Conversation with Gordon Burn
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DH: I like the idea of outside and inside - the medicine cabinets
to be like people, with the drugs the internal parts and they kind
of relate to different parts of the body. Life and death as a sculpture
is a surprise and the acceptable look of it is a bigger surprise.
I see the flies, well I actually didn't use flies - but the flies
could be people, as the bottles in the drug cabinets could. If you
see people as flies you can seem them as butterflies - like either
small and disgusting or fragile and beautiful. Something that has
always intrigued me, in all the works, is the action of the world
on things.
The names of the drugs in the cabinets conjures up a vision of
human misery and dread - with all the drugs there comes a reference
to a particular sickness along with a list of side-effects. One
drug, on the packet, for example carried a big warning - it said
blurred vision, change in color vision - these were all the side-effects
you could have, so it said like a warning - you think the drugs
are perfect and they're used to heal you and do everything they
say - I've got a headache so I'll take this.
GB: They're about degeneration and decline aren't they?
DH: Yeah, basically. One warning I wrote it down, let me just have
a look at it, I'll get it out for you - 'Warning: can cause blurred
vision, changing color vision, headaches, severe nausea, vomiting,
ringing or buzzing in ears' - I mean it's ridiculous - 'itching,
fever, wheezing, back leg or stomach pain, delirium, seizures, comas,
cardiac arrests.'
GB: And was that on your mind when you did the pieces? Thinking
about the those kinds of negative effects as opposed to the positive
effects?
DH: When you're installing something like that then you're looking.
You've obviously made the initial decision to get involved and create
it anyway to begin with.
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