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 ondon-based artists Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell began their collaboration in 1978, after meeting while studying fine art at Middlesex Polytechnic. Together they have created artworks that explore the influence of architecture and other complex systems in people's lives, noting patterns in the usage of structures and coded language. Langlands and Bell work with a range of different media, including architectural diagrams, sculpture, film, digital projects, and full-scale architectural works. Langlands and Bell's work has been exhibited throughout the world including at Charles Saatchi's Sensation exhibition and at the Venice Bienniale in 1997. They have taken on a range of extremely diverse large-scale international projects in the past decade. In 2002, Langlands and Bell were commissioned to travel to Afghanistan by the Department of Art at the Imperial War Museum in London to create work related to the War in Afghanistan. Their two-week stay resulted in a trilogy of pieces, including the interactive digital work The House of Osama bin Laden, which earned them a Turner Prize nomination in 2004. The piece consists of a virtual interactive tour around the deserted house that had been occupied by bin Laden in the 1990s. In 2004, they won the Interactive Arts Installation BAFTA award. The same year, they constructed a monumental steel and glass pedestrian bridge at Paddington Basin, London that is capable of supporting 20,000 people a day. In 2008, Langlands and Bell created Moving World (Night & Day) a double neon and glass wall installation featuring the textual codes of international cities for Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5, a setting that corresponds with their explorations of pattern and repetition in an age marked by frequent international travel and communication.
Langlands and Bell's works are a part of many international permanent collections including the Arts Council, British Council, MoMA New York, the Yale Center for British Art, the Saatchi Collection and the Tate Gallery. Langlands and Bell are currently working on another commission: the first permanent memorial outside of Africa to commemorate victims of the Rwandan Genocide, which will be installed in London.
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Langlands and Bell
Moving World (Night & Day)
2007
Glass, steel, digitally controlled neon
2 items, each 6 x 18 x 2.4 meters
BAA, London, Heathrow T5
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Art Interview: You were both born in London, Ben in 1955, Nikki in 1959. Can you tell me about your backgrounds as children, and what it was like growing up?
Ben Langlands: I grew up in London in the late 1950s and early 1960's, I lived in Earl's Court, central London, where there were still bomb sites from the war. Now it's a very international and affluent area. In those days, it was a local community. I remember spending a lot of time exploring ruined, abandoned buildings as a small child and playing in these strange, mysterious places. It's odd to think of London like that now, but it was like that back then...
Nikki Bell: ...and I was brought up in Paddington. I went to a convent school from which I was expelled.
Art Interview: Did your families encourage both of you to become artists?
Nikki Bell: Not particularly. I think we were just always very independent and creatively minded.
Art Interview: You both went to Middlesex Polytechnic. Why did you choose that particular college?
Ben Langlands: In those days in London, fine art courses were highly structured; if you applied to one, you had to declare your medium. If you said that you were a painter, then you would stay in the department of painting until your degree was finished. The course at Middlesex Polytechnic was unusual because it was an unstructured one. It allowed for flexibility which was appealing to both of us. You could do anything that you wanted to do there. You could mix different media. There were people who were painting, making films, and sculpting. Some were even just writing or making music.
Nikki Bell: We liked the more experimental approach. You could move between whatever ideas you wanted to work on at a particular time and change mediums. You could make a film one day and an installation the next.
Art Interview: Do you think that your education had an influence on the diversity of media you work with today?
Langlands and Bell: Definitely, it did.
Art Interview: Why did you decide to collaborate with each other?
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Langlands and Bell
The Kitchen
1978
Multimedia installation
2.4 x 2.4 x 2.4 meters
Courtesy of Langlands and Bell |
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Ben Langlands: It wasn't a conscious decision. We just started working together on an installation called The Kitchen. It was a work with two distinct halves - an old kitchen side-by-side with a new kitchen. Initially Nikki was going to make the old kitchen and I was going to make the new kitchen. But we just ended up helping each other with both. Afterwards it seemed logical to continue working together. There were more things that we wanted to do, so we just moved on to the next thing that interested us.
Nikki Bell: In a way, The Kitchen almost became a metaphor because it was in two halves.
Art Interview: Why did you choose something as utilitarian as a kitchen?
Ben Langlands: Mostly for that reason, because it is an everyday environment that we are all familiar with. A kitchen is fundamental for all of us.
Nikki Bell: The kitchen is a central place where things begin, where you start your day, where you have a meal, where you make a coffee or have a tea.
Ben Langlands: Where things are transformed.
Art Interview: Was the college accepting of your partnership?
Ben Langlands: They were sort of divided. Most of them didn't want to accept it, but in the end, they were obliged to. At first they spent all their time trying to stop us from working together, but finally they just gave up.
Nikki Bell: There hadn't been a precedent set for collaboration at our college, so they resisted it in the beginning. It has become much more accepted now.
Ben Langlands: They were concerned with how they should judge it and weren't very prepared for it.
Nikki Bell: They were still thinking in terms of artists only as single individuals working in isolation.
Ben Langlands: They were still concerned about who made what, but in the end, what counts is the work and that was always the way we saw it. It took them a while to accept that.
Art Interview: Were there professors there who supported your work?
Ben Langlands: Yes, there were a couple who supported our work, but the majority didn't. Some of the visiting professors who were not part of the regular staff were very encouraging to us.
Art Interview: Many journalists have compared you to Gilbert & George. Were they role models for your partnership?
Ben Langlands: We were only barely aware of them when we started working together. Our collaboration was a very natural process. It wasn't an ideological or didactic decision that we were making.
Nikki Bell: We just found that we could work together.
Ben Langlands: We obviously became more aware of Gilbert & George, and in time we actually got to know them. But we never saw them as a model for our own collaboration.
Art Interview: Did you initially have role models?
Ben Langlands: Not really, no. I don't think so.
Art Interview: Were you able to move directly into the art market after graduating, or did you have to work in order to survive financially?
Ben Langlands: We had to work at other things to support ourselves financially.
Nikki Bell: However, one of the first things we did was travel to South America. We needed to go somewhere completely different to get away from the whole system.
Ben Langlands: In those days, the London art market was extremely basic. I'd be surprised if there were more than half a dozen contemporary artists who were making a living from their work. I think when we went to South America in 1980, you could have said Gilbert & George and one or two others were the only artists able to support themselves solely from their artistic practices. There were only three or four serious contemporary art galleries such as Lisson Gallery and Antony d'Offay Gallery. There was barely anything. The London contemporary art market in those days was extremely rudimentary. We didn't really expect to have a professional career immediately; in those days we didn't think about our career in those terms.
Art Interview: How did your trip to South America change your perspective?
Nikki Bell: We were catapulted into the unknown, into another territory, into another world, into another experience.
Ben Langlands: We wanted to have a complete change of scene and explore things in a different way. We'd been in colleges for four years, and we didn't apply for postgraduate degrees. We'd had enough of the college environment. We just wanted to get out in the world and get on with things, really.
Art Interview: Do you feel that the jobs you had to take to pay your bills had an influence on your art?
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Langlands and Bell
Negotiating Table
1991
Wood, glass, lacquer
78 x 560 x 250 cm
Courtesy of Langlands and Bell |
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Nikki Bell: Yes.
Ben Langlands: Yes, in order to continue doing our art, we had to be quite careful about how we earned money. We actually started restoring houses for people because it allowed us to carry on working together. Working for ourselves allowed us to create our own timetable much more than if we would have had to each do a 9-5 job in a factory or an office or something. The skills that we used to restore houses for people were the same skills that we had been using and developing at college; in fact, we'd used them even before going to college to earn money. Restoring houses involved everything from brick work and painting to making and installing furniture. As we carried on, our skills developed and we could do more things. Some of the skills were related to skills that we used in our sculpture.
Art Interview: I understand that you bought a house in 1982 in Whitechapel.
Ben Langlands: It was semi-derelict, so it had to be restored. It was a very basic house built in the 1790s and was in a very poor state of repair. We spent a year and a half restoring it.
Art Interview: Were you using that space as a studio?
Ben Langlands: We were, yes.
Art Interview: Your first representation was by Maureen Paley at Interim Art. What works did you have in your first solo show there?
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Langlands and Bell
Traces of Living
1986
Wood, glass, lacquer, found objects
600 x 92 x 60 cm
Courtesy of Langlands and Bell |
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Nikki Bell: It was an interesting context, because Maureen's gallery was in a house, and the work that we made was a sculpture called Traces of Living that had three tables and two chairs. The tables contained objects from the East End and the environment where we were living and working.
Ben Langlands: The tables and chairs functioned as vitrines.
Art Interview: I find it curious that there seems to be a comment on duality present within both The Kitchen, and Traces of Living, which has continued into many of your later works.
Nikki Bell: There's two of us, so it's bound to reflect that.
Ben Langlands: There is often a tendency toward the bipolar in our work. It may have to do with balancing; when two people work together, they obviously have to be aware of the other person. And if they want to carry on working together, then obviously they have to balance a range of impulses and interests. One can also use it as a device to juxtapose opposites.
Nikki Bell: Positives or negatives...
Ben Langlands: Or different elements. And it's a useful artistic device anyway for your creativity, bringing different elements into play with each other to shed light on new ideas.
Art Interview: Do you feel that the work you are producing is an extension of your relationship?
Ben Langlands: It's all one thing.
Art Interview: Getting back to Maureen Paley, how did you meet her?
Ben Langlands: Her gallery was in the East End close to where we lived, and we would just run into each other at art events. She said, “Why don't you come over and show me what you're doing?” Then she came to visit us. The East End art scene in those days was really only Maureen Paley and Robin Klassnik of Matt’s Gallery.
Art Interview: At that point, could you imagine that you would become as successful as you are today?
Ben Langlands: I don't think we thought about it in that way, but we were always quite focused on what we were doing. We had the intention to do what we were doing well and to take it as far as we could. We didn't really think about it in terms of success, more in terms of opportunities perhaps -creating, finding and developing better opportunities for ourselves to do more interesting and new things. That, to us, is success in a way. If that is what you mean by success, then yes. We were always focused on living and working in a way that would allow our art to develop.
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Langlands and Bell
Maisons de Force
1991
Wood, glass, lacquer
92 x 100 x 800 cm
Daskalopoulos Collection
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Art Interview: How did you begin showing internationally?
Ben Langlands: When we were students we had one or two small shows outside England. We met some people in Marseille and they asked us to do a show in a tiny little studio. But in the late 1980s the most significant international connections that we made came through Maureen Paley. Karsten Schubert had opened his gallery. Maureen and Karsten had quite a lot of connections in Cologne and had started to do the art fair there. We also did a group show with Tanja Grunert. Tanja could sense the Young British Artists thing coming over the horizon, although it wasn't called that in those days. So, she did a group show that included us and people like Michael Landy, Michael Craig Martin, and Bill Woodrow. From that show, other things happened in Cologne.
Nikki Bell: It was quite an eclectic group.
Art Interview: In 1992, you exhibited in the YBA show.
Ben Langlands: Yes, we were in the first of the Young British Artist shows that Charles Saatchi did. That was probably the first time the tendency was actually called YBA, because the show was called Young British Artists. We certainly weren't called that before that point.
Art Interview: Did you have a personal connection to the artists from Goldsmiths?
Ben Langlands: We got to know them because we were in shows together. We've shown with Damien Hirst, Michael Landy, Angela Bulloch, and others. We know them all, but we're a little bit older than they are. And obviously, we attended a different college.
Art Interview: The same year, you also had your first solo museum show at Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow. One journalist wrote that 1992 was the turning point of your career. Do you agree?
Ben Langlands: It's hard to say, I suppose inevitably, in those days, having your work bought by Charles Saatchi and then exhibited in his gallery on Boundary Road was a great platform. There's no doubt about that.
Nikki Bell: Also, the space was a very beautiful space to show in. It was a great privilege to show in such a fantastic space for the first time.
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Langlands and Bell
Frozen Sky
1997
Wall-mounted, framed and glazed sculptural panel frame
135 x 135 x 16 cm |
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Ben Langlands: I think any career has multiple turning points. Our first show with Maureen Paley in 1986 was a turning point, and the second show we did with Maureen Paley in 1990 was another turning point because that was when Charles Saatchi first bought some of our work. However Doris Saatchi was already buying our work before him. Going to Afghanistan was also a turning point for us.
Art Interview: How did being in the Venice Biennale in 1997 affect your career?
Nikki Bell: It is difficult for us to quantify. The Venice Biennale was a very exciting context in which to show to a different international audience.
Art Interview: How have your expectations changed over the years?
Nikki Bell: (Laughs) That's a big question. We're always challenged, and we like to be challenged by exciting, unusual contexts and situations for our work. We hope opportunities grow and become more varied.
Ben Langlands: Now that we have a bit more security on a day-to-day basis, in terms of having a professional profile as artists, one of the most important things to us is to develop interesting opportunities and be challenged to make interesting work. That's what we find most rewarding, to make work that we value and to do it in interesting places that have interesting audiences.
Art Interview: Did you hesitate taking on the commission from the Imperial War Museum to travel to Afghanistan for two weeks in 2002?
Ben Langlands: We obviously thought about it quite carefully. But we also thought it was a special challenge and a unique opportunity.
Nikki Bell: We are conceptual artists, so it's exciting to go somewhere so different and not know what one is going to do there or what one is going to bring back. You have to take those risks in art.
Ben Langlands: We really didn't know what we would find or what we might be able to do. Actually, when we first arrived, our immediate reaction was that we didn't know if we could respond by making any art.
Art Interview: How did that trip change your perspective as individuals?
Ben Langlands: It widened our perspective considerably. We knew a little about the conflict before we went, but we inevitably of course learned more.
Art Interview: Do you see yourselves as political artists?
Ben Langlands: No.
Nikki Bell: All art is political, but we are not political artists.
Ben Langlands: We have no desire to be didactic...
Nikki Bell: …or to be labeled in any way.
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Langlands and Bell
NGO
2003
Dual screen digital animation/ computer projection
Dimensions: Variable
Imperial War Museum, London
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Art Interview: How did your work with the NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) develop?
Ben Langlands: We had already done quite a lot of work, using the three letter codes that identify international airports. When we were in Afghanistan, we noticed that the abbreviations that the NGOs used to identify themselves everywhere, were codes, and were very prominent.
Art Interview: It's curious to me that you moved from commenting on architectural structures to organizational structures.
Ben Langlands: As architecture is a means to organise space, so codes are a way of organizing information. They become a kind of architecture of information. We see it with the aviation codes as well. They are a global template for international communication and exchange.
Nikki Bell: A poetry of places.
Art Interview: Do you feel that your work comments on the limitations that these structures impose upon society?
Ben Langlands: Our work reveals the structure, so people can draw their own conclusions. We don't want to make judgments about these organizations in our work. Going to Afghanistan revealed the flip side of globalization to us. Britain, Europe and the US benefit a lot from globalization. Afghanistan is still part of a very globalized environment, but people there are experiencing its punitive side. You could easily argue that the war in Afghanistan is part of the “Great Game”; it's about Geo-strategy and international power politics. It's about the West and other powerful bodies maintaining access to resources. You certainly realize that it is the flip side of globalization, the other side of the story, and that it is all part of one bigger picture.
Nikki Bell: As the world changes and becomes more complicated we have an increasing need for codes to simplify and try and make sense of the world.
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Langlands and Bell
A Muse Um
2008
Limited edition ink jet print
83.9 x 143.8 cm
Courtesy of Alan Cristea Gallery
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Ben Langlands: These systems are multiplying all the time.
Nikki Bell: For instance, we noticed this just by looking at the codes identifying art fairs, or the Internet country codes in website addresses. We are fascinated by codes because they reduce, minimize and pinpoint.
Ben Langlands: We find these movements of energy, power, and money, distilled to their essence in a code.
Nikki Bell: As people become more familiar with these codes they begin to assimilate them.
Ben Langlands: In a sense, just like architecture, they are a public language.
Art Interview: Did you realize when you initially began working together that you would develop a concentration on structures and their influence on society?
Nikki Bell: Not at all. We have always worked very intuitively, very organically.
Ben Langlands: I don't know if any artist actually knows which direction their work will go in or where it will lead them. We don't have X-ray eyes looking into the future, and we can't tell where it is going to go.
Art Interview: Let's step back for a moment. Initially, you were making representational works, and then you began creating diagrams. What inspired this evolution?
Ben Langlands: We expanded outward to work at a different more macro level. When you are making a diagram, you are thinking about the bigger picture of the way things interact and relate to each other rather than being focused on the smallest details.
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Langlands and Bell
Air Routes of the World (Night)
2001
Limited edition screen print
83.9 x 143.8 cm
MOMA, New York
Courtesy of Alan Cristea Gallery
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Nikki Bell: With diagrams, you're thinking about how things connect to each other.
Ben Langlands: But essentially many of our concerns remained the same from The Kitchen to the aviation codes. I think they are about the environments we inhabit, how these environments reflect the way we relate to each other and the kind of potential we have.
Art Interview: How does the element of time integrate into what you do? Do you take time into consideration?
Ben Langlands: I suppose there are lots of different types of time...global time, the present and your own time. Working in different media allows us to interact with time in different ways.
Art Interview: Do you feel that the media that you work with should represent our present day?
Nikki Bell: I think one should use the medium that is most appropriate for the idea or the project that one is working on at the time. It might involve new technologies; it might involve materials never worked with previously.
Ben Langlands: Some people might say oil painting or easel painting is out of date. We don't do much of it ourselves, but there are people who do it very well.
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Langlands and Bell
The Artist's Studio
2002
Interactive digital animation/ data projection
Courtesy of Langlands and Bell in association with V/Space LAB
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Nikki Bell: And it still has relevancy for them. It about the idea you are trying to convey and in what way.
Art Interview: Why did you decide to work with interactive media for The House of bin Laden?
Ben Langlands: We had started working with interactive media a year or two before when we made an interactive reconstruction that visitors could access, of the Old Library Hallway at Petworth House where Turner had a studio. When we discovered the house where bin Laden lived, it just seemed a very appropriate medium to use. Not only because it allowed us to incorporate the photographs we had taken in a digital model, but also because a virtual medium seems appropriate to grapple with bin Laden as a subject, since he is bigger in the media than out of it. He is elusive, an almost virtual subject himself.
Nikki Bell: We still don't even know if he is alive or dead!
Ben Langlands: The medium is also what the military uses for targeting guided missiles in the War on Terror. It's a very closely related medium to its time, subject and context.
Art Interview: And the masses relate to it because of video games.
Nikki Bell: Exactly.
Art Interview: How did being nominated for the Turner Prize and winning the BAFTA Interactive Award affect your career?
This oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Langlands & Bell on 27 August, 2010. The interview took place over the telephone between Berlin, Germany and London, England. Brendan Davis conducted this interview for Art Interview Online Magazine. Frances Underhill and Cara Cotner wrote the introductory text at the beginning of this interview.
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