ART.ZIP: Are most of the work finished here in the studio?
ART.ZIP: 你大部份工作都是在工作室里完成的嗎？
JC: Studio is very important for me, as you can see, it’s quite a big space and it has taken a while to get to a space like this, it’s been a number of years. I worked in a really small, tiny little room for four, five years. It must have been about 800 sq. feet and now I am in 2500 sq. feet. My friend in Beijing has some crazy 3000 sq. meters studio – it sounds amazing! I suppose my studio is big in London, it is a really big studio for a sculptor of my age who is not really a super renowned artist yet, but it is a slow thing for anyone to develop that sort of career or whatever you want to call it. I don’t like to refer to it like that. So I’m sort of pushing everything as far as I can go. There are some days when I am here that make me feel there are a big ball and chain pulling you to the bottom of the sea, but there are other days, like today, where I have got my new equipment through, and I’m high – I’m really feeling good. I am someone who has to be really near to the construction side, even though there are people who make the hydraulic hoses and help me with the electrical engineering side of things, they often come here to this workshop to do that. The electrical engineers – they were here about two weeks ago fitting out these machines – just walked around the studio as if it is a workshop, they can go over to the tool box, open the top drawer and get a screwdriver out and work. They are comfortable working here. So for me, studio is a combination of a studio and workshop, it is probably as industrial as you can get, and still I call it a studio.
I used to have very small space studio for 4-5 years, it’s only been up until recently that I’ve been able to make enough income to put all my money into a larger workshop.
As a process the workshop is really fundamental. I am an artist who makes his own work rather than contracting it out, so from my perspective, what happens here is the most important thing. And the most important thing in the scheme of the work is the actual chassis and the steel side of it. I have to get all of the hydraulic cylinders in and get the chassis together so that all of these machines could move and coordinate in the right way. Once they do that without the oil in their system, there are a couple of different people who could get involved to help the things to come to life. It’s kind of like the way some people would make motorbikes, they put things together on the frame and then they look at it, they step back. It’s not done from a drawing – it’s trial and error – and I really work like that, especially with these prototypes. So that’s how they come together and you can’t really employ engineers to do that, you really have to do that in your own studio.
JC: 工作室對我而言非常重要，如你所見，這裡是相當大的一個工作空間。我努力了好多年才有了這樣一個工作室。在此之前的四五年裡，我都擠在一個非常狹小的空間，大概只有80平方米，而現在我能在250平方米的空間裡創作。我北京的朋友竟然有一間3000平方米的工作室，真是太不可思議了！但是我的工作室在倫敦是比較大的了，特別是對於我這個年齡層的雕塑家而言，因為我還不算是名氣非常大的藝術家。可能對大多數人來說，按部就班的職業生涯發展都是一個緩慢的發展過程，可是我不是很喜歡這種模式，我屬於那種鞭策著每件事往前跑的人。有些時候，我覺得呆在這裡好像是被拴著鐵鏈大球拖向海底；但有時候，像是今天，我有了新添置的設備，我的狀態就非常的好。此外，我還必須接觸施工方，甚至是一些製作液壓軟管的人員，我需要他們協助解決關於電子工程方面的問題，所以他們經常來車間工作。電子工程師們從兩週前就開始在這裡裝配機器，現在在工作室工作就像在加工車間一樣。他們隨時可以打開工具箱，打開頂層抽屜，拿任何一把螺絲刀出來工作－－他們在這裡工作很自由。所以，我的工作室應該是工作室與車間的結合，這裡可能很像工業廠區，但我還是稱它為工作室。
我曾經在非常小的工作室裡工作了4、5年，直到最近當我有足夠的收入時，我才有能力換成更寬敞的工作室。
在創作過程中，加工車間是非常必要的。因為我的作品一定得自己加工完成，而不是承包給第三方。所以在車間裡面發生的一切事物對我來說都是最至關重要的。在作品的結構中最重要的部份就是底盤和鋼邊。我只有把所有的液壓缸和底盤都拼裝完整，這些機器才能正確無誤的運作與協調。如果是機器沒油了，這裡其他人也能讓它恢復工作。這就好比是組裝一輛摩托車，我們把零件都安裝好，然後還需要不斷地調試和修正。光照搬圖紙是遠遠不夠的，要通過反覆的調試來完善它，特別是這些樣板機器。這就是我的工作方式。所以我沒法僱用一堆工程師來處理這些問題，我必須在工作室裡親自完成。
ART.ZIP: Would you consider developing the studio as a showroom? Or a social space that people could come to view the work?
ART.ZIP: 你有考慮過把工作室發展成陳列室嗎？或者說是一個大眾能來觀摩作品的社交場所？
JC: Well yes, I’m trying to do that at the moment! Although I know you can’t see it, because it’s a mess, but this area here is going to be my show space, and then that’s the fabrication workshop, behind there is the wood workshop and storage. So it’s all quite compact – like being on a boat or something. It’s like a barn, really! I feel that there should be some horses, I should have some farmed chickens running around or something (laugh).
JC: 有，我正朝著那個方向努力。雖然你現在還看不出來，因為這裡目前亂糟糟的，但這塊區域很快會變成我的陳列室，接下來那邊的空間是加工車間，再後面就是木工車間和儲藏室。一切都規劃得十分緊湊，像是在船上什麼得。嗯，像馬廄！我應該養一些馬，再養些雞讓它們到處亂跑什麼的（大笑）。
