An Interview with Scott Barley

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Alden Nagel is the founder and editor of Nut Hole Publishing, and also a writer. You can find him on Instagram: @alden_nagel_. His debut novella FAG SYMPHONY is out now, via Nut Hole Publishing. He has an upcoming novella entitled Salination Mountains, and a (paired) novel entitled The Desalinated Exosphere.

Scott Barley is a Welsh filmmaker-artist, lecturer, and a writer based in Scotland. His full-length film Sleep Has Her House is available now through his website. He has an upcoming feature film sponsored by the British Film Institute and Doc Society entitled The Sea Behind Her Head.

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Alden Nagel: Sleep Has Her House somewhat recently experienced its seventh anniversary of a film. Over these years, have you gained any insights on SHHH which you hadn’t when you released it into the world?

Scott Barley: I never expected the film to resonate as it has, and continues to do. I've seen more concretely my long-held belief that avant-garde film can transcend its self-imposed walled garden when filmmakers let go of their self-preservation and elitist, onanist fancies. A genuine appetite for a different kind of cinema far outside of what is centralized and heavily marketed does exist, and seems to be growing. The film has brought me into contact with some really beautiful, generous, kind, sensitive, intelligent people. I've observed how culture at large tends to overlook short films compared to features, which I think is a great sadness, as I feel short films are a complete medium of expression unto themselves. The power of word of mouth, too, should never be underestimated. There have been other, more private insights too, which relate to how I live and work, both functionally and (mostly) dysfunctionally.

Alden Nagel: How would you describe the feeling of the creation of your upcoming film The Sea Behind Her Head?

Scott Barley: Open, doubtful, redundant, challenging, tedious, beguiling, meaningful, isolated, painful, boring, mycorrhizal, pentimenti, metamorphic, syncretic, heteroglossic, multivalent, incantatory, curious, mythopoeic, subversive, ancient, erotic, new, mysterious, corporeal, disarrayed, sonorous, rhizomatic, disembodied, monstrous, turbulent, sensitive, beautiful, exciting, slow.

Alden Nagel: There’s something to be said about Sleep Has Her House primarily inhabiting the countryside, while The Sea Behind Her Head may offer something else entirely. How do you view these two films to exist, in tandem with each other?

Scott Barley: When I think back, Sleep Has Her House, and more than several of my short films were, in one sense, concerned with the absence of symbols. The Sea Behind Her Head is, in one sense, more concerned with subverting symbols and iconography, so they no longer orientate; their meaning is obfuscated. They create new myth out of old ones. But I think audiences will have far more insightful things to say when the time comes.

Alden Nagel: You recently wrote about the role of serotonin in childhood, in contrast to that of dopamine in adulthood. Was there anything in particular which prompted this for you?

Scott Barley: Life.

Alden Nagel: When do you find it is best to critique a piece of media or art in a negative way?

Scott Barley: Never. I don't enjoy critiquing art. When I work with students, I provide constructive criticism, and I have faith in what I say will serve their development if they choose to listen to it, but I'm not a critic. I don't have the tolerance or sensibility. My relationship with art is primarily experiential. I want to be beguiled, mystified, awed, ruptured. If something moves me deeply, I might respond with an ekphrastic poem, share an intimate anecdote of my encounter with it, or simply embody the invigoration it gave me—to continue, in life and in my own work. I am an artist with my own particular sensibilities, and very few things bring me any genuine sense of satisfaction.

Throughout my life, for better and for worse, I have endured and sought extremes—paroxysms of experience. I derive nothing in seeing, reading, or hearing work that doesn't destroy me in some way; nor in commenting on it. As Emily Dickinson said, “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” I seek to be eviscerated, decollated by art, and float ten feet off the ground—nothing less. If it doesn't do that, I can't feign interest or expend any energy on it, especially negative. It's just how it is. I don’t know how others do it.

Alden Nagel: Nut Hole Publishing is based in Seattle, USA. With this in mind, how do you feel about the nature of art’s dissemination through the internet today? Do you feel that the internet as a medium for communication, can also be a form of art within itself?

Scott Barley: The enshittification of everything is not helping to make it so, nor are the dull and dead ironies and exhausted asinine quips that have pervaded so many online spaces. As a dear friend once said, “Irony is exactly the opposite of what I wanted out of art.”

As these platforms become increasingly centralized, homogenized, and self-preserving, perhaps we should focus on creating and cultivating our own spaces, our own communities—and leave the techno-feudalists to their algorithms.

Alden Nagel: What do you think makes the experience of a video game great, and beautiful, for you?

Scott Barley: That it is its own world. A vision. Mystery, feeling, mood. A psalm about being connected to everything alive and dead. And, as little action as possible.

Alden Nagel: How much do you believe nostalgia influences your work with music, intentionally or unintentionally?

Scott Barley: In terms of specifics, zero.

Alden Nagel: What role do you believe trauma, both lived and inherited, plays in how you handle inspiration?

Scott Barley: Zero.

Alden Nagel: If you were to write a book of fiction in the future of any kind, what might it be like?

Scott Barley: As with my films, my hope would be that, beyond my name attached, the reader would recognize my voice.

Alden Nagel: What do you believe about contemporary philosophy which presently, you feel to be exciting?

Scott Barley: In the western tradition, I find Kant especially contemporary. His ideas have resonated with me since I was first introduced to them, and there has been a renaissance in his appreciation within recent consciousness studies and cognitive science. Spinoza's monism and Deleuze's perspectives on difference and multiplicity also feel increasingly relevant. Consciousness, reality, experience—these are the topics which fascinate me more than anything. I don’t think there is anything that could possibly be more fascinating. I think we are finally starting to break free from the anthropocentric and materialist view that our cognitive modalities are necessarily features of the world.

Recent developments in neuroscience challenge our assumptions about consciousness by suggesting it may be a more fundamental feature of reality rather than an emergent property of complex brains. Meanwhile loop quantum gravity suggests space-time is not fundamental, but rather comprises emergent phenomena occurring at the Planck scale, further suggesting that the universe itself may be cyclical, rather than borne from a singularity. All this, combined with the resurgence of idealist interpretations in philosophy of mind, points towards a more nuanced, less egoistic approach to questions of consciousness, reality, and experience.

Alden Nagel: How do you think about solar politics within the context of the research and artistry you do?

Scott Barley: If you’re referring to eco-consciousness, and minimizing environmental impact, I take it very seriously in every aspect of my work. If you’re referring to Bataille’s solar politics, I don't. In a life-work as illuminating, unique, and brilliant as Bataille's, I find solar politics one of the less interesting aspects of his philosophy—although it is a testament to him that it remains remarkably compelling. I have some interest elsewhere, more in ancient civilizations' alignment with celestial bodies, and hermetic wisdom. Bataille’s unique analysis of expenditure and economics partly feels like another framework imposed upon something more primary. I find myself mostly returning to Madame Edwarda, L’Impossible, L'histoire de l’œil, or parts of his Summa Atheologica.

Alden Nagel: Do you believe in numerology?

Scott Barley: Yes, but I think it is cognitively emergent, not necessarily fundamental.

Alden Nagel: Do you believe in magic?

Scott Barley: Yes, in the sense that only a reconciliation of mysticism and science can approach and appreciate.

Alden Nagel: Do you believe in the infinitude of the moment?

Scott Barley: In terms of linear time, who can say? But in depth, yes. Its presence, its tendrils, its richness. Its emptiness. As a phrase, it sounds awfully precious and stiff, doesn’t it? “Moment,” on its own, is beautiful enough.

Alden Nagel: How is Theo (your cat) doing?

Scott Barley: God is good.

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