Appendix

Transcript of interview between Dryden Goodwin and Bethany Kohrt 

21st September 2024

Recording may be found here

https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/share/_epSlK5fSC9qPvSmMYk2uhihGuON8Bbg0SOhW7-TC9oMvIOGhVm7vueXtHiv5Bs.2kDMeryz5reWalCP 

Passcode: 0uWCF%yG

Bethany: I do see a lot of networks in your work and it's a parallel, not an obvious parallel but a  a subtle nuance that I see that is interesting in my working interesting in your work and that's one of the reasons that I came to you I saw the ‘Our Earth’ exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral which is not far from here and my whole family were really taken by it we talked about it a lot and how accessible the works were and that's what led me to to looking into the work more and wanting to to interview you for this research paper…

Dryden: no it's really helpful it's really nice to have a sense of what you describe within your own practice and as you say this  fascination… that's certain as you say the sense of grief and sense of loss and it's a way of coming back to how your way into what the work that I'm making but I really like that idea that somehow the compost heap is almost like a  funeral pyre of things which are set to  transform into bed down, to become something else the  mulch down but it's wrong that there's a  fermentation and there's this regrowth and there's a  set of new relationships that are that are created in the mass of stuff, which  started to cross pollinate and start to generate something and that's  really interesting that idea of laying down a certain  structure and from that structure things will start to evolve and you described it within your home and that the design and the building the groundwork or the other  the underlying structure on which things will proliferate and start to find its own  its own chaos or its own organic form within a certain structure and that's an interesting relationship I think then to thinking about ‘Breathe’ where I mean in 2012 it this relationship between thinking engaging with Professor Frank Kelly about his research into the effects of the polluted air on the body and then becoming very conscious of its impact I suppose understandably on the young developing body and then at that point having a four year old and a six-year-old and growing up you know and having decided to grow up in London in a place that has challenges with air pollution and the impact that that can have but then that shifted from thinking about who it who is I wanted to draw and fundamentally I was interested in it seemed to me thinking about breath was really fascinating not just in terms of the body and us being alive in the world and negotiating that  fundamental to the to being alive but also the fundamentals in relation to animation and I love that sense of the animated somehow when drawings move through animation you know it's as if the breath of life has been taken into it and so that sense of the inanimate and then it becomes animate and therefore there's something very  magical to me always within something which has something that has a likeness or an association with something that's been given that given life and finds life and that spark I think there's something  so infinitely exciting about that. I suppose looking through art history you know within the paintings and sculpture and that the edge between the artifice which then slipped into something that you know the way that the light hits the marble head or that's been sculpted that it seems to  move or suggest something or that there's something really magical about that they’re fundamentals of that and you feel like caught something with

Bethany: the way you draw there's so much available to see how you draw and you've done all these amazing videos and I’ve watched hours of you drawing and the hospital rooms or you know and the way you draw is very dynamic and and there's  an energy and a  a  you know as you watch the pencil  frenetically making these marks it's incredibly vital and I find it really interesting the way that the animation as the only one I've seen in life is the one in Salisbury Cathedral which is yes phenomenal volatility quite stilted it's quite sometimes quiet and respectful and it's also very different Print and then there's this very vital animations very dynamic it continues that dynamism I think of the way that you draw the your personal energy the way you draw continues into the 'cause quite often that dynamism stops doesn't it and then you've got a static drawing yeah differentiate between the act of drawing you know the word drawing is the same and the drawing, unlike in general the verb is very different, but there is there's no separation there and I you know I really enjoyed how the animation it reminded me of - I don't know if this is insulting I hope it's not - but it just genuinely you know when I was a childish to make this little animated flip books you know when you draw something you know there's little flip books and I I spent hours of my life as a child making these tiny, tiny like a little stick man walking you know and it had this  this very analog sense of animation and the way that you've brought that into a much more dynamic, digital, exciting you know very vital and quite it's so quick you know you have to watch it you’re going to miss it otherwise.

Dryden: no that's what you're saying about the flip book absolutely the idea of something that's very made and this the phenomena of actually I was remember my dad showing me this this exercise book when he drawn as boy and then if someone just you know in the corner of the book flicking in dumping over and moving and and watching him draw was always something really fascinating and the point where something that  creating illusion of space or an illusion of movement or there's something  very  magical about that through very simple means that this  implied sophistication is and subtlety and nuance and I  found really fascinating and I mean I was just thinking as you touched on in the cathedral I've just thinking that just that arc of the idea drawing from what you were doing in your space and and then how that I think relates to this engagement with Frank's research and then this the drawings within my studio space where I then draw my five-year-old son and then the fluctuating rhythms and the the closeness of that and that sense that it felt like you I was literally trying to draw breath into his body you know there was like  trying to keep him alive and some somehow this and it takes and the time it takes to make the work is so is long, it’s an engagement with a sensor that person each drawing you make and and I love the fact that each time you make another drawing it's another encounter it's another engagement to try to hold them in some way and then I suppose the animation is a record of all those attempts which then accumulate in a very brief relatively brief time over the weeks of making the drawings into this into this intense as you say all the marks the energy and the and the focus that it's taken and I love that density that sense of density but of course nothing is ever simultaneous there's still exist in their own time pocket and there's something about that sense of bringing things together but also they still remain a part all these different thoughts and all these different  meditations and focuses on who I'm drawing and then it's I suppose in terms of that from 2012 I then put it on the screen of the how's the parliament and it's very public place and it's it felt very in one way very exposing of my son you know that he was very vulnerable in that location and I  felt I was it did occur to me whether at that it felt too vulnerable in that state but then I realized of course that was the whole point in a way the vulnerability was really important wasn't a photographic image of him which I think would be very different it's a draught, as a drawn image, but I love that shift and scale and then this  panoramic and the dynamics of this space at that point it was a single projection and then there was this communication between the projection and the Houses of the Parliament, which seemed important as this very powerful institution which decides the quality of air ultimately that the animation and then I suppose Lewisham for in 2022 when when there was this conversation about revisiting ‘Breathe’ and how the agency around air pollution and became even more acute and also that you know living in Lewisham and that Lewisham had become really at the centre of the clean air debate through Rosamund kissy Deborah whose daughter Ella was so devastatedly affected and died from the effects of air pollution in 2009 when she was nine - there seemed something  about the fact that I was living in the same proximity same locality is as Rosamund and her family but of course you know the fact that they were  was so so badly infected by even though you know relatively a few roads away and that that we don't all breed the same air and all that proximity to busy roads but also But also the the fact that the susceptibility that people are very vulnerable some people are very vulnerable to the effects of Air Pollution and then the fact that there is there's such a history of activism within Lewisham and there were so many people locally trying to drive change seemed really interesting to try to engage with and that you know that you know we're all passively affected by air pollution and of course Heath, my youngest son, epitomized that in 2012 but there's also we can be active agents of change and that's what these people represented that driving change locally and so that was a that was the  the center and you know written realizing all these stories that are behind these individuals are  becoming important but then thinking about how the manifestations of the work would be across the I suppose the expanse of Lewisham and the fact that tension between the still are moving image - I think originally I thought well I'll do another projection and that'll be  interesting to make this film but there was certain  challenges you know how how we would finding a way of how to work with materialise and how we what funding we could do to do the work and then in those discussions I started to think well that's a real opportunity here to think about the sequences of the images as posters and it's and drew on the experiences of making the project for art and the underground and these images that drawings which were then  reproduced and all these different forms across the underground. I thought that the history the poster is interesting in terms of protests and in terms of  communicating a message in an idea and the fact that the these sequencies could be zootropic inform you know that they could they could hold a sequence of images which describes a sense of movement and and in public space of course it's becomes really exciting how people move past the artwork and they're not enough frame of seeing art but they you know in a museum or a gallery but you might be walking past you might be driving past you might be driving past on the top Deck of a bus and I think there's something really beautiful about and I made a lot of work actually a lot of video work back in the late ‘90s and the noughties which engage with momentary encounters with people as you pass the on different modes of transport so this idea you could see the work and see it in motion I think there was something  very exciting about that tension between the motion again another  reflection I suppose on ideas of stillness and movement and that you might stop and pause and contemplate one moment within the breathing sequence but as with the editing at the animation when it might slow down for a moment you think it's going to stop I mean you'll know that sensation of when you're children are asleep and you opened the door and you look in a darkness and you're just waiting for that we could just like movement and when you do you feel reassured you and then you so there's something about that. I remember I mean talking about loss and grief and and I think a lot of the work I made has have made I mean a film I made when I was at college a lot of the work stems from making work around a sense of sense of loss and a sense of when I was 18 my closest friend had leukemia and when we heard that I spent weeks and months in the in the hospital visiting her and that's up first period and I was remembered take because of the time the amount of time that you could either be with her or not and she was in isolation and just taking my drawing pad and making lots of my sketchbook and making lots of drawings of both space the corridors and the  space and just making lots of notes about the quality of the color and the quality of the light. I suppose making these drawings of these spaces and then when times I could spend with her in conversation with her drawing her or during the during her asleep. Also friend of mine passed away a sadly committed suicide that who 

at the Slade who I was living in the same house with the time and the work I made when I graduated from the state was called ‘Hold’ and it was a stop frame animation children's Super 8 film it seems relevant to our conversation room grief and and loss and and I suppose each and I photographed strangers in the street and just in in the film it's a under five minute film is a cast of over 5,000 because on each shot there's a different head of someone coming in the street and just trying to hold them tight and I love that sense of  the comfort of that but also the sense of loss and trying to assimilate that in a way and I think that that tension between the still moving stemmed from that in different ways because all works that I've made and that sense of vulnerability and the sense of the temporary is and whether you describe is is there the fine so therefore I think also this relationship to scale the drawings are necessarily small because that's the only way that I'm going to get so many done and and wearing I have to wear a watchmakers viser it to make them and so they're very small in scale but I love this idea of reproduction where the you can blow them up to a larger scale and and that's a reveals more of what's there but also it starts to suggest other things which interests me. 

Bethany: that retention and relationship I find so compelling in your work that intensely personal experience you know that you put into the drawings I watched the lecture that you did in July when you talked about some of these intensely personal all right experiences of laws you know and the drawings that you made they were talking about and it's it's so powerful how your voice changes when you talk about her - was it Sarah - you know your voice changes so much and the way that you breathe and everything it changes so much watching you, listening to you talking about these intensive experience you know intensely personal experiences and and you know the intimate scale of these tiny drawings and the circles you know some tiny little - you know and and on your website for the series of drawings of your son Heath stuck on (the wall) a you know in a series these frozen moments in time but then you've also got this enormity of the universality of breathing, the universality of those experiences like you said, you know as a parent you can immediately say you know that moment when you go into a child's room and ‘oh there they go, they're fine,’ you know that reassurance. One of the things I am very interested in my paper and your work is this idea of empathy, this exchange and how emotions are personal but also social and this moving that you do so elegantly I think in your work between this intensely personal and very intimate scales and then the vastness that goes up into into  policy change and this manifest project that you're doing and intersecting with all these different stakeholders in the change of how we regard and how we treat and how we manage air pollution you know from London mayors to people who operate in Lewisham locally but also  on a much more national and international scale. I know you're doing this project in Lahore and these other cities and bringing this global thing and this ease or the elegance I would say of moving between these two extremes of intimacy and and universality speaks to me very much of a type of empathy that draws in  a sense of something that's very shared. Kinship is the word that I'm  hanging everything off so I wonder if you ask you a little bit about that because you do talk about empathy in your in your interviews and things that you've talked about the drive of empathy and this London Underground project you know these  the intimacy of talking to these relative strangers but they're  people in these uniforms that you see but you know the stories that you describe of their lives and personal descriptions that they give you, they volunteer and this lady who talks about the the man who died on the platform and intensely personal stories but they're  relatable in so many ways perhaps you could - I’m talking too much sorry, I’m getting very animated! - but perhaps you can talk a little bit about empathy or this idea of a  shared network in the way that your work is presented or received, however you want.

00:21:47

Dryden: completely - one idea before talking about empathy exact because I think it's it relates to that first point of the proliferation across space and then how something once you've established a structure in space and therefore in our round around Lewisham thinking about your idea of the of the of your space in the way that you use it and what was interesting over time they become like coordinates that people encounter you know that you might be on a bus route you might encounter three or four of these installations around a space and then over that that time also the effects of Air Pollution actually fall onto the work themselves or the rains that over here starts to change them they so they take on a patina with which is actually totally encrusted by the pollution itself and so there was something that I really exciting about that just thinking of your organic descriptions and how they then start does there's a certain  poetry but also a  just a factual visceral physical  register of the stuff that you're you're breathing and also I just wanted to say before before that I mean I didn't know I was interested in air pollution I mean obviously I was aware about it and very conscious and worried and concerned about it but it came through this encounter with this the scientist and then I suppose finding a way in that that it seemed to be a way of talking also about relationships fundamental to art making but then as you say and that's what has become increasingly interesting that the fundaments in this DNA, the blueprint of that is at the heart of the work between the still in the moving image and then how then it starts to find these other our echoes or in the idea that in this idea of animation being a metaphor for collective action being more than some of its parts the same really exciting to me. This idea of empathy I mean is really how that's difficult how it's very difficult to really think yourself into someone else's experience and how making a making a drawing of someone it gives you a window a time frame to to really focus on that on that personality if that's from direct observation as I've made a lot I've been in conversation or if it's through them through looking at a photograph - I had a big body of work at the photographers gallery where I drew into photographs or drew from photographs and that sense of how it then becomes a portal to think about who this person is, who the stranger is and also to acknowledging that it's one thing to say well I feel great empathy for you but what does that really mean you know really what does that entail and of course what's fascinating within the scale of the infrastructure of the city or a challenge such as the dangers within the air that we all have to breathe but within the city that we live in is that you… sorry to completely lost my train of thought!

Bethany: it’s that difficulty of empathy, you know how you feel into somebody 

Dryden: yes exactly yes - let's see it just seemed to be a relationship between what it is to think yourself into someone else's experience or try to or want to have a desire to do or to try to connect or try to and I suppose what it is when you when you engage with someone I mean it's amazing because you find out about them but of course it gives you an insight and a reflection on your relationship to the world too and where one is trying to orientate yourself as a kind of map-making where you are in relation to someone as well as that person too so it changes you through that encounter and I love that kind of nourishment and how expansive.. those the wrong words but it does change it does implement, doesn't it, through conversations with people through your whole life and the fact that you can continue engaging with different people's experience or people with different experience to your own I love that - I love drawing as being a medium to enable that but of course what's really fascinating within the context of what are the factors which will influence the dire need for change that we have in so many other big challenges we have in the world is that it's about where fundamentally policy and the bedding down and happening is a response to the people who are making those changes are responding to the experiences of people who are the most vulnerable first and foremost and that marker of a society being how the most vulnerable and I think it's kind of really fascinating and so the policy makers being able to think themselves into the experiences of people other than their own, experience is critical and I think that what's hard is we continue with challenges of the resources of climate change is that the idea of survival doesn't necessarily mean that people will be thinking collectively it will be that people will you know feel when people come more threatened there's a closing down so it's it's an interesting that empathy will really bring about change or play a more and more vital role if we really are going to have change.

Bethany: in terms of the presentation of your work, there is a difference in scale in terms of  the 2012 iteration of ‘Breathe’ having a cinematic quality, it's opposite the Houses of Parliament, it's got a real political charge so that atmosphere around it, whereas the tube I find really fascinating - the project that you did with drawing people on the Tube that, you know, London and the public space as a sort of a setting as you say outside of the museum or whatever, it’s fleeting because big cities can be quite anonymous and the Tube is a really strange anthropological entity of anonymity. But I think people are also uniquely placed to share vulnerable moments you know like the stories that the people told you while you were drawing them, as an exchange of empathy, it's quite intimate, much less cinematic, it feels like the visual storytelling of the lives of those people. These interactions, they're in sharp contrast with the way that we imagine the tube you know it's been quite breathless and soulless  and sitting on the sweaty Piccadilly line you know with your head wedged and someone's armpit for you know your commute to work I mean it doesn't feel like a place that  you know naturally is predisposed to an empathetic exchange but actually it is for that very reason probably uniquely place to be somewhere that feels more empathetic when people do share or exchange or when something happens you know you hear these these stories about people having emergency things on the Tube and how people do rally and people do you know become very personal. I think the setting of your work has been very different, the Lewisham Town Hall - also very political, very cinematic, very large and then some of the others have smaller works have been very.. I've now lost my train of thought sorry I just… there was a question there…!

00:30:18

Dryden: yeah yeah there's yeah then within that different so you're right, as you were saying that, I was thinking that whole lot of drawings that I've been making out here and you might lay them out on a you know on a surface but then you might put them into a stack and you do have to hold them in a stack with new  making them or but the idea that in a projection all this all this stuff can be  stacked on top of each other or seen in sequence one after each other and then the sense because that work like the work for the underground I love that sense that you're engaging with the singular moment and the singular encounter but then you're also mapping the Jubilee line itself which has to say expanse for space and that then there's become 60 drawings because there was so many people on the underground at that point but somehow how you can distill or imply that sense of the multitude of the multivarious experiences and the sense of the panoramic and there's always this interest for me between the panoramic and the detail is just something that just occur because again I think there's something about the white that the figure is seen on this white background because they know where that can even imply this expense of space and you don't you there's that sense of detail and moments of focus within within it within the schematic space and I think what you described in Salisbury which I just was so excited to place work in this space where just the sacred architecture and the  acoustics and the quality of light and as you say you described that I love the way it described that there's stillness but also when it's  set against this the sound and you know when they were doing Evensong and then you know this  then you you encounter this image with this seems to be charged by this music but I but for me I suppose that I mean I'm not I'm interested in a sense of what's beyond very much what's beyond the scene and what can be you know a sense of I suppose for spirituality but I'm I wasn't I didn't grow up in a religious household but I suppose a house what is very interested in looking at different you know that the desire to looking at different forms of belief and religion and so there's something about how that transformative state that you're in in that space combined with what the artwork is trying to do then becomes a third, something else and and as you say I like this this it's almost like something's trying to work out I think that there's a  juddering  flickering image 

00:33:29

Bethany: that there's something emerging and disappearing, it almost looks like taking a piece of paper and screwing it up and putting it in the bin and then a new drawing it's almost  I love that I love how they're not all the finished drawings. 

Dryden: I think that's almost like the idea that you're when you're the surface when you're making the drawing the sense of trying to create the illusion of trying to feel a sense of the form of the body but each one is almost like you're scanning the body  your through and then your back and you're you're not you're not staying on the same plane the whole time you know your sense of that person is both physical but also you tend to they occupy your imagination it’s incredible when you're when you're making them it's very you know you feel you feel an intensity and I think that's also something to do I think I'm interested in proximity and distance and as you say anonymity and intimacy all these  oppositions I think was just so  in conversation with each other that actually being close to someone you can actually feel an extraordinary distance but being a distance from you can feel incredibly close and so that remoteness of working with not the person in the presence is as interesting and complex to me as being in the presence of someone, the physical presence.

Bethany: absolutely can I can I ask you about the  the materiality of the drawings because you know a lot of the stuff that you're dealing with is huge you know air pollution breath it speaks to life and death and speaks to you know some of these enormous concepts and all the things that we've discussed already and and yet the drawings you know the materials that you choose you know you tend to work in  fairly simple mechanical pencil and you've done some red drawings and they tend to  you know wipe background you know piece of paper draw you know the simplest probably the most sustainable in the context of you know talking about where we find ourselves with you know our ecologies very sustainable very democratic form of art making is this is the simple handheld piece of white paper and just a pencil. Could you talk a little bit about you know have you moved out to that and I think that the photography obviously that  intersects in a very different way to brings that very ancient form of art making into a  contemporary, the animations you talked about that already you know  how that makes it something entirely different and breathes and new life into into the drawings but the original drawings I'm interested in that and - just for a moment the drawings of Mark you know the man that you drew very intimate for portraits of - I realise that they’re portable they're easy to carry around all that stuff but could you talk a little bit about the choice of materials and how much you've because it seem to have been fairly consistent on on your materials over the last 10 years or so.

00:36:31

Dryden yeah, what I like about the materials is that it somehow the scale of them is that you hold them in your hand and there's something about the fundaments of that of that act that you're and that then it becomes quite performative I realized because it's often I document the process and I think for me there's something that's great there's meaning in the method and there's meaning in the process so much that and sometimes that needs to be shown, it isn't it isn't shown in brief but maybe it's implied in breathe because of the drawn mark. What was interesting to me with encountering a day making that piece a day with Mark was that I could something that wasn't intrusive but allowed an engagement and a  opening and to hear Mark’s story and that this was happening and I was drawing as I was talking with him but I was also he was it wasn't as if that he was having to  look at me behind this huge canvas or something you know it felt that I could it was you know the like a notepad I suppose or it almost felt like writing with with that very 

Bethany it’s very direct isn't that it's very 

00:38:01

Dryden yeah or the end and note-taking and  but I so yes I think I think that what it is to what's happening when you're looking at a drawing it's like with the linear works is that you seeing the drawing being made but the richness of of what's implied in the drawing and in what's is there within what's being said as well so that the construction, you talk about Tracy telling her story on the underground you know from you know oro Tundaaye with the baby Jubilee and there's so many amazing stories in that

I think that there's something when you're drawing I was amazed how open people became and I think there's something about looking at people and they're looking at looking directly at people as you as you  taking in an aspect of how they're looking and you're talking with them at the same time so you can't fully you can't fully hold everything in your one state you're constantly in flux and I love that mistakes like speed dating - you encounter someone the point and the first work I made is in 2003 with that camera video it was called ‘Reveal’ and I just approached strangers in ehe streets and when recorded the conversation and you just saw the drawing being made and I love the fact that you can you can hold the scale of drawings in your hand and but then you can also engage and it does influence the way you engage with someone but I think it also adds something to that because I think something about looking away half the time that allows people open up because and also that sense of focus on some on someone it seemed to me through that I remember talking to some American lady I just approached in in a park in a park in London and just so would you mind if I could just sit down and with you and drive for 15 minutes and record the drawing as I making and she she just told this incredible story that you know she was maybe early 70s and she'd never her husband had died and she'd never traveled outside the States and but she decided now that she would do that and then she spoke so openly about her life and as I was making the drawing she just started to to these tears to start it to come down and cheek and I was drawing and I realized that that in the drawing I couldn't really I couldn't describe that in a way which was  you know you would see that she was crying but there was something entwined into what she was saying that added that dimension and and how that  imaginative space that through through the  the minimal means of this spider drawing and and then richness of what they were saying there was something that was something that was being formed. It's about a practicality I like that idea of the practicality sometimes that that can define what the scale needs to be is just I think that

Bethany: what do you think I mean it must be difficult to self-reflect but what do you think is it about this encounter where you're approaching entire strangers and inviting them to share this  quite special or quite unusual moment and I think you know talk about materials you know they're quite they're not very intimidating it's  not you know if you had some very fancy techniques you know doing something that will be very distracting to the process you know as you say or canvas or something like that but there must be more to it you know that as you say the  the verbal element adds something that the drawing doesn't necessarily say on its its own and you as a person become very integral to that and you know it sounds to me what I'm hearing from that story about the American lady is that you obviously made her feel very safe you you know you approach and quite strange I mean you know man comes up to in the park you know it has lots of potential to go in a number of different directions and clearly in a very short space of time you made her feel safe enough that she could not only engage in the drawing exercise but also reveal quite personal you know get right to the heart of the matter can you just talked about it's quite difficult survive yourself but you know in what way do you feel you have brought something into that process of drawing vulnerable people or in strange situations 

00:42:48

Dryden: we're all vulnerable that's the point I think in a way into different degrees obviously you know some more much more explicitly than others but there's a vulnerabilities within us all or there's a  desire to want to connect within us all even if that might not be about

Bethany: I wonder what it is about drawing that draws - that literally draws - that out, it's like that Old English phrase of ‘hung, drawn and quartered’, taking the viscera out, whatever it was about that circumstance allowed that lady to just

Dryden: yeah yeah and I think it's something about the I think that is about listening as well and somehow there's a I'm made a work called ‘Closer’ with which I showed that the tape of over 20 years ago and I used a laser light to  like a laser pen and I was filming in public space and first it was tracing on the Architecture but then I then was looking at strangers through windows and there are partially veiled with reflections but then the light would touch onto the arm or the hand and you know that's something very  ambiguous about that and as you say that when you and I think a lot of the work has this range of how you engage with people and some way you're engaging with strangers some young age of the people that you are known but it's always about questioning that in some it's more a sense of taking someone's image and sometimes it's about asking for someone's image sometimes it's about being with someone for a long time it's questioning the ethics of looking and and what you can understand from someone else and and how you engage with someone else but the laser light I felt was almost like a luminary stethoscope in a way it was a way of  listening through the light and I think that in the way the pencil is a bit like that it's like a  it's an it's a listening as well as a looking device and it's a way of sensing it's like a I was think of sonar as well like you send something out and you get something hit something back. All those things I think are  really interested in and I think that that I think about things and when you when you actually encounter people that actually listen and to you oneself you can really feel it and it's like whoa actually we are really exchange here and that doesn't often happen often and and that's interesting what those  barriers are and how what are the means that you can go beyond that and really try to connect with someone and I'd love the fact that you can feel very connected to someone that you might just meet for 15 minutes or five minutes and I think that maybe the drawing is a means through which that I've that stimulates something around that to enable something around that not just in my experience but then to be drawn and to be looked at intensely is quite an unusual thing I think you know a new and then everyone you make a drawing of someone you explain you know I don't know what it is but there must be a whole new category of love but you fall you fall for that person because you're completely enveloped in them and whoever they are whatever their stories I don't know what the stories are going to be and what people would like to say some people don't want to share much but just within the tone and the subtleties of what they say so much is implied and suggested and those it's so you know everyone is just totally in grossing aren't they I mean if you spend the time to really look and really really engaged and I think there's something there's something important process isn't it 

Bethany: yes it is a sort of a seductive process because I think it's you know the way you talk about listening I haven't really thought about it but it is it is a listening device isn't it and it's like that that phrase and attention is the greatest form of generosity I think just going up to somebody and just you know gifting them complete attention it's quite a seductive process it does pave the way for something a little bit more special than you know I think past few brought a lot of ego into it or sort of talk about yourself a lot you know it would be an entirely different thing that I think because you sound like very receptive and that's an impression I get from you this mental image of a sonar it's you know it's this amazing idea of a beam of light between you metaphorically speaking of  you know something unsaid that goes between two people in this very intimate encounter of drawing and being drawn. I remember years ago being drawn by someone in the Tate and and I'll never forget it and a man just came up to me and he gave me the story and he said I've been watching you for ages you stand really interestingly and he said would you like the drawing and I just I was so unprepared for it I said love to I took the story and I still have it I must have been about 19 quite a long time ago and I just I felt hot tears come to my eyes well that moment I just like I could we just this idea that somebody was just quietly observing me without expectation or judgement and the drawing was beautiful I mean it was just you know it was obviously somebody very skilled in observation and draughtsmanship and it was immensely seductive thing to feel that someone had chosen me!

00:47:37

Dryden: that's interesting yeah that’s lovely. I think that's so interesting what you're right what it does and and yeah and that's an amazing moment where it's and you know that person gave you the drawing and then what that yeah it's very charged. Did you talk afterwards yeah but that's  amazing as well isn't it yeah because it may have become much less romantic we then got into a conversation and I don't know if it's  then developed into something or you know that might have been more disappointing or you know I don't know to discover this person was boring or annoying or I don't know this person then wants to go for coffee or something I don't know it would have been it becomes something else. That this laser interaction of very very specific and very brief moment in time that was founded on this bizarre generosity of attention and observation and kindness

Dryden: yes absolutely kindness and that goes to your kinship idea, the sense of the kinship that you described and yeah you're right you're that's it I suppose it is it's about trying to locate oneself in relation to others all the time and in that description of your experience that does that both ways isn't it both for him and for you and I think that I feel that too when when making that  and that goes back to your  the tentacles of the rhizo interconnectedness of that that's there within this schematic structures of these different encounters in different works and and different physical places and then different dimensions supposed of as you say on this larger scale now that there's that potential that you could take that and you could take it to him to another city of the gauge with another infrastructure of peoples in not just individuals but does societies and also in very particular political structures or very particular  challenges you know and that that's revealed through the challenges of air pollution for example but by making a drawings of this this activist from Lahore it reveals the challenges that are there which are very different than here although we share some of that so in the spirit of one encounter as well it's like that's that's like another country another world other country fantastic great tech great play but so yeah 

Bethany: the materials in your work are quite constant aren't they say they're  this this play between how they're different but also very similar this is the drawings in the mechanisms of you know harnessing the  sense of a network of drawings and the network of connections that you made through lots of speaking with different stakeholders different types of people and also this  speaking to strangers you know it creates these these very intricate networks and I think you know that is how empathy works it is a  a strange invisible network of of these things and and you know the old you know origin of the German adaption of the word Einfühlung meaning to feel into something is the basis of empathy that  aesthetic empathy where we can express ourselves through the means of drawing or through something and actually interestingly you talked to … (Dryden writes the word down) into Einfühlung it was interesting to me the early talked about thinking into someone else's life and very similar concepts idea that I've owned is feeling into something and it I think we broadly imagine empathy to be a human to human thing but I think it can be lots of things it can be I think the city into into a double decker bus, it can be this feeling into the world air pollution feeling into the air like breathing it in literally it's the blurring of self and other that I think drawing is so uniquely placed to do this all the things that we've talked about all this intimacy all of this universality that we drawing plays within your work that is so compelling and going to another city like Lahore that has all these differences it feels different and it looks different and smells different than it sounds different but yet there are these tentacles of humanity that  ripple through the work of a network that you’re making that’s part of a network that’s not that different from London really yeah exactly Brixton for 10 years so it's not far from Lewisham and spent some time in Lewisham actually I live very briefly in Lewisham and just for a short time at the Vicar of Lewisham's house right this is amazing Presbyterian vicar who had nothing in his house but wooden table and a cross on the wall and it was all quite austere and I was a young artist at Camberwell well that's great what you were Brixton 

Dryden: where were you in Brixton is that the slade where were you Dalyell Road 

Bethany: so it's in that little triangle between Stockwell, Brixton and Clapham north and it was just at that moment of gentrification where you know people went from not wanted to all the Clapham anymore to being it's much cooler than call it Brixton.

Dryden:  I was just Railton Road just off just offer Railton Road in a mail road it was called yeah no no absolutely I relate to what we're talking about but 

Bethany: I think also Lahore or wherever else I don't know if you've got plans to do other cities in the world but I think there's something so connective about this idea of taking this  project with air pollution whether it goes into something else I don't know I wouldn't like speculate but I find that immensely empathic and it speaks more to how a similar than how we're different yeah it's not london-centric or too Lewisham-centric it becomes it becomes an everyone thing right it doesn't become an Ella Roberta thing or a Heath thing, it becomes an everybody thing. 

Dryden: you know it's it becomes what it goes back to what you were saying about you really nice way that blurring of the boundary between you and you and I or you know you and someone else because the thing with that it does it it enters the body it fill it feels body as no other no other entity or thing does that has this  you know of this both the with the contained in the air is both the  you know the oxygen or the balance of those but it also the particles of what's happening in the in that moment but also the particles of history and there's something going to really and also terrifying that enters the body and then goes and those things are exchanged and shared I mean it's very and it's they'll do 

Bethany: it’s equalising 

00:56:55

Dryden: then and then you realise it also has these and terrible inequalities in it so it

Bethany: I think broadly climate change is something that experienced massively unequally we  you know we're in the west  suffer a little bit from this  invisible invisibility fallacy you know where we really seeing and sitting here beautiful Wiltshire it can sometimes feel like a  an effective gap there where you it's very difficult to experience but Ella roberta's family I mean that you know the effects couldn't be more devastating and personal and that inequality is shocking although broadly speaking you know sickness and death are quite equalizing and we're all going to die at some point none of us have any that's true that's really absolutely the direct effects of the ecological breakdown this this climate chaos you know it is it is so unfair it is so devastating for so many and so violent and catastrophic and the loss of identities for indigenous cultures and for people who live in places that are archipelagos or islands that are just sinking and vanishing you know it's it's so violent and so catastrophic and yet for people like me I would say it's it becomes a conceptual relationship that we have with these things

Dryden: ultimately it's just like okay so there's a few Islands which are going under now you know so but you know that's that's that will that that will increase and it's like well at what point do people really that is there going to be enough urgency I mean it's like incredible that the idea that people can imagine that all there's a few other you know the idea that that's okay well that's that that's the it's now it's well it's you know we're so beyond the time that those responses and need to change it's just like turning a huge tanker isn't it I mean it's just sort of pulling that those Communities and because those that people that are most vulnerable within those Communities and that but ultimately all these all the the inevitable  all the logical steps would be that will all be caught but it's just like well why why are anybody why has anybody being caught or why I suppose that's happened throughout history is this what the peace supers and in London it's like what was the point and then the cleaner act came in that clean air act was you know what because those devastating effects were happening to many many many people before it got to a critical mass where people really stood up and that's it it's like well how how much evidence do you want and the issue is is that yeah so it's when you look at populism the problem is that everybody would like more simple solutions because they're so complicated the problems and that's why I suppose that set and then the work were we're not talking to people that we don't agree with too are we that's  that's another big problem in the world that seems that's a lack of isn't it the idea of how you enter into how do you enter into a conversation with someone if you weren't support trump who does support trump you know you need to talk about them needs to be a common ground with a talk to to people and to find a  consensus or a common ground because there's so much polarization and that and when you have polarisation starts this you have stasis and stillness you can't move forward because you know there's a there's only going to be a few thousand people in the states for example that are going to decide the election isn't it because and it's this thing where they can't they can't move forward so empathy is interesting is like how do you empathize with someone how do you empathize with someone that you think I don't I can't see I don't understand what you think in it’s appalling you know just like okay well maybe we should talk about it spend a bit of time with you to try to understand what you're saying what your perspective is and that's  important to I think too to talk to people we might find a really we really disagree with 

Bethany: I think empty is unique of a wishy washy  slightly watery concept of just being nice to one another, it is something that is you know it is a core moral concept I think  you know a lot of definitions of kindness that we've got bound up and being some little bit self indulgent or you know a bit more about you know being nice to another I think true empathy this feeling into this sense that you can create commonalities where we perceive there to be none like you know talking to Trump (supporters) and you know my husband ran on a road trip across the midwest and he is just the most extraordinarily empathetic person he's a naturally born empathetic human being, he’s an empath. He just wanted to talk to him people have all these you know these flags outside their houses would come banners and whatever and there's really small places where people were just you know they live such a different existence to the lives that we leave and you you made it his mission to just listen which is interesting with what you said and he just asked questions you know just for his own interest just to say you know I'm here from Germany and I'm just curious about you know your views on the upcoming election and just held himself entirely back you know blood boiling thinking how you know he not being that empathetic with you know some of the Trump stuff and you know and it was so interesting that he was able to have these incredible encounters where you know there was this amazing exchange of views because the premise that he'd the whole thing was predicated on this premise of empathy where he would just go in and say I'm here I'm interested in your opinion I don't want to fight with you I want to understand you this I want to feel in to you of your lives because your life is so different to mine and I’ve rarely loved him more than when he told me the story about how he'd been able to go and talk to all these different people just on his weekends you know just for for the fun of it and just try and empathize and understand and just put himself in a position where his own politics and his own views were left at the door and it is a rare thing but it's not a watery, week concept of being pleasant it's incredibly powerful thing and I do believe very passionately that truly is one of the few strategies that we have against this monstrous, the velocity of of climate change and you know I think I think I would like to briefly talk about impact if that's okay because I needed an impact study I think in It's really interesting that you're able to  seek that feedback but just going on very conscious of how much of your time I'm taking up …

So the  impact study was  a little while ago and you know I love this collaboration that you have with scientists and politicians and I think art has entered a new arena where we are able to cut a participate in some of these issues that are right on the the sharp edge of life and science and and policy but so there's a little while since that impact study and I just wanted if you could talk to me a little bit about how you feel the work has been received and we are constantly told the art can't do anything or can't change anything I just I just don't think that's the case, I'm hopeful that you'll be able to tell me some good news but if not that's okay would you be able to do something works since the Case Study that impact is study words you know how you know because the 2002 project is still relatively new you know - have you been able to engage I haven't seen anything if I've missed something in my research I apologize but I haven't seen any impact studies more recently.

01:05:45

Dryden: I mean the potential one might come from this yeah absolutely just in your own words I'd love to know what do you think has been the how has it been received what has been the yes it's what's obviously gives that you I suppose I think what realistically you if you're able to work that I've made is it contributes in some way to  during. One yeah I mean the potential one might come from this yeah absolutely I mean your own words I'd love to know what do you think has been the how has it been received what has been the impact.

yes yeah it's it's what's against that you I suppose I think to realistically you if you're able to work that I've made is it contributes in some way to  during to add to or to help to generate connections in terms of conversations and I suppose it's a I think that the drawings for me this this idea of these urgent these carriers of urgent in of information of a sense of urgency within the within the lines that heightened consciousness of breathing and there's something I hope just by seeing encounting images in those spaces that makes you suddenly conscious of that act of breathing so I so I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the I hope that the work the the different manifestations of the work can  work in different ways and yeah it's  interesting how it because it coincided 2022 with the ULEZ and the extension of the ULEZ and that was a that added something which was more so as suppose explicitly political about it because it was a controversial for policy and but it's you know that's it is like if you know that if structural changes going to happen you have to there's going to be it's not going to be easy it's not going to be easy but then how do you how do you mitigate against people who are more affected than others in that change and you have to do what you can to do that but you also are aware that yeah it's interesting to me what did Sadiq Khan held held true to something that could have seen to be seen as a non-popular policy but in fact the fact that he got in the way they did for this next for this next is it what is it three or four years is it three years what's the mayoral term yeah yeah but I mean it's interesting that actually you see that people a majority of people are prepared for those difficult and want those difficulties I feel a bit  strange about talking but the politics of it I don't know if I feel confident enough on that. 

Bethany: I suppose there is a timing thing you know you talked about how Lewisham  living in Lewisham and at the time it became central to this discussion and then again there is the  ULEZ thing happening at the same time they're  I suppose that  being in the midst of it all and you've obviously  taken that opportunity to  you know utilize that that momentum in your work so that timing issue is also quite critical I think yeah I suppose but out there and meeting with Sadiq Khan and another stakeholders that you know at another time perhaps might not have been quite so at the front line perhaps yeah and 

Dryden: I think what ultimately I was in terms of the being an artwork that I'd like that I did that that context and and that does have an impact then of emphasizing important elements that are there within within the artwork that the stories of the people that are portrayed in it or the fact that it's coincides as you say with this period of time with what's happening structurally I think that's really interesting to me that and that it's in the public space and that people see it who may not go to art galleries those you know and a different state and how that might tap into things which are  you said it there's something about the there's something about the directness of drawing I think and I always really enjoy that and how people respond respond to that I think it's it's really fascinating that it feels approachable in for people because it seems within most people's experiences to have drawn and it isn't within most people’s experience to make films I make films and I and you know work because interesting you saying about working directly with the drawings and a lot of the  films or the context that I put drawings in like this this feature film The Unseen the lives are looking the feature link film which has drawing in it but it's it was about the making of the film all around that to carry that act of drawing someone and capturing someone with the lens in it but then what your what your what the thing about the lens and all the editing and all the put together that's the means to enable it to happen but fundament when you watch the film you're most conscious I suppose about the act of drawing and what it is to draw these people that I'm drawing who are all have this extraordinary relationships to looking so yeah but I I like that how and I also like the idea that you take some very small and some intimate as you said you put them into public space and it has architectural  you know you it has quite a physical presence too this stretch of 12 posters which do something and that you’re claiming that that underpass as an installation for that moment so it isn't just a posters it's the it's it's the whole of that experience is the car passing it's the noise of the bus is going person I think that's why I've always tried to document and make the films of the documentation of things because I believe for me that's where the work is it's between it's in the experiential but those things are seen and how their scene and I love that I think that's that that is the work you know it's it's not it's not it's not just the paper on and the drawings so it's how those things accumulate and start to become additive which becomes really exciting and I suppose that taps into what you're saying about then these conversations how it taps into the politics of it and the communities of people that are around locally but then also how that there might become spoken about within the news the news or the of reported on also linked to what Rosamund is trying is doing and this desire that she's pushing to make breathing clean air human right and how and what that tells us about the values that we have in societies and and that doing ‘Breathe for Ella’ and the collaborating with rosamond in that way and you know that there's something within the conversation that we're having and we went to Vienna and we're at the world Summit which was  really  exciting and you know but you always you know you see listen to Arnold Schwarzenegger talk about climate change and you know and all the challenges and you know that fundamentally that the issue is is the red tape you know he says that we've got the solutions but the issue is the red tape but then you you also are aware that red tape is there so that people don't get invest in the wrong solutions and so it's not you know it's such a complex story and and then you know and you know we've gone through a time of like the idea of not listening wanting to listen to experts that I think Michael Cove said that didn't they we've had enough experts but in fact we read that's exactly what we need to do because we need to make the right choices because there's a critical time path I mean it we are Apollo 13 that's what we are where in you know where the surrounded by space and it's like well how are we going to get ourselves through this we've got to make these critical path they've got to be the right choice and we need people talking together to find a way of doing that but these whether is that possible you know is that is that possible on a scale you know there's lots of there's lots of different projects which are happening there are really exciting things happening but how that can  I suppose that's it how that interconnection of all those different parts how that can how they can interconnect enough to enable that those directions to be the right direction to be taken you know the right decision is to be taken. Small drawings and it's like this interview I did in the Guardian and yeah it was just after having no sleep at all again you know and getting the show on and having made all these drawings and I was slightly hallucinating but I remember saying if something about to say you know you know we've got to do something about it I think I said bloody actually something about it and this is what I do I you know I suppose you make small drawings and then that's the  an attempt to  engage with this the scale of this this challenge and so there is something about that the related again to the detail to the panoramic I mean that you can't get more parameter than the challenges we're facing at the moment can you

Bethany: that visual storytelling I mean it is it is they might be little drawings but they say an awful lot but you know can be difficult to say in words. I guess that's why artists are uniquely placed in that regard it can some cut through a lot of the noise and and speak to some of those  more the bigger broader you know stuff that's more likely to be received and I think people are  cave people in some ways you know we you know it is hard I don't somebody who's invested conceptually and intellectually and in the whole thing of climate change but you know the there is this affective gap it is very difficult to know what to do and beautifully do our recycling and and pay attention to the life choices that we make and how we travel and all these kinds of things but it's it's quite hard it's not affective in many ways we don't affect it - I don't feel it in my body very often in a way the art you can feel in your body it's something that you can actually experience it's a visual storytelling but that goes into the body you know and you can feel it it's that phenomenology of drawing that experiential quality that you were talking about that I think communicates so sharply and drawing more so than other mediums I really believe that I think you know once it becomes something that's harder to understand or you know a child can draw before they can speak and that's that's so important you know because it is so universal because everybody can relate to everybody can relate to a pencil and a piece of paper everybody can yeah I think in whatever codification it is or you know how whether it's just taking notes or jotting something on a piece of paper or just writing with the hand it's something that we basically understand in a way that an abstract painting or even a landscape painting or a piece of film or an installation you know you start to lose people inevitably.

01:17:29

Dryden:  a lot of there's a you're right there's a directness right there's a absolutely that  interrelationship now you're right and I spoke sorry I haven't really answer that question around impact but you hope that everything that you describe about what a drawing might communicate in relation to a particular subject might then contribute in some way usefully but also emotionally and in terms of the imagination and but in terms of revealing the stories and the and the urgency and it's like well what's what what's it all why you make what is that what's the what's the hope for the work it's what's how is it useful is it useful but is it useful but it's not just in a practical way but if it engaged people's imagination up and you can draw people in and whoever those people in if you know I mean interesting that you know that the who sees it and then therefore what impact it might have I mean suppose that that's it isn't I mean that's what I mean you're aware of that you know you see a documentary you see you see the ‘Blue Planet’ and that there's just blows everything in its community what it communicates is beyond beyond it's it's so massive and and that's it that's your that's because it's it's just beautifully crafted and researched and and reveals and it captures people's imagination so you're aware that those things that things which are made but it's also carries so much information and insight so therefore that you know that that's something that's made so that so that things that could be made in the world can be both have a beauty to it but also a  meaning and a  purpose as well I suppose it's an inquiry into that it's it's it's thinking what this this is this project is engaging with things and that's run with it and see how it can it can push and as you say opened up that opportunity for Manifest which was  fascinating which seem to offer a lot there's a whole other conversation around that I think about about the  the impact and what it is to involve artists in those contacts I think that's why it's such an interesting project to do because that there is I think there is such a potential because it it offers the people in those situations and how policy making is perceived to have a different way of looking at what they're doing and I think that's it it's all about trying to see something in the round I think that's what you do when you make art what you're trying to find new perspective to understand it and that you might have multiple relationships to something you make because you're trying to work out what it is and what it might mean in relation to the world in the regulator art history into relationship what's happening in your locality around the world at any one moment and I think artists are quite well you know that's what we do that's what we're  there's really important and important based on that in we all do that in different ways but that's why it's great to have different artists in those really critical scenarios as it's a great value as well as what's produced it's just what influenced that way of thinking and engaging can generate I think.

Bethany: I don't know if you've read Ben Okri’'s book ‘Tiger Work’ it talks about the  existential creativity that that  this urgency that there is in creatives because we are so uniquely placed too common things come at this issue of climate change from from a different perspective and I must it's super adhere actually but I love his work anyway but what's the time what's the title but it's called Tiger Work I realised I should I wanna let me take a picture so long enjoyed talking to you so much thank you and you too that's been a pleasure I can't imagine what would motivate you to sit here and just you know let me ask you all these questions and tremendously generous with your time giving it yourself immensely busy at the moment and in Hong Kong.

Dryden:  it's a great interest to be the subjects and what your talking about and you know all that you've said and you're so fascinating and yeah absolutely it's been really really interesting for me to talk so thank you I don't know if the paper's gonna be entirely justify all your your kind gift of time but it's a little bit of a hurried last minute  yeah don't worry don't worry together at the last minute but I was definitely send you the pay for eventually I think the deadline the final deadline is in November but it's I think hope you'll get some feedback in between so oh yeah that would be that would yeah and yeah maybe if you're in London you must come and visit this coming from coffee at the slate or something I would love to I would absolutely love to and you were reader is that right here at the slade is I'm professor at Slade a professor and I'm just moving into the PhD program now I'm gonna be teaching on the PhD program which at some point I'm thinking about David PhD okay well conversation maybe I'll come in Coming you know there's it's been very interesting what your researching well see how this paper goes totally but no I mean looking a big talk a lot of the first year about how I can wait through this research paper and yes I'm building this house and parenting children for my husband away and also stuff and I just  left a little bit late shall we say so well I mean I think there's enough to pull it together and you know in the time yeah I'd love to anyway thank you very much I'll let you go and send my fondest regards to Hong Kong yeah I will, all the best, all right all the best.