An Artist Statement (2004)

An Artist Statement by Daniel Dugas

from a lecture at the University of Lethbridge – October 2004 / updated in February 2008

So what is it that I do?
What excites me?
What makes me angry?
What makes me tick and go on as an artist?
I am interested in everything but maybe the word everything is too big.
In 1990, I was finishing a residency at the Banff Center and I thought that maybe I could find some work and stay in the area.
I went downtown to a construction site. I made sure that I was wearing my steel-toed boots. I asked to speak with the foreman.
He came walking over, and I remember that he did not look too happy that day,
or maybe he was just a crabby kind of guy.
Anyway he said: “What do you want”?
I answered, “I am looking for work.”
He asked me what I could do, and I said, “Everything”.
He looked at me in Total Disgust and said: “Nobody can do everything, ” and he walked away.
I was left standing in this huge hole of mud, kind of stunned.
Maybe instead of saying ‘everything,’ I could have said ‘many things,’ and I could have added that I like to learn.

The thing is that I am interested in many things.
I am interested in construction,
how things are built,
how people work together to put something up.
I am curious about TAYLORISM: The Principles of Scientific Management.
I am interested in knowing why the foreman looked so angry when he said that nobody does everything.
And, as I don’t know what building they were constructing, I am still curious to know if they put brick or stucco on the façade.
I am also interested in poetry
In the idea of going on a sailboat
In insects – and especially the ants
In patterns on wallpaper In barcodes

In extended memory
In Martha Stewart and bad financial advice
In woodworking and the history of glue
In walking long enough to forget where I am going

In TCP IP DV NTSC ASCII HTML GPS XML URL
In Black Boxes which are really orange
In Time to Live
In Smileys:
Ta Ta For Now
Smile Smile with a large nose
Laughing hard
Screaming
Drooling
Ill with the flu

I am interested in Open source codes and distribution
In wikis In people having a chance to write
In blogs
The story of our world
In inventing meanings

I am interested in cryptography
In the Morse code
In algorithms of all sorts
In the frequency of letters in texts
In the absence of the letter E in the novel A Void

I am interested in loops
In dead ends
In spam
In people working madly to distribute that shit
In people working madly to dodge it
In indexes,
And all of the things that are left un-indexed
And all of those that will never make the cut

I am interested in fungus and rot
In weird and beautiful mushrooms that grow in the dark woods

In information explosion
In logic and in Pascal,
who said a long time ago that the heart has its reasons, which reason does not know
In Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said that our difficulty is, that we keep speaking of simple objects,
and are unable to mention a single one

I am interested in questioning the digital divide
In crossing bridges
In finding common grounds
In trying to breathe

I am interested in the black BMW’s
In the shiny Mercedes
In groups like Earth on Empty
Artists in Action

In wealth
In the Theatre of the Oppressed and Augusto Boal
In Saul Alinsky and Community Organizing
In the words of Winston Churchill, who said that
Money is like a sixth sense, essential for the complete use of the five others.

In stock markets
In crashes
In rise of opportunities
In bad luck In the absence of luck
In Boom or bust economies
In Power In mechanisms of exchange

In high tech and in low tech things of all kind

I am interested in parsing text files
In Apple C
Apple X
Apple V
Esc
Esc
Option
command
F
O

In apples with worms
In the names that are given to computer viruses
Like Clone
War 547
C Magic
COCO2099
Crazypunk.500
Dark_Revenge.1024
DarkApocalypse
Tiny.family

Or the names that are given to racehorses
Like Exaggerate This
Or Trick Again
Or Sightseek who won $630.000 so far this year

I am interested in databases In electrical diagrams In the taste of wine In Pong

In ping pong

I am fascinated with weather, hurricanes in particular
I am interested in models of analysis
And in seeing how they can be used in an art context
I am interested in the names that are given to future storms

Arthur
Bertha
Cristobal
Dolly
Edouard
Fay
Gustav
Hanna
Ike
Josephine
Kyle
Laura
Marco
Nana
Omar
Paloma
Rene
Sally
Teddy
Vicky
Wilfred

Those are the Atlantic storm names for 2008

The most intense hurricane to have hit the mainland United States remained unnamed.
It was in 1935 and was a category 5
With a Minimum Pressure of 892 mb

I am concerned about the repercussion of things
What happens when something is done?
What are the consequences of all actions?

I am interested in the politics of everything
The marketing of the politics
The reduction of the marketing
Newspapers
The online editions of the newspapers
The top stories

The breaking news
The exclusive interviews
The talk shows
I am interested in the wit of the guests
The waste of time
The length of life
The shadows of puppets on the walls
Brightly lit by pepper kits
Sold in advance
Sold out to the crowd
I am amazed that Oprah is on the cover of her magazine every month
I read that Oprah is the leading source for information about life and love

I am interested in pocket PCs
In the culture of pick pocket pcs
In the point and click
In the click and disappear
In the cyclical nature of fashion
In Simple Text Messages
In Thoreau talking about the telegraph
In how loud people talk on their cell phones on the buses
On the complexity of the discussions
And how others are trapped inside this dialog
Delicate choices have to be made between broccoli and asparagus
Between Bits & Bites and Vegetable Thins
All during the ride home on the train.

I am puzzled on why there is a 1-800 number on every box and every bag.
I have never bookmarked anything of Kraft, Pepsi or GM on my browser.

I like to look in the dictionaries
And bounce from one word to another
From one image to another

I believe that the world can be explain through anecdotes