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Arranging Tangerines Episode 25 - A Conversation with Matthew Cronin
6 Plays3 years ago
This week, we have Matthew Cronin over to the gallery to talk about the intersection of photography, technology, and culture, how he uses found imagery in his work, the way that scale can literally change an artwork, the influence of some folks from Düsseldorf on his practice, hate watching Youtube, an algorithmically driven existence, abstraction as it relates to art and economics, and the spectre of the past over the present.
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Transcript
Introduction to Arranging Tangerines
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, presented by Lady and Stater.
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Speaker
Conversations with contemporary artists, curators, and thinkers about the intersection of art, technology,
Meet the Hosts: Alessandro Silver and Joseph Wilcox
00:00:10
Speaker
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.
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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.
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I just know I don't want to be like you.
Matthew Cronin's Artistic Journey
00:00:37
Speaker
This week, we have Matthew Cronin over to the gallery to talk about the intersection of photography, technology, and culture, how he uses found imagery in his work, the way that scale can literally change in artwork, the influence of some folks from Dusseldorf on his practice, hate-watching YouTube, an algorithmically driven existence, abstraction as it relates to art and economics, and the specter of the past over the present.
00:00:58
Speaker
We're doing it?
00:00:59
Speaker
Well, thank you for being here.
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Thanks for having me.
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That was a great conversation.
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Really good.
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Really insightful.
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And then you did that thing, which was really good.
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Actually, thank you for coming with me to freeze.
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Oh, it was a ton of fun.
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I really enjoyed it.
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It was like really fun to just hang out and be a part of it.
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Yeah, I was kind of jealous.
00:01:26
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It sounded cool.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, once we found our footing, though, I think things really started moving along kind of quick, which is nice.
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Yeah.
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That wasn't how people wanted to be approached.
00:01:44
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A little too action news.
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That's what you tried after lunch.
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Yeah, that makes sense.
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Before that, they probably thought you were like doing some performance art, like expose.
00:02:03
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Yeah.
00:02:04
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Yeah.
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That's funny because when I worked in my SBA, yeah, I remember art school too.
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It's a lot of fun to watch.
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You can also do that stuff in Manhattan and nobody bats an eye.
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Yeah.
00:02:26
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Which actually isn't necessarily what you want.
00:02:28
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You kind of want people to notice that you're doing something different or strange.
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Everybody's like, I don't care.
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Right.
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Go ahead, do whatever weird shit you want.
00:02:36
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Yeah, it's nothing different than I saw on the train.
00:02:38
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Yeah.
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All right, so Matthew Kronin is here with us.
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You want to do it?
Reimagining Commercial Photography
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Matthew Cronin lives and works in New York's Lower East Side.
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He holds an MFA in studio art from University of Texas at Austin, as well as a BFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
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Cronin reimagines pre-existing images in order to explore the invisible functions of commercially produced photographs.
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Through montage, multiple exposure, and in-camera manipulation, he creates new pictures that reveal what was both literally and figuratively hidden in the original.
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His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Canada, including the Visual Arts Center, Austin Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Back Gallery Project Vancouver and the NARS Foundation, Brooklyn.
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Shout out NARS.
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Cronin's work can be found in the Ogden Museum of Southern Arts Permanent Collection and in the archives at the Center for Creative Photography.
00:03:37
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Hell of an intro.
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Welcome.
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Thanks again for having me.
00:03:42
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And also you have a piece in a show in Singapore.
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I have, I think, 19.
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It's like a huge... I didn't realize it was that many.
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It's a big presentation of the Dwelling series.
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Okay.
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So I think...
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They requested to see 19 images.
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I know it's like a showcase of the project, but I think when it gets into the space, it might be reduced given the size.
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Ideally, it will be produced at the scale I like.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Six, seven feet long.
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And this, what's the
The Dwelling Series at Singapore International Photo Festival
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thing called again?
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It's the Singapore International Photo Festival.
00:04:24
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It's like a biennial.
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Okay, yeah.
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Yeah.
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Ooh, the show's open to the public in like mid-September.
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There's a reception at the end of the month, and then it runs through the end of October.
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Cool.
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And it's kind of a big deal.
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It seems that way.
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It's like a citywide thing throughout various institutions and public spaces.
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The portfolio showcase part was curated and juried by a bunch of really great curators.
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I saw the curator list.
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Yeah, from like the Tate and stuff.
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Yeah, Natasha Egan from MOCP.
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Yeah.
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So there's some really cool things there.
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And the photographers, I think there's 20...
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2015 from 22 or 15 people or 22, uh, 15 people from 22 countries, something like that.
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22 people from 15 countries.
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Other way around.
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Yeah.
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I am dyslexic.
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Some people are from multiple countries.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, that's awesome.
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Congrats.
00:05:25
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So you're going to try and go because you want to see the work in a space printed like that big because that hasn't necessarily happened before, right?
00:05:33
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Exactly.
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I've seen a handful of the work printed and exhibited at that scale.
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But this will be by far the largest showing of the project.
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And I would...
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be really sad to not see it in person.
00:05:46
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Yeah.
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No.
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The larger pieces are 60 by 75 inches and like the smaller pieces are 40 by 50.
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And that's like the size that was in the Ogden Museum.
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Yeah, so they have two pieces in their collection and had shown both of them and that's like the full size where the objects really approach a one-to-one-ish ratio with their real-life counterparts.
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Okay.
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So it really adds that final layer of the work that gets lost as it is reduced in size where it's almost like a sculptural relationship to the viewer.
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Uh-huh.
The Impact of Scale in Photography
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you move through it and move around it and the shifting perspectives are like felt in your body.
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So it's something that doesn't translate at smaller sizes.
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So I'm like, I want to see all of them at this size in one space.
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Oh yeah.
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Yeah.
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It's nice.
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Cause it's something that like,
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you know, studying at MassArt, it was a very traditional photo training and education where...
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it was really all about the content of the image and we never really explored like ideas behind scale and installation.
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So when I was in grad school and really have the ability to go beyond the, uh, the scales, like 20 by 24 was the biggest I had done before.
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So now all of a sudden I can go like, I was like 40 by 50 is huge.
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And then one day I was like, what if I'd go and make a bunch of panels and this thing is all of a sudden 120 inches long.
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And it just completely changed the way that I,
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thought about how my work could function.
00:07:32
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Yeah.
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So it's like, it's not just big to be big, but like is a really important part that can get lost.
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And, you know, even on JPEGs, it feels so different.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I don't know.
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I think a lot of people have different ideas of how scale and photography functions.
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And, you know, when I was really starting to study the medium, we would talk about the image in like a very poetic sense and not necessarily talk about how you related to the photograph as an object.
00:08:15
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So we'd be really talking a lot about the way that
00:08:18
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certain subjects can create associations with your experience and how that can really change the way that you interpret images and what happens if six are in a row and you change the order, stuff like that.
00:08:30
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So I do think it's a bit more about like that internal response to a depicted scene rather than the response to the depicted scene as well as how you're responding to it in the space in that moment.
00:08:42
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Mm-hmm.
00:08:43
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It's also with photography, it's like you have the choice once the picture is made for how big it's going to be.
00:08:49
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I mean, pending kind of like resolution circumstances.
00:08:53
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Right.
00:08:53
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And with painting, like when people talk about small paintings, they're not talking about a big painting that's been made small.
00:08:59
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They're talking about somebody who made a small painting.
00:09:01
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So like brushstrokes are still there and like all that stuff.
00:09:04
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And with photography, it's like you are getting a different product when it's small than it is big because you lose detail.
00:09:11
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You like lose surface area.
00:09:13
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Mm hmm.
00:09:14
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And that was actually something when I was like on the train looking at your past projects, just like prepping a little, you have like detail shots on your website.
00:09:21
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Yeah.
00:09:22
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And I was like, and like, I know, you know, like, I know your work and how it's supposed to be viewed ideally is in like these very large prints where you can see like this crazy detail.
00:09:32
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And you're also but you're also like working.
00:09:34
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Digitally,
Digital vs. Physical Art Consumption
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kind of like analog, post-digital, digital.
00:09:39
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And like a lot of the work gets seen on phones.
00:09:42
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And it's like this like push and pull, which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing.
00:09:46
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I think it's kind of fun because then like there is a moment where somebody gets to like actually see...
00:09:52
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the work like you want it to.
00:09:53
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Right.
00:09:55
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And like, if you could always see it like that, I mean, I guess that would be ideal, but like it, you know, it like takes something away.
00:09:59
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It's like being able to like see a band live after like hearing the record or whatever.
00:10:03
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Yeah, exactly.
00:10:06
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But that was, that was something I just like, I enjoyed the detail shots on my phone.
00:10:10
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I was like, this is still too small.
00:10:11
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I was like, I can't.
00:10:13
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I don't necessarily mind that sometimes things can get lost in those as a JPEG and stuff.
00:10:23
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I mean, in a way, I'm already working with like reproductions and like images that are existing in like a commercial space.
00:10:31
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So they're already shifting on their intended use, like variety of scales, variety of details.
00:10:38
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So I just also kind of like the idea that it's just constantly like these different versions of recycling the same type of image.
00:10:44
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And I kind of think of them as totally different images.
00:10:47
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pictures too like yeah the jpegs versus the print it's um i like them both and i think of but i think of them as like two very different types of pictures yeah and so when you're making you probably are like looking at them at different scales all the time and making sure they're like cool in both yeah yeah i mean that's and that's been like the biggest challenge uh since i lost regular access to printing is like uh
00:11:17
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how do I really see what I'm doing because it does change so much.
00:11:24
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And I've like tried to find workarounds.
00:11:26
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Like what if I screen share it to like a TV that's like 60 inches or what if I project it on the wall, but it doesn't really do anything.
00:11:35
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I think sometimes I'm just trying to feel busy.
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:40
Speaker
Which is good.
00:11:41
Speaker
That can be good.
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes.
00:11:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:43
Speaker
And sometimes something weird happens and you're like, oh, that could be like a new way of working.
00:11:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:46
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So I'll do, I was told once there's like, there's really no bad ideas.
00:11:52
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You just got to know which ones are the good ones.
00:11:55
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So I was like, I'll just do stupid stuff until something becomes interesting.
00:11:58
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Yeah.
00:11:59
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Yeah.
00:12:00
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Yeah, I just saw the Pipilotti wrist exhibition in LA, and I had never seen her work in, I'd never seen her work off of a computer screen.
00:12:13
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And so it was in this giant space at the MoCA, the Geffen MoCA.
00:12:19
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And so like, I mean, like the screens were the walls and they were like 80 feet tall.
00:12:25
Speaker
Jeez.
00:12:25
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And it was it was awesome.
00:12:27
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Yeah.
00:12:27
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And but I remember like seeing there's like a video.
00:12:30
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I can't remember which one it is, but she's like walking down the street with this like rose kind of cane that she's smashing windows with.
00:12:35
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Oh, yeah.
00:12:35
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And I saw that on the Internet.
00:12:36
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That was the first work of hers that I saw.
00:12:38
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And I was like, I was like, this is awesome.
00:12:39
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And then like they have it like huge.
00:12:41
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And I was like, oh, I get it.
00:12:43
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Yeah.
00:12:43
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Yeah.
00:12:46
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Yeah.
00:12:54
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Yeah.
00:12:59
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Yeah, exactly.
00:13:00
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And really trying to figure out what scale things function optimally at.
00:13:05
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So it's not an arbitrary decision just to fill wall space or to make something have the illusion of being more intimate because you shrink the size.
00:13:15
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At what point does the scale match what I want to happen?
00:13:19
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It can be a real challenge to find.
00:13:21
Speaker
Even with seeing it physically, it can be really difficult to determine what is the official thing.
00:13:28
Speaker
size or the best size for a piece.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny because I like, you know, initially I was so used to.
00:13:51
Speaker
So the last like three projects have all been at very different sizes.
00:13:56
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There's some big stuff in like my Trinity Primer project.
00:14:00
Speaker
Then it was fairly large throughout dwelling.
00:14:03
Speaker
And then I went smaller for this Technics.
00:14:06
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And I was not really intending to do that initially because I'm working from 8x10 negatives.
00:14:12
Speaker
Their drum scan, the detail's incredible.
00:14:15
Speaker
And part of me wants to show that detail.
00:14:19
Speaker
But then sometimes you don't need to have...
00:14:24
Speaker
the ability to see threads on a screw.
00:14:26
Speaker
But like it would be sick, right?
00:14:28
Speaker
It really would.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:30
Speaker
And that's what I was going to ask, you know, like, because you're into detail and like photographers, especially who shoot large format or who are working with large format.
00:14:39
Speaker
I mean, there's like no reason to shoot 8x10 if you're not going to print it huge.
00:14:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:43
Speaker
Right?
00:14:45
Speaker
And so like, yeah, I thought those works functioned really well at the 20x25 size, but like I want to see them.
00:14:50
Speaker
at whatever oh six by nine feet yeah i mean i really am looking forward to the time i can make that uh i can make prints like that but i also want to try printing that work in like different ways like printing it with like metal on metal and stuff i think there could i think there's a lot a lot of possibilities for that project because i still think of it as like very much an early stage work in progress that is just
00:15:16
Speaker
very slow.
00:15:16
Speaker
I'm very slow moving when it comes to working on like new projects and conceiving ideas and figuring out how I want to
00:15:24
Speaker
approach things.
00:15:25
Speaker
So sometimes an idea will be kicking around in the form of 10 or 12 pictures for three plus years before one day.
00:15:33
Speaker
I'm like, oh, okay, now I kind of know where to take it.
00:15:36
Speaker
So I think, you know, in a year or two from now, that work might be entirely different.
00:15:43
Speaker
So who knows what's going to really become of any of my stuff.
00:15:47
Speaker
What I like about that scale was
00:16:07
Speaker
Yeah, my first job was in a factory.
00:16:09
Speaker
I worked in a leather factory and these really old Italian machines that, I mean, if you don't know what they're supposed to do or what their intended function is, they just look like
00:16:23
Speaker
weird pieces of equipment that somehow appear like the highest form of technology for old manual processes.
00:16:32
Speaker
Like they look, they're really advanced.
00:16:34
Speaker
They have like really thin, long, like circular razor blades that give the appearance of almost like a hard drive spinning.
00:16:41
Speaker
Like it's really weird.
00:16:42
Speaker
And I mean, I worked there for a bit.
00:16:45
Speaker
It was my uncle's factory and I like,
00:16:50
Speaker
I don't know how, I still don't really know how they work.
00:16:52
Speaker
I never really was able to figure it out.
00:16:55
Speaker
But there was something really interesting about like these things as objects and being able to sort of make my own versions and not necessarily caring if it is a real machine or a functioning piece of equipment.
00:17:07
Speaker
But really just thinking about how like...
00:17:10
Speaker
you know as technology continues to advance we're becoming more it's becoming more and more of like this weird abstraction and uh like becoming like more and more alienated from from that technology itself and just sort of thinking of it as like a certain point it's going to be so abstract for at least somebody like me that it's only can be considered in this like
00:17:31
Speaker
As like a, yeah, as like an aesthetic thing, like I find like computer chips and like, uh, like logic boards to look just like incredible.
Fictional Machines and Design in Art
00:17:40
Speaker
I have, yeah.
00:17:41
Speaker
And I got no idea what's going on or how to fix it.
00:17:43
Speaker
And even if I watch a million hours of tutorials, I would just electrocute myself.
00:17:53
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:17:55
Speaker
You did?
00:17:55
Speaker
I don't know that.
00:17:57
Speaker
My girlfriend's grandfather was like a really high up.
00:18:01
Speaker
Started as a salesman and became like a VP of the company.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:06
Speaker
Back when that was possible still?
00:18:07
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:18:09
Speaker
High school grad and also then VP.
00:18:11
Speaker
Like crazy.
00:18:12
Speaker
But yeah, I remember, the one thing I remember the most was that they called robots that put the chips in their hands.
00:18:21
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:18:23
Speaker
how little they resembled what I thought in the shooting for the robot was.
00:18:26
Speaker
Because I don't like your photograph.
00:18:30
Speaker
Form and function, those engineers didn't care what the thing looked like and there was very few housing.
00:18:35
Speaker
Like there was a plastic housing which is to kind of like keep apart from the very best.
00:18:39
Speaker
It wasn't to make it look aesthetically pleasing.
00:18:42
Speaker
Every form had a function that this cable had to be just this long and that's it.
00:18:47
Speaker
It didn't need to be the rest.
00:18:49
Speaker
You know?
00:18:55
Speaker
these things are his yeah but right but it's kind of funny though because when I'm making these composites of these fictional images a lot of the times my process starts with like a really ugly initial attempt at merging these different pieces of equipment together and then all of those all of the subsequent decisions are based off of the choice I made before so in a way they kind of build themselves almost like the person who's designing the thing they're like oh if the wires X amount of
00:19:23
Speaker
That means the next thing has to be X amount of inches away.
00:19:27
Speaker
And so it's kind of funny that there's like, I mean, I'm moving with aesthetics in mind versus functionality, but it's kind of interesting how there might, there could, I could see there being like a parallel between the two processes of creation there.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, and when you make a factory and factory machines for a specific product, those machines are fictional until somebody makes them because they have to do this such a specific task.
00:19:54
Speaker
Somebody has to create that machine, right?
00:19:57
Speaker
Because they are custom.
00:19:58
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure there's some kind of...
00:20:02
Speaker
base layer.
00:20:03
Speaker
I don't know that much about how factory machines work or whatever, but there's got to be a base layer, but then there's all this customization to make the cuts that need to be needed for whatever.
00:20:12
Speaker
Somebody's making those machines, which is cool.
00:20:16
Speaker
I also think it's kind of interesting to try to grapple with understanding something that is not comprehensible to me.
00:20:25
Speaker
It's just sort of like I'm just...
00:20:29
Speaker
going for it and like if I was to design a machine maybe it would look more cool than its functionality like what does it do you're like I don't know it makes beeps yeah yeah yeah
00:21:02
Speaker
Right.
00:21:02
Speaker
Oh, the backers?
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah, the backers.
00:21:20
Speaker
The Dusseldorf Photography School is like probably the single largest influence on my work.
00:21:26
Speaker
The Becker's, Gursky, Struth, Ruth, Candida Hoffer.
00:21:31
Speaker
I never noticed any connections at all.
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, it just came off of being like, yeah, big prints.
00:21:37
Speaker
It would be like a collection of like,
00:21:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah, almost like that taxonomy of equipment.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:47
Speaker
I mean, that was also something that I was initially... When I first started working through those pictures, that was sort of how I was intending to work, like replicate the same sort of perceived scale, the same sort of neutral background.
00:22:01
Speaker
And then it just turned to be way more difficult than I initially thought.
00:22:07
Speaker
And I didn't have nearly...
00:22:09
Speaker
I mean, I have thousands of these negatives that I work from and a fraction are usable for what I was trying to do at that point.
00:22:17
Speaker
So I had to kind of pivot, but that was like the initial intended way of making those pictures was this like taxonomy of fictional machinery.
00:22:27
Speaker
And then maybe if I can get more, I'll continue to work like that.
00:22:31
Speaker
But I just kind of follow with whatever is working at the time and make sense of it later.
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:39
Speaker
Yeah, so I think we'll I'd like to talk about the Dwelling series eventually.
00:22:46
Speaker
But so like you have these projects where you're using found negatives and then you have these projects where you're using found digital imagery.
00:22:54
Speaker
And so like with found negatives, there's this like history of the object of like the actual negative and like bringing it back into the contemporary dialogue.
00:23:03
Speaker
And I actually want to talk about a project that isn't on your website that I don't think is actually a project anymore.
00:23:09
Speaker
Yeah.
Zillow Project: Public vs. Private Spaces
00:23:10
Speaker
But it was like you, I can't remember.
00:23:13
Speaker
You may be posting some stuff on Instagram, but it was like, it was like shots from interiors from like Zillow or something.
00:23:20
Speaker
Do you remember this?
00:23:21
Speaker
I sure do.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:24
Speaker
The Zillow ads that would let you walk through a house and you could like look and find all these like
00:23:29
Speaker
weird weird stuff yeah yeah that stuff was fantastic which I don't know if you're still playing with it yeah it's one of those things that is on the back burner but haven't had the chance to figure out how to resolve so I'm just like that's that is a perfect example of a project that will kick around yeah
00:23:47
Speaker
Until something really strikes like that creative match.
00:23:52
Speaker
Sure.
00:23:53
Speaker
All right, here we go.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:54
Speaker
And it's also I get like, you know, there's there's like lots of people who have done stuff like that.
00:23:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:58
Speaker
Especially with Google Street View.
00:24:00
Speaker
But I feel like that that angle I hadn't seen before.
00:24:04
Speaker
And it's such like private space that is put out into the public world.
00:24:09
Speaker
But it's only it's only private space.
00:24:11
Speaker
for a little bit cause they're leaving whatever place they just listed for, for rent or for sale or whatever.
00:24:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:18
Speaker
Uh, so it's like, it's going to be gone eventually anyways.
00:24:22
Speaker
Um,
00:24:25
Speaker
I mean, this one house that I wish I... I have it written in my notes somewhere, but there's this one house that just had rooms and built-in wooden bunk beds that looked like the basement of the house in Fight Club.
00:24:38
Speaker
And I was just like, oh my God, what am I doing with my life?
00:24:41
Speaker
But like...
00:24:42
Speaker
In one of those rooms, it was just like a bed filled with packaged board games and like VHS tapes.
00:24:48
Speaker
And I was, but like immaculately preserved.
00:24:51
Speaker
And I was like, I have no idea what this is.
00:24:53
Speaker
Like somebody who maybe sells that stuff on eBay for a living or whatever.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:24:58
Speaker
But it was like stuff that I could not imagine really having any sort of like retail value.
00:25:03
Speaker
It's like 50 copies of The Lion King or something like that.
00:25:07
Speaker
It was like really bizarre.
00:25:09
Speaker
But it was weird, too, because those pictures, the way that they're made is they put a camera on a tripod and just does the 3D photo so you can walk through it.
00:25:18
Speaker
But because of that, it feels like you're looking at...
00:25:21
Speaker
crime scene photos and it's like so sterile it it is like a truly objective way of like documenting a space like they're covering nearly 360 degrees without interfering at all yeah unless they're staging the house but in terms of the photo process it's so just like removed from creative choice that no matter where you look it feels so um
00:25:47
Speaker
like voyeuristic, like it feels very weird to be looking, especially in this case, the people did not really prepare the house for the photos.
00:25:55
Speaker
There's like blankets everywhere and things are like askew and it's like dirty.
00:26:00
Speaker
So it feels like you're looking through somebody's like
00:26:04
Speaker
nanny cam or something.
00:26:05
Speaker
It's very weird.
00:26:06
Speaker
I mean, even like, yeah, I feel like real estate photography, if the place hasn't been staged, like can be really violent in terms of the way it like documents the space.
00:26:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:14
Speaker
It's like a, it's like such a blunt,
00:26:18
Speaker
tool yeah it's just like everything gets treated exactly the same as like smashes it all together right but it's not a nanny cam it's like somebody came in to do this thing for a very specific consumer purpose yeah that like the people who live there maybe may or may not actually want to be happening right because who knows if they are leaving they might have rented the place so they might have to go because rent's going up or like whatever right there's like this like apparatus of economy around it
00:26:44
Speaker
And then like going to places, I mean, I'm sure both of you have like looked at apartments before where people are still living.
00:26:50
Speaker
It's such a weird experience.
00:26:53
Speaker
There was a time I used to collect images from like Facebook Marketplace and I think Craigslist where people would actually sell mirrors and mirrors are horrendously difficult to photograph.
00:27:06
Speaker
And the thing I liked the most, obviously, was that
00:27:10
Speaker
You know, the mirror itself and in front of the mirror would be clean, but then you would see the reflection and everything in the background, including the person photographing the mirror.
00:27:18
Speaker
You can see pretty clearly.
00:27:20
Speaker
There were some doozies, nothing crazy, but it was definitely interesting to see the opposite space reflected in the mirror.
00:27:28
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:27:29
Speaker
You walk into somebody's apartment and you're like, I can smell them.
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:33
Speaker
It's like there's a smell and it's not like a bad.
00:27:35
Speaker
It's just like you can smell a person living in a space and it's really like, all right, let's just move on to the next one.
00:27:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:57
Speaker
That's true.
00:27:57
Speaker
I never really thought about how yard sales are kind of trashy.
00:28:00
Speaker
They're like kind of like, yeah, you just like put it out there.
00:28:03
Speaker
And it's like the stuff.
00:28:04
Speaker
It's the stuff that's like, right.
00:28:05
Speaker
It's like not worth keeping.
00:28:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:07
Speaker
But then Gary V can go in there and make YouTube videos about it.
00:28:10
Speaker
So it's a trade that I guess I'm not willing to make.
00:28:13
Speaker
Wait, who is this?
00:28:14
Speaker
Dude, that guy, Gary V, who's always just like, got to make content, put it on the blockchain, blah, blah, blah.
00:28:20
Speaker
He's really obnoxious, but he's like a...
00:28:25
Speaker
super rich dude who just pumps out a lot of content, like hyper motivational content to get people to like invest in like
00:28:35
Speaker
bizarre crypto schemes and or like weird things it's yeah it's he's like a like look at him as a joke i find him wildly entertaining but it's also like he's like such a symptom of so much of what i find wrong or perverse with like uh like a capitalist system it's like he embodies it so much that it's like a caricature of it and i'm like repulsed and drawn to it at the same time and i just will get into these holes of him like
00:29:03
Speaker
just swearing at the camera, like, you gotta wake up and make a video and put it on YouTube and monetize it, monetize it.
00:29:09
Speaker
I was just like, oh my God, what am I doing?
00:29:12
Speaker
I don't know.
00:29:13
Speaker
I'm obsessed.
00:29:14
Speaker
Because that's what artists do, right?
00:29:15
Speaker
You have to like make content.
00:29:17
Speaker
I watch so much YouTube of things I do not like or cannot stand.
00:29:21
Speaker
And if somebody was to look at my search history or just the like algorithm that I have, they'd be like, this person is repulsive.
00:29:28
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:29:30
Speaker
That would be so fun to come up with some kind of visual interpretation of people's algorithm.
00:29:36
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:29:37
Speaker
Right?
00:29:37
Speaker
Like whatever the internet thinks that you are, which you actually kind of are.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:43
Speaker
Did you see that documentary, Ascension, that came out last year?
00:29:49
Speaker
It was one of the...
00:29:51
Speaker
Oscar nominees, it was, it's really, it's really, really good, but it's about, it's like, it's all just like regular shots.
00:29:58
Speaker
There's no like, like narrator or anything.
00:30:01
Speaker
Um, but they do a lot of shots in factories in China and also like these kind of like content producing farms, like people, people who like produce content for the internet for various products.
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:14
Speaker
Um, and it's, it's wild.
00:30:16
Speaker
I think you would really, really like it.
00:30:19
Speaker
I will most definitely be watching that.
00:30:21
Speaker
It's like an overlap between like factory style production and the internet at the same time.
00:30:26
Speaker
That's like if you boil down my two latest projects.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:30
Speaker
It's really good.
00:30:31
Speaker
Maybe that's a good segue into the project you worked with us.
00:30:38
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:30:40
Speaker
Is that your first NFT?
00:30:41
Speaker
Yeah, that was my first NFT.
00:30:42
Speaker
My first way of kind of thinking about making images that exist as just like a digital file.
00:30:48
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:30:56
Speaker
I mean, I think, again, that is definitely one of those things that will probably, I like dip my toe in.
00:31:01
Speaker
And now I'm just sort of like thinking about it a lot.
00:31:04
Speaker
And I will, like, I want to find ways to work in that manner again and find stuff that feels really fruitful.
00:31:13
Speaker
But again, it's just like one of those things, like I will probably spend most of the next year working on like projects that are already well along and then just like
00:31:22
Speaker
watching tons of things on the internet that will somehow filter into, uh,
00:31:30
Speaker
working in that manner with like NFTs and digital files.
00:31:33
Speaker
And because that's like the thing that's the thing that I've been like obsessed with thinking about in the last like probably like last like five years has just been like YouTube is the supreme form of entertainment.
00:31:45
Speaker
And I don't know what to really do with that belief I have.
00:31:48
Speaker
And I don't even really agree with it.
00:31:50
Speaker
But I just feel that there's something so powerful about entertainment.
00:31:54
Speaker
YouTube as a form of entertainment.
00:31:56
Speaker
You still think that's true or do you think TikTok is now like the YouTube that was?
00:31:59
Speaker
See, that's the thing.
00:32:00
Speaker
Maybe I'm just becoming old.
00:32:01
Speaker
But I think, I mean, so it's kind of started with YouTube and I just sort of, this is like me becoming like an old man, just being like Google it on YouTube.
00:32:09
Speaker
But like YouTube for me is just sort of like, yeah, like
00:32:13
Speaker
shorthand for any sort of social media platform that is video based yeah um but i think youtube just allows the longest videos and that's where things can become like wildly unhinged or surreal and uh
00:32:29
Speaker
I just don't really know what to make of that yet, but that's what I've been thinking about.
00:32:34
Speaker
So I'm sure in the near future, all of that stuff will sort of coalesce and I'll figure out the right medium to work with, the right way to reproduce images or video, and my interest in this just vast,
00:32:51
Speaker
repository for video and just like bizarre.
00:32:54
Speaker
I mean, there's like videos of people who just will document a nine hour drive and it'll have like six million views.
00:33:01
Speaker
And it's like this is like somebody driving from like Baltimore to Boston with no extra audio, no commentary, just straight up dash cam footage.
00:33:10
Speaker
No, it's like terrible quality.
00:33:11
Speaker
And then that'll be like, you know, can lead you into a video of some guy with like a conspiracy theory and then somebody who's just like the mukbang videos.
00:33:20
Speaker
And it's just so weird and all over the place that I'm like...
00:33:24
Speaker
just trying to sort through the possibilities.
00:33:27
Speaker
And then on top of that, there's like a million people in organizations or whatever who are interested in that content for very specific reasons that are just like, just like scraping it all and figuring out whatever data is important to them because it's there in the public.
YouTube Content and Cultural Influence
00:33:44
Speaker
That like, so like you have like the content creators on YouTube and then you have these people who are actually going to use it for like whatever purposes that they want, which is usually,
00:33:53
Speaker
some kind of thing that they're going to end up selling us eventually.
00:33:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:57
Speaker
And then that like changes the content that gets produced because it's like this cycle of culture or whatever.
00:34:02
Speaker
And then it's also like a thing that can be really like easily manipulated if people, you know, like as a form of propaganda, a form of like perpetuating ideology.
00:34:12
Speaker
It can be so easily manipulated if you understand how that algorithm works.
00:34:17
Speaker
And that's like so far beyond me.
00:34:18
Speaker
But it's such like an interesting thing because it is,
00:34:21
Speaker
such a wide net from like the lowest of the low brow to the highest of the high brow and it is accessible
00:34:29
Speaker
like very easily accessible as a consumer, as a creator, and as somebody who might want to take information, you know, like scrape that information.
00:34:40
Speaker
Like you were like, there's just so much possibility and it's so easily accessible that I just find it like beyond fascinating.
00:34:46
Speaker
And I'm waiting to figure out how to make some interesting pieces about it.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:53
Speaker
And I was thinking about, cause in TikTok, right?
00:34:56
Speaker
Really it's like the algorithm and you just let it do its thing and you get to watch and like, yeah, you can like up and down things or whatever.
00:35:02
Speaker
I don't actually know how TikTok works, but I assume you can like, you can tweak the algorithm based on what you like and YouTube, like it's easy to search, but like if you just get lost in the algorithm, it's easy to just fall down those rabbit holes.
00:35:14
Speaker
Uh, just like TikTok.
00:35:15
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:35:16
Speaker
I mean, like I hate watched some Jordan Peterson videos cause I was trying to argue with this person I know and,
00:35:23
Speaker
In real life.
00:35:24
Speaker
Like, I just got, like, stuck watching it.
00:35:26
Speaker
And there's this friend of mine who was like, like, I think you should really watch these and, like, argue.
00:35:34
Speaker
You know, like, and I was like, all right.
00:35:36
Speaker
Like, I'm going to, like, sit and argue about this.
00:35:37
Speaker
What's Jordan Peterson's thing?
00:35:39
Speaker
Just that, like, masculinity is slowly disappearing.
00:35:41
Speaker
Okay, and he's like a men rights guy or whatever?
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:35:44
Speaker
And he's, like, really, like, takes, like, an affront to using preferred pronouns and stuff.
00:35:49
Speaker
He's, like, a jackass.
00:35:51
Speaker
But I was like...
00:35:53
Speaker
So my friend was talking about like the value he found in the videos of like taking personal responsibility.
00:36:00
Speaker
And I was like, I think there's something weird here.
00:36:03
Speaker
So anyway, I just watched like a couple short videos and then for months...
00:36:10
Speaker
All of my suggested videos are just like Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk.
00:36:15
Speaker
I mean, that's like their bread and butter on YouTube.
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah, but like I still am crawling out of this hole.
00:36:19
Speaker
And it's been months.
00:36:21
Speaker
And I'm like, I just want like, give me like a new turnstile video or something.
00:36:24
Speaker
Like, I don't know.
00:36:26
Speaker
Give me some music suggestions.
00:36:27
Speaker
You need to throw away email.
00:36:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's too far gone for that.
00:36:32
Speaker
We just got my daughter off of YouTube.
00:36:36
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:36:38
Speaker
Yeah, good call.
00:36:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:53
Speaker
Oh, the unboxing.
00:36:55
Speaker
A friend of mine from undergrad for a while had a very successful YouTube channel unwrapping wrestling figurines.
00:37:02
Speaker
And he had like a whole character that he built to do this.
00:37:07
Speaker
Shout out Tommy's toy chest.
00:37:11
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:37:13
Speaker
It's, it's, I mean, it's so fascinating though, because it gives you such, there's so much out there that you can find like these, like really what you feel are very intimate, like inroads into like people's interests and like little worlds and social circles.
00:37:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:28
Speaker
And I feel like it's, I don't know, it's just so easy to get kind of like lost or delude yourself into thinking you're a part of that.
00:37:34
Speaker
Uh, even though you've like never been in the same zip code as these creators or these like fans.
00:37:41
Speaker
figures.
00:37:41
Speaker
It's so interesting.
00:37:44
Speaker
Can you unwrap the image for you?
00:37:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:49
Speaker
It's very true.
00:37:52
Speaker
Just... Yeah.
00:37:55
Speaker
I mean, that was sort of like the... So when COVID really first started, I was living in this basement in Bushwick and...
00:38:08
Speaker
Pretty much.
00:38:09
Speaker
I mean, he's like, it was my house.
00:38:11
Speaker
It was my turned out to have a big black mold problem.
00:38:14
Speaker
But that's the other thing.
00:38:16
Speaker
But I was just sort of like, well, I don't know what to do.
00:38:18
Speaker
But if nothing can really be happening, like, I'll just figure out like how I can use like the 3D modeling functions and Photoshop and how to make gifts.
00:38:26
Speaker
And, uh,
00:38:28
Speaker
But like I refused to try to like, like I refused to watch like tutorials or read instructions.
00:38:34
Speaker
I was like, I'm just going to sit and try to figure it out on my own.
00:38:37
Speaker
And like in just absolutely butchering that process, like really weird glitches and things started happening.
00:38:45
Speaker
And that's really what led me to working with that team.
00:38:49
Speaker
like that approach, but then feeding in like images that I would pull from Twitter promoting OnlyFans and then just finding ways to like abstract the figures present in it and just, you know, just thinking about the relationship to like intimacy, desire through the abstraction that is like the internet and technology and how it's really sort of shifting the way people create and form and maintain relationships.
00:39:17
Speaker
And it just sort of seemed like a really good use of the tools to suggest those ideas.
00:39:27
Speaker
So it kind of just sort of came together and then...
00:39:30
Speaker
Uh, it was one of those things where like the, those happy accidents or that, like, you know, just like the virtue of being ignorant in the approach.
00:39:39
Speaker
Uh, I could not figure out how to replicate it because I had no idea how I got there in the first place.
00:39:44
Speaker
And I've done things that get close, but it's not like, it doesn't feel the way I want it to.
00:39:49
Speaker
So it's, again, becomes that thing that gets filed away until all of a sudden I try to figure something else out.
00:39:55
Speaker
And, um,
00:39:56
Speaker
that mistake becomes the better application for this previous project.
00:40:02
Speaker
Yeah, because you got further and further away from what that work looks like visually, and now you have these traditional prints that are kind of from the same source material, although they look really different, but they're still dealing with abstraction.
00:40:19
Speaker
Um, but now they're like these like crazy amorphous, abstract, like beautiful blobs.
00:40:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:26
Speaker
It's like almost like these like weird pulsating color fields.
00:40:29
Speaker
And, uh, yeah, it's interesting.
00:40:31
Speaker
If I take my glasses off, I can start to see like the hint of the source.
00:40:35
Speaker
Uh-huh.
00:40:36
Speaker
Well, I did.
00:40:36
Speaker
I like blurred my eyes and I was like, I was like, I don't think I can, but maybe so.
00:40:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's like... I mean, and the thing that's funny about those images, too, is that they've gone through such, like, a bizarre way of abstracting them that, like, I don't even remember what the... Original looked like.
00:40:55
Speaker
But that's kind of, like, the whole point.
00:40:57
Speaker
Like, these things are just getting, like, repeat... Like...
00:40:59
Speaker
this stuff is just being abstracted at such like an exponential rate.
00:41:02
Speaker
Right.
00:41:03
Speaker
It's no longer sort of it's like what once was like an approximation of like these real world connections just becoming like increasingly abstracted into something that isn't like can be even hard to think of it as like a simulation or a recreation or approximation of that real real world connection or whatever.
00:41:22
Speaker
It's just like so it's for me, it's not I don't need to remember or know what the source is.
00:41:27
Speaker
It's just.
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:35
Speaker
I mean, I think just as a person, I really enjoy the space you can find yourself in when you don't know.
00:41:44
Speaker
And maybe that's just how I get through life as an artist, a dyslexic artist making next to no money.
00:41:52
Speaker
It's like, if I don't know what's coming, it's all cool.
00:41:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:56
Speaker
But I do find a real comfort in not knowing and just trying to be at ease in that ambiguity.
00:42:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's why I'm just like, it's going to be here forever, so I might as well just try to learn how to sit with it.
00:42:15
Speaker
So did you want to talk about that one?
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'd like to talk about, because you made some of these into NFTs.
00:42:32
Speaker
But I don't know if you're selling them.
00:42:34
Speaker
I have no idea.
00:42:35
Speaker
My exchange wallet got flagged for day trading, so I can't buy anything.
00:42:44
Speaker
And because of that, I can't transfer things out.
00:42:47
Speaker
So...
00:42:49
Speaker
Don't use Coinbase.
00:42:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:51
Speaker
Good to know.
00:42:52
Speaker
Good to know.
00:42:56
Speaker
I mean, it's a good way to lose money, but yeah.
00:43:03
Speaker
I mean, some exchanges will like try to, they'll like, they have like rules, like only X amount of trades within a certain timeframe on a single token or coin or whatever.
00:43:14
Speaker
So I was just like, let's just see what happens and
00:43:20
Speaker
Then next thing I know, I get like an email being like your account is not suspended, but you have like holds on it.
00:43:27
Speaker
And I'm just like, I'm not going to go through this process.
00:43:28
Speaker
This is probably like a good way to save myself from impulsively.
00:43:33
Speaker
Impulsively losing all of my little money.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's probably a good thing because Tezos is at like $1.80 right now.
00:43:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:41
Speaker
And I think the last time we talked about crypto, it was at like $6.80.
00:43:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:46
Speaker
Still doing better than Terraluna.
00:43:50
Speaker
I mean, not 2.0.
00:43:52
Speaker
That was wild to watch.
00:43:55
Speaker
I mean, I don't want to get too deep into like real crypto stuff, but that was... Oh, it's insane.
00:43:59
Speaker
But again, it's all about like, it's such an interesting way of like continuing to think about technology as this driver of abstraction.
00:44:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:07
Speaker
Money's already such an abstract thing.
00:44:09
Speaker
Yes.
00:44:10
Speaker
And...
00:44:10
Speaker
I don't think any of this is immune to that.
00:44:13
Speaker
If anything, it amplifies that relationship between understanding and abstracting it to the point beyond.
00:44:21
Speaker
I threw $2,000 at a coin and previously I would never think about putting $2,000 anywhere without having some kind of board meeting with myself and all the people I know and being like, is this a good decision?
00:44:34
Speaker
And then all of a sudden I'm just tossing it in.
00:44:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's so, it's... Because it is, it's so abstract.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah, it like doesn't read as real.
00:44:41
Speaker
It's like spending money in the airport.
00:44:43
Speaker
Like you don't register it as going out.
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah, you're like, this is how it is.
00:44:47
Speaker
Because that doesn't count.
00:44:48
Speaker
Thank you for... Of course.
00:44:54
Speaker
Not as good as the bag of gummy bears I bought at the train station before I got to the airport.
00:44:59
Speaker
Well, it was... Well, so they were both $6.00.
00:45:03
Speaker
But the one I got at the train station had four times as many gummy bears.
00:45:07
Speaker
Nice.
00:45:08
Speaker
Oh, bring it up, pack it all in.
00:45:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:16
Speaker
So, no, I don't know.
00:45:17
Speaker
I just, I don't actually know what questions I have about this because I actually think I know the work too well.
00:45:23
Speaker
I mean, I look at the images and you're saying they're stitched together.
00:45:27
Speaker
I love that they come from these old catalogs.
00:45:31
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:45:31
Speaker
The catalogs back
00:45:34
Speaker
I impulsively bought like all 10 from the 70s and a bunch from the 80s.
00:45:38
Speaker
It's not strange that Seer and Roebuck was what Amazon is now.
00:45:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean...
00:45:51
Speaker
For so long, I mean, Sears is responsible for like, in a way, they're responsible for the development of like a number of suburbs throughout the US by using their catalogs to sell build-it-yourself homes.
00:46:04
Speaker
And so like, it's crazy the influence that these sort of big box stores had on like shaping not just like the American culture, but the landscape itself.
00:46:15
Speaker
And then how just really like
00:46:17
Speaker
very suddenly it felt like that influence just sort of dried up as things changed.
00:46:23
Speaker
Like you go from Sears, JCPenney to like Walmart to Amazon and like Alibaba and all of a sudden all these things are just so different.
00:46:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:36
Speaker
And Sears was big in my household growing up.
00:46:39
Speaker
I mean, JCPenney was like, that was like, I mean, we used to sit around at Christmas and like have the JCPenney catalogs.
00:46:47
Speaker
And so like they produce this like understanding of your world around you and like your identity.
00:46:54
Speaker
And I was thinking about like growing up, I always felt like, so I like got into punk rock when I was like 13.
00:47:02
Speaker
And I always felt like it was this thing I found that like was different than what was going on in the mainstream around me.
00:47:08
Speaker
And that I like made these decisions that helped like form some kind of identity that I felt like was authentic or something.
00:47:14
Speaker
But like, it wasn't at all.
00:47:16
Speaker
It was just these people were targeting me as like a market, just like these big box stores target like a much broader group of people.
00:47:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:26
Speaker
And like the person I am today is actually just bullshit.
00:47:28
Speaker
And it's like, and it's like victory records from Chicago in 1997 or whatever.
00:47:33
Speaker
Hell yeah.
00:47:33
Speaker
Blood for blood.
00:47:35
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:47:35
Speaker
No, it's like, it's, yeah.
00:47:37
Speaker
No, because it's interesting too, though.
00:47:38
Speaker
Because like, if that is the norm and you are making decisions to go against that grain in a way that is still shaping you as a person.
00:47:45
Speaker
Those are the only choices we have.
00:47:47
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:47:48
Speaker
Because I had a very similar sort of path.
00:47:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:53
Speaker
uh yeah like weird like uh like working class family like sort of aspired for that like jc penny aesthetic and i just found it like really repulsive and then i was found skateboarding found punk then i was like yeah fuck you dad
00:48:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:13
Speaker
There's still, there's quite an aesthetic.
00:48:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:15
Speaker
There's still a uniform, which is so funny.
00:48:17
Speaker
It's still, there's still a uniform at the end of the day.
00:48:19
Speaker
There's still a way of signifying your sort of ideological standpoint and you just are doing it in a different way.
00:48:25
Speaker
And that's kind of what I find so fascinating about like
00:48:28
Speaker
the source material from the Dwelling series.
00:48:30
Speaker
It is really like the most prescriptive way of achieving or projecting this like 1970s rehash of the postwar boom and like, quote,
00:48:44
Speaker
era of prosperity, just sort of that like hyper fictionalized version of like the American suburban dream and ignoring all else.
00:48:53
Speaker
And like, that is really what those like the core of those like source images are is like, this is the ideal fantasy life house aesthetic that you and your 2.5 kids should have.
00:49:07
Speaker
And this is the acceptable way to, you know,
00:49:10
Speaker
you know, give the appearance that you are moving through social class in like a upward trajectory, even though it is not that really at all.
00:49:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:19
Speaker
Very, uh, a very interesting thing.
00:49:22
Speaker
And, uh, there's just something really surreal about looking at those pictures, uh, looking at that source material now.
00:49:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:30
Speaker
Cause, uh, there, from what I've seen, some of the more traditionally prettier, more aesthetic, uh,
00:49:43
Speaker
But there's something you read.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:49:46
Speaker
It's... There's a David Lynch element.
00:49:49
Speaker
I keep wondering what's outside the frame.
00:49:53
Speaker
Yeah, because especially in some of the pictures where things are happening or being transformed, you know, blurring and blending together, it like often accompanies or follows the trajectory of like beams of light that enter from an unseen source.
00:50:08
Speaker
So it's like really weird that whatever is shaping and morphing these interiors is like originating outside the frame.
00:50:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's like there's really sometimes there's like really weird ghostly versions of objects or things disappearing into the background of like into the wall or into a reflection of something different.
00:50:36
Speaker
They can be really like.
00:50:38
Speaker
I mean, like they can be like wonderfully strange and it feels weird to talk about my own work that way.
00:50:43
Speaker
But because I feel like I'm working with these found images, a lot of the process is just about discovering what happens when I work with the material.
00:50:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:51
Speaker
And I'm kind of just following the process.
00:50:54
Speaker
Like I'm pulling on a thread and just following it through.
00:50:57
Speaker
It's like through that process.
00:50:59
Speaker
So I always feel like.
00:51:02
Speaker
I'm making a picture, but the picture is something that I've discovered rather than made, even though I still say that I'm making them.
00:51:08
Speaker
It just feels like there's an element of discovery that's happening.
00:51:12
Speaker
And like part of it is like as these different images come together into a single picture, I'm discovering like bits, like these clues in between the photographs.
00:51:25
Speaker
And that's where it gets really exciting for me.
00:51:27
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:51:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:39
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:51:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting concept.
00:51:58
Speaker
And at the risk of sounding a little D-baggy, like, like, Derrida, like, formed this idea of the way that, like, things from the past or like cultural or real world, like historical events.
00:52:12
Speaker
that happened in the past, like their specter, their ghost sort of hovers over the present, something that in a way that doesn't fully like come to, but it's felt like the way a ghost would like haunt the halls of a building.
00:52:25
Speaker
And then it really became, I think,
00:52:28
Speaker
more accessible and popular when Mark Fisher, a critic and writer from the UK, started writing a lot about electronic music replicating analog effects in this way that is an approximation of
00:52:48
Speaker
the past, but not the real thing.
00:52:50
Speaker
And just really the way that like the failed promises of yesteryear or like decades before loom throughout.
00:52:59
Speaker
And it like what you're feeling is like the,
00:53:04
Speaker
what you feel is like sort of a nostalgia for a future that will no longer or is not possible to exist anymore.
00:53:10
Speaker
But I've always really found it like an interesting idea just on its own, like this idea that something can be like semi-present.
00:53:17
Speaker
It's like both there and not at the same time.
00:53:20
Speaker
And to me, it's just something that goes so well with the medium of photography because that's kind of what like a negative is.
00:53:26
Speaker
It's like a semi-ghostly version of what was there.
00:53:30
Speaker
When you made the picture, there's like...
00:53:33
Speaker
traces of just time in that process on itself.
00:53:36
Speaker
So it becomes like a very interesting, or for me, it's an appropriate way to think about the life of photography and photographic images, especially when they're used in a commercial sense, because you're really looking at like these advertisements of these interiors are really supposed to be like
00:53:54
Speaker
this is the way forward.
00:53:55
Speaker
This is what you want.
00:53:56
Speaker
This is the future.
00:53:57
Speaker
And like, it never really pans out that way.
00:54:00
Speaker
And, you know, in like the 1970s, so many people really grew up or were thinking like really...
00:54:08
Speaker
steadfast in their belief in like the staple of like hard work bootstraps american dream like that mentality and i think as we move forward and especially like more now i think it's more popular or it's more common to be talking about the american dream as just that like a dream that is like a fantasy that doesn't really exist the way that we initially thought of
00:54:29
Speaker
So thinking about, yeah.
00:54:31
Speaker
And if it does exist, it doesn't have to do with bootstraps.
00:54:34
Speaker
It has to do with like scamming somebody out of something to like, to like get rich real fast or whatever.
00:54:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:40
Speaker
So I think that like thinking of like the past's relationship to the present, thinking about the life of an image and how it changes over time, you know, and looking at through that like lens of ontology is like a really appropriate way to make sense of
00:54:56
Speaker
the source material and make sense of the images that I'm making and really sorts of becomes like a very good framework to view and talk about the work and the ideas behind it.
Nostalgia and Critique in the Dwelling Series
00:55:07
Speaker
I just realized, uh, taking these photographs with the catalog, you're taking out the thing that was analog.
00:55:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:16
Speaker
It's, yeah.
00:55:18
Speaker
Except.
00:55:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:19
Speaker
Yeah, and that's like one of the things I always really like to try to find is to find ways that like the process can match the content and they can sort of become this like cycle that moves forward.
00:55:30
Speaker
And even with that project title dwelling, it's not only just like a place where you live, but it's like an idea of focusing on something so much that it becomes a source of anxiety or stress.
00:55:41
Speaker
And I think when you start to really spend time with those pictures and you take something that is initially received or perceived as comfortable and familiar and you start to enter the space through a prolonged viewing period and you realize that it is not familiar, it is actually like quite alien and like so sterile to the point of being like it pushes you back out, you really can feel that like switch happen.
00:56:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:56:07
Speaker
Is that the helipotry?
00:56:10
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:56:19
Speaker
They actually did atomic testing?
00:56:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, out in New Mexico.
00:56:26
Speaker
And this is the remnants of the area?
00:56:27
Speaker
So there's like a missile range and military base out in White Sands.
00:56:31
Speaker
And I think two times a year, they open up the actual ground zero of the atomic tests, and you can go there.
00:56:40
Speaker
So I just sort of scheduled the trip out there when it was...
00:56:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:56:45
Speaker
I mean, there's like a lot.
00:56:46
Speaker
I mean, it's such like a, it's like a really interesting part of American history.
00:56:51
Speaker
I mean, of world history too, but like there's something really bizarre about like the way that
00:56:59
Speaker
atomic bomb production was sold.
00:57:02
Speaker
Um, not just as like, this is a tool to use in warfare, but also that like the justification of the research is that it can be used to create like infinite safe and cheap energy.
00:57:14
Speaker
It can be used in medications like chemotherapy, like all these weird applications and promises that never really happened.
00:57:22
Speaker
And that was sort of the justification in a lot of cases for, uh,
00:57:28
Speaker
doing the research and you know if you will work on this but hopefully what we'll get from our efforts is something quite utopian and that just clearly never even got close.
00:57:42
Speaker
So this series we're not even hiding.
00:57:44
Speaker
No, it's not like we're just doing it.
00:57:50
Speaker
I mean the pictures are gorgeous though.
00:57:52
Speaker
They are gorgeous but you can see you can see the destruction and entropy of the
00:58:03
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:58:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:15
Speaker
I mean, it's because that was a project that is really interesting for me because it marks like a huge shift in my approach to picture making.
00:58:24
Speaker
And that's really when I started experimenting more openly with the like digital montage, the multiple exposures and all those various things.
00:58:35
Speaker
But to find this, like I didn't have found images yet.
00:58:40
Speaker
So I just tried to make these photographs that were as just
00:58:45
Speaker
direct as possible.
00:58:46
Speaker
Like, I'm just, here's the landscape, nothing fancy.
00:58:49
Speaker
The light is harsh.
00:58:51
Speaker
I want it to have that appearance of just like a document photograph.
00:58:55
Speaker
And then because I felt like it just took these like very boring images, that's what gave me the chance to really like
00:59:03
Speaker
just go wild with transforming them and either through like printing a map, like developing, scanning, printing, rephotographing.
00:59:11
Speaker
Some of the pictures are collaged together physically or digitally.
00:59:15
Speaker
Like there's a lot of different things happening at once, but it all really began with that project and it has really shaped the way that I make work now.
00:59:23
Speaker
So it's like a very, I'm very fond of that time of making.
00:59:29
Speaker
I felt like there's lots of discoveries happening for myself.
00:59:32
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:59:36
Speaker
and you look closely at something.
00:59:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:59:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:42
Speaker
Like you find that it's, you know, whatever, it takes you out of the game or whatever.
00:59:47
Speaker
But it takes you out of the game.
00:59:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:48
Speaker
Like there's like marks on the ground that show like some kind of definition.
00:59:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:54
Speaker
I mean, and it's interesting too, the way that I like came about that project, I was photographing in New Mexico as in Santa Fe and I was on this hillside and somebody was just like, Oh, you see those buildings like way off in the distance.
01:00:06
Speaker
That's the Los Alamos laboratory.
01:00:08
Speaker
So I was just like, Oh, that's weird.
01:00:10
Speaker
Like I'll photograph it.
01:00:11
Speaker
And I did some like multiple exposures.
01:00:13
Speaker
I was like, Oh, this will like, I can maybe make something weird.
01:00:15
Speaker
And when that picture came out, it just like,
01:00:20
Speaker
looked like a bombed out landscape.
01:00:21
Speaker
And my great uncle was a photographer for the US military who was tasked with documenting the immediate aftermath of Nagasaki's bombing.
01:00:32
Speaker
So I remember being like really young and my uncle having those pictures and like showing us when I was in like fifth grade and doing like a project on like American military history and like seeing these photos of just pure destruction.
01:00:46
Speaker
And it just like...
01:00:48
Speaker
the location, the image, and that personal connection, like really all came together in a moment.
01:00:54
Speaker
And I was just like, this seems like a project worth pursuing.
01:00:57
Speaker
It was a very, it was, yeah, there's kind of crazy.
01:01:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:35
Speaker
Right.
01:01:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:44
Speaker
Right.
01:01:49
Speaker
Well, you just talked about a lot of dudes in reference to a lot of dudes from history.
01:01:52
Speaker
I apologize.
01:01:53
Speaker
I just want to call that out there.
01:01:54
Speaker
Sorry.
01:01:55
Speaker
I'm calling them out there.
01:02:08
Speaker
Right.
01:02:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and that's really what shaped the aesthetic too, because like, I mean, it's a totally different location and it's a totally different set of circumstances.
01:02:23
Speaker
But in a way, I'm like thinking about how that moment in history looms over that particular landscape and how its exposure to time, to radiation, to violence has shaped that landscape and the way that like,
01:02:40
Speaker
that weapon really still looms over so much of just the world in general.
01:02:48
Speaker
And just sort of thinking about
01:02:50
Speaker
that landscape's relevance to that point in history, to the way things unfolded despite whatever justifications people had made on their own or, you know, whatever, however they got to be there, whatever justifications they had, like how that just sort of manifested out into the world.
01:03:13
Speaker
So what's next?
01:03:14
Speaker
What are you working on?
01:03:16
Speaker
We talked about your show coming up in Singapore.
01:03:18
Speaker
What else are you doing?
01:03:20
Speaker
So I got that show coming up.
01:03:22
Speaker
I'm really right now.
01:03:23
Speaker
I'm in like a very weird part of my process.
01:03:26
Speaker
I'll go through like these year long cycles where for a year I'll be like so wrapped up in making new work followed by just complete exhaustion where it's just like.
01:03:38
Speaker
How do I get this work out there?
01:03:41
Speaker
And then where I think I'm at now is probably like a year, maybe two years of just like studio experiments, trying to figure out how to resolve projects and work, projects that are in process.
01:03:54
Speaker
And then also just watching a ton of YouTube and just...
01:03:59
Speaker
Waiting for things to sort of... I mean, I have some stuff now where I can always tell when that creative part of the process is going to emerge because I start getting these intense bouts of just anxiety of not...
01:04:14
Speaker
like I have something that needs to get out of my brain and it can't quite get out yet.
01:04:18
Speaker
So it'll make me feel like super anxious or depressed and I can feel those like urges starting to come.
01:04:24
Speaker
So I think it's really at this point just like a matter of time before that impulse gets so strong that I cannot ignore it anymore.
01:04:32
Speaker
So I'm hoping
01:04:33
Speaker
that in like the next couple months, some interesting things happen in the studio that can really be that launching pad for a new project.
01:04:44
Speaker
And hopefully it's something that pushes me into like new forms of picture making.
01:04:50
Speaker
And I'm thinking a lot about video and animation and trying to find ways.
01:04:54
Speaker
Again, it's like these little experiments that just like start and then I go, okay, hold on, let me think about it.
01:04:59
Speaker
So I really have no idea what's next in terms of new things.
01:05:02
Speaker
I got the shows coming up and been doing some interviews for the Smithsonian.
01:05:08
Speaker
So those are really fun.
01:05:10
Speaker
I'm just going to taking some time to just process thoughts and experiments.
01:05:14
Speaker
It seems like a good time to do it.
01:05:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:18
Speaker
It was great.
01:05:20
Speaker
Got real sunburned.
01:05:22
Speaker
Lost like 400 bucks at the Hard Rock Casino.
01:05:25
Speaker
Like what?
01:05:27
Speaker
Craps?
01:05:28
Speaker
slots i found a jurassic park slot machine and it's i was just like i'm gonna sit here and just watch i feel like losing any amount of money to slots would feel worse than anything else like actually playing the game especially after when i was up 600 bucks or 400 bucks and then i was just like just let it ride baby and then like within like 40 minutes it was gone and then uh my friend i was with uh
01:05:52
Speaker
just decided to impulsively put like 300 bucks on red at the roulette wheel and just won.
01:05:58
Speaker
And then we're like, all right, cool.
01:05:58
Speaker
We should go home.
01:05:59
Speaker
We've been here for like seven hours ripping cigarettes.
01:06:01
Speaker
Let's get out.
01:06:03
Speaker
Okay.
01:06:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:07
Speaker
Uh, anything else, Alex?
01:06:10
Speaker
I think I'm good.
01:06:10
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:11
Speaker
Thanks a third time for having me.
01:06:14
Speaker
Uh, this was a ton of fun.
01:06:14
Speaker
I really, really liked it.
01:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:06:16
Speaker
I really enjoyed myself.
01:06:22
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah he's slowly bringing him into the fold yeah yeah the third mic uh yeah and if you haven't listened to the previous episode of this one um you should uh matthew cronin shows up in a few spots i think yeah yeah
01:06:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:43
Speaker
He's like the rug.
01:06:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:48
Speaker
It really ties the room together.
01:06:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:53
Speaker
Really tied together, man.
01:06:53
Speaker
I just want to throw in here that I made a Detroiters reference.
01:06:57
Speaker
No, I made a, I think you should leave reference.
01:07:00
Speaker
Oh yeah.
01:07:01
Speaker
To him via text without, without like knowing that we both watched the show, but like, if you're cool, you watch the show and he just like flawlessly responded with the right thing.
01:07:10
Speaker
And then I showed it to Danielle and she was like, Oh hell yeah.
01:07:13
Speaker
Wait, Detroiters are showing on Capacity?
01:07:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:17
Speaker
I watched that show.
01:07:19
Speaker
No, sorry.
01:07:20
Speaker
There's a new show called I Think You Should Leave with the guy from Detroiters.
01:07:25
Speaker
Okay.
01:07:26
Speaker
So I made a joke about a big old mud pie.
01:07:32
Speaker
He uses that so hard.
01:07:34
Speaker
Too small a slice.
01:07:34
Speaker
And he followed up with the too small a slice and I was like, okay, we're good.
01:07:39
Speaker
We're on the same page here.
01:07:40
Speaker
Wait, wait.
01:07:43
Speaker
I grew up just north of Boston in a small town called Georgetown near the New Hampshire border.
01:07:50
Speaker
So those are the two areas really.
01:07:52
Speaker
Did they get the place?
01:07:54
Speaker
Oh my, I mean, like the whole, if you're from there, the show is, yeah, it's hilarious.
01:07:59
Speaker
I mean, it's a funny show to be in with, but I'm sure I'm
01:08:02
Speaker
Well, we like watch it with lots of people from the Detroit area.
01:08:05
Speaker
And we're like, I wonder what it's like to watch these bits and not know the things.
01:08:10
Speaker
I'm sure it's still funny.
01:08:11
Speaker
But if you're from there, it's like, it's very, very funny.
01:08:16
Speaker
No, mud pies is not a thing.
01:08:18
Speaker
No, there's like a scene where they were like the people come into the bar and they're like, hey, we should go to Meijer and get some pop.
01:08:25
Speaker
And that's just like, you know, like Meijer is the grocery store that you go to.
01:08:29
Speaker
It's very, it's hilarious.
01:08:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:33
Speaker
thanks again yeah that's it wait oh we got room room noise
01:08:46
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.
01:08:56
Speaker
You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at Lydian Stater NYC on Instagram, and follow us at Lydian Stater on Twitter.
01:09:03
Speaker
Thanks to Matthew Cronin for taking the time to speak to us this week.
01:09:06
Speaker
If you'd like to learn more about his work, visit his website at Cronin.info.
01:09:10
Speaker
Big thanks to Tal Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
01:09:14
Speaker
His albums are available at talwan.bandcamp.com.
01:09:17
Speaker
And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.
01:09:22
Speaker
I know what to say.
01:09:23
Speaker
I know what to say.
01:09:25
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
01:09:29
Speaker
I don't know what to do.
01:09:30
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
01:09:32
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
01:09:36
Speaker
Oh, no.