Forget Danny Boyle, this is the man who changed my mind about the Olympics. I interviewed Gregg Whelan (left), co-founder of performance arts enterprise Lone Twin, for an article in University College Falmouth’s alumni magazine, Scratch. Gregg and his partner in crime, Gary Winters, have created a boat from wooden objects donated by the public as part of the Cultural Olympiad. I was a complete cynic and he blew me away. Here’s what we talked about…
Could you start by telling me a bit more about the boat project?
About a year ago we started to ask people for donations to the projects – and those donations would be things they don’t actually want to give away; things that had been important to them in their lives, those sort of keepsakes or functional objects, favourite chairs, tables, or just small things like dice; things that had some value in their lives or in the lives of a family member.
We were amazed. We collected donations for about six months… the breadth of things, things that had real personal value but also national value, there’s a piece of the Victory, the Olympic (the Titanic’s sister ship), but then there are lots of things that are intensenly personal private things too. We received about 1,200 donations.
What do you think made people part with them?
As people made a donation we interviewed them, took a portrait of them with their object and it all went into a book. A lot of people had family heirlooms or things that had been passed down from a parent when they died. I think they responded to the idea that this thing would be logged and kept, rather than residing in the attic and perhaps ending up being lost. I think people liked the fact that their story would be logged forever, that they be in this book and in this boat. And when the project started getting media coverage, and there was a sense of wanting to join that.
We’ve done quite a lot of projects that work by invitation; where we invite the public to work with us on something and we’ve learnt not to be too surprised by the response, because often people are often more hopeful, positive, generous with their time, with their lives than you might think.
Why a boat?
We started work on the project about 11 years ago. We were making a lot of performances where the performance itself would be a real life journey, a long journey on foot, or on bikes, A lot of these journeys involved water in some way, crossing rivers or lakes – and we’d talked a lot about how human geography, where we live, where humans have settled, where cities have sprung up, is entirely about their relationships with water. (The only exceptions are Las Vegas and the Vatican!) So we started thinking a lot about water and how the human relationship with water completely shaped the world – the human geography of the world, and how mastering water or conquering it in some way opened up the world. It was by boat we understood that we live on a planet, it was boat that we understood that we’re not alone, it was boat by that we discovered that there were other cultures and started to understand other cultures.
At that point 11 years ago it seemed liked the logical step to build a boat. When we started work on it and realised we were dealing with this idea of boats and communities, boats and society, boats and life, boats and cultures, – as apposed to a bloke going up and down a river in a boat. It’s something much more human in its ambition, so we knew then that we wanted to involve thousands of people in doing it.
We started to think about ways that that could work pragmatically. We knew what we wanted to do was build a boat that could properly go onto the sea; we didn’t want a sculpture. Going into this project I didn’t know anything about boats. When it was commissioned within the context of the Cultural Olympiad, with the boat builder etc, we realised that boats aren’t just boats; there are designs and shapes that are associated with a certain time period and country. Simon Rogers and Mark Covell the designer and the builder, became very interested in the idea that we should build a boat for today, for 2012. So that in 30 years time you look at this boat and think: “That was built in 2012”. They wanted to build something that was contemporary. We were bringing all this old stuff to the project and we would make something new. We were giving the objects life – they weren’t museum pieces, or archival pieces; a lot of our projects are about giving something life. I think that’s what people liked; the idea that this thing that had sat on the mantelpiece, would go on to have a whole new life.
The crew on the boat were voted for by members of the public. We asked people to nominate people who would really get something out of being on this boat. Thousands of people were nominated and we shortlisted it down and picked a crew of seven.
Why is the Cultural Olympiad an important part of the Olympics?
I think that the Olympics is a cultural event anyway. I don’t see why not – from why our point of view as artists, sport is the same sort of thing as I’m involved in. It’s about everything for me sport: aesthetics, politics, achievement, identity, community, race; I can’t think of something that sport isn’t about. All of those things are part of sport, and endlessly debated in sport. Personally, or as a company, we’ve made a lot of projects that are about sport. I’m involved in a research project at the moment about sport and art.
The Cultural Olympiad and the normal Olympics used to be part of the same thing, and you could win gold for running very fast and you could win gold for writing a poem. The modern Olympics, as apposed to the ancient Olympics, which was sport – but sport that was enjoyed aesthetically, rather than in terms of times and winning. Sport in Greek times was really a version of dance in a way. If you were Greek and you wanted to add value to a pot, you’d draw a runner on it, because the aesthetic shape and form of a runner, was much like flowers four or five centuries later.
With the modern Olympics that had sort of dropped out by the austerity Olympics, the time the Olympics were last in London. When the London bid went in one of the things that was received positively was the fact that they’d reinstate the cultural Olympiad, that they’d bring it back. It’s not a new thing – it’s a much more traditional version of the Olympics.
I don’t think there’s a huge amount of knowledge about it in the public sphere, but I think it will become very apparent during the summer. Perhaps then one can assess whether it’s been a great thing to have. It’s certainly been a very intriguing context to make work in.
What’s the importance of the Olympics as a whole?
It’s perhaps the really simple things. I think the idea that you gather together a group of people who are trying their best at something, is a really good thing to have. In a very simply way, it’s inspiring; in quite a broad way. It may well mean that more young people try sport, but moreover it’s a moment when a lot of the world turns and looks at the same thing, that sense of a big global community looking at something which is about attempt, about people trying to do something. One of the things that is lost, is that a huge amount of peole are doing something on a world stage that is effectively their hobby. All of these people have other jobs; full time jobs. We’re looking at amateurs, hobbyests. The idea that the world might be interested in what you do in your spare time is quite curious – and I like it a lot. At the heart of it are these very human, quite personal, private endeavors that get played out on a global scale. For me, that’s what’s really interesting about the Olympics. It’s a grand stage for very small human endevour – there’s something greatly positively about that. Something quite peculiar and odd, and I like that.
What are you most proud of?
I’m proud that we’ve survived. We’ve been going for fifteen years and I’m proud that Gary and I have managed to continue a working relationship and that the company’s survived for that long. We make contemporary performance; live events. There are five of us in the company – to make that happen and keep that going, I’m proud of that.
What’s the influence of the Westcountry on your work?
Gary and I met at Dartington College of Arts and we were there this week doing some workshops for the students and giving a talk and it was great to reconnect with that context. Gary I wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for Dartington and it taught us all sort of things that still affect that way we work, about the way we understand collaboration and the way that we behave as a company, and make work together.
We’ve had hundreds of volunteers building the boat with us, the public are crewing the boat, that tradition of boat building in the Westcountry and the culture of that was a definite inspiration behind the boat project.
Thank you to Toby Adamson and Gary Winters for the photography.
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- interview :: rose forshall
- interview :: tom dymond
- interview :: natasha ratcliffe
- interview :: donna wilson
