At Scope London 2006 we met the artist Paul Sakoilsky. Paul Sakoilsky was born in 1964. He works in numerous forms and media. His work is rooted in performance and actionism. One of the most well known performances / installations, which he has developed and performed since 1995 is based on a text by Konrad Bayer, “Idiot”. Our video shows excerpts from the video of the performance “Cry”, which he performed at Plattform – Raum für Kunst in Vienna in 2005. More information on Paul Sakoilosky on his blog and his website. At Scope London he was represented by the London based gallery Carter Presents. Scope Art Fair London, October 15, 2006.
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00:00I used to do that as well, but mostly just performance and writing, and then for a while
00:26I had a sabbatical, a kind of pharmacological sabbatical, and I won't, I'll leave it up
00:36to someone's imagination, and then came back about two years ago, and started working again.
00:42I did curation with Jamie, which I'm proud to be a part of, and then Donna Chacartier,
00:52who's a wonderful performer as well, who did a couple of shows with her, Idiot, which was
01:00commented by Idiot Text. I did the first ever performance of Beyer's text in Shoreditch
01:08in 1995. We also made, for part one, we made this 360 degree camera, because you can't
01:16possibly play part one, so it was a big, huge inspiration for part one, just in case we
01:21get killed with the camera on my head, so it's like surround sound, surround vision,
01:26for me. And then I did that again in Vienna, at Donna's, but a very, very low-tech version.
01:34I lived in the gallery for three days, kind of making a mess, and then performed the performance
01:40in the evenings with Thomas Grasham, who's a Viennese artist, filmmaker, who also is
01:46with Carpenters, in London.
01:49What would you describe your art as? Your video art as well?
01:53Video art, also drawing, collage, started when I was 20, I burned all my paintings,
01:58every drawing, every photo, whatever, and I've started drawing and painting again.
02:06At the moment, most of it that's finished is video works, it's four videos that I'll be
02:09showing there tomorrow, digital photography, text, visual curation projects, and corners.
02:20All right, here, the last performance here, something to look at, rather than just my
02:24ugly head, is a piece of work, which was a public tattoo actually, my first ever tattoo.
02:32Here we go, piece of work.
02:35And you see in English, do you understand the phrase in English?
02:38Piece of work means a piece of work, a piece of art, but it also means someone who's not
02:43very trustworthy, and then you can, then you can objectify to what you say a real piece
02:49of work, it's either a really good piece of work, or someone is a con man, really not
02:56very trustworthy, then you have a real fucking piece of work, it's someone who you'd never
03:01And this was at a show I organised at a tattoo shop in London recently, yeah, well I did
03:14this performance in Frankfurt recently called Limit-Limit War, which was a lecture action
03:22on the concept of limit, with, by ingesting helium and N2O, last gas, lac gas, you get
03:29strange consciousness, you go out, and I'll be doing that again in St Martins at some
03:35point soon, black box, I'll be showing in Vienna, Area 53, making work for that, kind
03:43of wall-based work primarily, which is a gallery in Lumpendorfer, and really I've just got
03:50into a studio, a new studio, and I've started, I've just finished five videos, and so now
03:57I'd really like to get off the computer for a while, so I've just started making a mess,
04:02and I'll start showing at a castle as well next year, that'll be a solo show, wall-based
04:07works, performance also, I'll be doing a big performance in Prince George's castle, and
04:12Nietzsche's castle next year, they've invited me to do a performance there, because next
04:16year they're taking a year off as it were, because they're just, you know, it's gone
04:20interstellar now, and it's just got crazy volume, so they're taking a year off, and
04:24they've invited me to go there and do a performance, which will be about, it's going to be great
04:28volume, it's a bit scary, well not scary because of Prince George, I go there and take part,
04:34and friends of theirs, but you know.