with the idea of non-humanness through animals, for example in
Journey to the Lower World where you used shamanistic ritual. What interests you about the non-human?


Marcus Coates: In western societies all species are designated as having their own consciousness, an exclusive experience of being particular to that animal or bird or human. I’m interested in the possibility of these boundaries being flexible and on some level this being familiar to us. However minute the commonality between say us and bats are there might be degrees to which we could and possibly do know what it was like to be a bat.

In attempting to navigate this commonality I can explore definitions of humanness, whether its using our cultural adaptation or appropriation of nature as a context or exploring the idea of species difference through scientific processes or technology. Across my practise I adopt or engage with varying cultural aesthetics as contexts. The strategy of becoming animal has become central within this. More recently I have been looking at the historical function of this ‘becoming’, its use as a social tool particularly within shamanic traditions in indigenous societies.


2. Would you say you were trying to investigate the truth or validity in shamanism or spirituality through this work?


I have developed a process where by I can put my animal becoming skills to a practical use. Shamanism is a model I have roughly adopted to reference this process to a cultural act people can identify with. I am partly interested in the idea of the artist taking on roles that are essential but society doesn't recognise as immediately necessary. In this way I am investigating the validity of the artist.


3. What led you to start working with the ‘lower world’, and the idea of tapping something inhuman?

Becoming animal is pretty exciting for all children, I don’t think I grew out of it. From being a stoat, seal, squirrel, deer, hedgehog, badger and half of the British Bird species it's a natural step into the Lower World where all of these animals and more besides exist. Mostly you have to talk in their language, they like it (are responsive) if you make the effort. You have to be careful not to ham it up or they’ll think you are taking the piss.


3. What have you been working on recently? Are you still dealing with rituals?


I’ve recently engaged in a ritual in Israel with the Mayor of Holon, a town near Tel Aviv. Clients ask a question, for me to seek a resolution/answer to. He asked me about youth violence and about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I performed the ritual with him and a translator in his office. The answer focussed on a bird called a Plover and its habitual behaviour in the face of danger.


4. How serious are you about the idea of another realm or real transcendence in your work?

transcendence in your work?


I am serious about my skills as an artist, my ability to use my imagination, to enter worlds defined by my imagination and the control of that process to affect/create an arena for empathy and dynamic shifts in identity projection for myself and ultimately others.


5. Would you say you are commenting on or investigating something about the nature of art through focussing on the sacred and spiritual?

I would say I am investigating something about the nature of our species through the filters of many cultural adaptations including the sacred and spiritual. Art is the by-product of this.

There is a transcendent point between belief and not believing, between being open and protecting yourself, engaging and not engaging, reality and illusion. Artists play with this edge because it is a powerful pivot as does religion.


6. I’m interested in the links between psychic phenomena, the imagination and the creative drive; the traditional or historical idea of the artist as being ‘in tune’ with otherworldly phenomena than ordinary people. Your work nods to this idea, and I think it’s an interesting theme for contemporary art as we seem to be combining cynicism with a kind of openness too. How do you feel about this traditional view of the artist’s role, how do you see yourself? It seems as if you have a distanced view of this kind of ‘belief’, without ridiculing it, would you agree?


I’m anti the idea that artists have innate exceptionality beyond the norm. I use skills that a scientist, actor, management consultant or mechanic might use, I have combined and honed these to be effective in a very specific area. What is interesting to me is that I have invented the specific nature of my job and found a role for it in society which is an exceptional situation. It has become apparent that part of societies need for my (artistic) practise to be effective, an audience needs to create a distancing persona for me, to establish a separateness from them. This often means them granting me an extraordinariness. Of course I play up to this and I invite it, performing in extraordinary costumes sets me apart from the audience but ultimately the audience give you or your work its power and decide how ‘special’ you are in order for the process to work for them and I think that's probably true for all art.

In everyday life there isn't much room to exercise one’s imagination and realise its potential, even on a political level (Holon, Israel). Because this is my job and I am trained to use my imagination I can offer this as a unique service.


6. There is a humour to your work, do you think there is a relation between the escapism in humour and the escapism or transcendence in spiritualist ideas?


Collective laughter feels transcendent, as a group reaction it combines people and releases nervousness, fear, tension in this way it is cathartic and infectious. This is again a by- product of a performance/encounter not something I seek. Humour caused by the incongruity of an action can bring a relief that suggests our lives aren’t defined by an obvious and known reality, but that we can step outside of that and look down on ourselves to see something as farcical and perhaps discover a new truth.