‘Artist in Residence’ – A View from the Analyst’s Couch: A transcript of the conversation between Lisa Castagner and Dr Catherine Grant, 2nd September, 2014, Chelsea College of Art and Design. CG is waiting in a chair, she arises then sits again as LC enters stage and lies on analyst’s couch. CG: You’ve been away for some time. Would you like to discuss this? LC: I did that artist residency in Amsterdam for three months that I told you about. And I made the film I proposed, based on the life and work of a female Dutch still-life painter, called Maria van Oosterwyck. Part of the contract for the residency was to conduct interviews with arts professionals every month, which I managed, but next I have to present a ‘public facing event’ about my experience there. It’s supposed to be an informative talk about the Amsterdam art scene. But I don’t know the London art scene, let alone a scene anywhere else, so I don’t feel cut out to comment on how it works. I just feel like a massive fraud addressing a group of people. CG: You say that you feel like a fraud, and that you don’t know anything about the London art scene. Let’s explore why you feel this way, despite having been a practising artist in London for at least the last 10 years. Maybe there are issues arising from this residency and the lecture that we could discuss, particularly around feeling like an outsider. It might help you understand what you did achieve by spending the three months in Amsterdam. Are you uncomfortable talking about your art? LC: I don’t know why, I can’t comfortably use the artist word, but I don’t feel like I can call myself a photographer either, it doesn’t seem honest somehow. It’s a bit of a love-hate relationship I have with photography and with art, when I’m annoyed with one label, I turn to the other. But I probably have a hot-cold on-off relationship with most things and most people. I saw a documentary about Divine the other day, she started her drag career by dressing up to look like Elizabeth Taylor, at a time when all the other drag queens were aiming for realism and to look as beautiful as possible, but after a while Divine began to dress up in costumes that were less appropriate for somebody overweight to wear. John Waters said he liked this and encouraged it because it made fun of the drag balls. It made me wonder if John Waters hated the drag balls while also being drawn towards them, if his contempt for the thing he was obsessed by helped to drive his creative process forward. In Divine’s case, his anger about his past as a misunderstood and bullied youth, led to rebellion later. He would turn against the drag balls and against his audience if he felt like it. Like Sinead O’Connor, from time to time I watch her SNL performance of War, when she rips up the picture of the pope, then her performance at Madison Square Gardens when she got booed off the stage and Kris Kristofferson whispered something in her ear and gave her a hug. Her anger seems to fuel her creativity, which gets her into trouble, attracting criticism for when she turns against the music industry whilst continuing to work in it, and for her tirades against organised religion while being an ordained priest. CG: It sounds like you’re saying that these artists are looking for a creative solution to their conflicted relationship with the thing they want to be part of. LC: Yeah, maybe it’s that. CG: Why did you go on this residency? LC: A friend posted it on Facebook and someone else I know said they thought I’d like it there so that put it in my head, but I wanted to experience it as more than a tourist on a weekend break. Quite a few artists seem to be of the feeling that a trip abroad should be spent working in some capacity, they express guilt or unease at the idea of pure holiday-making for its own sake. This is in contrast to people who hold down steady jobs like I used to, who might feel they live for their holidays and deserve them. When I saw the residency opportunity I was struck by the look of the studio and apartment, I was drawn to it physically and I tried to visualise myself in it. Then you write this whole proposal and it brings a cold, researched idea into vision and that makes you want to see it through, to give birth to it. I didn’t understand the appeal of residencies for a long time, I’ve had to switch gears a bit to make art that justifies being in another country, I want to use the environment, not just have it as a nice spacious backdrop for making more of the same artwork. I’d previously been on one other residency and my proposal for a film involved similar research into historical female figures and I really tried to use the surroundings, also actively engaging with women currently living there. In the interview the Dutch panel made me aware of the studio building and it’s history, that the studio was a letter foundry then they squatted in the 1980s now they’re all still there and they’re in their 50’s. They pointed out that it had an LGBT disco in it on Sunday nights. I imagined it to be like a wholesome version of somewhere in London like Horsemeat Disco in Vauxhall, but anyway I fantasised about this space, what it would be like if I went there, what I would wear. I brought loads of clothes to Amsterdam, about 20 pairs of shoes and boots as I didn’t know what to expect from the weather and the attitude there, and I must have wanted to blend in. It was much more restrained than London of course in terms of style and self-expression, so I developed a modest pared-back look and stuck with that. It was ages before I explored the gay disco, which is called Trut, being Dutch for ‘faggot’. It had a strictly gay-only policy, so I had to pretend; they genuinely don’t welcome straight people, fag-hags especially. It was a challenge to dress in a way I thought a European liberal lesbian might, although I got told my first night by a German girl “you don’t look queer”, that made me all the more determined for the next time, The club was in the basement of the block, so I even went on my own one night, but I think in my own way, I cracked it. It was no Horse Meat Disco, the music wasn’t that exciting or loud and the crowd were quite young and studenty, but it was friendly and positive feeling. Somehow typically Dutch and healthy, I do have other clunky observations about Dutch people, but the gay scene, speaking as an outsider anyway, is a useful analogy for the culture in general, it’s a microcosm for the society as a whole; tolerant, fair, open, healthy, not particularly edgy. CG: How did you find the isolation of your residency? LC: I really craved a partner and collaborator, someone to work with to make it come alive, I had my dog with me for company, I didn’t collaborate with him or anything, but I was glad I had him, so glad, ‘cos I took him to openings and dinners, he gave me something to hide behind, like having a cigarette to smoke. The lack of structure or a defined audience as an artist working alone really hit home, questions of who I am doing this for if not just for me, who cares. Unlike a 9-5 job, where you’ll get fired or get a hard time from a manager if you don’t perform or show up. The writer and critic Cyril Connolly said it was ‘Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self’ …as virtuous as that sounds, I think you’d need a really strong sense of self to be able to exist in a vacuum like that. I do need some validation, to feel the highs to be able to keep going. Both Connolly and his friend Evelyn Waugh were consumed with self-loathing but Waugh achieved success and sought solace from his misery through spirituality, although Connolly is considered to have remained the most true to himself. Although the Netherlands is hardly a cultural shock, I had a heightened feeling of being separate from everyone else even more than usual. I suppose that’s the nature of being foreign CG: Did the isolation of the residency have some kind of religious significance for you? LC: I felt a bit like a monk, I was being frugal with food, careful with money and not going out socialising or boozing, at least not for the beginning anyway, I thought this was a needed break from distractions that I look for and sometimes find in London. But perhaps I needed something spiritual to keep me company and give meaning to my self-confinement, instead of just trying to connect with people and things on the internet.