Simon Pope in-conversation with Kris Cohen and Sarah Cook

Kris Cohen and I met artist Simon Pope at a conference titled, appropriately enough for Simon's invitation to Venice, Bridges. Simon's reputation as a noteworthy media artist had preceded him, in part through his winning of a Webby Award (2000) for his collaborative project, I/O/D 4: The Webstalker (http://bak.spc.org/iod 1997) - a free tool for browsing the Web. It is not often that 'net artists' working in the open-source software camp get glossy media recognition for their anti-commercial, anti-institutional work. We were intrigued.

Naturally, it turned out there was a lot more to learn about Simon - his position as a Course Director at UWIC Business School in Cardiff (a forward thinking place to be, charting data flows from art to commerce), his NESTA fellowship, and his curating of the Art for Networks which was first exhibited at Chapter, Cardiff in 2002 and which has toured the UK this past year.

That Simon is now in Venice, charting that most not-wired of European cities is exciting indeed. For the Wales Pavilion , Simon is developing a project which follows on from both the 'tools for enquiry' / 'speculative tools' aspect of the Webstalker and his book London Walking (2000). While the former is software that enables one to navigate around the non-locality of the World Wide Web, the latter is a text that enables one to find ways around the very location-specific capital city.

With our joint research interests in technology, mobility, performative art projects, and exhibition structures, Kris Cohen and I paired up to ask Simon about his work for the Biennale.

SC + KC: Venice is a city which is difficult to navigate unless you have a compass or are content to 'crowd surf' the trails of tourists (which, as you've noted, lead inevitably to a church or a bathroom). As your new work is about navigation, how are you going about your research while there? And what form will your investigations take?

SP: I'm based in a temporary space in the Ex-Birreria on the Giudecca. I'm following leads from people on the ground there and, from these 'street smarts', describing exercises and investigations that both visitors to Venice and an online audience can participate in.

At the moment, these activities include: looking for rainbows, (especially in glasses of Campari); making a flotilla of origami gondolas; logging kisses across the city; building bridges over the slightest of gaps in paving; and learning to whistle loud enough to be heard across the Giudecca canal. Some of these exercises will result in a series of photographs, audio recordings or text panels in the Ex-Birreria; others in live events, and small objects sited around Venice itself, made while walking there.

SC + KC: How do you arrive at these exercises? What relationship do your investigations have to common experiences of walking around Venice?

SP: This new work springs from my current research into art practice as a possible 'ambulant' research methodology. You could think of 'ambulant method' in literal, technical terms: walking as a research method that might reveal, disseminate or validate knowledge in ways that are impossible for 'proper' or 'major' scientific enquiry.

But there's a wider definition that is also useful here, where ambulant describes an approach that is revocable. This might provide a way of thinking through what could be considered as 'valid' knowledge, and who can speak about it. Quite often, I've felt that I needed to have certain knowledge - derived from someone else's situation - before I can begin to speak. What if you don't have supposedly 'valid' knowledge? What if your situation makes it impossible anyhow? Rather than seek a commanding position with 'proper' knowledge, I want to explore the process of coming to an understanding. This might be a tentative process, constantly developing and revising methodological ''rules-of-thumb', but at each point being able to speak about the world and your place within it.

SC + KC: In an earlier conversation, you mentioned Deleuze and Guattari's theory of 'minor science' as an important influence. Can you talk specifically about the major sciences you're interested in with this project and how you want the minor sciences you're inventing to act upon, or deterritorialise them?

SP: My practice is related to 'major' disciplines such as Urban Planning and Architecture, but also works as a critique of proper research methodologies across many academic disciplines. It is by no means unprecedented though, and may exemplify Hal Foster's critique of the 'enthnomethodology envy' displayed by many contemporary artists. I prefer to see my ambulant approach as a way of breaking even the least objective of academic research methodologies. Rather than being too lazy or stupid to learn a 'proper' ethnomethodological approach, I want to be able to willfully use or misuse these methods, or even drop any pretension to a formal approach altogether. I'd rather look for popular, accessible, everyday ways that people use to understand what their city is, or might be, how they fit or fail to fit in; that is, ways of sensing and making sense of the city.

To that end, you could consider walking as one of many possible methods within a broader research activity which includes secondary research such as reading about how Venice has been the site of prior enquiry.

Other points of reference are Michel De Certeau's opposition of 'strategic' and 'tactical' modes of operation, which concentrate on how things are used, rather than what is used. This also seems to relate to the 'rich' and 'poor' arts as outlined by the Italian curator and writer Germano Celant who coined the term Arte Povera in 1967.

SC + KC: Maps are the conventional method for 'making sense of the city'. In one way, maps are technologies that allow sight (also: governance, control) at a distance. They are also translations of the city for people who don't know it. What verb would you use to describe your investigations? What will they do?

SP: In the form that we often encounter them, maps appear to be innocuous and the functions that they perform, the ones you mention, are of course considered to be beneficial, useful, and desirable. But they also embody a particular way of understanding the world that privileges certain things above others (sight being the most obvious one). They presume that to know where we are is more important than how or why we are. They also bear a particular relation to our ideal of knowledge: its object must be considered at a precise distance. We choose our map to give us a specific, sublime over-view: too far out and we lose clarity; too close and the world appears too complex to comprehend with one glance.

There's always going to be a disparity between this overview and what is actually happening at ground level. This was even acknowledged by a spokesman for the UK military recently when he noted the difference between aerial surveillance images and 'ground truth'. As if we didn't feel the difference anyway!

The incursions I'll be making in Venice will be at ground level: they will be speculative, opening up spaces for enquiry; they will be revocable, tentative and revisable; they will describe possible ways of operating by making the first iteration and then inviting participation to carry the enquiry further.

SC + KC: What kinds of relationships with Venice's population will you try to enter into by way of your work there? Entertainer? Teacher? Observer? Tourist? Refugee? And what kinds of relationships would you want to avoid?

SP: This new work presents me with a real challenge: the way of working developed through the book London Walking was reliant on me living and working there, developing and describing the de Certeau-inspired 'ruses and tricks' that could be brought into play in everyday life. Finding these in an unfamiliar city such as Venice, given the rudimentary understanding of the place I have now, is the basis for the new work.

There are some historical, literary examples of encounters with new places that have informed my approach. In Italian Journey Goethe uses the optic of the natural sciences to view Venice: adopting this 'proper' scientific mode gave him a language and method to legitimise his observations, while also determining what was deemed worthy of recording.

There is a great interview with Gabriel Orozco where his interviewer reels off dominant, heroic roles that artists have sought to mimic: bureaucrat to scientist to factory worker. I'm sure that today's ideal model is of the 'free software' geek. It's tempting to take the equivalent contemporary scientific optic and bring British IT or management skills to bear on Venice, to see what limited set of concerns would become apparent.

In Death in Venice, Thomas Mann conducts his enquiry through the optic of love: speaking through this less-than-scientific language we get to find out about sickness, lying, paranoia and conspiracy (as well as deep narcissism and love). Even though the idea of love is vague here, it at least sits clearly outside any notionally objective scientific mode. For me, that's a vital place to be right now.

Biographies: Sarah Cook is an independent curator, critic and researcher in curatorial practice and new media art at the University of Sunderland, where she co-edits the Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss (www.Newmedia.Sunderland.Ac.Uk/crumb).

Kris Cohen is a research fellow at the University of Surrey's Department of Sociology, working in the INCITE group (Incubator for Critical Inquiry into Technology and Ethnography; www.Soc.Surrey.Ac.Uk/incite).