Playing With Gators and Dying With Dogs: Benjamin Tan and Catherine Hardwicke in Conversation

intro by Chimera Mohammadi
stills from Dog (2024)

In Benjamin Tan’s 2024 short film, Dog, teenage angst sizzles from the screen in a haze of rave-flavored smoke almost thick enough to make you cough. Tan speaks with filmmaker Catherine Hardwicke–who described and shaped generations of adolescent fantasies and fears with movies like Thirteen (2003), Lords of Dogtown (2005), and Twilight (2008)–to identify the strains of terror, rebellion, and self-destruction that combine to infuse the atmospheres of their movies with punch-drunk drama. Dog exists only in tight, black and white images of raves, bedrooms, and cars, which are so myopic that each small scene expands into a massive world, capturing a hedonistic sense of frightening abandon by allowing each moment to become all-consuming. Hardwicke also harnesses deprivation to produce abundance, her coming-of-age stories defined by a similar smallness as limited backdrops make up the vastness of young adult worlds. The limitations of their settings go from comfortingly controlled to claustrophobically constrictive as bacchanalian exploration leads down dark, dead-end roads. Tan and Hardwicke’s films are astonishing for their abilities to capture the unbound possibility of youth culture and keep the camera trained when the carcass of promise begins to rot and fester in its fishnets and kandi bracelets. In conversation, the creators turn their gazes on their own explosive entrances to adulthood, sifting through memories of predators, secrecy, and ecstasy, cataloging the bruises and scars they passed down to their protagonists.

BEN TAN: I watched Thirteen for the first time when I was in middle school. It’s such an honest depiction of teenagers, and it was the first time I watched a film where the characters mirrored my own experiences.  

CATHERINE HARDWICKE: Yeah, that was definitely the idea: to make it feel like you were just living like Nikki Reed was living at the time. I would go over to her house and film, with my little video camera, a war between her and her mom. We hadn't really seen what was really going on with teenage girls and all the stress and struggle and peer pressure and all that crazy shit. I went and volunteered at Nikki’s middle school and I saw wild behavior. I saw the teacher trying to wrangle out-of-control students with cell phones running around and guys calling girls pretty outrageous things right there out loud in class. And I thought, this is a lot to deal with. Do people really understand what's going on in a nice school?  

TAN: Did you have a rebellious childhood?  

HARDWICKE: Everybody kind of has to, a little bit. I grew up in South Texas and it was a very different environment. We would be on the Rio Grande River doing crazy stuff like rope slings.  There would be snakes there. There would be 12ft alligator guards. It was a very rowdy childhood. Like, “We're gonna swim across the river. We're gonna run around in Mexico, illegal entry.”  

TAN: So you were like an adrenaline junkie.  

HARDWICKE: Exactly. If you had bruises on you, you know you had fun. If you didn't, you were a wimp. I guess it’s its own form of rebellion. Rebellion against ordinary life. Boredom.  

TAN: I grew up skateboarding and Jackass was a big influence on my brothers and I. We’d blow shit up on our street or skate off roofs. Just be completely crazy kids. I feel like my destructive childhood formed my creative adulthood.  

HARDWICKE: I kind of feel lucky that I had crazy adventures as a kid. When you make something very specific, which you did in Dog, it's more relatable to people. I was amazed how you had a very complex relationship with the mother and the sister established almost in 30 seconds. And you're curious and it's a mystery. What is going on? We're drawn into it right away. I think it was so fascinating that you created this kind of mystery at the beginning about the sister and then we start to reveal it. Some people might not even realize that she's blind until the touching game.  

TAN: Yeah, I wanted the opening to set things up quickly but be subtle enough, leaving some mystery for the audience to discover the characters.  

HARDWICKE: Well, it helps. You keep leaning in. There's something a little off. You're curious. I want to know more. Keeps you in with the film. I like that. Did you feel like you based these on real people that you knew?  

TAN: I went to raves at a really young age, like 11. I fell in love with the music right away. At a rave, you can have a profound spiritual experience but there's an element of danger just around the corner. It’s not based on anyone in particular, but I wanted to express the anxiety I felt as a teenager. I always felt like something could go wrong at any moment, or worse, my parents would discover my secrets.  

HARDWICKE: It's not the most safe environment.  

TAN: But the older sister is more experienced.  

HARDWICKE: She knows not to drink the voodoo juice. Even if you try to be the best big sister you can be, something else could happen.  

TAN: And when you’re a teenager and something bad happens to you, you don't want to share it with anyone. We default to keeping secrets because we want to protect the people that we love from our own pain. We don’t want to inflict it on anyone else.  

HARDWICKE: Wow. Yeah, that's intense.  

TAN: I think I see a lot of similarities with Thirteen. Tracy pushes away her mother to hide her pain.  

HARDWICKE: She's secretly cutting and doesn’t tell her mother, but that takes great pains to hide it. 

TAN: In my middle school, raver girls would wear kandi bracelets they’d make and they’d say things like “love” and “peace” but underneath they were hiding the scars on their wrists.  

HARDWICKE: There's a lot of irony built into that. Talk to me about the music and how you wove the music and when you chose to use it.  

TAN: Austin Feinstein made the score. I showed him some scenes and he made two demo songs that I placed in the areas where I thought needed music. It worked right away. He tried to convince me to use no score because he thought that the film was stronger without music, but his music really sets the mood.  

HARDWICKE: But you were always going to have it in the rave.  

TAN: That's true. The rave music was a song from a Scottish techno DJ called Franck. I wanted to have authentic techno, so I reached out to him. and he let us use his song.  

HARDWICKE: Oh, that's so cool.  

TAN: When you were shooting Thirteen, did you rearrange the dialogue and edit things on the day? How much did you execute that script by the book?  

HARDWICKE: What we did is, we wrote it standing up. I had been observing, having her friends over at my house all the time for surf and skate camps and slumber parties and going to her house and going to the schools and all that. So I was kind of like taking all this in, absorbing the scenes that I thought were interesting. I'd say, “Let's improv out a scene.  Let’s do a scene where you came home from school and your mom says this. I’ll play your mom, you play yourself.” And then as soon as we finished acting, I would write it up the best we could and put it into the screenplay. But during the rehearsal process, I’d schedule the scenes that I was the most worried about. And I said, let's work on the big confrontational scene. We would try it out. If people felt like their words were clunky or not natural, say it in your own words, inner monologue, what are you really feeling? Say what's in the script now that we've talked through it all and we felt it. Sometimes those inner monologues, those improvs would give a great line that needs to be in. Sometimes it's just an exercise to connect you to the material. Sometimes there's something great that happens. 

TAN: When we shot Dog, Alexis Felix, who plays Summer, was giving her mom a quick rundown of Meisner technique just hours before we shot her scenes. They were changing the script so their argument was in their own words, making it more natural. It definitely sounded better. Her mom had never acted before but I casted her because that chemistry and history is already there and I've witnessed them have a heated debate more than one time.  

HARDWICKE: Which is kind of great because you could feel it. There's this built in tension. There's little trigger points that everybody has. When you made Dog, did you rehearse?  

TAN: We only rehearsed the long scene where Tommy is flirting with Lex, and Summer feels the need to intervene. Tommy is on molly, so he’s not thinking rationally. Also, we don’t fully know Tommy and Summer’s past. One thing we did in the rehearsal process was create a backstory between Summer and Tommy and the relationship that they had. That backstory that we created really guided the nuances of that scene.  

HARDWICKE: I thought it was really effective. Certainly in Thirteen, there's the backstory and all the different things, her mother’s struggle with addiction and what her relationship with the mother's ex-boyfriend was. Even in Twilight, we rehearsed scenes of Bella with her father and her mother when her parents told her, we're getting divorced. We played improv scenes where Bella hung out with her dad at Disneyland when she was 13 years old, and super awkward. None of that is in the movie, of course, or even in the books. Just the fact that the actors had that sense memory. That informs the scene.  

TAN: Wow, yeah, you can definitely feel it. I love your use of color. How Thirteen takes on a blue melancholic tone as the relationships become more conflicted. And how the ending scene with the sunrise resets everything and allows the color back into their life. Was that something that you thought of early on or did you kind of discover that in post?  

HARDWICKE: I was thinking a lot of this movie, 60% or 70%, is going to be in a house and a lot of it's going to be in one bedroom. I thought, how is that going to be interesting? How does the light change? How could the movie stay alive? It's kind of an emotional rollercoaster with the color. It’s normal and bland lighting at the beginning. Then, when Evie comes into her life, it's glowing. We start cranking up the chroma a bit when she starts doing drugs and experimenting. So there's a bit more exaggeration to the colors. When they break up, the color starts draining out. The color goes away back to the blue grays and finally the end when the sun comes up. You made an absolutely beautiful movie in black and white. Why did you choose black and white?  

TAN: I wanted to remove a sense from the audience as a reminder that Lex, the blind character, is missing a sense too. Also, there is the notion that dogs see in black and white. Besides setting a mood quickly, these examples were compelling reasons that I felt motivated the aesthetic. Also, I think that showing it in black and white kind of enhances the imagination of what could be in the setting. When you take the color away, the scale of the rave looks so much bigger.  

HARDWICKE: I think so too. I used to be a production designer, and when I didn't have enough money to control or create the world the way I wanted to, I would often be asking,  “Could we make this in black and white?” I think it's very smart. You created a beautiful, unified look. I thought it worked emotionally. And I thought it was exciting to be in a rave without color because now you have to think about other parts of a rave. You're thinking more about the music, the rhythm, the other elements. 

Tactile With The World: An Interview of Photographer & Filmmaker Lewis Khan

interview by Lara Monro
photographs by Lewis Khan

British Photographer and filmmaker, Lewis Khan, uses London as one of his many creative resources. The city has great sentimental importance to the native South Londoner, who has lived on Bonnington Square for most of his life. Tucked away behind the traffic of Vauxhall, the square is one of 300+ housing cooperatives in London, owned and run by its tenants. It has a unique and fascinating history that owes much to the squatters who moved in during the ‘80s as a preventative measure to avoid demolition of the residential buildings. The community set up a whole foods shop and vegetarian café, which is still there to this day. 

Unsurprisingly, Khan draws much influence from the solid foundations of his local community. As a result, his interests focus heavily on the study of emotions, relationships and belonging. Working with stills and moving image, his achievements include Theatre, a photo series documenting the realities of medical professionals over a period of four years at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and West Middlesex Hospital in London and It’ll Soon Be Nighttime (2021). This filmic work focuses on a long-standing friendship with the 58-year-old George, who Khan met at the age of fifteen. 

Khan adopts the collaborative and inclusive mentality of Bonnington Square within his creative practice, which prompts a personal and insightful approach to his work. He spoke with Autre to discuss why he is drawn to photography and film, his recent trip to the States, and why he enjoys finding beauty in the small things. 

LARA MONRO: Can you tell me a bit about your creative practice and your journey with it? When did it begin?

LEWIS KHAN: I’m a photographic artist from south London. I work with stills and moving image, and my work is a  study of emotion, relationships, and belonging. I’m interested in the experiences that the pursuit of taking pictures opens up, particularly portraits. Taking photos for me is a way of being tactile with the world. I enjoy finding beauty in the overlooked, and using the medium as a means to form connections with people and places.  

What do you seek to uncover through your work and what are some of your biggest achievements to date?

There have been some amazing milestones for sure; early on having my graduate work Georgetown exhibited at the Photographers Gallery, having Theatre published as a limited-edition photo book in 2020, being represented by At Trayler. But to be honest, I’m just so grateful that I get to do something I love full time. I realized it the first few shoots back after everything had been off for so long with the pandemic. I’d never taken a moment to pause before then. I guess l was always wrapped up in trying to do this, and that, and the next thing.

MONRO: London is one of your most important creative resources. What is it about the city that  you find so intriguing/inspiring? 

KHAN: London is home, it’s where I grew up and have always lived. I feel like a product of it and that doesn’t feel like a negative thing. I see it as a foundational place, a base. Familiar and well trodden.

MONRO: Can you tell me about your community in Bonnington Square and what it means to you? 

KHAN: Bonnington Square is a deeply special place to me. It’s an ex-squatting, now housing co-operative, community in Vauxhall in South London. It’s where I grew up along with a lot of my closest friends.  What’s really amazing is that because of the housing co-operative we’re all still able to live there as adults. Everyone moves houses around the street quite a bit and a lot of our parents still live there. A lot of our generation are there too, and now even some of our generation have kids, so there is the next generation living on the Square. Everyone knows everyone on the street, it’s kind of village life. Eastenders tucked away next to the massive traffic junction in zone 1 London. I feel really lucky to have grown up in that environment, the sense of community, wider family. Growing up here definitely shaped my outlook on things.

MONRO: You have worked with film when documenting your community of friends and family. Your most recent work: It’ll Soon Be Night Time, follows one specific character, George. Can you  tell me about him and your relationship? 

KHAN: George was someone I met as a teenager, after he moved into a flat on Bonnington Square. It’s a super social street, everyone knows each other, and there always used to be a big bunch of us out skateboarding, playing football in the road, hanging out smoking on the benches, etc. George used to blast music and sing, walk with his radio and flags, so it didn’t take long before he got to know everyone.  

As we got more acquainted we would chat in the street, and George would often talk with heart about his past. Certain names and places would come up again and again, and I started noticing those same names written on lamp posts and pavements around the area too. I didn’t really understand George’s story in full, but I felt the emotional weight of what he was telling me.  

In 2013, I made a short film entitled Georgetown about him. The process ended up being a way for me to better understand George’s story more substantially. The act of “doing the film” gave license for us both to speak on things more deeply, and reason to spend extended periods of time hanging out. This is a good example of what I meant by the experiences that the pursuit of taking pictures opens up.

Since making Georgetown, George and myself have remained close. We see each other a lot and speak often on the phone. During the various Covid-19 lockdowns and being isolated indoors, we were speaking on the phone a lot, and I started to see a specialness in the ordinary chit chat of the phone calls I hadn’t noticed before. I bought a recording device for my phone and started to record the calls we were having. I liked that the words were now tangible things, not lost to the air. I think because we were all living so isolated from one another, the value in these fairly ordinary exchanges felt increased. I didn’t see George much over that period but heard his voice a lot and  started to find our phone call space unique. These recordings then became the motivation and the basis for the video piece It’ll Soon Be Night Time. 

screen capture from It’ll Soon Be Night Time by Lewis Khan

MONRO: What have you found most informative about working with film and photography? 

KHAN: Probably the number of different experiences, places, people, settings that I’ve had time with through film and photography. It’s a privileged position of getting to live all these different snippets of different ways of life.  

MONRO: Why do you think you are drawn to film and photography as your main mediums? 

KHAN: I enjoy their foundation in the real world, and how they enable me to have a specific type of interaction with people and my environment.

MONRO: You are currently travelling around New Mexico. Can you tell me about the trip and what you hope to gain from it? 

KHAN: Yeah that’s right, I’m out here at the moment. The reasons for coming here were a mixture of things. For the last couple of years I’ve been working on projects where I’m either exploring something personal or I’m working with someone, or a place that is close to me emotionally. This was in part due to the pandemic; that much more isolated life caused me to focus on making work that was more introspective. My practice is largely documentary-based so the work needs to be "of" something. Sometimes with an idea or concept that isn’t immediately so straightforward to represent through documentary photography or video, that figuring out process can be quite lengthy and at times I can get quite bogged down mentally. Having finished those pieces of work I found myself needing a switch up in process, a palette cleanser to cut through some of that previous mental clogginess. I wanted some time to travel, which is  something I haven’t done since pre-pandemic, just some focused time to make work in an intuitive way. I’ve always been fascinated by the desert, the plants and the tufts that grow there, the concept of an ‘oasis’ I find interesting. How humans are interacting with that terrain I also find interesting. These points along with my overarching interests in belonging and human experience made me take this trip.

MONRO: What is next for you? Do you have anything in the pipeline, any creative goals? 

KHAN: One of the pieces of work mentioned above I’m yet to put out, It’ll Soon Be Night Time. It’s a video piece made of phone recordings between me and George during the pandemic and then video  footage mainly of times before that when we were going places and doing things, Vauxhall/ Bonnington Square and people-focused mainly. It’s a very personal piece of work so it’s always interesting to see how that will be received, but I'm really looking forward to giving it an audience.

To Erase a Cloud: An Interview Of Jim Longden Following The Release Of His Debut Short

interview by Lara Monro
photographs by Domino Leaha

The London-based artist Jim Longden has released his debut short, To Erase a Cloud. Shot on 16mm film, the twenty-minute piece is “a sort of crash-course to the introductions of filmmaking.” To Erase a Cloud delves into the harsh realities of grief. The poet and actor Sonny Hall, a good friend of Longden, plays the painfully tormented, reckless and broken main protagonist, John Little.

The opening scene shows Little living a depressing existence in his dirty apartment; drinking dregs of empty beer cans and lighting half smoked fags as the early morning sun seeps in. We catch Little staring at his reflection in a cracked mirror; a symbol for his fractured state of mind and the result of his self-inflicted isolation spurred on from the loss of his mother.

We meander from the realities of Little’s daily existence, which includes taking a drunken cab to his mother’s grave, robbing a porno from the local off-licence, and surreal dream sequences that question the perception of Little’s reality. The poetic filmwork was made by Longden during the height of the covid pandemic. Although it may seem a desperate state of affairs, Longden manages to find beauty in the bleakness. As the saying goes; without darkness there is no light. To Erase a Cloud highlights humanity’s resilience to carry on.

On a recent trip to Italy, Longden was shot by the Italian photographer, Domino Leaha for his interview with Autre. He is currently traveling around Europe, writing his next film.

LARA MONRO: Can you tell me about your most recent filmic work, To Erase a Cloud? 

JIM LONGDEN: It’s a film about a young man being at that age when he should be passing the stage of the growing-but-stained teenager he was before, and to now be at the stage of finally entering adulthood. He is in this awkward middle, between his teenage angst, and his ongoing frustration and bitterness for the world and it’s ways. His mother not being alive, and him not being around her often during his younger teenage years, has left the character in this wayward mould of growing and developing. The character has a menacing side to him, but holds this poetic, and theatrical demeanor at the same time. We see the raw sides of his persona, but also hear from the mind which he holds. 

We shot it in the year 2020; during the time of the pandemic. The film held this atmosphere of being set in an almost deserted ghost-town area, which resembled points of reality near to those times. I had written and directed the film when I was twenty, it was to me, a sort of crash-course to the introductions of filmmaking. The shooting was a three-day experience which I learned a lot from. I found the possible perception of the more experienced members of the team interesting, because of the fact that they were seeing people acting on screen for their first times, whilst also being directed by a director who had never directed before! I see the film almost as being the equivalent to a student film, a directorial debut. And, in that sense, I am pleased with the outcome. 

MONRO: The main protagonist is the poet, Sonny Hall. How did you come to cast Hall in the film?

LONGDEN: Sonny has been a friend of mine for years. I knew he would be able to also help me with parts of the writing within it. And, he held a willingness to do things on camera, which I felt other’s may not have felt comfortable doing. Those stunts like him running into the car door of Benny Benson, and him punching the mirror after slapping himself as he faces it, were tough to see for certain people. When doing the rehearsals for that scene of him and Benny, he kept diving into the damn door in the run-throughs, we did not have a stunt supervisor present at any moment. He ended up limping for a few days after, but it was good to see this devotion from him. 

MONRO: To Erase a Cloud feels surreal in the moments when we find ourselves inside the tormented mind of the protagonist. Can you tell me more about these creative scenes and your treatment for these?

LONGDEN: Trying to make this film as good as it could be, while sticking to a very low budget was tricky. The access we had to certain locations was limited, so I had to almost treat it as if it were a theatrical story being told on the stage. I think the cinematography matched what sort of themes and styles we were aiming for. The music too, in my eyes added this blanket to the film. We used music made by Matt Elliott for the soundtrack. I had been a fan of his for years from when Sonny introduced me to his music. I also added in two guitar pieces I had created for the original score.

MONRO: Was the film mainly script-based or did you rely on improvisation? 

LONGDEN: The story was mainly script-based. At a certain point, we had just enough time to fit in a newly thought up scene, which we rushed to film. And at another point, a scene we planned had to be cut due to it not working. Scenes like the Benny Benson one, had many improvised lines on his part, and certain movements as mentioned previously, could only be performed once, due to others being worried about the rightful code of health and safety. There are a lot of give and takes, sometimes they help, sometimes they don’t. The opening dance scene was an idea Sonny came up with, and on the day we were only able to film it in two takes.… Within a moment like that, the outline of the scene is there, but the rest is out of control, it is up to the subject to perform. We spent quite a while tweaking, adding, removing, changing things in the script, but at times, that could make one’s mind go around in circles. So, in that sense, I had to be careful and trust my instinct. 

MONRO: Do you have a favourite scene, or are there any that stand out most to you for any particular reason?

LONGDEN: I liked the writing in the scene where we enter the mind of Johnny Little. I also enjoy watching the dream sequence he has.

Film still

Film still

Film still

Film still

MONRO: It seems you mainly work with film and photography. Have these always been your preferred mediums? 

LONGDEN: Yes, they have. I had swerved within different lanes after leaving school, to survive and to keep myself busy. But, when I was younger, I wanted to become a professional football player. And when that dream faded, I was saved by the thrill of wanting to take photos and make films. 

MONRO: Are there other mediums you would like to introduce into your creative practice?

LONGDEN: Maybe joining a Gypsy guitar band or something? 

MONRO: Your website also features clothing. When did you first venture into fashion, and can you tell me what CAPO stands for? 

LONGDEN: The clothing is merely merchandise, which is how I am able to keep my stomach full.

MONRO: You left school at sixteen to follow your creative pursuits. Did you face difficulties infiltrating the creative world as a self-taught artist/filmmaker? 

LONGDEN: I wouldn’t say difficulties, I was more just upset at the fact that I didn’t know who to trust. I didn’t know what was real or not. I didn’t want to play snakes and ladders. I was at a blossoming, but vulnerable age, and didn’t want to have the blood sucked from me. I wanted to stay true to what I believed in, but at the same time, I needed to be able to move forward. It was an experience, that’s for sure. 

MONRO: Are you working on anything else at the moment?

LONGDEN: Over the past few years, I have been taking photographs for a book I want to create. It holds the working title, Where You Are When You Don’t Know Where You Are?. I really look forward to being at that blissful moment when I think the book is ready and complete. 

I also started writing passages, for what can maybe one day become a book. I am not certain of this happening any time soon though, I think I need more time to develop my writing before releasing it. But, it’s in motion, currently holding the working title of, Memoirs of a Balloon.

Existential Time: An Interview Of Gisela Colón

interview by Summer Bowie

I conducted this interview with Gisela Colón on November 19, 2020, just after a mysterious obelisk-like structure was discovered in Utah’s Red Rock Country, and just days before the discovery was announced. Exactly when this crudely bolted, John McCracken-like monolith was initially installed is a mystery. That it was found by state employees counting sheep has been described as the most 2020 thing of 2020. Since then, multiple monoliths of varied fashion have been appearing and disappearing around the world, leading to a magnifying force of everything from commercial opportunists, to alien conspiracy theorists, to a Christian military LARPing crusade. Meanwhile, Gisela has been installing her solo exhibition, EXISTENTIAL TIME, Exploring Cosmic Past, Present and Future, of monolith and rectanguloid sculptures created in quarantine from optical acrylics and aerospace carbon fiber. Her unique sculptural language embodies the way that time expands, retracts and collapses. Her two short films express the anxieties that result from isolation and inertness. Her inquiries into the laws of physics address non-linear time flows and they provide the viewer with a sensory and intellectual experience in the grand cosmic sense of time and space. In essence, these “organic minimal” forms inherently attract a diversified coterie of forces that might point toward all the reasons we could be feeling our fragmented world suddenly culled together by a mysterious ping.

SUMMER BOWIE: You studied economics in Puerto Rico, and then you came to Los Angeles to study law, but how exactly did you realize that your career would be at the intersection of art and aerospace technology?

GISELA COLÓN: I grew up in Puerto Rico and I went to University of Puerto Rico, studying economics with a minor in political science, but I was a painter very early on with my mother. We painted for years together, since I was four or five years old. I made paintings of everything around me in Puerto Rico, which is a particularly diverse biological region. So I painted still lifes and landscapes, spent a lot of time hiking in the rainforest, on the beach–I was exposed through my Puerto Rican upbringing to a really vibrant, alive biological world that’s at the root of all of my work. That’s my primal source where I go back to everything. When I graduated from university, I came to Los Angeles to study law, not because I was fascinated by law at all, but because I grew up fairly poor. It was survival mode: if I study law, I will be able to understand society and how society functions, especially as a woman growing up in Puerto Rico. It wasn’t easy, I lost my mother at twelve after she went through a terrible divorce with my father. There was a lot of violence in the men around me, everybody carried guns. So for pragmatic and practical reasons, I studied law in my twenties, but I kept on going back to the painting, and the art, and thinking, this is what I love doing. I created so much art in my youth and I want to continue to do it, and it worked its way into the right time.

BOWIE: Your work draws this very seamless connection between science and art. It seems like you’re constantly fusing the artistic sensibilities of your mother with the scientific ambitions of your father.

COLÓN: You just hit the nail on the head. I was brought up with both science and art very actively because my dad—being a PhD in chemistry—he always had all of these chemistry sets around, and we experimented with crazy things. My Puerto Rican grandmother was a pharmacist, so in her closet she had all of these medicine bottles and syringes lying around. I would grab them and start taking stuff out with the syringes as a kid and go inject the banana leaves, and then take the banana leaves and cook them in a pot. We were always making concoctions and chemistry things, and so it was really a duality of this art and science as a child that now I combine again. 

In fourth grade, I wanted to be a paleontologist and dig up dinosaur bones because it was so fascinating, looking at the rocks and the minerals. I went through that on my own, loving the earth and loving the kind of archaeological vestiges, or past history of our existence on Earth. 

Gisela Colón, Rectanguloid (Quartz Spectrum), 2020. Blow-molded acrylic. 91.25 x 43.5 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist and GAVLAK Los Angeles / Palm Beach.

By fifth grade, I started really studying outer space and science, and I was just fascinated by the moon. I’d spend hours looking up at the moon and the sun and trying to identify the planets at night in the sky, and I said I want to be an astronaut. I remember my mother saying, “You can be whatever you want to be, but if you’re an astronaut, you’re never going to be able to get married and have kids.” It was the traditional woman’s view of the world. That wouldn’t have deterred me per se, but it made me think twice–do I really want to go and do this? Then by sixth grade, I was back onto loving the art. It was just as a child, going through all the different progressions and iterations of your thoughts and your environment. Put it all in a soup pot, and then years later it comes out.

BOWIE: It seems a great many layers of your identity were established at a very early age. A lot of artists emulate other artists early on in their practice, and your earliest works were often compared to many Light and Space artists like Craig Kauffman and Robert Irwin, but was there a defining moment when it felt like your works were really your own?

COLÓN: Oh yeah, absolutely. When I first started painting, my earlier influences were more like the Latin American Op Artists that I had studied in books because I’m self-taught, so I would read about Carlos Cruz-Diez, and Soto, and all the traditional Latin painters, and then I became friends with a lot of the Light and Space contingency of older generation artists. I read all of Robert Irwin’s manifestos on perceptualism, and then I really got into minimalism and started spending a lot of time in Marfa studying Judd and Flavin and Doug Wheeler, John McCracken, and on and on. There was a phase there in the middle, what I call my transitional phase. When I first started working with plastic, I started painting the plastic similar to Kauffman, that was my springboard. Then, within a very few short months, I said, “this is not my thing because I have to pursue something different that has not been done before.” 

That’s when I started experimenting with these new optical materials. There’s no paint involved, and it was like I had this eureka moment where I would form a piece, and then I’d put it on the floor, and I’d put something underneath it, and then I’d form another layer until I struck upon this whole layering of materials, which created a prism. It’s the point of view of a woman and of a Latinx artist, because that’s the other dimensionality. It really pisses me off when people say, “Oh, you’re a second generation space artist.” No, I’m not! Not even fifth generation, for god’s sake. It’s been sixty years. I am a Latin woman in the 21st century using modern materials that had never been used before and creating my own language, my own vocabulary, which I’ve titled organic minimalism. It’s a new and different interpretation from the point of view of somebody who puts life and this whole Latin point of view in their objects.

Gisela Colón, Rectanguloid (Quartz Spectrum), 2020. Blow-molded acrylic. 91.25 x 43.5 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist and GAVLAK Los Angeles / Palm Beach.

BOWIE: Another thing I think that struck me is the way that your works are often considered a feminist take on Finish Fetish, and yet I’d say there’s a rather loud expression of femininity that has gone almost unrecognized in the works of say, Billy Al Bengston or Peter Alexander, et al.

COLÓN: Don’t even get me started on that topic because I’ve written a whole essay on this—not published yet—but have you studied Craig Kauffman’s work? Pink bubbles...think about this, the titles. Bubbles. He made dishes, he made donuts. There were all these things that belong in the kitchen. It was the purview in that era of women, and most of his colors and his glitter—oh, his flowers contain glitter—so if you look at all the titles, flowers, dishes, donuts, loops—you know loops that look like a piece of clothing hanging on the loop? Like on a clothesline? To me, his entire oeuvre, when I look at it, is made by a woman, except that he was a man. 

I’m taking the masculine, like these monoliths, which have destructive references to projectiles, bullets, rockets and missiles, and feminizing it; softening it to the world. I reference Judy Chicago a lot in this process because her atmospheres from the 1970s are precedent. Basically, what she did is she put these colors out into the world that were the feminine impulse and softened things. I’m putting these impulses of women, and you could say femininity, but it’s really more feminist. It’s saying, “I can tackle the purview of men. I can tackle these forms and, as a woman, be fluid in the gender approach to my work. I can do all this and still be strong and create meaningful work.” It’s this fluid gender spectrum that’s embedded in the work, because when you look at some of my more organic forms, they’re vessels for life, like cells or things that generate life.

BOWIE: It’s really interesting because they have a very phallic shape, and yet at the same time, those nuclei are almost like the yolks of an egg.

COLÓN: Well also it could be phallic penetration, or reproduction—some people say they see a womb and the seed of a baby, or life inside. It really fluctuates fluidly between genders. It’s really oscillating between masculine and feminine. I can take anything; I can go from masculine to feminine and back. 

BOWIE: There’s something to be said about the subtlety of such a subversion. At first glance, the works feel anything but political. You’re experiencing them on such a sensational level, moving around them, watching them change, and it takes a while for all of the implications to set in, which is really nice. You have to sit with it for a moment while it all sinks in.

Gisela Colón, Rectanguloid (Rubidium Spectrum), 2020. Blow-molded acrylic. 91.25 x 43.5 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist and GAVLAK Los Angeles / Palm Beach.

COLÓN: What you’re getting at is the whole topic of beauty as a concept in art, and beauty is a bad word. You’re not supposed to make beautiful art, or you’re not supposed to make art that is attractive to the eye, but there’s a wide range of artists that are abstractionists that have made beautiful work, like Sam Gilliam. They’re finally getting recognized as people realize it’s okay to make beautiful work with an undertone of political statement that’s not always specifically identified, but it’s there by virtue of its existence. It’s there by virtue of the fact that the artist that is making it is making this kind of work. That’s the political statement.

BOWIE: You make works that change color and form as the viewer moves, and these qualities are highly sensitive to the environment that surrounds them. Are the environmental conditions of the exhibition space something that you consider before or after making the work?

COLÓN: I never considered it before because I make the work knowing that it is a variable and mutable object and that it will alter depending on where you place it and who’s looking at it. Now, I do like presenting it in the proper lighting. Obviously once it gets into the commercial gallery setting or the museum setting, I want to make sure that everything is lit properly so that the viewers can really experience the full spectrum, but the works are alive. It’s kind of like they’re alive and they do things sometimes that you’re not expecting, so they have a life of their own. 

BOWIE: And when people collect the works, do you prescribe the conditions of the environment they’re displayed in at all?

COLÓN: I would prescribe a proper lighting, but it’s really up to them. It’s their work. If they want to experience something a little differently, that’s them. I’ve had collectors who have said to me, “Oh my god, during the day it looks one way, and in the middle of the night, I walked around the living room, everything was turned off, and all of a sudden the thing was glowing at me.” It’s really up to the collector to enjoy it, and that’s part of the perceptual experience that it really is in the eye of the beholder, it’s participatory. The ultimate enjoyer of the work completes the experience.

Gisela Colón, Rectanguloid (Gamma Spectrum), 2020. Blow-molded acrylic. 91.25 x 43.5 x 6 in. Courtesy of the artist and GAVLAK Los Angeles / Palm Beach.

BOWIE: I don’t think your work is ever acknowledged as performance, but there’s a performative aspect to it because the object is always performing in relationship to the viewer and the environment.

COLÓN: It is, but what I think you’re hitting on is the element of time. Performance is time, but in this case what you encounter is a real sense of memory. You can have a memory of an object, and have that picture in your head, and then encounter it at a later time and it changed completely. So, the performative aspect even goes beyond just the moment, but it involves memories and the capturing of ideas that will resurface later on. This whole concept of collapsing time, existential time, is woven into that participatory aspect that you’re talking about.

BOWIE: How has the use of a time-based medium such as film made it easier or more challenging to address the non-linearity of time?

COLÓN: Well in fact, that was the greatest kind of paradox. Here I was talking about this stasis and paralysis and inertia, yet the only way of communicating it effectively was through this time-based medium, which takes you through the feeling quickly. So it was a paradoxical thing, but I enjoyed doing it. I think it’ll be effective.

BOWIE: When you’re making a work that changes with your every movement and that changes with the environment, how do you know that it’s done?

COLÓN: It’s a real visceral feeling. You know how, at some point when life started in the little cesspool of hot water, and there was that initial ray of light that came through the pond, and somehow that first cell started—that primeval, primordial spark of energy? I can feel it because that’s what I look for. That’s what I tap into when I’m making these pieces. When it’s completed is when I finally look down at it and it glows back at me like it’s alive. Then, I have that recognition that we have in ourselves. I say we’re all composed of stardust. We go back eons and eons into the universe, before time, so we have that instinctual knowledge, and a lot people don’t access it, or they don’t tap into it, but I always talk about how you can feel that if you just quiet the noise around you, get off of Instagram, and just really focus for a minute. You’ll feel what it is to be alive because it’s in your cells. I use the elliptical form a lot and that curvature which is present in our cells. Even our DNA strands involve movement, so this whole concept of movement in art is present inside us. We never stop moving; our cells never stop multiplying. I know when a piece is ready because I can feel it in my cells.

BOWIE: We are so used to experiencing time in this way where we take little snapshots of things, and we think of life happening in these blocks, when actually it is this amorphous, constantly moving thing. Looking at it like still images helps us to understand the world around us, but when we can’t give into that deep time, to that cosmic time, we lose our ability to instinctively feel when things are arriving or going.

COLÓN: Absolutely, because you don’t experience the passage of time absent change around you, which is why the quarantine was so nerve-wracking. There wasn’t much moving or changing, yet time was passing, and so yes, it’s that whole tapping into the cosmological realm that I think we really need in this day and age, just to check ourselves. I think a lot of my work, at the core, tries to address that; to bring certain feelings about in the people who view it, to go to that primeval source of life. The cosmological realm just fascinates me. There’s so much out there, the unknown, and I feel like we’re all searching for something, and nobody really talks about it, but it’s right there. All you gotta do is go out at night and look up in the sky, and when you really look at the stars and the moon–I know it sounds kind of superficial, but it’s not. When you really take it all in, it’s magnificent, what’s out there for us to access that we just don’t see every day.

EXISTENTIAL TIME, Exploring Cosmic Past, Present and Future is on view through January 3 @ GAVLAK Palm Beach 340 Royal Poinciana Way, Suite M334

Art Of The Divine: A Conversation Between Rikkí Wright & Kilo Kish

Film still from A Song About Love by Rikkí Wright

Rikkí Wright and Kilo Kish are two of the eight artists exhibiting in this year’s edition of Womxn in Windows, a socially distant group show that clearly presaged the conditions of our current moment in its first edition last year. Visitors are invited to walk along the storefronts of Chung King Road in Chinatown and watch short films through each window with scores that can be accessed via QR code. Founded and curated by Zehra Ahmed, this year’s artists were invited to exhibit work that examines the intertwined relationships between culture, religion, and society. These films remind us how womxn have relied on faith and on each other as well as on a desire for equality, understanding, and the power to make the right choices for ourselves. In both Wright and Kish’s films one observes an intimate relationship with the spiritual, however from highly contrasting perspectives and with completely unique aesthetics. Wright is a photographer who makes films and ceramics, and whose practice includes explorations of gender and faith in the Black community. Her film, A Song About Love is a spiritual reckoning on the different forms of love in this world, from human to divine. It is a moving collage that combines interviews of Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and bell hooks with the soul and gospel stylings of D.J. Rogers and more. Most notable is the way that she delicately stitches these intellectual and emotional anchors with a personal thread of vulnerable, self love that manifests directly in the undressed body of the artist as it moves languidly to the music. Kish is a singer-songwriter and visual artist who makes films and music videos. Her film, Blessed Assurance: a dream that I had, is presented as a multi-room installation that takes on a new life as six individual visual pieces, each framed in their own windows. It’s a captivating mix of recorded video overlaid with punchy, low-fi graphics, and an animated church reminiscent of a two-bit video game that transports the viewer to their own physical and spiritual dimension, somewhere between the space Kish imagines and the sky above. These varied approaches to understanding the relationship between art and the divine are reflective of their very different backgrounds and core disciplines. The following conversation is an in-depth look at the role of the body in self-portraiture, the effects of the pandemic, uprisings and election that have dominated this year, and the value of tapping into your intuition.

KILO KISH: Do you think it’s possible to fully find yourself as an artist, or is it an ever-fleeting thing? 

RIKKI WRIGHT: I think the latter. I came to photography initially, and then filmmaking. It was kind of by way of exploring and trying to understand who I am and where I came from. My mother passed away when I was two years old, and I didn’t grow up having that figure in my life. I think that once I got to a certain age, I was trying to find parts of my feminine self or the parts of womanhood that a mother gives to her child that I was lacking. But, in the midst of trying to look for photos of my mom and my childhood home, I wasn’t able to find a lot because I think the mother is the person that keeps all of these heirlooms together. That’s what brought me to wanting to create images and knowing how to make tangible evidence of something that happened in a way that just proves that that time existed. So, my work really revolves around trying to fill in that gap, around my family, and the Black family, and there are so many conversations and things that I’m trying to understand in my work constantly. It’s just ever-flowing. 

KISH: Yeah. I kind of felt that after watching your piece. It had that nostalgic quality of opening up a scrapbook, like an old scrapbook at your grandma’s house and being like, “Oh, this is Uncle Joe!” And I agree; I don’t know if you ever fully find yourself as an artist, and if you do, you just kind of move on to the next thing that’s exciting for you. If you do find something–and I attribute this more to making albums–it’s like you’re asking questions and trying to find parts of yourself that you want to explore further, and by the time you actually put the album out, you’re already onto the next thing. 

WRIGHT: That’s what’s so amazing about being an artist and having the ability to express yourself in however you do that—being able to have these conversations through your work, or just working through and processing the questions that you have. Toni Morrison talks about that a lot. All of her books start with a question, and she’s pretty much trying to answer that for herself, and strongly going, I make this work for myself first, and whoever comes to it to connect with it and is able to explore that question within the work, that’s an amazing added bonus. 

KISH: Totally. I was thinking about that a lot recently, because I was nervous in general about social media—it just doesn’t leave that space for questions. You’re presenting yourself in a way that is who this person is, but sometimes that’s tough because we are portraying, and we’re using our bodies, and we’re using figures of ourselves to play a role or explore ideas that we don’t know the answer to yet, and I think a lot of times artists get stuck in this spot where they’re like, that’s who you are! No, I was just using my body in a space. 

WRIGHT: Yeah, yeah, I mean that’s my approach in the self portraiture within my work, and also in the film, I present it as: that body is my body, but not me. It’s a form for all of the Black women who are experiencing, or have experienced this stuff with their sexuality or their spirituality, the suppression or oppression of it. So, I’m using my body to speak on behalf of others sometimes, or to create a character that represents something I’m trying to express. Maybe not even an actual person, just a being.  

KISH: Or even an idea, or a question. 

WRIGHT: Yeah, that is interesting. And also with being on Instagram and social media and having to present yourself as an artist. I started out as a photographer. I always see myself as a storyteller, a visual storyteller. I’m a visual learner. I grew up in a very religious household, so most of the music I know that’s not Catholic music is from watching films. That’s when I realized I want to say more with the images that I’m making. I feel like the moving image could add to what I’m actually trying to say, and I tried not to transition into filmmaker. I feel like there was also a resistance in conversations I was having with people trying to hire me for jobs. They were asking, “So, are you a photographer, or are you a filmmaker?” I do a lot of pottery as well, ceramics, so I’m trying to figure out how to merge all selves as an artist. I feel like sometimes, social media doesn’t allow you to do that. 

KISH: I agree. It’s a very daunting space because it’s centered around branding. What do you do? What is your thing? If you find your thing and just keep doing more of that thing, people will like it and share it, and I think when you’re exploring, it’s difficult. You’re like this is my music, but we’re also having this art show that’s going on right now. Do my fans of my music care about my art show? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m sure someone does, but is that this audience? Having gone to art school, and then jumping into the music industry, it’s such a difference. We’re selling a product in the music industry; we’re not ​selling​ art. As much as you want to think about it like, oh this is my art, the people in charge of it do not think of it that way. They’re thinking, okay, there’s nothing fine about this. We’re selling songs, let them be catchy, and that’s that. That’s not my doctrine at all, so it’s very difficult to try and merge the different parts of yourself, and I think now, after doing it for nine or ten years, just making art and trying to support myself off of the things that I make, I learned that I have to accept the output and stop trying to make myself fit into what people expect. 

WRIGHT: I’ve been reading this book by Saidiya Hartman, called ​Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments,​ and it’s about Black women right after the Reconstruction period. Black women moving over from the South to New York and trying to break out of this role of servitude that’s put forth, like Black women can’t do anything but be in the kitchen. But I think it speaks to the fear and anxiety of trying to do all of these things, or trying to incorporate different mediums into my practice, because I’m trying to tell the same message. I just know that I have different modes, or my body wants to do this instead of take a photo, so I feel like that has really empowered me. People are receptive; there’s an audience for each thing that you do. 

KISH: Yeah, totally. How do you know what to work on from day to day? Do you just feel it? 

WRIGHT: In the past eight months–how long have we been in quarantine? I feel like I was trying to stay on this roll of I need to be doing this, or I need to be doing that. Recently, I’ve been shooting a lot more, feeling inspired to connect with other people and shoot, but I also feel like I’ve just been sitting. I’ve been reading a lot. I’ve been trying to wrap my ideas around the one project that I do want to finish. It’s a documentary I’ve been shooting for the past two years with my grandmother in Alabama, telling the story of the American food race and how certain foods came here. It’s about memory as well. My grandmother is going through the early stages of dementia and what we shared growing up was being in the kitchen together. I could call her, and she could tell me a recipe on the drop of a dime, but that is diminishing slowly, and I’m feeling compelled to document this and to have conversations about intergenerational relationships. In the midst of me prepping for that, I’ve been working on so much self work, so much work within my family, having more open conversations, and relationship growth. I’ve been nurturing the relationships I do have. It’s been beautiful that my work brings me to that type of place because it’s all self work as well. I’m going home to Alabama for a month in December, and I’ll be finishing filming with my grandmother and staying on the farm out there. That work feels good, especially for the moment. It’s me connecting with my family, and that’s so important right now during this pandemic. Things are so unknown–the future, this election coming up. 

Self-portrait by Rikkí Wright

KISH: Yeah, I just want to get through this election, and I’ve been having similar things, just working on my relationships here and figuring out where I’m at creatively because this is the longest I’ve sat in one spot, but I’d been burnt out and it feels good to be able to slow down and just be like, so why am I doing this again? I feel like it’s so easy to get in those patterns of getting things done, and you’re working on autopilot, and then you’re like, do I actually feel for this work right now? Is this still a question for me? Because sometimes life just answers questions when you’re in the middle of a work process. That whole problem was just answered by me sitting down for two months. I was working on an album, and it was about American themes, and I got bogged down with this entire quarantine. It was so intense, and I was just like, I don’t know if I really want to...I’m already over it. 

WRIGHT: The priorities shifted as well. There’s an importance for certain work to be out right now and to be seen, and certain conversations to be had. Sometimes it’s time to put that on pause and have it for a different space. I’ve really enjoyed connecting with my family because they’ve shifted into a wider awareness—a wider political awareness as well. Connecting more with the stories and lives of people in my family, it’s like, oh, this is happening because of this larger systemic thing that’s going on. That’s why I love experimental filmmaking: because it allows the freedom to be as open as possible and just put whatever you’re feeling out there. I feel like right now, I’m really into having conversations with people in my life and sitting with that idea of reimagining what our future can look like if we look at what’s been going on. 

KISH: I feel like it would need to be an entire reimagining of the United States, just an entire reimagining of the whole way that it runs. The whole quarantine has helped to reconnect me with a lot of social issues and things that are going on within our community. I tend to isolate in general. I stay home, I do a lot of things alone, I like to live in my own world. I don’t watch that much. If everyone’s in love with a show, I generally don’t watch it. Being forced through a really fucked up thing and then jumping into life with everyone else again, it felt crazy in that moment when we were doing all the protests, and volunteering, and doing petitions, and doing all this work. In a way, I felt more connected to people than I have in a really, really long time. 

WRIGHT: For sure, because there was a collective consciousness, and I feel a shift in the strength that it had. I feel like right now, everything has been put out in the open, so people are more receptive to actually having the conversation. Because actually turning away from things is so frowned upon in this moment, and hopefully forever. I’ve been having conversations with some of my very close friends that I’ve never had before, and I’m just like, wow, very interesting to know this is your experience. That also informs the type of work I want to create. Experimental film is not commercial or high commodity, but I feel like that’s resistance as well. I feel connected to the work that has always been fighting for change. That’s why Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Maya Angelou are people that appear in my piece. They have been guides. It’s very important to make sure that I’m addressing that in the things that I create. Not that it’s my responsibility, because it’s been addressed many times over.

KISH: I agree. Just being able to see all the different industries and all these different Black artists saying how they’ve been affected. In your own self-centered version of your life, you feel like you’re the only one that these things are happening to, and I think that’s part of the divisiveness of the whole thing. You’re supposed to feel like you’re alone in it. Having seen everybody with their different versions of the same story, which was really depressing, I was able to realize that everybody has the same idea of what I’m making—not that it’s necessarily my responsibility, but I feel the need to share these different views and perspectives of what Blackness can be, and about what family can be, or what these different parts of connectedness are. I’ve been doing that, but I didn’t realize I was doing it until this whole thing happened. I feel like there’s all kinds of Black girls, and I want to make alternative music, so I’m just going to do that the whole time. When people were like, “You should only make rap music, always”, I was like, “No, I’m going to keep doing this other stuff.” So, I think there’s always been that rebelliousness when people try to put you in a box of what you’re able to achieve. It also comes down to what you were saying before with wanting to do experimental filmmaking, whereas someone might tell you that you should just direct music videos, or something. 

Kilo Kish. Photo courtesy of Andrew Arthur

WRIGHT: Exactly. Yeah. And starting in this space of experimental filmmaking, when I am approached for any type of job, people are open and knowing this is what they could possibly get from me based on what they’ve seen, and usually people are only coming to me if they’re open to being on the same page as me, which I’m really grateful for. 

KISH: It’s nice to be strong enough to–and I think it does take mental fortitude and grit to be that vulnerable with the different practices, because your film from the show was super vulnerable. It’s very powerful in that the body itself is so powerful. What you’re willing to share is a statement in itself. I was going to ask you: how do you not talk yourself out of doing things that you know might be scary for you creatively? 

WRIGHT: The way that I grew up, I always had this need to protect myself. I was just out in the world. Whoever could watch me and my sister would, or we were bounced around from different family members, and so there were a lot of different opinions. I was just like, I’m going to go crazy if I have to adhere or just be what you want me to be. I’m just going to do me, and don’t ask permission, ask forgiveness, and do it. I think I kind of lived by that, and it inevitably is a part of the way I come to art. You have that fear, but in my experience, even having that one person, a friend, or somebody from your family give a critique, that helps me in a way. It was worth it for me to just do it. 

KISH: I feel the same way. I feel like the curiosity of what could happen outweighs the fear that you might have about it. I just want to see what happens, even if it doesn’t do well by other people’s standards. What is the role that spirituality plays with you now because you said that you had a very spiritual upbringing, but I wonder, now, after having grown up in the Church and all that, how do you feel about it? 

WRIGHT: Organized religion is not necessarily where I think I can connect spiritually. I have the experience of losing my mother at the age of two, and in 2017 my father passed away on my birthday, so the people who brought me into this physical life are both in a spiritual realm, and I’ve just felt a spiritual connection, a motherly connection, since I was a child. I have always felt like there’s guardian angels, or I definitely feel connected to my ancestors. That’s just something that’s not even by choice. I know that even in some of the work that I create, it feels like somebody needed that to be done. I don’t know if it was my grandma, or who. So, in that sense, I really am big on remembering our ancestors and making sure that I have altars on my mom’s birthday. Images are also huge for me. Sometimes I can just be transformed or taken back to a place, and that feels almost spiritual as well. There’s a scripture, Do this in remembrance of me (1 Corinthians 11:24), and I think about that often. We’d do communion every first Sunday where everybody drinks the wine and takes a little piece of the cracker in remembrance of Christ’s blood and body. It’s kind of intense actually, but we do it so casually. It’s a very honoring ceremony, remembering Christ’s sacrifice, and I think that’s how I approach remembering my ancestors, and remembering the fight of just being here in this country, or just making it; our survival. 

KISH: Yeah, wow. It’s like a weaving of your experiences and your life, and all the little bits that inform your life. I had a strange upbringing where I was the only Black person in my whole school and I was in a gifted program. I was this little Black girl who was moved around all these different classes, and if I think of my younger self, it definitely informs the way that I approach work now. It’s very in my own world, and it’s in my own space. I have friends in fashion, but I’m not a fashion girl. I do music, but I’m not a music girl. I do art, but I’m not an art girl. I’m always this separate thing that’s in the Venn diagram overlapping everything else. I think everybody’s experiences create how they make work, and I guess spiritually, I believe similarly to what you said–there are things guiding and protecting and moving you in the right path, and if you’re able to tap into intuition, or whatever you want to call it, you kind of know: that doesn’t really feel right for me, I don’t know why, but I’m going to sidestep. I always feel that with all the projects that I do, and I think during COVID, I’ve just not really heard that voice as much. I’ve kind of just been sitting down. 

WRIGHT: I think that the uncertainty of the world has an effect where you feel like you don’t have much control, and that’s why sometimes I’m like I have to stop. I have to get off social media, I have to sit with myself and listen to my own thoughts. There’s so much being thrown at us all day long. It’s really a lot, and I really do think that affects being able to hear yourself. I haven’t done this yet, but a lot of my friends have taken social media breaks for a couple of months during the pandemic and are just working on their own thing, and it’s been great. 

Kilo Kish. Photo courtesy of Andrew Arthur

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This year’s exhibition of Womxn in Windows is on view through November 15 in Chinatown Los Angeles on Chung King Road, as well as New York in partnership with the Wallplay Network - 321 Canal Street, Chinatown London in partnership with Protein Studios - 31 New Inn Yard, and Hackney Shanghai in partnership with Bitter - Jing’an District. Additional films can be viewed by Christine Yuan, Everlane Moraes, Ja’Tovia Gary, Kya Lou, Rémie Akl, and Sylvie Weber—artists whose backgrounds span the United States, Brazil, Lebanon, Taiwan, the Dominican Republic and Germany. Follow @womxninwindows, @rikkwright and @kilokish on instagram.

A Voyage Into Sight, Sound and Surf: An Interview Of Filmmaker Chris Gentile

Interview by Agathe Pinard

Self Discovery for Social Survival is the surf/music feature film born from the collaboration of Chris Gentile from New York-based surf brand Pilgrim Surf + Supply and Keith Abrahmsson from the record label Mexican Summer. Together they started this ambitious project to connect surf, sound and sight and make a film that would satisfy most senses. World-renowned surfers including Stephanie Gilmore, Ryan Burch, Creed McTaggart and Ellis Ericson joined musicians Allah-Las, Peaking Lights, Connan Mockasin and MGMT ’s Andrew VanWyngarden on this surf journey starting from a secret spot in Mexico, to the southern atolls of the Maldive Islands, and ending in the cold waters of Iceland. The film is narrated by a man who is often referenced as the godfather of American avant-garde, the late Jonas Mekas. I had the chance to talk to the artist, photographer and film director Chris Gentile about the making of his first feature-length film, bringing together artists and surfers, and working with Jonas Mekas.

AGATHE PINARD: I wanted to start by asking about the meaning behind the title, Self Discovery for Social Survival, can you explain it?

CHRIS GENTILE: When we started to conceptualize the film, myself and Keith Abrahamsson from Mexican Summer, we were thinking a lot about music and its relationship to surfing. Surfing is this activity, this pursuit that people engage in and that kind of helps people detach from what they’re do day-to-day, give them some contemplative time to sort of go inward and we were trying to come up with this name, and along the way I came across an old book that was written for climbing, for people who would free climb and climb up mountains. It was basically a book that gave people a pathway to overcome fear. The book was titled Self Discovery for Social Survival. Keith and I both felt like that really resonated with the spirit of what this film was about. Surfers are constantly looking for that open and free space to have a moment in nature, where two forces are meeting each other and the surfers are in the space where the energy that’s coming from nature is dying and being born at the same time. We felt like this title had a lot of metaphoric possibilities and decided to go for it. It’s a mouthful, it’s a big title.

PINARD: This is an ambitious project that mixes surfing, music and animation done by the in house designer of Mexican Summer…

GENTILE: Yes, Bailey Elder but also Robert Beatty, who’s an independent artist and illustrator.

PINARD: How did the idea/project come together ?

It was evolving the whole time we were making the film, it was a very open-ended and experimental process. The one thing that I really wanted to maintain was an open-endedness with everybody involved. So there are multiple points of influence that went into the filmmaking. I didn’t give the surfers any directions while they surfed. We travelled together, we picked these particular places, and they were reacting to the waves that were there for a two-week period of time, and the cinematographers were reacting to the way the surfers were surfing, positioning themselves to get the shot that felt right. I really left a lot of that control up to them. The musicians who were involved were on these trips and they were in the water and surfing the same waves that the professional surfers we travelled with were surfing. They have a first experience and perspective on what was going on. The idea was to let them go back into the studio and have complete creative freedom over the music that they wrote in reaction.

PINARD: What about the animation?

GENTILE: When that came into play, we showed a rough cut to Bailey and Robert. Then Keith Abrahamsson picked a couple of songs that he felt were appropriate to transition from one location like Mexico to the Maldives. To put a song and an animation that would kind of be like a mental palette cleanser, Keith came up with these two fantastic songs. One was an archival song from the seventies, “Void Spirit,” and the other one was a song that was made by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma for the film. Jefre isn’t a surfer, he wasn’t on the trip but he made these beautiful compositions inspired by the idea of being under water, being under the ocean. So, those tracks were given to Bailey and Robert along with the access to this footage, and they reacted and created these animations. Everything was very independent to one another, every aspect of the film. I kind of kept everything on track and helped people when they need my help, but really it was exercise––relinquishing ego and control, and letting everybody’s influence come in and affect the overall project.

PINARD: That’s funny, last week I interviewed Connan Mockasin and we talked about the trip he made to Iceland for the movie, and how he was impressed at the beginning to be around these professional surfers like Stephanie Gilmore who’s a seven-time world champion.

GENTILE: One of the things that I had to do was to think deeply about the personalities that we were going to introduce to one another on these adventures because most of the people didn’t know each other. And taking a surf trip, you don’t know what you’re going to get. There’s no guarantee that the waves are going to be good, or that the weather is going to be good, or a tire may go flat. You may miss opportunities or you may get opportunities that you would never expect. When we went on these trips I had to think about how the group would feel and I was just going off my own instincts and my own guts. The trip to Iceland was really special because it was a group of really different people. They all had a sincere admiration and appreciation for one another. Everyone became fast friends. Iceland was interesting because we were traveling all over that country chasing these storms and these waves. Sometimes getting them and sometimes missing them, but we spent so much time in these vans just traveling across this incredible landscape. Everyone got a lot of time to know each other, more so than on the other trips because on the other trips it was a lot more surfing, people were getting tired, it was different. Iceland was the one where I think the actual chase for the waves was the beauty in that trip, more so than the wave riding.

PINARD: For the movie you took some surfers and went on a trip to Mexico, the Maldives and Iceland, which one was your favorite ?

GENTILE: That’s a great question. I mean, I’ve been to that spot in Mexico so many times and it’s one of my favorite places on the planet. I loved the opportunity to go down there with that group of people, but I have to say the Maldives was really unique and special, because we had this group of Australian surfers together that were kind of like a brotherhood. That trip, we were on a boat, the whole entire time, on an old, old boat. It travels really slowly, had a lot of character and a great captain and a great crew. It was not posh by any means, it was kind of a busted boat. But it was so fun because everybody was just excited to be around each other, find waves, fish. The kind of boredom that you experience on these boats, these guys were wild and doing the most hilarious stuff. Some of it we couldn’t put in the movie it was crazy, drunken backflips off of the boat completely nude at like 3 o’clock in the morning. It was incredible, very memorable.

PINARD: The film is narrated by the late, legendary Jonas Mekas, it might have been the last project he worked on...

GENTILE: I know that Jonas filmed his life every day, so I’m sure that that footage is truly his last work. On this project we were so fortunate to have him agree to come and narrate. The words are Jamie Brisick and Jonas read them. It was so special to get to meet him and experience his humility and his generosity, it was fantastic. If it weren’t for Jonas, I don’t think we could have made a film like this. He’s had so much influence on me as a young artist throughout my life. He gave us, me and the rest of the people at Mexican Summer, everyone, he truly gave us the license to make the film. So, to have him narrate it was an honor, it was so special.

PINARD: How did you get him to work on the project?

GENTILE: Keith Abrahamsson is really responsible for that. Keith presented him with this idea and had already been working with Jonas on a couple of other things, helping him with his archives. They had a working relationship together. Keith asked him if he would be up for narrating the film, and explained to him what it was, and I think it was so strange that he thought it was worth doing. It wasn’t very difficult. He got in a recording studio with him, drank a couple glasses of wine, and I think in one or two takes he nailed the narration. It was great.

PINARD: The movie will premiere in LA this Saturday, are you excited? How do you feel about it ?

GENTILE: I’m a little nervous, I’ve never directed a film before. I’ve made a lot of short films, experimental films, but nothing that’s feature-length, and at this scale, and this level of production. I’m so grateful to have the experience. I’ve learned a lot from it. I’m really excited to see it in front of an audience, see the reaction, see the bands perform live to it, it’s going to be so special.

Self Discovery For Social Survival will premiere in Los Angeles this Saturday June 15 at The Palace Theatre with a live score by Connan Mockasin, Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT and Allah-Las

The film is out digitally on June 18 and available to pre-order now at https://geni.us/SDSS .

The Art Of Short Cinema: An Interview of Christian Coppola

text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

photographs Pierre Auroux

Christian Coppola is an LA-based filmmaker and photographer with a few short films already under his belt. Informed by an early fascination with The Wizard of Oz, Coppola’s personal style incorporates dreamy colors and the ever-present dichotomy between home and away. His short film debut, Heartbreak Hotel and his upcoming short, Daddy, explore the complicated nature of hotels, and the opportunities offered by the short film genre. Fixated on the process of creating his personal style, Coppola’s own viewing process is predicated on the question, “could anyone else have made this?” We had a chance to catch up with the burgeoning filmmaker and discuss his upcoming film, development as an artist, and his desire to create a universe through film.

OLIVER MAXWELL KUPPER: How are you?

CHRISTIAN COPPOLA: Good, I'm sitting in my backyard looking at some palm trees, and it's a really beautiful day.

KUPPER: I assume you're in LA.

COPPOLA: Yeah, I'm here. I'm actually—I just shot this new film in New York. And I shot it January 16th through the 19th. Pretty quick shoot.

KUPPER: So this was a pretty fresh, new project.

COPPOLA: In the grand scheme of things, we just shot it. But now I'm—you know I've been here for a month just meeting with editors and people who are going to be involved in the post production process. And also hanging out with my friends, because I really love LA and all the things it offers. And New York is really cold right now, kind of a wasteland.

KUPPER: I keep hearing that about New York, and everyone's moving to LA. And it's not just for weather, it's also like the creative energy.

COPPOLA: Well it's nice—I went out for Valentine's Day and I went to this party in Chinatown and before, we kind of congregated in this space downtown at my friend's apartment. And I walked in and it was so big. It always blows my mind. I just sort of realized that we can actually congregate in a space that isn't someone's shoebox bedroom where we're all piled onto a bed talking about how we're all going to fit into an uber to go to this stupid fashion event that nobody even really wants to go to in the first place. It's a bit insane how you meet people who are able to not only sustain a life here, but sustain their creative work.

KUPPER: You're still quite young, but what are some films that you grew up watching that inspired you to make movies?

COPPOLA: Well, whenever I'm asked that question I always go back to The Wizard of Oz. Just in terms of the scope, and the imagery alone. In the sense that, when I watched it, I would act it out as it was playing on the screen. I was so enamored with all of the elements that went into making this movie, whether it was the music, the costumes, the lighting, the set design, the props, the story. That was a movie I watched where I kind of just had this aha moment of, "Holy crap, I need to be a part of this world."

KUPPER: So you want to make movies to sort of capture that feeling.

COPPOLA: I definitely want to make, not just movies, but anything that I create, I really strive to get the core of why we react or why we feel what we feel when we're watching something. It's really kind of powerful to be able to make something like The Wizard of Oz that is the most unrelateable story. It's about a girl that gets swept up in a tornado and ends up in this weird world where she's trying to run away from witches. But there's something about that that really strikes people deep down. And a lot of that's about going back home and going back to a place where you came from. And I think also this element of escapism and fantasy is a really big thing that I aim for as well.

KUPPER: When you called, your number came up as Grand Prairie, Texas. Are you—

COPPOLA: [Laughs] Yes, I always explain this whenever I call people. So I grew up in Dallas, Texas, which is in Highland Park. I have a lot of family that is in LA, in the California area. But, my parents really didn't have an interest in raising a family here. And even though a lot of my dad's side is here, that was something that my parents never really wanted to do. So that explains my Texas area code.

KUPPER: It also explains why you're so enamored with The Wizard of Oz.

COPPOLA: Really?

KUPPER: I mean yeah, if you think about it, growing up in a rural community and wanting to be somewhere over the rainbow where you can make movies and images and everything's in color. That's sort of LA, right?

COPPOLA: Yeah I think that's a really interesting reading, but also it's funny that every time I mention that I grew up in Texas they have a very preconceived idea of what that means. But where I'm from, it's called Highland Park. I do describe it as the southern version of Beverly Hills. Except it's a little more heightened, if that's possible. Because everything's bigger in Texas I suppose.

KUPPER: But anytime you sort of feel like you're outside of LA or New York or these cultural capitals, you sort of feel like you're in the middle of nowhere.

COPPOLA: Totally, I understand, I think I was fortunate enough to travel a lot when I was younger. And my parents really stressed taking lots of trips and seeing different corners of the world. But it was always really interesting to do that and then come back to a place like Dallas. Where people are really content there, and don't necessarily want to leave. There's something really to be said about that. Just like there's something to be said about the fact that people have a really hard time leaving LA.

KUPPER: So the traveling thing, that sort of ties in with the whole idea of your love of hotels. Was that your first short that you shot at the Bowery?

COPPOLA: So that was actually, that wasn't my first short. I made that in film school at NYU Tisch. I made that my junior year, and that was our intermediate thesis. I just shot it sort of as a school project. It was my take on a fashion film, but I also kind of—in that time period, I was really drawn to this format of the fashion film. But I wanted to put my own take on it, so I wanted to add these ideas of nostalgia and real people, but also this idea of acting that wasn't necessarily acting and giving these characters—casting it in a way where these really beautiful people that I knew almost embodied the real people that they were playing. I cast my friend Dylan, he's from Malibu, grew up in Malibu and he kind of has this really distinct James Dean flair to him. The imagery was really beautiful, shooting in a hotel sort of offers this timeless essence. Yeah, of course, and I think that's what draws me to hotels. I love the idea in shooting in spaces that are so intimate and private, but also accessible in a way. Where every time you go into that space, or every time I go into a hotel room, I sort of imagine what happened there before me. Who was in there before I was. Just this idea of: if a hotel room could speak, what would it say? There's just something really magical, there's a really magical quality about having a story play out in a hotel room. Because it's not someone's home. There's a different set of rules that come with being in someone's home. But when you're in a hotel room where—you're not gonna be there forever. There's a time limit. It's almost like the Cinderella complex. Everything's gonna turn back into a pumpkin at some point.

KUPPER: What came first, photography or filmmaking? Because you're a great photographer, you've shot a lot of really great people, where did your interest in photography come from?

COPPOLA: I suppose what's always been at the forefront is filmmaking. Because I remember always making videos on my family's video camera. Just sort of obsessively running around with it, and never really editing the footage together. And it wasn't really until I got access to my own computer and the internet and iMovie that I really started to piece things together and realize that this idea of putting clips back to back and creating your own universe was kind of at your fingertips when you had this editing software. For me, the two were interchangeable. Filmmaking and photography are interchangeable to my creative process because whenever I go somewhere I always carry my point-and-shoot 35 mm with me. It's a personal way of documenting.

KUPPER: So your current project, which you just finished filming, can you talk about it?

COPPOLA: So the title of this film is Daddy. It stars Dylan Sprouse and Ron Rifkin. Obviously two really great actors. Essentially it takes place at the plaza hotel. It's about an 80 year old man, played by Ron Rifkin, whose wife has just passed away. And to celebrate their first anniversary apart, he hires a male escort to take her place for the evening. And they have this really beautiful, sad, interesting night together. Ultimately, I think it's going to be really special. And what's really really exciting is that I think a lot of people are going to be blown away by how these two actors—or what these two actors bring to the table.

KUPPER: What is that process like, casting and choosing actors?

COPPOLA: We knew that we wanted Dylan, and we also knew that we wanted Ron. But Ron is such a seasoned actor. Not to say that either were an easy get, but Dylan had been aware of the script since the summer. It was really just about figuring out scheduling with him. He wanted to do it, he was on board. We were basically in the final stages of getting him on board, and as we were casting the older man, we knew that we wanted Ron. It was just a question of if he's available, and if he's even interested. Luckily we were able to reach out to him through our casting associate. And he read the script and he just had such a fantastic response in connection to the story and wanted to have a meeting. And I met with him and from there he was on board.

KUPPER: When did you initially start writing this story idea?

COPPOLA: I knew that I wanted to do it since around last year this time. And I had this other project that I was fielding, which is now kind of more of a feature that I am kind of still in the process of developing. But I knew that this was just the most sensible next step for me to take in terms of a project. A lot of people asked me, "Is it a feature?" For me I think, there's something really special about a short form piece. Because it's a little tiny silhouette that's just so—it's probably going to be around 15-20 minutes, but there's something to be said about a contained piece that is thoughtful and really just gets to the point and is succinct

KUPPER: So how fast do you generally want to get back to the drawing board after you make a film?

COPPOLA: My last film that I made, I made in film school. And that was my thesis project. And I screened it this past summer. That was Him. And that was a really great experience. I was doing a lot of traveling in the post-production process. And I sort of put it on the back burner and let the editing process go on for quite a while. This time I realized that it took me a couple of years to get to the point where I shot Daddy, and there was such a span of time spent where I didn't have a different narrative project. I definitely want to keep my momentum up. And I've spoken a lot with my producer about this and kind of everyone working around me. Ultimately my biggest drive at the end of the day is to just keep creating as much as I can and putting out thoughtful content. In a good span of time. It feels good to be in this place, because I know what direction I want to head.

KUPPER: Yeah, evolving and cementing yourself your vision as a filmmaker. It seems like each one of those films you're gonna start to see a style.

COPPOLA: And I think that's—creating a style is one of, if not the most important thing that you should be doing as a director. You have to create a universe that people not only are interested in, but that you're interested in. And that you feel passionate about. With Daddy, that was sort of the first project that I felt was incredibly specific to the world that I wanted to explore. Ultimately that's something that, whenever I'm watching a film or looking at a director's work, one of the main things that I look for and one of the main questions that I ask is: could anyone else have made this?

KUPPER: So when do you expect it to be ready, when do you expect it to come out?

COPPOLA: We're probably going to be starting the editing process within the next month. I'm thinking hopefully we'll have it done by the beginning of summer. That's our aim, our trajectory. But it's been funny because, when we were shooting this film, and leading up to shooting this film, I kept everything so secret.

KUPPER: So are you gonna premiere it in—do you think you'll premiere it in New York first and then LA?

COPPOLA: So, the goal is to take it to festivals and just travel around with it. It's interesting because we shot this film before—Dylan is moving to China, and he's doing a project there. But we kind of had to rush because we really wanted him. It's funny because we wanted Dylan and we really made it work to get it shot in time before he left. But that's our goal.

KUPPER: Well congratulations on that.

COPPOLA: Oh thank you very much. We're really excited about it and I think people are going to be very delighted and intrigued. Because there's a lot of nice little surprises that are lace throughout the project. Everyone is really fantastic in it, but I think specifically Dylan and Ron, just they created something incredibly special between the two of them. And I'm very eager to share it.

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Coppola's upcoming film, Daddy, will be available in 2019. Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper, photographs by Pierre Auroux. Follow AUTRE on Instagram:

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Being Sandro Miller: An Interview of Photographer and Artist Sandro Miller

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text by Adam Lehrer

Sandro Miller has been using photography as a medium for storytelling for over 30 years. In both commercial work and fine art endeavors, Miller has shown time and time again that the still image can be imbued with as much emotion and theatrics as a 90 minute film: “ I strive to make images that move people and facilitate conversation,” says Miller.

Many of Miller’s best known projects are loaded with Freudian subtext and even pathos. His images examine the psychologies of his subjects to find out what drives them and simultaneously fulfill a kind of personal fantasy for Miller. For instance, his project American Bikers looks at life in a biker gang and finds out that bikers don’t ride Harley Davidson motorcycles because they are the fastest or smoothest bikes; on the contrary, they ride them because they are the loudest and most obnoxious bikes. These bikers ride bikes to communicate to the world, “I am here, goddamn’ it!” His portraits of Cuban boxers capture the pain and agony of training that go into the athlete’s quest for personal improvement and glory. All the while, Miller admits that a part of him has always wanted to be a boxer and a biker. “I fulfill these fantasies through my photography,” says Miller. “Since the biker project, I’ve been riding a motorcycle for 20 years.”

Another artist that uses images to explore his own fantasies and dreams is of course David Lynch. Miller has long worked with the Steppenwolf Theater Company and its actor John Malkovich. Malkovich has served as subject to numerous Miller projects, including one in which the pair paid homage to 36 iconic photographs (by the likes of Diane Arbus, Andy Warhol, Annie Leibowitz and more) entitled Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich. Now, the duo has turned their efforts in recreation towards the master of cinematic surreal horror, Lynch. In a short film recreating characters from Lynch’s output entitled Playing Lynch, Miller films Malkovich as Lynch himself, Twin Peaks’ Agent Dale Cooper and Log Lady, The Elephant Man’s John Merrick, Blue Velvet’s Frank, Eraserhead’s Henry Spencer and Lady in the Radiator, and Lost Highway’s chilling Mystery Man (once played by the utterly horrifying actor Robert Blake). One fascinating caveat of the film is that the characters, while selected by fans using a social media poll, are all emblematic in someway of Lynch himself. It’s arguably a conceptual personality analysis.

The film premiered last weekend at Lynch’s music festival The Festival of Disruption amidst performances by art-pop band Xiu XIu and Sky Ferreira doing the music of Twin Peaks, St. Vincent, and Rhye. The film is available upon donation through its website, and all proceeds will go to The David Lynch Foundation that promotes Transcendental Meditation as a means of overcoming trauma. Miller and I spoke about the project as well as a life spent in the creation of imagery. 

LEHRER: So, I just wanted to start off asking you: judging from your prior work with Malkovich and also the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, I understand that you most likely have a deep love for performance and that probably extends to cinema. How did cinema become important to you?

MILLER: I came from a home that was run by a single mom who came over from Italy. The arts weren’t emphasized. My artistic soul developed at an early age I discovered photography at the age of about fifteen, seeing the work of Irving Penn. What really began my great love for cinema was seeing The Godfather in my teens. With that film I finally really began to get it: the importance of cinema, the impact of cinema, and what it really means to visualize. It was a way for me to begin to heal a lot of the early years of a very dysfunctional childhood.

LEHRER: That’s interesting to me, too, especially with you being Italian. As much as I love [Federico] Fellini and [Michelangelo] Antonioni, ‘70s Hollywood cinema and [Francis Ford] Coppola and [Martin] Scorsese and [Brian] De Palma are my guys. Hollywood at that time was pouring a lot of money into really bold, artistic statements which is something doesn’t really happen anymore.

MILLER: Right, for the really big productions, like Ben-Hur, it was just so grandiose. That chariot race was so unnerving. I remember as a youngster, sitting at the end of my couch, and watching, going ‘Oh my god! There’s going to be this huge accident!’ You could feel it. That was the golden era of cinema.

LEHRER: Especially now, with the big studios the superhero films eat up most of the budgets and they’re super safe and they’re going to make a billion dollars anyway. There’s only a few auteur American directors that can still get funding whether they be PT Anderson or Wes Anderson or [Quentin] Tarantino. Most conceptual filmmaking has gone towards TV or streaming.

MILLER: You know Adam, I have to tell you: just this week I received fifteen Woody Allen films in the mail. There’s a guy who just made [cinema] very very simple. It was just great scripts that he would write, great humor, a great connection with all of his actors and actresses, and they all wanted to give him so much. It was really film at its basics.

LEHRER: With that, he was really able to create a clearly defined aesthetic. Manhattan I think was the one that I most identified with. I love that movie.

MILLER: Absolutely, absolutely. I like New York Stories, which I just watched. It was kind of a three piece film that Coppola and Scorsese shared with Woody Allen. There’s so many great Woody films.

LEHRER: I’m just curious, did you watch the De Palma documentary?

MILLER: I have not seen that yet.

LEHRER: Noah Baumbach did it. It’s basically just DePalma in his office talking about every single one of his movies. It’s fascinating. He starts off by saying pretty much everything he does he ripped off from Hitchcock and just modernized the Hitchcock aesthetic by saturating it with color. It’s pretty awesome.

MILLER: Well, I give him credit for putting his Hitchcock influence out there. [DePalma] has done so many great things. He has definitely earned his place in cinema.

LEHRER: Yeah, absolutely. It’s hard to imagine a studio funding a movie like Sisters or Carrie now. It wouldn’t happen.

MILLER: Yeah, it wouldn’t happen. Exactly.

LEHRER: So, I wanted to also ask you, leading into photography, do you think photography and images have the capability for narrative tension and emotion that theatre and cinema does? Or, is that at least what you’re aiming for in your photographs? Because they are rather emotional.

MILLER: That’s a great question. I do believe so. I made my name doing commercial photography and I got hired from all over the world to create very emotional portraits: people crying, people laughing, people dying. Whatever it might be. I always tell people that photography is the big educator. If you think about it, most of what you know—about what wars are like, what a tsunami or AIDS looks like— it isn’t personally experienced. Photography is how we know. Photography, along with travel, has been my education.

LEHRER: We’re living in such a photograph heavy society, with digital photography and cell phones, and I read this quote by a photographer, it might have been Collier Schorr but I can’t remember, who said something like, “everyone’s a photographer but there are very few image-makers left.” Do you agree with that at all?

MILLER: Absolutely. It hurts me to see that the photographer and the photograph isn’t as important as it once was. I’m being passed up on jobs for people who are now called “influencers,” people who buy fans or “friends,” who are instagrammers and who get hired for jobs because of how many people that follow them on social media. It’s disgusting. What about the great photographers? We’re guys who eat, sleep and breath photography. I’ve been doing this for forty years. It’s my life. There isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not involved in image making. When you hear of these young kids who take photographs from their iPhones, put them on an app, and they have hundreds or thousands of friends and all of a sudden they’re considered photographers? I have a problem with that.

LEHRER: So, moving on to the David Lynch project. He’s probably my favorite artist of any medium. It’s fascinating to me that he hasn’t even made a film in ten years but he’s still discussed by every artist around. His aesthetic is eternally powerful and copied. What draws you to his aesthetic personally?

MILLER: You know, there is only one David Lynch. If you take a look back at one of the most important film ever created, Eraserhead, that was an art school project and today it’s probably one of the greatest films of all time. David is one of those people who, when you sit down and watch one of his films, some [latent emotions of yours] is going to come up. You’re going to feel something and it’s going to be powerful.

LEHRER: You project your own feelings.

MILLER: Yes, you project your own self and fears into his own films. He is a monster. I just don’t know of any other director that moves me the way that David has moved. The characters that he creates are so memorable. Iconic. And whether you like the film or not, you’re not going to forget these characters.

LEHRER: And also his films don’t need to be understood, they are experiences. Like Lost Highway, which is underrated I think, I didn’t start to think about it narratively and what it meant until several views in. It begs you to keep watching it until you understand it. Like the scene in Mulholland Drive where they go behind the diner and they see the monster. Every time I watch that movie, I want to close my eyes because I have no desire to see that monster again and every single time, I watch it.

MILLER: When I watch Blue Velvet, Frank Booth creeps me out so bad. I’ve got a freaky side to me, but he is so out there, so freaky, that he totally wigs me out every time I see him in Isabella [Rossellini]’s apartment. I mean I just don’t want to watch it, but I do! What is so scary is Lynch’s people are real. They’re out there. They’re walking the streets of Chicago, New York, LA. That’s what makes it even more upsetting. And more gripping.

LEHRER: I have a theory about why you used the characters that you did in your series and you can tell me if I’m in the ballpark or not. To me, all these characters; David Lynch himself, Cooper, the Mystery Man, Frank; They all represent or communicate something about David Lynch himself. Cooper is his more rational, deductive side. The Mystery Man is his guilt. Frank is his rage. What do you think?

MILLER: I think you nailed who these characters are. But we actually used a social media blast to find out who were David Lynch’s fan base’s favorite characters. It was a two week survey where they gathered all this information and they gave me ten names and I was able to pick seven of them to recreate. I think you’re right on when you say that those characters are absolutely different characteristics of David.

LEHRER: That’s kind of fascinating that his fanbase is so rabid that they picked the characters that are most emblematic of his creative process.

MILLER: Tomorrow night is the VIP party where we’ll be premiering the film and Saturday night is the big press production. I’m sure it’s something you’d have loved to be able to attend

LEHRER: Yeah, he has a relationship with sound and music that no director on Earth has and I’d love to see him put together a showcase of music. It sounds amazing. There was actually an article that came out yesterday in Pitchfork where they interviewed Angelo and a bunch of other musicians that have worked with him talking about how he interprets music and how he processes music into his work. David’s in-house engineer Dean Hurley was talking about Lynch hearing Kanye West’s Yeezus for the first time and how he can tell when David likes something. [David] will get a “serious death stare” and that’s how Dean knows he likes it.

MILLER: I’d love to read that. It’s in Pitchfork?

LEHRER: Yep, yesterday.

MILLER: I’ll have to check that out. He has a new album in production that’s being released this weekend, actually. I’m anxious to get ahold of that.

LEHRER: I’m just rabidly waiting for the next season of Twin Peaks. In your videos, I love seeing John in there repeat this dialogue and playing up the camp of it. I thought it really amplified the humor in David Lynch’s work, which is something that is often missing in his critical analysis. Is that all intentional?

MILLER: Well, it’s funny because we really did it as a serious homage to David. Have you seen the whole film?

LEHRER: I’ve only watched them as individual clips.

MILLER: I look forward to when you get to see the whole film which really uses John as David Lynch as the thread. It wasn’t meant to be comical. When you pay homage to someone, (I mean David is a master) you want to recreate it in his honor. Even though it might come off slightly as a parody or a little comical, both John and I wanted to go in and tilt this thing into perfection. John put so much into each one of his characters and the amount of research and detail we put into every single shot, every set, every stitch of clothing was so that we could pay a great homage to David. Really to say, ‘thank you for what you have given all of us.’ 
 

LEHRER: When you were creating this, were you in contact with David or any of the people that worked with David? Was John in contact with Kyle McLachlan, for instance?

MILLER: I sent the script to David thirteen times for his approval on all the dialogue, the sets that we were using, and the characters. We got on the phone with David just once, and one time, with Kyle. David wouldn’t have given me direction. He had a lot of trust. David had seen my homage series and was really blown away by it and when he offered me to do this film, he knew I was going to do it justice. After he gave me the approval on the dialogue, David let me run with it.

LEHRER: I can imagine him being quite curious in another great artist’s take on his work.

MILLER: David was working seven days a week, fourteen, sixteen hours a day on Twin Peaks while we were shooting. So he was so wrapped up with Twin Peaks schedule. He really didn’t have the time to obsess about our project. He loved everything though.

LEHRER: That’s great. I want to say congratulations. It’s a great series.

MILLER: Thank you so much. I really look forward to you seeing the whole piece. When you see the David Lynch part that really intertwines everything together, it’ll really come together. There’s a great story there. When John delivered the “Lord is my Shepherd” Elephant Man Speech, the crew was crying.It was such a beautiful delivery. I mean you really felt John’s heart.

LEHRER: John is such a terrific, dextrous actor. Especially in his facial expressions. What was that movie that was kind of an action movie, but better? With Clint Eastwood?

MILLER: In the Line of Fire.

LEHRER: That movie is so emblematic of how good he is. It’d be terrible without him, but he brings it this eccentric element that makes it a ‘90s action classic.

MILLER: John brings a dynamic presence regardless of the size of the role. He plays characters you don’t forget.

LEHRER: I was discussing with a friend whether Being John Malkovich could have been Being someone else, you know like Being Billy Bob Thornton. And there’s no way. It wouldn’t have worked.

MILLER: He’s got an incredible presence.

LEHRER: While I have you, I wanted to ask you about a couple other of my favorite projects of yours. I’m really into The Blood Brothers project and also the project you did with the bikers and I really feel like those series and more of your projects are almost Freudian in their ability to use imagery to examine what makes these characters tick. Like in the bikers project, we find that these guys like Harley Davidsons not because they’re the fastest or the easiest, but almost because they’re the most obnoxious and the most masculine. Are you always trying to examine how someone thinks and what makes them tick?

MILLER: Most of my projects like that explore a culture I long to be a part of: I would have loved to be a biker or a great boxer. I did another book on a bullfighter: I’ve always fantasized about being a bullfighter.

LEHRER: By that reasoning, does a part of you want to be David Lynch?

MILLER: Uhh, no I don’t think I want to be David Lynch. I think he goes non-stop. I mean I think he just turned seventy and what he just did with Twin Peaks, putting in almost 3-4 months, seven days a week. I don’t know where he finds that stamina to be able to keep on going.

LEHRER: That’s interesting though, because a lot of contemporary fine art photographers shoot people in their own lives. A lot of people are very good at it, but I really feel like that classic photographer, the one who maintains a healthy distance between him/her and his/her subjects, is missing.

MILLER: Thank you so much. It’s been a great 40 years of being able to explore the world. It has been an unbelievable way of life.

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Click here to explore Playing David Lynch – each download will help support The David Lynch Foundation. text and interview by Adam Lehrer. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

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Very Little Bad Vibes: An Interview With Cult Comedic Hero Tim Heidecker

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text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Most people know Tim Heidecker from his brilliant Adult Swim series ‘Tim & Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job!’ and ‘Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories.’ While it’s easy to use colorful adjectives to describe his brand of humor, it’s even harder to define it. Whatever it is, he’s developed a massive cult following. He’s an everyman that blends a sort of slobbish machismo with the mind of a stoner philosopher, but there is also something sinister about his wit and irreverent spin on, well, everything. Like every great comedian, Heidecker doesn’t identify himself as one. His role in Rick Alverson’s 2012 film The Comedy proves Heidecker is a brilliant, natural actor with an ability to show a haunting, dispossessed vulnerability that encapsulates a very distinct ennui and disillusionment belonging to the comedown between youth and middle age. As he gets wiser, Heidecker exudes a certain suburban boredom – a boredom that he makes seem exciting in his new album In Glendale. It’s a true ode to the singer songwriters, like Warren Zevon, Harry Nilsson, and Randy Newman, who wrote about their surroundings and life with a beautiful banality. Because it’s Harry Nilsson or Zevon or Newman, it works, and just like that, Heidecker can pull it off too. I got a chance to chat with Heidecker about comedy, music, getting stabbed in the back and dream projects that haven’t materialized yet. 

OLIVER KUPPER: The new album is great, by the way. I really enjoyed it.

TIM HEIDECKER: Thank you. That’s a good place to start.

KUPPER: Yeah, compliments are a good place to start. This is your first somewhat earnest album, right?

HEIDECKER: Uh huh, whatever that means.

KUPPER: What’s it like writing songs versus writing comedy? Is there a different wavelength you need to be on?

HEIDECKER: I don’t know. Songwriting is a little more meditative. Obviously, it involves an instrument usually - singing, playing guitar, playing piano, noodling around, finding phrases and subject matter. It’s something that I’ve done for years as a hobby or a way of clearing my brain of other stuff. It can be spontaneous; you can be sitting in a car with other friends and start singing something catchy. Comedy is generally driven by a project. What are the ultimate goals of this? It involves a lot more people, a lot more collaboration. I’m very productive when I’m in collaboration with comedy. I don’t sit around and dream up amazing ideas all day long. It generally involves getting lunch or going on a road trip. It’s doing something where there’s a conversation with a buddy – Eric, Gregg [Turkington], or Doug [Lussenhop]. Someone I’m close with. Music is more singular.

KUPPER: Were you craving that singular, cathartic experience?

HEIDECKER: Not really. With this record, I had always written lots of music. Certain songs would end up in a folder on my computer. Like, I don’t really know what this is. It might not be appropriate for comedy. It’s not really funny; it’s sort of sincere. I was reluctant to share that publicly. But once the first couple of songs on the record starting coming out of me, I thought, there’s a theme here that kind of works. It might be nice to put a record out without it being couched in a joke or a character.

KUPPER: How did you team up with [Jonathan] Rado from Foxygen?

HEIDECKER: Through Chris Swanson, who runs Secretly Canadian. I had known him for a while. Those guys financed the movie that I was in, The Comedy. We were friendly. He was a big fan of our work. He knew I was doing music, and he nudged me to take a stab at making records in a more current or straightforward way. He was curious to see what I could do if I did something outside of parody, if I could be a pop music guy that was doing interesting stuff. Rado and I connected on very similar interests in music - 70s singer/songwriter stuff. I love talking about the process, how those guys got the sounds they got, and getting back to that straightforward songwriting. He just wanted to help and be involved.

KUPPER: He’s super talented. That band is really great. Who were some of the singer/songwriters at the top of that list that you would talk about?

HEIDECKER: For me, it’s Randy Newman, Warren Zevon, Harry Nilsson - the greats, the big ones. I’ve been really enjoying them for the past several years now.

KUPPER: I’m obsessed with Harry Nilsson. When you decided to go in and make this album, did you feel like you had enough songs? Did you throw yourself in the studio and see what you could come up with? Half and half?

HEIDECKER: The process by which this record was made may be interesting, maybe not. Half the songs were written in a period of a month or so. The other half were songs I had written over the years; they didn’t fit into any one category. I had my little home recording studio. I would try to build up the track. You know, not just me and the guitar, but drums, bass. It’s a fun way to work, to build tracks, and getting it to sound good, but never that good. I’m not that good at it. I made a demo version of the album at home. It was in the order of all the songs, with a couple extras. I took this home demo to Rado and his garage, and we started making the songs from scratch at his place. He’s such a great piano player and drummer. We recorded on tape, and we had four or five demos out of that. But they were still demos; they weren’t what we both wanted, which was really clean studio, major-label-sounding recordings. So we took those demos, and I gave them to my band that I play with live - City City. They learned the demos, and then we went into a real recording studio. In the course of a week, we laid everything down. Very quickly, because we knew all the sounds and what we wanted to sound like. We wanted the level of professionalism and the clean sheen that those 70s records had.

KUPPER: You work with a lot of musicians. It’s like a ten-piece band, right?

HEIDECKER: Yeah, there’s a ten-piece band that I put together. It’s mostly that band, City City, and a little horn section. It’s a little bit extravagant; there’s two background singers, two electric guitar players. I could probably shave that down if I needed to. But right now, everyone just gels. They all came in and brought their own talents to the record. I’m very grateful.

KUPPER: Do you think the audience for your music is different from your comedy audience? Your comedy following is big. Will the same people come out for your music, do you think?

HEIDECKER: For right now, a large percentage of my fans will find me through comedy. With this record, we’re trying to present it to the largest group of people possible. I think some people who are coming on board either didn’t know or didn’t care for my work, but they like the music. It’s not intended just for the fans; it’s intended for people who like the music. I get a lot of, “Oh, this Tim Heidecker record is actually pretty good.” They’re surprised. Some fans who have been following me a little closer aren’t surprised because they know that I am a big music lover and music maker. That early music might be sillier, but it has the same core qualities.

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"I don’t necessarily identify myself as a “comedian.” I do comedy, I do standup and sketch comedy. I make all kinds of stuff. But I don’t concern myself with what to call it or how I should be perceived...I think it’s unfortunate that we expect people to stay in their lanes."

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KUPPER: It’s interesting. Not a lot of comedians can bounce between these different mediums and be taken seriously. Especially when it comes to acting. Your role in The Comedy was a really serious role. There are certain actors, like Robin Williams, whose acting is so good that you don’t necessarily think of them as a comedian anymore. Do you ever think about the implications of being too serious?

HEIDECKER: It’s a thing that’s put on us by journalists and certain people that have perceptions of what people are supposed to do. It doesn’t affect my decision making when I decide to do something or not. I generally try to do something based on the desire to do it, whether or not I think it will have quality and be successful. I don’t necessarily identify myself as a “comedian.” I do comedy, I do standup and sketch comedy. I make all kinds of stuff. But I don’t concern myself with what to call it or how I should be perceived. If anything, it’s more interesting to have different facets and abilities. I think it’s unfortunate that we expect people to stay in their lanes. Actors, musicians, directors, whatever - most of us started out just wanting to make stuff, to do something creative. There was more of a push towards doing comedy, for me. But I still have interest in lots of stuff. As long as there’s a market for it, I want to pursue those things. I also understand that there is context. There’s a challenge when someone who is usually a country singer comes out with a rap album. It’s going to be hard. But some people can do it really well. I admire Steve Martin. He can be silly, very serious and intellectual, he can play music and go on tour. I just hope that you can place this record of mine in the context of my larger body of work and say, “This guy has ideas. He has an interest in expressing himself in different ways.”

KUPPER: There’s a lot of freedom in that. If you see yourself as an artist and not specifically in one lane, you can do anything, even if there’s not a market for it.

HEIDECKER: I want to have that reputation, that you don’t know exactly what to expect when I present something. It should, theoretically make you more interested in what I’m doing next.

KUPPER: You still maintain the cult comedian aura. Is that something that you try to hold onto, or is it a natural progression of you as an artist?

HEIDECKER: It’s all just been fun, playing with identity and the media, trying to create work that leaps the dimensions of television or linear video. It’s been more fun, for On Cinema, to let those characters have a life outside the show. This record, though, is really straight. There’s really not an angle for me to be anybody but myself. If there’s something stupid, like something from the Tim and Eric Show, the work speaks for itself. Let’s just party.

KUPPER: Do you feel like you get a lot of stupid questions? Do you like doing interviews?

HEIDECKER: It depends. It’s interesting to see the spectrum of people who are interested. Our publicist works very hard to get as much press as we can. My attitude has always been, do as much as you can. You never know when someone is going to read something out of the blue, and it turns into their favorite thing. But there are so many young people doing this who don’t seem interested. Like, I had a kid come to the Decker screening, and he ran out of questions for me in, like, a minute. I don’t know if this is the best career choice for you if you can’t think of any questions. He’s like, “Yeah, my editor wanted me to talk about Trump.” He asked me three questions about Trump, and then he got tongue-tied.

KUPPER: They want clickbait.

HEIDECKER: Yeah. But generally, if there’s someone like you, someone thoughtful and interesting, I think it’s pretty harmless. It helps me figure out what the hell I’m doing. You can make stuff, but you don’t really analyze it too much until you start talking to someone about it.

KUPPER: It’s interesting how that works. That’s why real criticism is important, too. People are too focused on clickbait, and they don’t think that the most interesting thing is to analyze the work and talk to the artist to find answers.

HEIDECKER: I think some criticism tends to be very quick, not thoughtful, not researched. The negative criticism I’ve gotten has usually come without a frame of reference to me or my work. It’s a very easy, “This is just Dad rock.” I’m insecure with that person, who doesn’t know the context. It’s safer and quicker to go with a buzzword that they just heard.

KUPPER: You’re premiering Decker next week?

HEIDECKER: Yes, Friday the 17th.

KUPPER: And you’re working with Gregg Turkington again, which is great. What’s that experience been like?

HEIDECKER: Gregg and I have known each other for about 10 years now. I was such a huge Hamburger fan. I roped him into doing our show. Our wives get together. We’ve got kids who are the same age. We just share a lot of common interests. Once we started doing this On Cinema thing, it seemed like we found this endless well of material that we could keep feeding and growing and developing. We established these two characters that are so fun to write for and behave as. It keeps entertaining us, this world. And it keeps getting bigger, because we keep adding fuel to it. Also, he’s just a nice guy. I’m so grateful to do this. On the TV show, we were able to elevate things a little bit. We were doing it as a full time thing. It was one of the most stress-free, joyful experiences. Everyone doing it loves it. It’s an easy thing to make. It’s so shitty. It’s not like you’re doing tons of takes and waiting for the perfect light. There are very little bad vibes in that environment. At my age, you want to be around that kind of energy as much as possible.

KUPPER: Especially in collaborations.

HEIDECKER: Yeah.

KUPPER: It’s been ten years since you had that famous interaction with your neighbor [where he stabbed you in the back]. Do you still think about that, or is it ancient history at this point?

HEIDECKER: Strangely, I’ve been thinking about it lately. Not to pat myself on the back (and not to be ironic), when that kid did that to me, I didn’t want to press charges. It felt like such a futile thing to do. He was 19 or 20 years old. He was on some insane drug. If he was going to go to jail for a significant amount of time, he would end up way worse. He’d be a bigger problem to the world. He ought to be given another shot. Those with white privilege are treated with more leniency, and that’s not fair, but it shouldn’t be, “Let’s throw this kid in a dark cell for the rest of his life.” It should be, how can we give disadvantaged kids better opportunities? We need to look at the prison system as not the answer to our problems. It’s a heavy thing. When you’re actually faced with the choice to punish somebody, it’s a hard thing to do. If you know anything, the prison system is designed to fail. It doesn’t make any sense.

KUPPER: You have to rehabilitate.

HEIDECKER: Yeah.

KUPPER: Do you have any dream projects that haven’t materialized yet?

HEIDECKER: We’re kind of doing it all. The more of an audience you have, the easier it is to do all these things. That’s the challenge, to get the word out, to get people to tune in. The futility of that is I know I don’t have a lot of power there. It either connects with a larger group of people, or it doesn’t. To answer your question, the next record I want to do, we want to bring in some of the guys that actually played on those old records who are still around. People like Jim Keltner, those guys who are still doing sessions and available. I would love to go in with Murderer’s Row and the people who made that, just to do it, because you can. I think that adds a whole other level.

KUPPER: I look forward to that, for sure.

[helicopter-like sound]

HEIDECKER: Cool. My helicopter is here, so I guess I got to go.

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Tim Heidecker's new album, In Glendale, is out now on Rado Records. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Photographs by Cara Robbins. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

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The FOMO Is Real: An Interview With Photographer and Filmmaker Yulia Zinshtein

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Yulia Zinshtein is a photographer, filmmaker and poet living in New York City. In the FOMO (fear of missing out) generation, she paints a portrait of her friends through a sardonic lens that leaves the viewer wondering if she is poking fun or being completely serious. It's a deadpan type of humor that only the keen, or members of her generation, will understand. In her short film, entitled Girls Going Wild, inspired by early-naughts reality TV and late night infomercials, she brings to life what it means not to be the life of the party. She says, "Girls Going Wild is about searching for the best party. This video aims to show how awkward that search can be...and that the very process becomes the best party you could ever find." We got a chance to ask Zinshtein about her work and her new short film, which Autre has exclusively premiered. 

Autre: Where are you from and why were you in Miami?

Yulia Zinshtein: I was born in Philly and raised in Moscow. I shot the video while in Miami for Art Basel! It was my first time at that art fair and it really affected me, something about Basel brings out the worst in people! But Miami is the best, one of the most inspiring places for my work. 

Autre: Where did the inspiration for this short film come from?

Zinshtein: We had extreme FOMO the whole time we were at Art Basel...worse than general New York FOMO! Where was the “real” party at? Were we on the list? Could we sneak in? Are we having fun? Will there be free drinks? Am I cool enough? Do my parents love me?! The 13 year old inside me was inspired by the old school video camera...filming my friends doing nonsense and acting for the sake of it really brought up how it all started for me. 

Autre: This work has a reality tv feel to it, only it feels a lot more real. Was that your intention, and are you a fan of reality tv?

Zinshtein: Oh definitely! It's between Girls Gone Wild and The Real World. But the message is the exact opposite of what Girls Gone Wild represents: girls not getting wild enough! 
I actually find contemporary reality TV extremely boring, I can never get through an episode of the Kardashians (and I've tried many many times...like oysters, I never got a feel for it). I love watching old Real World episodes but mostly for aesthetic reasons.

Autre: In addition to your video work, you're also known for your photography and poetry. Which medium did you start with first, and where do you feel most comfortable?

Photography was my gateway drug into video work and poetry. I feel comfortable in all mediums, they trigger different satisfactions. However I am most confident in photography, because I am more educated in it and have been doing it longer.

What's next?

Next, I have a trip planned to a private ranch in south Texas, somewhere I've never been! I'm really excited to see the outcome. In the summer I'm planning to go to Moscow (my parents still live there) and make work about them and my old life. Mostly, I want an excuse to annoy my Mom by following her around with a camera! I can see her yelling at me already, it'll be great!

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Click here to watch Yulia Zinshtein's new short film Girls Going Wild. Visit Zinshtein's website to see her photography. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

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A Long Strange Trip: An Intimate Conversation With Actor, Artist and Now Curator Leo Fitzpatrick

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photograph by Curtis Buchanan

A little over three years ago, I moved to New York to attend a graduate journalism program at NYU. Though I had wanted to get here forever, the very essence of being here didn’t hit me until I was record shopping at Kim’s Video and Music (RIP) in the East Village when I saw artist, actor, and now, curator Leo Fitzpatrick flipping through the bins. Fitzpatrick, to me, was something of a city landmark for young weirdoes that like fucked up art. As a bored suburban teenager I would look at photographer Patrick O’Dell’s Epicly Later’d blog where photos of Leo with his uber cool friends—from actress Chloe Sevigny to pro skaters like Jason Dill—and I saw a world and a lifestyle that I knew I wanted a part in. Fitzpatrick and his mega-famous artist buddies like the late Dash Snow and Dan Colen were my New York heroes, much like Lydia Lunch and Basquiat were to a previous generation. It wasn’t just about the work; it was the whole wasted freedom of that particular moment in downtown New York's history.

It’s been a long strange trip for Fitzpatrick since he was discovered skateboarding in Washington Square Park at age 14 by Larry Clark to star in the director’s seminal ‘90s troublemaker film Kids. Though he has remained involved in acting on and off ever since (he’s most likely appeared in at least one of your favorite shows: The Wire, Carnivale, Banshee, and a hilarious turn in this past season of Broad City as a misdemeanor prone trust fund man child), art has more or less been his primary passion since he bought his first Chris Johanson piece at age 17. He gained some notoriety for his austere and slightly brutal painting style as well as for his documented friendships with some of the early ‘00s’ most famous wild child artists like the aforementioned Snow and Colen, Nate Lowman, and Ryan McGinley.

But Fitzpatrick may have found his true calling as a curator. What sets him apart is his unbridled passion for the art that he likes. What he doesn’t like is the financial motivations that sometimes overshadow what art is supposed to be. This notion allowed Fitzpatrick to conceptualize the Home Alone and Home Alone 2 galleries with Lowman. The driving force behind the Home Alone concept was that none of the art that Fitzpatrick and Lowman showed was actually for sale. This freedom allowed them to re-imagine the gallery as a hangout. A place where ideas could flow freely and art could be displayed in interesting and surprising ways. Home Alone housed shows by artists like Adam McEwen, Larry Clark, Klara Liden, and others. The problem, of course, became money. With nothing to sell, Fitzpatrick and Lowman were losing money every month Home Alone was alive. And with Lowman’s busy schedule, Fitzpatrick shouldered much of the logistical burden behind the concept. “It’s tricky to hold up a gallery when you’re working with a friend,” says Fitzpatrick. “When we broke up Home Alone, it was mutual, but you can start to resent your partner at some point.”

But thanks to Marlborough Chelsea director Pascal Spengemann and owner Max Levai, the spirit of Home Alone lives on in the Viewing Room, a space set up in the Marlborough Chelsea location where Fitzpatrick has complete creative control and is again not worried about the constraints of selling. “Financially, [Home Alone] kicked our asses,” he says, “With Marlborough, I have support. It’s all the best parts of Home Alone, but with more stability.” In just a few months, the Viewing Room has hosted a show by 80-year old Los Angeles-based artist George Herms, and is currently holding an exhibition by iconic New York photographer Richard Kerns. “It’s his photos from the ‘80s” says Fitzpatrick. “I don’t know what he would call them, but I call them “streetscapes.” They’re all never-before-seen photos.”

After I profiled Fitzpatrick for my Forbes column last winter, he and I became friendly. I’m not going to lie: I look up to the guy. He is a singular example of someone who was able to carve out a place for himself in the art world without any formal training but a whole lot of sheer passion, hard work, and interesting ideas about the industry. We chatted in the Viewing Room about transitioning the Home Alone concept to a commercial gallery.

Adam Lehrer: How did this collaboration with Marlborough Gallery come about?

Leo Fitzpatrick: I wanted to have a body of work that was different. I enjoy discovering. I’m excited to try new things [with art] in an unconventional setting. In this space, I don’t have to worry about selling art. When you free it up like that, it’s exciting for everybody.

AL: Does making art for a gallery space feel as interesting as working in a more guerilla-type setting?

LF: There are benefits to both. I just needed the help. A lot of people remember Home Alone as something bigger than it actually was. But running a gallery is a lot of work. I don’t have the energy to start anything on my own anymore. We closed it at a good time. And I don’t think I could have gotten a job at a gallery before Home Alone.

AL: Do you see more artists trying to move outside of the conventional frame of showing art?

LF: I think people are moving towards finding ways to show art outside of the conventional gallery. Maybe your friend owns a pizzeria—put your art on the walls, and call that a gallery. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

AL: Getting work out there is more detrimental than ever, with the living costs associated with this city.

LF: The problem is finding space. Artists are living in the same spaces that they work in. It limits the kind of work they can produce. Like, a painting is much easier to make than a sculpture because it takes up less space. But I also like the challenge.

AL: Because with challenge, one is automatically forced to think differently in his/her execution?

LF: A lot of my outlook comes from skateboarding. One person might just see some stairs, but a skater sees a lot of options. How do I manipulate this to work for me? That’s how I view the art world. I can’t compete with somebody who has a lot of money or more education than me, so I have to invent a new way to do what I want to do. I’ve probably made some naïve mistakes, but that’s what you have to do.

AL: Chelsea shows have been the same forever. This is a new concept in an established space. Do you think, if it’s successful, it could be pioneering?

LF: It’s an unusual concept, so I don’t know if it will catch on. But I think it’s a great idea. I would support other galleries that wanted to try it. I never understood why the art world was so territorial. Aren’t we all trying to do the same thing? When you start talking about money, that’s when the competition comes in.

AL: How do you see yourself fighting that territorial aspect of the art world?

LF: When I came into the art world, I was a young kid. I was really intimidated by the Chelsea galleries. They were cold to me. I want to create a space for the kids who are curious. Why would you turn someone like that away? I tried to make Home Alone more of a hangout than a gallery. If one kid comes for a free beer, but gets really excited about making art or starting his or her own gallery—I think that’s really cool.

AL: Is it keeping the culture alive in some sense?

LF: Oh, yeah. You have to encourage kids to do their own thing. They can’t just sit around making the kinds of things that are going to be shown in Chelsea. Start your own movement. And kids need a place to talk about their ideas. Art is [about] growing up with your peers.

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"Kids are unpolished. They’ll stay out until 4 in the morning and talk to each other and try to take over the art world. I love that kind of thing. Kids fucking up the system—to me, that’s great."

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AL: What are the challenges you see for young artists?

LF: With the Internet, everything is so transparent. It must be hard for younger kids not to compare themselves to their friends. If they see their friend selling something for $20,000 and they’re only selling theirs for 10, I don’t think that’s healthy. They won’t be able to concentrate on making the work.

AL: What is your relationship to money?

LF: I have a very funny relationship to money now, especially money in the art world. I understand that it needs to exist, but it’s hard for the art world to thrive. I probably can’t afford the art that’s being shown in the gallery, but I get to hang out with it for a month. For me, the exposure is more important than the money. I just want to start a conversation.

AL: Is the role of curator fulfilling creatively in the same way making art is?

LF: Maybe more so. I get more out of supporting other artists than I do supporting myself. I’m not very ambitious. I don’t really consider myself an artist; it’s just something I do. If I get asked to do an art show, that’s cool. But if I confirm that I’ll be showing an artist that I’ve been trying to get for months, that’s like, “fuck yeah!”

AL: What has been your favorite part of curating?

LF: Hanging an art show is more satisfying to me than anything. I always tell the artists to not worry about the art they give me. My job is to make it seamless. They get to make whatever they want to make, and I figure it out. And I’ve loved experimenting with how the show is going to look. You want the art to get exposure, but you don’t want it to be too conventional.

AL: Is showing artists that you feel are under-appreciated important to you at all?

LF: That’s not always the case. I’ve done shows with artists who have had a lot of exposure. But I prefer otherwise. George Herms is an 80–year-old from California. He’s a dying breed. He’s a photographer, a sculptor, and a painter. His whole life embodies art. I want this show to set the tone for the rest of the gallery.

AL: Are there other curators that inspire you?

LF: Not really, no. But I do follow a lot of little galleries. I like to support the underdogs. These little galleries are the underdogs, and they’re doing really cool stuff. If I was to compare myself to contemporaries, I would compare myself to these tiny, scrappy galleries that are just trying to get by. I’m not trying to compete with a big gallery.

AL: But if that did prove to be the evolution of it, would you be opposed to it?

LF: As long as you keep your heart in the right place. But I don’t think about competing with the art world. I have ambition, but that doesn’t mean making money. It means putting on great shows that leave people scratching their heads. I also want to prove people wrong. To the people who say, “You can’t do that,” I say, “Let me try.”

AL: Have you had to attune your business savvy to deal with those challenges, or are you letting Pascal and Matt take care of that?

LF: No, I do everything. If you’re a smaller gallery, people might be more eager to help you out than if you’re a more established Chelsea gallery. So we’ve gotten a lot of support. But I deal with a lot of rejections.

AL: For all of your lack of pretentiousness and mellow attitude towards what you do, the name Leo Fitzpatrick is one that is known in the New York art world. Are people starting to recognize you for your connection to the art world as much as your acting career?

LF: Kids have come up to me on the street. At first, I thought they were going to talk to me about my acting, but then they said, “We really like Home Alone.” To me, that was the best feeling in the world. I think of acting and the art world as two different careers. And if you’re not going to sell your art, a kid stopping you on the street to say they like your work keeps you going.

AL: How do you go into choosing work for the gallery?

LF: The work has to excite me first. Everything I show gives me a gut reaction. There aren’t any politics to it. It’s not the artist who is hot at the moment. I’d rather show people who aren’t in the limelight, and give them the exposure. I’ll do more research, dig in the trenches, and try to find artists who were forgotten or who don’t get the respect they deserve. Hopefully, the rest of the audience will find it interesting, too.

AL: What you do makes people realize that it is possible not to come from a certain world or scene, and still be able to do what you want to do.

LF: For sure. I think we need to give these guys a little heat. If you can’t compete on their level, and you still attempt to create (whether it be art or a gallery or whatever), that shows that you have a lot of drive and hunger. From the beginning, you’re setting yourself up for failure, but you say, “Fuck, I’m going to do it anyway.” That’s awesome.

AL: You once said to me that the art world needs a grimy side. Do you think griminess can exist in this Chelsea system?

LF: Grimy can mean so many things. I think it’s the youth that will provide the “griminess.” Kids are unpolished. They’ll stay out until 4 in the morning and talk to each other and try to take over the art world. I love that kind of thing. Kids fucking up the system—to me, that’s great. It’s probably a good idea to get on those kids’ sides.

AL: How should they go about that?

LF: A kid just reached out to me from London and said—“Hey, I want to do a Home Alone in London.” You don’t need my permission. You can even use the title Home Alone. I don’t own it. It’s just an idea. You can sell art out of the back of your car and call it a gallery. Just fucking do it, man.

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You can catch Leo Fitzpatrick's current curated show, Viewing Room: Richard Kern, at Marlborough Chelsea until December 23, 2015. You can follow Leo on Instagram: @lousyleo. text and interview by Adam Lehrer. Follow Autre on Instagram to stay up to date: @AUTREMAGAZINE

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Leo Fitzpatrick and Richard Kern by Adam Lehrer