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T&T/Carchitecture: Tyler Brett and Tony Romano in conversation with Patrik Andersson

[Links:  Tyler Brett  Tony Romano  Patrik Andersson ]

Included in the exhibition Going a Journey at the Charles H. Scott Gallery are four large-scale digital c-prints produced by T&T, the artist collaborative made up of Canadian artists Tyler Brett and Tony Romano. Mixing humour and irony with the serious concerns of technology and our natural environment, T&T offer us a picture of the present as an "after-image" suspended between a familiar past and a yet to be discovered post-apocalyptic future.


Patrik Andersson: Since graduating from art school, the two of you have developed individual art practices but you have also managed to maintain a collaborative project called T&T. How and when did that come about?

T&T: In 1997, in a get-to-know-you and meet-the-teacher session at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design where we were both new students, one of us accidently spilled the free orange juice onto the other's sketch-book which in many ways broke the ice. That led to the two of us sharing a table in Dennis Burton's class "Intro to Colour Theory." I guess you can say that it was our shared interest in music that sealed our friendship as we soon started jamming with turntables,keyboards, drum machines and guitar. These sessions eventually led to some recordings and live performances under the name With Love Nonna. The T&T name offically emerged in 2001 when we came up with the T&T logo for a radio jingle demo we recorded at our crawl space/recording studio (a.k.a. the duck space). The T&T "Jingles for your Art Gallery" demo was a way for T&T to get to know (and promote) 20 Vancouver art galleries and included an insert with line drawings of the galleries' architectural facades and the T&T logo on the cover. We felt that the familiar and generic qualities of a name like T&T may associate us with community and infrastructure like neighbourhood mom and pop grocery stores and multi-national telecommunication conglomerates. But most importantly, for us, T&T referenced TNT, a domestic union-made beer that we liked as much for its faux plywood aesthetics as for its disclaimer, "CAUTION! handle with care".

PA: Speaking of colour theory, I first got interested in T&T in the winter of 2001 when you showed me what looked like a children's colouring book called Carchitecture. Can you tell me how this idea got started?

T&T: We were working with our computers a lot experimenting with varying approaches to graphic design, making posters and handbills for our music shows. As mentioned earlier, we had made some drawings of art gallery facades. The idea behind those had been to reduce the architecture of each gallery to line drawing that could function as a striking image or sign of identity. Using similar techniques, we began looking at ways to construct futuristic realities on screen with a kind of graphic reality in mind. Although there was never a clear plan, we found ourselves drawing cars by importing images into Photoshop where we turned them into line art. Bringing the cars into this digital form, we saw the potential to image a future whose basic structure was grounded in an aesthetic tied to the political and economic realities of here and now. As it turned out, the formal qualities of the drawings seemed suitable for the colouring book format. There is something nice about being able to produce affordable books that could be enjoyed as much by children as adults. We were interested in the idea that colouring books are tools of socialization and maybe our books could have an effect on future automobile owners.

PA: In the post-apocalyptic landscape that you have imagined, automobiles seem to play a large part of everyday life. In fact, I could imagine people who are really into cars liking your work for the simple reason that your depiction of cars is often a touch romantic. Is there any irony in the fact that neither of you are car owners?

T&T: This is actually not true any more. One of us now owns an operates a truck. But generally speaking, we all are forced to negotiate our way through the everyday car inundated environment whether on foot, bicycle or automobile. The project was really about how one could envision a way to be more actively and creatively engaged in that environment. This environmental response comes from having taken a sideways glance at car culture.

PA: I guess you could say you are working out of a theory of distraction then?

T&T: Yeah, sure.

PA: The cars in the colouring book are all de-mobilized (or maybe they are re-mobilized?) by having their function changed into various forms of habitation or practical structures such as water towers. You have refered to the landscape that these dwellings inhabit as both pre-utopic and post-apocalyptic. Could you expand on this?

T&T: Ultimately it is make-believe. If utopic architectural and environmental projects such as Archigram, Future Systems, and Coop Himmelblau envisioned a better future by drawing on the latest extrapolations and hypotheses of both science fiction and cutting edge technology, our project tries to be a bit more realistic. Our imagined future is grounded in the objects that are readily available in today's throw-away culture. This also includes available but underutilized renewable energy technologies such as solar panels, water wheels, and wind turbines.

PA: This seems to be most apparent in your models, which have a real "do-it-yourself" craft-based aesthetic, unlike your new drawings which look very slick printed as cibachrome prints.

T&T: I think the slickness in the prints has more to do with the capabilities of our computer software. If there was a machine that could output the sculptures as realistic three dimensional objects I'm sure we would employ it. In a sense, the drawings conjure up an ideal while the models are a bit closer to our ability to physically realize this future.

PA: Would you say that you are accepting a certain failure to control the future by addressing this gap? In other words, is this a dystopic look at art and technology?

T&T: I guess. On the other hand, the models are quite utopic in the sense that we have not limited ourselves to the instruction manuals that professional model builders and architects adhere to. There is a degree of freedom represented in the fact that we can put these objects together in any form we desire. Sure they end up looking a little "crappy", but our intention is to make the best of the situation. Our recycled lumber pile "handy-man" aesthetics pay homage to the Reader's Digest's do-it-yourself home build and renovation guide, or for that matter, our forefathers.

PA: One of the images in the exhibition Going A Journey presents a cross-sectioned panoramic view of a landfilled subdivision. From a distance this looks really great. By making people live underground you have created expansive green spaces. On the other hand, if you live in one of these habitats, you are essentially burying yourself.

T&T: According to geological forecasters, there is an ensuing revenge of nature in forms such as rising sea levels, coming ice ages, etc. Our underground architecture is meant as a pro-active measure against this impending doom that we are all too aware of. We thought it would be amusing to imagine a post-apocalyptic landscape filled with subdivisions no longer inhabited by today's suburban citizens, but functioning as hobo-troubador collectives. This would be an ideal environment for people who are used to living "underground" but also see themselves at one with nature. It is not our attempt to destroy the past or present, but to build on it, literally.

PA: So in a way you are reuniting suburbia with nature.

T&T: Precisely. Historically we are really interested in times of transition such as the Dark Ages.

PA: These are often the most productive times for myth making.

T&T: Yes. And magic.

PA: Your interest in hobos and troubadors is not only revealed in the characters who inhabit these landscapes, but they have also played a big part in earlier projects related to fashion.

T&T: At one point we were involved in collaborations with other artists such as Holly Ward, Elizabeth Zvonar, Jane Lee, and Corin Sworn producing live music, performance and installation. This resulted in experiments in fashion as well as the production of some zines. In this context the hobo represented someone existing parallel to mainstream culture. An underground existence.

PA: Alongside your visual production, you both make music. Can you tell me about Dynamite, your collaborative music project?

T&T: With computer technology we are now able to create the epic soundtrack of not only our lives, but our future. Like in the Middle Ages when there was a high degree of illiteracy, people learned from story telling and songs. Debris, The Message, and Campfire all allude to this history making process. The lyrics of our songs tend to relate as much to our everyday reality as it does to an imagined reality of the "other world". Like the images, the music has a slightly dated folky feel to it that is mixed with our current interest in electronic music.

PA: All this must be very difficult to produce considering that you do not live in the same city. Tony, you are working out of Toronto while Tyler, you work in Vancouver. What's it like collaborating across such great distances? Is this making things difficult when it comes to actually producing work?

T&T: With regard to the drawings it really isn't a big deal as we can just email them back and forth. The models we work on individually but post on our daddywarrior website for easy response. Any major problem or idea that we think is "dynamite" tends to be diverted to that older mode of communication -- the telephone.


Vancouver, November 2003

Patrik Andersson is Associate Professor in Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and is currently curating an exhibition with T&T that will open in Sweden in the summer of 2004.

T&T Sanctuary (c-print), 2002




T&T Post-Camaro (c-print), 2002




T & T (Tyler Brett and Tony Romano) - Page from T&T Carchitecture (Coloring Book): Turbo Prop, 2001




T&T Electromagnetic Transport (c-print), 2002




T&T Condotower (c-print), 2002




T & T (Tyler Brett and Tony Romano) - Detail from Wilmount Trail: Troubadors (c-print), 2003




T & T (Tyler Brett and Tony Romano) - Detail from Wilmount Trail: Rotowheely (c-print), 2003




T & T (Tyler Brett and Tony Romano) - T&T Underground (1:24 Scale Models), 2002-ongoing




T & T (Tyler Brett and Tony Romano) - Detail from Wilmount Trail: Troubadors (c-print), 2003




T&T Vanama (c-print), 2002




T&T Watertower (c-print), 2002




T&T "interview fragment" courtesy of Patrik Andersson