Artist and Filmmaker Oliver Payne grew to prominence in the late 90s due to a set of collaborative works with Nick Relph. Their groundbreaking and emotive pseudo-documentaries featured skateboarders, musical subcultures and even England's farmland.

As a solo artist, Payne’s work focuses on ideas of subjectivity and context.His global Chill Out performance invites participants to switch off and listen to his favourite record, Chill Out - The KLF's ambient house concept album. The live soundscape promotes stillness for 44 minutes - no phones or social media - forcing people to chill out.

His love of the album has even led to a clothing line - Chill Out Relaxing Clothes. On the eve of a recent Chill Out performance, we spoke to the self-confessed video game addict about balancing commerce and art, social media’s impact on creativity, essential advice for burgeoning artists, and more...

 

GOODHOOD: How would you describe yourself as an artist?

OLIVER PAYNE: I make things and sometimes those things will be shown in an art gallery, and sometimes they’ll be graphics for a skateboard or music video for a band... Or something like that.

GH: Describe your creative process...

OP: It involves a great deal of thinking in silence and smoking weed. I consume a fair amount of cultural media, but not half as much as you might think. Lots of my ideas for work come out of playing, reading, writing about and thinking about ideas found in video games.

GH: How do you overcome creative blocks?

OP: I don’t really have them because I’m always excited about something. I just ask myself: What do I want to be surrounded with right now? What am I interested in? What do I want to be reading about? There’s always something that will consume me for a few months. And other things that remain a constant source of inspiration for decades.

GH: Do you think social media and people’s ease of access to camera phones has impacted the art world for better and worse?

OP: Yes - both for better and worse. Which I suppose is best described as ‘different’. It’s changed things so much that I no longer think it’s useful to look to the past to predict the future. It’s completely changed the model of how we create, experience and distribute art; no one really knows what’s gonna happen next.

GH: What’s the best thing you’ve read about yourself online?

OP: It’s always lovely when the work gets a favourable notice and I’m not mentioned at all. 

GH: The Chill Out performance has a strict ‘no documentation’ policy, what’s your thinking behind this?

OP: Having a no photography rule simply forces people to be more present in the moment. Also, it’s a matter of paying respect to audience members that don’t necessarily want to be photographed. it’s a totally safe space in that regard. Also, having no documentation helps build the mythology - you really had to be there.

GH: Can you tell us anything about the Chill Out experience, apart from it being a ‘guided meditation’?

OP: It demands silence and attention. Those things are quite rare in most peoples lives. Chill Out is my favourite record and I want to share it with people. As an artwork, I think it’s interesting to present ambience as something radical. I like this idea of chilling out being a militant position.

 

GH: How do you want people to feel after the experience?

OP: As if they have been part of something special. That they have shared an experience with a small but growing number of people in various countries across several continents.