Interview, Aimee Dodds and Tim Burns

AD: So whose was the first kind of archive, or artist working with archival material that you saw or knew about Tim?

TB: That’s a good question. First of all, I looked at the books. I mean, one of the things that impressed me out of New York was Avalanche Magazine that was put on (by) Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp. And they documented, you know, there were early works of (Richard) Serra’s where he’s throwing things around, there were the English conceptualists. There was a wave through the world that brought everyone together. In probably the first, I suppose the first virtual conceptualisation; it’s a virtual work. It was, you know, Lawrence Weiner… And Lawrence Weiner and I were in a show recently about artists who use explosives, you know, including Fiona Banner and all sorts of people. The Auto-Destructivists, you know, out of England and Germany and Italy, and kicking back the Futurists and all that… and they were more about the kind of celebration of fire. I, at the time, was more interested in the danger of the explosives what that kind of portended, the expectation for what the kind of future of it was.

 (Note - the explosives exhibition was Exploding Utopia at Laure Genillard Gallery, curated by Rozemin Keshvani in 2013)

AD: Which meant that the act of archiving, or recording failed you in some ways, right? Because then it got co-opted by the media, or the law and, you know, sensationalised—

TB: Well, Bill Clemens came along at six o'clock in the morning when they bulldozed my work out of the open day of Mildura (Sculpture Triennial, Sculpturscape 1973). So, it was a work that never existed. But it became kind of, in some way or another, a symbolic work for the show, in a way, because it wasn't there. It's one of the, you know, next number of works that weren’t there (at Mildura) for one reason or another.

AD: And now that work or that book in Minefield by A+A (Art + Australia) is one of the only {complete} texts that's been published on you, like as a full-length thing, right?

TB: Yeah.

AD: And that will act as the record anew!

TB: Yeah. And then that becomes the history, or the archive and that's, that's a group of people who mostly, probably weren’t alive when that was actually done. Maybe. But they, you know, they're riffing on the conceptual idea of that. I mean, at the time, you know, you don't think about those things when you're actually doing it, I don't think. But, you know, I mean, everybody says, you know, there's different levels of cognizant connection. We love it, but we don't understand it, really.

AD: No.

TB: And then someone comes along and writes a particular history and they get a few things wrong here, and a few things wrong there. I mean, half of the reviews that came out (about A Change of Plans, AGNSW, 1973) thought, well, I was the person in the room, in the gallery, or this and that happened or, you know, like they got everything a little bit wrong here and there, which always fascinated me.

(Author’s note: Barry Prothero, not Tim Burns, was in fact the nude performer inside the gallery room that Tim had purpose-built for the A Change of Plans installation, a fact that the early press following the controversial performance misrepresented.) 

AD: Yep.

TB: Yeah, and John Connan has just died, actually recently. And and we had a we had a contratemp by him not identifying the renaming of the show, or some bullshit, you know, that you do with critics and people who aren’t right. I'll pick up a book and I read something. You know, it's like the Ted Snell story too, which is, you know, where the archive is turned into something against you.

(Author’s note: Professor Ted Snell passed away in 2022. He was among the first art critics to write an incorrect or unfavourable piece of information about Burns’s work; a ‘fact’ that, through Snell’s own popularity as a writer, rather than any ill-will or bad intentions, became widely known as the ‘truth’.)

AD: So talk about that, Tim, the physicality of the archive and you know, the meterage of film. You don't even need film to make film anymore, you know, you just need a phone, but you still have to deal with this ‘materiality’ of it.

TB: Daniel Thomas said to me, or he said in an email, ‘I wish you were more like Mike Parr, and you would have documented some of these things properly’, which I never did.

AD: Why not?

TB: Oh, well, probably because getting them actually done was so stressful and so,

AD: —expensive!

TB: and also so, you know, questionable as to whether it was actually done in the first place, that the recording of it, sort of, you know, got left behind. You know, I was a bad conceptualist.

I did a work where I went to Mildura from Adelaide, recording all the fascinating conversations I was having hitchhiking between two places. And I've got the right machine, you know, the beautiful Sony Pro, everything was beautifully set up and I got the buttons mixed up so I recorded only me standing around waiting for cars to go by.

Noel Sheridan then suggested to me, (Tim, in the style of Noel) ‘why don't we do a radio show of all the interviews that you actually missed—because you're a lousy conceptual artist! But what really fascinating stories, I mean, the one about the Aboriginal children and all those secrets, and then the other guy, the TV guy that was leaving his wife. And then the bikies that beat you up!’. We made this kind of story about life! You know,

AD: —like a play almost, like an old radio play.

TB: That was on the cassette tape. God knows where it is now, but the cassette tape broke.

I'm talking to my son at the moment saying, you know, saying save everything you do, because you don't know what machine is gonna go down at what point.

AD: Yep

TB: Especially these days. And that's another thing, you know, the whole digital revolution has meant that, you know, first of all, there's hundreds of mediums. I can't even transfer or look at, you know, half of the tapes that I did in the bloody 70s and 80s or something, you know, as bad as that...

AD: Yeah

TB: ...and the only things that exist for me archivally are the films. And that’s partly because the National Film and Sound Archives (NFSA) have come along and grabbed all of the negative and positives and interested things and whatever the hell and, and they've saved them in a library.

And that's the Internet, and that's AI and could be any damn thing.

AD: It's also—

TB: but it's also gotta be found and gotta be kind of held onto.

AD: Yeah.

TB: And the digital has gone mad in one way, and mad in the other. You know, like, as they say on the ad on TV, you know, like, quick! Put this thing into your bloody machine because you're gonna lose 90% of your photographs or some bullshit, you know.

AD: Yep.

TB: I get that one quite a lot on YouTube.

AD: Yeah.

TB: And I put my stuff up on YouTube, you know, most of it's on YouTube anyway.

AD: No, don't tell them that, let them come to the show! …It's rare! Hard to see.

TB: I mean at one stage in the early 80s or something all my super8 films went through a kind of a change of media and this is probably before the NFSA picked them all up. There was a bootlegger out in South Australia, Weiss.

(Note: it would appear Tim means Curtis Weiss; confirmed thanks to the University of Melbourne’s link to the Pram Factory Archive, which has since in turn itself been archived by the Way Way Back Internet Archive.)

AD: Let's talk about the idea of the bootleg, versus a genuine copy.

TB: Yeah, well, you know, sampling, bootleg. That's the nature of the art world that learns from what's happened before or, you know, you contextualise how you go into a situation. What window do you sort of own, you know, or what window can you put your work out through, that means something.

AD: like kind of related to authority in a way, you're not allowed to be there.

TB: And it's also just space you can find within the other people's artworks that are around you, your peers. And it all depends on them. You know, I mean, for me it was a very fast workout. I went to Sydney, you know.

AD: Yeah. But it's interesting, that’s what —

TB: I'm very influenced by as a conceptualist, you know, (Mike) Parr and (Peter) Kennedy and Tim Johnson,

AD: Who all have very well documented their own things.

TB: Much better than I have!  Or they're going back to painting and made the career of that, or artworks in one way or another. I got nothing to sell, nothing to see, I’m doomed!

AD: (laughs, indulging him) Noooooo!

TB: It’s only the written, but the written for me. You know 'cause I've got so many fuckin’ reviews from all over the place, but they're poignant. They actually tell me something about the work I was doing.

Which never ceased to not fascinate me. But you know you come back to it every 5-10 years. I mean, the other nightmare of the archive is that you have to put it together in the first place. Or that you got to keep saving this stuff—If you're getting a product out of it, you know, if you're getting some means of making a living, which is, you know, this art thing is not just a cultural thing, where you’re trying to make yourself immortal. It's actually making a living as well, but that's secondary because nobody makes that good a living or if you do you, you're gold. But there's thousands of artists who don't.

AD: And it also has to be interesting to other people, right?

TB: Yeah, yeah!

AD: Like when you mentioned-

TB: You have to have an audience.

AD: You mentioned the library before. Like you can be in a library and pick up a book but if it doesn't strike you fancy, you're not gonna read it, are you?

TB: Yeah. Yeah. And you can see how many books are out there.  I mean, how many books can I actually read?

AD: Too many! there’s also too many artists, who don't

TB: Yeah—too many artists! Too many books. Kill the culture! Let's start again.

AD: Shut it down! (laughing)

TB: Go back to Aussie rules! (football)

AD: …and you’re not allowed to wear glasses!

(Both laughing)

AD: The idea of kind of self-mythologizing or you know, maybe adjacent to,

TB: yeah, well, there's another problem. Fuckin’ big one.

AD: Let's hear about that.

TB: Well, you know, when you're on the outer and you don't have the gallery and no one wants to work with you and they can't deal with you anyway, and as Donald Brook said, they, you know, they basically don't want, you know, artists rocking the boat too much. And you know, when they get away with rocking the boat, everybody goes, oh, how amazing. The (Jorn) Utzon, the (architect of the) Opera House. It's not going to work.

AD: Mmm

TB: Is that whole idea of, uniqueness, I suppose, or people who go outside the envelope, you know, outside the prescribed area and start something new, you know like. You know for me there's three or four pieces, you know that—the postcard pieces edition series, the postcards at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Mildura, and the Watters Gallery show as well; they all changed things, in some way or another. Physical as well as….

AD: notoriety, like through that?

TB: Yeah. But also they were pieces that turned things a little bit into a newer area than they'd actually been before. This was the first sort of really public multimedia work (in Australia). I mean they didn't know probably, it was bloody live at the time—you know, until they knew it was live.

AD: and the first artwork that spoke back.

TB: and the first artwork that spoke back. And that's what started the idea. I want an artwork to talk back to the audience. That was what it was about. And, you know, I started with Manet's kinda garden thing, you know, with a couple of naked people sitting in a garden having lunch.

AD: Which nobody probably got at the time. Because they were all just so shocked...

TB: Well, and it was also that, you know, the sexual revolution in the 70s was very profound and significant. Much more significant than people gave us credit for, I'm sure. But yeah, I mean you can see from the back of the bloody book that came out now, with Tim Johnson doing Disclosure Pieces. And here he is revealing people's private parts, you know, as a kind of a display. You know what I mean?

AD: Oh yeah, (realises by ‘book’, Tim is referring to the latest edition of Un Magazine, where Burns’ work A Change of Plans is on the cover of edition 18.1, and Johnson’s work is on the cover of 18.2) 

TB: Yeah. You couldn't do it, they wouldn’t allow you to do it, because it's just too sexist. Or even, coming to terms with the idea of nakedness and art, and that whole debate that was gone through by (John) Berger and everybody else along the way. All of which is, you know, has led to where we are now.

AD: But also, if we talk about the idea of frisson, or ‘pleasure’, in encountering the archive, kind of getting to be the detective, or the rediscover, or the person with the kind of cultural knowledge and capital to make something of what you find?

TB: Well as indicated by the fact that that's on the back page of the cover of un Magazine now, but the historical reality of probably ‘72 or ‘73, or ‘71, or whenever that was. It was probably at Sydney Uni, or Brisbane. I mean, I know he was heavily sanctioned in Brisbane. There were riots and you know. You had, what's his name? Smashing the lights and eating the tapeworm. You know, you had much more radical people.. I mean, that's what fascinated me. I mean this is a bit aside, but it was a trigger mechanism. You know, the thing that activated the kinetic response, or a kinetic act that required a response, even if it was revulsion or removal or whatever.

AD: That's almost like, comical in a way. I'm thinking about stereotypes of how, you know, the archive is depicted, even in film, like you know, the Eureka moment and, you jump up, and it's the closed fist and—

TB: yeah, yeah—

AD: You know, hurrah!

TB: Yeah, yeah, I've found it! I've found with the court cases, the transcript or angle, of the court cases. And it's kind of how you examine that. And that's where you have to find the Eureka moment and you have to attack the systematic.

In that Bunbury performance that I did, you know, I had mostly police as an audience. But there was just one slight variation in the story, because they brought in an extra witness to bolster their case, and he was the captain, and he didn't have the timeline. Which I realised reasonably early on, he didn't go to the script meeting with the rest of the cops.

AD: ah, yeah.

TB: and that undid the entire other cop, 'cause he gave a completely different timeline.

AD: So did you win?

TB: Something simple, like you know how long before I hit the policeman, for instance, you know, how long before the policeman hit me? And he's observing it all from the other side of the road. He doesn't know what the dialogue is. But you know, it's what he sees. And it hasn't been to the meeting because he's the boss.

AD: Yeah, and what he saw was probably equally as ‘true’ right, to him, in that moment.

TB: Yeah, well, it was absolutely true. And it was so obvious that it was absolutely true. Because the difference was, you know, sort of two, or three or four minutes. And then just zeroing in on that, won me that case, you know, having to listen…

AD: The ‘archive’ of the law and legal ephemera and documents and records is so vastly inaccessible. Like, we think that artists’ archives are inaccessible, but it's a whole nother…. (trails off)

TB: For, dare I say it, I mean there was no one who did a performance, did a defendant in a court case that was defending themselves as a performance, and invited an audience and had an audience.

AD: Which of course now? you know, with the MONA case is—

TB: Yeah, yeah. And then of course, CourtTV, which, you know, I loved CourtTV, of course, on the stage and worked a little bit with them as well, but they, you know that was before anything was recorded or whatever. I mean, certainly it was the Hansard, or whatever, the court reporter. But, you know, there wasn't kind of an ‘art audience’ at the event.

AD: Talk about court sketch artists, Tim, because they’ve always fascinated me—

TB: Yeah, me too.

AD: Because—

TB: I wish I was one.

AD: Oh, me too!

TB: I wished I could be one.

AD: Because, it's such a— it seems so ridiculous today, when you have cameras, right? But it's like, the court space is, maybe once space, that's where the camera is in fact forbidden, in Australia at least.

TB: Yeah, I love the idea, Now, I'd, I'd love the idea. I wish to hell I'd actually thought of that at the time. 'Cause I would have got someone in to draw.  I got people who just secretly filmed. ‘Cause that was against the law at the time.  And you notice, inside those books and everything (‘books’ here is referring to his own transcripts in his archive) there's a disclaimer that says ‘this work cannot be kind of shown, transcribed, or given to the public.’

AD: Yep, yes

TB: You know, it's so, you know, that's the sort of, that's the State working in their own, um, interest. And I’ve been to court maybe, hmm, you know, fourteen times…? I don’t know, but a lot. I mean, some of them for traffic violations, you know, when they hounded me? But you want to get the court records, don't you?

AD: Yes! And I...

TB: See, and there's another archive!

AD: And I, I'm having a very difficult time doing so, because one court folds into another…

TB: I think there might be a version of it in (the Artsource) archives.

AD: Yes

TB: Because I was going through it the other day, and they had pulled me over for drunk driving (historically). And then they— and I objected. But I also, you know, sort of hyper ventilated and

AD: —(cackles, laughing)

TB: I, I came in sort of, two points down, at 4.9.

AD: (laughing) how did you know that trick? Did you just know about that?

TB: No… I

AD: (still laughing) I've never heard about that!

TB: No, I was caught by the police.

AD, TB: (laughs)

AD: I forgot that story.

TB: You could state the obvious.

AD: That's hilarious.

TB: There's your archive for you.

AD: (laughs), yeah.

TB: But in the process, you know, they said like, they said, why are you hyperventilating in the bus? And I said, ‘oh, you know, I'm nervous. I haven't been arrested before’. Something to that effect. Not exactly that. ‘This is a shock to me’, you know, whatever. And they're going well, you know. And then the guy prints out this record (gestures broadly). Most of which, I had won the cases. And they're supposed to remove them, of course. But yeah, so there's another archive.

AD: Yeah, and that's an archive that's used against you.