Darren Almond was born in Wigan, England (1971). His work has been exhibited internationally in major exhibitions including in London at the Royal Academy shows Apocalypse (2000) and Sensation (1997-1999) in which he was the youngest artist to participate. Recent solo shows include K21, Kunsthalle Zurich, Tate Britain, Matthew Marks, Chisenhale Gallery, Galerie Max Hetzler, The Renaissance Society, White Cube and the ICA. Almond's work has been acquired for major public and private collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Kramlich Collection.

Additional Info
CV
Various links
Turner Prize 2005
Adrian Searle article (18/10/05)
Telegraph article (18/10/05)
BBC Collective article (27/10/05)
Renaissance Society essay (1999)
KF#139: Turner Prize 2005
KF#139: Fullmoon Series
KF#20: essay

This interview was conducted via email in November 2005.

Brad Barnes: Last time we spoke you mentioned the project you're working on involving the confluence of the Blue Nile with the White Nile, in Sudan. Can you fill us in on what drew you to this location and do you plan to travel to Khartoum anytime soon?

Darren Almond: Khartoum means elephant's trunk. Looking in plan at the flow of the Blue and White Nile considering that the river flows from south to north, the convergence draws a schema of an elephant's head, the resulting Nile being its trunk. There's an associated theory connecting the birth of geometry to the Nile, in particular the Nile Delta in the north. Farmers working the banks and flood planes of the river had their yield heavily taxed but lost out annually to the rising Nile. Their crop simply diminished through land loss. To divide the land equally and implement fair tax rope stretchers would measure the remaining land and subsequently divide it into a grid. These early cartographers were known as the "Herodotus Stretchers". So back up through the Cataracts of the Nile to Khartoum where the Blue meets the White Nile it is at this point, which is quite clearly visible as the rivers differ in colour, where this natural phenomena occurs and led historically to the birth of geometry and the grid. I think with some of the work, that might be an aspect of it, but that is not something I strive to make happen.

BB: You also mentioned the Whirling Dervishes from the region. Here, the US government has tried to build PR for Sufism as an alternative to forms of Radical Islam. It seems odd to find the dervishes "in play" politically over here. What do you make of it and what is your interest in the dervishes?

DA: That's quite interesting, I hadn't heard of that. Interesting point of deflection by the US government. What would be the Christian trance alternative that perhaps Bush and Blair could try instead of bombing certain news TV channels? Back to the dervishes and their dance. In part of the routine the choreography symbolises the Solar System with the planet's rotation around a central figure. Now the annual floods of the Nile are produced by the rising water levels of the Blue and its meeting with the White. The Egyptians produced sculptures that were in fact clocks, which were used to calculate this date. So following the rise of Sirius and its alignment within these clocks they could predict with great accuracy the time frame of this occurrence, thus enabling all the irrigation systems to be in place. The dervishes' solar routines are something that I'd like to explore.

BB: You've used human steps as a unit of measure before in your work -- early on in The Guest, later in pulling the arctic sled and more recently in If I had you: do you see the physicality of dervishes as an opportunity to extend this exploration in some way?

DA: Also in Schacta through the audio channel only there is a tempo to the piece given by the shamen recordings, plus an integral part of Fan was its trance like motion which was derived from a Ugandan drum beat. A beat where the left drums at four beats per bar and the right at three, so the motion of the telescopic blades became a visual representation of that. I've been interested in various states of meditation and altered rates of perception ever since an involvement in a car accident and I experienced what's commonly described as an outer body experience that took place in order to protect myself.

BB: I've always felt a consistent tension between the mathematical and the poetic in your work. Your attention to patterns, loops, symmetry, the infinite etc. often coexisting with more humanist, sensory concerns solidly grounded in nature. Do you think that by measuring and analysing the natural world we might be detracting from its beauty or mystery in some way? Do you believe there are things forever beyond the ken of mathematics?

DA: I believe that curiosity is a large make up of our psyches plus we have a fair chunk of insecurities as well and through looking into the cartography of anything from our biological make up to the flow of rivers we seek a certain reassurance for our position within the greater scheme of things. There are definitely places beyond the ken of mathematics, personally I refer to the passing away of my grandfather and how unbeknown at the time I isolated myself from my school class at the precise moment of his departure. I felt it very intensely at the time. One thing maths offers is that there needs to be a balance in order to apply any formula, the inclusion and location of the equals sign as a fulcrum is something that I try to include within my practice.

BB: I think I know what you mean by seeking a "reassurance". Is that the grandfather alluded to in If I had you?

DA: Yes it is. "A much loved man" as carved on his head stone. For me he supplied much of my early field of memory. The terrain of his own life's experiences he passed on as we were very close. The whole notion of travel for instance came from him albeit that he was serving in the army during the WWII he then revisited the towns throughout Belgium, France and Germany after the war and maintained friendships with people he met through the war. During the procedure of trying to make If I had you my grandmother and I shared our feelings that we still had for him and in fact they were feelings generated by memory only so a shared local memory does provide a certain reassurance. I hoped that despite an increment of melancholia produced in If I had you I also hoped that it would provide a certain optimism. I like a statement that was produced to me last night at my talk at the Tate, "the vision for the future is not utopia it is a re-interpreted 'telling' of the now. Memory is not exactly the site of freedom, but the layering of identity and memory is a basis for moving forward. The limit for this is language itself."

BB: I've also experienced that momentary sensation of a loved one's passing. Could you talk about what stays with you from that day? Do you believe in visitations? Not to go too Californian with this but do you lean more toward a mystical explanation of such phenomena or toward the psychological -- in which our subconscious desire take control of and protectively mis-translates our sensory information?

DA: Well were all particles aren't we. I mean every thing is, so there must be some connection or webs that are produced and maintained by two separate beings through emotions such as love. With the passing away of my grandfather I removed myself from class with the usual "need to pee" excuse, but instead of going to the restroom I went to the middle of the playing field and stood alone for a moment or two and this was the precise time of my grandfather's passing. Maybe the link was weakening and I sensed it. This could also be self reasoning but when you're dreaming and you stumble off a kirb how far do you fall?

Brad Barnes is a filmmaker living in Brooklyn, New York.

Image © Darren Almond