whitehot | Interview with Colin Beatty
Joe Heaps Nelson and Colin Beatty
Interview with Colin Beatty
I know Colin Beatty because we were introduced by a mutual friend, the artist Mitch Miller, at the Scope Art Fair in New York. I was intrigued by Colin’s description of a conceptual art piece called Firesale (during the conversation, we refer to it as “the gun piece”) that he was working on with frequent collaborator Craig Smith. When they work together, they are known as SmithBeatty.
I went over to Colin’s house in Somerville, Massachusetts for the interview. He has a little building in the back yard which he uses as a studio. It was the first full day of Spring, and it was raining and snowing. There was a black lab. We had beer.
Joe Heaps Nelson: Where’s this all coming from in the first place?
Colin Beatty: This is coming from systems analysis. This is grounded in the science of systems analysis, specifically ecological and freshwater systems.
When I was in undergrad at Miami University in Ohio, I paid my way working at the Cincinnati Zoo at night. I worked in different laboratory research settings doing systems analysis work, mostly freshwater ecosystems. We were hired by Westinghouse Corporation to come into Fernald Nuclear Waste Management site in Ross, Ohio. As a matter of fact, I just got a notice that says I need to go in, for free, I get to check to see if I have cancer. It’s so exciting. So fantastic, I really appreciate that, thanks Westinghouse. Westinghouse hired our lab to go into that site. It was the #1 Superfund site in the nation, where United Lead and Westinghouse had dumped all sorts of radioactive material. They asked us to see what the environmental impact was. So we went in, and it was crazy to see the high security, you would drive on and immediately security cars rip out, front and back.
Heaps: So this is, early nineties?
Beatty: '94, ’95 is when that research happened. You would see in the distance all the vehicles that were used to carry radioactive waste there, they were cement trucks, mail trucks, diaper trucks. It would scare even the most hardened scientist.
Heaps: Clandestine.
Beatty: Yeah, very subversive, very sketchy. So we found, lo and behold, there was significant impact to the environment caused by bad things being put in the environment, shock of shocks, and we presented our findings to Westinghouse. They asked that we present them in court. So, I went down to court with the head of our lab, Dr. Osborne. We went downtown, where he went to court, and I went and hung out at my father’s office. He’s a corporate attorney. I figure I’m down in Cincinnati, I’ll have lunch with my father and do the normal son/father thing. He wasn’t there, and then he came back and said, "hey, what are you doing here? I was just tearing the shit out of some science professor from your school!" Uh oh, what was his name? "Dr. Osborne." OK, that’s the head of my lab! And he says, "Oh. I can’t talk to you about this any more. I’m representing Westinghouse."
Heaps: So you missed the whole thing in court?
Beatty: Oh yeah. Missed the whole thing in court, missed my father eviscerating my research, in this kind of reverse-Oedipal exchange. Of course that set me on several missions, not the least of which was to understand how law had trumped science, the vernacular, the understanding, the filter, the lens that I use to understand the world. Everything that I had believed had been flipped on its head.
Heaps: Money talks.
Beatty: Money talks, and language of the day dominates. It used to be science, it had become law, which could manipulate truth and creedal states, states of believability and credibility to its whimsy. What I learned later on, at the Whitney Independent Study Program, was it was no longer law that dominated. It had transferred from science, to law, to business capitalism.
Heaps: What about PR?
Beatty: PR is manipulated by all of ‘em. It’s like a marketing tool; it’s a technical element that’s implemented by various strategies, at various times, through various mechanisms. So, anyone can produce an ad, but what’s the language at play, and how do they dominate or subvert other languages that are competing with it?
Heaps: If they need to convince the public of something, they can throw a lot of money at the problem, and since most people are basically non-critical, that can be very effective.
Beatty: Yes, so where does money come from? So, when I went to New York, to the Independent Study Program at the Whitney, this is right at the time of the dot-com bubble, the inflation of the stock market, the gold rush of monetary creation. ’97, ’98, ’99, they could create money out of thin air. Ipse dixit. I say it, therefore it is. I will it into being. We think of performative action. I christen this ship, the U.S.S. Colin, and it becomes U.S.S. Colin. Playing with that construction of truth value, out of thin air, it’s what the stock market was doing at the time.
So while I was at the Whitney, I started trading stocks, with money I had from a sculpture that had been vandalized. I got the insurance money and began an investment account with Fidelity. So I’m having lectures from these cultural theoreticians, about Marxist endeavors, and the hegemony of culture capitalist society, and here I am in the bathroom, trading Network Solutions and all these hot stocks of the day, whispering in the corner. I used the money I built up in the investment account to start a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation in the heart of Wall Street, at 16 Beaver, between Broad and Broadway, right by the bronze bull, right by the stock exchange, a corporeal entity, a body that is designed not to make money. A perfectly ironic thing to do.
Heaps: So, it’s a not-for-profit, designed to benefit artists?
Beatty: Artists, writers, critics, musicians, cultural workers, for lack of a better term. People whose work is valued differently, or undervalued, or simply not playing in the same landscape. Setting up so they have the same tools, economies of scale and scope, pool their resources, pool what was originally distributed autonomous power into a collective group so they would have those economies that businesses have.
Heaps: So, how did that work out?
Beatty: Poorly. Sub optimally. Different than good. But, part of the reason I set that up, if I can backtrack to an individual who spurred this, and I’ll call him a catalyst, not all catalysts are good but they’re all effective. I do a lot of collaborative work, this gun piece in particular is a collaboration with Craig Smith, who’s a professor at University of Florida in Gainesville, we do a lot of collaborative work. He was the same year, Matthew Bakkom was the same year, so, it was a banner year for folks playing with this series of concepts of performativity, parafictional work, parafactual work, that was, I think, the year for that kind of work. There was an individual, Trevor, whose last name I don’t remember. I don’t appreciate his work as much as perhaps some people do. His work at the Whitney Program was about McDonald’s, and his problems with the production of meat.
Heaps: Who could ever have a problem with that?
Beatty: Exactly, an easier target I couldn’t think of. None of us had love for how McDonald’s did business, nor how McDonald’s produced its food. No one could love that! That’s the child that no one could love. So, the idea that he had difficulty getting people to embrace it at the Whitney was pretty telling. The method he used was to put language on signs, big pieces of cardboard, and go in front of McDonald’s on Canal Street, which is the busiest McDonald’s in the United States, and the signs would have 20+ words, they would say “McDonald’s produces meat in underprivileged communities, it takes 200 acres per cow to produce…” Dissertations have been written with less tooth. So he’s put these outside, and he’d stand on a pickle drum out in front, and he’s have someone take beautiful, glossy, Cibachrome, large scale pictures of himself holding these signs, and put them up in the Whitney. So this was his mechanism for change. When I asked him, “What is your goal? What is your strategic objective?” All projects should have a strategic objective, a tactical mechanism to achieve that, and technical devices to attain the objective. His strategic objective was to stop McDonald’s from producing meat the way they do. So of course, myriad questions follow. Why would you attack the consumer? Why would you attack, basically, a poor population trying to find a cheap meal?
Heaps: So he’s trying to hurt McDonald’s by shaming people.
Beatty: Incredibly arrogant posture to take. Incredibly condescending. The idea that a family in New York, who can afford a meal out pretty much only at McDonald’s, and you’re gonna get shamed by a wealthy German, coming in and telling you that McDonald’s is evil. That is incredibly entitled, and incredibly expected, if I buy into your strategy. What an ineffective mechanism.
Heaps: Trevor’s stupid art project was an inspiration for you? My grandfather used to say, if all else fails, you can always serve as a horrible example.
Beatty: This is, I think, the modus operandi for the gun project, for all of my work, for a lot of Craig Smith’s work, and I think a lot of Matthew Bakkom’s work, this idea that instead of being reflexively pro- or anti- anything, wouldn’t it be a better approach to learn something? Wouldn’t it be a better approach to walk a mile in the shoes of whoever you are about to critique? Wouldn’t it be a better approach to simply say, I think this, and this is my hypothesis, but I’m not quite sure. I’m going to test the hypothesis.
Heaps: That way, you have a better chance of sneaking up underneath things. Like a groundhog.
Beatty: Subversion! Which is where I am now. The idea that my response to Trevor was a very simple question, for which he had no answer. That was, if your goal is to change McDonald’s, why wouldn’t you go to McDonald’s University? And buy a franchise? I’m sure you could find people in the arts community who would love to sponsor the purchase of a McDonald’s franchise, in order to fuck with it, and change what it sells. Wouldn’t it be great if all you sold was veggie burgers at your McDonald’s franchise on Canal Street? If you want to change something, what’s the power of changing from a subversive, interior position? And what do you learn? There’s a set of tools and devices that are empowering for you, in this now no longer distributed power matrix. In this system where now you have a voice, you own a share.
Heaps: So this dumb guy annoyed you to the point where you had an epiphany.
Beatty: And the epiphany was, if my intention is to critique, or dialogue about systems that are built on the creation of capital value, why wouldn’t I understand them better, and change them more effectively, from the inside out? The first thing I did was set up a not-for-profit on Wall Street. That’s the infant version. Trying to set up a hybrid that’s part for profit, part not-for-profit, a sustainable not-for-profit, which is just not done. It’s built on NEA grants, the donors’ rich benevolence, and gifts on an annual basis.
Heaps: It’s a tough country.
Beatty: It is. So, to set it up based on something that is more sustainable, based on economies of scale and scope, bringing artists together in such a way that they behave like a corporation.
Heaps: (Laughing) That’s a tough one! It’s like herding cats!
Beatty: It is! It’s impossible! It’s incredibly problematic. It’s got its issues! So, when I realized I didn’t know enough to be articulate about it, and that I was doing the idiot’s version of playing with that language, that’s when I went back to business school.
Heaps: You went to business school after grad school at Stanford?
Beatty: I went to the Kellogg School of Management, at Northwestern. So, the first step was I went into investment banking, straight out of business school. I figured, I’m going to McDonald’s University, euphemistically speaking. So, I decided I was going to try and push that in a direction that was going to be absurd. To reveal it as absurd by pushing it to its logical conclusion.
Heaps: So, your idea was that if you have credibility, it’s possible to create value, and manipulate stock?
Beatty: Absolutely. Created credibility by going to a good business school. Created credibility by scoring well, saying all the right things, knowing all the right vernacular, doing all the right things, putting on the right suit, the pastiche of correctness, and stepping into that environment in a true theatrical manner. Becoming a banker.
Heaps: How did you decide that you wanted to fuck with these people?
Beatty: I’m a square peg. I think I’m a nerd that simply tries to problematize systems, and this was a grand system to problematize.
Heaps: Because it’s bullshit.
Beatty: Yes. It’s paper thin. So, not wanting to stand on the outside with a piece of cardboard with 30 words on it, I said I’m gonna go whole hog. I’m going to go in and understand it, and not disingenuously, not saying that all bankers are douchebags.
Heaps: So you gave it the ol’ scientific approach, and tested everything out.
Beatty: Unbiased. I think they manipulate and construct value out of thin air, and I think that is highly volatile, and it’s a system that is manipulable in a way that doesn’t benefit the most participants in the system. It has shit in the water that’s precipitating out in a negative way. That’s the hypothesis I go in with. It’s the same thing with the gun project. I’m not pro-gun or anti-gun. I’m simply stating a set of hypotheses and problems about distributed power. I’m testing it with this set of variables.
I realized when I was able to push to the extreme… the big light came on when, for a Russian oil mogul, and I use the word oil loosely, a person involved in bad things that needed to hide $50 million in cash. I decided to take the $50 million and purchase yachts that didn’t exist yet. I ordered these yachts and pre-paid, to push his capital assets off his balance sheet, onto an asset that doesn’t exist yet.
Heaps: This is money laundering.
Beatty: This is money laundering at a very large, abstract scale. It’s a miniature Enron. When I realized no red flags were raised, no alarms were called, that I simply made $50 million disappear for approximately 2 ½ years, the bill cycle of a large-scale yacht, then I realized there was no pushing it to a tipping point. There was nothing I could do from a subversive standpoint that was gonna do a damn thing, so that’s when I decided to pull the ripcord on the parachute and get the fuck outta Dodge. I realized that was probably a less effective endeavor, from a sarcastic position, to try to push it in the direction it was going.
Heaps: So, you took your whole business school and investment bank experience, and made it into an art project.
Beatty: Yes.
Heaps: So tell me about the gun project.
Beatty: I am working with Craig Smith on this. The gun piece started when my father decided he was going to give me a handgun. A handgun that I neither asked for, nor particularly needed. But a handgun that he was going to give me nonetheless.
So, this idea of a gift. A loaded gift, as it were. It was given unasked. And what that meant from a perspective of power, of violence, of potential engagement. Immediately problematizing this idea of a gift, and distribution of power.
Heaps: So, now you have a gun. What kind is it?
Beatty: An HK .40 caliber handgun. It’s a German handgun, and a very nice handgun. It’s a brand that is a kickass, heavy caliber German handgun. It can do some damage. It has, as they say in the business, very effective stopping power.
Heaps: You could shoot an elephant with it.
Beatty: You could split an engine block with this handgun.
Immediately we began talking about what the implications were for this kind of distribution, this kind of empowerment, and the same time disempowerment, this burden on the owner.
Heaps: This was a Christmas gift?
Beatty: Yes.
Heaps: Well, I don’t know the laws in Ohio, but that would be against the law in the place where you live.
Beatty: Yes. Which gets into regulatory affairs. Which gets into agency, and individual lack of agency for a participant, for a government entity, a corporate entity, this stems back to the idea of the 501(c)(3), this idea that in America, corporations were established specifically in support of our economy, specifically in support of what is the dominant dialogue at play right now, the capital economy around wealth creation, this idea that a corporation is a corporeal entity.
Heaps: A corporation has rights, like an individual.
Beatty: We have seen that at play with the Supreme Court in the last year when those rights were extended, they are, in effect, the rights of a living body that lives past the lives of its assumed founders.
Heaps: There are always lawyers involved.
Beatty: Always lawyers involved. But the idea that this is the structure at play, that I think is very important because the way we have set it up is, a company is being established, Seacrest Industries, which will hold a certain number of fixed shares.
Heaps: So you and Craig have established a corporation, Seacrest Industries, and its only asset is this gun. What are you going to do with this gun?
Beatty: I’m going to disassemble it, into its 61 base parts, its most rudimentary components, and I’m going to distribute that power in the same way it was distributed to me. I am going to mail it to 61 art world and corporate world luminaries, who don’t necessarily need it, nor did they ask for it. So they will receive a gun part in the mail. It is, in fact, a stock, and these people are the only shareholders in Seacrest Industries. They will be part of this distributed power, this group of voters.
Heaps: Are you sending instructions to them?
Beatty: We are. We are sending them first the gun part, and following that, we are sending a call. This is effectively a put option, we are putting this option in their hands, the same way we would put a stock option in a CEO’s hands, and we are calling that option, and requesting that they send that asset to Basel, Switzerland, to an art fair where we have a booth set up where we will have all the pieces that are sent back, and to the extent we can perform this action, we are going to reassemble the gun into a functioning handgun.
So, we take a German handgun. We are going to disassemble it on behalf of an American corporation, and we are going to ship it into Switzerland.
Heaps: So you and Craig will show up in Basel, and everything is getting mailed to you, theoretically.
Beatty: This is where we have an interesting wrinkle, in terms of regulatory agencies, corporate entity versus regulatory body entity. The idea that a handgun in parts is just as violent and dangerous, that an art audience is just as dangerous as its total sum, is part of the issue. An individual participant can act as a disruptive agent, can simply opt out, and say, I got the trigger, I’m not going to send that trigger back in, therefore the gun will not operate, or they can work for the greater net effect, not net benefit. This is distinctly not about pro- or anti-; this is about net kinetic effect. So, taking a potential energy, in the form of a trigger, or a barrel, or a grip, and saying that potential energy has kinetic effect at the end.
Heaps: You need all 61 pieces for the gun to be operable.
Beatty: Absolutely. Every screw, every magazine, every piece absolutely has to be shared in total, or the company is not whole.
Heaps: How did you select the shareholders?
Beatty: Ah. For example, we have a CEO of one of the largest weapons manufacturers in the United States. We have the CEO of one of the largest Department of Defense contractors. We have folks who are very much imbedded in the arts community. We have people that are both theoretically pro-gun, and probably very gun control, although I haven’t dialogued with them directly.
Heaps: Did you send one to Rumsfeld?
Beatty: (Laughter) Close! We avoided politicians, because we saw that as almost gratuitous, almost reflexive, and instead said, ok, if I send it to the CEO, the manufacturer of what is probably the most known handgun in the United States…
Heaps: Smith & Wesson?
Beatty: I can’t actually say, but, yes! I’ll say that it’s either Smith & Wesson, or Colt. You’ll know when their name appears on the website, and then they have to decide whether their name appears, and that’s one of the interesting things about the way we’re setting it up online, as shareholders, when they receive this, much like Facebook, they have to accept that “friending” to be visible. Now they have taken that asset, so they control the asset, but when it comes to the dialogue that comes out of it, about whether or not to send the piece back in and create the whole, they decide. They will be identified in function. This individual that holds piece #34 is the CEO of one of the largest gun manufacturers in the United States. Piece #35 is the executive director of a contemporary art museum, etc.
Seacrest Industries Logo
Heaps: I would wager that your chances of getting all the parts back are slim.
Beatty: They are slim. But, when we send them back into Switzerland, the question that we have, and the hypothesis that we have, is that they will probably assume that the gun will be reassembled and will be therefore controllable, therefore something they want to stop and regulate. They will assume that even though these are individual pieces, that when they see a trigger come across, or a barrel, or a grip, they will assume that it will become a whole, even though it hasn’t yet, and even though that’s certainly not guaranteed, and probably not likely. They will probably stop it at the border.
Heaps: Now of course you have taken into account Switzerland’s attitude toward handguns. A lot of people don’t know this, but all adult males in Switzerland are required to own a handgun. Their idea is that every male Swiss citizen is liable to be called up to defend Switzerland, in the event that somebody decides it’s worth it to scale the Alps and attack them.
Beatty: Yes! Yes! And that is not a far stretch from some of the states in our fine union.
Heaps: Well I suppose it is not mandatory, but culturally approved.
Beatty: That is not lost on us, especially with Craig in Florida, one of the more liberal gun states in the United States.
Heaps: Liberal!
Beatty: Shall I say, liberal in the sense that you can get a handgun if you have a pulse.
Heaps: This is especially prevalent in the Southern states.
Beatty: We have jumped through hoops in terms of training, and regulatory agencies. Craig and I have taken extensive coursework. Currently, I am licensed to carry a concealed weapon in 36 states, and Craig is licensed to carry a concealed weapon in 32 states.
Heaps: Including this one?
Beatty: Yes.
Heaps: What about New York?
Beatty: I am covered in New York as well.
Heaps: A lot of paperwork.
Beatty: Yes. I am licensed to own and operate a machine gun. I’ve got some licenses.
Heaps: I guess most of the states where you aren’t licensed, you could just drive through and probably not be stopped.
Beatty: I can’t actually say. (Chuckles)
But again, that idea of distributed power, disruptive response. The idea that any individual has a certain power at their disposal, and the idea that the art community doesn’t recognize that power.
Heaps: So your plan is to smuggle in a handgun, in 61 separate parts, but it depends upon 61 people going along with the idea, and they are people that you don’t even know. And, you are trying to smuggle it into a country where every adult male owns a handgun. Pretty cool piece!
Beatty: (Laughing) And it’s a neutral country!
If these individual stockholders send the gun parts to us, and we are able to recombine the gun, and because it’s off U.S. soil, the law is a little hazy on this, we would theoretically be the first U.S. corporation to own and operate a firearm. Now it seems like a subtle distinction, but there are a few things that a U.S. corporation cannot do. They cannot vote. They cannot own or operate a handgun. That’s pretty much it, after the latest Supreme Court ruling. They can leverage money to effect a political outcome. They can exist as a body politic, in perpetuity. They can pretty much do whatever they want, as a person. They can manufacture a gun, and distribute a gun, but they can’t own and operate a gun. Until now. Which I think is an interesting dilemma to present to people who are trying to problematize those structures of agency, and those structures of power.
Heaps: So you guys will be doing this at Basel, in June.
Beatty: It’s part of the Scope Art Fair. Scope has been very flexible and open to some of these ideas that are a little bit abstract.
Heaps: It helps that you are pals with the people that run it.
Beatty: Correct.
Heaps: And this isn’t affiliated with any gallery or anything, it’s an independent project.
Beatty: We have no corporate sponsorship, other than Seacrest Industries. They are staunch supporters of our efforts.
Heaps: I’ll drink to that.
Beatty: Cheers! (Glasses clink)
Heaps: So, what happens if somebody doesn’t send back a piece of the gun?
Beatty: Lather, rinse, repeat. The idea is to go on to the next. Seacrest Industries will become a gun club. We will start with a .40 caliber handgun, and move up the food chain, next, to a Desert Eagle handgun, which is basically a hand cannon, then we will move to a shotgun, a Beretta-style shotgun.
Heaps: I understand that there are a lot of Kalishnikovs lying around, especially where you find dead bodies.
Beatty: Very, very much so. For that range of caliber we’re probably gonna go with an M4 carbine, the U.S. military version of that. That’s our pick. So we’re going with an Italian shotgun, an American automatic rifle, or machine gun, and the final piece for Seacrest will be a Claymore anti-personnel mine. (Laughter) Which does require special licensing, and security clearance, which we’ve already garnered.
Heaps: Lots of guys seem to be able to export those, internationally, all the time! Especially to poor countries.
Beatty: Exactly. There’s something elegant about a weapon that says, on its surface, Front toward enemy.
Heaps: Instructions have to take into account the fact that the people who are reading them may be retarded.
Beatty: I love a good instruction manual, as much as the next guy, and the Claymore mine manual is elegant and gripping at the same time.
Heaps: Too bad about the children who find them when they are playing.
Beatty: Collateral. I mean it really is. As long as the stock goes up!
