Didem Yazıcı: In collaboration with other artists, you are giving lectures in different public and private spaces. Previously, we talked about these lectures in relation with the history of performance. Can you talk about the idea behind these lectures? What makes a lecture performance art in your opinion?
Scott Rogers: One recent lecture project is in collaboration with my friend Dave Dyment called Defacing the Currency. Dave and I discovered a mutual interest in the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. Diogenes was the founder of Cynicism and a truly notorious character in antiquity. To say that he was austere and provocative is an understatement for sure. What Dave and I were particularly interested in was how the incidents of Diogenes’ life seemed similar to the tropes we associated with performance art. In approriate acts, eating raw onions etc. It was a clear similarity, and one which we thought could be further investigated. The lecture itself became a way of tracing Diogenes’ influence and exploring how the Kynic is an almost archetypal figure running through counterculture figures. This is not to say that Lester Bangs, Marina Abramovic, and Gunter Brus were consciously referencing Diogenes. Rather Dave and I were interested in the synchronicity of all of these characters’ behaviour. In a way the project is about charting the production of culture, particularly cultures of refusal and resistance such as punk. We also just wanted to bring greater awareness to Diogenes as a thinker, as I don’t think he is that well understood outside of philosophy. So we use a lot of references to popular culture in the lecture as well, citing things like Mr. Show alongside a variety of art historical material, and philosophers such as Peter Sloterdijk. This range of materials places Diogenes’ ideas within many contexts and shows how they are applied in supposedly “high” and “low” culture.
I’m also going to present a collaborative lecture as part of the Arbour Lake Sghool (a group of artists that I have been deeply involved with since 2003). This will be at a conference called Institutions by Artists in Vancouver in the fall. There’s six of us in the ALS currently, but the membership changes sometimes. In this case Justin Patterson and I are the only two members who will be able to attend the conference, so we’re working together as a group to try and make something that all of us can contribute to. I have the feeling that this will be some kind of elaborate exquisite corpse, but who knows. It’s a project that has to deal with the problems of individuals presenting a collaborative practice I think. I also think we have to deal with the ways that institutions and individuals historicise themselves in the context of the production of art history.
As for your second question, I don’t think a lecture is necessarily performance art since many people don’t think of lectures this way. However, I think lectures are always in some way a performance. We are always performing ourselves in life of course, and lectures are noteable examples where this becomes evident. The lecture is a rhetorical format. It also involves a lot of careful editing, refining, and rehearsing. In that sense it has everything to do with performance.
