If that baboon was alive he could feel that the warthog is staring right at the back of his head the whole time. You cannot tell really why they arranged it that way. You cannot really understand. But I think it is not so good for the little baboon. Nobody likes that feeling. It feels like someone is drilling in the back of your head when they stare at you like that.

I think I'm drawn to spaces which language finds hard to inhabit, or at least spaces in which I can foresee a particular set of difficulties or complexities for language. Much of my work has been done in the frame of live performance, and in that context I've been particularly drawn to ideas of failure, error and to unfolding, real-time processes of making do or improvisation, especially in language. In live work I'm very much drawn to the way that error or the struggle of the speaker makes something visible - I suppose I think that the subject becomes visible in a particular (open, transparent) way thanks to the force of error or rupture. If you want to understand a system, first study how it fails!

A while ago - during the Gasworks show - I did an interview/conversation with Sophie Risner at Whitehot Magazine online. You can find it here.

The exhibition PLAY ADMONT currently being staged at Admont Benedictine Monastery in Austria places visitors firmly at the centre of attention and encourages them to play the role of discoverer, game partner and explorer. Active participation and interaction with the artworks on display and other procedures enable them to enter into a dialogue with an extended, socially-anchored sculptural milieu and gain admittance to a user-orientated environment that provides for a wide diversity of different transactions and forms of expression thanks to the incorporation of digital technologies. Choreographic objects, location-specific acoustic installations, situationally related spatial installations, interactive machines, performance activity participation, ephemeral experimental designs and developing archives assimilate visitors into the creative artistic process itself – it is only through the complementary elements of interaction and participation that the exhibits reveal their full potential.

ARTISTS: Thomas Baumann (A), Tim Etchells (GB), William Forsythe (USA/D), Armin Linke (I), Reactable - Martin Kaltenbrunner / Sergi Jorda / Günter Geiger / Marcos Alonso (A/E), Hubert Machnik (D), Hans Pollhammer (A), Werner Reiterer (A), Robotlab (D), Constanze Ruhm (A), Richard Siegal / The Bakery (USA/F), Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau (A/F), Martin Walde (A), Hans Winkler (D), Erwin Wurm (A), Johannes Deutsch (A), Julius Deutschbauer (A).

CURATED BY Christine Peters (D), Michael Braunsteiner (A)

More information here - descriptions of other artists projects etc. Play Admont is part of the large Styrian Festival Regionale 10 - more information here.

My part in the above is a new neon work cryptically titled G.O (photos at some later point) plus Unnatural History: A Reading of Spaces (2010). Here's the description of the latter project:

Responding to the Natural History Museum at Admont, reestablished after the devastating fire of 1865, Tim Etchells has created a new work in the form of an audio guide to the collection. Drawing the visitors’ attention to selected displays and to specific taxidermied or preserved creatures featured in them, Etchells playfully eschews a complete account in favour of a highly selective, partisan and idiosyncratic approach to the museum and its contents. Unnatural History: A Reading of Spaces reads the institution as an alien landscape – interpreting its displays and arrangements of wildlife for their significance and possible meaning in unexpected ways.

Play Admont: Opening hours:
3 June to 7 November 2010:
Open daily from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm
July and August 2010:
Extended opening to 8.00 pm every Friday

More information:
Benediktinerstift Admont - Library and Museum, 8911 Admont 1
Tel. +43 3613 23 12-601 od. -604
www.stiftadmont.at