Since 2004, British artist Phil Collins has been filming wannabe popstars in Bogota, Istanbul and Jakarta for his own DIY version of Pop Idol. However, this is no run-of-the-mill talent show - it’s the artist’s latest video installation. Here, expanded from the March issue of Dazed & Confused, the 2006 Turner Prize nominee talks about why he chose to use karaoke as an art medium, the role of The Smiths, and of course, what it’s like for a serious artist to be called Phil Collins...
Phil Collins
the world won’t listen, 2004–07
Three–channel synchronised colour video installation with sound, 57 min.
Courtesy the artist.
Dazed Digital: Why did you choose The Smiths' The World Won't Listen as your project's theme? PC: The project was realised over a four-year period. It started in 2004 in Colombia, which I visited, you know, just to sample the local specialties, but where I discovered an amazing youth culture. So I was interested to see how something so specifically local as The Smiths, with their romantic representations of a certain form of repressed Britishness, translates to different cultural and geographical contexts.
DD: I find The Smiths global revolution quite funny – like all those Morrissey cholo fans in Los Angeles... PC: Whichever city in the world you decide to go to, I’m sure you’ll find at least a pocket of Smiths fans. You just have to read the signs. In that sense, it may as well have been the title, although whatever album I picked would have surely provoked a bun fight among the rarely satisfied, pernickety fans.
DD: Why did you not do a project on Genesis songs?PC: Hmmm, that’s an interesting question – but can you actually imagine yourself singing to any of those prog–rock epics? Or even worse, some of the later atrocities. Lest we forget, a nation voted Labour just to get my eminent namesake to leave the country. Suffering four years of listening to ‘Mama’, or ‘That’s All’, might well be too much for anyone to take, let alone someone as sensitive as I am.
DD: Surely you had fun with your name in the 80s?PC Whilst it must be amusing from the outside, somehow I feel you don’t sense the anguish and, yes, laughable gravitas of growing up called Phil Collins. I’ve only ever had one person say to me when asked my name ‘Oh, I really like him’. And that was the arresting officer.
DD: Why karaoke? PC: Maybe it’s the combination of ordinariness and individualism. Anyone can do karaoke, but there's nothing anyone in his or her right mind would want to sing. People sometimes find karaoke embarrassing or laughable or delusional, but I find it moving and incredibly courageous. It offers a promise of completion – this act will somehow make me whole – but at the same time there's vulnerability and failure, with its false starts and blind terror. It’s like a mild form of heroism.
DD: How old was this chap (to the left) and what song did he sing? PC: Omo is nineteen and the lead singer of Union Boy, a band in Jakarta. He sings ‘Shakespeare’s Sister,’ and was unbelievably sweet and shy.
DD: What’s the Jakarta rock scene like? PC: It’s great! I got to hang around regularly thanks to the project. I’d really love to work with some of these people in the near future, bands such as The Upstairs, The Brandals, or Goodnight Electric, which all give totally electrifying performances, like a mix between The Dolls and deranged robots pining about the human condition.
DD: Did you stumble across any other cool scenes? PC: Yes, my project crossed paths with the skin scenes in Indonesia and Malaysia, which are very elaborate. I’m trying to develop a project with them over the coming months.
DD: What was the most inspiring performance and country? Why? PC It was such an incredible privilege spending time in each of these vast metropolises, which turned my preconceptions of each of them on their head within minutes. And in each city what was incredible was that you got to meet everyone you’d ever like to meet as a part of the production.
DD: Who did you primarily work with in Colombia? PC In Colombia I worked with Alejandro Gomezcaceres to record and mix each of the backing tracks, with a full band, without any sheet music. Ouch! I then worked with video editors to create a functioning karaoke machine, with the lyrics for each song flashing up in succession.
DD: What about in Turkey?PC In Turkey, I was running the Smiths karaoke alongside gercegin geri donusu, a project with people who felt their lives had been ruined by appearing on reality television, so it was an insane time and often it felt like we’d never make it. How was I to know that twelve hundred people would turn up on the night when we held a live recreation of The World Won’t Listen, which at times descended into complete chaos.
DD: And in Indonesia?PC Indonesia was the only country where we filmed in two cities – Bandung, a spiritual home of indie music in Java and a place of immense historical importance for the birth of the Non–Aligned Movement, and Jakarta, a mesmerizing, disorientating sprawl which the locals, quite poetically, call Hell City. And that’s being complimentary.
DD: How many people did you film in total?PC I’m not sure. In Bogotá we had around 60 appointments, in Istanbul over 100, and in Jakarta and Bandung about 140, but obviously a lot of these were groups or pairs, so it’s hard to know the exact number of people who took part.
DD: Did the constant renditions of The Smiths get depressing?PC In Indonesia, during my stay, they were experiencing the worst floods in centuries, and outbreaks of dengue fever. But somehow, strangely, it felt like the perfect place for a Smiths karaoke. Although I can tell you I wasn’t overly optimistic at times, chain-smoking in an internet café, trying to organize the whole thing, wondering what the hell I was doing there.
DD: What are you working on next?PC It’s a new project, which, sadly, must remain under wraps until it emerges like a dirty butterfly with pure evil in its design.
You can see The World Won’t Listen at the Dallas Museum of Art till March 28th 2008. If you’re not in Dallas, pick up the accompanying A2/SW/HK designed book from www.yalebooks.co.uk