Tom Duggan

A Conversation with Sam Mercer

On April 12th 2011, Tom Duggan visited Tether during their residency 16 Days, at The Lombard Method in Birmingham. A themed discussion was held each morning, often with visiting artists. Duggan visited for 2 days, when the discussions were Branding and Re-branding. After the residency Sam Mercer from Tether and Tom Duggan continued a conversation related to these themes, which asked various questions about Duggan’s current practice. This text has been edited from an E-mail conversation between the two artists, which took place between May 2nd and June 6th 2011.

Sam Mercer: I was wondering about a part of your work that you’ve been doing lately, the Lucy Burden part, which you may have passed on to someone on the Internet. When you were using Lucy Burden’s name in Nottingham, you always maintained that it was a real person, but now on your website you clearly state it was a fabrication. Tom Duggan: I certainly tried to maintain that she was real around the time of my degree show [June 2009], but I used to try and make work which could be viewed from both angles; that of her as a real person, and that of her as a fictional invention of my own making. It was a year or so later, after I did the Lacuna show [April 2010], that her existence started to change substantially. I started discussing [my ideas] with people online. Over time, I spoke extensively with one person in particular and much later on decided to let them have a level of editorial/directional control over Lucy Burden. She went through three main stages. She firstly went from being someone I tried to present as being real, but who was a fictional phantom of my making; 'Re: Fwd: (No Subject)', 2009. 'Degree Show', 2009. 'Herbert Read Gallery', 2010. After that she became a shared effort; still a fictional phantom, but one of shared making by myself and online contributors. This happened while I was diluting exhibition listings. Now, because I have let someone I don’t know take control of her, someone anonymous, the name has almost become a superficial practicality, a stage-name for public purposes. I do know the person, but I don’t know their name or where they live or what they look like. Surrendering control of her to an unknown person I met online has been part of a process of making her real, moving her through stages of reality and allowing for her to be created or made through the Internet. The process of finding someone and getting them to agree to operate her doesn’t translate into a very tangible piece of artwork, but I’m pleased to have found a body for Lucy. We want for her presence to be felt within the real world and for [it] to embody the kind of anonymous and perhaps threatening behaviour that the Internet makes possible. People fear anonymity and faceless crime almost hysterically, I’m sure you’ve seen the news today of the American students angrily celebrating the death of Usama bin Laden. The fear which arose from the anonymity of the attacks on the Twin Towers had to be given a face and now people are rejoicing because the face and all that they had attached to that, has been killed.

Sam Mercer: There’s something quite strange about what you said about the Americans rejoicing the removal of Bin Laden which reminded me of something I was reading a while ago about Julian Assange and how there’s now several breakaway groups from Wikileaks due to the anonymity being removed. Wikileaks had become Julian Assange so by ridiculing him, it undermined anything that comes from within the organisation. So while perhaps anonymity is what people fear, they also rejoice when it returns; when the organisation is once again faceless? Perhaps because up to a point the anonymous is also invisible? Tom Duggan: I think it is. Invisible and anonymous are almost synonymous with one another and are ever more so within the context of the Internet. I did feel for a while that I wasn’t able to do a lot of the work that I wanted to because my name and face had been publicly presented together in talks and video interviews. I felt a bit like Julian Assange, like I wasn’t able to speak once I was just a man with a face. It was one of the reasons that I had to find a replacement who would carry on doing these anonymous things. The position that I’ve put Lucy into - being that she is unknown and anonymous - means that she is invisible, so I’ve managed to get back that presence of a phantom artist. We’ve managed to put her into a situation where no one, not even myself, knows what she looks like. I’ve got a phantom artist back, but what I have lost however, is knowing if the claims we make are genuine or not.

Sam Mercer: During your visit to the 16 days residency we [Tether] did in Birmingham, we discussed how necessary it is to distance yourself from a myth/pseudonym and even how telling people you have made up a certain character or event affects its authenticity, or how much people can believe in it. Tom Duggan: Obviously telling people that you have made something up alters how it is perceived. It stops it from working. In the documentation of my work and in talks that I’ve given about my practice, I’ve owned up to many of the works where I’ve created myths in the past. It was a hard decision, but I decided that I just didn’t want to carry on purporting myths that my work had made. You usually had to be in-situ for the work to operate correctly (how I wanted it to) and in photographs and text, which documented the work, carrying the myth on just didn’t work. Having pictures of my degree show on my website looked weird: why would anyone be proud of the fact that their degree show got totally trashed? Resultantly people suspect me of lying all the time. I don’t think people realise how I want that though, how I want my work and the things I say to be viewed from both perspectives: that of them being true as well as false. It’s a bit annoying at times, when people talk to me about my work and they just try to gauge whether or not I’m telling the truth. I feel a bit disappointed that they’ve failed to see past that and to engage with the rest of what’s there. But perhaps that’s my fault for insisting on that dubitable set up.

Sam Mercer: During 16 Days, we discussed an artist who created work anonymously. Who published nearly all of his work under pseudonyms and never told anyone that he had created it. But, if it turned out that someone else was going to get the credit for this work (either through claiming it as their own, or by appropriating the idea/imagery), the original artist would feel a need to tell people who had created that work. Almost like there is still a need to be credited for work you do anonymously, which seems kind of strange, an egoistic or jealous underbelly that seeps through perhaps. Tom Duggan: I think that there is always a desire for people to claim achievements as their own. As humans, we are used to getting rewarded for our efforts. If something we have to keep quiet about goes really well, like a bank robbery or a faked death for example, I imagine that there is a very human urge to want to tell someone about it, a need to brag or confess. On the poster I made for Re: Fwd: (No Subject) I hid my initials among the ASCII tiger image that I drew, so that should that kind of situation arise, I could have some ground to stand on and claim it as my own. Largely the work Lucy and I are making at the moment is just for the two of us. I think that’s why we’ve been keen to discuss it in interviews, it’s because we want that recognition; that sense of reward. Anyone could come along and claim to be Lucy Burden, but then, they wouldn’t be her anymore. Even if they were in the first place. Lucy knows that I’ll replace her if she does talk, but I’m pretty sure that she won’t for a while yet as I know how much she is enjoying working as her.

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A Conversation with Sam Mercer