To what extent is the activity of label manager set under pressure, by the need of commercial viability for instance?
Ultimately what we are trying to do is put out releases of such quality and consistency that people will feel able to trust our releases even if they have never heard of the artist. It makes absolutely no sense for us to try to play the pop game. In terms of the underground "commerciality" is kind of meaningless. I'm sure Merzbow or the Boredoms sell records and I don't think anyone would call them commercial. On a more subtle level you could say "commercial" for us is something that fits broadly within the styles we tend towards. We have on occasion rejected stuff because we think it's too mainstream for our audience. We had a discussion recently with a band were quite good but they sounded a bit like a more trendy version of "the Lighthouse Family"!! They could be very successful but we don't have the resources and I doubt if anyone who buys our stuff would like it that much!

Hasn't it become difficult to separate this activity from your work as an artist or as producer?
Not really. It's more like an expansion. It goes back to the very first question. Art is about making choices. Malka & I feel extremely privileged to not only be able to have people take our personal work seriously but also to be able to be associated with the calibre of artist we have on the label. Anyone who really wants to know what that all adds up to should check out the "Swim team #1" sampler. We are very proud of this album and it's a fantastic introduction to our world.

What difference do you make between your different creative "occurrences" on Swim? Is the way you work (compose/record/produce) with Immersion, Bastard, Oracle or for Malka's albums very different, or not?
With the exception of Oracle which is no longer a current project (it can't be Oracle without Samy and none of us really have the time..) It has to be said that all of the above are Malka & I working together in different modes. You could say it's all Immersion, certainly as far as playing live goes. It is in a way the core project as it is the simplest name with which to associate both the musical & visual side of what we do. On record Immersion is pretty much instrumental and has moved this year into being totally an a/v project. We'd really like to be making DVD "albums" but it's not yet commercially viable.
There is a very clear development with Malka's albums, on which we become more and more like a band. Somehow Malka is the right singer for this band. She has developed vocally so much since we have been working together!
One shouldn't make the mistake of presuming that an album by Colin Newman on swim is any less a partnership project than an album by Immersion or one by Malka. We work completely as a partnership. It's kind of hard to know sometimes who does what. I tend to be the more technical one. Malka is good at getting to the main point of anything.

Could you imagine not working with Malka for a recording?
Outside of Wire, not really.

As a former art student, and someone who has always been interested in visual arts (installations, video: see the Immersion installation project), how do you consider the evolution of this whole scene? Don't you agree that the conceptual aspect has received an extremely important role, and that the idea often tends to replace the mere creativity (please do not understand this statement as a kind of reactionary assertion)? Do you think that art (visual art as well as music) is now bound to taking itself as object?
I went to Art school and Malka has just hot her PhD in Fine Arts in University. However in many technical senses the worlds of non-academic music making and visual fine arts are very far apart in this period. This has it's roots in the conceptualist movements, like for example Art and Language (one of who's founders taught me art history at art school) of the 70's which still hold much intellectual sway over the fine arts world. There is some kind of "rapprochement" happening in a non-academic sense between the worlds but there remain great differences. The way that manifests is in simple terms is that you can succeed with a piece of visual art that has a "concept" but looks shit but you'll never succeed with a piece of music with a "concept" that sounds shit! (Interestingly, Chris Cunningham "star" of the RA's "Apocalypse" show who has a background in making art "pop" videos, most famously Aphex's "Come To Daddy", commented that he felt that the fine arts video tradition of "primitive" execution makes him feel insecure about his much more ""hi-fi" approach). On a more basic level, music can move emotions without explanation, it IS what it is while visual arts (with very few exceptions Rothko, Turrell) propose an analogue for the ideas they are trying to convey. However it can also be true that music with no conceptual basis can be facile and there is plenty in the visual arts world to stimulate. In our A/V work we are trying to combine visual abstraction with the kind of abstraction that the kind of music we make naturally tends towards and using very similar working methods on both aspects. This is a BIG subject for us and we are very privileged to be in a position to work in both media and we would like to consider ourselves as being involved in a synthesis of those media.

Which artists would you mentioned as having been important for you in that field (except from the unavoidable Marcel Duchamp)?
There's lots. I would recommend any visitor to London to go and see the new Tate Modern. Not only is the building very impressive but they have work there I would never have expected to see in an institution such as that and they are much more "underground" than you'd expect with their choices. Current favourites are the German photographers Andreas Gursky & Thomas Ruff, as well as James Turrell, Piero Manzoni, Haim Steinbach, Richard Wilson, Philippe Starck, Wolfgang Tillmans.

Concerning influences: You may dislike this, but if not too much, could you please quote the musicians (past & present) that you are considering as the most valid/interesting (not in the French meaning)?
Again so many! All anyone can say is what they like now and what they thought of when they were doing the list! Also I don't in any way like everything these people are/were doing or even necessarily like what they are doing now BUT they've all done something (at least ONE thing) magical at some point. So… in no particular order… : all swim artists past and present, anyone I've ever worked with plus The Beatles, Nico Sykes, To Rococo Rot, Tarwater, Brian Eno, John Renbourne, Terry Riley, LTJ Bukem, My Bloody Valentine, The Beach Boys, Arvo Pärt, Steve Reich, Seefeel, Magnetophone, Renegade Soundwave, Laika, Mono Junk, Aphex Twin, Rossburger Report, The Damned, Vapourspace, Frank Sinatra, Plastikman, FUSE, LFO, Kraftwerk, Baby Ford, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Wild Planet, Cabaret Voltaire, The Master Musicians of Jajouka, Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim), Beethoven, Speedy J, Underground Resistance, The Kinks, David Bowie, Steely Dan, Todd Rungren, Genesis, Tuxedomoon, Benjamin Lew, Scanner, King Crimson, Soft Machine, Can, Neu, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones, Daft Punk, Serge Gainsbourg, Rod Stewart, The Sabri Brothers, Tortoise, Happy Mondays, Andwella, Mogwai, Pole, Fridge, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Ornette Coleman, The Buzzcocks, Patti Smith, The Modern Lovers, Isaac Hayes, The Isley Brothers, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, The Cats, The Upsetters, Desmond Dekker, Millie Small, The Mothers of Invention, De La Soul, Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel, Junk Boy, Bowery Electric, Bert Jansch, Michael Jackson, Inner City, The Carpenters, Jethro Tull, Wallstar, Ten Benson, Massive Attack, Alice Cooper, Lush, Cocteau Twins, This Heat, The Ramones, Klute, Cornershop, The Dandy Warhols, AC Marias, The Orb, Spawn, Ennio Morricone, Napalm Death, Sonic Youth, Maurizio, Manicured Noise, New Order, Joe Crow, The 4 Plugs, The Nerves, Velvet Underground, Hawkwind, Deep Purple, Free, The Move, Dionne Warwick, Otis Redding, Leftfield, "Phases of the Moon", Big Bottom, Godflesh, The Flaming Groovies, Imagination, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Rankin' Trevor, The Pioneers, Simaryp, Boris Gardner, Prince Buster, Ronnie Laws, Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto, The Residents, Chrome, Nitzer Ebb, David Crosby, The Prodigy, The Beta Band, Jurassic 5, Sly & the Family Stone, Van Der Graaf Generator, Spirit, Sex Pistols, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Devo, Aux 88, Balil, Shake, Deneuve, Mott The Hopple, Family, Small Faces, Kevin Ayers, Traffic, Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, Bel Canto, 1910 Fruitgum Co., James Taylor, Nick Drake, John Martyn, Sandoz, Portishead, Derrick May, Van Der Graaf Generator, Emiliana Torrini, Dave Brubeck, The Stone Roses, The New York Dolls, Stina Nordenstam, Joe Meek, Plug, Kate Bush, Jyoti Mishra (Whitetown). I'm sure there are more!! One day when we have about 17 hours I'll tell you why each of those on the list were chosen.