We’ve talked about the changes that happened in the studio over the time. But is there anything that has remained the same since the foundation of the studio?The motivation and the ambition are still the same. When we started the studio, we didn’t really know where this was going. We just knew we wanted to try a lot of different things. And 16 years later, I think it’s still the case. And the beauty of what people like us do is that you don’t know what you’re going to do in the future. And that’s amazing. I don’t know if anybody can do that. Because that’s also a lot of stress. And even though you’re really established, you still feel somehow vulnerable. But it’s also fascinating, interesting, motivating to not know what you’re going to do in the future, I don’t know what we’re going to work on in one month. Anything can happen. And I think that’s the beauty of it. Even though we try to navigate our own boats, we still make sure we leave enough room for new experiences and new things to try. I think that desire of never really wanting to be cornered is still very present and maybe more than ever. That’s the main fuel to our practice which has never changed and never to change because it’s the best part.
How do you, as a studio, work together? What kind of team do you have?There is no team. There’s only myself and Judd, sitting in front of me right now. I’m overseeing everything, but 99% of people we work with are freelancers. Again, we do a lot of different things. Right now, we’re finishing a book, an exhibition and installation projects. At the same time, we’re doing a lot of consulting for big companies. And it’s very hard for us to have a team of people who can do all these things at once. So, we prefer to call people with specifics, according to projects. For us, it’s also very important to keep the space very emotional or private versus professional. Because I think one of the thing I personally like about what we do is that I never feel like I’m going to work, even though there’s a lot of stress and responsibilities around it. We don’t want to be a normal company. I don’t want to have a normal job. You know, it’s the same thing that when I was six years old, wanting to do skateboarding, because it was different than what everybody else was doing.
We’re very careful not to become a normal company. I think that changes your vision or changes a lot of you, having to put a lot of energy into management, thinking about how to pay people, and I don’t think I’m good at that but also that’s not something I want in my life. I prefer to spend that energy on looking for new projects, talking to different people and having the freedom to work with whoever we want.
Is there any approaches you take to keep the purity and essence of the initial concept?It really depends on projects. But I would say most of the time when the project comes up, the idea is already somewhere in our head or in the computer, or the phones. Because we do a lot of research, classification, analyze, and thinking outside of a given project. And most of the time when projects arise, we’re like, “oh, remember, this idea that we had the other day will be perfect for this project.” So, it’s really rare for us to start from scratch. I do a lot of just walking down the streets, taking photos of things, writing down some stuff. I have a lot of emails that I’ve never sent with different words and ideas. Every time something comes to my mind, I’ll write it down somewhere. We don’t wait for a project to look for ideas, the project is more of the context of an idea that we already have.
You talked about the stock of ideas; did it lead to such project as the A.D.D.P.M.P.?Yeah, totally. I think A.D.D.P.M.P. is a way for us to give form to our research practice, and to make it relevant and useful for other people. A lot of the research that we do usually is very self-centered. It’s usually for our own projects. It’s really cool for us to be able to share that with all the people. I know the book is in some libraries in schools or universities, and kids are using it for research. So that’s amazing. And we’re trying to push this project towards education. That’s why we’re careful to not present this as an art project, because it’s more of a research project that we want to share. Initially it comes from our desire to always research: it comes out of our curiosity, but it’s also a way for us to share our process with the rest of the world, because most of the time we share our projects, but we don’t really share our research.
This project is also an excuse to connect with the younger generations who are trying to visualize what they want, or how to approach a project. It is a very gratifying reward you get. Especially, I haven’t been to school, so I don’t know how and what you learn at school. It’s kind of cool for us to go back to school with our own approach. We don’t have the arrogance to think that we’re going to change things, but if we can bring a little bit of our experience to help some kids gain more confidence or a better vision of what they want, then it’s amazing.
Right now, we’re finishing the second volume of the book. And then we’re going to do a series of installations and projects that we want to do with schools, universities and museums. So, we can use this as a platform for conversation.