SIMON COSTIN

Burning (triptych)-1996 1/3

Burning (triptych)-1996 2/3

Burning (triptych)-1996 3/3

Artista, fotografo, collaboratore di registi e stilisti, incontro con una delle voci più vivaci della nuova e bollente scena londinese in una conversazione appositamente realizzata per Virus Mutations da Franko B.

Franko B: What education did you have?

Simon Costin: I was born in London, educated in Greenwitch, I have three degrees: film making, theatre designing and a bit of history of art.

You have worked in different, but at the same time connected, areas. When I first met you, eight years ago, you were working in jewellery so let'stalk about the different stages of your work.

When I left college, I was there as Dereck Jarman's assistant for about six months and worked at his show, at his film and at various project he did; then he introduced me to go to Sandy Pound, who is a costume designer, who was working on a piece about Caravaggio. At that timt I was doing pieces of taxiderm, which is a sort of stuffing dried animals like snakes skin, or chicken feet.

That is a part of a beautiful poster where the broach is like a foot or something like that...

As I was doing that Sandy asked me to do some jewellery and I had never thought of doing something like that, I started almost by accident and it was not proper jewellery and because of this I was freed from doing traditional jewellery.

You did also a bit of stage design, didn't you?

Yes, I worked with Tess Department but only for a few months because there was a man who kept pinching my ass, it was like sexual arassment and so i didn't want to work in theatre anymore.

Let's talk about photography: how did you start your work of manipulation?

Well, when I was a kid I used to make super8 films, usually horror films because I liked special effects, and that was the start of all of this: that is the fascination of presenting something that is in the space between your mind knowing it's not true but also believing it because it's so realistic. In fact the images I use are never so fantastic that you couldn't believe them; I mean I am not like holding my head. My images are just about believable: you can think "Is that real or that other one ?".

I am interested in the process, you use to make your photos: how long does it take?

I start with drawings: very very simple line drawings; then I have a list of notes on lighting, etc.; thenI choose the photographer, based on what they do like Nilk Nike, a fashion photographer who I want to bring the near of some of my photos to the beauty, I mean they have to be very seductive and look quite rich, whereas for some other ones I use a medical photographer, in whose photos you can't find any trick. After that the image will be manipulated.

Do you manipulate things because it is the end mean, because you couldn't obviously cut yourself or because your job is about it?

For me manipulation is not what my work is about; it is just another tool I can use to take my photos. It is just another way or better the only way that I have of presenting me cutting my fingers off, removing my ears or taking my eyes off. So my work is not about that particular thing: I don't usually do it either, I am not a technician!

What kind of stuff do you usually use?

We use theatre blood for make up.

What influenced your job?

At first I was really interested, when I went to school and college, in all the symbolist and decadent painters and in all those poets like Baudelaire, Edgard Allan Poe and painters like Moreau and all those slightly seekly decadent artists but then it is changed now I like a lot more contemporary artist: Rebecca Horn, Beuys, Clemente and also Connie Parker.

Are you interested in technology and in the ideas of using it as a metaphore for mutation?

Not really I see technology like it is there and I can use it, but I am not seduced by it particularly.

So for you the word technology just refers to the way you use it. Now what are you working at?

The show there was last year based on photographing themes, dealing with psico-somatic racism stuff in fact some of the show was about skin changing.

The work is about you?

No, it is not. The reason I used myse was that if I used someone else, it would have mean something, whereas by using yourself you become a new figure. My work changed slightly in the way that now I am looking more at the way an individual become damaged from society and go on to perpetrate sort of fantastic antisocial behaviour, be it serial killing or... so I am looking about the process, the period when a man goes wrong and starts to construct his own reality, outside the most people reality. I am also interested in all those ideas of evil, but evil as a religious concept and in this monovalent concept you can include also you impressing your will on someone else. I deal with confort feeling desire and how your fantasy work to remain that way changing it into an obsessional behaviour, referring particular to phisical problems.

Going to the images sometimes there is a real space, which people can choose to go through, opposing to a costructing image of you cutting your finger. People who choose to go through could also cut themselves in a work of you marked by blades, but they hurt themselves because they weren't careful or because it should happen?

It was a mixture of people cutting themselves because they thought the blades were not real as everything else was fantastic , so they wanted to touch them to feel them. In that case I chose a sorrounding piece to give people the feeling it could move; I wanted to make them have an amazing journey and I was interested in how did people find in a tridimensional space, your feeling of unease withyourself or with the enviroment . It comes from my passion for the horror films, where there were those blind people in the middle of a wooden board with raising blades on it.

What are you doing now?

I have got some proposals: a film piece with a fixed camera, with a guy who has to look archetipely sexy, and although he cannot change his rule he has to go through a process in that room, changing into something darker. In terms of photographing I am still working with the medical guy and we are finishing the "sensitive series"; I am working also with the fashion photographer and we would like to do an exibitio in the white tube, but it is only a proposal. There is also a group show that I am doing "Dinner plate", involving guys and animals in quite close up picture.

What are you trying to achieve?

I have not one end in my mind. Most of my work is about an antisocial individual, what that behaviour is and where that behaviour comes from, why that behaviour is allowed or not allowed...

Tell me about you working in fashion stuff.

Mr. McQueen wrote me about 8 years ago while I was doing my jewellery stuff, really I was finishing it because wanted to do bigger statements, so that my jewellery was not jewellery anymore because you cannot wear it. So I met him but then I started making art direction doing some pop videos, because a friend of mine needed one. Doing this I kept trying to persuade Alexander to use an art direction because he usually used white catwalks. The first thing I did with him was a water catwalk, which was a huge quantity of water looking like glass because there was ripping water until the models come. Then he got the Givenchy contract, and I ended up with the shows for him.

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