thank you I think in England we might
call this the graveyard shift the last
person if you grow up in a small island
you keep bumping into the edges and if
you never leave that island it’s
difficult to understand how big the
world really is so I was in my late 20s
when behind the wheel of a powerful van
with a credit card and a passport in my
pocket we landed at Hamburg that was the
first time I got a sense of how vast
this planet is in my imagination it was
unbroken road to Vladivostok Chennai and
Durban we were going towards Hanover
because we had our first hit show it was
in demand all around Europe and I had
started to feel lice it like a
significant artist and that meant a
significant person but that feeling did
not last for very long every big city I
went to everyone was super busy and each
city seemed bigger than the last
with busier and busier people and all of
those people seemed so busy doing the
thing that they do that very few of them
noticed that we’d arrived to do the
thing that we do so back at home
contemplating my newfound insignificance
I started to think how can I understand
better my place in this world I thought
it might help to understand how many
people I share the planet with so I
looked it up but that really didn’t help
at all
6.2 billion how do you make any sense of
that number even if you write it out in
full its ungraspable and then I started
to think maybe that’s the problem you
can’t grasp it maybe if I found six
point two billion graspable things put
them in a pile took one away said that
me and looked back at everyone else
maybe then I would understand my place
in the world so I spent some time with
the kitchen scales and I calculated that
I would need a hundred and four tons of
rice to get 6.2 billion grains
that’s for large lorry falls I was both
surprised and upset because by this
at that time 2003 the population of the
United Kingdom was 60 million which
conveniently was one ton of rice which
was a manageable quantity and whilst
I’ve been thinking about big rice piles
I’d also been thinking about a radio
documentary that I’d heard this
documentary was about babies that lived
in prison with their mothers and that
made me think there are all these
populations around the United Kingdom
that I know very little about I mean how
many of these babies are there and how
many women are in prison and I know
there are fewer women the men in prison
but how many men are in prison and how
does that lot compared to the rest of
the country and actually while we’re
going on about this how many prison
officers are looking after the prisoners
how many police officers are running
around trying to catch criminals and how
many judges are there waiting to send
them to prison
my show had turned from one big pile of
rice into a whole lot of very carefully
measured out piles of rice are neatly
labeled sheets of paper and so the
performance installation of all the
people in all the world was conceived
and I persuaded our local Art Center
Warrick Art Center that they could host
the first performance and they said
don’t put it in the gallery no one will
ever see it there put it in the foyer
where everyone passes by hopefully
people will see it be drawn in and
engage with your work and that was the
because in this first performance we
discovered that as well as being able to
show shocking comparisons and as well as
being able to show changes over time
this simple device are placing human
population statistics side-by-side also
allowed us to tell dramatic and tragic
stories it allowed us to recreate
important historic moments even allowed
us to tell jokes I knew people would be
interested in the content of the show
but what I hadn’t expected was how
emotionally engaged people became now I
think this might be partly because of
the proportions of these little humanoid
rice grains I know in Germany you clump
the corn the rice corn people seem to
see them as human beings if they saw one
on the floor not on a sheet of paper
they would pick it up and they bring it
to us looking worried I found this
person I don’t know where they belong
they lost thank you don’t worry they’re
the other thing that I was really
pleased to find out was that the rice
retained its granularity so even when it
was in a huge pile you knew that this
pile was made up of individuals and each
individual had an identity together they
formed a number and this was one of the
key things about the show is that we
don’t show any numbers because numbers
get in the way in substituting for
people the numbers erase the people in
the same way that the label assigned an
image in the art gallery competes with
and distracts from the image so the
number with the rice would take power
from it we don’t need the numbers we’ve
got the graspable objects so i said i
was able to tell jokes I was frankly
surprised people laughed at the jokes
everyone who’s walked on the moon
Michael Jackson
the famous moon Walker okay it went
Benny laughs there’s so many more like
those kind of arts the thing I wasn’t
expecting was that people would admit to
having to wipe away tears on occasions
children who will lose their sight today
and die within a year now charities have
long known that to show images of
individuals in need generates emotion in
a way that numbers can’t but this mute
disempowered parade of need or
helplessness does have moral
complexities the rice is anonymous it’s
blank
and the blankness invites you to invest
in it imaginative leave and the
blankness allows you kind of screen to
project your emotions onto it the
anonymity also allows us to be
egalitarian which means that no matter
what your social status whatever your
race your gender your age your health
your fame or your fortune everyone is
represented by a single naked grain of
and in that way we are like gods in
Browncoats
we plunge our hands into the rice sacks
and randomly pick out a grain
today you will be Nelson Mandela today
you will be an oligarch and you you will
live in a landfill site in Rio de
Janeiro we are all made of the same
substance we are all of equal worth and
today under these lights glowing golden
visitors will see this I know it to be
true two years later of all the people
in all the world was presented in
Germany we were back in a large tram
shed in Stuttgart with a lot of rice for
lorry loads of rice a hundred and four
tons of rice we’d built a map of the
world a map that measured out the world
in human circumstance and endeavour and
folly and triumph and disaster and
disgrace in granular form on a scale of
this is a profound time for me if you
ever need to get a bit more humble try
taking one grain of rice in your hand
and standing in the middle of 6.2
billion other grains of rice so that was
2005 and since then the show has toured
on it’s gone to galleries and theatres
it’s gone to tents and shopping centres
it’s gone to cathedrals and community
halls a gymnasium and museums and
everywhere it goes it’s remade because
it’s a new time in a new place with new
things happening on the news we’re
working for and with new people with new
histories and everywhere I go I’m
hopeful and made hopeful by these new
people because all of them share the
same interest in the world and their
place in it and the place of other
everyone has the ability to leap into
someone else’s life imaginatively
and empathize with them and this gives
me hope it gives me hope that everywhere
we go people are shocked by the same
comparisons all the world’s dollar
millionaires all the world’s refugees
they’re shocked by the quantity of us
everyone who lives in China everyone who
lives in India we’re shocked by the
economics everyone who will eat him
Donald’s worldwide today all the
employees are Walmart everyone who will
work for less than $2 a day it gives me
hope that so many people seeing a grain
of rice in the floor will pick it up and
try and find it a safe home if people
can care this much for a grain of rice
that represents a person how much could
they possibly care for the person
themselves it’s good to have knowledge
and it’s powerful to empathize and this
show makes both those things happen but
that’s not enough how can we who want to
bequeath a better world to those that
follow translate this knowledge and
ultimately it’s so much easier to take
responsibility for a grain of rice than
a human being you can pluck a grain of
rice from the floor safe in the
knowledge but it won’t cost you anything
but to pluck a human being from a leaky
boat in the Mediterranean that’s to take
on a much more open expensive and
is easy to be shocked by the growth in
travelers on airplanes over time it’s
easy to be shocked by a number of people
in Bangladesh who are displaced by
flooding is easy to be shocked by other
people have lost their homes through
extreme weather events or people who are
facing water rationing in Cape Town or
fighting forest fires in America is easy
to be shocked it’s easy to take a deep
breath when you see counted out in
grains of rice the thousand plus people
in Chad who altogether generate the same
carbon footprint each year as you or me
it’s easy to be shocked how do we turn
this shock into action it’s difficult
it’s difficult to find that ignition
point and it’s difficult especially if
that action in any way threatens to make
our luxurious lives even slightly less
luxurious and if we look around and we
see other people who appear not to be
making even this small sacrifice then
it’s very easy to say well why should I
or what’s the point well the point is
it’s the right thing to do
the point is someone’s got to set an
example we’ve got to show that it is
possible we’ve got to be part of a trend
yes because to be less than hopeful is
to admit defeat
and because every day I see a human
empathy acted out in our granular world
and to see you laugh and cry this gives
me hope [Applause]
call this the graveyard shift the last
person if you grow up in a small island
you keep bumping into the edges and if
you never leave that island it’s
difficult to understand how big the
world really is so I was in my late 20s
when behind the wheel of a powerful van
with a credit card and a passport in my
pocket we landed at Hamburg that was the
first time I got a sense of how vast
this planet is in my imagination it was
unbroken road to Vladivostok Chennai and
Durban we were going towards Hanover
because we had our first hit show it was
in demand all around Europe and I had
started to feel lice it like a
significant artist and that meant a
significant person but that feeling did
not last for very long every big city I
went to everyone was super busy and each
city seemed bigger than the last
with busier and busier people and all of
those people seemed so busy doing the
thing that they do that very few of them
noticed that we’d arrived to do the
thing that we do so back at home
contemplating my newfound insignificance
I started to think how can I understand
better my place in this world I thought
it might help to understand how many
people I share the planet with so I
looked it up but that really didn’t help
at all
6.2 billion how do you make any sense of
that number even if you write it out in
full its ungraspable and then I started
to think maybe that’s the problem you
can’t grasp it maybe if I found six
point two billion graspable things put
them in a pile took one away said that
me and looked back at everyone else
maybe then I would understand my place
in the world so I spent some time with
the kitchen scales and I calculated that
I would need a hundred and four tons of
rice to get 6.2 billion grains
that’s for large lorry falls I was both
surprised and upset because by this
at that time 2003 the population of the
United Kingdom was 60 million which
conveniently was one ton of rice which
was a manageable quantity and whilst
I’ve been thinking about big rice piles
I’d also been thinking about a radio
documentary that I’d heard this
documentary was about babies that lived
in prison with their mothers and that
made me think there are all these
populations around the United Kingdom
that I know very little about I mean how
many of these babies are there and how
many women are in prison and I know
there are fewer women the men in prison
but how many men are in prison and how
does that lot compared to the rest of
the country and actually while we’re
going on about this how many prison
officers are looking after the prisoners
how many police officers are running
around trying to catch criminals and how
many judges are there waiting to send
them to prison
my show had turned from one big pile of
rice into a whole lot of very carefully
measured out piles of rice are neatly
labeled sheets of paper and so the
performance installation of all the
people in all the world was conceived
and I persuaded our local Art Center
Warrick Art Center that they could host
the first performance and they said
don’t put it in the gallery no one will
ever see it there put it in the foyer
where everyone passes by hopefully
people will see it be drawn in and
engage with your work and that was the
because in this first performance we
discovered that as well as being able to
show shocking comparisons and as well as
being able to show changes over time
this simple device are placing human
population statistics side-by-side also
allowed us to tell dramatic and tragic
stories it allowed us to recreate
important historic moments even allowed
us to tell jokes I knew people would be
interested in the content of the show
but what I hadn’t expected was how
emotionally engaged people became now I
think this might be partly because of
the proportions of these little humanoid
rice grains I know in Germany you clump
the corn the rice corn people seem to
see them as human beings if they saw one
on the floor not on a sheet of paper
they would pick it up and they bring it
to us looking worried I found this
person I don’t know where they belong
they lost thank you don’t worry they’re
the other thing that I was really
pleased to find out was that the rice
retained its granularity so even when it
was in a huge pile you knew that this
pile was made up of individuals and each
individual had an identity together they
formed a number and this was one of the
key things about the show is that we
don’t show any numbers because numbers
get in the way in substituting for
people the numbers erase the people in
the same way that the label assigned an
image in the art gallery competes with
and distracts from the image so the
number with the rice would take power
from it we don’t need the numbers we’ve
got the graspable objects so i said i
was able to tell jokes I was frankly
surprised people laughed at the jokes
everyone who’s walked on the moon
Michael Jackson
the famous moon Walker okay it went
Benny laughs there’s so many more like
those kind of arts the thing I wasn’t
expecting was that people would admit to
having to wipe away tears on occasions
children who will lose their sight today
and die within a year now charities have
long known that to show images of
individuals in need generates emotion in
a way that numbers can’t but this mute
disempowered parade of need or
helplessness does have moral
complexities the rice is anonymous it’s
blank
and the blankness invites you to invest
in it imaginative leave and the
blankness allows you kind of screen to
project your emotions onto it the
anonymity also allows us to be
egalitarian which means that no matter
what your social status whatever your
race your gender your age your health
your fame or your fortune everyone is
represented by a single naked grain of
and in that way we are like gods in
Browncoats
we plunge our hands into the rice sacks
and randomly pick out a grain
today you will be Nelson Mandela today
you will be an oligarch and you you will
live in a landfill site in Rio de
Janeiro we are all made of the same
substance we are all of equal worth and
today under these lights glowing golden
visitors will see this I know it to be
true two years later of all the people
in all the world was presented in
Germany we were back in a large tram
shed in Stuttgart with a lot of rice for
lorry loads of rice a hundred and four
tons of rice we’d built a map of the
world a map that measured out the world
in human circumstance and endeavour and
folly and triumph and disaster and
disgrace in granular form on a scale of
this is a profound time for me if you
ever need to get a bit more humble try
taking one grain of rice in your hand
and standing in the middle of 6.2
billion other grains of rice so that was
2005 and since then the show has toured
on it’s gone to galleries and theatres
it’s gone to tents and shopping centres
it’s gone to cathedrals and community
halls a gymnasium and museums and
everywhere it goes it’s remade because
it’s a new time in a new place with new
things happening on the news we’re
working for and with new people with new
histories and everywhere I go I’m
hopeful and made hopeful by these new
people because all of them share the
same interest in the world and their
place in it and the place of other
everyone has the ability to leap into
someone else’s life imaginatively
and empathize with them and this gives
me hope it gives me hope that everywhere
we go people are shocked by the same
comparisons all the world’s dollar
millionaires all the world’s refugees
they’re shocked by the quantity of us
everyone who lives in China everyone who
lives in India we’re shocked by the
economics everyone who will eat him
Donald’s worldwide today all the
employees are Walmart everyone who will
work for less than $2 a day it gives me
hope that so many people seeing a grain
of rice in the floor will pick it up and
try and find it a safe home if people
can care this much for a grain of rice
that represents a person how much could
they possibly care for the person
themselves it’s good to have knowledge
and it’s powerful to empathize and this
show makes both those things happen but
that’s not enough how can we who want to
bequeath a better world to those that
follow translate this knowledge and
ultimately it’s so much easier to take
responsibility for a grain of rice than
a human being you can pluck a grain of
rice from the floor safe in the
knowledge but it won’t cost you anything
but to pluck a human being from a leaky
boat in the Mediterranean that’s to take
on a much more open expensive and
is easy to be shocked by the growth in
travelers on airplanes over time it’s
easy to be shocked by a number of people
in Bangladesh who are displaced by
flooding is easy to be shocked by other
people have lost their homes through
extreme weather events or people who are
facing water rationing in Cape Town or
fighting forest fires in America is easy
to be shocked it’s easy to take a deep
breath when you see counted out in
grains of rice the thousand plus people
in Chad who altogether generate the same
carbon footprint each year as you or me
it’s easy to be shocked how do we turn
this shock into action it’s difficult
it’s difficult to find that ignition
point and it’s difficult especially if
that action in any way threatens to make
our luxurious lives even slightly less
luxurious and if we look around and we
see other people who appear not to be
making even this small sacrifice then
it’s very easy to say well why should I
or what’s the point well the point is
it’s the right thing to do
the point is someone’s got to set an
example we’ve got to show that it is
possible we’ve got to be part of a trend
yes because to be less than hopeful is
to admit defeat
and because every day I see a human
empathy acted out in our granular world
and to see you laugh and cry this gives
me hope [Applause]
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