[The interview, in west Cornwall, commenced on 21 February 2002]

LU: How did you first meet Alaric? How did you become aware of him?

McD: The first time I was aware of him… I was working with Ken Turner; and he was working on forming a Cornish-based performance group.

LU: Ken was.

McD: Ken was, yes; and he had come across Alaric; I don’t know how. And he told me that he was interested in us all meeting and talking together; and that was the first time I met Alaric, at an open discussion about performance in the kitchen of Ken’s house.

Always, I am sceptical about new people. That’s the way I am. I am quite cautious. So it wasn’t till we actually started working on a project together in General Specific…

LU: General Specific was the name of the group?

McD: General Specific was the name of the group and the first piece we did was in the Newlyn Art Gallery. It was called Doubtless. It was a kind of a happening, very 70s in spirit, for which Alaric created some texts about the space in which we were working.

When we started working together, it began to become more chatty and talking; and it wasn’t a head on clash of ideas. It was a very supportive, quirky, bemused feeling of “This is someone I am interested in”; and it took off from there; and I was hooked. Alaric was such an extraordinary…. The way in which he would talk with you, and I say with you, not to you. It was fantastic. He drew all sorts of ideas out and wiggled them round in the conversation. It was a fascinating experience. At the beginning, I felt I was supporting him, because he seemed very insecure about the way Ken was interacting with him; and I had worked with Ken previously, for about six months; and so in a way I was saying “Don’t worry, this is Ken’s way of doing things.” It allowed him to be more happy with what he was doing, which was wonderful, even in that first piece; although it was very difficult because it was a new space for him to be working in and also to be working in collaboration for one of the first times, branching out and working with all sorts of people.

I think that’s what became one of his fascinations with collaboration: at what point are your ideas yours, and not just collusion with someone else’s talk with you; at what point do you start owning it. Do you own it because you iterate it? Or do you own it because you have actually thought it in your mind? At what point does it become your thoughts.

It’s always informed by something else so it’s very difficult to pin down collaboration; and I think he found collaboration both very difficult and the most inspiring thing, particularly when he started teaching at Dartington [College of Arts] ? I think he felt hooked by interaction with people.

I got the feeling that he believed very strongly that we are a continuum of interactions with people and ourselves; and it would be very difficult to make the distinction between where you began and where someone else began. There’s an area where it crosses over. And that’s why, when you are working with a specific person, you will create a piece of work that is specific to the two of you. It would be very difficult to not do that. And you’re affected by the way that you respond to each other. Even in conversations. Even on a personal and emotional level. I think we have an idea that we are individuals; and yet my experience of life hasn’t shown me that. In fact, it’s shown me the opposite continually. We aren’t individuals. We are the sum total of our interactions, including interactions with ourselves, if you can imagine yourself as a multiplicity of parts of yourself within which you interact.

LU: That’s interesting. I once, apparently, in a conversation with Alaric, one of numerous conversations, trying to express an idea, and probably failing, said ‘it’s autocollaboration’ of something which involved getting myself into a space that wasn’t quite me but was still productive, that I would normally do by working with someone else. I had no idea that I had said that beyond the moment of utterance

When I was going through Alaric’s papers, I found the lecture he gave where he said “and I call this autocollaboration [laughter from McDermott] a term used by Lawrence Upton”, or “I’m quoting Lawrence Upton”; at which point the word then came back into my vocabulary. I use it quite a lot now. But, in fact, I have plagiarised it from Alaric who had plagiarised it from me. That area is interesting and you’ve expressed it very well.

McD: I think he would say that he used stolen pieces of text, radio programmes that he’d listened to; and took sentences, paragraphs, phrases, words, and re-established them in a form. They were incredibly rich sometimes, because he picked out the nuclei of the conversation and placed them together in such a way as to create a dense, quite tangential and often semi-impenetrable ? that’s a contradiction in terms… It felt almost… it was quite difficult… You had to battle with what the words were doing to each other. Within that battle, you formed your own sensation of what he meant by these words. I could imagine him sitting back and enjoying watching someone battling with that text, although he had no real fixed sensation or meaning through it. I was excited by that. It allowed me to be the author within his own work. And that’s a paradox because, in one way, he was the author and he had placed these words together; but, in another way, he was allowing you to explore these words on very much your own terms. And to find your own space within it. That was for me a very exciting thing in the way he used language; because he was very much of the idea that it was not specific and it was interpreted individually; and I felt that was real; and it stopped people feeling that they had a finite usage of language. It made me feel that language is a much more flexible and fluid instrument than a lot of the time we are conditioned to believe. The media particularly is into creating a system whereby we understand very succinctly what certain words mean so that we can identify them and react to them so that we buy whatever products it is that they are trying to sell. I am worried by that. It’s a very frightening way of looking at language, as an instrument with which to condition us to commodify ourselves.

LU: Let’s go back, if we may, to General Specific.

McD: Yes. [Laughing] You rein me in.

LU: Well, it’s not so much reining you in, as I saw you wanting to stop.

McD: I’ll just go on until I come a halt of my own volition.

LU: Well I’ll rein you in then; but not when I feel, as I do now, that what you’re saying is very interesting.

A lot of people I’ve spoken to are saying that they either observed Alaric, or they worked with him, on a particular project. I think that you and I, and probably more you, are unique in having worked with him on a range of things; and that you were more aware of all the things he was doing. There were some things he hadn’t told me about. The ones he didn’t tell me about and I found out about while he was alive he told me “Well I knew you wouldn’t like that”; [laughter from McDermott] and I told him off. And now I’ve got access to all his little secrets, I find that he went on doing it. So I had a partial understanding, while he was alive, of what he was doing; and that is also something I have come to begin to understand. So you’re in a position to say what it was like and that’s what I want to get, rather than everyone saying “I think he was…”

McD: But ultimately that’s all you can do.

LU: Of course

McD: What the interviews I imagine will do is that they will tell you a lot about the people giving the interviews [Upton laughs]; and not so much about Alaric. That’s the difficulty with interviews. Because you’re interviewing a specific person, it is their views and their ideas you get about the way in which they interacted with someone. So you are closer to identifying the person you are interviewing than you are the person you are interviewing them about. It’s tricky.

LU: It is. It is.

McD: It’s tricky to try to distil out of these many words that are being thrown at you in conversations with various collaborators and observers. It’s a very tricky thing to do; and I think it’s a wonderful thing to do. I hope that the results will be exciting. I look forward to seeing them.

LU: I think they will be quite extensive! cris cheek and I, who have collaborated with each other ourselves several times and have known each other longer than either of us knew Alaric - we go back a long way - we’ve talked ourselves, about Alaric and talking to each other, into a position where we’re going to do another email discussion about collaboration - cris is moving around so much it has to be done by email - and to some extent we are letting go the subject of Alaric. That is, he will no longer be the sole subject of discussion… I think that maybe the use not only of what I am doing in general but, maybe, maybe, longer term with Alaric’s work. I think that some of Alaric’s works are very fine and will last…

McD: Yes.

LU: How good or how bad they’re held to be ? well that’s curation in the future, isn’t it? But I think also his value will come to be seen as a person who churned ideas out.

McD: And challenged.

LU: Yes and challenged other ideas. Challenged people. Changed people. And we’ll come to look at everything he did, certainly in the 90s, as a time-based performance, which is now passed, for which we’ve got fragmented documentation.

McD: Fragmented documentation very much so, because I think he would have felt that the works fulfilled their function at the moment of performance whether that be read off the page, through documentation, or in the observing or the interactions of the performance of the text.

I felt that The Unspeakable Rooms was specifically, in some ways, about that particular issue - the fact that text lives in performance; and when that text is not being performed, it doesn’t exist. It only exists at the moment in which our minds make sense or make nonsense out of the words; and that is one of the things that I found exciting. It’s back to the idea of fluidity.

And you were saying, earlier, that I may have an overview -

LU: Nearer to an overview.

McD: Nearer to an overview, exactly. It’s all subjective. That was the thing I was very moved by. To begin with, I admired Alaric’s work, and was fascinated by it, but did not want to collaborate with him artistically. I wanted to know him before I could really work with him. That was very important to me. It was about two or three years before I took on The Unspeakable Rooms; and that was the first piece that I could really say “OK this I want to work with”. And I was able to say quite commitedly that this was a text I was prepared give myself to in the kind of way that he would want me to, that I would need to feel the same passion that he did. That was the thing that I felt inspiring in him. His passion made me feel comfortable, because often my passion loses itself ? it’s a bit like a firework that goes off and comes down again, so you end up talking yourself out of sense, and lying flat; but with Alaric there was a sense that we could talk for hours and auto-excite each other with ideas and we would end up after however many hours or coffees we’d had - coffee was a ritual in itself - and end up exhausted. He would come back and say “I don’t want to speak to you again for another week because it’s just exhausting.” And there was an emotional tie in with it because then I felt that I had done something to him that had somehow abused his sensitivity, which wasn’t the case at all. He was totally responsible for how exhausted he got by speaking to me, as I was with him. We challenged each other a lot. And we, because we knew each other on a personal level, before I actually worked with him on a professional level -although I don’t think those boundaries really come into play with Alaric to a greater extent. I realise that now…

I just saw you looking at the minidisk and it unnerved me.

LU: I’m sorry. That’s just to make sure it’s working. I’m not used to this machine.

McD: I know. [Joke patronising tone] And not that you shouldn’t be looking it. You’re just doing your job, having a quick look. How long have we been talking? 15 minutes. My, that’s a long time, isn’t it?

LU: I know and I’m going to upset you if I say it seems longer! That’s why I looked at the watch too. No, it’s going well. Please try… But it signifies nothing except that I am making sure we are still recording. It’s actually a sign of encouragement that I care! [Laughter]

McD: What do you get out of all that.

LU: A lot! Now, let’s go with The Unspeakable Rooms. You’ve told me emotionally, but what were the mechanics of the collaboration? Did Alaric say “I want to collaborate with you. Here’s this”? Did you say “Give me a piece.”? Did you say “That’s interesting! Let me perform it.”

McD: No How it happened, as far as I see it; and Alaric may have seen it very differently; and that’s always the fun of collaboration. I had liked a lot of his work and I had always told him that I really liked it and that I was very interested in it; but I had never, at any point, said “I want to do this”.

He had said to me, if you find something that you want to work on, I’d be more than happy to support you and help you in that collaboration.

So it was on offer from him that his work was there to be interacted with. And, until I read The Unspeakable Rooms, I hadn’t found a piece of work that I felt sufficiently passionate about that I could do the work justice.

When I came upon The Unspeakable Rooms, it was also an area that would fulfil certain needs of my own. My nervous breakdown seven years ago meant that language at a certain point ceased to have any meaning. I had to redefine the boundaries of how I saw my world around me. It was as if you had a room and then suddenly the walls got knocked out and you found yourself in a much bigger space, much more flexible space, that was far more difficult to make finite, and structure ideas and concepts within, because it didn’t exist. To a certain extent a lot of it was linguistic. Some people might say that the whole thing was linguistic. How can I think about anything without using language as an interface?

So The Unspeakable Rooms was a fascinating piece for me. It was not only something that I felt about intellectually but that I felt bodily as it affected me.

I was also fascinated by the way it was structured as a poem: but, at the same time as that, it wasn’t a poem. It was a dense text that had no real narrative form. It was a diatribe on many difficult topics related together; and my belief was that I could make this piece visceral. I could place into this piece, I could interact with it, so that it would create a dynamic expression of itself. I think that’s what Alaric wanted and I think that was what he was inspired by when I said I wanted to do it. As soon as I said I wanted to do it, he was thrilled. He said “Well I can let you have space and time in Dartington [College of Arts]”; and he would apply for grants for research so that we could actually get it off the ground.

I think he liked the way I performed and he had confidence and believed that I could perform. That was how The Unspeakable Rooms started. That was my first collaboration just with him.

It was a much more vicarious and separated collaboration in General Specific. We were just beginning to find out how we would work in a creative collaborative domain. I wasn’t sure how I would interact, being a very physical person.

I felt that I wasn’t sure how this collaboration could move because I saw Alaric was an intellect that - I assumed when I first met him that I would not be able to handle his academic rigour and his incisive dismantling of language - I think in some ways I found that threatening; or because sometimes the… theoretical side of what he was doing as well seemed alien to me, I may have felt that it was distanced from me through my… It would make me feel inarticulate, I suppose, because the language he was using was a language I didn’t use. Eventually, after long conversations with him, we found a way of communicating which was slightly different. I think he found a way of communicating with me. I see myself as quite tangential.

General Specific was a kind of sounding out which lasted about two years and then we started working together and the collaboration was The Unspeakable Rooms. It went extremely well.

One of the big issues for us both, and which - I think - consolidated Alaric’s fascination with collaboration, was, because it was a successful piece of work, people immediately wanted to identify the aspects which, as individual components, had been successful. In analyses, people were trying to apportion particular successes in the work to either Alaric or myself. It became complicated for us, when we went to America particularly. It was unnerving; and it was as if we both didn’t want something that we felt was ours to be taken away from us. It had a value. It was having an effect in the outside world. It wasn’t a piece that was just for us. It was a piece that other people were getting excited about. So, therefore, the dynamic of the piece itself changed quite considerably; and we found it difficult.

We worked through that.

Then there was when Nekyia, another piece, he did with Jo Hyde and Steve Halfyard… 

I was going to be involved with Nekyia but because I was still trying to get my head around what had happened with The Unspeakable Rooms; and where I actually lay with that… I was surprised by its success. I had never worked in that forum before.

Therefore with the preparation for Nekyia I hadn’t been involved and then it had already started.

With Nekyia, he wrote a piece of text, gave it to Jo, who worked on it, gave it back to him; he then reworked it and gave it back to Jo; so there really was this indecipherable meshing of ideas and decision-making. It was almost impossible to decide who had made these decisions who had made these decisions in the final work. Nekyia itself is about the subterranean subconscious world in which this kind of collaboration goes on. It’s not identifiable. It is lost to us in some ways. It is hidden. Under water was a beautiful metaphor for it. I feel that was the trajectory of very much of his work in collaboration.

Though, saying that, the piece that moved me to the same extent as The Unspeakable Rooms…

Nekyia for me was… I felt it was a valid exercise, which is not to demean it as a performance work… For some reason, I wanted something more. It was too nebulous and maybe that’s a ridiculous thing to say because maybe its whole reason and whole form was a kind of fluidity through this way of interacting images and sounds and text; and ideas and concepts, that were also linked in. Maybe my understanding is increasing now…

But I thought that Letters for dear Augustine was the most beautiful piece of work. It was also a very private work. It was collaborative but within himself, as if it was a collaboration between different aspects of his… love, I suppose; because the letters I found incredibly moving to read, yes, very moving, as if you were writing to a lover sometimes and the painful way in which you want to try and communicate and feel unified with someone; and at the same time you can never achieve that; this strange paradox of wanting one thing and knowing at the same time it was impossible. It was painful to observe that kind of self-eating, like the snake eating its tail; it’s uncomfortable; and the way in which language was used. It’s a more romantic use of language, I felt; a most beautiful piece; and I still haven’t been able to go back to them; I find them a bit too raw to read. I can do things like Nekyia and… It felt so personal to Alaric that it feels like the essence of something that I had really lost and therefore still find it difficult to access that.

LU: I’ve been putting one or two of them out in email on a discussion list where, whatever else we’re doing on the discussion list, we get a poem of the day. And a couple of times a letter to Augustine has appeared as the Poem of the Day, without a context or much information. That’s the test of it, that it’s knocked people out. Wow! What is that?

And that same effect was there in Quick Hits ? On the last Sub Voicive Poetry  date of the year, anyone who had performed during the year was invited; and the idea was really to have a poetry party. So Alaric came the year that he had read with Carlyle [Reedy]. He huddled up a bit and introduced the work almost talking to himself and then read, as I remember it, very clearly. He was quite different and forceful and the writing knocked people out, myself included.

Now… do let’s go back to General Specific…

McD: OK

LU: How did it work? When something was going to be written in advance, am I right in assuming that was written by Alaric? Or were there things written by you and or Ken.

I felt that these two, for me, mammoth intellects were not somewhere that I could textually involve myself; so the written work itself was very much by Ken and Alaric. Alaric’s work at that time was… I think it was because he was placed in a position to Ken that created the roles that they took

Ken took the role of the dismantler of fixed ideas and was very, in some ways, quite… destructive is too heavy a word; but it’s this very heavy questioning of the rigour of Alaric’s use of text. So Alaric found himself in a position of creating a structure within this mad space in which they were collaborating. It was a strange and uncomfortable space for him because he was like Ken in some ways. Maybe that’s why their relationship was quite conflictual.

Because was Ken was so aggressively questioning, it made Alaric’s work become much more structured than Alaric was really comfortable with, which I thought was wonderful. I’ve got, I think, somewhere the texts that he wrote in General Specific, I cannot remember exactly what, and it’s noticeable how succinct and precise and incisive is the way in which Alaric’s language is being used. He created texts in a much more controlled and literal way than he might normally do; and, after he finished with General Specific, it felt as he moved into a different kind of arena. Previous to that, Conversation in Colour was one of the pieces written before General Specific; and that was an exercise in endurance, I think. It was almost like a Reich piece, but in language. I always imagine it as a kind of minimalist sound work. Rather than being a text, it’s a score almost like a piece of music with these continual repetitions.

LU: Actually Conversation in Colour was written a very long time ago

McD: When?

LU: Pick a date. Way back into the 80s, but he kept changing it. He made it into a play. I think I’m right, because I need to study it more, that he made it back into a story and then made it into a play again. In one of the folders of work that I haven’t really paid full attention to, which is General Specific, I think, the Penzance Arts Club one, there’s a bit of Conversation in Colour suddenly appears.

McD: Yes, I did that.

LU: You mean you chose to do that?

McD: Yes. I was a bit lost .It was Time Memory Past?

LU: That’s the one!

McD: The Penzance Arts Club said that if we did a performance piece for them we’d get free membership for a year. So we put together this piece called Time Memory Past and had some very pretentious conversations about Time and Memory… Personally I had never experienced humiliation and embarrassment in that way. I think it was because it was one of the very first times I was doing performance work. I didn’t think it was successful.

Alaric chose to do a piece in his room.

What happened was we did a collaborative piece to begin the performance; and then we moved off into separate rooms in this hotel / arts centre. Ken just had a diatribe and was talking to people in his room.

Alaric had recorded sounds from the room and a text of himself speaking in the room alone; and, while this was playing, and the audience was there, he reiterated and interacted with his own conversation, with the tap dripping and all that. It must have been quite beautiful in its own way.

This was all simultaneous so the audience had to decide which room they were going to be in. So they couldn’t see all the pieces that were happening. They could only witness certain aspects of each performance. It was quite different for each one… I think Alaric’s room was probably quite good.

I filled my room - it was the smallest room, a white room, completely white even down to the bedcovers; and I filled the room with white balloons and a stroboscope and I just burst balloons [laughter]. It was about time and the big bang. It was very literal. [laughter] Very two dimensional; but lots of people loved it, and thought it was great fun, having these strobes and balloons being burst in this white room. Then we all came out of our rooms and met and went downstairs and did this other very embarrassing bit. For the text from Conversation in Colour - I stood on the bar in the club and started to recite: “It is it. It is it and I am walking in to it. It is it and it is blue. It is blue and I am walking in to it. It is it. It is it and I am walking into it. It is it” and it went like that for ages. Of course, not feeling comfortable with that kind of text, I just started to feel incredibly embarrassed as I was doing it. Which is quite an interesting way to do a performance. How often do you get performance artists who, instead of feeling vehemently and passionately involved about what they’re doing, feel [wild laughter from McDermott] totally humiliated and undermined by their own presence. So maybe it was a more interesting performance than I imagined at the time.

So that was Conversation in Colour, my first interaction with it. I’m fascinated with it at the moment through thinking how I can get the piece to work in a way that really lifts it into another area, other than text I mean, where it fulfils its function.

LU: Conversation in Colour has something of an audit trail because he was writing to Michael Finnissy and others. There’s quite a lot of correspondence. Often there isn’t. Things just appear. So one can know quite a lot about its genesis. And obviously, from an text-editorial point of view, it has its specific problems. Was there talk at any time, did he suggest to you, for instance, that you would be one of the actors?

McD: Yes. He wanted me to do it. This was before The Unspeakable Rooms… I didn’t feel passionate enough about the piece to take it on. I could only do a piece of work if I felt totally involved; and I didn’t feel that. I had to feel that or why would I be doing it? I’d be like a paid actor; and I’d done that and didn’t want to continue. And I think it was probably too complicated for me to create in a way that - even now I’m not sure if it could work. I’d have to start experimenting to see I could create the kind of thing I think it could be. I don’t know. He had [asked me], yes, and I came in and helped their performance. There was a man. I can’t remember his name. You’ll remember.

LU: Laurence Yates.

McD: Larry, yes. That’s right. I found that very difficult because the kind of piece that it was for me demanded that the way that the text was spoken was not that of an actor trying to make it a story about this person who is being hurt by their relationship; and that was what Larry was very much trying very much to do. He was becoming very emotive with the language rather than letting the emotion speak for itself within the structure and rhythm and the variation of small amounts of words really because there were so many words that were replicated and chanted, if you like; it was a chant almost. Therefore it didn’t hit the mark. Alaric’s performance of it I found very affecting.

I remember we had one rehearsal; and because Larry was very much going for it so to speak, it made it very difficult for Alaric just to speak it. It’s Alaric’s work. He didn’t need to do anything. He just had to read it clearly. I think he agreed with me. He kept saying “I want to do it the way I did it in that rehearsal.” Then, we just stopped. I said “Stop trying to do it. Just breathe. You don’t have to do anything. The less you do, the more powerful it will be.”

Because there was this juxtaposition, I didn’t feel it worked. Had there been two actors who were doing it in the same way, that might have worked.

Had there been two actors who were doing it as a sound piece, that might have worked.

Had there been a real addressing of the diversity of the way that Alaric and Larry were separately doing it, that again might have worked. It could have been a wonderful conflict between two ways of addressing text. That could have been part of the performance itself.

Finnissy’s music somehow seemed disassociated from it. I wish his music had been more rooted and…[RM gestures extensively] I’m doing all these movements [laughing]… to try and physically explain… but really, I wish the music had been more insidious in the creation of the piece. What happened was you had text and then you had a piece of music and then you had text.

It would have been beautiful had Finnissy had the time, which evidently he didn’t, to collaborate with two… sound poets, if you like, and created a piece that was an ensemble piece; that would have been wonderful; but that was not to be.

Alaric was extraordinary in the way that he would use what he had. He would find people, write to them, ask them what they could do. Whatever they could do, he would use. That’s what he did with Conversation in Colour when he did it at the Tate St Ives. That was the last time I really heard much about it. He seemed to move on with other projects that were fulfilling different aspects of his… search, as it were.

LU: It didn’t have a good reception at Dartington [College of Arts]. No one told the students that it was on, by Alaric’s account, and he got a bad write up from the manager there. So it went into written recriminations. Never good for an artist.

McD: How do you mean?

LU: Well, the bad report was sent to South West Arts; and Alaric was very worried that it would upset things for future grant applications. Which would be why it may have become a burden to him rather than the joy of a success; and he didn’t speak of it.

McD: And he was very upset by the idea of criticism. I remember, we did a preliminary [The] Unspeakable Rooms performance for which I probably hadn’t done as much work as I would have liked to have done. And therefore the piece that was offered was a twenty minute piece. The Tate [St Ives] weren’t particularly inspired by it. They weren’t really worried about it. The facilities they offered us weren’t what they should have been. It meant that the piece didn’t come across as strongly as it might have done. But the two people from the Arts Council who came down and stayed had no qualms. They gave us the award. Because they could see that there was something there which was of interest.

Once we got that, there was a lot more work being involved in it. Alaric was very wary of the way that people would criticise. I was tougher in that because I’ve worked in professional theatre which is raw and ruthless and horrific in the way that people will happily tread and walk all over someone’s ego. You have to have a huge ego and you have to have no ego at all. It’s a very peculiar state of affairs.

But also, to be honest, I think Conversation in Colour was a very complicated piece to do justice to. When I saw it at the Tate [St Ives], there were some people who were very moved by it; but I must admit that I wasn’t so moved. There were some key conceptual performance issues that weren’t being addressed in it.

So if that’s similar to the way it was done at Dartington [College of Arts], then I can understand particularly a place like Dartington [College of Arts] having problems with that piece of work. It wouldn’t have fulfilled the kinds of edge and the way of looking at performance that they would have been interested in.

LU: One of the stages it went through in its development was a radio play; and, in some ways, I think it remains a radio play.

McD: Absolutely. That’s exactly right. I see it as a score for a sound work. As I said to you, possibly for the Alaric Sumner Festival , we should be treating it as a sound work. So that you relieve the listener. To a certain extent. I don’t think that the idea was to relieve the listener from the repetition. But it was to create a situation where the repetition became a chant. And that wasn’t happening. When you’re doing it as a story, you take away the idea that it’s a chant or a mantra; so you’re going against the thing that will make it come alive.

And if you’re using it as a sound piece, then you can create multi-layers and you can repeat certain sections over each other. So that the audience knows what’s being said and ceases to listen to the meaning; and starts to begin to hear merely the dissonances of the similarities. So you’re hearing a constant wave of thought. I certainly find sometimes my head does that. It’s a circular motion. And you’ll find it very difficult to get out of it. And you’ll get occasional glimpses of colour, or a different movement, or a different observation point; but you’ll go back into the circular feeling. I think there’s a way of doing that aurally with sound and voice that could be beautifully done. I don’t know whether I could do it but I can imagine it being done; and I can imagine it being a superb piece. A piece with a real poignancy, not from acting indulgence, but from the words themselves. They need little else.

LU: One thing I was going to suggest, one thing we might do, is when I am down here or you are in London, is a reading of it together, initially to a recording machine or a few people, as a radio play; because you could make it a live event just by reading it in front of people! That’s all a lot of poetry readings are. And just see what happens. And then look at how it might be developed or altered.

I think we should be open, as you suggested, to taking his texts and changing them -

McD: Absolutely

LU: but saying “This is still an Alaric Sumner Festival and this is substantially his work; we wouldn’t be doing this without Alaric”; but saying too “We’ve learned ? in this case he had a measure of disappointment, because it didn’t quite click, but maybe he had it right two years before, when it was a radio play.”

McD: I would have thought that. I think it was a piece of work that had something in it which was very important to him. It was something, therefore, that it was very difficult to just let go of. It was a very important piece of work for him.

LU: He’d lived with it a long time.

McD: He’d lived with it a long time; and it was a very brave piece of work to put out. I think he was desperate to fulfil the sensations he had when he was first working on it. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe it was difficult to carry that through. Had it been put out when it was first done, it could have been successful.

LU: I think, too, there was that success, however you look at it, that was a success, with The Royal Court, to get a piece accepted there is something else anyway; and then to have had the good reaction that, generally, he got.

And they said “If you have any other pieces then let us know.” And I think, possibly, knowingly or unknowingly, he put greater emphasis on that than he should have done. I know that he wrote to people “I have been asked to offer more work to The Royal Court.” And so there was an impetus to have another theatre script.

Voices (for 9), the piece that the Court did, was old too; and that had worked so let’s do it again. I’m surmising. I don’t know.

Conversation in Colour was one of those things, as I said, that he didn’t mention or hardly mentioned to me, because he had decided I wouldn’t like it; which was partly my fault for being undemonstrative. I’d look at a thing and say OK; and that to me is praise - if I don’t look worried. If I do look worried that may mean I like it and have been hit between the eyes.

He wanted me as someone who knew his work to be more demonstrative than I naturally am about new writing.

McD: I was fairly much the same. I was low key unless I felt “I want to work with this”. And it was at those points that he went “Wow! He really does like it.”

The extremes of his passion and his emotional state I found exciting; but must have been painful for him. He would be soaring and then within and an hour or two hours in the lowest depths of despair. There were huge contrasts in emotional pitch in him; which came through I felt in the work. I think that’s the thing that gives them so much power. And the contradictions within the work: the placing together of certain words that have such a dissonance as if they’re magnets repelling each other; these words are spliced together and yet they’re pushing apart within the text. That’s a fascinating thing. I find it quite rare to see that. So many writers are concerned with “These words go together, they work together” whereas Alaric was more involved with dissonance in the words; and the way that you can put words together in such a way that they’re fighting and conflicting.

And that was exciting, it was so exciting to read language that doesn’t make sense in a conditioned way. It was a very healthy place to fight for.

When I was reading Conversation in Colour recently - boy, have I read it, I’ve typed it, in different versions!

McD: You have my commiserations!

LU: One thing I was reminded of, there’s a quote from D H Lawrence. It’s a famous quote and I’ll probably get it wrong - It is the way our sympathies flow and recoil that really determines the course of our life. Only Lawrence I feel could say recoil rather than ebb. I was thinking that is going on at whatever level of magnification you want in Conversation in Colour, which is why as a piece of writing I think it’s quite brilliant, however good or bad it is as a play; and then over the last few days for the first time I have been putting dates to things and see how things coincide; and I’ve been thinking… Alaric, this is your whole life. Maybe this is a mundane thing to say because it’s true of all of us; but it seemed particularly strong in him.

McD: He had these states; and I supported him; and we talked for a long time and he’d say “Oh God, I can’t talk to you”. I battled with that. I wanted him to know that even though he thought no one was there, they were there. There was a point at which it wasn’t his decision whether there were people there or not. It goes back to the collaborative. There’s a point at which you can say “I’m on my own and I’m in this terrible pit of stale air and depression and desperation”, but you are responsible for that and you place yourself in those areas; and I wanted him to know that, at the point at which that finished, there was someone there who really cared very deeply about how he felt and about what one could do. 

LU: There was one time he came to London and, as so often, as we’ve discussed, we dragged ourselves from the Monmouth Coffee Shop before we became stretcher cases -

McD: Shaking all over!

LU: And we got to a corner… and a question arises: what are we each doing?… I said to you the other day that we walked for some hours, talking, going nowhere; and then I asked him “Alaric, where are we going?”; and he said “I’m following you”. But on this occasion, he said “Do you have to go now? How long do you have?” - I suppose I was walking decisively - and I said “Well, I’ve got as long as you want; I’ve kept the entire day free.” And he became, in a good way, childlike. You know? “Do you mean? You mean you want to be with me? You’ve not booked yourself in case…”

And I said “Yes, we could go for a walk, and talk. I would like to talk with you. How busy are you?”

He’d come to London and booked himself into a place in Earls Court ?

McD: That’s right. Know it

LU: and he didn’t know anyone there and didn’t want to go back there. It was very strange.

McD: That was one of the things that we share. Our gay heritage. In some ways I was in awe because he was a member of Gay Pride from the very roots of it. And often we had long conversations on his crushes he had on various people ? collaborators he was working with often [laughing]; and talking about going out; and I can tell you I remember - oh god, the most hysterical thing I can tell you… In Cornwall down here there are very few gay venues; there are hardly any; and there was one club that opened up in Perranporth for three or four hours on a Saturday night. It was an old hotel that converted a British Legion social club into a gay discotheque [both laughing]. And we talked about going over there because both of us wanted to find a place where we could be and say that there are other gay people in that space; if that was necessary. In some ways it wasn’t; but it was something we shared, our understanding of fancying blokes. It was interesting going to these places occasionally. I can remember going once to some other club some place with Alaric. And rather than all these other people dancing in very stereotypical ways, Alaric started doing… I suppose you’d say… expressionistic movement in the middle of the dance floor [strong loud laughter from McDermott] which was wonderful. The reaction he got! The anger! The horror! They thought he was taking the piss. But he was just doing what he wanted to do. Everyone else was supposedly doing what they wanted to do! So he stood there doing these very extravagant movements and eventually he was the only one on the dance floor at the end of the night, moving to something like Gloria Gaynor [both laughing]. It was brilliant.

Anyway, we decided we were going to Perranporth, to this place called The Rainbow Room of all names… I went over to St Ives to collect him. It was about an hour and a quarter’s drive. Anyway, I remember the last time, some months previous to that, that we had gone to a club. He sat in the corner with a pint, took out a note book and wrote; and then he blamed me for having the most terrible terrible time. How could I take him to such a horrible place?

And I thought I’m not doing this again. Then we got into conversation about it, and I thought maybe we should try again. Maybe he’ll have a better time this time. It was desperation on both our parts I think. Anyway we ended up having driven an hour and a quarter over to this bloody Rainbow Room; and we’re sat in the car park; and he started to threaten that he would have a horrible time if we went in. And I thought I’m not taking the blame. So I said OK, well we won’t go in then.

It was very funny. He couldn’t - If I wasn’t prepared to take the buck for him having a horrible time, then he wasn’t going in. So we drove all the way back. And that was our Saturday night. We both couldn’t believe what we’d done. We had events like that.

It was a very strange relationship because in some respects it was like we were lovers. We weren’t. We had hysterical giggles at the idea of there being any kind of physical relationship between us. It was an absurdity for both of us somewhere along the line, it was more of a fraternal feeling… Until he wasn’t actually there… Until I got this phone call saying Alaric’s died… It was complete shock. I never… and then my immediate concern was - a  protective device that I didn’t have to deal with my own emotions on the subject. My thing was to deal with a lot of the things that I knew were going to have to be sorted out; and really being there for Rosemary , that was the thing I felt most strongly about; and sorting out his flat in Dartington; that was the last thing anyone had ever imagined; so it was very difficult; and then after when we had sorted a lot of it out that was when I began to feel angry and hurt and all those kinds of thing you feel when something’s gone that you liked and you had no control… It was a very intense relationship… and I suppose I imagine him complaining bitterly about me to people… but there was this passion there… Even in groups together sometimes people would feel uncomfortable because we were so volatile together; and we’d start to insult each other very personally in front of this a whole group of people who didn’t know each other and didn’t know us either. It was quite exhilarating.

LU: To me, he only ever spoke positively about you. I’ll just tell you that.

McD: Ahhh!… Ahhh!

LU: There’s no way you would know. He never said anything bad about you.

McD: Ahhh!

LU: I suggest a pause, and a cup of tea perhaps, because we’re getting near to the end of the disk….

McD: Phew!

LU: That was very good stuff!

McD: I’ll be interested to see what you can get out of that. Maybe there are bits and pieces you can transcribe.

[The interview resumed on Saturday 23 February 2002]

LU: Knowing we have limited time today, I have typed some key points out. So, I have four questions for you, maybe more, depending on your answers; and two of my planned questions may elicit the answer "No". At which point, that's it.

After, if we have time, I have a couple of things for you to look at; and that may or may not go into the interview, but I would like to leave the recorder running as you respond.

McD: That's OK.

LU: Good.

So, Rory, why do you think The Unspeakable Rooms is subtitled The Necessity of Anger? How do you understand that?

McD: Ha!... To say I think I understand it would be a misrepresentation of how I feel about it. When I first read it, the text, it resonated with me powerfully. It impassioned me. I felt somehow I wanted to be involved with it as a text; and to play with it; and to move in it.

Later, after I had done some first versions, I realised that my own anger was something that I identified with in the piece.

I'm not sure when it was given that title. I think it was after I had started working on it, because I think was the way in which Alaric - certainly when we were talking about it, there was a lot of - It was very...

I think the anger came about through the topics of frustration at trying to communicate and not being able to communicate. Just discussing those particular boundaries. At what point does language break down? I feel if language breaks down then you break down. You have no means to communicate and therefore no means to contextualise your being; and therefore the world ceases to make sense to you, because language is the way that we are. So anger was fundamental in the piece and that's probably why it was subtitled The Necessity of Anger. That's what I got from it, but on multiple readings there would be multiple ways in which you could view that.

LU: Right... Do you have the sense that I have expressed, that I find Alaric quite an angry writer?

McD: Yes. There was an anger. It is a funny kind of thing to describe because of the way we use "anger". "Passion" is also another word that I could use, which is very similar to "anger" and yet not the same. I think of a lot of Alaric's work as passionate... Certainly when you met.... Lurid Technology... I think I read to begin with; and it was incredibly dense, conceptually and intellectually and academically. And I thought "Oh dear, this is heavy going"; and I wondered to myself what kind of person this was. I think this was, before I got to know Alaric. Then, when I began talking to him on a personal basis, I realised that there was this incredibly passionate volatile emotional being. So there was great contradiction between some of the ways in which he communicated himself through his work and who he actually was.

I think that as I knew his work and as his work developed, there was an integrity. There became more integrity between himself and the work that was being created.

Through his work he was coming to terms with who he was. That was very beautiful. To even think that. Whether or not I was right or wrong, I don't know. But to just think that and believe I was seeing it was a beautiful thing to witness. It supports the way I feel that probably the greatest way that art can affect any of us is that. Somehow we come to know ourselves through it and we come to know what our place is in the chaos of things, or we can create a place for ourselves in the chaos. I don't believe it is anything much else than chaos really; but we need a sense that it isn't chaos or we shan't get far... So passion and anger. I think, yes, anger; but it could have been "The necessity of passion".

LU: This is possibly in that territory which you were portraying a few months ago when you played Christ in the Passyon; and he has to throw a wobbly... It's not bad temper, it's outrage -

McD: Desperation.

LU: Desperation, yes.

McD: The thing that I found complicated about that - It was the most fascinating thing. To me the key to it was...

The screams.... 

It was conflicting understandings; and one of them was this animal pinned to a piece of wood, knowing that it was not going to be saved... knowing that it is was going to...

This was its humiliation. I think that was one of the things that I found most powerful. I never imagined how humiliating it would be, not even pinned, but just up on a cross in front of the whole village with a nappy on and screaming. There's that aspect to it. But I hadn't realised in real terms that it may have been the most humiliating and degrading way of being observed. Being an animal pinned to a cross, and having all these ideas about what you believed in and what you were passionate about; and having this huge conflict, one of which was saying you believed in what you were saying; and another which was aware that you were an animal pinned to a piece of wood and were dying.

I wanted to create a sound; and I had to use a text because that was what was given; so I had to use those words.

So there were similarities, yes; and when they came and asked me to do the Ordinalia, I had no real difficulty in deciding. It was, I felt, very much the same themes and themes I find fascinating. I was being asked to do the same thing. I had no real doubts that I could do it; but it was a very different kind of forum.

LU: Yes. I don't want push that too far. I certainly don't want, as one could do, following that line of argument, making Alaric Sumner The Messiah! [loud laughter from McDermott] Now there's a thought! [More laughter] But I think in terms of the complexity of what was meant by that word... I find it fascinating, too. You're right, though, that the subtitle isn't on all the texts; and, if I paid more attention, it probably would show up as coming in late.

McD: I think it came in later and I think it came in discussions about the text. I think he was aware of my anger. He was aware of my anger. That's one of the places we met. Anger! Passion!

I don't think Anger's a negative thing at all. I think Anger's incredibly powerful and can create a lot of energy. So I think Anger can be used in very positive and creative ways. And Passion too. It's the way in which we use the words. Passion has a more creative sense to it. I like the idea of Passion. And I certainly feel that is one of the ways that I met with Alaric, was this kind of passion. And it wasn't just a passion for having your own thoughts felt, but it was a passion of respect for other people's sensitivity. And I think that was something I was very moved by. If I felt that I had upset Alaric in any way; and I know that on various occasions I did because of the views I held or because of what I had said or done, I also knew that he was an incredibly sensitive character and would become incredibly impassioned by the idea of something being said that he found difficult... and vice versa. It was a very rich playground, that relationship... [Long mutual silence]

LU: I think we've done that, haven't we?

McD: Yes! We've said "passion" enough.

LU: Can you tell me about taking The Unspeakable Rooms to America. Anecdotes, insights, regrets, good Alaric Sumner stories...

McD: I hadn't worked for a long time. I had never worked in live art and performance art. Well, in lots of ways I had. That's what I've done my whole life. But I'd never done it in that forum, so that for me was scary.

I had no idea what to expect from Cleveland and what kind of events would occur.

Alaric and I were taken and placed in this bizarre house with these huge fluffy cats who hid everywhere as soon as you came into the house... Someone who was a friend of the festival gave the two eccentric - supposedly - English people their house, which is this beautiful wooden house full of 1950s memorabilia and these huge cats; and Alaric and I found ourselves in this bizarre house; with this wonderful woman who had supplied us with a fridge full of vegan and vegetarian food and all sorts of tasty bits and pieces. It was the most fantastic place. She was a lovely woman. It was a wonderful time. It was really exciting, and frightening. I think for us both... 

Alaric had a real sense that his work was taking him places, I think. I really felt that it was exciting for him; as it was for me; but also traumatic as well - the journey when we started to feel undermined by the success of the piece, because it made us both more nervous; and, therefore... 

The way in which we normally interacted was that, because, I am quite outgoing, I was ebullient and was able to jolly us out of quagmires of gloom and these wonderful things that affect us. That was the normal state of affairs. But, when I get nervous and when I get frightened, I kind of recede; and I think at certain points that may have been very difficult for Alaric. This person who was normally there suddenly starting to recede. I got quite frightened in New York for some reason. I don't know why.

LU: It's a frightening place.

McD: It's a very frightening place.

LU: Everyone says how exciting it is. I think it's frightening.

McD: It is. In some respects it's frightening.

I loved it but I couldn't be who Alaric wanted me to be at the time. I'm usually quite good at being who people want me to be.

McD: Who did he want you to be?

McD: He wanted me to be with him, going out and meeting avant-garde - it's a funny thing. In one way he wanted me to be there and supporting and driving to galleries and take [The] Unspeakable Rooms to places; but for me it was a time when I was getting used to the idea that this piece had been successful so I wasn't in a very good space to be going around galleries and saying Hi, we do installations; and to sell it in a way he would have liked. That was his frustration. It was a difficult time.

LU: How many times did you do it in the States?

McD: We did once at the Cleveland Arts Festival; and once in Buffalo at Hallwalls gallery, in their cinema.

LU: Was it the same or did you do it differently each time?

McD: It was always different. The projected images had been recorded; and, because of lack of facilities, weren't able to be recorded anew, which is ideally what they would have been. So the live performance in front of the screen was varied and was just improvised within the basic structure. To a certain extent; there was the basic structure.. So it was quite different. Quite different. And in some ways better. And that was the problem with [The] Unspeakable Rooms. It was almost a discussion about what Live Art is and what Theatre is; and at what point they cross over. With The Unspeakable Rooms, it started off very much as a Live Art piece; and the more it was performed, the more difficult it was to call it a Live Art piece, because the performer was more aware of how they could manipulate the audience, even subconsciously; and therefore it was just a lot more complicated; and it changed and eventually I would have said the last performance of it in Tate St Ives was very much a Theatre piece. By that time, I had done it 7, 8, 9 times. I had an understanding of the levels and the contrasts, and the ways you could create more tension and emotion at certain points; and therefore it becomes more theatrical; even though it was nice to do it in a huge great gallery. It was nice in itself to do a piece of theatre in a gallery.

LU: That loops round to the discussion that Alaric and I had about Bucking Curtains, which we've discussed. I kept saying "No, no, I don't want to rehearse. I want to be fresh to the text." I would have liked to have had the opportunity to talk to him more about that; because he seemed to come to terms with that in Totnes; and then I was thinking that at some point I was going to say at one point "Now do you see why Cobbing and I, every time we do a performance we write a new script?" because each time... I can't speak for Bob  but I'm scared shitless. I walk out there and I look at this thing and say to myself "I can't perform this!" And then you hear "Ladies and gentleman, Bob Cobbing and Lawrence Upton [clicks his fingers] and you perform! But I want to avoid having a way of bottling out.

McD: Yes, yes. And there's a whole discourse about what Live Art is; and the questions that arise from questioning what Live Art is. Whether you've done it before, or you have any idea, or whether it's framed. Where you're doing it. Does that make it theatrical? What makes it theatrical? Someone like Marina Abromovitch, for example, uses extremely theatrical forms and yet her work steps outside of that in terms of the intensity of the pieces that she does. Her work's highly theatrical and yet it's live art. At what point does one become the other? Particularly now with the cross over. It's becoming more hybridised and companies are stepping outside of Theatre. At what point does it become - Is it just where you do it? If you do it in a gallery, it's Live Art even if it's Theatre? Because in Cleveland we worked with Coco Fusco and Nao Bustamente. Coco Fusco is a performance artist; and they did a piece of theatre, basically, a kind of European, quite quirky and agit-prop. It was almost like 70s agit-prop. The subject matter they used was Political and it was dealing with things that a lot of Theatre deals with. So it would be difficult to call that Live Art. It was a very theatrical evening, in fact. It just happened that they placed two theatrical pieces together...

I can't remember what your question was!

LU: There was no question. I just saw a link and said so. That was where Alaric was worrying away at. The way he was working forced you into asking those questions.

McD: Yes, and I remember some of the criticism that I came up against. He must have come up against it as well. 

When we did The Unspeakable Rooms in Dartington, the guy who did the programming loved it. He thought it was fantastic. He was all for getting it up to the Arnolfini and was saying it was a wonderful piece of work. And yet John Drever, for example; you could see he really didn't like it. And he'd helped work on the soundscape. He'd done a lot of work. He said it was karaoke. And at the time I was a bit worried. You get someone who is very knowledgeable and says it's karaoke. You know? Someone who's opinion I respect. And then I thought "That's very post-modern! We'll go with karaoke in a Live Art Forum! That's o.k. Why not? That's actually quite a compliment. Make it Live Art Karaoke!"

And that's actually, in a way, what Alaric dreamt of, was having [The] Unspeakable Rooms done in varying ways by different performers in an evening. So you had an evening of performances of [The] Unspeakable Rooms done in diverse and totally distinct ways; and that would be fantastic. And that would have been karaoke in a way. The text would have been the basic melody and the performers would have come in and done their thing on the top.

Jo Hyde thought things were interesting about it. But I don't think he was very convinced by it.

Roddy Hunter, I think, was really quite angry about it. He really didn't like it. I don't think he thought it was Live Art at all. I don't think he thought it was Art!

I think he was a bit embarrassed by it. And yet someone like Edward Cowie was very affectionate about it and wrote this long lists of sibilants about it. You've seen that?

LU: No.

McD: I shall try to get it to you... And then Carlyle [Reedy] wrote the most beautiful letter about it. Really. And what you wrote! It was lovely.

LU: Alaric said he almost regretted my writing it because someone said he didn't need to see the show, that reading my account was clear enough. [mutual laughter]

McD: It was beautifully done.

LU: Thank you for that... As we're speaking of Mr Drever, did you see Text out of image (Sandra Blow) at the Millennium Gallery.

McD: Yes, I was there.

LU: Would you tell me about it?

McD: It was a beautiful piece. A really interesting collaboration between a sound artist, a textual artist and a visual artist, a painter. They informed each other wonderfully. It was very moving.

The soundscapes - I don't think that's what they call them nowadays... The - oh... the sonic sculptures - I think that's what they call them... well, they too were beautiful! I still remember sections of the texts, about memory, and about the way that lines... that graphite is applied to a canvas and leaves a trace. There were all these similes of the sea, because it was all based on Waves on Porthmeor Beach to a great extent. Quite a few of the pieces that Sandra had done were of the natural landscapes that are surrounding her now. I liked it very much. I can't really say much more than that I thought it worked very well. I thought it was a very interesting collaboration between very exciting artists.

LU: I've yet to interview John Drever, as you know, when I'll probably be able to get a lot of factual stuff; but am I right in thinking that as well as Alaric’s recorded voice he was also at some points speaking?

McD: It was a recorded voice and recorded sound and then live interaction with Alaric's voice. Alaric would read certain sections. Sometimes he would read over.

LU: Thank you... Some of that text is going to be in the feature. I'm not going to put all of it because I am releasing the poems individually in the first place to make people look at them individually.

McD: Absolutely. That's the best way to do it.

LU: Then I'll put them together. So Masthead won't get all of it; it's too early. I think I owe that to the text. Text out of image is among the best of his writing.

McD: I love it.

LU: I prefer it to Waves...

McD: Some sections of Waves... Waves... was such a huge work; and it used such a huge resource of Alaric's. Whole swathes of his diary went into it. I suppose he knew that was what he was going to do with it.

I suppose Waves on Porthmeor Beach was the work which substantiated his residency at the Tate. Presumably that was the piece of work of which he could say "Well, this is what I have done."

I did actually like Waves on Porthmeor Beach, not as a whole entity, but in the separate parts of it. Some of the little haikus are superb.

LU: Yes, they are.

McD: I've said to Rosemary [Sumner] that I'd love to create an installation of Waves on Porthmeor Beach, but not using the whole thing. Not the whole body of work, but using aspects of it.

What I think was interesting was the way in which he used a journal...He used a critical analysis of a body of work by Sandra [Blow] and then small poems which had been precipitated from that interaction, I imagine. So I like the way he infused three different literary forms.

LU: Interestingly, it seems to have been the other way round. The last thing to go in was the reaction to Sandra's. He didn't get the drawings until very late. So the response must have been late, and made very quickly.

McD: So the first thing was the journal; then the insertions; and then the critical analysis ? really?

LU: Yes, I think so, that's how it looks... I need to study further. I was only... It's a relative thing. I like it; but when I read Text out of image I thought "Right! Here we go!"

Your idea of an installation is very timely. My possibly final question to you is this. At the moment, at Tate St Ives, there's a Sandra Blow exhibition. There's rooms of it and one of the rooms is - what has been described as an installation - Sandra's drawings, some of the insertions and a recording of the prepared sound for Text out of image.

McD: I felt a bid sad, to be honest, when I saw it. It's difficult, because it's perfectly valid...

I don't think I would call it an installation, I must admit. Having a tape-recorder in a cupboard... Could it be an installation?... It depends who was doing it. In a curatorial capacity, I don't think it's an installation. The work has been installed, but not in a way that I would think was...

LU: That word wasn't used strongly, and it is I who am emphasising it. Why were you sad?

McD: I was sad because it put Alaric's work as secondary within that body of work. So that you walked into the room and saw the drawings by Sandra Blow; and the feeling you got was that this writer had come to Sandra and asked her if he could create some text works on her paintings; and again, later, to get a sound artist involved.

I may be wrong; but the text that I read about how it was brought together didn't make it explicit that actually it was Alaric's work. Alaric was the one who was instructive in getting Sandra to make the pictures; it was Alaric that composed and decided how the whole body of work would work; and I think that I felt sad that it wasn't being made obvious.

Obviously, it was Sandra Blow's exhibition, but that room made me feel mildly... just sad... I thought they could have been more... They could have honoured his making of the work more.

And the way in which it was done... Difficult to have done it in other ways without having gone to some trouble. For example, having slides and projections of the text over the images of Sandra's paintings might have been interesting... To have created various... The one thing I was interested in was the idea of reflection and these artists were reflecting off each other; so I wanted to create projections that were on to moving mirrors; so that you walked into a space that had text and images that were moving because the screens were either out of gauze or reflective surfaces were constantly moving round them so that you moved into an ephemeral space. And then the text would have been treated in the same way so that you were getting sections that were quite visible and other sections that were hidden by other sections. This sort of wonderful depth and playfulness. The repetitiveness of it, because the waves were repeated and repeated and repeated but making these repetitions different every time. And I felt that wasn't achieved at all.

It was the most simple way in which they could have involved text, the audio they had and the pictures. So really it was very simple; and in that way it was honourable; but I just felt sad, because there's so much more there. It could have had a much more profound effect.

LU: I want to show you these... Number One. [Hands McDermott a typed copy of A prescript of performance possibilities] Tell me about how this came about, please.
,
McD: Well, this was done for PAJ. He did this, he wrote it down, with me. We went to Cranks in Dartington. He sat with me and just wrote. I talked to him about what I wanted to do with [The] Unspeakable Rooms and he just wrote. And so this is actually me. These were my ideas about possibilities. I said "I don't know what I am going to do yet. I'll know more when I have started doing it, but these are ideas that I have. Like "the piece will be contained within a ten foot cubic space, a three dimensional picture constrained within a frame creates an artificial restriction..." - a load of rubbish really; but there were pieces that actually came out of it. Also what worked really well was the way it was projected to work with [The] Unspeakable Rooms to create this space that existed but didn't exist; and then to create yourself within that space; and then to have a dialogue between someone who didn't exist and someone who did and they were both parts of yourself... 

Brigid [Mc Leer] was very interested. She wanted to use it as a model of Lacanian Developmental Processes. The piece, apparently, depicts the various processes in order. I've got a letter from Brigid on that.

LU: Yes please.

McD: I'll get it for you.

LU: Thank you. That's helpful. I was fascinated that he was writing from your viewpoint; and I wanted to check that was a correct reading.... Now I understand.

Number Two [Hands McDermott copies of Paradoxical Flusters and Red and Twist]

McD: Yes! Paradoxical Flusters! He wrote me a poem. I didn't know anyone had got this.

LU: Aha! You'd be surprised.

McD: But this is slightly different to mine... He wrote me a poem. And Twist was for me too. He sometimes sent me poems. But I haven't seen Red.

LU: Do take it.

McD: 18th July 1996. It was for my birthday. Paradoxical Flusters was for my birthday. My birthday was 15th. I rang him and chastised him for forgetting my birthday! so he sent me a poem…

LU: OK. I think that's it... So much paper!

McD: Paper?

LU: I'm turning Alaric into a pile of paper!

Thank you so much again for your efforts

McD: That's fine
 

Pictures from top: 1. Alaric Sumner; 2: Animated gif of Rory McDermott performing The Unspeakable Rooms; 3 & 4:  Rory McDermott in performance at St Ives (courtesy of Ken Turner)