Dan Goodman
Has storytelling always been a part of your practice?
No. I started off painting and convinced that I will always be making work about the activity and history of painting. Over the years though I worked in various galleries and did a MA in curating. Through this I became more and more interested in the social world behind the production of art. I took over System through serendipity. Right place right time. It was not really something that I was looking for. My self-esteem is very much connected to feeling useful, so running System was transformative for me. System became a large part of how people identified me, and how I identified myself. It became a narrative device. Similarly, it functioned in the same way for artists. Having an exhibition there can be a way of projecting/performing legitimacy or identity as an artist. There is something performative in having an exhibition and a preview. I also see making exhibitions as a form of storytelling. So short answer, storytelling became part of my arts practice when I realised that is what I was doing with System.
What inspired you to make an RPG?
I always loved RPGs. I grew-up obsessed with Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Pokémon. I wanted to make an RPG because…I don’t know haha. I am interested in different forms of storytelling and more recently have expanded that to performing karaoke, spoken word, and combining images and text. I think I am star-fishing and trying to find the edges of my practice. In a lot of my other work, I am deliberately self-referential in a funny way. The ways we are encouraged to think about, discuss, and value art organisations is self-referential. A lot of this is informed by how funding works. When an arts organisation uses the term ‘community’ for example, they are inadvertently comparing or aligning themselves with other organisations that use the same word. Consequently, it is impossible to be able to talk about, discuss, or view art or art organisations on their own terms. RPGs are similarly self-referential. I also feel like at System I often am ‘playing the role’ of curator.
Your gallery System seems important to you, especially since it is highlighted in this piece. How has running a gallery effected your practice?
I touch on this in my other answers. Despite having once being obsessed with it I do not paint anymore and have little interest in it. I make art now but had there was a time where I just ran System, and I was content with that. The sentimental way I write about System is slightly performed and sentimental, but I am genuinely intellectually and emotionally invested in it. I can be quite a private person, so it is a way of being public in a way I feel comfortable. My practice now is either running System or making/doing thinks about System. A large part of my social circle centres around System too.