Conversation with Sam Cottington
Sam Cottington is the creative sum of it all. Based between London and Frankfurt, he explores new ends of his practise, imbued by a raw, cut-through honesty. His boundary-breaking collages, sculptures and performances continue to challenge our understanding of reality – oftentimes expanding it. In his works, Sam reveals the ever-shifting, contradictory nature of our world, much like a kaleidoscope of historical and social influences.
Attendees: Divijah Rajendra, Nanna Svane,
Sam Cottington
Divijah Rajendra: Okay. Okay, we're here.
Sam Cottington: Hello. Hi.
Nanna Svane: Hey Sam. Sam. Would you call yourself mainstream?
Sam Cottington: Uuuhm. I thiiink I would not. No.
Nanna Svane: No. Love. Why?
Sam Cottington: I think I am too committed to perversion to be mainstream.
Divijah Rajendra: What do you mean by that? Too committed. Is there such a thing called too committed?
Sam Cottington: I think the mainstream can be perverse but it's always a kind of normal perversion. I was reading this essay that talked about capitalism being a normal perversion. I guess I'm interested in a kind of perversion which I would hope can't simply be incorporated into the mainstream, but I'm not totally ambivalent or totally alienated, sorry someone just walked past. I'm not alienated from, (I don't know,) to the kind of thrilling capacity of the parts of life that everyone has a kind of obsessive compulsion towards which sometimes is mainstream, some things are totally adored by millions of people and I think it can be completely terrific and fantastic yeah.
Divijah Rajendra: That's interesting though. I was thinking when you just said all of this how you kind of bring a complexity maybe to the mainstream visual somehow. In the combination of things of deconstructing things and putting them together in new versions. I was going to share this text that I read that somehow. Let me think of you and it is a text called.
Nanna Svane: Perversion. Nooo.
Divijah Rajendra: No, it's not. This one is called...
Sam Cottington: PERVERT.
Divijah Rajendra: That's it. That's the text! No, this one is Modern Love by Constance de Jong and I'm gonna read it out loud to you both. Everywhere I go, I see losers. Misfits like myself, who can’t make it in the world. In London, New York, Morocco, Rome, India, Paris, Germany. I’ve started seeing the same people. I think I’m seeing the same people. I wander around staring at strangers thinking I know you from somewhere, I don’t know where. The streets are always crowded and narrow, full of men. It’s always night and all strangers are men. I don't know why but somehow I stumbled upon this and then I thought of you. We kind of have been having this discussion about being a misfit and then also I love the part that starts in London and then it ended up in Germany. And also this aspect I guess of being a stranger. I think we both had this being a stranger in Frankfurt. I was just super interested in hearing what your response to this text would be.
Sam Cottington: I think I also like this text. It reminded me of my book. Or kind of one of the momentums of why I wrote the book. I mean the book I wrote is People Person. It's from the perspective of an art school dropout who is approximate to the art world but has a kind of masochistic attachment to it.
Divijah Rajendra: Mmmh
Sam Cottington: He goes to openings. He talks about art all the time with his friends who also went to art school and also are approximate to art, they have normal jobs and they haven't managed to have careers in the art world. And I guess I am interested in how the art world always says one thing and does another. At the time I started writing my book I was like, okay, this is not sustainable. I can't live like this. It's just not an option. So I started writing, but I was still writing about art, and I was interested in how people wrote novels or novellas about people in the art world. It was always like I was reading sort of post-war novels where people go to Berlin and they meet a very successful photographer and they become best friends. I was interested in how so many of the people who take part in art are not necessarily like that... I wanted to write a novella about the people that I knew in London basically and what I saw as being that kind of big reality of how art makes people feel bad about themselves and is talked about all these things that it does. It's Political potential or it's social potential. But the experience of going to openings or… Going to the pub afterwards. I don't know. That to me is such a huge part of art so…
Divijah Rajendra: yeah.
Sam Cottington: But I mean, that's what I thought about when I read the text that you mentioned because it's this idea that you very rarely hear the truth, it's like most people are losers…
Nanna Svane: That's the standard I think. Sam, one thing I want to ask you. What do you mean by art making people feel bad?
Sam Cottington: I mean, there's a spot in my book where they go to this art opening and then they go to the pub afterwards and there's this sort of excitement around all these characters. The main character can tell that everyone's so excited to say how s*** they think the art is. This moment where they can feel powerful again because the reality is that a lot of people who go to see art have aspirations to be in art but the reality of making art historically and specifically now too, is the art world has gotten bigger and bigger and the money goes to a smaller and smaller amount of artists. I saw this really good lecture when I was at Goldsmiths where he broke it down; there's much less money for example, he was talking about London, London funding to the arts has basically been cut in half in the last 10 years so there's much less money and it's going to much smaller amount of people. It's a much safer bet to fund artists who can prove that they'll get people through the doors of the gallery and that they will begin conversations online that will promote the gallery. Art isn't a realistic option for most people. But I am still compelled to take part in it. I take part in this cruelty, I'm still kind of aspirational sadly, I guess or I still feel conflicted all the time. I'm still trying, I still have all these desires to take part in the art world.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah. Yeah.
Sam Cottington: And since I wrote that book I take a bit more part in it. I remember being like I'm not an artist anymore. Now I know, no matter what… I was talking to someone about this, was it you? Sometimes in my life, I would have these stops, these significant stops…
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah.
Nanna Svane: Right.
Sam Cottington: But it stops… sort of.
Divijah Rajendra: You kind of spoke a bit about your work, and I know you have a huge fascination with theater. Would you consider yourself a very theatrical person how much drama is actually in your life?
Sam Cottington: That's a very good question.
Divijah Rajendra: And also when did the fascination for theater actually begin?
Sam Cottington: I think I would say that I am… Maybe not that… I think I'm theatrical in that I adore gossip. I think that's about this sort of constant commentary on the drama of everyday life. But I actually don't like to take part in that drama. I actually find conflict really painful. Actually makes me feel sick. I looove to take part in gossip about people and I think that's dramatic, but I don't think I'm dramatic in that I would say something.
Divijah Rajendra: You wouldn't start the rumour.
Nanna Svane: You would just pass it on.
Nanna Svane: You need to explain this. You lost me completely. So you like to lie and… to do gossip? Summing up.
Sam Cottington: Ahh… yes!
Nanna Svane: But that's amazing. It's super great that you're honest about it.
Sam Cottington: I find life more interesting when it is… I heard this quote from someone saying, art is best when it uses artifice to strip artifice of artifice. So this is something I feel like I'm kind of gesturing towards. Maybe thats why I am interested in the theatre; that's the theatre! I believe in this real life, this brutal real life, but I believe in the thrilling capacity of performance and life.
Divijah Rajendra: I love that you use all of these brutal yet real-life situations, but you make it sound really good.
Sam Cottington: I'm a big believer in committing to the bit! If you have a joke, go the whole way.
Divijah Rajendra: You're all in or nothing.
Sam Cottington: Exactly! All or nothing. Yeah, yeah, totally. I believe in intensity and passion.
Nanna Svane: Besides the drama part of the theatre, you also work with scripts. As I have heard from Divijah, and on the internet. But how do you work with them and how big part of your practice is it?
Sam Cottington: Scripts are definitely a big part of my practice. I've been working with scripts for the last two years and it really transformed my practice because I realised that when you're writing a script there's always some potential to change the world, even if that's fantastical. When you're writing something that isn't to be read aloud, it's this kind of a private interior world. When you're writing something I can put it in someone's mouth. That to me is an essential part of writing a script. I can improvise a text and then I can make a character and have this character say it and when this character says this thing it could create a character or it could destroy that character. You can make a conflict but it is making something that is going closer to this world to this “real world". It's getting out of my private interior, neurotic personal fantasy world and taking part in whatever potential there is for this real world, and I'm always interested in, it's kind of like what we were talking about with theatricality and camp and you know… this attention between a brutal realism and this kind of going against what seems natural or normal, but then also trying to tune into this role's intense experience of a shared life that we all take part in. I believe that that does exist. When you're working with scripts it's like sculpture for writing. The thing is in the world now to whatever capacity, maybe it's too small. But it's closer to the world.
Nanna Svane: What I'm also hearing here, I really love your description by the way, very much. What I also hear is you also the idea of always having control of each character to either destroy them or rebuild them, and also make them sort of neutral playing with the idea of a 360 Degrees narrative, so you can actually tap into any character change the narrative in the way that you want, but actually also go back without regretting.
Sam Cottington: For sure, I think with writing scripts it's always connected to this moment of performance… Even if you control it, there's always this moment of improvisation. It's always attached to this present moment. Where anything could happen…
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah.
Sam Cottington: There's this playwright called Richard Maxwell who says that a scriptwriter writes everything for the actor to say, and a director directs everything for them to do. You work on it for months. But the actors are alone on that stage. That's the moment! And the actor goes on stage, they are completely alone and they can say anything, they say the coolest thing or the cruellest most disturbing thing. They could say whatever they want.
Divijah Rajendra: That's a risk for sure. That's a lot of risk working with scripts… Because you really need to trust. The person who is acting out the script.
Sam Cottington: Exactly, and you also have to believe or take some pleasure in the person having their own relationship to the world, being they’re own person and… maybe completely being ambivalent to you. That's what's really thrilling about the theatre and collaborating with people. The theatre is always collaborative, you can't do the theatre alone, which is what's pretty rewarding about it.
Nanna Svane: But I think when you do all of this and the parts and the practice of writing itself, first of all, I've heard it very frantic and secondly, I would love to have a little description of that. Do you have a specific place you do it or a specific time of the day or do you need a specific headspace or do you need a lot of noise?
Sam Cottington: I do work frantically. I work in kind of bursts of intense moments. I find ideas pop into your head and the best thing I've learned as an artist is to write everything down as quickly as you can and not rely on yourself to remember it. You won't! Write everything down! Draw everything as soon as you think of it!
Divijah Rajendra: I just want to show something. This is inside Sam's studio. So we kind of sense…
Nanna Svane: I love it.
Sam Cottington: With a photograph by Divijah in the studio, my birthday present.
Divijah Rajendra: Just wanted to give an insight into the franticness that we're talking about.
Nanna Svane: I love it. I love it.
Sam Cottington: Yeah, it's intense at the moment. It's intense because I'm working on collage sculptures. So it's even more intense.
Nanna Svane: Did you say collage sculptures?
Sam Cottington: Yeah, yeah, so it's collaging images. But to become these objects in space. So it's always contingent on you seeing everything or… you have to have some sense of space. Takes up space, I guess. With writing I like to try and get as early as possible to the studio and I… I mean; No, I know that's a fantasy. That's not true. I don't. For example, if you do an overnight coach, you're coming back from Berlin and you arrive at 5:30 am. You can go straight to the studio and have a nap. And then bright and early, you can write something. I find it easy to write in the morning and paint at night. The best advice I have for writing is to read everything aloud. You can edit so much faster and understand the text so much clearer once it exists in the world… you can hear it. It's like anyway take that out…
Nanna Svane: Yeah.
Sam Cottington: And also that part of the editing and writing process is also part of the reasons why I've gone towards scripts too… because I hear myself reading them and they already have the theatric potential even if I'm working on poems and plays and a novella. I think it's all still kind of theatrical.
Divijah Rajendra: We have theatre, we have writing, then we have something called Instagram.
Sam Cottington: What's that?!
Divijah Rajendra: What is that?! We want to know what's your average screen time Sam.
Sam Cottington: It's actually gone down this week. So I just saw it. It was something like under four hours a day. I think it's good.
Nanna Svane: That's okay.
Divijah Rajendra: What's yours on Nanna?
Nanna Svane: I think it's three and a half hours a day.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah, same I'm also on three and a half. But what is Instagram to you and do you take Instagram seriously?
Sam Cottington: That's a good question. I have been told a few times by different people in art that I have to change my Instagram.
Divijah Rajendra: Nooo. Why?
Nanna Svane: What?
Sam Cottington: Yeah, multiple times. They say: "Sam, what are you doing? You can't do this, like people can see."
Nanna Svane: Okay, you need to describe to people why.
Sam Cottington: Okay. Yeah. Okay. My Instagram is a combination of pornography, goofy, humour, memes. And then everything else, my art is on there, but it kind of gets lost and people often say I didn't know you were doing this, why don't you post your art online? Like I do! I just post millions of other things that it just gets lost in it… which I really like because, for me, my Instagram is the context for my work. I resent that we all have to take part in Instagram in order to take part in the art world,…
Divijah Rajendra: mmm Yeah.
Sam Cottington: I think it's a disappointing place, but I believe that if I am going to take part in it. Partly because I have to as an artist, partly because there's a part of me that has a desire. I want to. I experience a complicated desire, maybe it's not a good desire. But I have the desire and I'm interested in pursuing that. And that's what I'm interested in about Instagram. If I see something, I've seen an image that's compelling, a joke, I say: "Everybody, look!". I feel the need to insist that this is social media! When I'm online, I want to live passionately. I don't want to, if I have to be online, which I do. I think people would argue that there are other options. You would say, you can just log off. I've spoken with curators who have said, I was talking about a friend's work and they were like, send me their Instagram and I was like, they're not on Instagram and they were like: "That says a lot." And then they don't pursue working with that artist. So that's my experience.
Divijah Rajendra: Wow. Yeah. But that's the thing with Instagram that it somehow at some point… It turned into a portfolio and business platform, more than just sharing your food and sharing your cat. I'm not sure where the shift happened, but that's why I think going to your Instagram to figure you out. Somehow it says something without saying something. I just want to ask one question. Do you always do the slides? How do you compile those images together? Do you have a way of doing it?
Divijah Rajendra: One of the images you have to send us is a screenshot of your desktop because I know it's crazy.
Sam Cottington: Oh yeah it's pretty bad. I just don't know how else to work. Sometimes I think I get in my own way, if I actually tidied up I could actually see clearly, but something is stopping me. I feel more urgently that need to get more images to put into my work or collages.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah. It's again the franticness. More mess.
Sam Cottington: Yeah exactly. I have this urgency. I don't have the time to tidy, I have to use this time to make something.
Nanna Svane: But Sam you already touched base a little bit on it. But as you guys and Divijah also said before, about having a platform and Instagram, first of all, I would like to connect a comment to it. I think it also appeared because it's free for people, so you're actually able to do it and I think that's a good thing. But then secondly, we can also start to go all the way down the rabbit hole and discuss how fucked up it also is… Moving a little bit away from that. I want to also ask you about how important you think it is to be a brand as a person to actually be accepted in this art world.
Sam Cottington: That's a tricky question. The truth is that being a brand is being knowable and or visible. If you have desires and aspirations to take part in this really competitive miserable art world people have to see you and your work. And they have to be able to get some sort of grip on it. Comprehend something going on in your work. Sadly that leads to you becoming this limiting logo. The creative and disturbing elements are kind of like… for example me, I want my work to be frantic and surprising and disturbing. But what happens when they get successful? They become the frantic disturbing artist, trademark! It's hard to avoid this moment of your work becoming simpler and smaller and you becoming simpler and smaller. I think all interesting practices are suspicious of that and work against it. But at the same time when I find myself getting worried about my work becoming too simple or too close to a brand, in some ways maybe I am getting close to some recurrent parts in my practice that I want to get close to.
Divijah Rajendra: Yeah, to figure out what's the core part of your practice. I don't think that's a bad thing. But I do hear some of your concerns, if you find yourself restricting yourself to comply with the "brand". In order to get yourself out of this, you have to keep getting ideas. New ideas. Do you have any advice on how to keep getting new ideas?
Sam Cottington: The best way to keep getting new ideas, is honestly to spend as much time on your art as possible. And that's not an option for most people. That's the frustrating thing about art is the more you're working on your art the more you can do. You can think so much more clearly if you can see you are doing the work. I can imagine my plays and my theatrical project so much clearer when I'm in front of the stage. You can't be completely alienated from what you want to be doing. So that's the reality, but if you have the luxury of being able to have space and time for your work, the best thing to do is to go for a walk or go to the gym. You have to get your blood pumping.
Nanna Svane: or have sex.
Sam Cottington: Well... If it's going really well during sex, I am thinking about absolutely nothing. So maybe not. If it's going well during sex. I'm thinking about myself. I'm wondering what they are looking for. You know. I'm getting just turned on. I'm not thinking about my art. But during walks and going to the gym when I get this endorphin rush I get blood going through my body, and I start rolling around an idea. It starts growing, like here is an idea, here is another idea, here is another idea... You can't sit still in it. Also reading. I always think why don't I feel inspired, oh I haven't read anything and then I'll pick up a book. If I like it, I'll put it down straight away because I'll just get all these ideas. I find it hard to read because sometimes it's too much about my own thing, the same with movies.
Divijah Rajendra: That's why you have 10 books you're reading at once. And never finished any of them.
Nanna Svane: Sam, do you need your glasses to read?
Sam Cottington: I can read without these glasses, but I get headaches. I'll go through weeks where I stop wearing my glasses because I feel lazy and I don't want to clean them. I won't wear them. I'll stop wearing them and I think oh maybe I don't need glasses and then I'll get these headaches.
Nanna Svane: Okay, then you need them. Because I like your look with glasses. I have been on this Earth for some time without using glasses. I have glasses here next to me. I'm looking at them and I've had glasses for six years and I'm halfway blind on this eye. I cannot identify with them! I bought so many glasses and I feel like I am a different human being when I put glasses on. Do you identify that much with your glasses?
Sam Cottington: I found that when I started to wear glasses, people took me more seriously. They were great!
Nanna Svane: That would be nice.
Sam Cottington: I think people treat you differently when you wear glasses. I can't believe you didn't put them on and think God this is fabulous.
Nanna Svane: No, never and I have six pairs.
Divijah Rajendra: Put them on…
Sam Cottington: Yeah put them on!
Nanna Svane: Okay only for you guys. I'm gonna look in the camera only on my own picture to make sure how it looks. Sam, I can also tell you this I have had the same glasses for many years and the glasses I bought were the biggest ones that I could find and the darkest ones that I could find. Because I am not halfhearted. I do one thing that I do 100%. So I thought not to get glasses that might disappear in my face and these truly do not.
Sam Cottington: Oh woooow. It is… Porn.
Nanna Svane: But it is teacher porn but porn is maybe okay.
Sam Cottington: This is pornographic. It's sexy. You look sexy. You should totally wear them constantly. Yeah, it's like pornographic to me.
Nanna Svane: That's the best compliment.
Divijah Rajendra: The real you.
Nanna Svane: okay, I'm keeping them on for the rest of the interview.
Divijah Rajendra: Yes, keep them on.
Nanna Svane: Okay speaking about all this I think also comes down to some sort of beauty and how you see yourself. I actually don't give that much of a f*** about what other people think of me and how I look but sometimes the insecurities inside of me can overwhelm me for example with the glasses. I think that problem also comes down to the average idea of ideal beauty, which I really struggle with but what is ideal beauty to you? If it even exists.
Nanna Svane: Oh my God, that is very amazingly put. Okay, so when you're having sex with a stranger, you don't know and Sam, I love this. That's why I'm picking it up and making sure you say it again. So when you have sex with a stranger this is the time where you actually feel the most or maybe not the most but you think about you feeling beautiful.
Sam Cottington: Yes, I mean it's not every time for sure. But it's the thing that keeps me coming back to sex with strangers where I know as little about them as possible. I get to be just a body. I don't have to talk. I don't have to worry about this sort of intellectual or even social part of myself. I'm not talking. I'm just desired. So for me when I think of ideal beauty, it's like this moment when a complete stranger fucks you.
Divijah Rajendra: Wow.
Nanna Svane: I'm in love with you now even more than I was before.
Divijah Rajendra: Beautiful. We want to know your favorite theater play from the present, the past and…
Sam Cottington: I love this question.
Divijah Rajendra: the future.
Sam Cottington: The future I'm hoping is this new Annie Baker play that's coming out at the National Theater in London. It's a brand new Annie Baker. I adore Annie Baker! If you can get to London, go! It's big! Think it's coming out maybe now, November or December. I'm going to see it in January. So no, I'm going to see it in December. Hopefully, that's the play of the future. Play of the present? I think I would say. I can never remember his name, wait. The name of the play is Downstate. Yeah, Bruce Norris. I mean it came out a few years ago. (Alejandro. I'm in a meeting) And it's called downstate. I cannot believe it got made and I tell everyone to read it and they always text me afterwards saying I cannot believe this play got made! It's about a group of people who have been convicted of sexual abuse crimes. I believe all involving minors. They live in a house together. This is something that happens in the US once you leave the prison system because you are not allowed to live at certain distances to schools and it makes living complicated…
Divijah Rajendra: mmm
Sam Cottington: So these convicted criminals live together in this house. It is the most challenging…
Divijah Rajendra: It sounds wild.
Nanna Svane: What?!
Sam Cottington: but he contextualizes stories of these people and it's incredible. It's so incredibly written. It's a perfect play. Downstate. And the past honestly, I would have to say any Tennessee Williams play, but I got to say A Streetcar Named Desire. It's pretty obvious, but it's a perfect play.
Divijah Rajendra: Why is it obvious?
Sam Cottington: I adore this play. In America you study it on the curriculum… but in my school, we didn't study it. God. I wish we did. It's completely essential. It's like the whole of life. Everything. Somehow it still surprises me every time I read it. I’m like "I know this woman and she said that, why did she say that?!". It's like everything you want from the theater. It's this compelling, desperate, humiliating experience of life, melodramatic and very honest. That's it. But it's also somehow so surprising, not sentimental or cliché - Sheila Heti defines sentimentality as ‘a feeling about the idea of a feeling’- this play isn’t that, it's vital but over the top and camp, super disturbing. You can't control it really, it has a life of its own.
Nanna Svane: I love that. Sam, I have one last question would you say that you can live a fantasy and if so would the fantasy still exist?
Sam Cottington: You live a fantasy? And that fantasy be real?
Nanna Svane: Yeah afterwards if you live a fantasy, which is something we imagine, so after you have lived the fantasy, would it then still exist as a fantasy?
Sam Cottington: Damn, it's a tough one. I think that it's both.
Nanna Svane: Yeah.
Sam Cottington: It's a fantasy. And if you've committed to that fantasy so much it has some purchase on reality.
Divijah Rajendra: mmm
Sam Cottington: But also no one is alone. So this fantasy has come in contact with other fantasies and the world. There's a real world out there too. As I said. so I don't know, I think both.
Divijah Rajendra: Very good answer and…
Nanna Svane: Good answer.
Divijah Rajendra: Thank you for sharing your fantasies and your real-world here.
Sam Cottington: I think I blacked out. I don't remember anything.
Divijah Rajendra: You can read all about it. Sam. Thank you so much. Love bye.
Nanna Svane: Exactly Thank you so much, Sam.
Sam Cottington: No, thank you. I really appreciate it. This was actually good. Kiss, kiss.
Nanna Svane: Kisses.
Conversation ended after 01:11:26 👋
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