We Spoke to the Fake Candidate Who Played a Long Con on the Tories

VICE: Bill C-51 is about to pass, and we're all under the impression the government really wants to snoop through our lives. But looking at your case, it kinda seems they're not really that thorough with their research, no?
Chris Lloyd: [Laughs] Maybe it just shows there's a lot of gaps. There might be lots of repositories of information, but not necessarily a smart way of connecting them all, connecting the dots.

What happened for you when this news broke?
I kinda sensed it was coming because I was asked to speak to the CBC when they were working on this story. I saw that it didn't look very good. So I approached the party to try and convince them that I was recorded without my knowledge or consent at that Fredericton event. It was a really long artist talk about my entire practice, 15 years. And I was speaking in a very theoretical manner and I felt very free to speak about all the potential, possible things that could happen, which is where of course that quote about "messing with the party" came up.

I had no clear plan though; I'd never been a candidate, or involved in a party this way before. So the entire thing was a learning experience for me, it was feeding my curiosity about the democratic process.

And what did you learn?
I'm still learning, still processing it. It's kind of still unfolding and teaching me things. My letters have always been about a disconnect between a lone individual voice and a kind of behemoth rift between media, politics, and personalities and how things can get twisted through the media as well. So what's kind of ironic is that that has now happened to me.

It's also interesting for me to see how these things play out at a different level between party politics and it's party politics that drives the country, so there's all these weird disconnections happening even within the power structures. Those are things that are interesting to me and…

It's ironic, too, that it would take me being kicked out to speak freely about it, whereas I wasn't really allowed to speak before because they were keeping me "safe" as a candidate. And I still wanted to explore that as far as it could go in terms of just what kind of message could I get out if I was within the confines of structures of that party doctrine.

So any interesting internal information? What was it like, being on the inside?
It felt a bit like summer camp. When I was a candidate, the persona that I was adopting was a conservative candidate.

So it was a persona?
I think everyone adopts a bit of a persona, especially people in public life. I don't think there's someone who is the exact same in every context of their everyday life. I explore those things with my letters a lot, because the types of topics I would talk about in my letters to the PM are the kinds of things that people write in their diary that no one else ever reads, because it's written for themselves. That's how they process their own identity.

So, I think people in politics and in public life… I mean, it is a performance. For me, what I was learning the most it that the most successful politicians are the ones that can perform the best. They're the ones that understand the script, they participate in crafting the script. They understand how it looks and feels and sounds, and they're probably the most convincing performance artists in the country.

Because they're the ones who can stay on message, own their message, they can deliver it in a very successful way. So, what I was seeing in the kind of boot camp, as a novice, is that some people are… I don't know if they're naturally good at it or they're just really well practiced. And [for] others, it's going to take them practice. You can see where there are different levels of success.

So you describe it as boot camp?
Oh, I think that's just a term that I'm making up to describe the learning process. We're not doing an official campaign right now, so I think every party is just trying to get their troops ready. It's like a big sporting event, really. The three or four main teams just kind of line up their players and discuss strategy. I think at the point where you're heading into elections, no one's really talking about the ideas anymore. It's about how to win, given the rules of the game.

And what I've been interested in even from the whole duration of my letter-writing project is the rules of the games. I've been more involved with one party in particular, and running for a party is where you really see that the rules of the game are made for the party.

Are you actually Conservative? What was that $600 donation about? You put a lot of effort into this, but were your convictions aligned with what you were doing?
Well I think this is also a flaw in our system. I don't think anyone is 100 percent aligned with the entire principles or policies of one party. I think that's true for almost everyone. It's just that you decide, OK, well, I'm more leaning this side. But my personal convictions are a little all over the map.

How do you feel about all the media coverage you've been getting?
It's kind of nerve wracking. I have a friend of mine who used to describe this feeling, when she suffered from panic attacks, she called it "terror belly." I feel like I understand that now, this knot in your gut because you kind of don't know what's going to happen next, and it's weird to see yourself in the news.

But it's one platform I was hoping to use, to discuss all these ideas about the individual and society and the artist, and using the campaign as a vehicle for that. But since i'm no longer an official candidate for the conservative party, I don't really have much of a platform left anymore, so it's kind of shifted over into this fear.

News is kind of a fleeting thing, right. In a week or so, there will be all sorts of other stories filling the same space.

But am I Conservative? It's not really even part of the issue, I think the issue, and the problem it stems from, from having made remarks that didn't seem in line with what the Conservative party would deem appropriate from a candidate. And my intention all along was to run a campaign using their messaging their platform and just see where it could get me and how I could work within that.

And what was the end game?
You don't know how badly I wanted to have a town hall debate with the other candidates in the riding, because that would have included Justin Trudeau. And I think that would have been the pinnacle, the best part of the whole campaign.

Why?
Well, I think this is where my personal views and the strategies or objectives of the Conservative party align nicely. They're trying to defeat him on a national level, to make sure that he doesn't become prime minister and they've invested a lot of time and money and effort trying to discredit him. They've almost ignored the official opposition, the party that has what, two or three times as many seats. So there's a persona, there's a buzz around him because of his heritage, because of his father, because of the kind of big boost that he got in the polls. I think there was a fear. So they've really really gone after that to try and discredit him.

I don't think he's ready to be prime minister. I also don't like the idea that people seem to be grooming themselves to become prime minister, like it's an objective. Honestly, I don't think anyone in their right mind would want that job.So all this talk and focus on leaders and who is going to become prime minister, and how much power gets concentrated around that. That's about as far as you can get from most people's day-to-day lives.

What do you think of the media coverage you've been getting?
One of of the best things I saw yesterday was the Beaverton article, I think that hit it on the head. Why do we have such barriers between that traditional view of politics and performance arts, why would it be such a bad thing if I was running a campaign as an art project, if it's still a legit campaign? What about fringe parties like the Rhino party and others that try to poke fun at our system but do it legitimately, within the system.

So the Tories asked you to resign?
We had a discussion about me resigning—it made sense to them at the time though personally, I think if they had gone the other way we would have a much more interesting story right now. Because essentially it's gone wild fire and it's made them look worse than they would have it they had actually stood by me and said "yeah, he's an artist, and he's merging these things and sure, it's a bit weird but we knew it from the beginning, he told us about his letters when he became a candidate and has been involved with the party for a long time and we're gonna stand by him."

That wouldn't have been as embarrassing for them.

Are you relieved that it's over?
I wouldn't say relief is the right word, because I was really looking forward to the real campaign, I would have liked to have that debate [with Trudeau]. But at the same time, it frees up time for my other project, for my family and for vacation this summer.

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