Gearoid Dolan (New York) in conversation with Áine Phillips
24-6-07 County Dublin, Ireland

BIOGRAPHY:
www.screamachine.com
I am an Irish artist, living and working in New York since 1987. I continue to work on an ever-evolving project titled “screaMachine”, which I started in 1987. ScreaMachine is realized in the form of installations, performances, audio and video works, films, digital media art and more. My work is by nature experimental; it pushes the boundaries of new media, experiential and time based art. I produce works that are flexible and that can have many incarnations.
Gearoid Dolan a.k.a. screaMachine

Aine
Do you translate lived experience, personal experience in your art?

Gearoid
I think of myself as a commentator on public events, and the 'me' that shows through is the interpreter – the filter is me. My approach is the reversal of 'from the personal to the political' it goes from the political to the personal. My work starts out with something in the world I want to comment on and it is filtered through my opinions. I look upon my work as being reactionary, in that it is filtered through my opinionated self and that process forces me into the work.

Aine
Do you do that consciously – finding an outside issue and filtering it through yourself?

Gearoid
It depends upon the actual content of the piece in question.

Aine
How do you think of yourself in the performance?

Gearoid
In performance, I am situating myself in the context of the work. I am both me and not me (I am not a character). I consider myself as male subject number one. A generic male, except for the fact of my beard (unique to me). For example in the work "Separate" (2006) commissioned by NYSCA (the New York State Council on the Arts) was performed in different places in different forms. The final version of the piece involves two performers that look fairly identical. I invited Fergus Kelly from Ireland as my doppelganger. In this case and in most performances, I don’t look at myself as a specific individual, but 'male' does come into it from time to time. I look upon myself as a generic male human being. Now I am more tattooed, it becomes an issue. I have covered the tattoos with makeup (to remove that personalization). I leave the Screamachine logo on my back which is part of the identity of the art, rather than the identity of an individual.

When it came to doing the final performance, in the "Separate" series, I wanted someone who looked enough like me (Fergus) so I wouldn't have to tone myself down. It is an ego thing, I want to be identified with my own work.

When I write up the performance, it is in the third person, like a manual, so that anyone can do the performance. If I am dead it can still be re-done. The performance is not centered around my identity. In 10% of the work, the performer would have to be Irish or male or some other matching trait. Each performance proposal is like a music score, they can be played again and again.

The works can be reinterpreted to a degree. In the "Separate" series, Fergus Kelly performed with me identically. When I show the documentation to people, they get confused as to which performer is which, we are so alike when wearing the same white suit. People assume it's me, because every other version of the piece is me either naked or in the white suit.

Aine
I would like to explore some of the more directly autobiographical pieces that take elements of your personal like as content. For example "Drag"…

Gearoid
I was thinking of that piece when I said the performer would have to be Irish. It is autobiographical to a degree and about Irish males of my generation. The final image revealed by my pulling a bible (dragging it by a cord attached through a pierced hole in my foreskin) across a projection field on the floor, is of myself and my ex wife – but it could be of any couple. It is a transformation in the performance and it refers to a transformation I went through in my own personal life.

Aine
You took a personal experience and translated it into something universal in significance.

Gearoid
It was about a transformation I went through which was a self segregation from the culture of Irish Catholicism towards a more stable emotionally mature person. In the performance the motion goes from Christian Catholic doctrine towards sexual liberation and non-repression. The image of myself and Cheryl (my ex wife) is one of fully enabled sexually mature people.

Aine
Did the personal experience come first or the political will to speak about the wider issues?

Gearoid
Since my early 20's, I researched the doctrines that made up Christian mores right back to the Old Testament. For example in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, in notions of man and woman - women were seen as being dirty, filthy, unblessed, like things that crawl! In Ireland in the 80’s, sex was viewed like this and condoms were a black market item, you couldn't get them.

Aine
In your work, you have a political consciousness and you transfer your personal awareness into the larger issues of cultural and social conditions – you translate the lived experience.

Gearoid
Yes, I had always wanted to do a piece about that oppression I had experienced. Our political system was subjugated to a religious system. In fact, the separation of church and state still hasn't happened in Ireland fully.

I moved to America in 1987 and could disassociate myself with that religious society while still identifying with being Irish. The separation of church and state in the US is wider partly because there is such a vast array of religious belief, all in disagreement with each other. So when I came to do this piece in 2000, it was from a perspective of liberation having lived with a woman for many years, having no one commenting on what we did but ourselves, being sexually and emotionally free and at ease. The context is definitely autobiographical because of that.

In the performance, I go through the 'endurance' of dragging a bible (acting as a computer cursor) to erase a biblical text on sexuality, to expose an image of sexual bodily comfort and liberation. At the same time I am holding my Irish Birth Certificate rolled up in my hands behind my back. The notion is that I am erasing my Irish religious cultural conditioning while maintaining my Irish identity. I wanted to make the point that you can be Irish and free.

Aine
Do you use the personal references to make a political point or do you use the political material to make a personal point?

Gearoid
The personal gives it context, gives me the right to say something. But I want to say something political, something cathartic – hence the name Screamachine – it is my cry for what is going on in the world and this is my reaction, the mechanism for screaming my distaste and resistance to it. The reason I make art is because I have the intelligence to notice and talk about things that are wrong in the world. My work is didactic, it is a political statement saying this is my opinion – I am disenfranchised and art is a method where I have a voice. I can get to shout my opinions and deal with different subjects publicly.

Aine
What was the first piece you made that had personal material as well as political?

Gearoid
The first public piece I did was in 1985 in Ireland called "Factory". It related to my own experience having worked in factories on a production line. It was about both the beauty of industry, its' sounds, cacophony, rhythms, devices and the absolute tedium and mindlessness of factory work. It was an indulgence in the industrial and at the same time a comment on the subjugation of the individual into the soup of industry.

Aine
How did you bring elements of lived experience into the performance?

Gearoid
I was appreciative, when working in the factory, of the aesthetic. I was gripped by it. I would gather memories and retrieve them later when I had the bigger picture of the piece, the subject matter and the reason to do it. It's like writing music, creating from the interrelatedness of the various elements. I have an instinctual feel for it. There is a degree of cynicism in how I apply the notion of gestalt, that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

The reason I chose specific parts was aesthetic, to give the work a beauty or repulsiveness, to form or fulfill my aesthetic. The piece came from my experience of working in a factory but became about the subjection of the individual working in a structure like capitalism or communism. It was a youthful reaction to realizing there is no freedom, the realization that I have to do something to make money, to cowtow to the system and the grind of working. Autobiography can be used like this and be metaphorical of conditions in the world.

Aine
All your works reflect your life experience, your attitudes and beliefs.

Gearoid
Most of my works reflect my opinions. I am opinionated and the works come from the type of person I am, they reflect me.

Aine
When I watch you in a performance you are yourself in your personality and styling.

Gearoid
My style is reduced. I don't speak in my work, I consider myself a visual artist, speaking in a visual language and using visual metaphors. It comes back to the notion of gestalt – that complexity has simple parts. I am very mathematical and I enjoy physics. In a general sense you can make complex statements by amassing simple elements. Simplicity is beauty. I look upon myself as creating a mechanism rather than a linear script or narrative. The co-incidental meeting points of these elements can often be the critical part of the performance. For example, in "Separate", I am pulling a milk crate down the street with a projection in front of me. Who I bump into, the traffic conditions etc. all affect the piece.

I often run multiple projections together each with different elements of content, but I don'r micromanage the content with a computer sync-ing the pieces so they all come together in a certain way. I often deliberately make the video pieces of different durations so that over 10 hours, each of the elements have a possibility of combining in so many ways that the gestalt comes through.

When I insert myself into the work I insert an element of locality, specific to me.

Aine
Do you think of your work as self portraiture?

Gearoid
The belly tattoo in "Define me" (2007) is a self portrait, my representation in the world as defined by government and official offices. It is an amalgam of portraits of me according to bureaucratic systems. Again, it's all the little pieces that make the larger picture. The larger 'figure', the image of the spiral of numbers coming out of the navel, is a gestalt. It does define me more than any of the individual bureaucracies that gave me a number. Each number is a context, a time and a place, an ability and an identity.

Aine
Is this the most autobiographical of your works?

Gearoid
It is a sum of biographies that becomes autobiography. I took the various biographies written by offices and put them together. I make it autobiography by control of the biographical elements.

There is a piece called "Without you" (2000). It was about what it would be like to be without my wife. It is closer to love poetry, lamenting the potential of death and separation. It was autobiographical, speaking about current emotional states. I used projected animations of my ex-wife's skull (taken from CAT scans) and a projection onto the palm of my hand of a human heart. I held up my hand as though to make an oath. I made a pledge of love and mourning. The animated skull was projected onto my chest.

In general, I don't feel I need to talk about personal things in my art work. For example, a relationship break up happens to everyone, every second song is about it. I don't feel like my perspective on this is unique. But I do think about things that have a macro and a micro aspect to them. The micro is my own personal experience and the macro is the world perspective. I don't see a way of extrapolating this personal story of a break up out into the world to talk in an important way about the human condition. I make work about things that are important, about politics or injustice. I move across subjects to find a catharsis, to resolve and complete the idea, to say the thing that needs to be said.

My piece "Separate" (2005/2006) came out of a sympathy and empathy for street people. Not that I was ever destitute or very poor. I see it in my NY neighbourhood, the oppression of street people who live in worse and worse conditions and I see the opposite of empathy where people step over destitute others in the street. That turns my heart and it makes me react.

It shows how the political is actually personal. Political things happen because of personal decisions. For example, that people walk over others in their everyday life, is a political decision. Political events happen as a result of personal acts.

I am a commentator on these actions.