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Artists are often stereotyped as brooding misanthropes who equate anti-social behaviour with originality and integrity. And while being an artist can be lonely, art scenes are often perceived as cliquish and closed off to anyone but the initiated. But London-based twenty-six year old artist Matthew Stone is a real-deal artist of the highest order who creates art that is unique, challenging, wondrous and exciting because it is open and inclusive. With his salons and group projects, Stone undertakes the serious task of making playful art.

Stone's photographs, films and performances are all the by-products of his elaborate viral happenings, in which viewers are invited to participate and the divisions between art, play, audience and artist are all melted into one harmonious, communal mesh.

As Lupe Nunez-Fernandez wrote for her Saatchi Online review of Stone's April 2007 show at London's Union gallery, "The artist, who is part of collaborative South London squat-scene of young artists, actors, writers, musicians, moviemakers and designers, strips his characters of context, observing art's potential for making and disposing of its own mythology... Stone's emphasis on explorative communal ritual, on the revolutionary potential of participation that reacts and questions its own meaning, definitely points to the art of tomorrow."

In addition to his salons and other art activities, since that review was penned, Stone and his merry crew have transformed London's Alma Enterprises into a temporary artists' salon/ 11am Sunday disco, and installed his sculpture "And as they reached for God with their fingertips their toes wrote stories in the sand" on the roof of the Union gallery.

Here, we discuss artists as ringleaders, working to create the best balance between individual egos and group betterment, when making cooperative art.

AFH: How collaborative are your projects?

MS: I'm not sure. I am always trying to work that out. I have a firm belief in the power of shared creativity, but I'm not trying to present a utopian model of it. I know the work wouldn't exist without everybody else, so I try not to hide where other people become involved. I have noticed that people collaborate well when they can hold onto their own individual creative identities. Ego is a big source of motivation for most of us and it can be harnessed to everyone's advantage!

AFH: Is juggling everyone's egos part of your art?

MS: Maintaining a sense of balance is something that runs through most things I do.

AFH: Is this a sense of balance that you feel could be applicable to other endeavours or circumstances? Are you, in essence, regarding your art projects as test-runs for some utopian social dynamic?

MS: Basically, yes. But firstly I must say, that I think the notion of a utopia is a flawed one. We must aim to create the best of all possible worlds, not an impossibly perfect world. My friend Jack Brennan helped me to understand this. He explained that this is why the Situationist's declaration to "Demand the impossible" is unsound. It reasserts the impossibility of their aims and doesn't identify any practical solutions. It is possible to make a better world. So lets try.

AFH: Do you consider yourself a group leader?

MS: Yes.

AFH: How do you reconcile the group spirit with your role as the leader of the pack?

MS: It's not a case of top dog. I have fought many personal battles with myself as to what it means to be someone people listen to. It's not a responsibility I take lightly or cynically abuse. I aim to create environments and situations that feel authentically creative to those that encounter them. Most of it is non-hierarchical and the points where I take a leading role are to maintain this equality without losing a focus to the outcomes.

AFH: Are there historical examples you look towards when negotiating the distinction between being a Manson-like leader versus a guiding star for your fellow artists?

MS: I take huge inspiration from Herman Hesse. His books approach philosophy and leave you with answers, not just questions. He has been a great leader for me. Warhol was also a great facilitator of his community. Like Beuys, his work allowed for and furthered others creativity. From my musician friend Ebe Oke's stories, it seems Isabella Blow was very much like this too, feeding people she believed in.

AFH: Who usually participates?

MS: My friends, people who come to events, basically genuine and passionate individuals that excite me intellectually and emotionally. I host a small salon every week. It began as a way to continue the conversations I started in nightclubs. Now we talk about the future and what we should be doing as artists. It feels so important and timely somehow. People bring others that they feel would benefit the salon's progress as a whole. It's an ongoing and organic process, an elite that anyone could join.

AFH: How are the salons especially timely now?

MS: There is a sense of powerlessness in today's society. Openly discussing this feels like the first step to overcoming it. It's exciting and feels radical to be making sincere statements with an aim to begin effecting positive change. I am keen to stress the importance of an acceptance of failure combined with a willingness to keep trying. It is a key condition for all my working methods and for the salon's ability to generate different thought and contexts.

AFH: Why do you think there is a sense of powerlessness? Is it because legitimate and complex bohemian avant-garde creative efforts are so easily co-oped by consumerist interests? Or are there other forms of powerlessness that concern you more?

MS: It's not about bohemians or the legitimacy of actions. It's deeper than that. Perhaps people feel that idealistic endeavours from history have failed and that there is no point in trying anymore. What they don't understand is that they are the ones who have the power to stop it.

AFH: Are you documenting the salon discussions?

MS: A video camera is too intrusive, so sometimes I record them on my laptop, but we are looking for someone to take and edit minutes.

AFH: Really, you're looking for a salon secretary?

MS: I actually think we might have found one. My friend Nina Trivedi who is a curator and writer has agreed to give it a go.

AFH: Is actual activism an aspect of these salons?

MS: We have talked a lot about the relevance and the format of the salon and increasingly the conversation is turning to what form a tangible "work" for the salon could be. In a sense we are moving from a meta-salon to a salon. We are still somewhere in between and a frustration is evident. Last week I suggested, somewhat melodramatically, that we are close to entangling ourselves with the future and that when we do, we will be able to mould it consciously. We may produce a publication or an exhibition. It's hard to map the influence of any event, but I feel the power of the salon seeping into everything I do, it's all over this interview.

AFH: Should I have invited the group to participate in the interview or do you feel that asking you alone was good enough?

MS: In terms of practicality it seems easy for me to talk about what I think. But I think that is a fantastic idea and that it would be a great challenge to create and edit answers that everyone was happy with. Can we do it as well as this?

AFH: Do you consider the work you do to be political?

MS: Some of the work is directly political and I have come to realise that a lot of it has political implication. The difficulty and in some sense the subtlety of art relates to the fact that if you know and clarify your aims for a work its true power can quickly disappear.

AFH: Is that because artists' become too self-conscious or because outsiders scrutinize and belittle artists' overt aims?

MS: I think that both of those situations can occur. But I also feel that it is possible to create deeper levels of understanding by aiding realisation, rather than telling someone something directly. A difficult path to a simple idea can be rewarding when you get there.

AFH: How does your work relate to other group-oriented London art hubs like Boombox, The Last Tuesday Society's things or the Wallis Gallery's incredible collective activities?

MS: I was a DJ at Boombox! It's inspiring when people make a real effort to make something happen. The momentum of a scene or sense thereof can facilitate huge creativity. I feel closest to what is happening with the Hannah Barry Gallery in Peckham. I am working with her and a lot of her artists on a show titled 'OPTIMISM' that will take place during Frieze. We are also making a grand production next year of PENTHESILEA, Heinreich von Kleist's great, yet rarely performed masterpiece from 1808, which I am art directing.

AFH: What is the ethos behind her space and how does it differ from the others I've mentioned?

MS: I wouldn't want to speak on her behalf, but I am personally drawn to what I see as a vital sense of artistic community. There is a desire to create truly ambitious art-works, publications and exhibitions, using little more than hard work and passion. I am sure that this is also the case for those involved with the Wallis Gallery. Nightclubs are their own end artworks, but Hannah's gallery exists to support the artists involved in as many ways as possible or necessary.

AFH: Do you find art fairs similarly facilitate the sense of community in the larger "art world"?

MS: It would be hard to argue that they do not. There is a temptation to reject them because of their commercial objective. But I feel that people coming together to talk about and engage with art is always a useful thing. The way art is sold is a separate and perhaps slightly boring issue.

AFH: Personally, I love the "family reunion" aspect of art fairs. But speaking of sales, how do you sell your work and how do you divvy up sales if the work was communally produced?

MS: As I said, I feel that collaborations flourish when individuals are able to a certain extent maintain their own personal creative identities and roles. I make and then my gallery UNION sell my own photos, sculptures, drawings, and writing and installation pieces. At the moment, I have no intentions to draw direct financial profit from, say, the salon.

AFH: Are you more concerned with the community-oriented process rather than the actual products your endeavours produce?

MS: No, I see them as one and the same.

AFH: Do you feel collective practice and teamwork are defining concerns for younger artists?

MS: I think they are dynamic and optimistic forces that can facilitate art-making. Art can be collective without being concerned purely with notions of collectivity in itself.

AFH: On your blog you discuss having baked a yummy looking chocolate cake to commemorate the death of post-modernism. Why do you think it died and how do you think your work differs from PO-MO?

MS: Oh I didn't bake the cake. I just ate it. I don't really worry about whether post-modernism is dead. I just feel that there are disadvantages in becoming overly self-conscious. I associate this with post-modernism. The implications of the sense of powerlessness I discussed earlier are truly frightening and if this is deemed to be a product of post-modernism then I think that we must find pathways out of it. It is too easy to lose sight of what you actually believe and it can destroy idealism. Whilst ideology is potentially dangerous when applied systematically, we must surely still remain idealistic. Somewhat surprisingly post-modernism has created a set of unspoken rules and artistic boundaries that deserve to be challenged. Artistic actions that are both sincere and optimistic could do this.

AFH: How would you define your peers' ambitions?

MS: Those I respect aim to make powerful, beautiful and lasting works of art.

AFH: Very few artists can widely fit that description. Do you have to respect your peers as artists in order to work with them on art?

MS: All artists want their work to have those qualities, even if they don't think it possible or wouldn't admit to it. Working with people I respect is a defining element of what I do.

AFH: Do you think there is anything particularly English about what you do?

MS: I feel uncomfortable defining things as "English", but Norman Rosenthal once told me, that concerning oneself with the aesthetics of friendship is a 'particularly English' thing to do.

AFH: That is fascinating. Can you elaborate on what you think that means?

MS: I would assume that the idea has its roots in groups such as the Bloomsbury set, and I know that he has often spoken of his personal memories of Derek Jarman's intimate circle and even Hirst's. It seems that there was a very generous and almost priestly element to Jarman's desire and ability to stir and lift his friends. You can see how much he loved "people" in his work. This is very obviously not a specifically English thing, but it remains a wonderful tradition to understand and be inspired by.