Sung Tieu
How are you?
Leopold Thun
I went to the dentist for a similar reason to you — I had a headache. Anyway, long story short, I went to the dentist, and I only see her every few years. She’s now a mother of five, Begonia. She’s from Spain and she’s very, very friendly. While I was there, I saw that all of the people were wearing little microphones. I asked about the microphones. She said they’re being made to wear them so they don’t have to type up the medical reports anymore. The old-school way would be an assistant or nurse typing while the dentist is looking in your mouth, just typing up what the dentist says. Now it’s all automated. Begonia, mum of five, really hates this development because she says she doesn’t look over the report anymore, so she actually turns her microphone off. I thought it was interesting how that all creeps into even the most quotidian things, like looking at teeth. So that was my Monday morning at the dentist.
ST
Well, I called my doctor in the morning as well, and you dial the number and only get to speak to a voice assistant. I couldn’t get through to make an appointment because they ask you the same questions and lead you down a pathway only to hang up on you… The only other option I had was to write them an email. I felt like it would be much faster on the phone just to describe what I needed, which was my blood results. Now I have to wait until mid-October for a 15-minute appointment just to check my blood results. It’s actually so inefficient.
LT
Yeah. Which, again, physically is interesting, because Angelina on Monday saw a woman fall off a Lime bike, and she assisted her in the rain. The waiting time for an ambulance was 90 minutes. In the heart of London. So it’s interesting what’s happening in terms of the physical availability of people coming to your help, people coming to see you. Anyway.
ST
Yeah. And did anything else happen?
LT
Yes. So I went back to the office, and it’s very interesting because we’re reinforcing the wall to hold your video sculpture, and the sound of the drill in the gallery wall is exactly the same sound as the drill at the dentist. It was sort of a continuous dentist visit throughout the day. It’s fascinating to see so much work going into something that’s totally invisible. And probably by the time you arrive in London, you won’t see anything that happened over the past ten days.
Last night, I went to a midnight screening of Jasper’s exhibition at Chisenhale, which was closing. For the last day, they did a midnight screening. What I found interesting was that midnight has such a particular connotation to it. There’s this cusp feeling. At midnight you’re either in a private space or you’re in a public entertainment space, but very rarely are you in a public space experiencing art.
ST
Yeah. I guess we define our day through the punch of the clock. Just to get a sense of time, we somehow make that mental separation in our minds to divide the day. For me, I’ve been having headaches since the weekend, coinciding with the election results in Sachsen-Anhalt. I’ve been refreshing the browser every few minutes waiting for something to change.
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