Ep. 54 - Conjuring the Future (The Goldberg Variations)

PuSh Play

Gabrielle Martin chats with Clayton Lee, who will be presenting The Goldberg Variations at the 2025 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Check out the show on January 30 at the Waterfront Theatre, supported by CMHC Granville Island.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Clayton discuss:

• Why do you only perform the Goldberg Variations once per engagement?

• What does it mean to identify as a performance artist and not just a musician?

• What are your thoughts in relation to care and consent in your work?

• To what extent is your own story the subject of your artistic projects?

• How do you use performance to actively reshape your life?

• What is allowed and not allowed in different performance contexts, and how do you respond to this?

• What did it mean to get married as part of a performance?

• What contexts are you currently playing with in your future work?

• How do we continue this work beyond?

About Clayton Lee

Clayton Lee is a Canadian curator, producer, and performance artist. He is currently the Artistic Director of Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK and, as part of the Living Room Collective, will be representing Canada at the 2025 Venice Biennale of Architecture.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

Clayton joined the conversation from Toronto, on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabriel Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and today's episode highlights a future conjuring and adding texture to the conversation.

00:17

I'm speaking with Clayton Lee, artist behind the Goldberg Variations, which is being presented at the Push Festival January 30th, 2025. Through an unapologetic investigation of desire, power dynamics, and identity, Clayton Lee explores his childhood obsession with the professional wrestler Bill Goldberg and the impact it has had on his sexual and romantic history.

00:38

The perplexing crossroads between dominance, submission, heartbreak, and vulnerability are laid bare in this candid and thoroughly unconventional performance, where fantasies are both indulged and deconstructed.

00:50

Clayton Lee is a Canadian curator, producer, and performance artist. He is currently the Artistic Director of Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK, and as part of the Living Room Collective will be representing Canada at the 2025 Venice Biennale of Architecture.

01:06

Here's my conversation with Clayton. A thrilling to be talking to you, thrilling to be part of the festival. Before we dive right into it, I would like to acknowledge that I'm on the stolen, ancestral, and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh.

01:29

And I think today it's important to acknowledge the recent passing of Murray Sinclair, the Anishinaabe Senator, and renowned Manitoba lawyer, who led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He passed on November 4th.

01:44

And he served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba and directed the pediatric cardiac surgery inquest into the deaths of 12 children at a Winnipeg hospital before taking the reins of the TRC, one of the...

02:00

important bodies in Canada's recent history, which released its final report in 2015. And his work with the TRC, well with his work, his conclusion was that residential schools amounted to a cultural genocide, or his conclusion with his collaborators.

02:19

And this conclusion, this document has reshaped Canadians' understanding of the government-run boarding schools that devastated generations of Indigenous communities. And I'd just like to share a quote from him.

02:32

We have described for you a mountain. We have shown you the path to the top. We call upon you to do the climbing. And Clayton, where are you joining this conversation from today? Well, normally I'd be in Birmingham, UK, but today I'm calling from Toronto, which is the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat, as well as the treaty territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

02:59

Unlike many artists, you prefer to only perform the Goldberg gradations once during an engagement. So for example, you requested to perform only one show at the Push Festival. Why is that? Oh, there's so many reasons for that.

03:17

You know, I think the kind of major difference between the ways in which I approach making versus other folks is I identify as a performance artist. And whereas I think most of the folks in the festival or in the festival circuit come from theater or dance kind of lineages and theater and dance, you know, have this kind of tradition of repeatability, right?

03:39

Where they make the work and then they kind of repeat it over and over again, hopefully on tour or over multiple weeks in a single city. And I'm, you know, for any number of reasons, I've framed Goldberg, the Goldberg variations as kind of a one-off live encounter event.

03:58

What this means for me is one, that the work is never the same twice. So the work is always being built and added onto it's iterative process. I kind of vaguely shape the conceptual framework for the piece is box sculptor variations with his 30 variations.

04:18

And the idea is every time I perform, I add one or two new variations to the work. And I'm interested simultaneously in what it means to present large scale work and to think about the spectacle of the live encounter and how to do this in ways of, ways within scarcity mindsets, right?

04:39

Where we don't have ton of money, but how do we pull all our resources into a way that feels big and bold and, you know, more daring than a kind of two or three performance run could be. So I really throw all the excitement into one basket and do it.

04:59

in that way for this. The stakes are high. The stakes are high and I think that's the way I like to kind of frame it, right? I really think about this performance as a score that I've built and I have no idea how it'll work and then the minute the performance starts the roller coaster begins and you know you can't get off of it and whatever happens happens and that's the kind of level of chaos slash controlled chaos I really thrive in.

05:29

Yeah and I really and I think the audience can feel that too, right? Because it's this one-off thing. They are kind of learning and experiencing it at the same time as I am. It is super exciting and you use the element of surprise and one result of this can be audience members yourself or your collaborators and or collaborators faced with the unexpected.

05:51

What are your thoughts on care and consent in relation to your work given this kind of the unexpected? Yeah, I think consent, of course, is key in all cases. And care, I have a funny relationship with care in the context of live performance, right?

06:11

And there's an artist named Bruno Gio who talks about how care is often a strategy to kind of maintain the status quo, that if we're never unable to kind of feel discomfort, how do we actually find new ways of being, right?

06:25

Not to say I'm explicitly interested in kind of abandoning care or kind of rejecting it, but for me, the work is not just about care. And I think when you or the audience experiences it, you'll kind of see very quickly that that's not part of the work.

06:43

And simultaneously, I'm interested in this kind of question around how artists of color are positioned within contemporary performance, right? This kind of critical need for representation, but the kind of limits of it.

06:58

And what I mean by that is, artists of color are often meant to be the kind of spokesperson for their communities. They're kind of intersecting communities. And for me, I'm not interested in doing that at all.

07:10

What if we don't position ourselves as forces of good necessarily, but forces that are kind of complex and are asking these kind of tangly, often unethical, often problematic questions, right? And what if we make that the starting point of the work and go from there?

07:29

And then I think the other kind of conversation around consent is, and perhaps this goes back to this kind of fine distinction between dance theater and performance art, but I think audiences often forget that there is inherent agency in their role as an audience member, that they can get up whenever they want, that they can leave whenever they want, that if they're gonna talk during the performance,

07:49

no one's gonna really stop. There are kind of these kind of standard practices in place, but also who's gonna stop them, right? And actually, I'm interested. interested in the ways in which audience members can or cannot exercise their own agency in the performance, and I can invite that in, right?

08:10

When I, you know, said earlier about kind of creating the score, it's like the kind of audience is in a way co-creating it with me, and if they want to kind of respond in any number of ways, that's invited, right?

08:23

You know, there are elements, there are kind of lines I don't cross, like, you know, this is not explicitly, this works not by, you know, it's not whatever, whatever, but it is kind of pushing the boundaries quite intentionally around care and what it means to be, you know, problematic or not, and yeah.

08:43

Yeah, I appreciate what you say about discomfort. I think there's some discourse around the difference between emotional and psychological safety, and that's like, you know, without emotional discomfort, there's no, there's no growth.

08:58

There's no room for diversity of perspective and opinion either, because inevitably we'll be uncomfortable when confronted by really different perspectives. I've presented this work before to kind of somewhat controversial results.

09:19

And I think so often that's coming from a place of what are the audiences or the presenters expectations of me as an artist? Who do they think I am as an artist? What kind of work do they think I make and what kind of artists do they think I can be?

09:37

And actually this work, so much of this work is about dismantling them. And there is this kind of inherent tension of, oh, actually you expect me to do this, but I'm doing this instead, and therefore you feel uncomfortable.

09:48

But then for me, there's the kind of reflection that's kind of quite essential in that. It's like, why, yeah, what were you expecting of me? Where are those expectations coming from? And how do we actually seek to not just dismantle them, but actually add texture to the conversation?

10:06

It should never be as simple as this equals good, this equals bad. I think the current discourse, especially in kind of performance circles are so reductive and simplified in these ways. And actually, no, I reject this wholeheartedly.

10:23

And actually what happens when we play in that kind of gray area and indulge in it where possible. The Goldberg Variations is in part an examination of your own desire. To what extent is your own story the subject of your artistic projects?

10:39

Yeah, that's a good question. You know, this one is very much my quote unquote story, though I often kind of reject this notion of people telling their own story. So I'm simultaneously kind of disgusted by myself and kind of making this work.

10:57

And I think... kind of there are two kind of key differences for me in kind of making this right the kind of you know I first thought of the title and the kind of reason for the title maybe in 2017 so seven years ago um but I wasn't able to make it until two years ago right and the kind of distance I had then that kind of drove that kind of conversation and who I was you know when I first made this are kind of two very different people and that kind of distance was useful but simultaneously I think in thinking about this like one-off encounter or this kind of site responsive work I'm simultaneously interested in this work as an examination of my past but also this kind of present and future conjuring moment right where I really am using this project to think about who I am right now think about the distance between who I am right now and the kind of feelings I'm thinking about you know I was thinking about seven years ago also how do we how do I use this performance to actively reshape my life and how do I use this performance to you know indulge in communities and meet with people that I wouldn't normally meet with right and I think there's something there's something in this work that has actually changed the way I move through this world and one thing what I mean by that is this piece is asking a lot of the audience and also of the presenters right and it you know the kind of work I made when I was first starting it was very small scale I was afraid to kind of take up a space you know I used to travel with a work that was just my laptop right and this work is the kind of opposite of that but if there's something in the kind of conceit of this work and the subject matter that has given me permission to actually ask for things of what if you know as artists we're often so um willing to kind of reduce ourselves or shrink ourselves down to make to make ourselves palatable and easy to tour right so that we're not kind of causing uh what's the word causing labor on to kind of present presenters but actually for me it's this this work is interesting because it's asking what if I start insisting on things or asking for you know crazier crazier things right when I first conceived this work it's always through the lens of like what if I did this what if I did this and those are tied up with ambition desire uh and trying to kind of like wash off this feeling of like not not being able to be an artist or whatever that makes any sense like I think we're so often afraid of the kind of things that we want to be and this piece is a strategy for me to kind of step into that I don't know if I answered your question at all but oh yeah yeah you did um and that giving oneself permission to ask you know I think there's like fear that I would imagine those fear to be perceived as a demand artist,

13:59

but my experience in working with you in this dynamic is not that. And yeah, you can always ask and then it's up to whoever you're engaging with to do what they will with that request. Yeah. And I think a large part of my work, you know, I, my day job is in kind of curating and producing, right?

14:18

Um, so I love kind of working within organizational or institutional frameworks to see what the kind of possibilities are. You know, we think of these spaces as so stagnant and immovable, but actually I'm in part using this work to think about how I relate to these institutions as an artist and using this work to in bigger or small ways shift the ways in which these institutions or organizations work.

14:44

You know, when I did, I was in residency with this piece at the Art Gallery of Ontario for three months and, you know, we had three meetings going back and forth of whether or not I was allowed to use the word faggot into the gallery space.

14:56

And for me, It's with a lot of labor on my part to kind of have those conversations, but it's simultaneously thrilling of like, why can't we use that word? Why can't I use that word in this context? And to not ever, I never approach these things with a kind of certain resolve, but as a kind of opening of, again, what if we do this?

15:16

What is actually allowed? What isn't allowed? Why isn't allowed? And let's get to the very end of that. And if, you know, I'm not allowed to say the word faggot in the context of the art gallery, then that's fine.

15:26

But actually, then we have this conversation and it feels, to me, both funny and potentially, or having the capacity rather to break things open. Right? It's not, for me, it's never just about the word faggot in the fact, it's about what do these conversations break open and allow ourselves to accept as new ways of thinking or working.

15:53

I want to step back to your mention of conjuring future, future conjuring. Can we talk about the content of some of the past iterations of this work? Oh, yes. What to say, what to say. I mean, we'll cut this after if you want me to say this, but the fact that you got married in one of the iterations, talk about future conjuring.

16:19

Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah, so I'm just trying to think. Yeah, absolutely. This kind of thing of how does this work meet my current moment, right? And, you know, the kind of coyness of so I got married as the finale for my art gallery of Ontario performance.

16:35

And there's this kind of funny thing of recognizing the context where, you know, the art gallery of Ontario often rents its space out for weddings and is famously one of the most expensive venues in the city.

16:45

So how funny would it be if I made them pay for my wedding and did as part of it again. Also, you know, this work is about desire and love and romance and the feelings that come with it. Right. And this kind of funny thing of aligning where I was in my life, i.e.

17:03

I guess about to get married, which is something I also never thought I'd do, but making it part of this conversation felt interesting, you know, and the version. Again, I don't know if we'll keep any of this, but I'll defer to you.

17:16

You know, one of the iteration that you saw on Montreal was there was an extended section where I went in search of a stripper that was really obsessed with. Right. And I spent, you know, dozens and dozens of hours getting in touch with him and trying to find him and, you know, and, you know, and you did.

17:35

Well, I did find him, but he never actually showed up. Okay. I hired him. Another variation. But there's something in this, this thing of like, actually, again, the question is what if I invite this stripper I'm obsessed with into the performance.

17:52

Right. And what happens if I get to meet him? Right. And all these things of Yeah, seeing these kind of questions through to their end. And it's a way for me to kind of find new communities or find new friends or find new collaborators, which otherwise I wouldn't have ever worked with, right?

18:12

I mean, as an example, the New York version, I had the initial... I had this funny dream of like, oh, what if Philip Glass performed in the show? Right? Because I was performing at NYU Skirball, and the year earlier they presented The Tower of Glass by Philip Glass.

18:28

So I was like, oh, what if Philip Glass performed? And then, of course, he wasn't available or, you know, was quite sick and not performing anymore. So then I went down the list of like, oh, who are these other big name composers that I could work with?

18:40

And then eventually landing on or getting to meet Adam Tenler, who performed at last year's push and meeting him through this kind of funny path. And, you know, I, you know, adored him and was so happy to have met him through this performance.

18:52

But otherwise would never have met him, right? So this thing of like, I'm so... Can I use this work as a strategy to kind of reach the kind of tentacles out, right? And find new collaborators and find new friends and all these things of...

19:09

I don't know what will happen when I start a process. But at the end, it's like, oh, there's something really generative about being able to kind of reach out or reach in or whatever and see what happens.

19:19

You've been speaking about how this work involves with every performance, every variation, and the project you're collaborating on for the 2025 Venice Biennale of Architecture. What's the name of this project you're doing?

19:33

We're called the Living Room Collective, but we're currently finalizing the title. Okay, okay. That, you know, these are just examples that reflect explorations of different forms for you from developing sense to design and architecture.

19:50

What context are you currently playing with or contexts? Yeah. You know, I think... I think what I've noticed about myself is the real desire to bounce around in context to context. And I think what I mean by that is like my mother worked at IBM for like 40 years or something.

20:10

And I think that has had such kind of profound impact on my life where I was like, Oh my God, I can't imagine working for the same company for that long. So I think throughout my kind of practice slash vocal career, you know, I find myself bouncing around and dipping my toes into new contexts.

20:28

You know, I started off in theatre, then performance art happened or whatever, and then dance and all these kinds of things. And I'm really interested in the ways in which each context has various ways of moving through the world.

20:47

Right. The language of dance is different than language theatre. The language of theatre is different than language performance art. But then what happens when you kind of expand that outward? and reach out into new communities.

20:59

So for the Venice Biennale of architecture, I worked with an architect for Rhubarb when I was a festival director there two years ago. And now we're doing the Canada Pavilion with other collaborators.

21:09

And for me, it's this kind of very strange toe-dipping experience into the world of architecture where half the meetings I'm in, I'm just googling things on the side because I don't understand what's happening.

21:22

But there's also something really luxurious in being able to do that, to kind of bring my own lens and bring my own perspective into these conversations and simultaneously let those conversations influence the ways in which I do things, right?

21:38

And I'm, you know, with this project that has me meeting with a lot of different contexts. So, you know, folks from the classical music world, DJs, bodybuilders, wrestlers, all these kinds of folks. And there's something quite intentional about the strategy that I've employed, where I'm interested in what it means to spend time with folks that aren't directly in what I would identify as my community,

22:04

right? And what happens when you spend time with bodybuilders? What happens when you spend time with wrestlers? And I think we are so obsessed with, you know, we kind of exist in such an echo chamber, right?

22:19

We're in our own community and we're so happy to kind of stick within it. But I think there's something valuable in spending time with folks that are not like us at all. And to do so, you know, of course, with the lens of criticality, but to do so with as little judgment as possible, or not even judgment, because I judge, you know, whatever, but like with a kind of openness that is so frowned upon,

22:47

right? Because we're in a moment that loves to, yeah, immediately kind of reduce or deny or reject because of who they present. as but actually what if we say no to that and spend time with folks that we either may think are quote unquote problematic and yes they may be problematic but actually there are like always is more to them than we kind of uh first assume uh so like right now i'm obsessed with my home gym in birmingham um and like and slowly befriending everyone there and you know it's just kind of very strange experience where you know the gym owner it's Ultimate Fitness Birmingham if anyone wants to google this but you know we're the gym owner eventually you know photograph one of the events that fierce where i work right and this this very strange mixing is so um so compelling to me of what happens when we attempt to step outside of these kind of boxes that we create for ourselves and find new ways of moving and living thank you so much Clayton I am,

23:49

this is the beginning of my day. I am feeling inspired. I am feeling thought-provoked. I'm feeling so excited to have you at the festival. I'm feeling so excited for audiences that don't, and myself, who don't know what we're gonna experience when we walk into the venue.

24:08

Yeah, I'm so thrilled that you're gonna be present for the festival and sharing your work. Just to say to the audience, if audiences are listening to this before, I really invite them to kind of talk to me after, if the kind of work has provoked or ignited or whatever.

24:26

Because I think the conversation that kind of accompanies the work is such a critical part of it. And I generally, I mean, I hate doing panels or whatever, whatever, but it's like, actually, how do we continue this work beyond?

24:42

And how does the prickliness of the thing kind of resonate with folks? Yeah, so folks can reach out to me, message me on Instagram, whatever, whatever, I'm happy to. Yeah, have the conversation in those ways, because I think it's part of the process, so.

24:59

Great, and there'll be a chat with you after the show as well. Oh, is there? Yeah, I think so. Oh, cool. Do we know who's doing it yet? I had some ideas. We'll chat about it. Okay, okay. So, okay, for the audience, there may or may not be about a show.

25:13

No, no, I love a post-show Q&A. Okay, there'll be a post-show Q&A. Okay, okay. All right, thanks, Clayton. That was the Goldberg Variations Clayton Lee in conversation with Gabrielle Martin. The Goldberg Variations will show at the Waterfront Theatre on January 30th for one night only during the 2025 Push International Performing Arts Festival.

25:39

Push Play is produced by myself, Trisha Knowles, and the lovely Ben Charlam. Original music by Joseph Kiribayashi. New episodes of Push Play are released every Tuesday and Friday wherever you get your podcasts.

25:53

This year marks the 20th festival for Push International Performing Arts Festival. If you'd like to explore more of Push over the last 20 years, please look for our special 20th anniversary retrospective Push Play season.

26:05

And for more information on the 2025 Push Festival and to discover the full lineup of more than 20 works of theater, dance, music, and multimedia performances, visit pushfestival.ca and follow us on social media.

26:20

Coming up on the next Push Play. So as human, as we belong to some history, we belong to some narratives, and we wanted to bring those narratives on stage with us. So it's not just Joseph coming to, you know, to play some things that have been experiencing.

26:38

No, I also want to come with all my context with all the politics around me.