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Oomlou Nioni, a pleasure to meet you, thank you for joining us on air.

The sentiment is shared.

That is a very formal response!

I was an ambassador for many years, the formal is all I know. To be honest my English is not that good as well, I know more formal phrases from my training, I lived in America for years and attended college there, but I was never very social.

So you never lost your accent?

No, no, no. I suppose I should try harder- they say that when you are colonized you must adapt and so maybe I am no good at being colonized!

Well you aren't colonized any more, you were an ambassador for the United States, that is a strange background for an artist. Do you see yourself having switched sides somehow, being part of the larger power? I know that Conje- as Considor- was under Caladonian rule for a long time, you were forced to flee in the sixties during the shift over to independent rule, is that right?

Colonies, you see, they are like dragons. They come in so many forms and are at their strongest in the stories told to the youngest minds. We were a colony until I was four or five and when we stopped being a colony there was a very long dark time that did not end until I woke up many miles away from any place I had ever known. Because of such turmoil I was ten years old before I was able to read the word orphan and know what this meant. I learned to read in English, but this of course was before I ever spoke it, that is a strange order, no? When I think of speaking it is in Conjese but when I think of writing it is always in English. It is like there are two deep canals in my mind and no water will run between them.

And you were an ambassador for America, how does that factor in, is that something evident in your work, this sense of displacement or co-option.

I was able to be an ambassador because I rowed a boat in college with a senator's son, to tell one side of the truth. This is the way I tell the story now, because I am angry. I became an ambassador because I thought that I would return to Conje with a big stick called the United States and that when I spoke softly people would listen to me- this is what the fat Roosevelt says- and then the fighting might stop. It was a dream, of course, that big stick was made of paper mache. It was a very pretty, very ceremonial thing, and they used to drive me around in a big car with thick glass and in the end it was not me they were trying to shoot.

What was the main impetus behind your shift into being an artist? You went from something so serious and then, well, some of your earliest work might be considered flippant.

When I was trying to negotiate between the Tungas and Ghergise I realized that nobody was listening to me, not just because I was 'The United States', but because of my accent. This is a very silly thing. I did not know this at the time. I found out later that it had been spread around that I had a ghost in my voice- this means there are two people inside me trying to speak at once and so my voice sounds strange. The leaders, the generals, they do not really believe such things- but all the soldiers do, the children believe. They could not do the things I suggested or their followers might say "he has been charmed by the ghost". For weeks we negotiated and I am not aware of this silly thing and I made matters worse, and then children were killing children again and I cannot scream of course, I cannot speak out against this, there is a ghost in my voice! So this idea of silliness, or flippancy, to me this is a very serious thing.

I'm sorry if that was a painful subject to speak of.

I have devoted my life to speaking of it- just not with my ghost voice- this what art is for.

Do you see your work as being political then?

I see breathing as political. I am an orphan of war saved by an international organization with a semi-religious foundation, given government scholarships to study in foreign countries, I dress in suits much of the time, until I die I am a piece of propaganda. For open Minds, for Stanford, for America, I will always be a sales pitch. I do not see my art as being political, it is anti-political, it tries to dodge entirely the structures that organize the world and speak directly to the mind of the child.

You say this very often when you are talking about your work, you say that you are making it for children. Accordingly, much of the imagery you use is 'child-like', but it isn't child-friendly. Your current project, Menagerie, includes a cartoon styled dragon, but in many ways the piece is very somber, not something I necessarily see a child appreciating, repetitive. There is a disconnect there.

You mean the piece for Isabalin, at Waymaker?

Yes.

I mean this, not exactly in the Freud way of thinking, but more like Deger- there is a child inside us all, the child experience that informs the adult. There is a clearer way of saying this. Even though we are adult, we are still very affected by the way we saw the world as children, we are like trees with many branches at the top where we grown our fruits and flowers but tied to the ground at the roots is our child experience. I think my work does not speak just for young people, but to these roots. I am dirty artist: a soil sculptor. (Laughter)

That is funny, I like the image of you as a soil sculptor- but of course that isn't literally true, much of your work is very mediated by technology, what role does this play in the work?

You are very good at this thing of returning to the point.

Thank you.

Yes. Much of my work uses technology, in strange ways. This piece you asked about, Menagerie, it is stop motion animation. I did not shoot it on film, which is maybe the obvious way. I used a digital camera and only later did I print it onto film stock. From the digital I edited it many times over, because you can do this, I don't know how to say I moved within the frame? I had a graduate student help me, Philip Thompson, from PIMS, he did most of the actual editing. I think the back of his neck must smell like my breath! I was very aggressive at this, watching and telling him what to do, but he was okay.

So you are not proficient at these things yourself?

Look, you know, I can do some things, I know what can be done. I know what has to happen. I think that with technology we use languages without thinking, we accept as natural ways of thinking attitudes that have only existed for maybe twenty years- something like that, more or less. This is my generation. I grew up with no telephones, where I was, but now I am sending emails all day from my phone. I do not think that media should be invisible. We should see it, and question it. I belong to the school that says we should question everything.

Do you see that as the role of the artist, to question things?

I see us as builders too. Art, builds and breaks at the same time. I know on the base level some of these ways of thinking, that art addresses itself, it is self-referential. This is not wrong, of course, but I am more interested in other things. This can be a long discussion, too much for now maybe. I will say this on the nature of art: it is a way of being seen completely and being invisible at the same time.

What does that mean?

Whenever you do something in art, it is entirely visible. If you make a painting, people do not only see the painting, they see the color of your skin, the language you speak, the schools you attended- they see the museum they are standing in, the price tags in the galleries and names of big collectors. With art we see not only the object but the society around it too. Sometimes there is a little fiction here, but even this is okay, maybe even a good thing. Art shows everything, so much so that sometimes the object is just a backdrop, an excuse for looking at something larger. At the same time, maybe the narrative of you is so big that the real you can escape being seen. I can be invisible in my way, I do not have to actually show up you know? Does this make any sense, maybe the ghost voice is speaking, yes? (Laughter)

It makes sense. I think your work is very successful at negotiating the visible and the invisible, the Adiisian dragon in Menagerie is a good example. The body, half in the ground and half out and of course the part we cannot see is doing things that it should not be able to do, allowing the body to move in impossible ways. The invisible acts according to different rules than the visible. This is not far from the political model- where what we see on stage differs from what goes on behind the scenes.

In some ways maybe. I think when a politician says they will act a certain way, maybe they will and maybe not but... what you know from this is something else. Maybe you know what they think people want to hear, or you know what people really care about. This is not truth, but this is something. In America now Barrack Obama is running for office and I think this good, I hope he wins, if he does win he might bring change and he might not but we will know that people want such change, I don't see people in New Caladon voting that way, not now at least, and I think that says a lot.

You know this never really got where I wanted it to go and we are already out of time. I appreciate you coming on air to speak to us. I understand you are traveling tomorrow?

Yes I am flying to Chicago to visit a friend and then Adiis for a conference, not to Conje though, of course.

Well I wish you the best of luck!

Thank you very much for having me.