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Arranging Tangerines Episode 22 - A Conversation with Selina Trepp Part 2
63 Plays3 years ago
In our second episode with Selina Trepp, we expand on our initial discussion of her practice with talks about growing up in a commune, the pros and cons of art school, using music as a tool, how art can be viewed as problem solving, coming to terms with painting, working site-specifically, how limitations can encourage play, and the ways in which the problem can be the prompt.
Selina Trepp (Swiss/American b.1973) is an artist researching economy and improvisation. Finding a balance between the intuitive and conceptual is a goal, living a life of adventure is a way, embarrassment is often the result. She works across media, combining performance, installation, painting, and sculpture to create intricate setups that result in photos, drawings and animations.
This week's outro music is from WHADOIDO by Selina Trepp
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Transcript
Introduction to "Arranging Tangerines" Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, presented by Lady and Stater.
00:00:05
Speaker
Conversations with contemporary artists, curators, and thinkers about the intersection of art, technology, and commerce.
00:00:10
Speaker
Your hosts are me, Alessandro Silver, and Joseph Wilcox.
00:00:13
Speaker
I don't know what to do.
00:00:14
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
00:00:17
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
00:00:20
Speaker
I don't know what to do.
00:00:22
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
00:00:23
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
Selena Trapp's Backup Chaos: Seeking Order
00:00:34
Speaker
This week's guest is Selena Trapp.
00:00:37
Speaker
We're just talking about backing up your hard drives.
00:00:40
Speaker
Oh.
00:00:41
Speaker
I assume you have a pretty robust backup system.
00:00:45
Speaker
No.
00:00:47
Speaker
Amazing.
00:00:48
Speaker
Well, you should.
00:00:52
Speaker
I know, I know.
00:00:53
Speaker
There's so many things.
00:00:54
Speaker
And it's on my list.
00:00:55
Speaker
I have...
00:00:57
Speaker
I do back up, but it's very chaotic.
00:00:59
Speaker
What I need is somebody to go through all my drives and create order.
Challenges of Conserving Digital Media
00:01:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:06
Speaker
Like all my stuff is backed up, but it's like, none of it is backed up the same.
00:01:10
Speaker
So it's like, sometimes there's like half of a, of an era on one drive.
00:01:15
Speaker
And then that half is somewhere else again, somewhere it's like double backed up everywhere.
00:01:19
Speaker
I just don't know exactly where everything is.
00:01:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:25
Speaker
That's the best I can do.
00:01:25
Speaker
I think.
00:01:27
Speaker
That's where I'm at.
00:01:29
Speaker
Mostly because I work on something very organized for a long time and then comes the end phase and then it's like, I'm out of space.
00:01:37
Speaker
I'm out of space.
00:01:38
Speaker
I'm out of space.
00:01:38
Speaker
I'm out of space.
00:01:39
Speaker
And I start quickly shuffling.
00:01:42
Speaker
Yeah, I just did a backup recently because I realized that I have a project that I've been working on that I haven't backed up in like a year.
00:01:50
Speaker
And then all of the Lydian Sator stuff that's on my computer is just on my computer.
00:01:55
Speaker
And if it died, it would
00:01:56
Speaker
not be ideal i mean we have some of it on the cloud but not all of it oh yep you you get no um i'm the same it sucks i mean there is like this weird thing where i have like dan and i have like a
00:02:14
Speaker
solid, I don't know how many computers between the two of us we have of like historic, like old laptop, old laptop, desktop, laptop.
00:02:22
Speaker
And they all still have like vaccines, pictures from certain time of their life.
00:02:27
Speaker
I have no pictures because they're on some other computer that I never did anything with them.
00:02:31
Speaker
And so there's no pictures.
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:35
Speaker
That's exactly why we were talking about it.
00:02:37
Speaker
Because I was looking for some old photos of my daughter.
00:02:39
Speaker
Because I wanted to give my wife like this.
Art Projects Inspired by Childhood
00:02:44
Speaker
You know how you take a first month, second month, third month?
00:02:47
Speaker
I used to do these things where I'd do these drawings related to whatever she was playing with at the time.
00:02:52
Speaker
And then I would do a Photoshop thing with her.
00:02:54
Speaker
But I couldn't find the images.
00:02:56
Speaker
Oh, that sucks.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:57
Speaker
I found most of them.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:02
Speaker
So that's like another project of mine where I'm just like, oh, I wonder if, and then I have like my oldest hard drives.
00:03:08
Speaker
Oh boy.
00:03:08
Speaker
I mean, that's the problem also of working.
00:03:10
Speaker
I've been working with this kind of media for the last 20 years,
The Importance of Media Preservation Grants
00:03:15
Speaker
at least, you know?
00:03:16
Speaker
So it's like, that's a lot of stuff.
00:03:18
Speaker
And then I have a basement full of like old video formats.
00:03:22
Speaker
Oh gosh.
00:03:23
Speaker
That's another thing.
00:03:26
Speaker
That's a whole thing.
00:03:27
Speaker
Conservation of digital media.
00:03:30
Speaker
Maybe at some point, some museum will pay an intern to digitize all your stuff for you or something.
00:03:36
Speaker
There is actually a grant for this that I'm applying to.
00:03:40
Speaker
It's just more a matter of when do I have time?
00:03:42
Speaker
It's not like I still need to supervise it to a certain extent.
00:03:46
Speaker
But yeah, there's a grant in Chicago that does exactly that.
00:03:51
Speaker
The SAIC has one or is it somewhere else?
00:03:54
Speaker
No, it's outside.
00:03:55
Speaker
It's like a film.
00:03:57
Speaker
Amy Vestey told me about it from SAIC, but it's from like a film archive preservation grant.
00:04:04
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:04:05
Speaker
So I think that is definitely, because she had the same, like she was like, what are you doing for files?
00:04:12
Speaker
It's true.
00:04:12
Speaker
Like one of my, one of my total hit films was what very early film is, is a master's on a format that just does not exist anymore.
00:04:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:22
Speaker
And the only specific player to see it or whatever.
00:04:25
Speaker
It was like, it was called, um, what was it called?
00:04:29
Speaker
See, I don't even know what it was called.
00:04:30
Speaker
It was digital, but it was like, just, it was a after like before DVD, rewritable DVD, but DVD Ram.
00:04:39
Speaker
That's what it was called.
00:04:40
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:40
Speaker
And it was basically kind of like a cassette digital.
00:04:44
Speaker
And I thought like, yeah, this is totally going to be the format.
00:04:48
Speaker
It did not catch on.
00:04:51
Speaker
It's hard to know what is going to be the thing that continues, right?
00:04:55
Speaker
I mean, I mean, it seems great that way too.
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:59
Speaker
Like, are we just in the fad and this is all going to be gone soon?
00:05:03
Speaker
We'll see.
00:05:04
Speaker
We'll see at least.
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:05
Speaker
I wouldn't master my stuff on NFTs.
00:05:07
Speaker
That's a lesson that I learned.
00:05:11
Speaker
Before we start, I have a question from, uh,
00:05:15
Speaker
the artist we had on our last show, Beatica, to you.
Creative Opportunities at Elsewhere Museum
00:05:21
Speaker
To me?
00:05:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:22
Speaker
Have you ever heard of ElsewhereMuseum.org and their residency?
00:05:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:05:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:31
Speaker
She wanted to know if you hadn't, you should.
00:05:33
Speaker
I don't know if you know it, Joseph.
00:05:36
Speaker
No.
00:05:37
Speaker
Well, it sounds familiar, but no.
00:05:39
Speaker
It's a thrift shop?
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:42
Speaker
And you can make work, the residency, you make work with the available material, but none of it can leave.
00:05:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:05:49
Speaker
It's like a reshuffling and remixing of the existing objects.
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah, no, that it's interesting because I am tempted to those things.
00:05:58
Speaker
But then in another way, I'm not at all.
00:06:00
Speaker
Right.
00:06:00
Speaker
Like, I actually like doing stuff.
00:06:01
Speaker
I do other projects outside of my studio.
00:06:05
Speaker
And I often really like working in places that have a lot of materials.
00:06:08
Speaker
like very specific that will like
Unique Art Residencies and Inspirations
00:06:10
Speaker
give me everything that I don't have in my studio.
00:06:15
Speaker
Like, but yeah, no, it's like the fabric museum in Philadelphia.
00:06:19
Speaker
Have you heard of that?
00:06:21
Speaker
The fabric workshop?
00:06:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:23
Speaker
A friend of mine worked there.
00:06:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:24
Speaker
That, that seems like a great place.
00:06:26
Speaker
Like stuff like that.
00:06:28
Speaker
I think is, I did a bunch of stuff at Sputnik and that was really great too, just for that reason.
00:06:32
Speaker
Cause it was kind of like, Oh,
00:06:35
Speaker
It's not the same thing as what I'm doing in my studio.
00:06:38
Speaker
Right.
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:39
Speaker
I've been to that fabric museum or fabric workshop in Philly.
00:06:43
Speaker
It's the exhibition they had up.
00:06:45
Speaker
It was like a, it was like an archive exhibition of all the residencies that have been there.
00:06:51
Speaker
Wow.
00:06:51
Speaker
And it was fantastic.
00:06:53
Speaker
I can only imagine.
00:06:53
Speaker
No, it seems like they really do great work there.
00:06:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:58
Speaker
All right.
00:06:59
Speaker
So
Selena Trapp's Creative Upbringing in a Commune
00:07:00
Speaker
are we back?
00:07:01
Speaker
I think we already were, but yeah, we're back.
00:07:04
Speaker
Okay.
00:07:05
Speaker
I guess I wanted to know a little bit more about your upbringing and how you got into arts.
00:07:10
Speaker
I know you said your mother was a painter.
00:07:14
Speaker
She's a painter.
00:07:15
Speaker
And your grandmother as well?
00:07:18
Speaker
Yep.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:19
Speaker
So I come from a very creative family.
00:07:22
Speaker
Were you born in Switzerland?
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, so my father's Swiss, my mother's American.
00:07:27
Speaker
She's originally from New York City.
00:07:30
Speaker
They met in the United States in the 60s and then ended up in Switzerland where me and my brother were born.
00:07:39
Speaker
And so my parents also founded a commune in Switzerland, was one of the first communes in Switzerland.
00:07:44
Speaker
And so I definitely think that a lot of my thinking and working and
00:07:48
Speaker
is probably grounded in that kind of upbringing.
00:07:52
Speaker
Or not necessarily so much thinking about like the values that it was, but just being within, like living in a place where we were really, really clearly outsiders.
00:08:02
Speaker
So it was in a small town and we lived with about 40 people living inside a...
00:08:08
Speaker
former hotel and theater complex in the middle of town, right across the street from the church.
00:08:15
Speaker
And we just terrorized the town who were terrified of us.
00:08:20
Speaker
But also, the other one, we all went to public school, so we were like 12 children.
00:08:25
Speaker
So we were very integrated in the town, but it was definitely like I was brought to my house when I was in third grade by my teacher, and it was like, this is the house of sin.
00:08:32
Speaker
I was like, oh, I live here.
00:08:34
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:08:37
Speaker
So in Switzerland at the time also is much more of a conservative society.
00:08:40
Speaker
So this is the seventies and in Switzerland, women only got the right to vote in 1971.
00:08:44
Speaker
And so very much about the commune was also really about sort of feminist Marxist based, I would say, and really very important part of how Switzerland changed.
00:08:57
Speaker
I mean, because of places like that, really Switzerland is a very different place now than it was then.
00:09:02
Speaker
But yeah,
00:09:05
Speaker
So within that, most of the people there were somehow in the arts as well.
00:09:08
Speaker
So arts for me was very much part of my everyday, you know, like a new film, part of people were filmmakers, people were from theater, people were visual artists.
00:09:17
Speaker
My mother was,
00:09:18
Speaker
She became a painter actually much more seriously and that's sort of her only occupation after I left home when I was 16.
00:09:26
Speaker
Before that, my parents had all different kinds of sort of things that they did.
00:09:30
Speaker
She started a patchwork business and made these really incredibly beautiful patchwork, but that she then really was able to sell to interior design companies and so on.
00:09:39
Speaker
So she had sort of a cottage industry where she designed them and had people sewing them.
00:09:43
Speaker
And then my parents made sandals and belts that they sold on the streets.
00:09:48
Speaker
And then they made food.
00:09:49
Speaker
They were basically carnies that went to fairs when I was growing up.
00:09:53
Speaker
So it was like a very adventurous upbringing.
00:09:55
Speaker
Sounds like it.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:58
Speaker
It really does sound like it.
00:10:00
Speaker
It was.
00:10:01
Speaker
But at the same time.
00:10:04
Speaker
In Switzerland, which is not very an adventurous place.
00:10:06
Speaker
So it was like a good, I feel like I was lucky that it was kind of a good balance of both very adventurous, but also very safe in a lot of ways.
00:10:15
Speaker
Like I think these kinds of things can go all different kinds of ways.
00:10:20
Speaker
But for me, it went well.
00:10:23
Speaker
Interesting.
00:10:23
Speaker
Now I've only been to Switzerland once.
00:10:25
Speaker
It was in the late nineties for, we were doing a travel show and I just remember it being very orderly.
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:34
Speaker
Very orderly.
00:10:35
Speaker
Very, very orderly.
00:10:36
Speaker
And really, I mean, it's so funny.
00:10:39
Speaker
Like, of course, there's a reason why I don't live there.
00:10:41
Speaker
I've now lived in the United States longer than I lived in Switzerland.
00:10:44
Speaker
I came here when I was 23.
00:10:46
Speaker
And Switzerland is very orderly.
00:10:48
Speaker
And it's kind of,
00:10:51
Speaker
they had this campaign one summer when I arrived in Zurich.
00:10:53
Speaker
They always had these sort of public PSAs in public.
00:10:56
Speaker
And they had these bright orange posters that said, which means allowed is what is not bothersome.
00:11:06
Speaker
I was like, wow.
00:11:07
Speaker
I mean, I don't even know what that means.
00:11:09
Speaker
Like, I don't know what it's allowed.
00:11:12
Speaker
Right.
00:11:13
Speaker
Right.
00:11:14
Speaker
What a phrase.
00:11:15
Speaker
And I thought this is very typical for, and yeah.
00:11:19
Speaker
So my, I was raised in a space where it was very orderly and we were very clearly not part of that.
00:11:25
Speaker
And what that helped me do was to not, to realize that it's not necessarily that important to be part of it.
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:32
Speaker
that you can find other ways to do things and it works too.
00:11:35
Speaker
So I think it was very liberating for me, but I could also see how it could not be.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:41
Speaker
And then you went to art school in Chicago.
00:11:44
Speaker
Yeah, then I first went to art school in Switzerland.
00:11:47
Speaker
I went to this... So, I mean, in my family, my mother's an artist.
00:11:51
Speaker
My father's also very artistically inclined in a lot of ways.
00:11:55
Speaker
But it was very clear in my family that I was sort of the artistic one, always.
Rigorous Academic Arts Education
00:12:01
Speaker
And I went to an arts high school first.
00:12:04
Speaker
That was a very, very... And I think actually...
00:12:08
Speaker
in a lot of ways, probably the most important part of my arts education because it was a very, very rigorous academic Italian arts education.
00:12:15
Speaker
So I learned really how to technically paint, draw, sculpt architecture.
00:12:21
Speaker
And it was run, it was half run by the state of Switzerland, half run by the state of Italy because there's a lot in Switzerland, there has always been, or since the forties, there's been a huge influx of guest workers, Italian guest workers.
00:12:33
Speaker
And because of the way Swiss laws work,
00:12:35
Speaker
people can't become Swiss by birth.
00:12:38
Speaker
It's very difficult to obtain Swiss citizenship.
00:12:41
Speaker
And because there's generations of Italian people who've been born in Switzerland and raised in Switzerland, but are not citizens, this has created real problems.
00:12:48
Speaker
And so one way that they tried to address this is by starting this school, this high school,
00:12:53
Speaker
which people could pursue that was half taught in Italian, half taught in Switzerland, half financed by the state of Italy and half financed by the state of Switzerland.
00:13:00
Speaker
And people could graduate and get degrees that would be at the time there was no, like at the time, if you had a Swiss matura, which would be what would get you eligible to go to college, that didn't necessarily translate to an Italian university and vice versa.
00:13:17
Speaker
But when you graduated from there, you could go either to Swiss university or Italian university.
00:13:22
Speaker
So this is like before there was in Europe, they didn't have the BFA MFA system at the time.
00:13:26
Speaker
It was just like matura and then university.
00:13:31
Speaker
And but in that school, all the art was taught by the Italians and it was crazy, like really, really, really not creative or free at all.
00:13:42
Speaker
It was all about technique and I hated it.
00:13:44
Speaker
But I really learned a lot.
00:13:46
Speaker
And I think actually in that time, that was between 16 and 21 that I was there.
00:13:50
Speaker
In that time, I think I don't, even if it wasn't like, even if I wasn't allowed to express myself completely, I think what I learned there was actually extremely useful.
00:14:01
Speaker
And what I would have had to say at that point was not that interesting.
00:14:04
Speaker
So I'm glad I did that.
00:14:08
Speaker
And I see that I pull that out all the time.
00:14:10
Speaker
Like that is like something it's like learning how to ride a bicycle.
00:14:12
Speaker
It's just like, of course, I'm not the best anymore because I'm not in practice, but I know like how to get back into it if I need to.
00:14:20
Speaker
Like if I need to make portraits or draw a hand.
00:14:24
Speaker
When I went to art school at SAIC, I mean, you went there as well.
00:14:29
Speaker
It's pretty interdisciplinary.
00:14:32
Speaker
And it was so loose that I gravitated towards the more traditional, like how to do a figure, how to... I had two pottery classes.
00:14:43
Speaker
I felt like I had to give myself something of a foundation.
00:14:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:48
Speaker
Otherwise, I don't know.
00:14:51
Speaker
I'm the person that you kind of have to know the rules in order to break them.
00:14:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think there's so many.
00:14:58
Speaker
But it works the other way as well.
00:15:00
Speaker
I mean, I've seen plenty of people who have not gone the traditional route that make amazing work.
00:15:04
Speaker
But for me, I know I needed that kind of like foundation.
00:15:10
Speaker
I think it's nice to have something practical.
00:15:13
Speaker
that you can call like skill, whatever it is, even like for myself, I'm like, it's not really what I use that much, but maybe it's also about learning how to just kind of work through something.
00:15:23
Speaker
I think it's maybe more about that.
00:15:24
Speaker
Like a lot of,
00:15:28
Speaker
What I do is like I'm self-taught as an animator.
00:15:31
Speaker
But I think having sort of learned how to just push, like at that school, for example, when we started the first year of painting, they gave each one of us a small picture of a classic Italian Renaissance painting that we had to raster up and then replicate perfectly.
00:15:45
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:15:46
Speaker
Like that was like how we started.
00:15:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:50
Speaker
But it's like, so it was really about just like, okay, you just work until, and I do believe that.
00:15:54
Speaker
Like, I think actually in those kinds of things, it's like, yeah, some people are more easily come to it, but you can, anybody can learn this.
00:16:02
Speaker
It's, it's a matter of working through it more than anything.
00:16:06
Speaker
And people who are good at it just were more inclined to work through it earlier on.
00:16:10
Speaker
It's like, so I think that that's good.
00:16:13
Speaker
But I also, it's funny because as a teacher, especially when I was teaching sculpture and stuff, I'm actually absolutely not interested in teaching skill.
00:16:20
Speaker
It does not interest me in any way at all.
00:16:23
Speaker
And I'm terrible at it.
00:16:24
Speaker
So I don't, I'm really much more interested in teaching concept and how to think about it and systems and all those things.
00:16:30
Speaker
But I think it's kind of a lot to ask if you start with that.
00:16:35
Speaker
But we're also in an interesting place now because you have all these students have access to these YouTube videos and tutorials that they can kind of like do things on their own.
00:16:45
Speaker
And I mean, the hard part is the conceptualization of the work and putting it into practice.
00:16:53
Speaker
But yeah, like you said, for a lot of people, it probably should maybe be a necessity to have some sort of skill, right?
00:17:01
Speaker
They can fall back on.
00:17:03
Speaker
I mean, thinking is also a skill, of course.
00:17:05
Speaker
Right?
00:17:06
Speaker
Like, I think that is like, and I think the thing that I find most interesting about art is the problem-solving aspect of it, regardless of the medium.
00:17:15
Speaker
Like, as far as like why I'm interested in it, I like how it is actually hyper-intellectual in a lot of ways.
00:17:22
Speaker
And it kind of combines those realms, like the hand and the brain.
00:17:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:27
Speaker
I wonder too, like, if self-taught, you know, like speaking of
00:17:32
Speaker
all the tutorials and YouTube videos that are available is even like, if it even means the same thing anymore, because I feel like it used to mean kind of like figuring it out through exploration and like, so you didn't have any training or, or formal teaching.
00:17:47
Speaker
And now it's like self-taught means you could, you could be being taught by the best person ever through a video or whatever.
00:17:54
Speaker
Um,
00:17:55
Speaker
Because all of the skills that I use in my practice, I didn't learn formally at all.
00:18:01
Speaker
I learned them through tutorials.
00:18:03
Speaker
But I wouldn't say that I'm self-taught in those things because I had good teachers.
00:18:07
Speaker
They were just the internet, I guess.
00:18:10
Speaker
Yeah, but you still figured out your path, right?
00:18:14
Speaker
So I do think that it was always even when you self-taught before, you had to find the book or there was a way to find it.
00:18:22
Speaker
Now it's just more access.
00:18:23
Speaker
That's what is so kind of...
00:18:25
Speaker
interesting about this time is that we have so much access so you can teach yourself more if you can deal with the internet yeah and find time to learn and yeah
00:18:38
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit about your early work?
00:18:41
Speaker
I'd seen some on your website.
Trapstein Duo's Scandalous First Exhibition
00:18:43
Speaker
How early are we going?
00:18:46
Speaker
I know.
00:18:47
Speaker
The ones I saw were like vinyl pieces and pieces using mirrors and glass.
00:18:55
Speaker
Looked like some performance.
00:18:58
Speaker
But before that, what was that like?
00:19:02
Speaker
I mean, sort of my first, my very first foray into exhibition was very performance based.
00:19:08
Speaker
It was a performance duo with another artist in Switzerland called Esther Epstein.
00:19:13
Speaker
And we had this because my name is Trap and her name is Epstein.
00:19:17
Speaker
We were Trapstein.
00:19:18
Speaker
Of course.
00:19:20
Speaker
Made perfect sense.
00:19:22
Speaker
Very logical.
00:19:23
Speaker
And we as Trapstein were this kind of fictional artist couple that burst onto the scene when I was 20 or 21.
00:19:32
Speaker
And we like very scandalously in Switzerland around Christmas time, you always get these postcards by organizations that help disabled people.
00:19:41
Speaker
And they would be like postcards of like people painted them with their mouths because they don't have hands or people painted them with their feet.
00:19:49
Speaker
And then we just, we made this film where we're like these are very stereotypical French artists with greys.
00:19:55
Speaker
And we get this in the film.
00:19:57
Speaker
We made a video.
00:19:58
Speaker
This is like early 90s.
00:19:59
Speaker
So like early video art as well.
00:20:02
Speaker
We had, we were friends, all of our friends went to film school.
00:20:05
Speaker
So we had access to video equipment and, um,
00:20:11
Speaker
In the film, we're like these artists and we open up the mail and in the mail, we get these postcards and we have this idea.
00:20:16
Speaker
We're like, bing.
00:20:17
Speaker
And then the next thing you see is you see us like all white arrays and bright colors.
00:20:22
Speaker
And we're hand and foot painting this huge painting of portraits, but we're not pretending like we can't use our hands.
00:20:28
Speaker
We're like mixing.
00:20:28
Speaker
But then when we apply, we apply only with her.
00:20:32
Speaker
And it's actually a really great painting.
00:20:34
Speaker
And then we walk away with it.
00:20:35
Speaker
And then in the film, we did this in real life.
00:20:37
Speaker
We just walk into galleries with this painting.
00:20:40
Speaker
Like we're trying to give the guy, like get his soul.
00:20:43
Speaker
Which always works.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, they didn't know what we were doing.
00:20:47
Speaker
We just walked out again.
00:20:48
Speaker
It was like, just for the film.
00:20:49
Speaker
But then in the opening, nobody really knew about it, but when we had the show, this was our first show together, people, there was a video of that where you kind of see, like, basically the film brings you to the place where the opening is, and then we offered, you could get for 50 francs, you would make a portrait, hand and foot painted.
00:21:07
Speaker
And so that was a total scandal.
00:21:10
Speaker
But...
00:21:12
Speaker
In a good way.
00:21:13
Speaker
People were just like, we can't believe that you did this.
00:21:15
Speaker
And also in Switzerland at that time, it wasn't like it was very hierarchical and there wasn't really like we were just very young and very fresh and kind of sold a lot of those paintings.
00:21:23
Speaker
And then that was then we went on and made many more kind of big, huge.
00:21:28
Speaker
We released a record.
00:21:30
Speaker
We had a DJ contest that was like an international DJ contest, but all the beaches have to use our record.
00:21:40
Speaker
There's so many follow-up questions to this line of conversation.
00:21:44
Speaker
I don't know which one to grab onto first.
00:21:46
Speaker
I think this is an important part of my history because what it was, was I came out of a scene in Zurich where it was like, Zurich is extremely expensive.
00:21:58
Speaker
So for young people, it was very difficult to have any kind of space.
00:22:01
Speaker
If you didn't live with your parents, it was just really unaffordable to live there and not very many free apartments.
00:22:06
Speaker
And so there was a really...
00:22:07
Speaker
sort of a culture squat scene that was like squats, but it was really also very cultures and brought just a lot of different people.
00:22:13
Speaker
And it was a very kind of a time where people were like, well, the establishment can't support us, doesn't support us.
00:22:21
Speaker
So we're going to create our own spaces.
00:22:23
Speaker
And so that's why I say like working with artists run spaces.
00:22:25
Speaker
This was when I started working with artists run spaces and actually Esther, my partner started an artist run space, which is one of the like,
00:22:33
Speaker
preeminent spaces in Zurich, really a very important space now and has been for a long time.
00:22:41
Speaker
But really kind of having this understanding of that the innovation comes out of the community and that it isn't so much about being picked up, but about just doing your thing and seeing what happens.
00:22:55
Speaker
And I think that ethos was established there.
00:22:57
Speaker
And then when I came here, I would still pretty much the first 10 years that I lived in the States, I was half in Switzerland, half here.
00:23:04
Speaker
And I was very involved in here.
00:23:05
Speaker
And I think even here, I think a lot of my preference of how I like to work or how I like to experiment comes out of that because that was so much about kind of being audacious, but also very honest and funny about it.
00:23:19
Speaker
and sort of thinking about what art could be in many different ways and commenting also on society while doing it.
00:23:28
Speaker
So I, one of the things I wanted to talk about was performance.
00:23:33
Speaker
And, and specifically I like, I'm thinking about inheritance was a, when, when did you make that work?
00:23:44
Speaker
Thinking about inheritance?
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:46
Speaker
The videos where I paint my face.
00:23:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:49
Speaker
So that came, that would have been 2010 to 2011.
00:23:52
Speaker
I'm actually pregnant in that, like towards the end, I'm like just about to give birth.
00:23:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:23:58
Speaker
So you kind of can't see it because you never see me from below my face.
00:24:03
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:03
Speaker
And then there's the, there's like kind of the photographic work after that, where you're including yourself in these kinds of compositions that are portraits, which I also would consider very performative.
00:24:14
Speaker
Yeah, totally.
00:24:15
Speaker
And I was, I was wondering if you kind of think of your, your stop motion works, you know, the kind of more recent stuff as, as performative, or if, if you've thought, like if you've removed yourself in terms of how you think about it.
Performative Elements in Stop-Motion Animation
00:24:30
Speaker
Depends a little bit on the piece.
00:24:31
Speaker
I mean, not, yeah, not in the same way because my body is not in it.
00:24:35
Speaker
Right.
00:24:36
Speaker
And, um, but for example, the piece,
00:24:41
Speaker
virtual exhibition, I think is really performative.
00:24:43
Speaker
Like that is the product of performance for me using my voice in that way.
00:24:47
Speaker
And then lip syncing, I mean, they're my avatar.
00:24:49
Speaker
So there I would say, yes, it's performative.
00:24:52
Speaker
The more abstract pieces, I wouldn't see.
00:24:58
Speaker
I don't know.
00:24:59
Speaker
Like they're performative.
00:25:01
Speaker
They're not me being performative.
00:25:03
Speaker
They are being performative.
00:25:04
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:25:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:25:06
Speaker
And I just made the connection between the avatars and the virtual exhibition as being stand-ins for you.
00:25:11
Speaker
It's like, I mean, I've watched the film so many times, but sometimes those very direct things, just like I miss them and then they come back to me.
00:25:21
Speaker
So I really like that.
00:25:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:25
Speaker
I have to warn you, my phone is telling me that I have 11% and then I'm going to have to choose between power or headsets.
00:25:33
Speaker
Okay.
00:25:33
Speaker
I mean, there's not really a choice.
00:25:35
Speaker
I'm going to have to power up.
00:25:36
Speaker
Power or talking.
00:25:39
Speaker
That should be fine.
00:25:40
Speaker
It doesn't seem like there's too much noise in your studio.
00:25:43
Speaker
I'm going to maybe move to the other side because there is.
00:25:46
Speaker
Got it.
00:25:48
Speaker
Cool.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's no problem.
00:25:53
Speaker
And then Alex had mentioned mirrors, which I love them, by the way.
00:26:01
Speaker
But the way in which they're used in more recent stop motion animations, I mean, like aesthetically, I really enjoy how they change the space and like offer kind of like breaks in the space and movement and all those things.
00:26:17
Speaker
But you've been using mirrors for a really long time.
00:26:20
Speaker
So I guess I'm just like, I'm curious to hear you talk a little bit about where that started and kind of like how the mirror has functioned in your practice over time.
00:26:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I've actually, even as a kid, was super fascinated with mirrors.
00:26:35
Speaker
And then I had this, like, moment when I was a teenager, a young teenager.
00:26:40
Speaker
I was in a cafe somewhere.
00:26:42
Speaker
In Switzerland or Italy or I don't know where, but somewhere where they had mirrors.
00:26:45
Speaker
And I was, I love people watching.
00:26:47
Speaker
That's sort of, I really, really, and I used to be completely, I would like get so into it.
00:26:53
Speaker
I had no, like my mouth would just be open and I would just stare and watch and watch and watch really into it.
00:27:00
Speaker
And so I figured out in these cafes, I would look through the mirrors and I would be able to people watch, but I didn't realize that when you see somebody in the mirror, they see you too.
00:27:08
Speaker
Like that was not clear to me at that point.
00:27:11
Speaker
And so at one day I was sitting in a cafe, people watching and this person came to me and was really, it's like, what do you want to picture?
00:27:17
Speaker
Like you've been staring at me this whole time.
00:27:19
Speaker
And I was like, what, you can see me?
00:27:21
Speaker
And he said, yeah, I can see you.
00:27:22
Speaker
I was like, oh, mind blown.
00:27:24
Speaker
And then I kind of started it, started me thinking about just like how crazy it is that mirror, how they, the optical, like the way that they're analog, like they're not, it's a completely analog phenomenon.
00:27:38
Speaker
And,
00:27:40
Speaker
they're amazing, right?
00:27:41
Speaker
They like double up spaces.
00:27:42
Speaker
They're this kind of special tool.
00:27:44
Speaker
So that's
The Magic of Mirrors in Art
00:27:45
Speaker
my fascination.
00:27:45
Speaker
I also really liked that they're sort of heavy handed.
00:27:48
Speaker
Like they're loaded with like a lot of like, I think in earlier pieces, that was a really big part of my fascination of thinking about like, how can you take the material that is so, such a trope in itself?
00:28:02
Speaker
Like, how can you take it and utilize that in a way that's not tongue in cheek?
00:28:07
Speaker
or that like takes it out of that.
00:28:08
Speaker
Is it possible?
00:28:09
Speaker
Or is it just like, it felt like a complicated material.
00:28:13
Speaker
And then thirdly, I think for me, there's been a long fascination with this idea of performing effects.
00:28:21
Speaker
So that we have this, like, there is this, a real desire, like I'm,
00:28:28
Speaker
In art, I really enjoy kind of like a magical thing.
00:28:32
Speaker
Like there's something that's fanciful or that puts me into a state of disbelief.
00:28:37
Speaker
But I also really enjoy when I understand it.
00:28:39
Speaker
Like when it gets too hermetic and I don't get it, like then it kind of also becomes distancing.
00:28:45
Speaker
And so what I like about the use of mirrors is that they have these, like you can double things up, you can deepen space, you can turn something into a one-way mirror.
00:28:53
Speaker
And we always understand it when we think of it enough.
00:28:56
Speaker
But for a moment, though, there's also this moment where you don't understand it.
00:28:59
Speaker
It's completely magical.
00:29:00
Speaker
And I love that back and forth, where it's like understanding and then being taken out of understanding at the same time.
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't know how mirrors work, actually.
00:29:11
Speaker
I mean, I don't know what the material is.
00:29:13
Speaker
I know that it's like light reflected, maybe, but... It's glass with silver in the back.
00:29:17
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:29:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:19
Speaker
Yeah, they're pretty magic.
00:29:21
Speaker
But, for example, the videos, thinking about inheritance videos there, it's just a piece of glass with black cloth behind it, and it will cut through it because if you have something dark, you just have a black mirror.
00:29:32
Speaker
And then the hole is where the camera lens goes through.
00:29:34
Speaker
So I would see it as a mirror.
00:29:37
Speaker
It's a one-way mirror.
00:29:39
Speaker
Cool.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a really... I mean, that's what I like about stop motion, too, is that it is so...
00:29:49
Speaker
You know, I was super purist.
00:29:50
Speaker
This piece was all shot in camera.
00:29:52
Speaker
I just switched to working with Dragon Frame now just because it makes no sense to work the way I work.
00:29:57
Speaker
But before I was really interested in everything was shot in camera with just a remote shutter, no digital interface at all.
00:30:05
Speaker
And part of the reason why I did that was because in film, I started out with film, 16 millimeter film and just
00:30:12
Speaker
One of the things that I really loved and I miss about like the way I work now and that I've worked for a long time is the space between the making and the seeing that you don't like there's this kind of, and there's a real surprise.
00:30:23
Speaker
Like when you work with film, you just have to kind of be also open to surprises and see what you got.
00:30:27
Speaker
There's this moment where you're like, okay, here it comes now.
00:30:30
Speaker
Let's look what I have.
00:30:30
Speaker
And so I was emulating that in my process before where I would just basically shoot into the camera and then maybe once a week I would sequence.
00:30:40
Speaker
And so I didn't actually know how it flowed until I saw it, until I put it out.
00:30:47
Speaker
But what I like about that is that then the stop motion film isn't really a film.
00:30:51
Speaker
It's a series of still images.
00:30:53
Speaker
Right.
00:30:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:54
Speaker
Right.
00:30:55
Speaker
It's a different thing.
00:30:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:58
Speaker
Which like I've, I've explained to students many times that that's actually just what video is.
00:31:04
Speaker
Anyways, it's just a whole lot of stop motion.
00:31:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:09
Speaker
Yeah, but it's different because in video you're capturing an action and in stop motion you're creating the action.
00:31:14
Speaker
So that's like a really profound difference.
00:31:16
Speaker
Yes.
00:31:16
Speaker
And so also in regards to thinking about time, stop motion condenses time and video does not condense time unless you want it to.
00:31:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good distinction.
00:31:29
Speaker
I think about that stuff all the time.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah, I can only imagine.
00:31:36
Speaker
I had a question about, actually, I have a side question that isn't necessarily about your practice, but have you seen the TV show Station Eleven?
00:31:48
Speaker
Mm-mm.
00:31:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:31:51
Speaker
It's like a post-apocalyptic kind of series that was on TV that was adapted from a book.
00:31:57
Speaker
But there's a traveling symphony in the show that does the Shakespeare plays that they travel around this post-apocalyptic world and they do these symphonies.
00:32:08
Speaker
But it's all very makeshift DIY because there's not materials around anymore.
00:32:13
Speaker
And I don't even remember if the aesthetic reminds me of your work.
00:32:18
Speaker
or if it's just kind of like the vibe of it.
00:32:21
Speaker
But it was something I was thinking about when I was preparing for the podcast today.
00:32:25
Speaker
I think you would enjoy at least the, the series is really heavy.
00:32:29
Speaker
It's like a, it's like a very sad show, but I think you would enjoy the traveling symphony aspect of it.
00:32:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:32:35
Speaker
I wrote it down.
00:32:36
Speaker
Thank you.
00:32:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:40
Speaker
It's on one of them.
00:32:41
Speaker
I think it's, I think it's Netflix.
00:32:42
Speaker
I'm not sure.
00:32:45
Speaker
Um, but so then I do have a question about the, uh, about music.
00:32:51
Speaker
I think maybe I want to talk about music.
00:32:54
Speaker
Um, and, and we had kind of talked, uh, where there was, when you did the, I work with what I have film, audio visual film that you really kind of were able to merge those things quite a bit.
00:33:10
Speaker
Uh, and so I'm kind of like curious how you think about your practice in terms of
00:33:15
Speaker
visual and music and like if one takes precedence over the other, if they're both just as important to you and just like, you know, how you kind of like navigate that because I know lots of artists who are also X, Y, or Z also, but many of them are musicians.
00:33:31
Speaker
And yeah, I'm just kind of curious how you navigate that space.
00:33:36
Speaker
I mean, I'm primarily would consider myself visual.
00:33:39
Speaker
And when I say that I'm a musician, it's about like,
00:33:44
Speaker
visual music.
Concept of Visual Music and Improvisation
00:33:45
Speaker
So I've always, yeah.
00:33:48
Speaker
So I, I'm a little bit different than musicians because I actually don't have the confidence of saying that I personally am capable of like creating beautiful music, like sonic music, but I, um,
00:34:05
Speaker
I think I understand music really well.
00:34:08
Speaker
And when I hear music, I see images.
00:34:13
Speaker
And so I sort of capitalize on that.
00:34:15
Speaker
So when you said the videola, the videola is an instrument that I named.
00:34:21
Speaker
I just gave it a name.
00:34:22
Speaker
It's not a thing that actually exists.
00:34:24
Speaker
I mean, it's a thing that exists that's not called the videola.
00:34:26
Speaker
But I called it the videola because I realized that what I'm doing is a little bit different than traditional VJing.
00:34:34
Speaker
So what I do, in essence, when I perform with musicians and when I say that I'm in... So I was saying, I play the videola.
00:34:41
Speaker
Yes.
00:34:43
Speaker
So my relationship to music, yeah, for me, it's more about...
00:34:48
Speaker
When I think about music, the music that I'm interested in is improvised music specifically.
00:34:53
Speaker
So I have no interest in learning songs and just repeating that.
00:34:57
Speaker
I'm interested in this and going into a space and...
00:35:04
Speaker
collaborating with other people and responding in the moment and trying to create something out of that response, call and response between people.
00:35:11
Speaker
And I got really interested in it when I worked in Chicago.
00:35:15
Speaker
And when I came out of my undergrad, I got a job working in a museum as preparator and all the other preparators were
00:35:22
Speaker
were musicians and were in the improvised music scene in Chicago.
00:35:25
Speaker
And that's actually how I got into it.
00:35:26
Speaker
I would see them perform.
00:35:27
Speaker
And I realized when I would see them perform, I really ambied them for this direct energy exchange that they had both amongst each other on stage, but also with the audience.
00:35:37
Speaker
And that that was something that I realized I didn't really have
00:35:40
Speaker
in my artwork when I was working in the studio.
00:35:43
Speaker
I definitely had that in my performance practice and it's something I always like, that directness.
00:35:47
Speaker
Also the fact that it's like here and then it's gone.
00:35:49
Speaker
It's like very different than making an artwork that is forever to be seen.
00:35:53
Speaker
It's like very much about you have this moment that you experience and
00:35:58
Speaker
especially with improvised music, the reality is often it's like, it's maybe a 45 minute set.
00:36:02
Speaker
I'm very happy if I get 10 good minutes out of that.
00:36:05
Speaker
Right.
00:36:05
Speaker
And so, so is the audience.
00:36:07
Speaker
That's what you work towards.
00:36:10
Speaker
And so when I saw them do that and kind of participated just as an audience member, I realized that I wanted to have something like that in my practice.
00:36:17
Speaker
And at the same time, when I was an undergrad, one of the great things that I learned about in undergrad was the
00:36:26
Speaker
Jack Smith.
00:36:27
Speaker
Not Jack Smith.
00:36:28
Speaker
Jack.
00:36:29
Speaker
Now I'm totally blanking.
00:36:32
Speaker
That's crazy.
00:36:37
Speaker
animation and specifically 60s kind of film performance art and happenings and using different kinds of like projections and really started being and then going much earlier going into the 20s when in Germany there was a lot of work being done about visual musics when a lot of artists were starting to think about film as a medium that wasn't necessarily meant to be narrative but would operate
00:37:01
Speaker
like sounds operate.
00:37:02
Speaker
So thinking about dynamics and tone and texture, which are all these kinds of terminology that we share.
00:37:09
Speaker
And I thought about that and I was like, well, I think for improvised music, if I can find a way to improvise those same terms within a visual vocabulary, I can make music and improvise as well.
00:37:21
Speaker
And so that's kind of how it started.
00:37:23
Speaker
So then I started first made a piece with Chad Taylor was a very close friend of mine.
00:37:27
Speaker
Who's now, I think now he's living in Philly, but used to live in New York too.
00:37:33
Speaker
and started developing basically a vocabulary where I realized I need to create, it's building an instrument.
00:37:40
Speaker
So I had this built this in essence, a synthesizer in which each key has visual information that is originates out of analog information.
00:37:49
Speaker
So a brush stroke or a pencil stroke that is then on alpha channels on transparency.
00:37:55
Speaker
And so when I put them together, I can layer them in different ways and then I can also decide.
00:37:59
Speaker
how, what I can affect their color, their position, their, what, how much it's time-based so I can show the whole clip or a part of a clip.
00:38:08
Speaker
So I have all these different ways that I can then play this instrument, but eventually I developed an instrument that I learned how to play.
00:38:15
Speaker
And then at the same time, my partner, Dan and I, he's a musician.
00:38:19
Speaker
He is a musician.
00:38:20
Speaker
That's what he does.
00:38:22
Speaker
We started a...
00:38:23
Speaker
a project that was like very explicitly where you're like, no, what we would see very often in that sort of 2000, it was very common for a video to be part of performances, especially in electronic music, but it was always very much a hierarchy.
00:38:36
Speaker
There was always like the musician is on top and then the video person is somehow in the background and kind of like light people.
00:38:43
Speaker
Despite the fact that with electronic music, the video became actually really important.
00:38:47
Speaker
But what happened was that very often what I would see was,
00:38:50
Speaker
maybe interesting in regards to technology, but not so interesting visually, because there was sort of a huge barrier between who will deal with the technology.
00:39:00
Speaker
Those are different kinds of people who are able to like
00:39:04
Speaker
Learn that like was all really new.
00:39:06
Speaker
Right.
00:39:07
Speaker
And then for me, it was kind of like I was lucky to have access to people who were really good at that.
00:39:12
Speaker
But I really came from the art corner.
00:39:14
Speaker
And so I could kind of synthesize those things.
00:39:16
Speaker
Then those people left.
00:39:17
Speaker
And then I was forced to learn myself, which was also great.
00:39:19
Speaker
Like I was kind of like I got enough of a sort of leg up to be able to figure it out myself.
00:39:25
Speaker
with a little bit of help.
00:39:26
Speaker
But then I think the big difference between me and everybody else in this realm has always been that I've come really from the art end of it and really thinking of it as like, it's a tool and the image, what the visual represents is really important to me.
00:39:41
Speaker
Like, so it's, and then I wanted to operate, like I want people to be able to see the music and feel the music at the same time.
00:39:50
Speaker
Like that those things are congruent.
00:39:52
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:39:55
Speaker
I didn't want to bring this up again.
00:39:56
Speaker
I think we had, I brought it up nerderly last, one of the last times I talked to you, but I had asked you whether you knew what the first law of thermodynamics was.
00:40:09
Speaker
But it's so apropos.
00:40:10
Speaker
It's like the way you work.
00:40:11
Speaker
I mean, I'll just read it out.
00:40:14
Speaker
It's a conservation of energy that states that the total energy of any isolated system is constant.
00:40:19
Speaker
Energy can be transformed from one form to another, but be neither created nor destroyed.
Balancing Energy Transference in Media
00:40:26
Speaker
And I think you work in that manner.
00:40:30
Speaker
and everything you kind of do, like whether it be the installation pieces or the sound or the animations, it's like, it's like this transference of energy.
00:40:39
Speaker
And it's like, like comes from one place.
00:40:42
Speaker
It, it builds up and it goes to this other place, but it's like, it's a balance.
00:40:46
Speaker
It's a balancing act and you, which you do so well.
00:40:50
Speaker
Oh, thank you.
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:52
Speaker
I think that's true.
00:40:52
Speaker
I mean, I think I have a desire for like,
00:40:57
Speaker
I think I have a weird desire for world building, but also for like knowing and figuring out.
00:41:03
Speaker
I always, when I talk about my work and I give my artist talk, or I started my artist talk and I'm like, well, why?
00:41:09
Speaker
The main question about making art is like actually really why?
00:41:11
Speaker
Like, what's the point?
00:41:13
Speaker
Because there's no, if you can't know that, then you have a hard time there.
00:41:18
Speaker
And I said, for me, art solves my problem.
00:41:20
Speaker
I find it profoundly a problem solving process.
00:41:23
Speaker
And so, but when I, and I don't really see problems as problems.
00:41:26
Speaker
I see them as prompts.
00:41:27
Speaker
It's a good thing, like a problem.
00:41:29
Speaker
So in the instance of music and how I got to be, create the Videola and perform, it was that my problem was that I was like, oh, I would love to be able to have that kind of energy exchange with other people.
00:41:41
Speaker
And I would love to be able to perform in this way, in this kind of direct way, in addition to my studio practice.
00:41:48
Speaker
And so I was like, okay, well, what can I do?
00:41:50
Speaker
What do I have?
00:41:51
Speaker
Like, how can I make this happen with what I got?
00:41:54
Speaker
Right.
00:41:55
Speaker
And so then I figured that out when I think that's always so something that could have been like, oh, well, this is super depressing.
00:42:01
Speaker
I'm not a musician and I really am not that musical in that way.
00:42:04
Speaker
Like I'm musical in this very different way.
00:42:06
Speaker
Um,
00:42:09
Speaker
I can't do it.
00:42:09
Speaker
So I'm going to be depressed for me.
00:42:10
Speaker
It's then that the next step for me is really always, and always has been.
00:42:14
Speaker
And I think that's part of how I was raised has always been, Oh, well then you just figure out a version that you can make it work and it's going to have to be your own thing.
00:42:24
Speaker
It probably doesn't exist yet.
00:42:26
Speaker
So, and then,
00:42:28
Speaker
through that so that's why I was like well I have to name my instrument to explain that I'm not doing visuals I play the videola and so when I perform I also I'm always on stage like I don't it's like very like bands don't come to me and say can you do something for my tour it's like well I collaborate with people so it's totally different kind of thing is economically really dumb but
00:42:55
Speaker
But most things are, right?
00:42:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:59
Speaker
But it's very, I mean, for me, that was a really interesting thing to also really think of it.
00:43:03
Speaker
And I am a little disappointed.
00:43:04
Speaker
I have to say, I think as an art form, it has so much more potential than what we're seeing.
00:43:09
Speaker
And there's some people who do really interesting and amazing stuff.
00:43:11
Speaker
But I also think people don't, people are so easily satisfied.
00:43:15
Speaker
You know, like they're so used to seeing mediocre things that they don't even realize that it could be better.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:43:21
Speaker
And it wouldn't take that much, actually.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:26
Speaker
Yeah, and there's just not a good, at least not one that I know of, kind of like a structure in place that promotes or educates on the fact that this can even exist.
00:43:38
Speaker
There's so many structures in place for...
00:43:42
Speaker
regular concerts and or traditional concerts and traditional exhibitions and all these kinds of things.
00:43:48
Speaker
But there aren't necessarily mainstream structures in place for kind of more experimental improvisation stuff.
00:43:55
Speaker
And there could be and there should be.
00:43:57
Speaker
Yeah, and I think there will be, but I think it's really like, it's an art form.
00:44:01
Speaker
I've been meeting and I meet people who are trying to push it.
00:44:04
Speaker
I think it's just really important to model it basically.
00:44:06
Speaker
I think part of the reason why it's not so interesting is because it's technology based and the pioneers really had to deal with the technology first.
00:44:14
Speaker
And so I was able to jump in when I was kind of like, you know, first I built my own patches and I was like, I hate doing this.
00:44:22
Speaker
And then I thought, you know what?
00:44:24
Speaker
I'm sure somebody designed it already.
00:44:26
Speaker
And then I found like some Belgian little company that designed like the thing, the interface, and I bought it.
00:44:32
Speaker
And it has the potential to do awful things, but it also can do good things.
00:44:36
Speaker
So it's kind of like, and you program it.
00:44:38
Speaker
So, but then I didn't have to do like the, I was like, okay, now I'm not.
00:44:42
Speaker
But five years earlier, I didn't have that option or even two years earlier, I didn't have that option.
00:44:46
Speaker
So first I did spend like two years of like, just trying to figure out
00:44:51
Speaker
do I want to spend my time figuring out jitter?
00:44:54
Speaker
I was like, no, I don't, not interested.
00:44:56
Speaker
Right.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:59
Speaker
I feel like a lot of, um,
00:45:03
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like a lot of art that's connected to early emerging technology, it's hard.
00:45:13
Speaker
I've been to so many retrospectives of artists that have worked with emerging technology in the 70s or 80s.
00:45:20
Speaker
And the work itself is pretty...
00:45:25
Speaker
simple because of because of like the hurdles that had to be overcome in order to kind of like do the tech in the first place uh that like the work if you don't understand the historical context of it doesn't even like it's not even that interesting or good or whatever but then when you realize kind of like what was involved in kind of like making that thing it becomes uh much more interesting
00:45:47
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:45:48
Speaker
And I think that's the issue when, I mean, with everything, right?
00:45:53
Speaker
And with technology, super, super obviously, because there there's such a, I think it's really interesting, actually, how we've moved from thinking of art and technology being such separate things, to now they've really become things that you sort of understood that you have to have a certain
00:46:08
Speaker
technological chops to be able to be an artist as well.
00:46:11
Speaker
Like you can't get away without it, but that wasn't usually the case and technology really felt like it was sort of owned by one kind of person and art was owned by a different kind of person.
00:46:22
Speaker
Sure.
00:46:23
Speaker
So yeah, that has, that has collapsed quite a bit in the recent years.
00:46:29
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, and music for me is always like, even before actually doing performing myself, I, I like,
00:46:37
Speaker
I see art as part of culture and music is a really important part of culture, one that I engage with.
00:46:43
Speaker
I love, I mean, I love the way music is physical.
00:46:46
Speaker
It makes me feel, and I've always gone to a lot of shows.
00:46:49
Speaker
And in a lot of ways, I think I enjoy music a lot more than I enjoy art as a consumer.
00:46:56
Speaker
So again, there's something that like always, if I enjoy something, I want to be part of it.
00:47:02
Speaker
Yeah, sound to me is memory.
00:47:06
Speaker
And I've heard recently that it's the sound, how we interpret sound in our mind, it's in a lot of components in our brain, as opposed to focus, like the visual part where that goes straight to, I think it's a cortex.
00:47:25
Speaker
But the sound part is like distributed.
00:47:28
Speaker
And I can tell this firsthand because my mother has Alzheimer's and music is the one thing that like immediately brings her back.
00:47:37
Speaker
And it's like, she just grooves when I play her old tunes from when she was like in her twenties, in her teens.
00:47:43
Speaker
And it's just amazing to see, but it's, it's just, it's an amazing art form, music and sound.
00:47:50
Speaker
It does just like bring you to a place immediately.
00:47:54
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like it has like it operates so much more on the level of affect.
00:48:00
Speaker
And that is something that I just find.
00:48:04
Speaker
As far as thinking about accessibility, I think appealing to affect is so much more accessible.
00:48:10
Speaker
Yeah, I'm similar.
00:48:12
Speaker
I like I approach.
00:48:14
Speaker
visual art from like a very cerebral place and music is like a very much not that.
00:48:22
Speaker
And I feel like the same, as a consumer, I like enjoy it on a different level, on a very different level than I do artwork for sure.
00:48:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:34
Speaker
This is the podcast about music appreciation.
00:48:38
Speaker
Well, apparently.
00:48:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:41
Speaker
I was going to suggest maybe we talk about another tech, a very low tech, which is painting.
00:48:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:48:49
Speaker
And in the Q&A that you did for the catalog, you mentioned, I think we had asked you about how, because painting was secondary in the works that you did, how that kind of like...
00:49:05
Speaker
helped you go through iterations quickly and not think about it as too formally and not get stuck in the idea the big idea of heavy painting with a p and just do things and now you're at a point where now the paintings are kind of like living on their own and they're allowed to leave the studio so when i was in art school i had a professor candida alvarez and she had told me
00:49:28
Speaker
she saw I was kind of being very rigid with my paintings and she gave me permission to paint on gessoed paper.
00:49:35
Speaker
And I found that one of the more liberating things,
00:49:38
Speaker
things I've ever done where I was doing these paintings and I didn't care about the support and I would just do whatever.
00:49:44
Speaker
And I learned so much from that process about just letting go.
00:49:49
Speaker
And it just reminds me of the way you kind of like didn't have to worry about what the paintings ended up because you knew you were going to paint over them and you were liberated and you could just experiment and do things.
00:50:02
Speaker
And yeah, it was nice to see.
00:50:06
Speaker
Can you kind of elaborate on that trajectory?
00:50:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, painting, I feel like painting for me symbolizes a lot of different things.
00:50:18
Speaker
But for one, I am.
00:50:20
Speaker
I love to paint, but I've never actually painted in like painting as the main thing has never been the main thing in my practice up until recently.
00:50:28
Speaker
But I think a lot of my work always, most of my films, I think are very much about painting in a lot of ways because this is part of the conversation we were talking about my family.
00:50:39
Speaker
So being raised by a family of artists means that I've looked at a lot of art.
00:50:43
Speaker
I've been going to museums and art shows and listening to people talk about art and have like a lot of thoughts about it.
00:50:50
Speaker
And then I've been to art, like that's been the main thing that I've always done.
00:50:55
Speaker
So it's kind of been like this primary thing
00:50:57
Speaker
But painting always also felt like really coming out of the 90s, which is when I started, it felt so kind of in the 80s, you had sort of like the monumental 80s paintings and for that hyper kind of
00:51:12
Speaker
Yeah, it just felt like painting was totally dead and was only functional in one way, which was like to sell to put into either a bank lobby or into a house of some sort, mansion.
00:51:24
Speaker
Neither one seemed very interesting.
00:51:26
Speaker
And I didn't really have a studio practice either.
00:51:28
Speaker
So I was much more interested in the social aspects of it.
00:51:31
Speaker
Yeah, drawing and painting has always been what I do just automatically.
00:51:34
Speaker
So if things like, if I don't know what to do, that's what I do primarily.
00:51:38
Speaker
And it also makes me feel like good.
00:51:40
Speaker
Like it's something that feels really good to me to do.
00:51:43
Speaker
It's not hard in that way.
00:51:46
Speaker
But then I also just felt like conceptually, intellectually, painting, it was very hard for me to pack in all my ideas into a painting.
00:51:53
Speaker
So that is, and I still feel like that.
00:51:56
Speaker
Like, I don't think a painting can hold the breadth of my ideas necessarily, or I haven't figured out how to do that within painting.
00:52:05
Speaker
And so that's kind of the background, why I never really did it in front.
00:52:09
Speaker
So I wanted to do it, but I was like, I don't think it can hold the whole thing.
00:52:12
Speaker
I think it is really the
00:52:14
Speaker
sort of my strengths is the fact that I do it all and that I have like a really high quality at all of it also, that I can sort of keep the quality up, but then conceptually understand that no, because it's lens based, it is, there's a sort of, what it does is that the work becomes less precious in a way, which I like, but it has this pressure.
00:52:35
Speaker
You are aware that it is totally precious because these pieces aren't just pieces that I found outside.
00:52:39
Speaker
It's not found footage, it's footage I created.
00:52:41
Speaker
Everything is made by me.
00:52:44
Speaker
And so that's sort of the background.
00:52:45
Speaker
And then when I was done with I work what I have, which took me three years to make where I really only worked on that.
00:52:53
Speaker
The next step was just to figure out, well, what do I do next?
00:52:55
Speaker
And when I start something new, I always go to I really don't know what to do.
00:52:59
Speaker
I go to what I what I avoid.
00:53:02
Speaker
And I'm like, OK, well, what am I?
00:53:04
Speaker
What's scary?
00:53:08
Speaker
You go towards fear.
00:53:10
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the most useful thing because the problem is the prompt.
00:53:13
Speaker
Like then it's like, I see my practice
00:53:16
Speaker
you know, it's not like, I mean, I do okay financially with my work, but it's not like people are like, there's not wait lists for my stuff.
00:53:23
Speaker
So it's not like I have to figure out why, what do I want to get out of it?
00:53:26
Speaker
What am I doing?
00:53:27
Speaker
Why am I doing this?
00:53:28
Speaker
What's interesting?
00:53:28
Speaker
And so there it's like, I mean, it's interesting to challenge myself.
00:53:32
Speaker
It's interesting to do something that's not easy to do.
00:53:35
Speaker
And so for me, then I was like, well, this is really interesting.
00:53:38
Speaker
You have these 10 canvases.
00:53:39
Speaker
And because sort of the
00:53:42
Speaker
The project was at that point at eight, seven years, almost eight years.
Challenges with Integrating Painting
00:53:46
Speaker
Like it was kind of like thinking about like, how does this project end of working with what I have?
00:53:52
Speaker
When do I bring something in?
00:53:54
Speaker
And I was like, well, really the only way it can end is if I have nothing left.
00:53:57
Speaker
And so I was like, well, then I need to change the structure of the project that things also aren't just lens-based, but that are actually object-based, that are gone forever, that it becomes less.
00:54:08
Speaker
Because mostly it was like, yeah, I'd run out of certain things, but also other things, continuously recycling.
00:54:13
Speaker
You don't really run out of stuff that, like you can go for a really long time, turns out.
00:54:18
Speaker
And so I said, okay, now I'm going to start creating conditions in my studio that are much more like something is going to be done and out and no longer recycled.
00:54:27
Speaker
And then painting in particular is like, and painting is actually the thing to do because that is like the most
00:54:33
Speaker
sort of for me the most problematic the most interesting but also like the biggest challenge to because i've had this many times every time i take a film or a photo of a painting and it's in it i had to make this decision where i was like it was very clear conceptually to me always that the mediated piece and the original art piece inside the mediated piece cannot exist at the same time it's one or the other as far as like the art moment can only be in one and i have to decide so
00:55:01
Speaker
So I was like, okay, now I want to make it that it's not the needed piece, but the piece itself.
00:55:05
Speaker
And so that's what I decided.
00:55:07
Speaker
That's how I got there, really, as a challenge to myself.
00:55:11
Speaker
And then it was really interesting because, of course, it came at a time when I had been thinking about that.
00:55:16
Speaker
Also, it wasn't just out of the blue, but as I was working on the other film, I was already thinking about
00:55:21
Speaker
painting in general in a more concrete way, maybe the way that I was thinking more about music before I started thinking about painting.
00:55:27
Speaker
And so then I was kind of, it was kind of magical.
00:55:31
Speaker
I was just able to really get into it.
00:55:33
Speaker
And because I love painting,
00:55:36
Speaker
I think it's the first time that I was able to make painting.
00:55:38
Speaker
I'm hypercritical of painting as well.
00:55:40
Speaker
I've had a lot of conversation of painting.
00:55:42
Speaker
So it's very hard for me to make a painting that I think is good.
00:55:44
Speaker
I can make an okay painting.
00:55:47
Speaker
I can make a pretty good painting, but that's something where I'm like, no, I really feel like I'm adding something to the canon of painting that should be there.
00:55:58
Speaker
Cause there's a lot of crap out there and I don't want to be part of that.
00:56:00
Speaker
So yeah.
00:56:03
Speaker
That's hard.
00:56:03
Speaker
It's a casual problem.
00:56:05
Speaker
And it was interesting because the paintings were done pretty quickly, actually.
00:56:10
Speaker
That was a very fast process.
00:56:11
Speaker
I was working simultaneously.
00:56:13
Speaker
I mean, it was like months.
00:56:15
Speaker
Of course, they had been made over years, but months for finalization.
00:56:18
Speaker
But then during the process of the film, I actually had another year of looking at them, and then I kept on working on them.
00:56:25
Speaker
Like in the film, they changed.
00:56:29
Speaker
So are any of them the original final version or did they all get reworked over that course of the year?
00:56:36
Speaker
Half, half.
00:56:37
Speaker
Okay.
00:56:39
Speaker
So the original final versions are more valuable.
00:56:43
Speaker
I don't know.
00:56:44
Speaker
I mean, I think they are all done though.
00:56:46
Speaker
I mean, I'm committed to them being done and some of them have been sold.
00:56:49
Speaker
So it's like they are also, and that's, I mean, for me, that's also an interesting thing to just think about.
00:56:55
Speaker
I think,
00:56:57
Speaker
You know, I think my sort of my hang ups one could say about capitalism or about how to interface with market realities and like how to do this.
00:57:05
Speaker
I think these are very important and interesting questions.
00:57:09
Speaker
But also, as I've gotten older and have more responsibility in life, I've also come to the conclusion that.
00:57:16
Speaker
I mean, I can be critical of it as much as I want.
00:57:19
Speaker
I also need to interface with it or I need to figure it out.
00:57:21
Speaker
I need to figure out a system that works.
00:57:25
Speaker
because this is the system that we're in and otherwise I need to move to another country where the system could support me in different ways, but this isn't the reality right now.
00:57:33
Speaker
And I don't know if that exists at this point.
00:57:35
Speaker
So it's kind of like about figuring out and painting becomes an acknowledgement of that as well.
00:57:41
Speaker
Cause of course I'm very aware of like the difference of a painting versus a file.
00:57:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:50
Speaker
Not to mention that the, those paintings have like several paintings layered underneath.
00:57:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:56
Speaker
So in one of the paintings has like, for example, one of the paintings, which is one of my favorite paintings still, but underneath it, there's my top favorite painting that I overpainted like years ago.
00:58:08
Speaker
And still, when I look at it, I'm like, oh, I'm like, oh God, somebody ever x-rays this to be really interesting.
00:58:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:14
Speaker
You get like an art restorer to pull off the layers to get back to it.
00:58:19
Speaker
I don't know.
00:58:20
Speaker
It'll be hard because I like what it is now too.
00:58:21
Speaker
It's like, that's life, right?
00:58:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:24
Speaker
Kind of what I like about it too is that it's not even with those, it's like when you get it, you get it, but you also get the whole story of it.
00:58:33
Speaker
Isn't there that at the Art Institute, isn't there the Picasso piece of the guitarist?
00:58:40
Speaker
Like, and underneath, you could start seeing the beginnings of the female portrait that's underneath.
00:58:46
Speaker
It's just like coming to light slowly.
00:58:49
Speaker
It's slowly revealing itself.
00:58:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:55
Speaker
It's funny, thinking about Picasso, I recently had a total realization of, like, sort of how... Do you know the film by Picasso called Le Mystère du Picasso, The Mystery of Picasso?
00:59:07
Speaker
I think I've seen that, yeah.
00:59:08
Speaker
It's a film where he's like in the studio whenever like topless, but he's painting behind a screen and you only see the painting coming up.
00:59:16
Speaker
So it's actually an animation and you just see him like creating all these paintings.
00:59:19
Speaker
And I love this film growing up.
00:59:21
Speaker
I saw it many times, like play in the movie theater.
00:59:23
Speaker
And I was like, I totally forgot about that.
00:59:26
Speaker
And I was like, you know, I think that was probably extremely profound influence on my work that I hate to admit it, that Picasso is the one, but.
00:59:35
Speaker
That's funny.
00:59:37
Speaker
Joe hates that I bring up male artists for examples, but I had written Picasso and Dubuffet for, oh, wait, and Elizabeth Murray.
00:59:46
Speaker
Sorry.
00:59:47
Speaker
That's not true.
00:59:48
Speaker
I hate that you bring up super old historical references, which just happen to all be male artists.
00:59:55
Speaker
But it's hard because, I mean, if I think about references, honestly, I was exposed.
00:59:59
Speaker
That's what I was exposed to.
01:00:01
Speaker
Exactly.
01:00:02
Speaker
In a way, when I think about people who influence me now, and actually even as a child, Nikita Sample was a big one that I was exposed to as growing up.
01:00:12
Speaker
I can see a connection.
01:00:13
Speaker
Yeah, totally.
01:00:14
Speaker
I feel like, I mean, I actually have
01:00:16
Speaker
we have, I have a Nikita Sandfall piece in my house that I inherited from my grandmother.
01:00:20
Speaker
So it's like, it has been a presence in my life.
01:00:23
Speaker
But for the most part, I mean, you know, the other film that I think really influenced me is the officially wise film, the way things go, like was super, super hyper influential on my thinking about stuff.
01:00:35
Speaker
And I think Rick Rick, they're all guys.
01:00:37
Speaker
It's totally depressing.
01:00:38
Speaker
It totally is.
01:00:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:42
Speaker
We barely work with any guy.
01:00:44
Speaker
Yeah, no.
01:00:46
Speaker
We're changing things.
01:00:47
Speaker
We're making changes.
01:00:48
Speaker
Good, which is important.
01:00:50
Speaker
No, and I mean, that's like really important to me.
01:00:52
Speaker
That's why I think there's nothing more important than having other people out changing it.
01:00:58
Speaker
It's not easy to do.
01:01:00
Speaker
No, it's not.
01:01:01
Speaker
No.
01:01:05
Speaker
Can I go, Alex, or do you have another question?
01:01:07
Speaker
No, go ahead.
01:01:07
Speaker
Go ahead.
01:01:09
Speaker
So you had mentioned in the kind of catalog interview that we did that you're excited about working kind of like outside of the gallery museum in more public spaces.
01:01:21
Speaker
And the piece that you did, the woven piece at the, what building was that?
01:01:30
Speaker
It's the... Merchandise Mart in Chicago.
01:01:32
Speaker
Merchandise Mart.
01:01:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:36
Speaker
really I enjoyed how you like described kind of like responding to the facade of the building.
01:01:41
Speaker
And I'm kind of just curious about this, like responding to spaces, like when you're making work.
01:01:49
Speaker
And I know that you're doing that both of your new, the two new pieces that you're working on are also site specific, right?
01:01:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:56
Speaker
So I guess I'm, I'm, I'm wondering, have you always kind of like
01:02:00
Speaker
done site-specific type work throughout your career?
01:02:04
Speaker
Or is this kind of a new thing?
01:02:06
Speaker
And just like, I'm curious to hear you talk about responding to spaces and how that process kind of looks.
01:02:12
Speaker
Yeah, site-specificity has been part of my work often throughout my career.
01:02:17
Speaker
Partially, I mean, initially it was because I was like, I want to travel.
01:02:22
Speaker
And so if you make site-specific work, you have to travel.
01:02:24
Speaker
So that was the problem you had to solve at that point.
01:02:28
Speaker
Like, I want to travel.
01:02:29
Speaker
How can I do that?
01:02:30
Speaker
How can I make my work help me travel?
01:02:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:33
Speaker
That's what I mean when I'm like, yeah, I think very literally when it comes to how art saves my problems, solves my problems.
01:02:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:40
Speaker
So that would be like a purely practical.
01:02:42
Speaker
This new work, of course, it's not like that.
Site-Specific Work and Transforming Spaces
01:02:45
Speaker
I'm really interested in working side specific because I think, especially with projection or with video, but with projection in particular, and now the other two pieces are actually on LED walls.
01:02:57
Speaker
Oh, cool.
01:02:58
Speaker
So...
01:03:00
Speaker
But with projection in particular, I find it really interesting the way that the image gets transformed into light, which is really similar to sound.
01:03:10
Speaker
So when I work, especially when I think about sound and work, and that it can go on any surface, that it can kind of fold itself onto something, like that I can sort of take possession.
01:03:21
Speaker
So I really like this and I like playing with that, like thinking about
01:03:24
Speaker
what does that mean to do that?
01:03:27
Speaker
So even when we perform, so when I perform with Spectralina, that's a big part of what we do.
01:03:31
Speaker
Generally, when we perform, we don't, we bring our own projector and we project into the architecture and on top of us.
01:03:37
Speaker
So in that sense, side specifically is interesting.
01:03:40
Speaker
With the newer work, it's a little bit different.
01:03:44
Speaker
sort of a shift has come for one working with like with Woven, for example, there the site was given to me and I had to respond to it.
01:03:54
Speaker
And there it was much more in a really direct way of like, hey, it's a real, so the merchandise mart is two and a half acres of facade, but it's all with windows in it.
01:04:04
Speaker
So what it actually is, is it's a net.
01:04:06
Speaker
It's a, because you're working, you only, you don't project onto the windows, only onto the facade.
01:04:11
Speaker
So everything is video mapped out.
01:04:12
Speaker
So it's like you're sort of in a giant pixelated surface in a weird way that you're working with.
01:04:19
Speaker
And so when I there, I was just kind of thinking about, OK, well, what does this look like to me?
01:04:23
Speaker
And right away, I thought of it as like it looked like a loom to me.
01:04:25
Speaker
And I realized also that when you have lines going across that kind of surface, what happens is you have warp and weft because of the like going in, like in and out of the projected areas from the video mapping.
01:04:36
Speaker
So that was.
01:04:38
Speaker
kind of became like one idea but then in that particular case it was also very specific it was a commission from the city of Chicago as part of the year of music so they had like a whole year of programming or they and it was a commission for Specterlina which is my project with Dan and so we were really tasked with thinking about music as well and their music was composed to it and when we were thinking about music we said oh this is really interesting thinking about like
01:05:05
Speaker
composing music, especially with different musicians, which what Dan was doing is very similar to weaving.
01:05:11
Speaker
Like you have all these different strands of sounds, which would be the similar, like different colors in there that you bring in, you bring it together to create this tapestry.
01:05:18
Speaker
And then at the same time, the city of Chicago being on a grid also is really similar.
01:05:23
Speaker
Like having that weaving pattern warped and wefted and then the building.
01:05:27
Speaker
So I really, we liked how that all kind of became one image.
01:05:32
Speaker
And then we took the, I took the,
01:05:34
Speaker
The video is a hand-drawn animation, but the drawings sort of have keyframes and the drawings go from sketch to sketch of just over a month or two.
01:05:45
Speaker
I would go into different neighborhoods in Chicago and whatever, shop or eat something.
01:05:49
Speaker
But I would like, if I found any kind of interesting patterns or textiles within those spaces, I would just make a little sketch from memory.
01:05:55
Speaker
So I was very clearly not documentation.
01:05:59
Speaker
at all, which I think the people who got it were like a little bit bummed out because they couldn't use it that well.
01:06:03
Speaker
Like they're like, you want interviews and blah, blah, blah.
01:06:05
Speaker
I was like, that's not really how I work.
01:06:07
Speaker
I just go in and I like tried to scan the
01:06:10
Speaker
get an impression and then work from that impression.
01:06:13
Speaker
And so then those would be the keyframes.
01:06:15
Speaker
And so it sort of connects these different patterns would be like something from Chinatown, something more like African and then kind of mixed up.
01:06:21
Speaker
Maybe if I was in different places, it would be mixed up patterns that come together.
01:06:25
Speaker
And so everything, ultimately, it's like the surface of the building becomes the loom and the music becomes part of the woven while the drawings get woven as well.
01:06:35
Speaker
And they all respond to each other.
01:06:37
Speaker
It was a rare occasion too, where I was actually,
01:06:40
Speaker
very, very directly responding to Dan's music, which with us very often it's the other way around or it goes more back and forth.
01:06:46
Speaker
But in that case, it was incredibly, luckily, like, I think they got done recording like two days before lockdown.
01:06:55
Speaker
Hmm.
01:06:57
Speaker
So I was able to work on that.
01:06:59
Speaker
And then because of the pandemic, we were only supposed to have five months to work on it.
01:07:04
Speaker
And then I had a year to work on it.
01:07:06
Speaker
So that also allowed me to really think about it in much more complicated terms.
01:07:10
Speaker
Because this was, I mean, it's completely hand-drawn and drawn on a light box over an architectural rendering of the building.
01:07:17
Speaker
So it's 5,000 drawings.
01:07:18
Speaker
Wow.
01:07:21
Speaker
It's a beautiful piece, by the way.
01:07:23
Speaker
And that's only experiencing it on a small screen.
01:07:26
Speaker
I could only imagine having been there to see it in front of you projected.
01:07:31
Speaker
No, I was really, I mean, and it was definitely one of those super incredible to be able to do something like that.
01:07:39
Speaker
Just also the jump from working, you know, for a year working on my light box in my studio, drawing and drawing and drawing and then seeing it on that surface is so crazy.
01:07:50
Speaker
It's so huge.
01:07:51
Speaker
It's just like so much real estate, right?
01:07:53
Speaker
It's like, yeah.
01:07:55
Speaker
And then also understanding something like that I was playing every night from July until September.
01:08:01
Speaker
And that has over a million viewers.
01:08:04
Speaker
It's very public.
01:08:06
Speaker
And I think that is also I mean, I guess that's where maybe my sort of ambition comes in.
01:08:14
Speaker
But I do like that.
01:08:16
Speaker
I want my work to be seen.
01:08:18
Speaker
I have a desire for a public.
01:08:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's true for most people who make stuff.
01:08:26
Speaker
Not everybody, but most people who make stuff and especially visual stuff is that they want people to see it.
01:08:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:33
Speaker
So, and I think there's a lot of potential in this space with the newer work that I'm doing right now.
01:08:38
Speaker
Those are both stop motion pieces and they're both ones for the airport and ones for a lobby downtown Chicago.
01:08:45
Speaker
And there I worked a little bit differently where I was like really kind of thinking like Dr. Selena, where I was like, what does this space need?
01:08:51
Speaker
And really thinking about the qualities of,
01:08:55
Speaker
One is Arrival Corridor in O'Hare Airport International Terminal.
01:08:59
Speaker
So that means that anybody who walks past it, it's right before you go to customs, which is probably people are going to be tired and a little bit stressed out and maybe excited.
Art Installation at O'Hare Airport
01:09:08
Speaker
And so it's like a kind of a complex space.
01:09:11
Speaker
And what I was thinking there, I started approaching it very clearly as like, okay, so I know that space really well, actually.
01:09:17
Speaker
And I know how it feels.
01:09:18
Speaker
And I was like, what do I think people need there?
01:09:20
Speaker
And I was like, you know, people need to have like a moment of levity.
01:09:24
Speaker
Like they need to be both woken up and relaxed.
01:09:27
Speaker
Like you need to kind of be brought into the position where you can just handle some grumpy customs officers and stand in line for a little bit longer.
01:09:34
Speaker
And you also need to be woken up because you probably had a night flight or, you know, like whatever it is, you need some kind of thing.
01:09:40
Speaker
And so I was like, okay, well, what do I...
01:09:43
Speaker
How could video, what would an animation need to do to do that?
01:09:47
Speaker
So that was like my starting point for that piece of my proposal.
01:09:51
Speaker
And for the lobby, it was similar that my starting point was very much like me just hanging out in there and kind of thinking, looking at what was going on in there.
01:09:59
Speaker
And I realized that the people who were there actually most are the janitors and the person who does the door.
01:10:05
Speaker
And it's this giant, giganto video wall.
01:10:09
Speaker
And I thought, well, really, I'm entertaining them.
01:10:12
Speaker
Like, that's my audience.
01:10:14
Speaker
Like, the other people are just going through, and especially, who knows, with the pandemic, right?
01:10:17
Speaker
It's that office building, so I don't know who's going through there right now.
01:10:24
Speaker
And I thought, well, they need, I think slapstick would be good.
01:10:27
Speaker
Like, they need kind of, like, humor and also something that never gets boring and really no sound.
01:10:34
Speaker
Like, that would be awful.
01:10:35
Speaker
You know, like if they have to listen to this.
01:10:37
Speaker
Because you can't you can't stop it.
01:10:41
Speaker
Like you can look away from a video, but you can't stop noise from coming into your ears.
01:10:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:47
Speaker
So kind of like being like and that's what I mean when I say like I feel like I almost want to think of it in medicinal terms of like going in and then kind of like looking at like, well, what kind of experience?
01:10:58
Speaker
Because I do think with a stop motion, these kind of more abstract pieces, they operate like music and music.
01:11:05
Speaker
can create tension or relaxation and so on.
01:11:07
Speaker
So I believe I can do that with my animations as well, that I can actually induce certain states.
01:11:14
Speaker
So for the O'Hare project, what I'm capitalizing on there is I'm just saying like, okay, well, for what they need is both to be sort of enchanted, which is do like the myself is like super beautiful and bright and like very alive.
01:11:27
Speaker
But then I also think they need in order to,
01:11:30
Speaker
stress, like if you have problems and stress relief is actually in order to understand a problem, you have to like, first you experience it, then you have to recognize it and then you can transform it.
01:11:40
Speaker
And so I thought, Oh, it'd be interesting for them to just experience that while they walk past.
01:11:44
Speaker
And so,
01:11:46
Speaker
I've made like a walkway that's about 20 feet wide where the sculptures walk and I got a super wide angle camera set up that it captures it all in one.
01:11:55
Speaker
But the sculptures walk in the same directions as the people will walk at the same speed and they'll start out like very sort of encumbered or problematic, slightly problematic.
01:12:04
Speaker
And then in the middle there's this transformation moment and then they leave the screen kind of transformed.
01:12:09
Speaker
And that is just like an endless loop of different sculptures going through that procession.
01:12:14
Speaker
And I'm like, well, somebody will walk with one of them and they'll sort of witness this like positive transformation, which in itself, I think will probably help them.
01:12:23
Speaker
That sounds so interesting.
01:12:24
Speaker
That's the first time I've heard you describe the actual content of that work.
01:12:29
Speaker
It sounds fantastic.
01:12:30
Speaker
It sounds really fun.
01:12:32
Speaker
Thank you.
01:12:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's interesting because it's also very basic in a lot of ways.
01:12:36
Speaker
Like, I'm like, okay, I'm very kind of, I feel like I'm getting more and more pragmatic about stuff.
01:12:41
Speaker
I'm like, well, what does this space need?
01:12:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:46
Speaker
And what do I have to offer within my tools?
01:12:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:50
Speaker
That's going back to utilizing what you have at hand, right?
01:12:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:54
Speaker
But also it goes back to like, it makes it much easier to make an argument for my work.
01:12:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:00
Speaker
Sure.
01:13:01
Speaker
Yes.
01:13:04
Speaker
And that is, I mean, that's like the public art kind of like push and pull, right?
01:13:09
Speaker
You have to be able to pitch it to somebody who approves it, usually, that it's necessary and it's important and it's going to function in the way that they kind of like want it to in that space.
01:13:24
Speaker
which produces limitations.
01:13:26
Speaker
But as you've said, right, limitations can be a really good thing.
01:13:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:32
Speaker
I mean, there's definitely limitations.
01:13:33
Speaker
I can't, you know, I am aware that I can't do certain things, but that's okay.
01:13:36
Speaker
Cause I can do other things.
01:13:38
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:13:42
Speaker
There's still infinite possibilities.
01:13:44
Speaker
Right.
01:13:44
Speaker
And I also think, you know,
01:13:48
Speaker
I don't think, I mean, I think part of what frees me up is that I do operate in different spaces.
01:13:54
Speaker
So public art is just one space that I operate in.
01:13:56
Speaker
Right.
01:14:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:01
Speaker
I like it.
01:14:01
Speaker
I also just like it in regards to sort of the real world application of it, because it becomes much more utilitarian when you have to start thinking about like just very practical things that happen once you deal with architects and, you know,
01:14:14
Speaker
you know, like insurance, things like that.
01:14:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:18
Speaker
Very cool.
01:14:25
Speaker
I think that's all my questions that I wrote down.
01:14:30
Speaker
Alex?
01:14:32
Speaker
I have one.
01:14:33
Speaker
I was wondering, so this
01:14:36
Speaker
It sounds like you're ending the project where you're working with stuff in your studio or you're, it's changing.
01:14:44
Speaker
It's morphing into something.
01:14:46
Speaker
You're allowing it to morph into something different.
01:14:47
Speaker
I was just wondering, having done that process of working with what you had at hand for so long is what's, what's the most important thing you've learned from that?
01:15:03
Speaker
Wow.
01:15:03
Speaker
What a question.
01:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, I never even thought about that.
01:15:06
Speaker
The most important thing.
01:15:09
Speaker
Or anything.
01:15:10
Speaker
I'm not really ending it.
01:15:11
Speaker
It's shifting a little bit.
01:15:12
Speaker
So I think that's pretty... And I'm super excited about it.
01:15:17
Speaker
That it is shifting.
01:15:19
Speaker
And the way that it's shifting.
01:15:20
Speaker
So...
01:15:21
Speaker
I think it was a little unclear when I talked to you guys about it.
01:15:24
Speaker
But yeah, my mother moved her studio or gave up her studio in the United States.
01:15:28
Speaker
She lived part time as an artist in the United States and part time in Switzerland.
01:15:32
Speaker
And last year she gave up, she decided that that was too much for her.
01:15:37
Speaker
And so I moved all her stuff into storage and I own it now.
01:15:43
Speaker
And I get to use it and I decided in October, it'll be exactly 10 years since that last time I brought things in.
01:15:48
Speaker
So I said, I'll do a one-time material infusion with my mom's stuff.
01:15:53
Speaker
I do not know what
Constraints Enhancing Creativity
01:15:54
Speaker
it is.
01:15:54
Speaker
And so it's again, kind of like within the same ethos of working with what I have and really thinking about also really complex, of course, my mom's stuff.
01:16:02
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:16:03
Speaker
Like I like the heaviness of that.
01:16:07
Speaker
I think it's really interesting.
01:16:09
Speaker
And also, but I'm not going to buy it.
01:16:10
Speaker
Like that won't open.
01:16:12
Speaker
I'm not going to, I'll stick to it.
01:16:14
Speaker
Like that'll just be like a one time and then I'll see what I do with that.
01:16:17
Speaker
And I guess based upon that,
01:16:19
Speaker
I think what I like about it or what I've learned the most is the fact that creating a system that makes me react to the system is really productive to me.
01:16:28
Speaker
So having infinite possibilities actually becomes extremely distracting.
01:16:33
Speaker
But within this kind of conceptual framework and that tightness of that framework, it becomes really exciting because it turns it into play.
01:16:41
Speaker
And I think my practice has become much, much, the longer I work with this, I think that is the tension of the work is that you would think
01:16:49
Speaker
that kind of concept would be sad or somber, but actually it really pushed me to play an experimentation in ways that I would have never, I mean, I know that I wouldn't have made the paintings that I make or the sculpture that I make, or the, I wouldn't have even made stop motion.
01:17:02
Speaker
Stop motion clearly came out of that.
01:17:03
Speaker
Like I was not doing stop motion work before that was sort of came in about six years in for maybe five years in.
01:17:12
Speaker
And it was very clearly out of me and my relationship with the materials and me thinking so much about my materials that one day when I was biking home at night, I was thinking just as a joke for myself, I was making myself laugh.
01:17:24
Speaker
And I was like, it would be so funny if these materials had like their whole life while I'm gone.
01:17:30
Speaker
Like when I leave the studio, they just start doing stuff.
01:17:33
Speaker
And then I come back to like...
01:17:35
Speaker
It's like night at the museum for... Totally.
01:17:37
Speaker
And then I was like, oh, well, I should do that.
01:17:42
Speaker
I should make a stop motion doing that.
01:17:43
Speaker
And that was my first stop motion.
01:17:45
Speaker
And that was rotation.
01:17:45
Speaker
That was the piece that you saw at CAC.
01:17:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:17:49
Speaker
So that was... And so because...
01:17:53
Speaker
And then that, yeah, so I completely credit really everything I do and where I'm at, I credit to that concept because it pushes all the sort of every decision I made came out of that material restriction.
01:18:06
Speaker
And then the other thing that I think has been really helpful for me is just this idea of
01:18:12
Speaker
I always struggled with art, sort of with the space, like how to figure out how I could be both ethical, political, and conceptual in my work, and also fanciful and totally like intuitive and non-cerebral in my work.
01:18:33
Speaker
And how do I bring those
01:18:35
Speaker
two things together because I like both of those things and they're both very much part of how I think and operate.
01:18:41
Speaker
And so by splitting up, this concept has allowed me to just kind of split those two things apart in a really productive way that both those things are there.
01:18:48
Speaker
Like I think all my work is based in this very rigid kind of clear concept and also politics and ethics.
01:18:57
Speaker
But what I do can be whatever.
01:19:00
Speaker
Like that doesn't matter because I have that, like it's behind it.
01:19:03
Speaker
And none of it, I would say like,
01:19:06
Speaker
If I would think about revolutionary aesthetics, I would say like, well, the work that I have now is a revolutionary aesthetic.
01:19:12
Speaker
Like it comes out of that, like a political aesthetic, like the politics completely created that aesthetic.
01:19:20
Speaker
I think part of the magic that brings that about is there's almost like a childlike wonder that comes through.
01:19:27
Speaker
Which probably should be the goal of most artists is to get back to that childlike state.
01:19:32
Speaker
That place where things were unnamed or just amazement everywhere you look.
01:19:38
Speaker
And I get that from your work.
01:19:40
Speaker
I get that wonder.
01:19:41
Speaker
I get that sense.
01:19:45
Speaker
Yeah, great though.
01:19:45
Speaker
Because that is really important to me.
01:19:47
Speaker
I think that's sort of
01:19:49
Speaker
I mean, that's the kind of art that I speak.
01:19:51
Speaker
Like, I think I always thought it was interesting.
01:19:53
Speaker
Have you ever seen, you know, Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels?
01:19:56
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:19:57
Speaker
Yes.
01:19:58
Speaker
And then Spiral Jetty?
01:19:59
Speaker
Yep.
01:20:00
Speaker
So when I was in grad school, we went on this amazing road trip where we went all, saw a lot of land art.
01:20:07
Speaker
But we did a lot of reading before.
01:20:08
Speaker
And in the reading before, I always kind of thought like, Spiral Jetty, cheesy, just because spirals are cheesy.
01:20:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:14
Speaker
In general, like it's not like conceptually just didn't really interest me.
01:20:18
Speaker
And Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, I was like, oh, super interesting.
01:20:21
Speaker
Then I went there and Spiral Jetty is just the most amazing experience ever.
01:20:26
Speaker
Like really blew my mind and my heart.
01:20:28
Speaker
I was like, oh, my God, this is so amazing.
01:20:30
Speaker
And it's not cheesy at all.
01:20:32
Speaker
And then Sun Tunnels, on the other hand, when I saw it, really didn't do anything for me.
01:20:36
Speaker
But when I thought about it, it was so interesting to think about.
01:20:39
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:20:41
Speaker
And it's kind of like, that's the thing.
01:20:44
Speaker
I want to have both at the same time.
01:20:46
Speaker
And I think this allows me to do both.
01:20:50
Speaker
Yeah, I also just can't help but think about the way in which the rigid system produces kind of randomness a little bit.
01:20:59
Speaker
Like you are always responding to a previous action because it's a closed ecosystem, which I think is a really nice dichotomy.
01:21:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's generative, weirdly.
01:21:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:12
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:21:13
Speaker
Surprisingly, like.
01:21:16
Speaker
And also points to when we were talking earlier about Alex's simulation theory and you responded that you just think it's like actions and reactions.
01:21:27
Speaker
It feels very much tied to your philosophy on how things happen in life.
Shifting Perspectives and Control in Art
01:21:34
Speaker
Yeah, I do.
01:21:35
Speaker
I mean, I think.
01:21:39
Speaker
I'm grateful that I have the feeling that it seems like I have people have a lot more control over things than they think they do because we have the power to change our perspective on things.
01:21:53
Speaker
And that's all I'm doing is really shifting perspective.
01:21:55
Speaker
Right.
01:21:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:57
Speaker
And if you view kind of like everything as an opportunity, then you just only have opportunities.
01:22:02
Speaker
Exactly.
01:22:03
Speaker
Like if problems just aren't problems.
01:22:05
Speaker
Right.
01:22:06
Speaker
Then you're much happier.
01:22:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:09
Speaker
I heard someone say the problem is the prompt.
01:22:11
Speaker
I've heard that.
01:22:11
Speaker
That's what I said.
01:22:14
Speaker
No, I really do like that.
01:22:15
Speaker
That's a very strong statement.
01:22:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:19
Speaker
No, and I think, you know, I think we're all actually responsible for our own happiness.
01:22:23
Speaker
Ultimately, in that sense, I am very American.
01:22:26
Speaker
Like that.
01:22:26
Speaker
I do think we have, I think this, like we're responsible for our own happiness in the sense that we can choose what we desire and what we don't desire.
01:22:37
Speaker
Oh, I forgot you also have the dichotomy.
01:22:39
Speaker
So you are American and you are Swiss.
01:22:41
Speaker
So you have that.
01:22:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:22:43
Speaker
No, I mean, I was raised by an American English speaking in Switzerland.
01:22:47
Speaker
I was considered a foreigner in Switzerland.
01:22:49
Speaker
That's funny.
01:22:51
Speaker
Then I moved here and I was like, oh my God, I'm so not, I don't understand anything.
Conclusion and Exhibition Promotion
01:22:58
Speaker
I was going to ask, I think we should probably wrap up, right?
01:23:02
Speaker
I think we're getting close.
01:23:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:04
Speaker
Could we use one of your sound pieces to, to, to, to go out the show?
01:23:10
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:10
Speaker
I think that'd be nice.
01:23:14
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:14
Speaker
Have them have the earworm.
01:23:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:16
Speaker
It's always, it's always nice to be able to do that.
01:23:20
Speaker
I'm sure.
01:23:20
Speaker
I like that.
01:23:21
Speaker
Cool.
01:23:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:23
Speaker
I don't have any other questions.
01:23:25
Speaker
I thank you.
01:23:26
Speaker
thank you so much for your time.
01:23:27
Speaker
And yeah, thank you for taking the journey with us.
01:23:29
Speaker
And, you know, no, thank you.
01:23:33
Speaker
I mean, I totally appreciate it.
01:23:34
Speaker
I think it's super fruitful.
01:23:35
Speaker
So, and the exhibition is up until May 28th, because this episode will come out next week, at least the first, I guess this one will be a week after, but anyways, the exhibition will still be up when people listen to this.
01:23:47
Speaker
So go check it out.
01:23:49
Speaker
Go check it out.
01:23:49
Speaker
You got to see it in person.
01:23:51
Speaker
Virtual is not the same, but also good.
01:23:56
Speaker
The NFTs are very, very beautiful as well.
01:23:58
Speaker
So yeah, they look great.
01:24:00
Speaker
Cool.
01:24:00
Speaker
Thanks so much, Selena.
01:24:02
Speaker
Thank you.
01:24:03
Speaker
All right.
01:24:04
Speaker
We'll see you soon.
01:24:06
Speaker
Bye.
01:24:06
Speaker
Bye.
Podcast Credits and Links
01:24:11
Speaker
Arranging Tangerines is recorded, edited, and produced by Lydian Stater, an evolving curatorial platform based in New York City with a focus on the intersection of contemporary and crypto art.
01:24:21
Speaker
You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at lydianstaternyc on Instagram, and follow us at lydianstater on Twitter.
01:24:29
Speaker
Thanks to Selena Trepp for taking the time to speak to us this week.
01:24:32
Speaker
If you'd like to learn more about her work, check out our website at selenatrip.info.
01:24:37
Speaker
Big thanks to Tal Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
01:24:40
Speaker
His albums are available at talwan.bandcamp.com.
01:24:44
Speaker
And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.