The only point in the Art/ Value/ Currency project at which all 62 artworks will be shown together.

Interview with Mariette Papic

From writing to photography to sound and installations, Mariette Papic’s work aims to expand ‘personal memoir into an ongoing conversation between conscious and subconscious experience.’

Through out my time here in New York our paths have sporadically crossed, with each encounter more enchanting than the one before, and filling the gaps between with musings and anecdotes shared via email and online chats.

On a relaxed Sunday evening on the roof of the Old Red Schoolhouse, I finally found a moment to interview Marriette. However we were surrounded by people at a busy barbeque.  In order not to disturb the festivities, we decided to do a silent interview. Passing a note pad back and forth writing and answering questions, we created a combination of our online and face-to-face interactions.

IS: You lead a ‘semi-nomadic lifestyle’.  What keeps you moving on and what keeps bringing you back to New York?

MP: The more I travel the more New York welcomes me home.  I was born in New Jersey and have been a New Yorker for a little while now. Giving up my studio was very difficult but also transformative.  I take less for granted.  My work benefits from rotating landscapes right now.  I feel I really want to see things with me own eyes.  The world is changing – quickly – and I like change.

IS: Keeping things moving and changing avoids things getting stagnant.  Yet sometimes these ‘stagnant’ periods cause a certain frustration that can be really productive.

MP: I find frustration in being a pseudo-traveler type, just as I did when I had a more standard life.  Eventually I’ll tire of not having a stable base.  Like a lot of people, some of my lifestyle started with an economic downturn. So this started with a less than positive feeling from me.

IS: Perhaps it’s all just a test of our resourcefulness. But yes I guess at some point we all want to have more control over our resources. And there are more and more resources available.  Do you think any of this is making it easier for us, or is it just over complicating the way we conduct our lives?

MP: I find life pretty complicated, just trying to take a subway to Brooklyn on the weekends … so yes…

IS: However I actually find the subway quite relaxing.  It’s a moment when you have to be still.  You can’t control anything about the pace at which you are moving.  Plus it’s a welcome air-conditioned break to the hot city days.

MP: Trains, airplanes, the subway all give me that feeling of suspension.  I can’t answer my phone. I love that feeling of being in a kind of pod.  When it’s really hot out I like to hide out most of the day.  But I agree with you A/C sis sooo amazing in doses.

IS: Speaking of public transport, you’ve been getting the train a lot recently and said that ‘Walt Whitman was helping to get you through New Jersey’.

MP: I’m mildly obsessed with his ‘Leaves of Grass’.  He was born in Long Island and died in New Jersey so on these train rides to and from I read the lines and think about what he would’ve been looking at through the window.

I enjoy the transcendence, the spirit of appreciation for being alive.  I could go on about it but I won’t bore you.  When I read certain passages, I feel his passion.  At least I think I do…I’ve never met the man, just his work.

IS: How do you feel about the fact that people have built these relationships with your work and have a sense of knowing you through your work?

MP: That’s the point for me, to create work that resonates with people, without me hovering in a corner nudging them along… which might actually be fun to try…

I’m open to challenging people but not in challenging their feelings.  The work is an aspect, a moment.  It can be a voice or a channel to something as intense and fleeting that I imagine that type of moment to be universal.

When I meet people through my work it’s very nice to connect.  I think some of those closer to me get more concerned that they didn’t really know me, all because of a line of poetry.  That’s funny, too.

IS: Who, what, when is Ruby Gold?

MP: I will fail at explaining this better than a friend did.  Ruby Gold is a spirit.

It started with photography and mixed up with memoir and so people are confused because sometimes I exhibit using the name Ruby. The clarity comes from the inspiration (maybe).  I wanted a name that played on words.  Rubies and gold are precious to us for adornment mostly but the colors themselves refer to blood, the universal feminine and my musings on value.  What is life, a stream or a memory worth? What is going on with Ruby is that she comes from my life, as I relate my life to the life of the planet…

It all started when I worked at a nightclub.  Having traded day for night, having worked and lived in so many different spheres I was hungry to explore the space between me and the cocktail waitress or the friend struggling with cancer.  Looking for a connection to the universal in a form I could relate to sparked Ms. Ruby’s appearance.

I think a lot of it has to do with an early love of commerce and pop culture too.

IS:  Speaking of commerce and value, what value do you place on art? How do you establish/measure this value? How do you feel about the artworks being themselves being used as the currency in this exchange?

MP: Well, I like trades and barter as well.  I’m not sure why people would want my pieces and I’ve noticed people pay different amounts based on the setting.  And I think that currencies are changing too, so that’s interesting.

- confusion

- clarity

Ok. Art is valuable in a way that we all feel and can’t often contextualize.  As a record and a reflection of a person and culture.  It’s beyond dollars and cents.

But that might not be what you’re asking. Art and art markets are a complex topic. See all I can say is…

is….

that the art market is about as arbitrary as any other, and that doesn’t mean that I spend too much time considering these things.  It’s important but it’s not my focus, it’s a distraction.  Markets in general, are a distraction (and sometimes the result of slight of hand).

Interview with Rebecca Gilbert

In my penultimate interview for Art/Value/Currency, I had just one question for Rebecca Gilbert. Discussed over beers and snacks, with a few fabulous digressions, here are the results of our evening…

IS: What four questions would you hope I would ask you, and what would your answers be?

RG:

Q1: Where do you like to work? And why?

I feel constrained in the studio. In many ways the studio is a sterile environment that is hidden from the final outcome. The studio is where messes are made and some of my best naps are had. I make my charcoal drawings at the studio and use gesso there, but otherwise I really do prefer to work from my apartment or in public places, like gathering field recordings at the beach. Because I appropriate much of my media and I use myself in my videos and sound pieces, I like the comfort that being home allows me to surf the web and record my voice or make video.

A few years ago I created a photographic catalogue-type inventory of my mother’s humble heirlooms that she’s saved from her mother and that I was fascinated by as a kid. These photographs are what I submitted to Art/Value/Currency. I used my parents’ house lamps, rather than professional lights, to photograph the items.  I liked the warm pink light of a home and how that was conveyed in the photographs. After that time it became clear to me that working from home was more than just a comfort and a convenience, but that the home encouraged my ideas and the home adds to my process by allowing me to utilize a space that I feel really close to. Much of my work revolves around communication and especially how reproduction can bridge the gap between something original and my personal inexperience with it. I feel like the home, or wherever someone feels most comfortable, is a place where we don’t try to experience anything, we are just as we ought to be. Plus, I have a much nicer bathroom at my apartment.

Q2: You make charcoal drawings, photographs, videos, and you work with recorded voice and sound installation— all of these mediums also seem to range a variety of subject matter as well. With a multi-disciplinary practice, how do you determine what medium matches a particular subject matter versus another?

The basic answer would be that if the subject of a piece is the sound of a lake paired with the sound of my voice, then I suppose making a sound installation would be the best medium rather than a painting. If I’m using found video footage of a rock star singing, then I suppose video would be my medium of choice. I like to stay true to the original subject, because in many ways, the rock star (Jim Morrison) is not the subject, but rather my interaction with the footage is the actual subject.

In terms of video, I made a 24-hour long video of a photograph of Bernini’s sculpture “Apollo and Daphne”. Placing the photograph, found in a textbook, beside my bedroom window I zoomed in on the photo and let the camera record for the full day, only using natural light. The video functions like a still painting. Because it’s 24 hours in duration the image shifts from complete blackness to that of a crisp marble sculpture emerging from the TV screen.  As the video progresses with the time of day, the sculpture returns back to darkness. It’s a very simple video, but is difficult to explain how it looks. That video was important for me because I have never seen a Bernini sculpture in person, and I wanted to make a video that was about the image of the sculpture rather than the object itself. The light and dark from the sun and moon passing over its photographic surface was almost the essence of my entire relationship to Bernini’s work… just a flat lifeless page from a book. I was interested in serenading the mass-produced stock photo of an incredible object of desire. This piece needed to be video because that was the only way to embody the passing of time while re-representing the photograph at the same time.

However, after making that video, the simple visual of light and dark became something I wanted to continue in my practice in a different, more tactile, way. Light and dark, in terms of drawing, is defined by charcoal and paper. There is nothing complicated about a charcoal drawing, and I feel that it compliments the technical complexities of video and time-based work. I use charcoal for what it does best: to cover and obscure. The choice of medium is an artifact of my intentions for the work.  By covering photographs and by making silhouette drawings of art historical sculptures, I can quickly and directly embellish and acknowledge the flat surface I have always associated with looking at reproduced imagery. Most of my knowledge about three-dimensional things, everything from Italian Sculpture to Humpback Whales, has come from stock photography. The act of drawing on these surfaces–that have mediated so much of my experience of the world—becomes both a cathartic and reflective act.

Charcoal became the physical and messy surrogate for what light and dark, sun and moon, high and low, provide for me in my video and sound work.

Q3: When you first moved to New York you were making work about your mother. What made you make the switch from a private history to a more public history, such as with your Jim Morrison videos?

I don’t feel I’ve stopped making any particular work or that I’ve switched from one mode to another. I’m a young artist and I certainly feel like I’m just getting my feet wet and learning to balance out all the ideas I want to work with. When I began packing my things to move from Chicago to New York I began working on the piece that I mentioned earlier, involving the various things my mother had collected or saved. The objects themselves were empty vessels that housed great meaning for her, and for me as well, but to the outside world they were merely photographed knick-knacks. It’s a generic but profound experience, the one you have when looking at family photos, not just nostalgia, but wonder…whose vase was that? Was my mom’s mom into that kind of jewelry, or was it merely a gift? Photographing these objects inspired a growing interest in discovering what my mother was like before I was born. Asking my mother, or looking at her things, isn’t really enough to answer that question. We can only access answers to this question through the medium of reproduction and memory, both of which are flawed and mutable.

Having never been to Rome to see a sculpture by Bernini, and only knowing his work via photographs, created a very similar feeling to that of sifting through my mother’s possessions. Those “private histories” manifested into experiences I have had with public or well-known people, places, and things. Watching a whale go up for air, all you see is a sliver of a huge animal that you can never really see or know. I can hold my mother’s white enamel pitcher, from her family’s past, but it doesn’t really connect me to her past, only to the selected and rehearsed stories that she chooses to share.

These indirect experiences that everyone has–such as watching a whale partially surface, seeing beautiful sculptures via textbooks and google image searches, and listening to famous love songs written about people we will never know–these are similar to the private family histories that we inherit. Having a crush on Jim Morrison (despite him being dead and way out of my league) evokes the same feeling as creating the catalogue of my mother’s possessions, it is the sense of having a bond to something you can never really touch or loving someone you can never completely understand.

Q4: You made a 2 channel sound piece where one speaker is a recording of a whale and the other speaker is your voice mimicking the whale’s drones as well as you harmonizing with the whale. That piece, along with other videos and sound installations, can be seen as both silly and serious. How do you draw the line between being serious and being silly, and sometimes being both?

I’m happy that when brainstorming this question together, we chose the word “silly”. Humor is crucial—in life, in general. I feel embarrassed a good chunk of the time. Being human can be embarrassing, and art is sometimes way too embarrassing. For me, irony is not an option; I’m a slapstick kind of gal. I don’t want to make fun of whales or make wry commentary about the art world. I’d rather make fun of myself, even if while talking about something important to me. Ultimately I don’t make art looking for laughs, but I’m really happy when I get a chuckle. That whale piece gives listeners, myself included, the awkward giggles….should I be laughing? Does she know how weird she sounds? … I’m happy that I can make people laugh while trying to sound like a whale, but as the listener sits with the piece longer, there is a bittersweet understanding that there is a huge intelligent animal out in the sea that no one can communicate with, no matter how we might try.

I think that physical humor fits in well with my work. I don’t pull Charlie Chaplin stunts, but the physicality is in the fact that I use my body and that I don’t have the control of a trained actor, singer or dancer. I’m just a young lady making art. Though I’m not outrageous, I still think the subtle presence of my body or my voice is relatable to viewers. Making animal sounds, or harmonizing with Jim Morrison, or using body language to talk about desperation, can be just enough to get a little laugh and then hopefully… a sigh. In all my work, I’d say that poetry would be the offset to humor and that the “sigh” from the viewer would be of sympathy or understanding toward another more sobering sentiment.

Some of my work, especially my photos and drawings, are not remotely silly, and that’s okay too. I don’t draw a line or sort out what piece needs to be a little silly and what should be serious—that sounds like a torturous procedure. However, when I use my voice or my body, I find that I can’t help but utilize some of my natural given awkwardness to dive deeper into my feelings on a subject. I don’t take myself too seriously, but I’m serious about what I do.

]]> http://www.artvaluecurrency.thebunkergallery.com/?feed=rss2&p=868 0 http://www.artvaluecurrency.thebunkergallery.com/?p=858 http://www.artvaluecurrency.thebunkergallery.com/?p=858#comments Sat, 24 Jul 2010 05:44:44 +0000 Isobel Shirley http://www.artvaluecurrency.thebunkergallery.com/?p=858 July 22^nd 2010

Interview with Chris Chludenski

Chris Chludenski has a home/studio that resembles Brooklyn’s version of ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’, complete with giant tribal masks, other peoples’ snap shots stuck to the fridge, a stack of early 90’s video games and his recently established ‘Debaucherous Brewery’ in the corner.

Yes he brews a mean beer, I can vouch for that.  He can also pull off a cowboy hat like no other, bowls like a demon, and has a moustache that puts Tom Sellick to serious shame.

IS: How long have you been making your mobiles?

CC: For about 10 years now.

IS: What is it about mobiles that interest you?

CC: There’s something sexy about a finely balanced mobile delicately turning about itself. They’re very calming to watch I think.

IS: You seem to be a bit of a collector. As well as random objects collected for your mobiles, you collect old film cameras. How many do you think you have? And how many of those actually work?

CC: I’ve amassed about 200 cameras. Almost all of the Polaroids still work and are in use, but many of the Kodaks and Imperials require film thats no longer manufactured.

IS:  What are you interested in exploring with your photography?

CC: I’m primarily shooting instant photos now. Thanks to the Impossible Project, sx70 and 600 speed film is back in limited production, and Fuji is also making film that works in some of the older Polaroids.

I like shooting objects, scenes, places that are devoid of humans. I like the feeling of holding a one-time print that can’t be reproduced or changed, and I like the square format. The photos feel like they’re from a different age and time that I guess I long to get back to somehow.

IS: How do you feel about digital photography?

CC: Digital photography has allowed anyone to become a fairly good photographer with little or no effort. There used to be a lot more skill and knowledge that went into shooting, composing and printing images. What previously could take hours in a darkroom to accomplish now simply takes a few clicks on a computer screen. This is good for convenience I suppose, but I personally think its bad for photography in general.

IS: You live in a large live/work space full of other people working in creative industries. How do you think this affects your own work?

CC: I find it inspiring. Seeing other people working on things that they’re passionate about makes me focus on what I’m doing a little more. It’s also helpful to have friendly artists around when you need advice or materials.

IS: What’s the best thing about New York?

CC: Always something new to see or experience.

IS: What’ the best thing about you?

CC: My mustache?

Interview with Catharine Ahearn

I was put in touch with Catharine Ahearn, by one of the artists I had interviewed who had been in a show at  ’The Charlie Horse Gallery’ and thought it might be a good space to exhibit the Art/Value/Currency collection.  Unfortunately the timing was off and ‘The Charlie Horse Gallery’ was already coming to the end of its run of exhibitions.

However we decided to meet up anyway…..

We sat in the grass covered gallery (remnants of a previous performance), looked through the Art/Value/Currency collection and talked about the joys and the perils of running a space, the treasures that get left behind after shows and how on earth you find time to make your own work around all of this.

IS: Can you tell me how ‘Charlie Horse Gallery’ came about? What did you set out to achieve with it?

CA: It was kind-of an accident. Originally the space was intended to be studios. Before I divided it up into separate spaces a friend suggested we put on a big summer show. So we threw together a drawing show with 70 artists and 130 works. The parameters were “light hearted or comical works on paper” which translated to huge range of submissions, from insanely funny David Shrigley inspired drawings to brightly colored Mike Kelly look-alikes.  The opening night of “A Dry Run” a ton of people showed up, artists and gallorists from all stages of their careers met and rubbed their dirty little elbows together. It seemed like something productive was happening, so I decided if it could pay for itself for the duration of a year I’d keep it open. And I did.

IS: Did your experience running the gallery live up to your expectations?

CA: Luckily I didn’t have many expectations. The more shows we had the better they got, that was all I could ask for.

IS: You mentioned your decision to close the gallery was partly due to logistics and partly to give yourself more time to concentrate on your own work.  Now that curating has become a large part of what you do, do you think it will be difficult to turn away from that and shift the focus back onto your practice?

CA: Yes, but whenever I take a break from studio life to reenter the world and in this case the art world, the work ultimately improves and gains perspective. Honestly though, it sucks. One part of my brain is able to curate shows and find challenging combinations of works, and the other is able to make stuff. The two parts, they don’t play well together. But I’m working on it.

IS: Your work uses a lot of collected images, have you ever consciously linked this to your eye as a curator coming through in your own work?

CA: My taste has really broadened from working at the gallery. At the beginning I curated with a heavy hand, falling back on my personal taste. Collecting images was good practice for curation, but putting on two shows a month forced me to move outside of my normal instincts and try something new/strange/not boring. And now as Keith Mayerson would say I can fit more in my “Art Box.” Wow that sounds kinda gross.

IS: Your work includes a lot of humor.  I always think it is important for artists to be serious about what they do but not take themselves to seriously.  Would you agree with this?

CA: For sure. I try to make it funny. Sometimes other people think its funny too.

IS: Now that you will have more time to focus on your work, do you have any specific plans with it? What will you be working on next?

CA: In August I’m leaving for a residency in Johannesburg. I’m going to shoot some video with a friend while I’m there. That’s the plan.

IS: Which artists and spaces in New York would you recommend checking out?

CA: That’s a hard one… I’m gonna say stay home or go to the met.

Interview with Vincent (Dick) Dermody

I met Vincent Dermody at a party in Brooklyn.  He made me laugh so we kept in touch.  When I needed to find a space for a performance in Chicago, ‘my cousin Vinnie’ did his best to help.  When he was looking for a home in New York, I also did my best to help.  Ultimately we both failed but the effort was mutually appreciated.

IS: What is the most important thing I should know about your work?

VD: That I’m a blackguard in possession of an original mind. An ass. A scamp with x-ray eyes who holds the power to communicate with dead modernist poets. I also make a mean bacon scallion burger.

IS: What is the least important thing you can tell me about your work?

VD: I’m bedbug free and on the verge of claiming bankruptcy.

IS: You claim to be responsible for the recession. Can you explain this?

VD: I’m responsible for the Recession. Well, not just me, but myself and my ilk: Telephone Salespeople. I’ve died and gone to Hell, and I’m a living, speaking tongue of flame selling ad space in trade pubs for Nybbas out of a boiler room in Malebolge. The last ten years of my life on earth were spent misappropriating marketing funds from dopes in some of the worst hit parts of the country. Vain business owners threw tens of thousands of dollars my way for fake magazines in every godforsaken industry under the sun. This bucket of crap is known as the Profiles Industry, it’s kind of like Vanity Publishing but creepier, and it’s the only future for printed publications in end times. Everything I said was made up. Taking everyone from idiot executives of Fortune 500 companies to family business owners, 250 calls a day. I separated them from their coffers with insider information (and football talk) that was smuggled via bogus research made for cover stories that would never be written. Lies became truth with practice, and we would do anything for a stale beer and box seats at the hockey game sitting on the boss’s knee: “It doesn’t matter if the vice-president was killed in a car wreck – call the C.F.O. at home on his cell phone. We have a fish-fry target to hit”

IS: You recently had a show at Heaven gallery in Chicago.  How did you feel about how it went? How did the pairing with Peter Hoffman come about?

VD: “For the first time in my life, I let myself be held, like a big old baby.”

—”Held”

Smog

Knock Knock

IS: What made you make the move from Chicago to New York?

VD: I was tired of dealers taking fake phonecalls on cellphones whenever my grinning mug was around and my tarot cards advised me to hit bricks.

IS: Has New York lived up to your expectations?

VD: Ask that to the cab driver who cleaned my vomit out of the cab last night. I’m good at throwing up, surreptitiously, and I usually totally avoid the splashback. He got a nice tip.

IS: Chicago seems to have a huge ‘apartment gallery’ scene.  How do you feel about these artist run spaces and the work they are doing?

VD: I feel like Wyatt Earp pandering on the set of his first biopic. (R.I.P. LAW OFFICE 1998 – 2003)

IS: What are your thoughts on their New York equivalents?

VD: At the moment I’m surviving and enjoying the culture shock, trying to have as much drama as possible, and staying optimistic. Oh, Regina Rex really needs air-conditioning.

IS: So why the name change?

VD: After my moms death, she showed up as a dog to her funeral, so I fixed a mistake a customs official cursed me with after mishearing my dad’s brouge and misspelling my family name. That was Darmody to Dermody. And Dick, well because I’m a Dick.

IS: What’s next for Vincent (or Dick) Dermody?

VD: Continuing being more Flaubert than Turgenev, dying, creating poltergeist activity at Chicago’s M.C.A., ascending into purgatory like Enoch. I heard they have good weed there.

www.matthewverdon.blogspot.com

Interview with Bennett Williamson

I first met Bennett Williamson few years ago when he was in London on an exchange programme at Central St Martins. He’s been back in New York ever since, making work both on his own and as part of the net art collective Double Happiness.  We met the other week (coincidentally in a cafe that sold English tea, biscuits and squash) to reminisce about London and catch up on our post art school lives.

IS: Your collaborative work on the double happiness blog, is a sensory overload of collated material (which did crash my computer as you said it might).  This experience is difficult to translate in a physical space, however I know that you did this for the ‘New Blood’ exhibition at Vertexlist in Brooklyn. How did you approach replicating that experience? Do you think you were successful? Did it change the way you approached working on the blog?

BW: Once we got the invitation to the show, initially we talked about how much of a ’single gesture’ we wanted to make – like a focused, fairly simple sculpture, which would be closer to replicating a single post on the website. Or did we want to go more general, to try to embody the feeling of Double Happiness offline. We decided to go with the latter.

It was a mix of trying to embody the aesthetic of the website in the way that the installation would be laid out, and also trying to find examples of things in the real world (objects, images, items, machines, etc) that were Double Happiness. (We often use ‘Double Happiness’ as an adjective – loosely it just refers to something that fits the feeling of the site, or would be included on the site.) We tiled images across the background, as the site often has a tiled background. We used a lot of found objects (posters, stickers, microwave, placemat) in the same way we use appropriated content online. We spent a lot of time the week prior to the opening in the gallery, trying out different compositions, sketching, trying things different ways. Along with the found objects, we purchased/made a lot of new items just for the show (video loops, DVD cases/covers, mini-fridge).

In the end I think it was successful in that although we were obsessed with all the little details and hidden bits of the show (after spending a week in that room going crazy), it came out looking like one, messy, huge gesture. In that way we were successful in creating a the feeling of Double Happiness offline – the individual images and pieces may have a lot of meaning to the members of the group but the audience is confronted with a noisy mess as a whole, and has to decide if they want to delve into it or not. It looked great, we were very pleased.

Doing the show did not change the action on the blog, but it did get us applying to more grants/shows and thinking about taking Double Happiness offline more.

IS: You organised the ‘Internet Sleepover‘ at Eyebeam in 2007, which has received a lot of attention.  Again this event gave a ‘real’ space to something that previously only existed online.  Can you tell me a bit more about the event? How did it come about? Have you worked with any of the other bloggers since the event?

The Great Internet Sleepover was essentially a meetup of people that were doing this new net art, now known largely as ’surf clubs.’ There was a little groundswell of movement of people doing this new style of group blogs that featured a mix of found and original content. I think what interested me was that these were not like style blogs or photography blogs just images found on the web to try to create a ‘look,’ it was all people making work or showing things that really related to the experience of spending time online, using computers in a personal and artistic way, and taking notice of all the little great aesthetic moments that crop up in the everyday user experience. There was some talk too in the (mostly online) art world about this being ‘net art 2.0′ as opposed to the original wave of 90s web art.

It seemed like a good time to try to get these people together, just to give everyone a chance to get together and talk face-to-face, and maybe make some artwork together. Double Happiness started while the members were all in different countries, but once we all got back to NYC we met up, and the times that we’d get together and surf the internet together were really fun and fruitful in terms of ideas that I thought ‘lets get a bunch of these groups together.’ It was cool because a lot of the people were NYC based, but by no means all, and people flew out from LA, Utah, drove from Baltimore etc to come. For some of the surf groups it was the first time they were meeting each other in person as well. The groups included Double Happiness, supercentral, nasty nets, loshadka, and other individuals.

The ’show’ was at Eyebeam and was open to the public for the first few hours, there were tons of computers set up, public terminals for people to log on, mess around online, and they were hooked up to projectors. There was some fun cross pollination between the surf clubs that night, people posting content on other people’s blogs, working informally with other people. There was a half-hearted roundtable talk which yielded more questions than answers, there was a green screen, people were live chatting with strangers online on huge projection screens, people were playing four square, there was a pizza party, someone brought a tent and was playing video games in it, and there was even a big game show trivia event that one of the Eyebeam artists organized. As it got late, the space was closed to the public, and it became a lock-in style party, with people staying up all hours and getting crazy, doing art both online but also drawing, talking, filming, etc.

It created a lot of dialogue between the surf clubs after that, but nothing like a formal movement really emerged. I think that an important part of the work is that people are at home, doing their thing on their own computers, and meeting in person is the exception. Afterwards I was asked to submit work to some shows that other net artists were involved with, which was really fun. And I did become closer with some of the NYC based people.

IS: Your work has a very ‘tongue in cheek’ attitude.  Do you think it is fair to say that a certain part of making art is about seeing what you can get away with, about being able to say, ‘I want to do this seemingly ridiculous thing. But I’m going to pull it off. It’s valid and conceptually sound, and if you get it, great!’?

BW: ‘Ridiculous’ and ‘Amazing’ are two words that do come up a lot in relation to Double Happiness. Usually something like “Look at this thing. It is totally ridiculous because it is so disgusting / poorly designed / inexplicable as to why its on the internet / amateur / etc. But in its own way it is amazing, and I’m really glad it exists.”

We created Double Happiness as the place that we could put all this stuff, and look at it together.  And then that dialogue informs our own original work that we create and put on there. We also take advantage of the fact that the publishing is so fast – you can have a stupid, Double Happiness-style idea, and boom 30 seconds later you’ve made it into a post, and thus the artwork is ‘completed.’ So I don’t think we are trying to get one over on people in the way you describe, by doing ridiculous things on purpose trying to ‘get away with it.’ I think that we just made ourselves a place that we can post some of our basest, least-developed, crassest, and in that same way some of the purest and simplest ideas and urges we have. Like, first thing that comes into your head.

IS: Do you ever worry about your work being dismissed as purely entertainment?

BW: No. That is to say I think some people probably do look at the blog and think of it just as entertainment, but that doesn’t worry me. Double Happiness is like a sketchbook. We’ll talk about something together and then some version of that idea will get made into a post, but the real idea gets developed more thoroughly by one of us individually and made into a more cogent artwork.

But I also like mingling art and entertainment – it would be great to work on some music videos / films, or public entertainment events.

IS: How would you describe the differences between how artists approach their work in both London and New York?

I’m definitely not ‘on the scene’ enough to make any sweeping statements about this. But when we met and talked in person, I was talking about my initial impressions of art students at NYU where I was in school and at CSM where I did study abroad and met you. I was saying that in London, at least from the students I met, there was much more people that were going to just start up their own gallery/collective and just do it from the ground up – start with a squat show or whatever but just stay active and make your own space if you can’t get into the mainstream. I just didn’t see that much of the same spirit going on in New York (though technically I wasn’t in the art program, so maybe I was missing out a bit). There were some warehouse/apartment shows, but somehow they didn’t feel like people were taking it as seriously as in London. I know a lot of people who are just out of school and are artists, but I’m not sure how the gap gets bridged to practicing artist. I think this is just because I’m young and still figuring it out myself.

IS: Is there anything interesting going on in New York you think I should know about?

BW: Uhhhhhm its summertime so places like Storm King and DIA Beacon are great day trips outside the city… check out Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, also in Queens is Flushing Meadows, huge park with the Unisphere which is a cool huge globe. Also in Flushing Meadows, in the Queens Museum, is a scale model of the entirety of New York City, which is cool. The Max Neuhaus sound installation in Times Square is probably the only reason to ever go to Times Square. Definitely check out The Dream House in TriBeCa, by LaMonte Young – awesome and trippy. In the same category are The Earth Room and The Unbroken Kilometer by Walter DeMaria – like The Dream House they are cool because they are weird installations that take up huge apartments/spaces in non-museum parts of New York. They are always there, day and night, forever. Look up Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc and then go down to the courthouse plaza that they removed it from and checkout the stupid benches and bushes that replaced it. The Greater New York show is coming up at PS1, that is definitely one to check out. I usually enjoy whatever is at Postmasters gallery.

Interview with Wayne Adams

With his high energy paintings, prints and works with tin foil, teamed with the sheer number of works he’s produced and long list of exhibitions over the last few years, I got the impression Wayne Adams wasn’t one to dilly dally over things.  I thought if anyone could handle some quick fire questions, Adams could. I certainly couldn’t describe my practice in six words.

IS: How comfortable are you talking about your work?

WA: I’m comfortable talking about my work but it certainly isn’t always easy.  I often process things through talking about them anyway, so it can be very helpful to talk about my work in order to understand it better – or at least in a different way.

IS: If you had to describe your art practice in six words, what would they be?

WA: That’s more of a challenge…

Intensely personal, abstract and representational paintings.

IS: Would you say you are good at networking?

WA: My first reaction is to say no, but I’ve gotten a lot better recently. It takes practice and I think there has been a negative stigma around networking for a lot of artists until fairly recently. It’s much better for me to look at it as building relationships.  It makes it more personal and changes both how I think of the networking/business side of the art practice and the people I want to network/do business with.

IS: Do you think this is an important skill for artists to have?

WA: Absolutely.  Although networking can be pretty broadly defined, it’s necessary for almost any level of participation in the contemporary art world.  Relationships have to be made in order to form a dialogue, no matter what form of dialogue you’re interested in.  I’m invested in and enthusiastic about the relationships I have developed.

IS: How would you go about striking up a conversation at a gallery opening?

WA: ok, short answer and long answer:

Short answer:

I say “Hello” or ask a question about the artwork or the person I’m talking to, like, “What do you think about this work?”.

Long answer:

It starts with being interested in the work or the artist or the gallery I’m in.  It was actually really helpful when a friend reminded me that  if you’re at a gallery you like, at an opening for an artist who’s work you like, then you have something in common with the other people at the opening.  Once I realized that, it hasn’t been as intimidating to start talking to people.

It’s also helpful to remind myself that I don’t have to have a meaningful conversation every time I come in contact with a dealer or curator.  Building relationships takes time.

So first, I remind myself of all that.

Then I’m more relaxed and conversations come more organically.  I also don’t let myself leave without at least saying hi to the person or people I want to talk to.

IS: Are you represented by a gallery?

WA: Not currently

IS: How do you feel about the idea of someone else speaking about your work on your behalf?

WA: I’m fine with it generally – as long as I trust the person doing the speaking and that they’re enthusiastic about my work.

IS: You show your work fairly regularly. Have you had any negative experiences?

WA: Sure, but those are generally few and far between.  My worst experience was when I was just finishing graduate school and someone very publicly offered me a solo show and then recanted a month later for some super-lame reason.  It was really disheartening.  Fortunately, that’s the only decidedly bad show experience I can think of.

I think most of my bad experiences have come from being naive, self-conscious and not actually taking an active role in building relationships – like following up with people.

IS: How much control do you usually have over how your work is shown and is this important to you?

WA: Right now, this type of control mostly comes from choosing what shows to participate in and from shows I help coordinate.

How my work is shown is important to the extent that I’m interested in some pretty specific conversations and look for people and places to have those conversations.  That both opens me up to a broad range of venues and circumstances and helps me avoid spending energy on other things. OK, that’s a little vague, but I think it’s different for everyone.  I guess it’s important to look for who’s interesting to you (both at your experience level and others) and then find out what they’re doing and talk to them.