Ian Smith/Bowie

Michief La Bas head honcho and five-star solo artist Ian Smith introduces a familiar face

FEATURE BY IAN SMITH.

as told to Gareth K Vile

PUBLISHED 02 FEBRUARY 2011


David Bowie may seem a cheesy and obvious choice, but it has to be my choice because I have been following his every move and batting of eyelash for about forty years. You’ll hear this story from everyone, from Boy George, everyone who was completely transformed by the Starman appearance on Top of the Pops in 1972. It did change the world for lots of outsider freakos living in grim suburbs of London, who suddenly realised you could be anything you wanted, even something from another planet.


That has informed my thinking ever since; he is an artist of the twentieth and twenty-first century, and has probably introduced more concepts, styles and subversive thinking to the popular consciousness than anyone else. I was thirteen when I got into him, and he was the first person who was mine. I’d had a huge education in popular culture from my brother who was seven years older than me, so I had been (vicariously) a mod, a greaser, this and that on my brother’s coat-tails. But this was for me and has been ever since.


There are tracks on The Man Who Sold the World that mention Winston Churchill, Kalil Gibran, about seven kinds of religion, gangsterism, et cetera et cetera, and you were then inspired to explore all these things. Jung. I mean, who the hell was Jung? And that was in a top ten pop record.

I went with my brother to the last tour in both Wembley and Glasgow, and it was one of the finest moments of my life to share with my brother who had always led me. And when he did numbers like Waterloo Sunset – for me, as a London boy, it was about as close to bliss as I could get.

Everybody knows what he has done on his erratic and interesting journey: it is like having a freakish big brother, and I'm not disappointed in the least that he seems to be settling down now. He has done enough, surely! He inspired me to realise that you could be your own person, dress it up a bit and that was enough. Theatre, art and music, my three favourite things, all in one package that looks brilliant. What more do you want?

Neil Butler @ Ian Smith Festival CCA 2015

And so my next guest, Neil Butler, is someone that I have known for a while: when I worked on The Skinny, he was one of my neighbours in The Briggait. I know that he is always up to something intriguing... actually, I am not quite sure how to introduce him... so, Neil... can I let you introduce yourself?

Neil:
Hi Gareth - my background is as an artist and performer but most of my work is around creating events and commissioning artists through my company UZ Arts thats based at the Briggait.

Gareth:
Once again, my knowledge has come up short. It's lucky you are here to help me out. I am going to start off with my sneaky dramaturgy questions first: do you think that it is a relevant thing for me to ask you about? What does it mean to you?

Neil:
Not a lot-I rarely work with dramaturgs.

Gareth:
Another great question from Vile. Moving swiftly on -  I know that you worked with Ian quite often... am I right in thinking that he was involved in your reasons for being in Scotland?

Neil:
Ian was my closest friend. We met when we were students. I was organising a contemporary art festival with Roger Ely with a lot of performance and live art (People Show, Lumiere and Son IOU, Lol Coxhill +++) and promoting bands like the Clash, the Damned, Souxie and Psychic TV. 

Ian got involved in the Festival and when I set up the Zap Club he helped build it and became the MC. We performed a lot together making performance art, music and an an art /cabaret act called the Wild Wigglers. 

Then in 1988 I was invited to Glasgow to create festivals and events to prepare Glasgow for European City of Culture in 1990. Ian worked on the festival and then ran away to join Archaos Circus for a few years before coming back to set up Mischief. From then on we worked on many projects together developing them through 'hothouses' or residencies and presenting them through one off events (crashing a space ship into Kings Street Car Park for the Millennium) or in the festivals I was involved in.

Gareth:
I've banged on about Ian's influence on me - but what would you say is his quality that you enjoyed the most?

Neil:
A huge influence. Ian was incredibly inventive, producing remarkable and utterly unique ideas that commented on the world he saw. His work was often comic but also serious and insightful. He was always generous in his relationship with other artists. He had a real rapport and affection for the public too. And with all that incredible imagination he was utterly businesslike in the way he managed his company and a very traditional pipe and slippers kind of Dad at home- although he didn’t smoke a pipe but liked to pose with one occasionally


Gareth: 
What are you doing as part of the Festival? What can we expect from you over the weekend?

Neil:
I’m there to enjoy Ian's work and the event that Angie created. I am also performing in the Death Cabaret. A reworking of a piece that Ian enjoyed -now called “Getting Slated”. Its a performance lecture during which I create an installation around near death experiences and the artists who have influenced me - including of course with Ian!



Gareth:
Cool: are you going to nip into my office for a drink over the weekend? I have absinthe...

Neil:
Delighted - it makes the heart grow fonder.

Gareth:
In terms of the work you do, is their any particular inspiration or tradition that you would say connects with your work?

Neil:
I include about 20 artists that have influenced or intrigued me in Getting Slated from Duchamps to Beuys and Richter but I probably first got involved with art because of John Lennon and Yoko Ono and reading about Guy Dubord and the Situationist International when I was growing up. I’m sure they pushed me towards performance art and experimental work and the avant-garde, if people still use that expression.

Gareth: 
And what about Ian's work? Where does he fit in?

Neil:
We shared a delight in myth making and encouraging artists and the public to invent their own realities. Ian inspired that and practised it throughout his career- "gently warping the underlay of the fabric of society…"

Gareth:
I've got one of my abscesses today - don't ask where - so I might be a bit cloudy. Can you do my job for me, and tell me what questions I ought to be asking, if any? I want to go a good job of this but... well, you know me, so I might as well stop the professional act...


Neil:
(Stunned silence)

The Festival of Ian Smith: A Dramatugical Chat Show with Pauline Goldsmith

Gareth: 

Good evening and welcome to the Vile Arts. I am delighted to be joined tonight by Pauline Goldsmith, the star of... well, frankly, you seem to be in about half the plays I see in Glasgow. What was that last thing I saw you in? was it at the Tron?
Pauline:
Well the most recent thing I was performing in,  involved a piece with an artist, a bunch of anaesthetists, and  some medical computerized mannequins in an operating table at Larbet hospital. Like robotic patients that can blink and breathe and talk.  

The audience were in scrubs so you could well have been that dashing fellow in the paper mask and gloves. But yes my theatrical last venture in the  Tron was a quare farce involving his holiness Grant Smeaton, his eminence Raymond Burke, the Catholic Clergy and Strathclyde Police. In that order. We worship at the altar of Joe Orton, Dave Allen and Fanny Craddock...i was recently back there in a cat gimp mask purring with Derek Mc Luckie at the Glasgow comedy festival but that's another story...

Gareth:
Of course! I really ought to get some researchers, or use the internet for research and not just... anyway. So am I right in thinking that you are offering part of your signature work as part of the Ian Smith celebration?

Pauline:
Yep its time to get the shroud out and start polishing my coffin. Doing a wee bit from Bright Colours Only. I've had to be refitted for the wooden suit, I'm not the Slimsea girl i once was.


Gareth: 
I think I first saw it in The Arches - would that be right? I wasn't even a critic then... I was a Latin teacher. Bur this show - where did it begin for you- was there a particular moment, or object, or idea, that inspired you?

Pauline:
A couple of moments...Standing behind my Nanny's coffin getting a dirty look from my  relative from across the water because i was laughing and chatting in the cortege. Sitting in Paisley in a waiting room outside the crematorium silently queing to use the coffee machine and wondering why i had come across the water. A dream where i was getting into my coffin even though i wasn't dead because i didn't want to upset my guests. They had travelled a long way and were expecting a good send off apparently. So i made a speech to them and then i woke up.  

Gareth: 
Great stuff. I am delighted that you are part of the festival - I love it when stuff is in the CCA, because it is right next to my office! Do you fancy getting a free cup of tea over the weekend? Think of it as a small return for doing this interview. Some people might know that Ian Smith was very important to me as an artist - settle down at the back there. Can't a critic be an artist?
Er-
Don't answer that... answer this instead. How did you get to know Mr Smith? Did you ever get up to Mischief with him. so to speak?

Pauline:
I knew Ian Smith not to say hello to. Im quite shy somehow even though in other ways I'm not -  I never really knew Ian. Only admiring him from a far.  I loved his work so much and was probably too scared to say hello to him. I used to nod to him but i'm sorry i never really spoke to him. I saw him a few times before he died and nearly said hello but didn't.  

Ach I think he would understand - seemingly he was a bit shy at times himself. A genius. Unique and very funny. I do hope I won't make that mistake again.  One of my favourite Mischievous memories is the very  incorrect piece of a violent drunken  Irish wedding. With Stevie Cooper's  (Clyde) fabulous Norn Irish accent. It still makes me gasp with laughter when i think of it. True anarchy and poetry. Other pieces like the Heaven and Hell thing, the Bull one - i never know the names - the one with all the Saints - all fabulous - but that Irish rabble is seared into my unconscious!

Gareth: 
Since you've doing this show for a while, what kind of audience responses have you had?

The most powerful response is that after the show people want to tell me their own death stories. The show acts like a wake and folk want to talk about their own moments. I love that so much. I feel useful at last. Some audiences laugh a lot - others cry. I remember a show i did where i was very  hung over and the emotion tipped too much in to an unbearable place. The venue was very rural and the cortège ended with peacocks screeching to this wet rainy silence. 

A lady came out and kinda shouted at me: " What are you doing? You've really upset people? You've really upset people. Why are you doing this?" And then in Dublin old ladies turned up with cakes and snuff. In Derry they wouldn't take the whiskey because they were off it for lent. And in Belfast I couldn't get the show started because the mourners were gabbing so much. Some people sleep through it. Comfy couch and whiskey. Even the critics...they need their sleep.

Gareth: 
Okay! Now onto the serious bit of the show. It's the dramaturgy database. After a word from our sponsors.

Gareth: 
Welcome back. Now, Pauline. You've read my comic: is dramaturgy relevant to you at all?

Pauline:
I must say I think that the conscious  intellect must be got to fuck in the crucial stages of creativity. Intellect is the enemy of the creative process in the initial stages. Vomiting of the unconcious must not be interupted by the need to keep the carpet clean - in the initial stages. The brain has its part to  play later but it must be kept out so that terrible mistakes can be made and wonderful accidents of the unconscious come through. So for me dramaturgy is all in the timing and the ego, brain and intellect must know their place and get out of the way of instinct. 

Once the jigsaw of vomit is complete, we can let these buggers back in the room. I am no expert however. My house is filled with sporadic vomit  - and no plays. i must ask a dramaturg to visit. How much do they cost? I worked with dramaturg and writer Nicola McCartney on my Johnnie Ringo Bingo show and actually found it hugely helpful. I  guess its a bit like a film maker needs the editor. Not simply the chopping and changing but little things like where to put the rain, what rhythms work where, what we don't need to say. She helped me sift through the vomit to find the sweetcorn. 

The last sentence is an example of why we need dramaturgs. Otherwise we just write the first piece of nonsense we we think of. This interview would be great if a dramaturg did a bit of work on it...


Gareth: 
Does it manifest itself in any particular process? Are you all about the script? The improvisation? How do you go about making stuff?

Pauline:
I do a little bit of everything but ultimately i have a complicated attention span - so i do bursts of impro, stream of concousness writing and more focused writing. I put myself in the headlights of what ever it is i'm thinking about - so for example i spent a lot of Bright Colours Only prep sitting or lying in a coffin (sometimes with the lid on). i also collect or steal things people say or do - im not an imaginator at all. I just pick up things folk do and say. Then i play with the pieces and order. I get my pals in and they influence me too so i have lots of cooks but I like the broth.

I work with different artists and companies collaboratively - especially Vanishing Point. Mat Lenton mixes up the creative vomiting with simultaneous dramaturgy. So in Tomorrow, for example, there was a  constant tension between the brain (in this case Pamela Carter as dramaturg ) and the improvisational heart (the cast) and this morphs and blurs with Mat ultimately balancing the soul of the work. But i think what is important here is the roles bleed into each other and conflict of mind and instinct is part of the process. Pamela also has a heart...

Gareth: 
And is their any tradition, any particular influences on you? Who would you like to be compared to?

Pauline:
People I work with and live around hugely influence me. I am the sum of all my collaborators - whether they are artists, friends, or bystanders.  As a kid I loved  Laurel and Hardy, as an adult  Charlie Chaplin. I hope to be compared to someone very mediocre or evil  as then i will win the comparison. 

Actually if i had to pick one person, whose work i admire and would love to find the voice in me like he has - it would be David McSavage. A theatrical comic performer from Dublin whose Savage Eye is genius. Beckett meets Kenny Everett on Irish mescaline. Actually thats wrong. There are no words. Analysis is nonsense. Go watch him. 

Gareth: 
Well, that's been great talking to you. Before we go - you know how I don't do research and just say stuff off the top of my head? I ought to ask whether there are any questions that I ought to have asked about how dramaturgy works for you? 

Pauline:
No. I think its best if we just drew a line under this and moved on to the next moment. Our work is done here. You've been Vile. I've been a  Pauline. Goodnight. xxx

Ian Smith