In June 2022, Daata commissioned leading British Curator, Katharine Stout, to interview artist Orfeo Tagiuri on the occasion of his exhibition ‘Fished from the river of passing little thoughts.’

Katharine Stout: I want to start with asking how you see the relationship between your creative life as a writer and as an artist?

Orfeo Tagiuri: Well, in terms of a timeline, I was potentially going to study medicine, so was initially involved with the Sciences. Then when I arrived at university, I began taking writing courses and became increasingly interested in storytelling, particularly in writing to understand my own experiences. It was only after I graduated, that I began making visual work. This mode of storytelling and observing is a way of recounting a story of myself to myself, so it's always quite self-reflective. I see both writing and visual art as tools for that kind of navigation.

KS: Maybe the next question will help draw that out. Can you say more about the relationship between words and images, in terms of how they help you process your imagination, your inspiration, and how that might then translate into your artworks, whether writing or visual art.

OT: I was thinking about it like this, if I'm writing there's an ability to describe something very literally and logically. The distinction for me between writing and visual art can be the idea of having a script that one's written, and then acting out that script. In any given moment, I can describe the scene to you with written language and communicate that in a coherent, and quite literal way. Through drawing, especially in visual art, there's this ability to abstract and engage viscerally with that language. I see visual art as a way to put emotion into an experience.

I was also thinking of these different mediums as modes of transport. For instance, if you're walking, you're slowly absorbing the world around you, and in driving or flying, you're able to leap from place to place. I think drawing is the mode of transport from which I can be looking inwards and moving at a certain pace through my experience and dissecting it in different ways. And similarly, with the other forms, I can be in the space in a very present moment but at a different pace.

KS: Can you give me an example? For example, I was really interested in your animation film, The Way Home, that you present together with text as a piece of creative writing and part of the work, rather than an interpretative description. It’s interesting that you describe the different art forms as different forms of journeys, because that work is about a journey.

OT: That’s a good launching off point. So I made this short film that's about four and a half minutes long. The origin of that film is that I had written about a young man in a park who follows a line of ants carrying flowers, and they arrive at a tree. Then there's this mystery that unfolds. I was following where the narrative took me, writing and allowing it to unfold. Actually, I applied to art school with that film as my artistic statement. I felt that the conclusion of the story represented a sort of worldview, which mirrored my approach to making art. Once I was in art school, I developed a practice that repeated specific images, so a home, flowers, angels, the moon, the stars. It became a kind of alphabet of images that I could regularly and easily return to and reproduce. Once I'd finished school it become clear to me that that process of being able to rapidly recreate certain images is very conducive to making animation. That was when turned back to this original narrative that had been so important to me. I felt that by being able to represent that visually, I could convey a kind of philosophy to an audience. Also, there’s quite a bit of music in that film, they are all songs that I had made and recorded. What was exciting for me was to create a world in which those songs had their own space. So you're moving from language to the visual, and then there's music, which exists beyond logic, outside of time, within emotional based space. It was really exciting for me to bring all those disciplines together.

KS: That's interesting to bring in the musical element as a third, performative aspect. As you explain, there are motifs recur and seem to have a symbolic sort of place in your work, such as the home, plants, or natural cycles, which in a way extend that idea of a journey but maybe also drawing and writing as a form of journaling, a kind of diary keeping or reflection back to your own life and journeys past and present.

OT: I think there's there's something about a hunger and desire for encompassing the maximum range of my experience of the world. I like the idea that a lot of what I make is so simple, that I hope someone else seeing it could think, ‘this guy is enjoying himself making music, and he's capturing something that feels important and meaningful.’ Basically, I like the idea that the simplicity of these approaches is an invitation for anyone else to think that representing their perspective is the valuable thing here, regardless of technical ability. I think that's something I would like to impart to people. What I was expressing about this large appetite is that using these artistic mediums in all their forms is engaging with all the senses.

KS: What you're describing also is a generosity of sharing. Maybe to bring it back to drawing, which I guess is my special interest. Drawing is a very accessible tool in the sense that everyone, since they were a child has some form of drawing practice. It seems that medium is at the heart of your practice, but you use different materials and different techniques, whether that's a room installation, or drawing on found objects or wooden sheets, or pieces of paper. When you start a project, is it the subject matter or the theme that determines the format, or can it be the other way around?

OT: I'm picking up on the fact that you use the phrase ‘to start a project’. I’m constantly making things with no specific destination in mind and so there's this reservoir of ideas or images that I've collected through that process. The start of a project is this point in which a title or umbrella theme allows many of those things to be incorporated. Even from when I was very young, I was someone who collected things. I had little Buddhas I collected, seashells. My brother used to draw on stones, and I would buy them from him with my pocket money. Now looking back, I think he scammed me, but I was collecting his art. In terms of different mediums and formats, often the joy for me in art, is this connecting of seemingly unrelated things.

One thing that I really liked about drawing is there's this space between what my mind originally imagined putting on the page, and then the distance to my fingertips and then to the page itself. Because of that space, there's the opportunity for a little bit of chaos to enter. You mentioned the idea of children drawing and what's exciting for me is that sort of stereotypical moment of the child who's scrawling a chaos of some dark circle of ink, and the way in which the pen and the page itself becomes this mode for the expression of something that's very deeply within that person. When the teacher shows the parent a drawing and says your child is obviously very angry. I love the idea of the pen being this seismometer that measures something that's happening within you as the maker. For instance, if you're drawing something sad. Here in these works behind me are these two people weeping, a person who's getting swept up in their emotions, and I’m trying to depict that. I liked the idea that the eye is almost drooping into itself becoming a tear. In doing the preparatory drawings for this series here, I tried to allow a large degree of chaos and emotional engagement with the subject, which allows for this breaking of the controlled illustrative process. It is so exciting when you make something that you weren't intending to make, and it reveals something greater than what you knew when you began the drawing. That is part of what the seismometer is capturing.

KS: That's interesting, it is almost like trying to capture that moment when you see someone's face crumbling with emotion, using drawing as a very fluid medium. I wondered if you could say more about the animations, taking us towards the move to digital works. Technically, how do you make your animations? Do you use computer programmes? Are they hand drawn?

OT: One thing that really drives me and excites me about animation, is the sense anything is possible, any direction is possible. If I'm shooting a live action film, then I'm confined within the realms of what can physically happen. But in an animation, you can have a bird turn into a tree, and then turn into a car in the space of three seconds. And it's perfectly feasible to do. What is exciting about animation is that my default way of drawing a face would be to depict it at this angle, or that angle, but if I'm going to animate a head turning, then I end up in all of these unexpected views along the way. Those isolated frames can be very beautiful, because the choreography is disrupted, it's in between two notes in the sheet music. There's this beautiful in-between space where anything can happen. There's a lot of opportunity for sudden inspiration to take place, since you can decide in each moment where things should turn based on a gut feeling. Practically, when I'm making animations, I sometimes work on a computer drawing on a tablet, but always working in a frame-by-frame process.

KS: Do you know the start point and the end point, or does the end point figure itself out as you work your way through drawing process?

OT: When I'm storyboarding, I have no idea what the endpoint is going to be, often I'll storyboard and allow things to unfold. However, because the process is so rigorous, by the time I'm animating, I know where things are going step by step. At the same time, it is like a choreography, you know the person is going to start on the left side of the stage and end up on the right side of the stage. But in between, there's all these opportunities for expression to manifest itself. I really enjoy working on paper for my animations, because you end up with these in between moments that otherwise are never depicted. I want to dive specifically into that moment and unravel it.

To lead back to the start of our conversation, talking about writing and drawing, what's exciting is to describe a scene. For instance, perhaps there's two people having an argument over breakfast, and I can describe the conversation they are having in language, then maybe I can illustrate that. This is where drawing gets involved. What is captivating to me is perhaps how one of these people is holding their coffee cup. And then I can dive further into that focal point holding my attention in some way. I think it's kind of incredible to end up with an artwork that is perhaps just a hand clutching onto a coffee cup, to understand that one small detail, as a microcosm of this larger scene of tension.

KS: I was thinking about the relationship between writing, illustration, and drawing. In a way what you've just talked about is writing to articulate an experience or an emotion through words, then illustrating is trying to describe that written description. Then with drawing that image takes on a life of its own, and becomes a visual interest itself, capturing an experience or an emotion as much as a particular narrative. I think that's what's so appealing about your animations is that they are capturing an experience, or emotion, but they're also very captivating as drawings in the care that's given to each one. I think that's a statement rather than a question!

I meant to ask when your artwork exists in the digital realm, what shifts for you? Have you adapted your work in any way to suit that format?

OT: I don't think I've consciously adapted to suit that space. But I'm aware that there is a language both visually, and in every other sense with which people communicate that is most conducive to digital spaces. I think just naturally my work has adapted itself to a mode of expression that's most legible in digital spaces. One of the most obvious visual modes of expression in digital spaces is memes, which are so widely shared and so sharp and insightful in a way that a perfect haiku might be. Originally, when I started making this series of drawings I call my little passing thought drawings, which are an image with usually a little caption beneath them, I was interested in contributing to the New Yorker cartoon series. Every night I would lie down in bed and produce a series of cartoons that I wanted to submit, perhaps a far-fetched dream, but it was fun to access that part of myself. I was trying my best to be funny - retrospectively it's amazing that the New Yorker cartoon format is sort of an early predecessor for memes. What excites me is this dual direction creativity, that is both language and visual, in which everything just opens up. Returning to the digital space, one thing that's exciting, is the potential for really vast audiences to encounter artworks. Even the most famous paintings, the historically most prestigious paintings are getting less views than the most popular music video did last year. There's this incredible potential and capacity in that space for communication.

KS: It's an interesting point - the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa, is now the most digitally reproduced. As you say, it the format or technology that is the most used, and artists have always responded to new technologies that are changing our lives, like picking up the first handheld video recorder in the 90s. I think there's something that seems particularly poignant about your work in relation to the digital format, as it is often depicting something ephemeral, time based, whether it’s a journey, a fire or flight. That’s seen also in the three NFT works being launched - the flame motif or the heart with the of star that orbits, this sort of transitional moment. The meme is something is totally time based, reliant on motion to work, so it feels like you’re using the specific characteristics of that medium. You’re capturing this transitional moment through the motif or the subject that you're depicting. Is that deliberate?

OT: That’s interesting. The ephemerality of the digital space and its experience juxtaposed with a subject matter that is itself about the ephemerality of an experience. One thing that comes to mind is this double-edged madness of the digital space, in that it's often raised as a critique that artwork in the digital space is so ephemeral and can disappear. But at the same time, there's also a warning given to people to be careful what you put on the internet because it might resurface at any moment. There's this fleeting aspect and this fixedness of things that exist in that space. I went to a great symposium at the ICA, which was called ‘Choreographic Devices’ and one person had a phrase that stood out to me, which is ‘the past is that which no longer acts’. I thought it was interesting, because even if things leave the present context, there's still a ripple of what was initially placed there that's having an impact. Being able to capture something that feels very ephemeral, like a flame or a match disappearing, to hold that for a moment as this series of drawings, is to say, I want to hold this for a moment. And I want to share it by placing it in the digital space. Even if it does feel like a small drop, I love the idea of these ripples that are going to be constantly expanding in small doses and small ways. Because the internet and the digital realm functions as this vast reservoir of our experience, and at any moment, someone might just pull something up, like pulling a cup of water out of the reservoir and find the droplet that you put in. I think that's exciting.

KS: That’s a really great way of describing it because you don't know when someone in the world or at any time might access that work, which completely different to thinking about a static object in a specific place, a gallery or home or a museum. You know that's pretty radical when it comes to art, which historically has always been seen in quite rarefied spaces.

OT: This is true. I guess what's important is that the experience of the artwork online is happening inwardly for the viewer. I mean, it’s a different experience when there's a painting in front of you, there's a very visceral dynamic with the size or scale or texture of the work. But ultimately, people are carrying these ephemeral moments as experiences within them. I think what's exciting is even that small droplet can suddenly be triggered, and you can have a memory of seeing that thing, and that memory is going to inform how I react to this present moment. I like the idea that you're dropping seeds all over all over the place, even if they seem to fall beneath the ground, which at a certain point might suddenly sprout if the conditions are right.

KS: It is a challenge for digital works, to create something that I guess can withstand the digital noise of so much content. But I think that comes back to you creating artwork that is complete in itself. So, whilst it's brief, your work does seize that moment. It has an intensity that conveys a charge to the viewer.

OT: I'm glad that it has that feel to it.

KS: That's probably a pretty good place to end. That was a really great conversation.

OT: Thank you for your time, it's been great.

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