Henry Collins is a multidisciplinary artist best known for his decade spanning work as Shitmat. Shitmat, for those of you with short term memory problems, was the moniker that Collins adopted for a performance that took listeners on, “a roller coaster ride of splintered jungle, rave, old school, gabber and attention deficit disorder plunderphonic mashups.” As Shitmat, Collins released a series of LPs and EPs on Planet Mu and Wrong Music, and his 2009 album One Foot in the Rave is a breakcore classic.
Collins retired Shitmat a while back and since then he’s devoted himself to other creative projects. The most recent of these culminated in 140 Blindfolded Drawings of EastEnders Characters, which does exactly what it says on the cover. If you’ve ever wanted to own 140 blindfolded drawings of EastEnders characters, and who, truly, can say they’ve not dreamed of such a thing, you’re in luck.
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We caught up with Collins over email to discuss everything from conceptual art to Barry being pushed off a cliff by Janine.
THUMP: Firstly, Henry, can you tell our readers a little about yourself. Set the scene. Who are you? What do you dream about? When you wake in the mornings what’s the first thing you see?
Henry Collins: I’m a inconsistent, motivated, manic, obsessive, often stupid, sometimes disciplined and a hugely concept driven artist. I jump between projects as and when I please. The main thing I do right now is rummaging. Rummaging is a performance practice myself and Robin Foster have developed over the last few years. It involves junk and found objects. Here’s our spiel:
The ultimate goal of rummaging is the attainment of purity through chaos. The complexity of the sound created through rummaging is intended to focus the mind whilst freeing it from the conscious decisions involved in the creation of improvised music. The restraint imposed by the container of objects is precisely what creates the freedom from the constraints of human choice.
It could also be described as sweaty people freaking out in a pile of junk. Either way It’s something Robin and I wholeheartedly believe in and will be exploring and touring for the foreseeable future.
Also, after three and half years retired, I have resurrected Shitmat. I decided I still like DJing, making mashups and being that dickhead, so it just made sense. You can blame the Chinstroke crew for this happening. They reminded me of what I loved about doing it. Playing bangers and not taking the whole music thing too seriously.
Last month I made the decision to abandon having a permanent home, so I’m now a drifter. The first thing I see in the morning could be a snoring musician, a tree, the wall of a warehouse, an angry French man, a TV in a five star hotel, a pile of junk or even a pile of vomit. It just depends on where I’ve laid my hat that night. I dream of giving up on being in a regular society and creating a self sufficient artist commune in the countryside with lots of interesting folk, chickens, cats, dogs and a goat. Growing produce, foraging, making art and sounds, snoozing in a hammock, having spontaneous happenings and sharing food, drink and happiness.
How would you describe your musical career to date? Who’d you want to be filed next to in an easy to parse list of artists?
I really don’t know. All over the fucking place. I envy artists like Rie Nakajima and Max Eastley whose themes and crafts are so disciplined; choose something and explore it to hell. I just can’t do that, I’m too fidgety.
For me, release wise, At one end of the spectrum you have an album of mine like Music of Sound, which I feel has a real purpose to exist as it’s an unearthing of a hidden musical work within a movie and at the other other end you have gabber remixes of Oasis and that kinda stuff which have no real need to exist other than make people smile and dance. The contradictions in what I do, and like, I used to see as an issue but I’ve learned to accept who I am. So yeah, I like EastEnders and John Cage equally, same goes for Vengaboys and Sun-ra.
It’s fair to say that you’re a relatively conceptual artist. Why is the general public fearful of conceptual art?
Are they? I have no idea why people would fear conceptual art. It’s such a loose term. Maybe It’s the stigma of the terminology they’re fearful of. A concept is anything. Art is anything. CHINSCAPE was art, it had a concept, it’s not scary, it’s hilarious. The fear for me would be that the concept is better than the end product or the completion of the concept would take up ten years of my life or kill me, that’s why I never followed through with reordering parts from every episode of EastEnders into a David Lynch movie with Ian Beale walking around confused for two and a half hours.
After finishing massive projects like remixing every number one single, I always say I’m done with conceptual projects, it can be so exhausting and strict. So there’s that period after where I revolt and revert to a more dada/fluxus/abstract/whatever approach. My work then is loose and care free, I’d say people are more fearful of that, as it has no connection or meaning. People should stop being scared!
Let’s talk EastEnders: least favourite character ever? Favourite death? Where in Walford would you head if you found a fiver on the floor by the Arches?
My least favourite character is Zanab. Barry’s death is easily my favourite, that storyline is up there with great Shakespearean tragedies. If I found a fiver on the floor by the Arches I’d probably ask Janine out for a drink (my lady of choice in Walford). Visiting the set of Albert Square is top on my bucket list, so someone reading this: PLEASE MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Stacy Slater, Arthur Fowler and Shirley Carter.
What made you want to compile a series of blindfolded drawings of characters from the show?
Trends and obsessions come and go but even if I was living In this mythical arts commune I mentioned earlier I’d still be streaming EastEnders, I’m an addict. At the time of the drawings creation, I was going through some mental health issues and it was the only thing that I wanted to do. I found solace in the pen. The concept of doing 140 of the drawings was actually pushed by Chinstroke and DJ Detweiler (who’d never even seen the show) So I went for it. It was actually the easiest and most pleasant project I’ve ever done and I’m very proud of it. Weirdly it isn’t even a completest conceptual project or I would have drawn every single character ever, In fact It’s been pointed out to me on more than one occasion that i missed out Trevor Morgan. I’d like to issue an apology to all the fans of that horrible Scottish rapist, I chose Big Ron over him.
140 Blindfolded Drawings of EastEnders Characters is out now.
