Welcome to my world
by Steve Xoh

I held an Open Studio earlier this month. A day when anyone could come in and visit Studio Two, look at my art, buy some stuff and have a chat. I love these events. Even though I am interacting with strangers and talking to lots of people for a whole day, I am doing it in my own unique and comforting niche-habitat.

I’m fascinated by how much more comfortable I feel when I invite people into my world. I realise that it is a thing that I have done for much of my life - creating an environment, event or experiment that is an uncensored and unmasked expression of who I am, and then asking people “Hey, would you like to come in and join me?” Part of the reason for doing this is because it is my job as an artist and workshop facilitator to host events and show my work. But I suspect the main reason I do it is because I feel a greater level of comfort and connection with myself interacting with others in this way.

The main thing I love about doing this is that it is a great way of short-circuiting small-talk. Those initial chit-chat situations in which I genuinely shrivel up inside and have a kind of out-of-body experience where I am witnessing myself trying to play the role of a “normal” adult human. When I do talks I try to avoid speaking to people before-hand as this is the zone of excruciating small-talk (e.g. “What do you do?” “What brings you here?” “What’s your talk about?”) But after I have been on stage and shared a load of weird stories and thoughts and philosophies I really enjoy talking to people. As they have been dipped into my world for an hour or so we have a different start point to our interaction. They have a sense of what fascinates me, who I am and how I am wired and will likely only come up to me if there is a shared interest in that kind of thing.

It is the same with Open Studios - it is very unlikely that when people walk into my weirdly curated cosy space that they will ask “So, what do you do then?” (Although, strangely, some people still ask “What kind of art do you make?” even though it is plastered all over the walls around them!) At this point I feel I need to clarify that I’m not saying that I like the conversation and focus to be all about me! Quite the opposite in fact. I am always fascinated to learn more about others and love asking questions and getting deeper into meaningful conversation. It just feels like a much easier start point when others know more about me and my nature up front through being immersed in it in some way.

It is, however, rather impractical to only interact with others when they come into my world. I also want to get better at bringing my uncensored, unmasked, relaxed self into the world of others. I used to be able to do this much more naturally as a child, but when I think about the things I used to do at primary school, I start to doubt it was actually me! At primary school I used to write surreal short plays and sketches and then recruit a bunch of the strangest kids to perform them in assembly. I used to write and illustrate a series of short stories about a character called Yappy Dog and read them to the younger classes. And a very bizarre memory that came back to me recently was playing, in assembly, a piece of music that I had written on a strange battery powered keyboard that sounded like a hovercraft. This all came flooding back when I was messing about on my Casiotone MT46 writing some music and suddenly remembered how to play the assembly song. I use the word “song” in the most tenuous of ways. As I played it, it made me laugh out loud how ridiculous it was - simply alternating hitting the lowest C key and then the next key up right up to the top of the keyboard and back down again. (I play a version of this on the podcast version of this issue.) What was even more bizarre about this primary school assembly performance was that I recruited a girl in my class, who had the same weird hovercraft organ, to perform it with me as a duo!

As an adult I now wonder what the teachers and other adults who witnessed these things were thinking. But at the time, that didn’t even enter my mind. I was just doing these things because I loved them and probably found myself in a wonderful, immersive creative flow state. Looking back I am very appreciative of my primary school teachers for encouraging me and giving me a platform to express my creativity - a permission and freedom that rapidly eroded in secondary school to such an extent that I became reluctant to express my wild and creative self for many years.

I’ve decided that I want to experiment more with blurring the lines between my world and the world of others. To try and find a more symbiotic balance between the me who prefers to invite people into my niche habitat and that primary-school kid who simply went out into the world and was naturally a bit strange and eccentric. I was invited to the launch of the latest issue of the brilliant Partners Zine recently and decided that this was a good petri-dish for my experiment. I only recently realised that one of the reasons I find social situations like this hard is because I set way too high an expectation for myself. Often I imagine myself being the life and soul of the party, meeting a plethora of new friends, chatting with everyone, getting invited to more events or gatherings, getting some paid work or getting signed by a top art agent. This ridiculously high and unrealistic bar typically results in me feeling very down and crappy when I end up leaving after 30 minutes because it was too noisy, too crowded and I didn’t know how to talk to anyone. (This fantasy version of myself is likely a manifestation of an idealised self-image that my inner critic/super ego constantly evaluates me against. I might write more about this in a future Substack.)

So, at the Partners event I tried to set a realistic bar and try something different. I really like my little “Be kind to crabs” zine, so I printed off a load of copies to take with me to give to people, as that’s the kind of thing that Primary School me would have done. When people came to speak to me or if I spotted somebody I would like to speak with I simply said “Hello, I’m an artist, would you like a little zine about crabs?” And it worked! It seemed that people enjoyed getting the gift whether they liked crabs or not and it led to some lovely conversations about life, art, philosophy (and crabs). But the most important thing for me was that I felt comfortable doing it and didn’t care if the person I was giving it to thought I was weird or eccentric. I felt very energised and alive on the tube home, a stark comparison to the drained, self-critical experience I normally have. I felt like I had managed to channel 8-year-old me playing the hovercraft organ in assembly, whilst at the same time meeting my social needs as an adult who is fascinated by interacting with other humans.

I’ve now started bringing various zines with me to events and gatherings. On the 1st November I went to a Samhain/Halloween party dressed as a rook. I knew people would come up to me and think I was a crow and then ask what the difference between the species was. So, to short-circuit this, I created a little zine of rook facts that I handed to anyone who spoke to me or I wanted to interact with. Not only did this prevent me from having to describe the differences between crows and rooks over and over again, it was a delightful catalyst for a different type of conversation.

Zines are just one strategy for this social exploration. I realised that they are essentially a transitional object that helps me allow more of my uncensored, unmasked self to be seen without worrying too much about what others think. And gradually it feels like they are helping build a bridge between the two worlds. Or at least make the semi-permeable veil between them a little thinner.