Simon Denny: The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, 2014
| FT How did you become interested in art making? SD I was attracted to art as a teenager in high school because it seemed to be a context where complex, diffcult and important cultural questions were framed in tangible but somehow poetic ways. I was interested in music, design, architecture, politics, economics—and the history of conceptual art kind of revealed itself to be a place where all of those things came together. I’m not sure if there was really a particular moment or work, it was more a gradual thing that happened through art education— first at high school, then university in Auckland, then Frankfurt at the Städelschule. A charismatic teacher, a book, an exhibition, a new friend. These were the things that made and continue to reveal what the field can be, and keep it exciting. |
FT Your work refers to narrations coming from media and tech entrepreneurial cultures: what interests you in a company or a specific environment? SD It’s often pretty clear when something is going to have a longer lasting impact—like Bitcoin, or rethinking surveillance, or the growth of Start-Up focuses in governmental policy and city planning to give a couple of examples. Within those core topics I try to focus on examples, figures or events that have a larger resonance, and can introduce bigger issues that relate to the whole field or wider political and cultural space. |
| To read the full interview download MUSE 47 available from September 7th, 2017 |
