Art and Curiosity: A Q&A With Curator Sylvia Chivaratanond

May 2, 2015

Everyone in the art world knows that Los Angeles' art scene is going through a frenzied and near-maniacal renaissance. But for the last fifteen years, curator and art historian Sylvia Chivaratanond has sewn for herself a unique place in this strange Shangri-La’s rich artistic tapestry, which dates back to the 50s and 60s with artists like Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston. After seeing the landmark exhibition Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s, which is widely considered to be one of the most important exhibitions of contemporary art, Chivaratanond switched her major from law to art history, volunteered to be a guard at MoCA, and began a long career organizing exciting exhibitions for institutions from the Centre Pompidou to the Tate Gallery in London. Recently, Chivaratanond has been brought on the curate exhibitions for After & Again, which is a contemporary art platform celebrating the craftsmanship of textiles. Merging art, design and fashion, the platform sources textiles from all over the world, which are then presented in unique site-specific installations. For the first installation presented by After & Again, Chivaratanond has curated an electrifying exhibition by established and leading contemporary Mexican artist Betsabee Romero, which explores pre-Columbian iconography, colonial imagery, and lowrider culture – it is currently on view at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Autre was lucky enough to catch the very busy Chivaratanond to discuss her beginnings in the art world and her continued thirst for exploring new creative landscapes – what you will learn is that she may just be one of the most important ambassadors for the Los Angeles art scene.

Autre: What is your artistic background…how were you initially introduced to the world of art and can you remember a specific work of art that really set you off?

Sylvia Chivaratanond: I am originally from Los Angeles and was a pre-law major at UCLA. As a college sophomore I walked into the Helter Skelter show at MoCA's Geffen one evening, and that show single-handedly changed the course of my life. The following week I marched into MoCA to volunteer as a guard and intern in the Education Dept; switched my major to Art History and didn't tell my parents until six months before graduation day. My world was turned upside down when I saw the work of Charles Ray, Lynn Foulkes, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Lari Pittman, Jim Shaw, Meg Cranston, Robert Williams, Manual Ocampo, etc. Then I saw Sonic Youth perform at the Geffen outdoor plaza as part of the show and I was hooked. That work spoke to me on so many levels: viscerally, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. And it had a rock star component, which spoke to my youth culture. It was then that I learned that many of those artists taught at the art department of UCLA and several colleges around the city, and I wanted to be even closer to these individuals' energy.

A: How did you get your start in curation and can you describe your first curatorial effort?

SC: After UCLA I went to earn a graduate degree from Leicester University. During my time in London I interned at the Tate Modern for two years and worked very closely with the curatorial department on several Modernist shows. It wasn't until the following year when I received a curatorial fellowship at the Walker Art Center that my expertise in the contemporary art world was cemented. It was there where I met the most creative minds working the field of contemporary art. I was the assistant of Richard Flood, then Chief Curator, and I worked on my first contemporary art show: Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3. In addition, I worked on the drawing retrospective of Robert Gober, Bruce Conner and the most comprehensive Arte Povera show to date. It was a phenomenal time at the Walker as it was a think tank and laboratory for ideas and artists; it practiced what it preached as far as cross-discipline approach to the visual arts. There was an incredible amount of freedom in our thinking and way of looking at art; there was no hierarchy in place. The director at the time, Kathy Halbreich (now Associate Director of MoMA) practiced a special generosity with regard to knowledge and her time that continues to be her ethos till this day.

A: You most recently worked as a curator for the venerable Centre Pompidou…what was most exciting about working with that institution?

SC: The Centre Pompidou is known for its stellar scholarship and excellent collection of art. It was an honor to work with their director and curators on building their permanent collection of art with regard to American artists, a focus for the Centre Pompidou Foundation. I was instrumental in adding important American artists to their collection including Jim Shaw, Rachel Harrison, Cheyney Thompson, Erin Sheriff, Sam Falls, Mark Bradford, Sterling Ruby, Barbara Kasten, Analia Saban, RH Quaytman, among many others.

A: I want to talk about your work with After & Again, which celebrates craftsmanship of textiles…what has your experience been with textiles?

SC: I recognize the importance of textiles in art as they have been part of the fabric of culture since the dawn of time! From what we wear on a daily basis to folk and tribal art to contemporary artists working w fabric such as Sheila Hicks, Ernesto Neto, and Yinka Shonibare. There are so many artists using textiles in their work whether directly sewn or worked into the sculptural object or simply as clothing to evoke an era or statement in a photograph such as Mickalene Thomas. In Mickalene's paintings, even though she doesn't use textiles directly, she makes specific references to them in her work in order to evoke a certain epoch or make a political statement. Do Ho Suh is another artist who comes into mind who weaves intricate sculptural installations from translucent fabric and resin.

A: One of the first exhibitions presented by After & Again is a presentation of works by Betsabeé Romero, which will be on view at the Masonic Lodge, can you describe your connection with this artist?

SC: I have always admired Betsabee's work from a far but never experienced it until now. She is a legend in Mexico and Latin American and I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to bring her work to audiences in Los Angeles. Her work in sculpture, photographs, drawings and installation bridge the gap between Pre-Colombian iconography and pop culture such as Chicano and lowrider culture. The notion of death as celebratory is also a big topic in her work. I have always gravitated toward work that both celebrates and draws attention death in our culture, not so much as a dark component, but instead using darkness as way to generate lightness.

Installation view of Helter Skelter - the show at MoCA that changed curator Sylvia Chivaratanond's life forever — *Installation view of Helter Skelter - the show at MoCA that changed curator Sylvia Chivaratanond's life forever*

A: Can you talk about future shows presented by After & Again that you are curating?

SC: We plan to choose the next artist by this summer in order to show in Los Angeles in the fall. The artist will also do an edition for After & Again and will somehow integrate that project into an installation at a location in the city.

A: What type of art do you gravitate to the most…is there any type of medium or work that you are immediately drawn to?

SC: I love work in all mediums across eras. I love Surrealist and Dada work and I also love strolling the Metropolitan Museum's collection galleries of ancient south east Asian art and art from the sub-continent from 400 B.C onward!

A: You recently curated a show of Devendra Banhart's work at Reserve Ames - what is Devendra doing that is different than other artists?

SC: I love Devendra's seamless fusion of visual art and music. He is the modern day dandy who understands the subtleties of our culture from the history of sound and the works of John Cage to the poetry of Ginsburg to the latest country music. He went to art school first then began his music career, in that order.

A: What is the most exciting thing about art in LA – especially in the present – is there a boom or has there always been one continuous shock wave?

SC: Los Angeles has always been important to the scene of art since the 1950s and 1960s with Ed Kienholz and the birth of Ferus Gallery to all the artists in the now historical 1992 Helter Skelter show at MoCA. Los Angeles has always been in a strong position in the art world as this is the city with the most concentration of the best art schools in the country. The recent boom of art comes at the heels of the revitalization of downtown and with it affordable studios and housing in these dense areas of population. Everyone from New York City has figured out that LA has been inexpensive to work and live (not to mention unbeatable sunshine) so recently there has been a mass exodus of artists, galleries, and collectors from every major city in the world. Did I mention the outrageously delicious food scene here? It's out of this world with the most Michelin star restaurants in one city. Downtown LA is also the home to the most exciting museums from MoCA to the new Broad Museum, which will continue to bring fresh and new perspectives of art while broadening their audiences.

A: What’s next?

SC: For me: yoga and meditation somewhere far off. For art: continue the curiosity that makes art of our time. We must continue to support art, music and culture in any way possible.

You can catch Sylvia Chivaratanond's first curatorial effort for After & Again, featuring the art of leading Mexican artist Betsabee Romero at the Masonic Lodge (6000 Santa Monica Blvd - right behind Paris Photo) from May 2 to May 4, 2015. text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

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Installation of Betsabee Romero's exhibition at the Masonic Lodge, curated by Sylvia Chivaratanond — *Installation of Betsabee Romero's exhibition at the Masonic Lodge, curated by Sylvia Chivaratanond*

Live Long Enough to Live Forever: A Q&A With Cole Sternberg

April 29, 2015

Multidisciplinary artist Cole Sternberg is an explorer of the human soul, the American psyche and the paranoia surrounding global growth, change and ecological destruction. Although he is predominantly a painter, Sternberg also practices sculpture, photography, film and room installations. At Paris Photo Los Angeles 2015, Sternberg will present what may be one of his most exciting photographic journeys yet: a recreation of his grandmother’s den from her home in Long Island. Sternberg has exhaustively documented every inch of the space and the strange objects that live there: "...Late 19th century plein air impressionist American painting, a 1990s TV with really strange, hardly decipherable instructions for how to use it, her VHS collection, my grandpa’s ashes, a binder about a Parisian tourist trip they did—this real weird mix of things—pillows knitted with puppies yawning." Through collage and unorthodox photographic processes, “My Grandma’s Den” is a microcosm of a larger consciousness: an America afraid of itself, afraid of its neighbors, armed to the teeth and begging for spiritual catharsis. After Paris Photo, Sternberg will be exhibiting a site-specific work in the Hamptons and then he is off to travel the world aboard a shipping vessel to create works that deal with human minuteness and global trade. In the following fascinating interview, Sternberg discusses his practice, the fate of mankind and his grandmother’s den.

Oliver Kupper: What were some of your earliest introductions to art?

Cole Sternberg: Well, my earliest ones that I don’t actually remember—but I’ve been told from family members—my parents and grandparents used to take me to a lot of museums. I guess I got really into certain, specific impressionist paintings when I was four years old. I would just sit and stare at these different textured oil works for—not a serious amount of time—but a serious amount of time for a little kid, three to five minutes or something. Just staring at them. And they thought it was kind of strange, but that was the first thing.

OK: That makes sense now.

CS: Yeah, it came together twenty years later…The first thing I really remember getting deep into was in middle school, my family moved to Germany for my dad’s job for a couple of years. They kept dragging me, again, to museums. But these were more iconic European museums like, the ones you would think—whether it be the Louvre, or the D’Orsay in Paris, or the Uffizi in Florence—you know, whatever, every big tourist museum. So I saw a lot of work. In a two-year span, I saw a ridiculous amount of important, historical work.

OK: Can you name three artists that really had a profound influence on you?

CS: I don’t know. It’s hard because I don’t think my work really related to any of those early influences super specifically. I mean, I’ve always really liked texture, and I would see that in a variety of works. I think when I was seventeen, I started learning more about abstract expressionism, and then Twombly. Things like that – you can see a little bit more in the work. But it’s weird because I can’t really piece it to one or two specific people. It’s kind of a blend. I love Joseph Beuys, and Sigmar Polke, and Twombly, and Mapplethorpe—all kinds of different people.

OK: Yeah, I meant in a sense of—not necessarily influence your work, but just had an impact on your creativity…

CS: Well that immersive environment of large abstraction. “Fifty Days at Iliam” is a Twombly piece in the Philadelphia museum that’s either eleven or twelve massive canvases that go together to tell the story of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The feeling sitting in a room surrounded by those big, powerful works, I think, drove me to actually create something.

OK: Yeah, that makes sense. So, do you travel around a lot? Did you travel around a lot as a kid? Were you sort of moving around the world a little bit?

CS: Not really. We were pretty much in Northern California except for that few year period in Germany. But during that period in Germany we tried to travel as much as possible because it was a unique time and opportunity. And then from college until now I travel a lot.

"I like this idea of an ongoing search for some sort of truth. That truth could be very grandiose. How is the earth placed in the whole environment, in the solar system, in the universe, and so on. How is one person’s life relevant to the rest of us? I like these amorphous concepts of searching."

OK: You work in a lot of mediums—photography, sculpture, insulation, film—but painting has sort of become your main medium. What is it about painting that best expresses your creativity?

CS: Well, it’s kind of a selfish thing. I think I just enjoy painting the most. There’s an emotional connection to that, and a sort of visceral feeling about it that I really like. But at the same time, my recent body of work is all photography. And then my next project after this is a mix of photography and painting. So I don’t know. I don’t know how locked in I am on it all the time. But painting a large-scale painting is probably still my most joyful thing to create.

OK: Your work seems to be this grand exploration of humankind—evolution, civilization, culture, what drives us, what moves us. You recreated the Sistine Chapel on shipping crates and the last moments of Ray Johnson’s life, which is incredible. What are you hoping to discover? What are you looking for? Is there anything specific you are looking for?

CS: I don’t know. It feels like I’m looking for something, but I don’t know what exactly it is. I like the overarching theme of how humanity or humankind (in a more positive way) affects our environment around us—for the better or worse. Mainly for the worst, but it kind of depends. I like this idea of an ongoing search for some sort of truth. That truth could be very grandiose. How is the earth placed in the whole environment, in the solar system, in the universe, and so on. How is one person’s life relevant to the rest of us? I like these amorphous concepts of searching. Also, I like to subversively deal with social issues in the work.

OK: Where do you think humans will be in five hundred years?

CS: Oh my god. Well, the way it’s looking now, we’ll probably be turning into fossils slowly. Sometimes I buy into the Kurzweil concept of a singularity, the possibility that in five hundred years our consciousness will be, basically, where it is twenty years from now. We’ll figure out how to live forever. The idea of neurology and robotics and general science and technology combined to the point where every day automatically our brain is uploading to a cloud and we know exactly how the brain works. So if I got hit by a car one second from now, I would just download all my memories and experiences into a synthetic brain and synthetic body and be rolling again. If that works, then in five hundred years, we’ll probably have explored deep, deep into the universe and learned more truths about how small we are in the context of our world and others.

OK: Sure. That was sort of a curve ball question, sorry about that.

CS: I could go on forever about weird theories of living on.

OK: I love that. I think we’ll be downloadable, too. I think that we’re already becoming cyborgs.

CS: Oh yeah, it feels like it in the stupid connection with our phones.

OK: That’s exactly what I’m talking about. So, Paris Photo is coming up. This is really interesting to me. Can you describe your solo exhibition with MAMA at Paris Photo?

CS: Well the idea started with taking a room and recreating that in photography in another room—that other room being the booth or whatever space for Paris Photo for MAMA. I spent a lot of time in my grandma’s den, which is in a small town on Long Island. The den is really creepy—like every grandma’s dens. But it also has all these weird little components that, taken separately, can mean a lot of different things. Or, together, can be this symbol of the weird state of America and the world. So I got really into my grandma’s den, basically. It has everything from a late 19th century plein air impressionist American painting, to a 1990s TV with really strange, hardly decipherable instructions for how to use it, to her VHS collection, my grandpa’s ashes, a binder about a Parisian tourist trip they did—this real weird mix of things—pillows knitted with puppies yawning. I captured all that, shooting each square foot of it very specifically. I took it back to my studio—all that photography—and then started to figure out what I was really going to do with it.

OK: What did you do with it?

CS: What that ended up being is a series of collages that are manipulated in a kind of strange way that give it this destructive, rough feel—in black and white and color. Then, integrating text in with different images to give these little hints of what I’m thinking with each work. They address the environment in some way. My grandma has been a lifelong left-wing democrat. Suddenly, she’s a very right-winged person, which I don’t understand, except that my uncle has her watch Fox News a lot. I think maybe that’s brainwashed her. There’s these little hints of what happens to people when they get old and why their viewpoints change for no rational reason. Then, the bigger thing that came out of it is this agoraphobic tendency of my grandma, of me, and then of America in general. We really want to build walls and isolate ourselves, which, I think is super unfortunate. So a lot of the work ended up getting into more of this agoraphobia than anything else.

*Agoraphobic Tendencies of a Modern World (2015)*

OK: Does she know that you are presenting this exhibition? Does she have any idea what’s going on?

CS: She loves art. She’s exposed me to a lot of art. She went to the Ray Johnson Hamptons thing. So she knows I’m feeling it. I’m pretty sure she has no clue of the dark side of it or the agoraphobic side of it, until she sees the work. Even then, I’m kind of hoping she doesn’t figure it out. She’s very sweet and fine lady. I don’t want to bum her out too much. It’s more about everyone than her specifically. So, we’ll see.

OK: You’re about to go on this massive trip around the world. Can you talk about that project? You’re about to travel the world, essentially, on a shipping crater.

CS: I love this project. It’s been planned in a variety of forms for three or four years, and finally, it’s not coming to fruition in what I think is, probably, the best way. At first, it was more in regard to Chinese trade, and America controlling the oceans, and what that meant to the world. Now, I have been more focused on it being about the journey itself and how small humans are within the scope of the ocean. The vessel stops three times in China, one time in Korea, then goes across the Pacific. That part of the trip is around 10 or 12 days. You cross one of the few dead zones that are left in the world—zones of the ocean where if you get sick or the boat has a major issue, no one will reach you in time. Dead zones are closing very quickly due to technology. So this is a last moment to really spend any time in one of those areas. Also, you pass by, to some degree, what’s called the “plastic island.” It isn’t really an island, just a massive amount of garbage floating around. You can’t really see it all of it on the surface at once like a normal island, but it’s another sign of disgusting human waste. And then the ship goes through the Panama Canal, stops in Columbia, and then goes up the East Coast of America, ending in New York. That’s more of a human ingenuity part of the trip. I think that might be more fun.

OK: So, what are you doing on the ship?

CS: On the ship, I’m painting. I’m creating all kinds of work—paint, photography, drawing, writing—and exposing the work to the elements in different ways. For instance, a watercolor might be tied to a pole on the ship, and then the rain and saltwater will eat away at the paint to some degree for the whole journey. Another piece might be sitting in the engine room for the whole journey, and the soot will slowly build up on the piece. I’ve never done that before—physically integrating the environment into the works in some way. I think it will be a mental and physical challenge.

OK: It sounds amazing. Now, are you exhibiting those works at MAMA? How long does that take? How long does something like that take?

CS: The journey?

OK: Yeah.

CS: It’s about a month—a few days in China on the front end. This production company is making a documentary about the journey and me, so we’ll spend a little time in China beforehand just doing things and wandering around. Then, the same on the back end in New York. So I guess the whole thing is about five weeks or five and a half weeks.

OK: It sounds incredible.

CS: I think it will be good. Hopefully I don’t jump off.

OK: Yeah, hopefully. So where do you see yourself as an artist in ten years? That’s my last question. It might be a difficult question.

CS: Oh my god. I don’t know. With every exhibition or project I do, I try to grow a little and push myself a little further in terms of process, and concept, and the ending visual too. If I keep doing that, as I’ve done for at least the last five years, I think the work ten years from now will be pretty interesting and pretty in depth in a variety of formats. I think that, through it all, that’s all I can really hope for, is the work itself. You can’t really predict what business opportunities or anything will come.

You can check out Cole Sternberg's "My Grandma’s Den" at Paris Photo Los Angeles 2015, presented by MAMA Gallery, New York Backlot, Stand H3, Paramount Pictures Studios. text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Exploring Margiela's Genius: An Interview with Alison Chernick

April 27, 2015

How do you make a documentary about a subject who never shows his face and insists on being interviewed only by fax? When the subject is Martin Margiela and his eponymously named cult label Maison Martin Margiela, the legend alone is enough material. In the short documentary The Artist Is Absent, an obvious riff on Marina Abramović’s highly present retrospective performance at MoMA, documentarian filmmaker and writer Alison Chernick explores the myth, the legend, and the genius that is Margiela. Indeed, Margiela was a pivotal and controversial fulcrum in the world of high fashion – upcycling car seatbelts, blonde wigs and winter gloves, he created garments that defined sartorial rebellion and he made fashion adventurous. Starting with his breakout collection in 1989 and ending with his abrupt departure in 2009, the collections produced by Maison Margiela defied convention. The documentary, which has been produced by the Yoox Group, features the likes of Jean Paul Gautier, Raf Simons, and Geert Bruloot, who is largely credited with discovering Margiela and his talents. In the following interview, Chernick, who has created award-winning documentaries exploring artists like Matthew Barney and Julian Schnabel, talks to Autre about her first fashion documentary and her journey unlocking the mystery of Margiela.

Autre: You’ve done a lot of documentaries about major contemporary visual artists, like Matthew Barney and Julian Schnabel, what was different about making a documentary about a designer versus making a documentary about an artist?

Alison Chernick: A documentary on a fashion designer comes with an innate rhythm, a visual aesthetic, a beat that gives the footage fluidity as fashion is so much about body movement. Fortunately for me he also is a complex and intriguing character so the film can also offer some deep commentary as well. A film on a visual artist is a totally different beast, often more esoteric with less of a natural rhythm.

Autre: What did you personally learn or discover about Margiela through the making of this documentary?

Chernick: What an original thinker he was. He was a leader, a provocateur, a maverick, a sentimentalist…the anti-designer.

Autre: There has been a recent wave of documentaries about designers, why do you think fashion is being noticed more and more outside of the fashion world?

Chernick: Fashion is accessible to the masses and that’s why fashion films have such a large following. Everyone has to wear clothes; therefore each can connect to this material, literally, in some form or other.

Autre: If you were able to sit down with Margiela, what would you ask him?

Chernick: I'd chat with him about his new paintings - he's been painting and I look forward to seeing them.

*A rare 1992 photo of Martin Margiela. Archives Villa Noailles*

Autre: Have you always wanted to make documentary films?

Chernick: I sort of fell into it -- but there is an endless wealth of material to document, so there is never a shortage of topics -- its all pending accessibility

Autre: Can you name one documentary that really floored you, a documentary that made you want to make the same kind of films?

Chernick: How about docufiction? I often find that fiction can often get to the truth before documentary…I was floored by Hirokazu Koreeda's Nobody Knows. I’m also a big fan of Maurice Pialat. The Cove was pretty mind-blowing. Capturing the Friedmans was also was riveting.

Autre: Are there plans to making a feature length Margiela documentary?

Chernick: Not sure…not as of right now, but there has been talk.

Autre: What do you hope the audience watching the documentary will learn about the designer?

Chernick: I hope it will inspire artists to put fear aside and think outside the box, lead and don't follow. Follow your instinct.

Autre: What’s next?

Chernick: Docufiction!

The Artist is Present will see its premier on Yoox – a premier fashion destination. There will also be selections from Margiela’s past collections available for purchase. You can explore Alison Chernick’s previous films on her website. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Lucky As Sin: An Interview with Lou Taylor Pucci

April 13, 2015

Very rarely do you catch an actor during that chrysalis phase between crawling out of the cocoon of one character and into the skin of another. This is exactly where I caught Lou Taylor Pucci, who is an innately gifted actor, well known for playing vulnerable souls and identity seeking characters, like the thumb sucking angst-ridden teen, Justin Cobb in Mike Mills’ 2003 debut feature, Thumbsucker alongside Tilda Swinton, Vincent D'Onofrio and Keanu Reeves. The role made him a fixture in mid-aughts indie cinema.

Then there is his most recent role as Evan in the genre-bending, sci-fi, love story horror film, Spring, which features a more mature actor grappling with demons that are both figurative and literal. In Spring, Pucci plays the heartbreaking role of a young man who loses his mother and decides to go on an adventure of a lifetime. The film, shot on the beautiful coastline of an ambiguous Italian village, shows his character searching for meaning, destiny, self, love…anything to quell the longing. He finds his purpose when he meets Louise, a beautiful young woman who is hiding a frightening, monstrous secret that far outweighs anyone’s definition of “baggage.”

The film is the second feature by inventive directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead who start the film off during the low tide of the character’s mourning of his mother and his stages of grief. As the tide rises, the film crashes beautifully on the coast of Italy, where slow motion drone shots and multiple minute long pans follow the character into a deep, dark world where every part of his psyche is pushed to the limit. It is a Kafkaesque tale that harkens elements and overtones of German Expressionist cinema with a little bit of Jarmusch-cool.

Pucci fits into these roles perfectly. He is an actor that is not afraid to be vulnerable, which is the mark of a great actor – if not a believable one. I first met Pucci, who is a New Jersey native from a creative, folksy kind of showbiz family (think the Carter family), before the premiere of Spring. He has grown a massive beard for his next role, as Romeo 'Prickface' Griggs, in Poor Boy – a film about two misfit brothers who try to survive in the desert. In the following candid interview, Pucci talks about his unique upbringing as an altar boy, his dichotomous entrance into the world of independent cinema and his future goals as an actor in the Hollywood machine.

How did you get your start?

I started in musical theater. I grew up in a, I don’t know what the word would be, because I can’t exactly say that I was in a poor family, but I was in a lower middle class family. There was not much money. But my dad was a musician and my mom has done modeling and she loved musicals. One of the first interesting memories I have of my dad was him up on stage at a fair playing guitar.

So it was in the blood already?

Well, yeah, my name – they named me Lou Taylor Pucci, because my mom and dad both thought it was a good stage name. They thought I was going to be a musician, which is hilarious.

That’s really thinking ahead.

So, yes, I grew up in a family that was based in entertainment and art. My dad was also a graphic artist and still is. He is actually still in bands now as well. He is in a Crosby, Stills and Nash cover band. He’s a great singer with a really high voice. So I was sort of born into that. I have two brothers and a sister and I was the first one, so they wanted me to do something. My mom wanted me to take dancing lessons.

Did you enjoy it?

You know, I was about 9 or 10 and I was in school and people were such assholes about everything, so it was literally, like, “faggot this” and “faggot that.” And it was terrible. I had very few friends that I could relate to in my regular school. But I did it…I took the lessons. It took about a year of fighting – then finally I was, like, “Fuck it, I’ll take the lessons!” I was basically given this option by my parents before I even existed. They would say things, like, “All you do is watch TV and go to school.” Then they said, “You can either become an altar boy at the church or you can audition for a community theater show and we’ll bring you there and give you ten dollars.” Basically, they really wanted me to be on stage. So, I decided, “whatever, I’m going to be an altar boy.”

Wow…what was that like?

I was an altar boy for about six or seven months. I was really up for it for a little bit longer than that. I loved it…the different colored robes and different colored belts. It was actually pretty funny. Finally, though, I decided that I couldn’t do this any more. You have to wake up so early. It’s the same thing every time. You know, I did grow up with church as a big part of my life. We didn’t go to church every day, but I did go to a Catholic school for my entire life. Even during high school…I went to an all boys Christian academy.

Finally you acquiesced?

Eventually I said yes, I took the ten dollars, and auditioned for Oliver! and I got into the show. When I auditioned, I was like, “Holy crap, I didn’t know I could do anything like this. I am singing and I’m dancing right now.” And this was just at the audition! They auditioned me to play Oliver…I got up to the last callback, but I faltered at the end because I had never read any script or had done any acting stuff in front of anybody.

Did you get a part?

I was a part of the ensemble anyways, not Oliver, but all of a sudden, it was like, holy shit, I have all these friends and there’s a bunch of girls in the show and they like this stuff and I like this stuff right now because I had all these people I could relate to finally. It was great.

"...I went from wearing a sailor suit

to playing this tortured hitchhiker.

I mean, I wasn’t even going to go to the

audition, because it was so ridiculous..."

Then what happened?

Well, I started doing Broadway [after community theater]. Amazingly, long story short, I ended up on stage doing The Sound of Music running around in a sailor suit as Fredrik Von Trapp for like a year and a half. I was about 12 when that happened.

That’s an amazing trajectory!

Yeah, it was. Well, I think there was a strange motivation my whole life that maybe I didn’t know about. All I saw was my parents fighting about money and so I just wanted to fix everything. I had this complex based on fixing or helping the family. As the first born, I felt this inclination to take care of my brothers and sisters. You have to be a part of their life. And I don’t know, my dad became a huge guy…he had a weight problem that was very insane. So, it was a real concern that he was going to die. Luckily, he has since taken control of his life, but I definitely came from a real weird, fucked up family and we didn’t have any money. But the only thing that they did have is an insane amount of ambition and love and they wanted me to do something. So, they would drive me to these community theaters and they would drive me to New York.

They were really dedicated.

They would take the bus to New York and the take the bus back to New Jersey to finish whatever they had to do and then take another bus to pick me up and take me back home. This was every day.

So, when did the movie thing start happening?

I think I was about 16 and I was still in high school and I was going to a lot of auditions. I was auditioning for about a year. So, I did the theater stuff and then I decided to take time off. I decided to go to high school. I wanted to be a real kid. I wanted to go to prom. I wanted to do things that normal kids do. Because I realized that I probably was going to do things that weren’t normal for the rest of my life. So, I went to high school and I was going to auditions, but I really wasn’t getting anything. I think I was not getting what film was. I didn’t know what it took to be in a film. I mean, I came from a theater background.

But you eventually booked something, right?

So, there was this one audition…for Personal Velocity….and Rebecca Miller wrote and directed the film and Parker Posey is in it with Fairuza Balk and Kyra Sedgwick. You know, Rebbeca Miller is married to Daniel Day Lewis and is daughter to Arthur Miller. The thing is, though, that I had no idea about any of this. It was just this opportunity that came up. I went to the audition and I went from wearing a sailor suit to playing this tortured hitchhiker. I mean, I wasn’t even going to go to the audition, because it was so ridiculous from what I knew that I thought I could only fail.

Lou Taylor Pucci and Fairuza Balk in Personal Velocity (2002) — *Lou Taylor Pucci and Fairuza Balk in Personal Velocity (2002)*

But you didn’t fail….

My dad told me that I have to try it…don’t miss this opportunity. He was always like that. In fact, he was really the only reason why I went to the audition. And then I went in and something just clicked in this really weird way. I was so nervous to go to this audition in the first place, but that nervousness was actually a part of the character. He was such a tortured, biting his fingernails until they bled, character who would not make eye contact and didn’t have a lot to say, but has a lot to react to and so in that room, I had a lot to do and something happened where, all of a sudden, because I couldn’t say anything, I finally understood what I was trying to do. I sort of understood what acting for film was.

What did you learn?

Well, when I walked out of the room, I remembered having tears in my eyes and sort of feeling very sad and terrible. I was, like, “Holy shit, it worked it! Something happened here.”

And a lot of actors don’t get that experience, right, that seems very authentic?

Yeah, I think I scared the shit out of myself and it was great for that role. And I think that’s what all roles are sort of about…you have to find out how to trick yourself into being someone. Each character or role has a different formula on how to do that. Each one is completely different. And you don’t know how you are going to do it. Usually, you figure it out two weeks before you start filming. So, I’ve been attached to my next film for about a year. I have this big fucking beard. I’m playing a guy named Prick Face who is a dirty, southern, real hickish guy – but not trying to make fun of it. It’s about two brothers who are trying to survive, they are living on a houseboat and they don’t have any education and their parents have abandoned them. And even though I have all this knowledge about this character’s story and I look like this character, I still don’t know how I am going to play this part.

Is that scary?

When I get to Las Vegas to shoot the movie, something is going to happen, which always happens, where once you start getting all the dialogue memorized and you start saying the dialogue out loud to people, it’s almost like living in a dream. You start noticing things about other people and they start incorporating into you. And there will be a snap. And, again, you’ll be like, “Holy shit, I get it!” That may not be the case for the whole role, but maybe for certain pieces of it, like this is how he walks or this is how he talks. And it all comes together in such a way. That’s why rehearsals are such an important thing to me and my career.

Did you grow up watching movies…was there a specific movie, or actor, or scene that you remember really blowing your mind?

First two movies I remember seeing, honestly, are Batman and Terminator 2 at a drive-in movie theater. The truth is, that’s what I love. I love action, sci-fi, big productions. Not just spectacle, but come on, Bat Man and Terminator 2 are staples of our lives in the entertainment business. Terminator 2 was hands-down one of the best sequels. Bat Man was one of the darkest and coolest – Michael Keaton, Tim Burton – things ever created. Awesome music, awesome acting. They were turning a comic book into basically something real. And Jack Nicholson as the Joker – holy shit!

What about independent films?

Well, independent films are not something I seek out. It’s not what I go and watch. But independent films are important, because they have the freedom to be creative and original. Who knows, sometimes they do make a splash and become big. But big studio films now can’t compete when it comes to originality…they don’t even come close.

So, you’ve done a lot of independent films. Do you have aspirations to be in bigger actions films? What is your aspiration as an actor?

Sometimes people ask me, “What characters would you like to play,” and I don’t really know. I think there’s two: one would be Lestat de Lioncourt from the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles and the other one would be Link from Zelda. So I guess my whole life revolves more around nerd stuff and video games and sci-fi. You know, Interview with a Vampire is definitely one of my most favorite films in the entire world. So, I don’t know…what would I want to do? More action films or more independent films? I think the whole point, for me, and what has become the point in my life, has become having a diverse career and maybe that’s because I’m still sort of at the beginning of my career.

How would you define your career?

When I look at a career, I take it apart, and say, ‘Look, here are the people that fucked up, like Paulie Shore and other actors like that.’ I’m not saying that he is a bad actor, he is just not the actor that I want to be. I mean, he stopped getting films because he did one thing and it faded out. But the thing is that he couldn’t do anything else because no one would let him. So, how do I extend my freedom to allow people, or trick people, into thinking I can do anything. At the beginning of my career, just like act one in any script, if you are going to make a script that’s horror and there is nothing scary in the first 30 minutes and then the horror comes along, it’s going to freak you out, especially if it’s a comedy or something. I mean, if there is nothing funny in the first ten minutes, it will be hard to laugh when the jokes come along. This is why you have to build all those genre tones into your first act to make sure that everyone is ready for what is coming next…so that they are available to it and accept it.

Building those genre tones is what was so successful about your current film, Spring, right?

The coolest thing that they did was that they knew that our little love story, which is the second act and third act, is fun. Its not necessarily two comedians talking, but they wanted the audience to laugh…to laugh with us. So what did they do? They made the first twenty minutes fucking hilarious. Even though it’s a horror film, they put so much comedy and fun into this depressed guy’s life. So, that’s basically like act one of my life and career. I want to diversify as hard as I can. Play everything that I can, so that there is nothing that people won’t accept.

"I am lucky as sin that people will actually pay

for this art because there is so much art out

there that people pay nothing for...I get to have

a life that I want. It’s really not that complex: I

just want to be doing what I’m doing."

And that would be the best-case scenario?

I want to be able to do any role that I want. That would obviously be the best-case scenario for any actor: they find a role, they say that they want to do that role and then they are allowed to.

That also seems like a recipe for not being type-casted right?

That’s exactly what I mean. I am always aiming for the long term. How do I make this last for the rest of my life? I mean, I have always wanted to play old man roles in sci-fi films - like an old mentor. I always wish that that’s what I will look like one day. I guess that’s why I have this big beard right now. I mean, I have a serious baby face and it’s going to be a weird road trying to figure out what I can do.

So, what do you think of the business aspect of acting?

It’s a business. It’s a strange, strange thing. I go out on auditions sometimes just to appease casting directors. I want them to remember me. That kind of stuff sucks sometimes. You are going out sometimes for roles you don’t even want, but you better do a good job because otherwise that casting director might think you suck. So, it becomes a real career…a business….that you have to tend to. It’s like growing a flower…you have to check in and water it every day.

Yeah, and there seems to be two types of actors: the ones that let the rejection get to them and they go back home and then there are actors – excuse the morbidity of this example – like River Phoenix that don’t think too hard about the machine aspect of it and they go into it with such passion and energy that they burn out. What do you think about that tightrope walk?

It is a tightrope walk. Most movies that I do are tightrope walks. I feel like now I do all the movies that normal people are sort of afraid to do. Maybe because it doesn’t seem like it’s been done. One of the better examples of that is Story of Luke and I played an autistic main character and it’s a comedy. I mean, try pitching that. How the hell do you do that? How does the tone match up? Is there any possibility that people are thinking that we’re making fun of autism if the main character is supposed to be funny, but has autism? The tightrope walk is terrifying. Same thing with Spring…how much of a love story are you going to treat this as? How real should you be? And how entertaining should you allow yourself to be?

*Lou Taylor Pucci in The Go-Getter (2007)*

What’s your least favorite thing about being an actor or being in that world?

For one thing, I think the whole system is disgusting. We’re made to be celebrities that some how entertain people into sitting on the couch or on their phone and they’re not even doing what they want to do. But one of my best friends I met when I was putting some stuff into storage and the guy working there told me that he saw The Go-Getter and decided to go to Australia for six months. We ended up going to Jumbo’s Clown Room and talking about it for hours. That is by far my favorite thing about being an actor.

But the fame part or the fame game is what really gets you down?

I am lucky as sin that people will actually pay for this art because there is so much art out there that people pay nothing for and hold to a very low regard. Yet, in this world, acting is held at such a high pedestal that I get to have a life that I want. It’s really not that complex: I just want to be doing what I’m doing. But there are a lot of actors that can’t. I guess that’s the real hard part. But with the new modern invention of YouTube and all these pilots, there are a lot more parts now. But because we have focused so much on celebrity and because producers have so much invested in the films they make, they need to have celebrities on television supporting their investments. So, all the main parts are going to be played by celebrities that you already know and they are going to make a bunch of money.

Was it always like that?

You used to be able to move to Los Angeles and go out on auditions and wind up in roles. But that is not really how it is anymore. Everything is outsourced. Everything is shot in different cities. Casting directors still cast the main roles in Los Angeles, but the rest of the roles are cast in Louisiana or Texas or even New York. So, as an actor, it’s more worth it to go to where the work is. As a new actor, those are the roles you are going to go out for…the smaller roles. As a result, though, you don’t really need to be in Los Angeles to make your break, which is the positive side of things. If there is anything to learn, it’s that you shouldn’t come to Los Angeles if you haven’t established yourself at all yet.

That’s great advice…is that advice you would offer to young actors?

Yes, don’t come to Los Angeles if you want to make it. I think there are some laws being passed that will make it easier to make movies in Los Angeles again. I think that Hollywood should be brought back to its original glory. That’s why we’re all here competing in the first place, right?

You can watch Spring on Amazon Instant Video and most on-demand platforms. It is also in select theaters, distributed by Drafthouse Films. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow AUTRE ON INSTAGRAM to stay up to date with art, culture, and more: @autremagazine

Trailer for Spring

Music Fucks with Fashion: An Interview with Cozette McCreery

April 10, 2015

photograph by Nick Dorey — *photograph by Nick Dorey*

I first met Cozette McCreery when I was trying on a flower and knit embellished coat and did a few twirls of delight. Her head nod of acknowledgment anointed me with a sense of cool that shook me up a little. After hours of online research I couldn’t get enough and I started to run off on tangents of whether or not to question her on her time as Lucian Freud’s muse or her stint in Israel as a shepherd in training. As one third of the design collective Sibling along with Joe Bates and Sid Bryan, Cozette is part of a special order of epic ladies whose stories from clubland can keep you wide awake and high… like a good Netflix binge. When I finally grabbed a moment with her during her preparation for the AW 2015 women’s Sibling show in London, I decided to ask her the hard hitting questions on the designer clothes, raves, and 80’s era Madge that fueled her.

BJ Panda Bear: What was your most epic outfit of that rave era?

CM: Thankfully no one brought cameras or had smart phones as I probably looked like a sweaty mess! Not sure if it was ‘epic’ as frankly it was pre-raves when all of us club kids really dressed up (I’d wear Alaia, Gaultier, vintage YSL, full red Jasper Conran suits, Alastair Blair, Rifat Ozbek and Patrick Kelly to clubs. Trying to either be very Robert Palmer video or a Roxy Music groupie) and raves were just not the place for full catwalk looks. I’d be in a Shoom T shirt, Alaia leggings and Travel Fox. Or a full Conran multi-strap dance all in one, leather wrap mini (it was like a belt - to quote my Father) and Nikes. Raving was all about the music and dancing and getting really really sweaty, less about the venue and wether your lipstick had smudged. I was also listening to a lot of Hip Hop at the time so that influenced how I dressed too.

I didn’t get back in to dressing up for a club night until Richard Mortimer asked me to take over the door at Boombox. Every Sunday I had the chance to wear my new designer frocks (Gareth Pugh, Jonathan Saunders, Raf at Jil Sander, Giles) and heels.

BJ: Last seasons epic homage to Madonna circa “borderline” tugged on all my happy strings. What music have you been listening lately to as inspiration for the new collection and life in general?

CM: I was always a massive fan of Madonna, still am, but that period was the one I love the most and the one I tried desperately (seeking - haha) hard to imitate in my dress. I listen to music all the time and usually instigate the choices for both the men’s and women’s shows. For men’s AW15 I wanted something that sounded like it could come from a young guy’s music collection, played loud in his bedroom. As it was an evening show (and all pink!) I also wanted it to be a bit sexier especially as Matthew Josephs had cast these buff guys. Women’s AW15 is still to be decided as I keep listening to stuff and thinking yeah this is great then walk to it and think nope not going to work. That’s why it’s brilliant to work with Nathan Gregory Wilkins as he’ll offer ideas and we can bat things off one another and Phoebe Arnold our womenswear stylist has good suggestions too.

As for my day to day listening well, it’s a bit random. I don’t tend to stick to one genre and try not to be a music snob so if I like the latest Ke$ha I’ll buy it. If iPod shuffle kicks out Rage Against The Machine, Odd Future, Prince and then One Direction and Selena Gomez I’m really happy.

Sibling S/S 2015 photograph by Lorenzo Cisi — Sibling S/S 2015 photograph by Lorenzo Cisi

BJ: How did you get into DJing?...Name your top 5 - 10 songs you love to spin?

CM: My ex boyfriend Adam put me forward to this all girl DJ group called Hey Ladies. Funnily enough DJ Fat Tony tried to get me to DJ when I was in my late teens but I couldn’t see why I would give up working in fashion to do it. Probably not one of my best decisions ever as he has joked that I could have been massive by now! Anyhow, Hey Ladies started it and we’d DJ at these great parties and record launches. When the group disbanded I just kept going as I still had people booking me and I really enjoy it. I’m good at parties because I never have a set-list. The last one I did was a really mixed crowd: teenage boys to middle aged aristos and 90’s pop stars but I had them dancing at 4am to The Rolling Stones and Blur so I must have been doing something right especially as they then kept me (hardly forced to be honest as I was having fun) there for another hour.

BJ: A lot of Sibling reminds me of all the great Kansai Yamamoto, famous for his work with David Bowie, with his knits, textures and color. You both have dressed iconic musicians, the Mariah moment is pretty supreme, who do you want to see wear Sibling next?

CM: Why thank you. Kansai is quite incredible. Am really glad that he’s getting recognized himself beyond Bowie. Ha ha yes Mariah! Matthew Josephs our menswear stylist was with her in NY and was frantically texting me that she wanted to wear the dress to her album listening but I was drinking cocktails with friends and not looking at my phone. By the time I got back to Matthew she was in it and on Vine singing. AMAZING! And we’ve had similar with Pharrell and Harry Styles. Who would we like to see in Sibling next? EVERYONE! Maybe the person reading this.

BJ: What new musicians do you see really being the center of the fashion scene right now?

CM: I’m a big fan of Sky Ferreira, Alison Mosshart you know all the slightly tomboy rocking girls. Are they new? (Laughs) And Pharrell of course. And Bieber in his Calvins. Badgirl Riri covered in Nasir Mazhar. Joni Mitchell and Courtney Love in the Saint Laurent Music Project adverts. Patti Smith in Made By You Converse (of which I am also a contributor, gotta love us erm old birds! Little old me and Patti Smith, still can’t get over that) music and fashion are always a very good pairing. Whatever style and age.

Visit the Sibling London website to explore stockists. Text and interview by BJ Panda Bear, who is a blogger, curator, DJ, fashion obessor, fixture of LA nightlife, and much more. Follow Autre on Instagram to stay up to date: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Reluctant Pornographer: An Interview With Bruce LaBruce

April 3, 2015

Bruce LaBruce is a filmmaker, an artist, a self-professed “reluctant pornographer,” and one of the progenitors of the enigmatic, self-marginalizing queercore movement. His underground Super 8 films of the 1980s and 90’s (including his debut feature, entitled Skin Off My Ass, about a hairdresser obsessed with a skinhead – which Kurt Cobain has cited as his favorite film) have made LaBruce an icon of gay cinema. His more recent films experiment with the same extreme and sometimes profoundly shocking themes: Otto; Or Up With Dead People is a porno-zombie flick with a political twist, while L.A. Zombie stars French porn star François Sagat as a schizophrenic homeless zombie (or so he thinks) roaming the streets of Los Angeles bringing back the dead by having sex with men. But even if LaBruce’s films are wrought with searing homoeroticism and overwhelming violence, underneath the blood-soaked sheets and layers of half-rotting flesh, LaBruce proves himself to be one of the greatest offbeat auteurs and romantics of the last two decades. There is a strange and wonderful sense of tranquility in the orgiastic tableau vivants of amputees and naked, masked men in rooms splattered with so much blood one would think a massacre had occurred within them. It’s not so much a glorification of violence but a visceral, analytical exploration of the darkest depths of the human psyche. LaBruce, who grew up in the 60’s on a small farm outside of Ottawa with its innate, paradoxical backdrop of slaughter and serenity, has come to view the entire fabric of life as a delicate, barefoot balancing act on the edge of a razor blade – and, in his view, our instinctive bloodlust is just as great as our ability to love. It would be remiss not to mention that many disagree with this point of view – LaBruce enjoys pushing boundaries. Entire countries have banned his films, and once an entire shipment of his Polaroids were confiscated and labeled “obscene” by Canadian customs. Obscenity, LaBruce’s latest exhibition in Spain, included sexually provocative religious imagery, such as a priest’s face covered in semen, and caused a near-riot among Catholics and conservatives who declared the show to be blasphemous, sacrilegious and depraved. What we mustn’t forget, though, is that some of the greatest art of our time has stemmed from a staunch refusal to abide by the rules. By that definition, all artists are outlaws in their own right – making Bruce LaBruce an outlaw amongst outlaws of the highest regard.

Firstly, you grew up in rural Canada in the 70s – what was that like? Can you always remember wanting to be an artist?

Well, I grew up on a farm, and sometimes I call it the “cruel farm,” because there was a lot of slaughter and castration going on. On a daily basis, so I’d routinely see animals being – we slaughtered our own animals and castrated our own pigs. You know, my father and grandfather would drown the kittens and all that stuff – so you know there was a lot going on that was kind of horrific, but on the other hand it was very idyllic too – it was a small two-hundred-acre farm. As a kid it seemed huge . It was really beautiful and we had our own vegetable gardens and fruit trees.

You just mentioned drowning kittens?

Yeah. Well, actually we had a little dog that was – I mean, my father was a hunter and a trapper as well, he was kind of a Daniel Boone type – and I would never kill anything myself, but I would go with him and watch him shoot and trap animals. Coon hunting was always really cool in the fall, because you would run through these cornfields at night with the hounds and the flashlights – so we had this little dog when I was like two or three years old that was named Tippy that was more like a pet, because the hound dogs were strictly for hunting, and they were kind of mean – it was okay, but they were a bit scary – and then the little dog [Tippy] was jealous of me, because – I guess this is the way the story goes – it was biting me, so my father took it out behind the barn and shot it.

Wow.

That’s my favorite childhood story.

So, those kind of stories, or those kinds of memories had a profound effect on your art? Yeah, I would say so. Because I was always a little sissy. My parents were amazing people – really gentle people – even in this harsh environment. And they are still married after 57 years or something and still living on the same farm, so when I go up there it all comes flooding back. But yeah, I think my work expresses some of that violence and also it was kind of – I don’t know – it was a time where the world wasn’t so global – so it was very isolated and you kind of were able to live your life without processing so much negativity and everything – so it was a little enclave of sanity in a way.

So, were you creative as a kid? Did you know you wanted to become an artist? A creator? Well, the weird thing is I never took art classes so much – I mean I did in public school, in high school – and I was always more cinema oriented, but I did take theater classes in high school. So, yes, I always had creative impulses from a very young age, and I always knew I was gay from the beginning as well.

And your parents were pretty supportive? They are – they obviously don’t like my work and really haven’t investigated it much. But they are also very rural. I guess they’re more hooked in now than they used to be. My mother got her first email account when she was like 75 years old.

Amazing. I can remember the first text I got from my mom.

Mine aren’t that advanced.

So where did the name Bruce LaBruce come from and when did you become Bruce LaBruce?

Well, I mean, should I talk about this? I guess I talk about this sometimes. My real last name is Bruce and I was born in Bruce Township, which is in Bruce County, and I worked at the Bruce Nuclear Power Development Station as a summer student, and it’s on the Bruce Peninsula and it’s near the Bruce Trail….so, in other words, it’s all about Bruce, you know? It’s Scottish – I’m almost directly descended from Robert the Bruce, the king of Scotland – it’s obvious that the Scottish lineage is really strong. My friend Kathleen Maitland Carter - when we started going to university she started calling me LaBruce, because I was always acting grand.

In the eighties you co-published a zine called J.D.s, which was one of the main voices of the queercore movement - can you explain what queercore is? And if Johnny and Joey Ramone were the fathers of punk, would you consider yourself the father of queercore?

I mean I did J.D.s – my co-editor was G.B. Jones and my friend Kevin Hegge is currently doing – she [G.B. Jones] was in a band called Fifth Column – so Kevin is doing a documentary on Fifth Column which I’m interviewed in, but they sometimes called them them “the grandmothers of the riot girls.” But there were other people doing similar things at the same time – that’s how I met Vaginal Davis who was doing a fanzine called “Fertile Latoya Jackson” and there was kind of a – it was sort of a spontaneous movement that was an offshoot of punk, because there were obviously a lot of people at that time who were into punk and the punk aesthetic, but with the advent of hardcore and the mosh-pits it had gotten kind of macho and there was some homophobia – also with the intersection of the skinhead movement with the punk movement – so there was some of us that really wanted to adamantly be more sexually revolutionary, so we started these fanzines. It was a historical moment in a way.

So what did J.D.s stand for?

Juvenile delinquents was the main thing, but we always liked other J.D.s - like James Dean, Jack Daniels, not Judy Dench – Joe Dallesandro….I can’t remember them all….

This is kind of a simple question, but it’s open for elaboration. Who or what inspires you?

Well, it’s always been a juxtaposition of opposing forces, like classical Hollywood versus punk – two things that are seemingly incompatible. Lately, with YouTube, I’ve just been watching so many Hollywood movies, mostly from the 30’s and 40’s that I’ve always heard about or read about that I’ve never had access to, and now I’m just kind of obsessed with them – the sophistication of them and the writing and the performers and the stars and the direction – I mean, it’s light years ahead of what’s going on now in Hollywood, which doesn’t interest me at all. But I’m totally into revolutionary youth culture as well – so I’m totally inspired by the Arab Spring and that kind of stuff that’s going on. In terms of artists, new kids like… Ryan Trecartin is pretty amazing - I like his surrealist vibe.

So, what was the catalyst for you to start making movies?

Well, strangely enough, like I said, my parents were really simple farm folks, but they were totally smart and totally in tune with Hollywood cinema, so they would take all us kids to the movies. So I was really interested at a really young age. When it was time to go to university I went into film school and I actually planned on being a critic. I was more into theory – I took some production courses – but I intended on being more of an academic or a critic and then it was only after I graduated that I got into making Super 8 films and art films.

And your work focuses on a lot of the gay culture, but also amputees, hustlers, the transgender, zombies, etcetera - Do you think you intentionally set out to de-marginalize the marginalized, and why do you think we put everything in categories and subcategories in the first place?

Well, I mean, for me, it’s a question of your philosophy of homosexuality, and mine is more along the lines that the difference and the idea of being an outsider and being a misfit – or even a criminal – has always been my sort of romance about homosexuality, which doesn’t really translate so much in the current zeitgeist, because it’s all legitimization and domestication, which is fine, because there always have to be people who go against the grain, and just as a fairy growing up in a very harsh environment I learned to use my difference as a weapon, or live by my wits, and maybe I have a bit of a combative personality in that regard. And you know I made a short film recently in Berlin that will be premiering at the porn film festival at the end of October, which is a tranny porn that has two female-to-male transsexuals, so I think transsexuals, transgendered people are really at the vanguard of the gay movement, because they’re the ones that have to put up with the brunt of a lot of the judgment and fear and misconceptions about gender and they are also redefining gender – which is really a lot more interesting than the gay marriage movement which seems to be reinforcing old gender stereotypes.

Yeah, androgyny is really interesting right now. I see a lot of people trying to explore it in a way.

Or live it. It’s tricky because androgyny can be aesthetically challenging, but when people make it work – you can tell when someone really tries to make a leap forward and take it in a direction that is really avant-garde or revolutionary somehow.

So, what do you say when you read reviews of your work – I mean what do you say to yourself when people just don’t get it?

Well, I mean you have to acknowledge that a lot of people just aren’t that into you. You can’t kill yourself over that. Everyone can’t please everyone, but one the other hand, because of the nature of my work, people have a kneejerk response to it: a lot of people turn it off after the first five minutes or they look at the surface of what’s going on and they don’t really bother to explore the work. I think with my films, you really have to also look at the whole body of work, because I’m super referential, not only to other people’s work, but also to my own work and so…For example, I made two films that are companion pieces for each other, Skin Flick and The Raspberry Reich; one is about the extreme right wing and one is about the extreme left wing – so in a way you have to look at them both to really understand what I’m getting at, and you can even say that Hustler White and L.A. Zombie are kind of both investigations of Los Angeles and the street world; street people, made fifteen years apart – they kind of together give a really, what I consider, it’s a portrait of LA that’s rarely shown – the underworld street reality that’s rarely shown in movies. So, yeah, I would say don’t judge a book by its cover.

So, throughout the last few centuries there have been a few archetypes of homoerotic culture who created entire worlds behind their personalities - off the top of my head I can name Oscar Wilde, Jean Genet, and Andy Warhol - do you think you fall into that vein?

Well, that’s August company. I do like to think that I work in a tradition of the gay avant-garde. The people you mentioned, or Kenneth Anger and some of the great porn directors like Fred Halsted and Peter Berlin, Jack Smith, all these people are very specifically dealing with the history of homosexual aestheticism and a very specific kind of avant-garde expression that has to do with the position of the homosexual in culture and what that means historically, the development of aesthetics, the aesthetic dimension – which homosexuals have always been the catalyst for all aesthetic movements - for many aesthetic movements - so for me it’s a really significant thread to continue. That’s why I find assimilation so disconcerting in a way, because the position of the homosexual as an outsider or as someone who can observe culture at a distance that, in some ways, gives them this opportunity to be avant-garde or to critique or comment on mainstream culture.

You wrote a memoir called The Reluctant Pornographer – what does pornography mean to you?

Well, lately I’ve been saying, which has sort of gotten me in trouble, because lately I’ve been calling myself a pornographer and saying I express solidarity with pornographers – that all pornography is art, really, because it’s a form of creative expression, it’s the mediation of reality, it’s made by people who use the tools of cinema, or making art, so why shouldn’t it be considered art as well? There’s good art and there’s bad art and there’s good pornography and there’s bad pornography, but it’s all sort of an artistic expression as far as I’m concerned.

How important is sexuality in art, or expressing sexuality through art?

For me personally, sex has always been an engine behind my work, both in terms of representing and in terms of making it, on a personal level, but I think the sexual and the creative drives are very much linked, but on the other hand I know people who are relatively, or fairly, or completely asexual who have very strong artistic drives, so I don’t think that’s necessarily the case for everyone. Certainly the gay movement was always based on that kind of sexual engine as well, which for me is yet another reason why the assimilation movement, which tends to be more domesticated and kind of based on ideals of monogamy borrowed from straight culture - it kind of dissipates the energy of the gay movement in my opinion. Yeah, sex is so ubiquitous in pop culture and advertising that it’s kind of hard to ignore it as an artist.

Do you think it’s more ubiquitous now than it has been?

Well, I think that what’s been happening in the last ten to fifteen years is that violence supplanted sex as the main driving force of popular fetish and popular advertising and certainly the media sells violence and death in a very titillating kind of sexualized way - which is kind of creepy.

Yeah, especially because it’s so blatant.

It’s blatant and it’s… in a way I don’t even know how conscious it is – you could talk about Naomi Kline’s Disaster Capitalism and how it’s a way the media keeps everyone frightened - inundated with terrorism and images of violence and that I think just pop culture and advertising almost unconsciously feed on that fear and turn it into capital.

Which is disturbing. In your work you deal with violence in a much more visceral way that sort of explores it in a much more human way, not for gain.

My argument is that my work isn’t corporate by any stretch of the imagination, for example, which makes a big difference, when you have a film like Final Destination in Imax 3D - and it’s this grotesque, brutal violence that is so magnified – I find that personally not entertaining. But I make L.A. Zombie for example - which is a micro-budget film with really, almost crude special effects that were all done in front of the camera – no special effects stuff – it’s more in the tradition of B movies where the fun is creating – it’s more like being very playful, and I think that has a different effect and your motivation isn’t quite so sinister somehow, and also my work tends to be a critique of popular culture or popular violence, so I always have a distance from the violence that I’m presenting.

And there always tends to be a tender, romantic notion behind it - hidden meanings come through.

Sure, and when I show extreme fetishes, for example, it’s always done in a romantic way - whether it’s the tone of the way it’s shot or the music and the characters who have these extreme fetishes are portrayed as kind of sweet or emotional, which is not how it’s usually done in these very violent, say, video games.

Yeah. So underneath all that, underneath all the blood and guts, would you consider yourself a romantic?

Oh absolutely, yes. I have always had a very strong romantic drive. I’ve always had this idea of classical Hollywood - certainly not having anything to do with the new “rom-com” mentality, where it’s sort of super sentimental and manipulative.

So, what’s next? What are you working on now?

I spent a year on the road with L.A. Zombie and then there’s also this documentary that someone made about me called The Advocate for Fagdom - a Parisian filmmaker named Angélique Bosio made this documentary over the past couple of years so I’ve been traveling a bit with it as well and with her - and I’ve been working a lot, I’ve directed a couple of TV shows for Arte, TV episodes of a documentary series called Into The Night, and I also directed my first opera in Berlin [last] March, an adaptation of Arnold Shunberg’s Pierrot Lunier, so now after all that I am trying to make another movie. I have three scripts in various stages of development attached to different producers - so that’s my new primary goal, is to get one shot by next year.

Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Autre Issue 2 (2012). Stay tuned for Bruce La Bruce's retrospective of films on view at MoMA in New York from April 23 to May 2.

Folk You: An Interview with Imri Vasale

April 2, 2015

Imri Vasale follows in the same familiar tradition of other American folksingers, like Guthrie, Seeger, or even Buckley - Tim Buckley that it is. With his banjo, his songs remind you of the familiar burden of a soul that is blowing in the wind like a white sheet let loose from a clothesline. His Americana spirituals of love and loss will require gentle reflection. It is true, though, that Imri's debut, self titled album, produced by Decadent Wreckords' Ethan DeLorenzo (who Imri met while working on goat farm in Sonoma County), shows considerable promise from an artist that is still in the process of cutting his teeth. We got a chance to catch up with Imri to ask a few questions about his songs and his first album.

When did you first start making music?

The memory has become a little fuzzy. I have always sung to myself, usually when I was alone. My dad would sing me traditional songs from the British Isles, as well as 1960’s folk revival tunes when I was younger, he also played and still does play guitar; I think I might have given it a go literally a handful of times. It was the latter part of High School-maybe 2008-2009, when I started picking up the guitar lightly, learning several chords and a rudimentary strumming style to keep the neighbors awake with. Two of my closest friends and I created a little punkish folk band, where I aimed at playing washboard and then eventually washtub bass and musical saw. I bought the banjo I have now-my first and only-at some time around senior year of high school, shortly after having picked up an accordion. I just let the dust collect on the damn thing, up until a year and a half ago when I realized I should use it. Without a doubt, the banjo has just quickly become my instrument, it’s here to stay.

Who were some musical artists that really inspired you – is there one artist that really blew your mind?

I’m going to put it plainly, two people directly in my lives: my father and my good friend Kalei Yamanoha. I could go off and start listing the musical artists and groups that I listen to now, but I have to mention these people. As I said, my dad sang me tons of folk songs and the like as I was growing up-he has a library of music, a lot of the materials that I’ve come to enjoy are field recordings in the Smithsonian folkways compilations, as well as more ‘contemporary’ portrayals. With my father, I was exposed to the mastery of folks like Doc Watson, Mike Seeger, Dock Boggs, Frank Profitt, Bruce Molsky, and Dirk Powell. Oh, and Adam Hurt is worth noting, prodigal clawhammer work right there. Kalei was one of the guys in my jugband, and he can play anything he picks up. He was the sole reason I bought both an accordion and a banjo, and when I see him play today, I still get ear-loads of inspiration. And fuck, there are few things more special in music than finding motivation in the folks closest to you.

Where did you grow up and how did that environment influence your music?

I was born in San Francisco and raised in the North Bay area. Santa Rosa my whole life. It’s a big town, definitely, but there’s near visually pristine countryside surrounding it on all sides, so I have been given the means to escape the suburban expanses. this is one of the greatest motifs in my music, or that’s what I’m aiming at, the natural world. Or, everything other than humans, as we have clearly learned to ignore everything other than ourselves. I have been blessed to have grown up in proximity to undeveloped land, some of which still has functioning ecosystems. It is even in our language where we try and delineate between ‘human’ and ‘nature’. Any promise to longevity and stability is to no longer ignore our whole selves, this is a massive part of my music.

How would you describe your sound?

Unrefined, but I’m working on that aspect, as well as my timing. But that can be ignored to an extent for now. I’d call it just old-time music with modern chord progressions and tonality, and minimalist. I’m big on the lyrics, I pour everything into those words until there’s nothing left in me sometimes. It’s a good way to exude self-destructive and overall negative thoughts. Yeah, neo-old-time-post-folk [chuckling]. Music is just the sound of organized emotion, and I want to capture that.

You are currently working on an album - can you talk a little bit about your debut album and what we can expect from it?

Initially it was going to be a four or five track demo, but we have ended up recording 10 or more songs, many of which now need to be re-recorded. Now we are stripping it back down to a 4 song demo. I’ve never worked with someone before on anything like this, but even with that said, Ethan [DeLorenzo] has been the most patient and encouraging person I could ever have come across. We’ve slowly been recording everything that I spat out in the last 2 years, but having not done that before, now I can listen back on my progression and refine my emotions and the way I share them.

You met Ethan - who produced your record - on a goat farm in Sonoma, can you describe that meeting?

No, well I was working on a particular farm while he came on up with my sister from LA. She became his housemate the year before and had shared some goofy garageband recordings of my banjo with him, and I guess he liked them. We met at my parents’ house, and he told me he’d be interested in recording. Nonchalant and homely. That’s the best meetings can get.

What's next?

I want to keep playing music, practice more, write more material, keep sharing it with folks. My one great ‘ambition’ with music would be to have some folks cry with joy or pain and then remember that song, and with that memory fuel actual positive change in their lives. Even if it’s one other person, even if it just ends up being me, I don’t care too much any more about what’s next because I do have faith that nothing goes as planned.

You can purchase Imri's self titled album here. You can also stream the album on Spotify. text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Haters Gonna Hate: A Short Interview With Sandy Kim

March 13, 2015

Sandy Kim is a rambunctious wild child and her camera may as well be a Molotov cocktail. With a they-love-to-hate-us-because-they-ain’t-us attitude, Kim shoots her friends and lovers with a semen-soaked, blood-stained abandon. Indeed, her work is a neon-hued punk diary of her life that is at turns exhibitionistic, voyeuristic and always hedonistic. Kim is not alone in her ilk that includes a brood of gritty and provocative documentarians, like Nan Goldin or Ryan McGinley. However, Kim’s work belongs to a different age – a desensitized, digitized age of youth-wave marauders; a progeny not high on Reagan-era mountains of cocaine, but on Obama’s 5-Hour Energy and Ritalin-induced angst. Tonight, Evergold Gallery in San Francisco is presenting How’s The Weather Down There? – Kim’s third solo show with the gallery. The exhibition will include large-scale photographs that scream even louder her declaration of sexual freedom and youthful independence. Autre was lucky enough to catch up with Kim to ask her a few quick questions.

AUTRE: How did you discover the artistic side of yourself?

SANDY KIM: Ever since I was child I was always drawing constantly, my parents were always busy working at their restaurant so I would sit in a booth and draw the time away.

AUTRE: Who were some of your earliest artistic or photographic influences?

KIM: William Eggleston and Dash Snow.

AUTRE: Can you remember the first thing you ever photographed?

KIM: I think the first photograph I ever took was of a building as an assignment in my first black and white photo class in high school. I played with the angles and composition to make an abstract image that was hard to tell whether it was a building on a close up object.

AUTRE: Your work features a lot of bodily fluids…blood, semen, etc…. what was the craziest response that you have ever gotten to your work?

KIM: Just check out all the anonymous comments left on my "Wait" music video for DIIV. People be passionately hating, but other than the anonymous comment leavers, my friends or likeminded people don't seem to be phased by my work.

Sandy Kim, Untitled, 2015. Digital archival photograph. 30x45 in. Edition of 2. Courtesy of the artist and Ever Gold Gallery

AUTRE: You are featured in a lot of big publications and photographers, like Ryan McGinley recognize your work – did you expect this big of a response?

KIM: No…because when I first started taking pictures it was strictly for myself so I wasn't concerned with what other people thought.

AUTRE: Do you think before you shoot…is there ever a consistent thought process when you look through the viewfinder…or do you just shoot away?

KIM: Well, yes I always think before I shoot, but it's seldom about what I'm about to shoot [laughs]. 99% of the time I just shoot away, but there must be a thought process, even if it's a subconscious one, because my photos always have a certain style that's easy to recognize

AUTRE: As a photographer…can you describe the ideal moment…the ideal time to have your camera on hand?

KIM: Whenever I happen to forget my camera something unreal happens

AUTRE: What’s your greatest fear as a photographer?

KIM: Running out of film at a crucial moment in time or during a shoot. Sometimes I'll just pretend to keep shooting.

AUTRE: Is there anyone that you dream of shooting…alive or dead?

KIM: Rihanna

AUTRE: What can we expect at your new show…How’s The Weather Down There…at Ever Gold gallery?

KIM: A trip into my world

Sandy Kim's solo exhibition 'How’s The Weather Down There' opens tonight and runs until April 18th, 2015 at Ever Gold Gallery, 441 O'Farrell St, San Francisco. See a preview of the show in the slideshow below. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Sandy Kim, Untitled, 2015. Digital arch photograph. 30x45 in. Edition of 2. Courtesy of the artist and Ever Gold Gallery

Ghost Rider Motorcycle Hero: An Interview With Alan Vega

February 23, 2015

interview by Oliver Kupper

When Alan Vega first heard Bruce Springsteen’s album Nebraska, he was convinced that the song "State Trooper" was a long lost Suicide song that he had forgotten about. The song was not a lost Suicide track – it was one of Springsteen’s own, but an obvious homage nonetheless.

That’s how powerful Suicide’s influence was and still is – a band created by two nice Jewish boys from Brooklyn. Black clad and with a lethally high-voltage sound, Suicide has had a profound influence on bands like Joy Division and The Jesus and Mary Chain – amongst countless others. But what many people don’t know is that Suicide provided a strange and pulsating soundtrack for a major change in American culture: art was being stripped to a bare minimalism of shapes and primary colors, and music was being peeled away to reveal simple digitized rhythms, computerized static and monotone vocals. Alan Vega – the front man of Suicide – was one of the first people to use the word ‘punk’ to describe their music. Today, Vega, and his band Suicide, is considered the missing link in the lineage between rock n’ roll and what would become known as punk, electro-punk, no wave, new wave and early industrial music. Before listening to Nine Inch Nails, start with Suicide.

Many people also don’t know that Alan Vega is also an established visual artist - art is actually his first passion. In fact, he studied under abstract expressionist turned minimalist artist Ad Reinhardt – an artist who was famous for his black on black painting that he deemed would be the last paintings anyone could ever paint. Vega would seemingly become a physical and creative manifestation of those “last paintings.” Experimenting with bare materials and items found in the barren and depressed landscape that was New York in the 1970s, Vega would create unique light sculptures that resembled Christmas ornamented crucifixes; a pastiche of a dystopian consumerist American culture.

In a new solo show at Invisible Exports – the first show devoted entirely to new work since 1983 – Vega presents a few of his iconic light sculptures and a series of semi-autobiographical portraits that are much more personal than his three-dimensional work. We were fortunate enough to speak with Alan Vega on the eve of the opening of this exhibition – entitled Welcome to Wyoming. In the following interview, Vega talks about Suicide, his current show at Invisible-Exports and how age brings wisdom and the general notion of not giving a fuck anymore what people think.

What was your earliest introduction to art – when was your introduction?

It must have been in the late sixties – I started making art and that soon turned into music. But I was always into music, anyhow. I was always doing music while I was making art. But I wasn’t doing it as a career or anything. Not even when I started Suicide. To me, we were doing art.

"Everything. Everything was changing.
And it was great. At times, it was impossible
to know what the hell was going on."

Who were some of your earliest artistic influences?

I was influenced by Ad Reinhardt, and also some of the early surrealists. And Picasso – I used to hear all these stories about Picasso that were really wild. But Ad [Ad Reinhardt] was my generation, and as far as I’m concerned [his work] was the end of painting. It was black on black and almost no color.

And that was sort of the birth of minimalism, right – at the end of the ‘50s?

Yeah, it was. It was the beginning of the end. I didn’t know where to go from there at the time. It was like, ‘Oh shit, what do we do now?’

But that stripped down minimalism must have had a huge effect on your band, Suicide?

Yeah, it did. It was a time of minimalism – in art, in music. And Ad really started that beginning – to the end.

Well, that whole era was a time of change – the end of the fifties and early sixties – everything seemed to be changing at that point in history.

Everything. Everything was changing. And it was great. At times, it was impossible to know what the hell was going on. But seeing Ad [Reinhardt] was enough – I remember seeing his paintings for the first time and I was like, ‘Holy shit.’ I knew Ad very well – he was a very shy guy, but he was also really funny. But just to see his paintings was really a treat itself.

I want to talk about Iggy Pop for a second, because he has also had a major influence on you as well – mainly as a musician and performer, right?

Yeah, well, Iggy was a major influence. The first time I saw Iggy was in 1969 at the World’s Fair in New York City and MC5 was the headliner. And they [MC5] tried very hard to outdo Iggy, but they could not outdo Iggy – no one could outdo Iggy. And it was twenty minutes of Hell. All his jumping on stage. He was all bloodied. I remember bringing two or three people with me and all their mouths were dropped.

So, how did you come up with the name Suicide?

[laughs] We all laughed at first when we first thought of it. We would try to come up with names for days and each time we thought of Suicide, we would laugh. And then one day Marty [Martin Rev] decided let’s just keep the name, because that was really the band: SUICIDE – and it was. Suicide sort of summed up the world we lived in: Nixon, the bombings, and the war, and what the hell! People thought we were describing our own suicide, but it was the only appropriate name.

"It greeted hell for me, because
everyone that saw it was, like ‘Holy shit.’
They tried to kill me."

Well, it’s one of the greatest band names, probably ever…

It probably is one of the greatest names of all time. Everyday, you read the newspaper and you feel like you are getting closer and closer to suicide [laughs].

And you used to walk around with a jacket that read Suicide, right?

Yeah, it said Suicide on the back. It greeted hell for me, because everyone that saw it was, like ‘Holy shit.’ They tried to kill me. They threw things at me. It was just a jacket! I took hell. In fact, I took hell for the first ten to fifteen years of Suicide.

Yeah, I mean people probably hadn’t seen anything like that before. Can you describe one of your craziest experiences?

Oh god, there are so many of them. It’s hard, because we were younger. We also went out with a different energy than we do now. We were insane. Or we were acting insane. Or maybe we were insane! Every night was different. Really, because we never knew what to do – we never knew how to start. Sometimes it started right off the bat and sometimes there was silence. Waiting for a sound. For something….

So, when do you think that people started really appreciating the sound?

Well, we started getting appreciation in the United Kingdom in the early 80s. I remember there was a show in Edinburgh at the Glass Door and we expected all kinds of hell – I remember they had a big disco ball, but it was completely dark while we played four numbers or so. Then I told Marty to watch out – “expect it from all angles.” But then the lights came on and people were dancing! So it started then – then people were against the walls and they started following us. They really loved Suicide.

What about some of your peers – I mean there were other bands in New York making very avant-garde music, like Television and a number of other bands. How did they perceive your music?

I liked the guys from Televsion, but they were more rock n’ roll. But I liked the guys. I knew the drummer – he was very friendly with me. The lead singer was a very quiet guy and he didn’t really talk to anybody. But compared to Suicide, they were more commercial.

Speaking of commercial, Bruce Springsteen has said that you guys have been a major, major influence, right?

Bruce – I became very friendly with him. He was in the same studio we were in – in about 1981 or 1982. We had a lot of laughs together, me and Bruce. But when I first heard that album [Nebraska] I thought: Did I write a song that I don’t remember now? There was a song on there that I thought was a Suicide song, but no, it was Bruce Springsteen. But I like Bruce and I always liked his music.

So, I wanted to talk about your upcoming show at Invisible-Exports. Can you tell us a little bit about Welcome to Wyoming?

I’ve always wanted to go to Wyoming all my life and I want to go before I die, and see the horses. So I was working on these drawings and the show came up, so I decided to call it Welcome to Wyoming.

And this is your first show devoted to new work in multiple years – what prompted you to show your work again?

Well, I love the gallery and the two people that run the gallery, they really know me.

And a majority of the work in this show is portraits – are they self-portraits?

They are portraits, but they are not really self-portraits. I’ve been doing these drawings since I was a kid. I would do them on the Bowery – these portraits of old people. But in a way they are self-portraits. And I don’t use any models or anything like that – I just draw. I’ve been doing it all my life. I did it before Suicide stuff. In this show, there are a bunch of drawings of these guys.

And I heard that you like to draw while under the influence?

I did, but….

Not anymore?

Yeah, I did, but now the doctors have got me staying away. But I’ve been focused – I’ve been doing shows. Suicide has been better than ever. And I have new music that I’ve been working on. It’s the blues, which is something that I’ve always wanted to do.

"Age is a hell of a thing.
Maybe it’s the idea of running out of time –
knowing that I could go at any day."

You’ve always wanted to make blues music or play the blues?

Yeah, I was only going to do one song…maybe two…but it turned into a volume of ten songs…and everything is live from the top of my head. I just heard a few tracks and it sounds really good. As I get older, everything is better. Drawing is better. Singing is better. So, I don’t know…I don’t know what’s happened. After forty years, maybe I finally know what the hell I’m doing. And the album is going to come out soon.

Do you think wisdom comes from age?

Yeah, I do. Yeah, there is a lot of shit that comes with youth. Horrendous fuck-ups. Which is great – I really love fuck-ups. But working through that is a good thing. But after forty years – forty-five years – of busting my hump…now I don’t give a shit. I just do what I want to do. Age is a hell of a thing. Maybe it’s the idea of running out of time – knowing that I could go at any day.

Well, I hope for more albums and music and more of everything…

I hope so too! But I’m going through a re-birth. I’m already thinking of the next show and I am hoping for good things for it. I have a lot of ideas for it and now I don’t want to die. Whereas before, I was like, ‘The hell with it.’ Now I feel like I could live a little longer. Now, I can keep making my art, but all my friends are starting to reach that age…

But you can’t really retire from art, right?

You never retire from it. I get calls all the time – people asking why don’t I quit or retire. But why the hell would I want to quit? How do you stop art or music? You don’t…you do it forever and that’s what I want to do and I love it.

Alan Vega 'Welcome to Wyoming' is on view now until March 29, 2015 at Invisible-Exports in New York. Click here to see photos from the opening.

Striking a Chord: An Interview with Jessica Pratt

January 27, 2015

The first thing that you notice when you listen to Jessica Pratt’s music is her extremely unique voice. It is instantly recognizable. It has a light spiritual hauntedness that makes her lyrics dance, flicker and fade like the last few seconds of an 8mm home movie. In her melodies and guitar picking, you can hear the ghost of Nick Drake and the lyrical heartbrokenness of a country ballad – all with a slight hint or twang of Marty Robbins Americana. Today marks the release of Pratt’s second album – entitled On Your Own Love Again (Drag City). The album is slightly more ebullient, albeit with a streak of melancholy, and perhaps more kaleidoscopic than her self-titled debut album, which was recorded by Tim Presley – of the band White Fence – on a label that he created solely to release Pratt’s music. In the following interview, Pratt talks about how Ariel Pink changed the way she approaches music and how Los Angeles has affected her recording process.

AUTRE: A lot of musical artists have very specific inspirational references that shaped the sound of their music – can you name one artist that you discovered that blew your mind; an artist that really floored you?

JESSICA PRATT: Though I feel I’ve been influenced by a fairly wide array of artists, there are some that make a special imprint on you. Paul Williams is a guy who’s song structures and approach to pop melodies have always struck a chord with me. Even though his sound is pretty smooth, he’s got a kinda weird voice and I like that blend of conventionality and off-kilter. Marianne Faithfull’s 1971 Rich Kid Blues is a major vocal influence I couldn’t deny. But, in 2011 I went to a small Ariel Pink show. He played mostly stuff off of Before Today and seeing the way he performed those songs forever changed the way I thought about and approached making music, pure and simple.

AUTRE: Living in San Francisco and then Los Angeles – how have those two places shaped your music or have they had any influence at all?

PRATT: I think it’s impossible for your environment to not in some way affect the things you create, although in what ways specifically I may not have an accurate read on yet. Coming to Los Angeles was, in the beginning, a bit like relocating to a minimally-inhabited island somewhere. I spent most of my time alone in the first few months writing and recording what is the bulk of the new record.

AUTRE: I saw on your Instagram that you met Van Dyke Parks – I think the caption was “Van Dyke God Dang Parks” – what is it like meeting your heroes; does it make you feel like you are becoming more established?

PRATT: Well, I haven’t met a ton of them, but, I think maybe it says more about the magic and usefulness of the internet as a tool, if used correctly. But yes, it’s also just quite remarkable living in LA; the odds of these occurrences are just are greatly increased as there’s so many creative people living and working here. Meeting Van Dyke was more just happenstance, actually, BUT, yeah, I think the fact that he’d heard my music via an NY Times post and liked it is what granted me momentary entrance into that world.

AUTRE: Naturally, people like to pigeonhole musicians that come out with a guitar and just the purity of their voice – what do you say to those people?

PRATT: It really doesn’t bother me. Pigeonholing, comparisons and labeling is an inherent part of music journalism and people’s processing of music. It’s like matching shapes. Where’s that red one gunna go? I like hearing the range of things people pick out of it. Sometimes it’s a revelation and sometimes it’s just fun.

AUTRE: What’s next – any plans for a “Play it fucking loud…” moment and a full electric band?

PRATT: I’d love to have a Band-grade backing band, but so far I’ve been rehearsing with a guitarist for my upcoming tours. Together hopefully we’ll be rendering the songs live in a sonically smooth, mildly psychedelic sort of fashion. Collaborating and playing music with others is very new to me, so I’m just testing the waters.

You can purchase On Your Own Love Again in multiple formats here. Interview and text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Olivia Locher On Her Group Show 'Pheromone Hotbox'

January 22, 2015

We first featured the work of Olivia Locher back in 2011. Over the years, her work and photographic identity has matured, but has never lost that brilliant collision of erotic and surreal – with a feminine mystique that blossoms with rich hues and jarring contexts. Tonight, Locher is included in a group exhibition – entitled Pheromone Hotbox – with four other women who have that same mystique: Amanda Charchian, Shae Detar, Marianna Rothen and Aneta Bartos. Together, they are exploring female sexuality and womanhood that is counterclockwise from the predominant male perspective, which aims more to objectify than to celebrate. In the following short interview, Locher talks female empowerment and learning to trust her artistic ideas.

AUTRE: What can we expect tomorrow night at your show Pheromone Hotbox at Steven Kasher Gallery?

OLIVIA LOCHER: A lot of girl power! I’m showing with four incredible female artists, who each have their own unique voice and style. The work all comes together fearlessly representing womanhood. It’s a great show, I’m really honored to be included in it.

AUTRE: How does your work represent some of the ideas behind the show - "post-feminist" ideologies or exuding female sexuality, or otherwise?

LOCHER: The pieces I’m showing are a really colorful, playful mixture of work. There are many different concepts though out the individual pieces, but these particular photographs meet sharing a universal theme focused around empowering women.

AUTRE: You have been finding a very unique voice in your photography over the last few years - how do you think your work as evolved or changed the most?

LOCHER: I have learnt to trust my ideas and act on them, sometimes impulsively.

AUTRE: What's next?

LOCHER: I am always working on a few projects at once. I am just finishing up a two year long series titled, “I Fought the Law”.

Pheromone Hotbox at Steven Kasher Gallery in NYC – featuring Olivia Locher, Amanda Charchian, Shae Detar, Marianna Rothen and Aneta Bartos – opens tonight. The show will be on view until February 28, 2015. Interview and text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

The Fetish of Desire: An Interview with Nino Cais

December 23, 2014

I first noticed Nino Cais’s work at Art Basel in Miami. Amongst the literal miles and miles of gallery booths and art, Cais’s work – presented by São Paulo based gallery Central Galeria de Arte – had a magnetic quality. His “fruit series” – which includes photo collages of bright ripe bananas, mangos, eggplants and exotic fruit covered in female panty hose, juxtaposed with nude glamor portraits – is a treatise on the temporality that culture places on female youth, beauty and desire. In other works, he plays with neoclassicism and roman iconography – one statue is half woman of antiquity and half stack of porcelain plates. We got a chance to ask Cais a few questions about his art – in the following interview he talks about choosing art versus priesthood and some of his biggest artistic influences.

AUTRE: Your mother was a seamstress and you grew up in the suburbs of São Paulo, where did you find your inspirations and how were you introduced to art?

NINO CAIS: My relation to art was, and still is, very intuitive. Since I was a kid, I used to manufacture my own toys with some of my mother’s materials, such as fabric scraps. I never thought I would be a professional artist – I didn’t even have a close relationship to art, nor did I visit exhibitions.

At first I entered the seminary to become a priest. I used to decorate the Church’s events and festivities. One of the priests of the seminary was convinced that I had to study art and he managed to get a scholarship for me to study in Santa Marcelina, an Art School in São Paulo. It was then that I started to understand everything I had been experiencing as a kid and young adult and started to have a more theoretical background, to think of art in a more consistent way and to start to elaborate on my production as an artist.

AUTRE: Who were some of the first artists who really expanded your mind – artists who you identified with and were inspired by?

CAIS : At the art school I met some artists that were of great importance in my personal and artistic development. One of the teachers I directly identified with was Led Catunda. Afterwards, other contemporary artists became an important reference for me, namely Constantin Brancusi, Richard Serra, Erwin Wurm, Cindy Sherman, Sam Taylor Wood and Nick Cave. In a more historical perspective, I was always fascinated by Mantegna and Giotto’s paintings. I also have a great admiration for some surrealist artists such as Man Ray, René Magritte and Marx Ernst. More recently, I am very much interested in some African artists such as Samuel Fosso and Yinka Shonibare.

AUTRE: You studied dramatic arts for roughly 8 years, how do you think that has inspired your work?

CAIS: Although I don’t really conceive a direct continuity between my experience in dramatic arts and my career as an artist, I do think that some theatrical elements are recurrent in my work. First of all, some of my installations are very scenographic and have an underlying dramatic tension, as they suggest a narrative and/or an imminent fall suspended in time. One other convergence of my artistic practice that could also be related in some way to theater is the fact that most of the figures in my work, and especially my self-portrait photographs, enact a persona that mingles with the surrounding objects, and that become some kind of entity. Note for example that my face is always hidden by an object or by a posterior intervention on the image.

AUTRE: Can you talk a little bit about your current ‘fruit’ series – I saw a few of these works in Miami and they are really stunning?

CAIS: My “fruit series” is centered on the idea of superposition of different levels and the nature of images. The starting point of this series is a recent research about the feminine figure. The pieces juxtapose images of fruits and iconic and beautiful women that harken a model of grace and sensuality. If both the fruit and the women relate to abundance, fertility and life, they are ephemeral and fleeting bodies that fade with the passing of time. In this sense, these images work as a kind of still life.

AUTRE: What’s next?

CAIS: I am working on a solo show that will take place at Central Galeria de Arte, in São Paulo, in February. The central axis of this exhibition is garments and how they relate to different cultures, how they drive projections, clichés and fetishes.

Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. You can view more of Nino Cais's work by visiting the website of Central Galeria de Arte.

Public Access: An Interview with Glenn O'Brien

December 17, 2014

Before he became the Dapper Dan with lily-white hair and a suit as crisp as the white tablecloths at Mr. Chow’s, Glenn O’Brien was a chronicler of the Golden Age of the New York avant-garde and the subculture underground of the 1960s and 70s. He was the first editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine. He was also, briefly, the editor-at-large of High Times magazine. But what he is best known for is TV Party – a public access cable show that featured some of the first appearances of artists like Jean Michel Basquiat, Klaus Nomi and Blondie. After 30 years, O’Brien has released three brand new episodes of TV Party on YouTube. Shot at locations such as MoMA Ps1, Le Baron New York, and Lafayette House, the new TV Party – a “television show that's a cocktail party, but which is also a political party” – features a number of luminaries and a smorgasbord of who's whos. In the following brief interview, Glen O’Brien offers a bit of fashion advice and talks TV Party and why it is always important to look ahead.

AUTRE: You were a part of a fascinating era in New York – with Andy Warhol’s Factory, Basquiat, the birth emerging music scenes like hip hop and punk, a pre-gentrified New York – do you miss those days?

GLENN O'BRIEN: Well, it was exciting and maybe a more interesting and inspiring community, and I prefer the spirit and tone of the art world then as opposed to now, but if you start to think that way you’re kind of doomed. I have to deal with the moment like everybody else and keep evolution going, so I don’t think too much about the past.

AUTRE: Can you remember when the idea for TV Party first came to you?

O'BRIEN: I always wanted to do a TV show. I have probably mentioned too much that I loved Playboy’s Penthouse and Playboy After Dark, Hugh Hefner’s 2 shows, because they were in a party format that seemed a lot more cool than the typical talk show. The direct inspiration was going on a public access show, Coca Crystal’s If I Can’t Dance You Can Keep Your Revolution, and discovering that people had actually seen it. I was immediately motivated to create a public access show.

AUTRE: What can we expect from the newest episodes of TV Party – there are only a few online right now, are we going to see more in the future?

O'BRIEN: We want to move the party from city to city, place to place and have guests that aren’t the usual showbiz fare. We’ll see how much stamina we have.

AUTRE: Many people don’t know that you worked for High Times magazine – can you talk a little bit about that?

O'BRIEN: When I went to High Times it had a bigger circulation than Rolling Stone and seemed more interesting culturally—drugs aside. I was working at Playboy in Chicago and was desperate to move back to NY. They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Aside from some things dealing with Rasta, I didn’t have much connection to the pharmaceutical aspect of the magazine. I was kind of the culture czar.

AUTRE: You are known as a 'style guru' – what is one piece of fashion or style advice you can offer?

O'BRIEN: I guess my basic advice is don’t follow fashion; express yourself.

AUTRE: What’s next?

O'BRIEN: Writing a couple of books. Working on some films and TV Party. The usual.

Text and interview by Oliver Kupper for Autre. You can visit Glenn O'Brien's website to read poems and other writings. You can also view all three episodes of TV Party here.

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Wayward Cognitions: An Interview With Ed Templeton

December 15, 2014

Mangled, bloodied and raw – Ed Templeton’s photography is a candid document of the halcyon days of youth and rebellion. Anarchy in the U.S.A. reigns supreme with open wounds, smoking youths and suburbia turned upside down, with all the coins shaken loose. There are also private moments captured in Templeton’s photography – of his wife Deanna and his contradictorily quiet life in the laid back hamlet of Huntington Beach, California. As a pro skater, Templeton has been given the unique opportunity to travel the world – luckily he has captured everything along the way. In his new monograph of photography, entitled Wayward Cognitions, Templeton curates images from his archive spanning nearly twenty years. Templeton not only shoots on film, but he also prints his own photography in his home darkroom – an anomalous practice lost to the ages. In the following interview, Templeton talks about Wayward Cognitions, the dichotomy between the skate world and art world, and why he is sticking to film.

AUTRE: Can you remember when you first picked up a camera and started documenting your life?

ED TEMPLETON: It was 1994, I had been shooting photos as a tourist like anyone might, but I wasn’t taking it seriously. I had some sort of epiphany where realized I needed to document my life and the lives of people around me. I had already been a pro skater for 4 years getting to travel the world and be paid to skateboard, I thought, "who gets to do that?" I figured there was something there, a story that needed to be told, and I had already wasted 4 years! After that I was very strict about having a camera at all times and ready to shoot whatever happened. Soon after the initial idea to document the subculture of skating I started shooting way more than skateboarders. Skateboarding took me all over the world, it gave be a travel bug and a desire to shoot photos of the people and places I visited that was a wider view than just the people I was around.

AUTRE: There is such a stark dichotomy between the skate world and the art world where most of your art is collected and exhibited – what feels more like home to you?

TEMPLETON: I will always feel more comfortable around skaters I guess. That is how I grew up, and that is the world I have been a real part of. The art world is so much bigger, I'm just one little blip on a ocean sized screen. I think art and skating are very closely entwined, but it's true, speaking in monetary terms, there is a big gulf between art collectors and skaters. That can be weird at times, but in a good way. Nothing makes me happier than to be at an art opening filled with fancy art people in suits and nice dresses and then to see mixed in the crowd young people in hooodies carrying skateboards. Art is for everyone.

AUTRE: Did you ever imagine that your photography would be so widely noticed and appreciated?

TEMPLETON: Not at first. I was starting to collect photo books, and I was out shooting and documenting subcultures and places and could care less. I started shooting seriously in 1994, I first exhibited some photos along with my paintings in 1998. So I didn't feel confident at first. But as time went on, I would be shooting and collecting books of great photographers and holding my work up to theirs to see if I was developing and growing. At some point I started feeling very confident that I had done some good work, work worthy of being noticed. I had started showing photography in exhibitions to the point where it was way more about photos than painting. So I can't lie and say I didn't hope my photos would be noticed by a wider audience, but you have to just plug away and make good work, and participate in the world you want to be a part of. I was able to make a book, Golden Age of Neglect that I feel was a sort of calling card for me. Ever since then all I think about is making books. I just love photo books and want to make them and collect them and be part of that world.

AUTRE: Do you think that being a professional skateboarder allowed you more freedom and opportunities to take photographs?

TEMPLETON: It certainly got me around the world. I think seeing new places and cultures and environments helps to humanize you and gives you a bigger sample of what the world is really like. That helps develop your eye. Of course skating itself develops your eye too, in different ways, but ways that can be applied to shooting photos, like looking ahead, and being ready for obstacles. I use that when walking and shooting for sure, always looking way ahead to see whats coming at you, and being prepared to shoot when it comes near. My style of photography has come purely from doing other things in life. I never travelled somewhere just to take photos. All of my travel has been for skating or art shows, and I shoot wherever I happen to be going. Pro skating gives you freedom from having any set hours to work, and surrounds you with interesting people, so yes!

AUTRE: Who are some photographers that you look up to you?

TEMPLETON: Jim Goldberg, Garry Winogrand, Hank Wessel, Robert Frank, Tom Wood, Anders Petersen, Mark Cohen, Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Alex Webb, Tobin Yelland, Larry Clark and Nan Goldin, the usual suspects I suppose. I like photographers who approach it like art, meaning outside of traditional photographic ways of presenting it, using collage, ephemera, writing, paint. I think David Hockney was great when he was doing photography, Peter Beard, Boris Mikhailov, Jim Goldberg, even Robert Frank, they all have presented photography from the position of an artist, not just a photographer.

AUTRE: You shoot on film and you develop your own photographs in your own darkroom – you shoot a lot of images, do you ever think about going digital and why is film so important in your work?

TEMPLETON: I like the way film looks, and I can afford it. Those are the major reasons. I'm not anti-digital, but I'm gonna shoot film and print traditionally as long as I can afford to and as long as they are making film. There's a hand done quality to a fiber print that is missing from digital forms. And I think going that extra mile in shooting film and having to focus and expose each shot old school style, and then making your own prints by hand pays off in the authenticity and feel it gives when the viewer sees it ultimately. This is just photo-nerd stuff, because I know that 99% of people do not give a shit how it was made. It's just for that 1% that will geek out on it, like I do when I see the master photographers work in person.

AUTRE: Your new book Wayward Cognitions is almost like a retrospective of sorts – what made you decide to go in that direction versus a more thematic direction like some of your previous monographs?

TEMPLETON: Most of my books have had a pretty specific theme, Teenage Smokers and Kissers are self explanatory, The Seconds Pass was all photos from a car, Deformer was all photos relating to or from suburbia, Litmus Test was all photos from Russia. So I wanted to just make a good ol' photo book. No theme, just photos. But It's not a retrospective because I chose all photos not printed in a book before. It's not an overview of work I made in the past, it's a story woven from my archive. When you shoot like me you amass a lot of photos. To me it's a shame that only a tiny portion of the photos you think are worthy might ever be seen. This type of book is a way to choose from that pool, with no limit on time or place or theme, and sequence the images in a way, very subtly, that a story, however vague, comes through. The name Wayard Cognitions is a more eloquent way if saying "Stray Thoughts" and that is what these photos are. Photos that do not fit in any theme or future project. Photos that have strayed from ever being seen, until now.

AUTRE: What’s next?

TEMPLETON: Onward to more books! I have plans to finally make my big book about my time documenting skate culture, a book on Catalina Island, a book with Deanna Templeton about the town we live in, Huntington Beach. Right now I'm working on a painting only show in April 2015 at Roberts and Tilton gallery. And I will be releasing a new zine and exhibiting some past zines at the LA Art Book Fair in January.

Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Autre. You can pick up a copy of Wayward Cognitions HERE. You can also catch Ed Templeton at his book signing at Moca Grand Ave on December 18 – 250 South Grand Ave, Los Angeles.

LIVE LOVE DIE: A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH BRAD PHILLIPS

December 4, 2014

Canadian artist Brad Phillips' artwork elicits an immediate visceral reaction - like realizing your entire life is a joke and only God knows the punch line. His text-based works, which are composed in watercolor, are quickly becoming what he is best known for. But behind the striking, stinging, slap-you-in-the-face puns and plays on words, Phillips is a writer and a poet at heart - a writer that uses a grander lexicon to explore the darker meaning of life. On top of being a writer, Phillips is also a photographer. His new book of photography – Mother Nature Mother Creature – puts a twist on 1970s naturalist photography by following two women who undress and romp through a forest in the nude. You can also view Phillips’ stunning text-based work at Harper’s Books in the Hamptons. In the following interview, Brad Phillips talks about his obsession with literature and poking fun at Ryan McGinley.

AUTRE: Your works deals with a lot of love, death and suicide – why are those themes meaningful to you?

BRAD PHILLIPS: Well, I suppose these are classic 'big themes' - and for me my work is always personal, and love death and suicide are all things that I have had vast personal experiences with.

AUTRE: Your watercolors are predominantly text based – like subversive poems – how do those quotes come to you?

PHILLIPS: My watercolors are only predominantly text based in the last few months, primarily my watercolors have been figurative. Some of the paintings of text are taken from other sources, like the bible, but for the most part, I can't say exactly how they come to me. I'm far more interested in writing than I am in art. I publish a lot of writing, I've been obsessed with literature and language my whole life and also comedy. So much of it just comes to me spontaneously – sudden puns I come up with, bad jokes, one liners, like art in general, the source is usually a mystery to me, except that I know it begins somewhere in some dark recess of my mind.

AUTRE: You have a new book – called Mother Nature Mother Creature – can you tell us a little bit about your new publication?

PHILLIPS: I've painted from photographs for my entire career, but I don't think photography has much currency as an art anymore. I think it's been done to death. So I'd taken these photographs of my friends before I moved back to Toronto from Vancouver. I guess I was interested in making a parody of 'naturalist photography' from the seventies. I don't know that it comes across as being parody and also I wanted to sort of poke at artists like Ryan McGinley, who hire attractive models to appear to be his friends and then photograph them frolicking in the nude. For me it was a way to document two women: one is my best friend's wive, a mother of two kids, who were both raised in the west coast, just being naked hippies in the forest. It's pretty simplistic, which is what I see as one of the problems with photography. So for me photographs right now are ideally suited to being seen in books, not on gallery walls.

AUTRE: Is everything a joke or is the joke everything?

PHILLIPS: I'm not sure about this – some things are jokes, some things are deadly serious. The interesting part is to make what's deadly serious and turn it into a joke, and to take what's superficial and light and make it look serious.

Text and Interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. You can view Brad Phillips' exhibition Law and Order at Harper's Books until January 5, 2015. You can also purchase 'Mother Nature Mother' Creature here.

Subversive Narratives: An Interview With Ryan Heffington

November 28, 2014

Ryan Heffington has carved an extremely unique place in the world of dance and contemporary art. If you’ve seen the music video for Sia’s triple-platinum song Chandelier, you know Heffington’s work. If you’ve seen the Sigur Rós music video where Shia LaBeouf goes full frontal, you know Heffington’s work. But Heffington’s real magic exists in his spectacular live performances – where he uses the medium of modern dance and movement to paint a portrait of identity and culture in a fragmentary digital age. Next week, as part of Art Basel Miami, MAMA gallery will present Heffington’s premier of Wading Games – a performance that he describes as a “punk rock water ballet" – at the Ritz Carlton hotel. In the following interview, Heffington explains his upcoming performance in Miami and how dance can change the world.

AUTRE: Can you talk a little about your upcoming performance in Miami – you once described it as a “punk rock water ballet.” Is that an accurate description?

RYAN HEFFINGTON: Yes, the piece will live between a glorious ballet in terms of scale, and at moments aesthetically beautiful, but sharply contrasted by a subversive narrative where the dancers will have to fight from drowning over collectively taking part in a synchronized swim routine.

AUTRE: You have been thinking about this project for a long time – why is this particular project so meaningful to you?

HEFFINGTON: The fact that certain performative spectacles cling to my brain collecting momentum over the years creates a feeling of deep respect and attachment to the piece. I'm not sure exactly when this ballet pushed itself inside, but the element of potential danger, the symbology of over-flooding tears, and a certain societal class - all of this is so dramatic. It has spoken to me in my dreams and waking state as well - at this point it's a part of me and I cannot keep it a secret any longer.

AUTRE: Why is dance important in today’s contemporary artistic landscape?

HEFFINGTON: In this age of digital media, over-saturation of well most everything, dance claims it stake in that it is most simple in its form. Its the body expressing the mind. No need for tools, keyboards, audio accompaniment - just the human form. There is something inherently grounding about this. It's access is given once the being accepts their own invitation to do so - again no money, tools or experience is necessary. It's also powerful in terms of invigorating the soul and once you come to peace with that you dance like no one else on earth - think fingerprint - an endless amount of joy is yours. Really - imagine if every human danced for 1 hour a day, how that would change your life, your work space, your community, your nation, our world.

AUTRE:What do you hope to convey – or what kind of feelings do you want to emote – through your dancers and your choreography?

HEFFINGTON:In rehearsals, sometimes I squint when watching the piece in front of me. I know when I feel something from the bodies before me - I'll get a tingle or goosebumps or rays of energy - I know I've created something visceral and this is what I hope my audiences experience. I can make aesthetically arresting imagery - yet without playing to the heart I'm afraid people leave empty handed. We're over stimulated visually as a society - but to connect emotionally to people or art is how I want to live and have my work experienced.

Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. MAMA gallery will present Ryan Heffington'sWading Games – with music by Banks and film installations by Osk – at the Ritz Carlton (pool) in Miami Beach as part of Art Basel Miami 2014 on Thursday, December 4 (rsvp@mama.gallery).

The Ecstatic Body: An Interview with Julius Smack

November 26, 2014

Under the stage persona Julius Smack, Peter Hernandez is part of a new wave of emerging artists that are trying to define their identity in a century that is trying to do just the same. Often wearing white jeans, his signature white face paint, a white shirt, and a tuft of blond curls hanging out of a white baseball hat worn backwards, Julius Smack combines the slow mortal pangs of Butoh with a sense of definitive post-internet Millennial angst. His performances cross boundaries between music and performance art and he will often sing his own songs, which are produced and released by his own record label – called Practical Records. Most of Smack’s recent songs were produced in his former home in San Francisco (he is now based in Los Angeles) and they have distinct political overtones. In the following interview, Julius Smack (Peter Hernandez) talks political performative art, his recent move to Los Angeles and why he uses Starbucks cups and yoga mats in some of his performances.

AUTRE: Who is Julius Smack?

JULIUS SMACK:Julius Smack is an awoken statue from antiquity that pontificates social and political messages through dance and song. In the past I used make-up to conflate an impression of a Grecian statue and Butoh dancer. I’d paint my face white and wear some white hair under a white hat. I explored vogue and butoh dance mostly at a historic drag bar in San Francisco called Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, where every Tuesday I presented a new track and a new choreography.

AUTRE: How would you define your genre of music – is it art or music?

SMACK: Maybe it’s Los Angeles, but I am beginning to see the two modes as one. I’m interested in music as art and vice-versa. I don’t think of the individual recordings of my music as art, but I think of the physical package of music as cassette or CD-R as being artful. That’s when it can be packaged and asserted as art with the accompanying liner notes and design. When I can convey a narrative arc, I think of the music as art. When I perform, I feel like I’m displaying artistic gestures. When I can give a whole Julius Smack performance, I think it’s art.

AUTRE: You recently moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles – what prompted the move?

SMACK: I’ve long wanted to live here since I was a teenager because I listen to a lot of music from here. There's a wealth of possibility and invention here and that’s partly why I'm here. I’m witnessing exciting and new modes of performance all the time, where there’s little delineation between music or dance or theater. I’m also dating a performance artist and writer named Brian Getnick, who I met when I lived in San Francisco. Being here with him has really shaped my performance practice because we discuss ideas and possibilities and he equips me with rehearsal and studio space. He also has a great performance art journal called Native Strategies that I recommend to anyone curious about Los Angeles’ emergent performance art.

AUTRE:What can you expect from a Julius Smack performance – I read something about yoga mats and Starbucks cups?

SMACK: That performance was at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge in San Francisco. There’s a great party on Tuesday nights called High Fantasy. It’s an incubator for new performance coming out of the Bay Area. The night I used a yoga mat and Starbucks cups I performed a version of the song “Choices” from my new album. I arranged three members of the audience in poses that resembled Julius Smack. One person was in the pose of the Statue of Liberty, one was in a Thinking Man pose. Then I placed in their hands a Starbucks cup of varying sizes and directed the lyrics to them --"There's no time to make up your mind, you're not sure of it anyway." I was thinking of ways to delegate the performance to the audience. I’m interested in transforming a place into a performance space through movement and voice. There’s something really exciting about seeing someone step into a performance in their usual garb. What are the possibilities of the spontaneous and unchoreographed present?

AUTRE: What are your performances like lately?

SMACK: Lately my performances involve a deal of surprise and emergence, field recordings and live recordings. I want to affect space as clearly as possible and not to rely on pre-recorded music, which has begun to feel like a crutch for performance. There is so much possibility in witnessing a body in space! Am I going to pose against a wall? Am I going to hold an audience member? In what order will I jump, sing, and dance? To allow that kind of response to space, I have been doing more acapella performances that use field recordings and live instrumentation. At Human Resources last month I used a night vision camera that was operated and projected live as a reflection of the audience. Human Resources used to be a film cinema, but all the chairs have been stripped out and it’s just a big white cube with concrete floors and perfect reverb. So I did an acapella song and then used a keyboard live for my first time. It was so liberating - I don't intend on relying heavily on backing tracks.

AUTRE:Can you describe your new album Everyday Ballet?

SMACK: Most of those songs were crafted in my big bedroom in San Francisco, and then I had a lot of room and space and time for recording. I could focus on audio effects and to adjust synthesizer tracks in a dance music form. I was really inspired by the house dance music that pervades San Francisco's music scene - it was there that I discovered some of my greatest house influences, primarily Terre Thaemlitz. And I was also looking at themes of social justice, progressivism, and gentrification, which are so fundamental to San Francisco's depleting culture. There's a song titled "Living Social," and I illustrate an image of house flippers speculating on the value of the Victorian I was living in. The lyrics empathize with the house and its history and feeling. Or "I Say What I Want," which basically calls out those who claim to oppose climate change with rhetoric instead of action.

Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Photograph and video by Perry Shimon. You can learn more about Julius Smack by visiting his website. You can also purchase music – including his new album Everyday Ballet - here. If you are in Los Angeles, you can see Julius Smack perform on November 29, at the Handbag Factory, 1336 S Grand Ave Los Angeles, California

5 Questions for Jena Malone on the Eve of Her First Solo Show

November 21, 2014

Actress and musician Jena Malone is set to present her first solo photography exhibition titled, The Holy Other, at MAMA art gallery in downtown Los Angeles, running November 21st through 28th. Proceeds will benefit Girl Determined, a charity which works with young Burmese women to educate and empower them through societal shifts in their country. Malone’s debut solo series features 39 images she captured while traveling through Myanmar, Burma this past summer. She was deeply moved by the way of life and the vibrant culture she experienced. As she took photos throughout her trip, the artist was inspired by the many young women who were finding their voice against the new backdrop of democracy in their government. In the following interview, Jena talks about Myanmar and why photography is important to her.

AUTRE:Can you explain your series The Holy Other?

JENA MALONE:The Holy Other is a series of photographs I took while traveling to Myanmar this year. I was drawn there because it is a country on the brink of great change, from its government to its way of life. I wanted to see Myanmar before the modern world rushed in. It was actually a life changing experience for me.

AUTRE: Why is photography important?

JENA MALONE: Its important to me because it helps me see the world in new ways and it is an absolute time capsule for everything I might have forgotten.

AUTRE: Who are some of your photography icons?

JENA MALONE: Mary Ellen Mark , Nan Golden , Boris Mikhailov, Sebastiao Salgado.

AUTRE: What do you think about when you look through the viewfinder?

JENA MALONE:My mind goes blissfully blank actually.

AUTRE: What do you want people to feel when they look at your photographs....

JENA MALONE: I want them to feel whatever they want! Ahha! I just want the images to evoke stories, small intimate stories that touch on giant fundamental truths.

Interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. You can check out the opening reception for Jena Malone'ssolo show – The Holy Other – tonight at MAMA gallery (1242 Palmetto Street, Los Angeles). The show will run until November 28.

Liquid State: An Interview with Sculptor Jonathan Prince

November 20, 2014

The great cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz once said, “Copy nature and you infringe on the work of our Lord. Interpret nature and you are an artist.” This sentiment holds true for a lot of sculptors – those artists that borrow stone and bits of earth in the creation of eternal and impermeable monuments to their artistic vision. This sentiment is especially true for sculptor Jonathan Prince, whose father actually once took him to visit the studio of Jacques Lipchitz. Watching Lipchitz work – Prince became transfixed. Today, Prince works with materials like Corten steel, aluminum and bronze to create sculptural works that twist and tear at basic physical properties and our own perception. In the following interview, Prince talks about his recent sculptural series Liquid State and why there is more beauty in imperfection than perfection.

AUTRE: You have been making sculpture in stone and metal (stainless and Corten steel) since you were young, why is sculpture your mode of choice when you also experiment with other mediums?

JONATHAN PRINCE: I’m not sure why but - I have always had an affinity for three dimensional work. Perhaps it’s because a sculptural work inserts itself into the real world - maybe because there are innumerable angles to visualize the piece from. Whatever the reason - it has always made more sense for me to create a line in 3 dimensional space rather than trying to simulate that same gesture in a 2D world.

AUTRE: How do your experiments in design, photography, painting, and installation inform your sculpture for which you are known?

PRINCE: Regardless of the medium - I am always looking for a new way to inform myself and the viewer about alternative ways of seeing the world around us. If I am using photography - ink and paper or stainless steel - I am always trying to deepen my own investigation of a particular subject matter - to open my eyes and mind in a way that I have not done before. I’m not always successful at accomplishing that task - but I’m always on the hunt for it.

AUTRE: Can you explain the process of evolution regarding your current series Liquid State?

PRINCE: Almost all of my work through the years has looked at the boundaries between internal and external form or what we see on the surface but feel inside. My Liquid State series are the first works that I have done which seem to have no exterior skin - in other words - the forms are made from only internal material in a figurative sense. Liquid State refers to one of four states of matter : liquid - solid - gas and plasma. The works in this series explore the relationship between geometry and fluidity - creating forms that have their roots in geometry but ultimately assume only the barest vestiges of cube, sphere, cone or disc.

AUTRE: Where do you think your interest in the contrasting qualities of perfection and chaos come from?

PRINCE: It is always difficult for me to determine where a motivation comes from - what is important to me is to recognize the interest and look at it from as many vantage points as possible. The thesis that keeps coming back in my thoughts as I go through the process of making work is that - no matter how hard I try to create a perfected object or form - the real beauty of the piece is in the breaks. I believe the same is true in life.

AUTRE: What would you like viewers of your work to experience, whether it be intellectual or visceral?

PRINCE: My hope is that my work will provoke the viewer to have questions about what they are seeing and perhaps why this object - thing or image may be of interest to them. It is my belief that each person will have their own unique questions based on their individual life experience.

Intro text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Interview and photographs by Abbey Meaker. You can view more of Jonathan Prince's work on his website.

An Interview with Tasya Van Ree at the Chateau Marmont

November 18, 2014

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Tasya van Ree steps out from her signature monochrome portraits and presents A State of Mind & the Affairs of its Games a hued-visual narrative, serving as an explication of the modern human mind. For one balmy Los Angeles evening, a salon was held in the penthouse of Chateau Marmont giving collectors, friends and fellow artists a desirable environment to appreciate her newest body of work. Twenty-one photographs in total, printed on metal, with images of dolls, toy trucks, Cracker Jack boxes, and other depictions of childhood entertainment. Titles of pieces include: The Glorified Self, To The Point of Being, and Sparks When Struck. The depth and attention to detail in the collection of photographs is grounded in a intellectually vivid perception that has underlined Tasya's photography throughout her career. Tasya graciously made some time to answer a few questions.

Autre: What inspired the narrative behind this exhibition?

Tasya van Ree: I wanted to visually translate society's function on the human psyche.

Autre: What was your childhood like?

Tasya: I was a wild and curious child with a lot of freedom. I experimented with everything that I could get into and everything that I could get my hands on. It's not much different from my adulthood.

Autre:Were your parents artists in any sense, did you have mentors early on, that had an artistic nature about them?

Tasya: They are artists in the fact that they have great imaginations, and they've always been a great inspiration to me. They both chose careers outside of the arts, but to have grown up with both parents showing you how to tap into your imagination was all I needed to know exactly what direction I wanted to pursue in life.

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Autre:What is currently inspiring you?

Tasya: The intelligence of the human body.

Autre:Does music and/or literature play a role in your creative process?

Tasya: There is always a creative conversation between art, literature and music. They are all moving pieces to a bigger form of consciousness. I can't help but be inspired by all of these parts when trying to interpret my own vision.

Autre: Does Los Angeles play a role in your work?

Tasya: I think Los Angeles has a high frequency of creative energy and I've found myself swimming through its channels.

Interview, text and photos by Douglas Neill. You can see more of Tasya Van Ree's art here.

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ART / FASHION/ CULTURE / MUSIC / FILM

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