saturated these days by predominance of
bad news whether it’s war natural
disaster or terrorism and of course it’s
it’s immediate the technology these days
means that we have a rolling update of
this bad news every day for 24 hours so
everything that we see and hear seems to
feel like it’s bad but whilst the
immediacy and the connectivity of that
bad news is a new thing the phenomenon
of bad news isn’t a new thing at all
when I was 12 I joined CND because of a
daily fear of the dread of imminent
nuclear war when I was an undergraduate
student I was coming down a highway in
Scotland with my girlfriend and her
mother into Lockerbie as as the plane
hit which was a deeply traumatic
experience I grew up with bomb scares
and bombs and like many of you I’ve got
friends and family that have been far
too close to many recent events so we’d
be forgiven for feeling more and more
depressed about the fact of all this bad
news so what I want to do today is
actually to try and give you a little
bit more of a positive positive aspect
and maybe to ask whether whether we’re
looking at that footage in quite the
right way so want you first and foremost
to come with me on a bit of a time
machine the end of the Soviet Union and
fall of the Berlin Wall and in spring
1991 I’m coming to the end of my first
teaching in my career in Germany and the
East Germans have been given gruesome
gulps which is greeting money it’s about
a hundred marks of which they can come
and experience the West’s ridiculous
idea like the West is some kind of sweet
shop and I’m on my way home so I’m at
Reiner station near the Dutch border and
coming down into an underpass and I
encounter a man lying on the floor in a
state of distress he’s bloody he’s got
broken ribs he’s beaten up and he’s got
no shoes and a couple of station
officials are trying to lift him off the
ground to get him out of the underpass
and I asked them who is and they say
he’s an East German which is amazing to
me and he’s been beaten up by West
German Jews who resented the idea of
reunification and the impact of that on
their standard of living possibly on
their jobs and so they’re taking his
trainers because trainers as we all know
are an absolute symbol of Western
consumerist power and they also took his
money so I fished out of my pocket the
last hundred marks that I had because I
budgeted for it then I tried to press
these upon him and he wouldn’t accept
them at first and we had a bit of a
conversation and then finally he did
accept the money and he embraced me and
I remember that time Stood Still in that
moment because what you’ve got to
remember is that I’d never met anybody
from the Soviet Union before I’d grown
up in the Cold War my name is PA zetsu
key but at that point it wasn’t my
father had anglicized his name as a
young man and so we went by a very
English name which was max dead and I
knew no difference at that point but as
I sat on the train them in the ferry
home I felt bewildered and I felt a kind
of seismic shift in my sense of the
other and over the next 10 years I began
to realize that I didn’t know whether my
grandfather who was a Polish airman I
had had any family at all because he
died in 1944 so I started to look for
family I started to research this my
father got on board and first and
foremost we found veterans that know my
grandfather which was amazing we had
Ministry of Defence searches for papers
I got the International Red Cross onto a
search for him as well and around about
1997 they said that they discovered that
my grandfather had a sister called
Veronica ogorodnik that was her married
name and but she lived in Ukraine but
unfortunately as the Soviet Union fell
so all the addresses changed and they
couldn’t trace an address for him and he
came to 2000 and by this point I was
established as a performance artist and
I was lucky enough to be invited to the
third international
the value of experimental art in st.
Petersburg Russia which was a really big
thing for me it was really a really big
deal and whilst I was there one of the
things I did was I made a five hour
performance which was called underground
that the Winter Palace and it really
dealt with my frustrations it was a
collaboration with an artist and it
dealt with my frustrations at this
severed family because of the Cold War
and afterwards a Russian artist called
Vladimir your book took offered to help
me find the family which I found really
unlikely Ukraine is a vast space and
it’s got millions of people but I
thanked him and two weeks later he rang
me up and he said Simon excuse max and
he said yes my mother knows your
grandfather’s sister and this was
miraculous but actually it turned out to
be true so two months later I took my
father to Ukraine and the family was
reunited as you see there which was just
an incredible moment but at that point
what happened was a complete collapse of
my sense of identity because I’d grown
up in the Cold War and suddenly I was
with family in Ukraine and it wasn’t
that that collapse that I suffered it in
some way actually it fascinated me
particularly as an artist and I started
to explore it through different source
of work and pretty soon that turned into
a PhD project for me as well a PhD
project that considered the shifts in
our identity in the constructs of
identity which was antagonizing the idea
of nationality because I realized that
my identity ran well beyond that for
example and so I was also interested in
the journey because I realized that my
grandfather had escaped from Poland on
foot through forests and over mountains
at night he’d been caught in Romania and
put in a camp he escaped I don’t think
it was that well guarded he made it all
the way to the Mediterranean and then
via Marseilles through France to Britain
where he joined the RAF and was
eventually killed at the age of 25 in
1945
and so I began to really consider this
idea of the journey and I started to
make theater that took people across
mountains at night which sounds
ludicrous but that’s what we did and
eventually I went to India because I
wanted to speak to Tibetans in exile
that had crossed the Himalaya which
seemed to me an unimaginable feat some
of them only 12 years old when they did
it and then I took myself up the high
Himalaya as well and unfortunately got
struck down with severe altitude
sickness a cerebral edema which is a
swelling of the brain well I was bought
into a valley and I was dropped off at a
dwelling a farm if you like with a
family and you have to lay on your back
really for at least a week to deal with
altitude sickness like this and they fed
me and they washed my clothes and they
nursed me and they shared Chang with me
which is a sort of barley beer and it
was the most amazingly compassionate
experience of my life
particularly in as much that there was
no expectation of pay although obviously
I did give them something for their
trouble and this really helped me to
embody this notion of crossing space in
peril something that really interests me
the PR in that actually etymologically
means to cross space you’ll find it in
other words like experience or perform
which is what I’m doing now with risk or
or experiment for example it’s also at
the roots of words for the pilgrim so
which comes from Peregrine’s so the P er
means to cross a space and there was a
really interesting book by Francesco
kerreri there was reading at a time as
well which charted really a history of
our distrust of nomadic cultures which
is another story but still quite an
interesting one recently my wife Shelley
is sitting there and I have been watched
The Walking Dead
now the walking dead and here’s a little
bit of a spoiler for you isn’t really
about zombies okay The Walking Dead is
about the complete loss of humanity at a
time of this terrible sort of plague of
zombies it’s about the loss of
compassion and it’s about the loss of a
sense of security and it’s also about an
endless journey of a group of people to
find something that ironically is
already there within them and I remember
we got to series free episode 12 in the
beginning of this episode Rick Grimes in
his son
Karl a journeying along the highway and
they’re off in search of some formula
milk they want to find some formula milk
for Rick’s baby so driving along and
they see a chap on the side of the
highway with a rucksack and pots and
pans and he’s desperately waving at them
for help he’s on his own he’s
desperately waving at them to slow down
and help and they slow down and you
think oh they can stop but their faces
are just expressionless and just as he
walks towards the car they accelerate
away and leave him and then at the end
of the episode they’re returning and
they found their formula milk in some
abandoned town and they come upon his
half-eaten corpse and they stop the car
and they get out and they retrieve his
rucksack throw it in the boot and off
they drive again and again not a word
he’s spoken and at this point we
realized that there’s absolutely no
future for Humanity because they’ve lost
all sense of compassion so isn’t about
infrastructure it’s about the loss of
compassion and the will to trust or help
one another as a phase-two practitioner
I’ve always been fascinated by the life
and work of Antonin Artaud and he wrote
a bizarre and wonderful book called the
theater and it’s double and which you
shouldn’t try to read unless you’ve
already read a biography of him because
it is quite bizarre read otherwise but
in this book he suggests that theater
and the plague are the only two spaces
where we have the possibility of seeing
human beings as they really are stripped
that is of things like national identity
rank or professional role it’s actually
at a time of the plague for example and
I don’t think he’s been negative I think
he’s at a time of a plague for example
that we’ll see the best in people we
have seen that in recent years in Africa
but we’ve also seen it with atrocities
in our own lifetime such as 9/11
so in 9/11 people were covered in this
terrible white dust and the white dust
in a sense modernizes what we see so
it’s much harder to kind of see any
symbol of affluence or rank or
professional role or even race but what
we do see is that people help one
another and not just the services who
were fantastic but people are helping
one another they’re carrying each other
they’re lifting one another they’re
helping each other and they’re putting
their own lives at risk because that
white dust actually the inhalation of it
has killed more people since 9/11 then
actually died on the day I don’t know if
you aware of that
more recently in some of the footage of
other terrible situations we’ve seen
similar things if I take you back I’m
sorry to do so but Tabata clan you
remember the terrifying image of a young
woman hanging by her fingertips from a
window and a man called Sebastian puts
his own life at risk to pull her back in
and she was pregnant
other people break cover and they come
out to drag people clear putting again
their own lives at risk and this really
interests me now um I want to introduce
you to a couple of authors
the first one is Antoine de
saint-exupéry who wrote as you might
know Liberty prompts the little prince
which is my favorite book as a child but
he was a pioneering pilot and he flew
postal services over the Andes and over
the Sahara and he wrote a lot of books
quite philosophical actually about these
journeys and when a second world war
came about he wanted to join up much
against the wishes of his publisher in
New York and his government who felt
that his saw Lee’s pen was much mightier
than
sword but he did join up and he joined
the Free French Air Force and he became
a reconnaissance pilot flying in towards
the invasion the invading forces to get
information out recently I adapted this
book for theater and it was directed by
Shelley and we’ve shown it in Armenia
and in France and we’ve shown it in
Britain as well and the reason interest
me is this flight to Arras is about one
flight that he takes towards eros and
the Blitzkrieg has hit Paris
so eros is on fire the tanks are rolling
the anti-aircraft guns are firing into
the air it’s just he’s just flying into
hell and as he’s flying along he’s
thinking he’s almost bound to die
so what is it that he’s going to die for
he’s trying to figure out what is it
that’s worth dying for
and he looks down from his aircraft
above France and he sees houses on fire
below him and he imagines the linen
burning in the closet imagines the
photographs the family history is
disappearing he looks down at the roads
and the roads are absolutely teeming
with refugees now this is France this is
only 70 or so years ago the roads are
teeming with the French with as refugees
and they’re heading south and he knows
that they’re just going to be
transformed into vermin and locusts as
they sweep through villages eating all
the food available so the villagers just
join the exodus and in all of that
Santee Sioux pre completely loses sight
of his belief in God for example he
can’t see a future for France he can’t
see a future for Europe and he can’t see
any future for civilization so what an
earth is it that he’s going to die for
what is worth dying for
I’ll come back to him first I want you
to say it’s to take you to Adam Smith
had a great nose and Adam Smith of
course wrote The Wealth of Nations which
is a sort of bedrock or cornerstone of
capitalists consumerist culture we think
of it as
we’ve such terms as dog-eat-dog world
and this sort of thing but he also wrote
another book which he’s far he was far
more proud of actually and he returned
he was so proud of this book he returned
to at the end of his life and in another
edition in 1790 and this book was called
the Theory of Moral Sentiments and it’s
extraordinary and quite ironic when you
think about its relationship to the
wealth of nations because he says in
this book that human beings are
essentially altruistic in nature that
they want to help each other actually
that we have this automatic in Bill
instinct to help even for no personal
gain and the book starts like this how
selfish so ever man may be supposed
there are evidently some principles in
his nature which interest him in the
fortune of others and render their
happiness necessary to him for who
derives nothing from it except the
pleasure of seeing it please remember it
was 1790 and things were a little bit
male gendered in the language of these
rings at the point so it’s he all the
way for it but he means us um and he
refers to this quality of wanting to
help each other as loveliness which is
quite a soft word by today’s standard
but loving this he talks about the
choice for right action not born of a
need to please so much as a wish to
serve with prudence justice and
beneficence so if I translate that we
might say that it’s careful oneself care
for fairness or justice if you like to
oneself and others and generosity of
spirit to others you’re all aware of
these values and I find that
extraordinary because I think there’s a
huge amount of truth in it actually
so he’s written this book alongside The
Wealth of Nations but he gives us a
problem and to illustrate this problem
I’m gonna ask you a question I need to
see a race you to raise hands if there
was goodness forbid let’s say a disaster
near here let’s just say a river is
birthed it’s bang and two miles away
from rotates from where you live or
rivers burst its banks and two miles
away a village is being flooded I want
you to raise your hands do you think
that you would go two miles waded in
water and help people out if it was that
local if it was two miles because he
could people raise their hands
quite a lot of you few people going
there now might be cold to Mars yeah I
think you would I think generally
speaking if it was that close to you
would how about if it was the next town
ten miles away could you raise your
lovely some honesty no room so it’s a
maybe ten miles away and we’re already
saying would maybe a wouldn’t 30 miles
there’s one person saying I think it
would and generally speaking there it’s
a no isn’t it so 100 miles away forget
it unless it unless it’s a close member
of a family or friends and a thousand
miles away I’m upset about it I am I’m
worried
really not my problem yes okay and
that’s how we are
so Christmas myths problem is locality
because he says yeah you know we are all
altruistic in nature we will lift people
off the street they fall over in front
of us doesn’t matter who they are but
this is really localized because
instinctively it’s also about
self-preservation if we sort of help our
tribe our immediate tribe then in a
sense we’re creating more security for
ourselves so this is the Lynx thing so
this is my idea I think that given the
immediacy of this technology that
connects us globally to the world we
really need to work harder to rewire
ourselves to think about what local
means we need to make these events far
more local because of the immediacy of
our technology and we need actually to
help out in all the ways that we
possibly can we will feel good about
that
but in order to do that we also have to
change the notion of what we belong to
and we have to flip it around because
we’ve got to get rid of the divisive
nurse of belonging because the flipside
of belonging is exclusion so if I were
to give you an example if I go to a
festival like a bit of rock if I go to
the download festive
or something like that okay and I’m
there I’m there amongst lots of
different age groups loads of different
races lots of different religions lots
of different ranks and professional
roles but somehow we’re there together
and we all have a sense of belonging in
a celebratory rather lovely way together
and so we also need to redefine what it
is we belong to in those very positive
aspects and I’m going to finish with
telling you what something super II did
die for because he was eventually shot
down in 1944 exactly the same time as my
grandfather who flew a Wellington bomber
that was built in Chester and what was
it that he would die for well at the end
of flight tariffs he sort of lands and
he’s walking along the country lane back
to the little farming family that he’s
billeted with a lovely family and he
suddenly has a bit of an epiphany and he
realizes that he wouldn’t die for that
family he wouldn’t die for the refugees
that he saw on the road all those
hundreds of feet below the aircraft he
wouldn’t die even for the victims of war
what he would die for was the people
that would help them he would die for
the person that would give up their seat
in the back of a truck for a pregnant
pregnant woman he would die for the
person that would carry someone else on
their back he would die for the person
that put their own self at risk to get
someone out of danger and he would die
for the person that pulls someone else
from underneath the rubble and at this
point something Zoop REE REE finds his
idea of God and he looks out and he can
see the fields of France again and he
can see a future for Europe and he can
see a future for civilization because he
knows that people are predominantly good thank you very much