TOM PENNEY

In this video, Prudence Whitehead reveals the fascinating secrets behind the new art of Perth Cultural Centre.

In Featured Projects, or click image to go to the page:

See interactive pdf below to read. Three more essays are available on the writing page if you CLICK HERE.

The Virtual William St page has been added (also known as ‘Valhalla’)
It is found in the Featured Projects menu, Or click the image below:

http://www.performinglineswa.org.au/productions_in_development/Reign/

This week I am working with Chrissie Parrott as a performer in her show “Reign”. It’s the final week for this stage of development.

*Could you briefly describe the experience a viewer of your video installation would have for those who didn’t see it ?

The New Spiritual Network was a vast conglomerate of videos shown on various collected television screens. Upon each screen was a video of one of my performances. I had been developing pieces that concerned the multi-faceted, subjective, performative nature of spirituality in a postmodern, globalised climate. In some cases there was also a virtual or a 3D work rather than a video. The installation was cacophonic and jabbering, each character portrayed went about their business as if oblivious to those around them. I intended for this to mirror the amorphous, impossible argument for ‘the spiritual’ and to reflect the many different, totally personal and even farcical voices for ‘spirituality’ that I had come across up until then. The different screens talk like cult leaders or self-proclaimed visionaries presenting through a medium like YouTube.

*What message were you trying to convey?

I suppose I was trying to do two things: Present spirituality as a seemingly never-ending, universal and paradoxical argument (the work extends outwards and has no start or finish) and also frame these infinite perspectives as totally subjective. By playing each element and character I wanted it to be narcissistically self-generated but self-fragmenting at the same time. In this way the form of the work mirrors its conflicted message. Through my experience of Western, mass-focused and especially Americanised hybrids, ‘spirituality’ is often ironically based on the selfishness or narcissism of the individual in an entirely capitalist, packaged manner. I wanted to play up this totally confused version of ‘spirituality’ as a paradox and as hopelessly inauthentic. I don’t necessarily use the words ‘narcissism’ or ‘selfishness’ negatively however as these characteristics are forgivably part of the human condition and something we innocently exploit about ourselves. I wanted to present a display that was full of noise and visuals but essentially left you feeling a bit void.

*What does “spirituality” mean to you?

I grew up in Anglican high schools and my father is heavily scientific. I was always trying to understand the space between all the ‘you can be who you want to be’ pseudo-spiritual and pop-psychological rhetoric and his more detached approach to life. As a kid I noticed a double standard in high schools that present a religion but at the same time try to “catch-all” possible students in order to earn money. I’ve also known some very strange people whose spiritual and religious devotion crosses over with mental illness and cult behaviour. There were always many conflicting elements. I’ve also always been very interested in mentalism, magic, the occult and shamanism. These things represent alternative, esoteric fantasies. When I became an artist I found I had a great struggle for relevance and identity without referring to something immaterial, dark or ‘other’.

The word itself presents a complication… I find the word itself means nothing much… but a lot is generated from it at the same time. If the word had a personality it might be laughing. It feels like it should be simple but everyone does so much for it and argues so much about it. It laughs knowing its own simplicity… and our own stupidity. For my practice it represents a central frustration. I don’t think ‘spiritual’ ideas need to represent easy answers, comfortable solutions or placating endpoints in any sense. For me the journey of ‘figuring out’ a meaningless word is a reason to ask impossible questions and create profound work out of this confusion. The word is impossible and personal, it will never yield answers but will give way to prolific production. Through questioning, although difficult and arduous, our best work as human beings is produced. It’s nothing comfortable, the best solution could even be criminal, it could be subversive, irreverent, it could be a masquerade, you can never know, so there is no right or wrong answer, maybe it isn’t even for me to know, all I know is that it underpins creativity and gives us a reason to produce as artists, philosophers or otherwise. Its tasks and challenges are always ahead of us and can make us better people.

*How important is it in your life?

And where does it fit in? I feel that in some sense it should be there but it isn’t, maybe that is because it isn’t actually anything. Having a word for it might be the problem. The problem could be language. That vague “it” could be any number of things. Maybe the spiritual simply represents a number of things I don’t have. As a word it becomes a symbol… a comfortable thing that can be “known”, reproduced and sold, today more like a computer file… as if to be assimilated to fill a space or a portion of data. People should stop assuming that it is easy in this atomised or materialistic way, and that spirituality is NOT some sort of white light or ‘goodness’, but is instead an unknown self-generated and self-reflexive totality that doesn’t pay respect to silly ideas like ‘good’ and ‘evil’ but instead a vast spectrum of differences and ideas. Everyone needs to take their own responsibility for their own version of it. At the same time, I don’t assume that it is even ‘anything’ or an ‘entity’ or a ‘power’ other than simply a family group of ideas and human experiences… I think it’s possibly just a way to represent concerns entrenched in our own psychology that we cannot face or come to terms with within ourselves. I guess in short, all I can say is that thinking about it might be good for the ‘soul’… whatever that means!

*Anything else you have to add on the subject?

I can’t do anything but waffle when asked about spirituality ! In response to the New Spiritual Network I then made the Tarot Self Portrait, which humorously presents me as every possible tarot card. I wanted to narcissistically attempt to become the reference point for all archetypes of human experience this way. I liken this to the way we fragment ourselves through profile pictures and avatars on Facebook. Through viewing a library of possible ‘selves’ we feel we are immortal. But data is not stone, and none of those pictures are actually ‘us’.

Welcome to TOM PENNEY.
My new site is under construction, please feel free to email me at tom@tompenney.com.au