Latest / WIPTHENRIP / Episode 5 - Adam H. Marchand

Transcript

Episode 5 - Adam H. Marchand · WIPTHENRIP

• Ryan: ⁓ we're getting creamed by all of his fans and not in a sexy way. God. Hi everyone, I'm Sydney. And I'm Ryan. And this is Whip. Then Rip. For our fifth guest, we have Adam H. Marshand, who is currently in a two person show with La Lou at Pact Gallery in Berlin that's up until August twenty eighth. Some things we talk about on the pod involve Talk about loneliness, we talk about Francis Bacon, we talk about Gigi Allen, we talk about Rubens, we talk about Billy Childish, we talk about ⁓ I mean we don't gotta do all the lists. Yeah. What else? Do everyone loneliness, masculinity and masculinity. Just you know, being an artist and the struggle of And if you want to support us, you need to like this content. You need to subscribe to our channels. You need to save a post. You need to share a post. Put a comment, even if it is offensive, even if it is even if you're telling us that you hate this shit and you never want to see it again. The comments make a difference. You're like this isn't good. That's manifesting that it's existence. Yeah. What what I am thinking about, the other part I wanted to say about the Patreon is that I know everyone is broke right now. I everyone is broke. Even if you're rich, you're broke in the sense that everything costs more. And you know, you can't go to the grocery store without send spending more money than you want. We are in a stupid war with Iran and oil is gonna go up. It's amazing that it hasn't gone up more than it already has. We live in Texas, so we have oil here in a different way than other parts of the country. Right. But even still we have to spend more money at the gas pump. So I understand why you might want to spend a dollar on an art Patreon. However, if we had some money from you, the viewer We could hire an editor so it's maybe slightly less DIY. We could get a jingle written, which is something we really care about, but we want to pay a musician to do it. So we're do the game. What even costs a dollar anymore? ⁓ gum. Does gum cost I feel like let's look that up? Gum c yeah, gum costs like probably a dollar twenty five depending on the brand. So we're I feel like right now we're talking three ninety five. I feel like A pack of gum, if I was to go to seven eleven right now and get it, they're gonna be like three ninety-five or some crazy outrageous shit. I feel like everything costs so much money and this podcast, which is essentially free with great conversations. Free entertainment for your pleasure. Yes. A dollar feels like so little. Yes. four quarters with The whole intro is like thirty minutes. Just like us talking. That's funny. So stay tuned and see how our conversation goes. Work in progress. ⁓ This feels like such a loaded build up to asking you your version of this. You're like, actually everything's wonderful and nothing ever goes wrong. Let's see, biggest gripes. ⁓ racism, the patriarchy. ⁓ let's go down this the hits list. No, I mean like specific to arts, it's like professionalism in general. The professionalization of things, which is kind of demented to say given the the long and winding road of what what so-called art is used for. In the illiterate ages, it was a means of communication. So in that way, comics are almost the highest form of art because they're read and they're just meant to communicate something. But they're different in that they're not public, the same way like the Sistine Chapel and frescoes are are public, ⁓ publicly available. ⁓ in my, you know, medium understanding of of the history of art. ⁓ But yeah, professionalization and I think that's part of what makes the f that that shy first answer, because no one wants to step on each other's toes. Everything's supposed to be supporting one another, lovey dovey, as if it's some radical ⁓ action against, I don't know, some unknown enemy, like something that's holding down artists or art or culture or something like that. Which I don't doubt actually exists, but that doesn't mean that you need to sit there jerking each other off, ⁓ so to speak. Yeah. I I mean that's super it's interesting that you use the word professionalization because I feel like we were just talking to Gabin Ivester about, you know, a certain need for professionalization. And again, that sort of was specific to what's going on in Texas. Just meaning that sometimes things can be so loose that a certain type of I don't know, necessary promotion of work or like seriousness in the way that people are handled, you know, respectfully, et cetera. How necessary that is, but if I'm understanding you right, you're saying you're talking about the way in which professionalization can then also harm art's actual purpose. I mean, I don't know that I understand art's purpose. It's ⁓ it's kind of a tool and used manifold ⁓ by various people. Some people look at it as merely a commodity and that's it. Including the person making it. And that troubles me. That's not the way I look at it. And that's not the way I think of I guess expression of ideas or expression of feelings or people that work visually, that express visually, being forced to put words to it often comes off as intellectually dishonest. Because if the work is there, it doesn't need words around it. And that's other people's jobs. That's critics and whatnot. And I yeah, I've got a little chip on my shoulder about grad school, but I don't know. I've applied to a few over the years, but I did it wrong. I wanted to steve ⁓ study with Steve Rank ⁓ Ranke at ⁓ Northwestern 'cause his videos are phenomenal and they're impossible to get to the end of. He's made so many fucking videos. It's always a privilege when I get to see them in person somewhere 'cause they're almost never well, maybe I haven't looked in a while, but they weren't online when I first started paying attention to him. And I wanted to study under him. ⁓ but I applied to one school. I didn't want to go to grad school. I wanted to study with him and I didn't know how to play the game of applying and writing things. I had probably pretty good recommendations. I got Shelly Silver, who's another really good video maker, ⁓ colleague at ⁓ Columbia to write me a recommendation. I don't know what it said 'cause she doesn't allow anybody to read her recommendations, but she's here in Berlin. I get to see her, so I don't think we have any bad blood. ⁓ But yeah, and then earlier than that I applied to writing programs. And again, reluctantly. I mean, I even dropped out of college because I didn't think that I wanted to be in school. That's mass art. Yeah, mass art. It's the poor person's art school. It was a s it is still a s it's got the privilege of being one of two state art schools in the country, the other one being fit, like an independent, not part of a university. So FIT in New York is the other one. So mass art I wasn't really sh comfortable with. You know, you're that young and you kind of have these fancy ideas of what how the world works. I wanted to make movies and coming from Lowell and not have any art house cinemas outside of Boston and not yet traveling into Boston to go see so called art house cinemas. Yeah, movies were it. You want to make movies. Whatever's available at the rental store, which is stuff sluice through Hollywood, and then so called independent cinema. I mean, I thought Wes Anderson was independent and none of his films were on an independent ⁓ distribution company. Yeah. ⁓ and MassArt was the only thing I could afford. So I went there, got really bummed out about how they didn't let you choose what you wanted to do. And at it's 15 I knew I wanted to make movies. How dare you suggest that I want to make anything else? But you know, they put you through the ringer and make you do all these studio courses, including like form studies where you have to just like do the same thing fifty thousand times just to get used to working with plastic media. And so I dropped out. And left and I worked for a year and applied to Ithaca College. I got in there, but we realized how gargantuanly expensive it is. And I was host with the leading cocaine dealer on campus. And I really didn't enjoy that. There was already people ripping lines and bongs in my dorm room the first week, and he wanted to borrow my car. And I said, I says, fucking nuts, I'm out of here. I could get a full refund if I leave this week. I love to think of Ithaca that way because, you know, it's such a beautiful, like, you know, the rolling hills and the valley and the It's gorgeous. Yeah. It's t shirts. So how long were you at Ithaca? Just like a semester. One week. I quickly freaked out, talked to I went to one week of classes. Dang. And realized it was the exact wrong place. I got in for writing and I still wanted to sneak into the what pretty much is a media studies program. Like Yeah. It's not film. It's promoted differently than what it actually is. It's it's TV and media studies. So after Ithaca, you end up back in mass. Yeah. I went to the president because it the leave of absence they that MassArt convinced me to take, because it would be worth my while. And luckily they did, ⁓ had expired by a week. And so I had to talk to Dan Zambo, who's the president at the time. And he goes, Well, at least you learned your lesson. ⁓ And let me back in. And I think I'm all the better for it. I was the year off was necessary. I guess other places call it a gap year. I almost had no intention of going. I was confused if I wanted to go to school. But I once I dropped out and was just working blue collar work full time and two jobs ⁓ and just writing BMX, I realized I also didn't want to be a towy. I could easily see being stuck, so I actually stopped drinking of that year and into my sophomore year. ⁓ I'd come down to Boston for parties and just have Dr. Peppers while everyone else is getting hammered. Again, actually I think getting hit on by girls sometimes that I didn't really realize because I wasn't drunk enough to be like, yeah, baby. Let's go kiss each other. The Dr. Pepper wasn't really doing it. Yeah, I yeah, yeah. So yeah, and then then I was in the film program and there was like a constituency that really wanted, they felt dupe. By the fact that it wasn't a narrative program. Because MassArt was so you like now that I've worked at a university and I understand how the administration is sort of severed from ⁓ the teaching, the pedagogy, in a lot of ways. The ⁓ there's the advertisement, there's the numbers people, then there's the teaching, the actual pedagogical portion of it. I realized, like, yeah, that's sort of just every place you go to school. they have an advertising wing. But There was a constituency that really wanted to make narrative and felt short-changed on that fact. And I didn't really click with them, even though I still wanted to make narrative films. There was assignments that were non-narrative, and I took them as they came. I was by no means any sort of brilliant non-narrative filmmaker, experimental filmmaker. But it opened me up to realms of cinema that I didn't know existed. Anything all the way down to, you know, famously Sadie Benning's Pixel Cam stuff. Yeah. Which gets celebrated 'cause of the pixel cam, but I think it's even more exciting as a diaristic film in line with Walden by ⁓ Jonas Mikas, ⁓ for instance, where just always have a camera on you, which she didn't really, but the ability to have it is what makes those films so light and fun. Well, not to mention dark too, but not always fun. She was also like sixteen, seventeen, wasn't she, when She was making this. Yeah. And her father was a famous avant-garde filmmaker too. That helps. So you were making films all through your undergrad experience. And now I'm just thinking about how I'm thinking two things. One about how the show that's coming up is painting. Yeah. And back to that earlier thought about whether it's narrative and non-narrative film, or it's film as a medium. And painting or writing, you know, I am kind of curious to hear you articulate sort of how you think about those boundaries or differences. I'm bad, very bad at choosing one thing. And I'm selfish. I want to choose everything. And the professionalization mechanism that includes that circle, Dirk, I mentioned, is geared towards I being able to identify you. So one like one talks about identity as if it's like my identity. One identifies oneself. There's also this external world that we're almost negating almost all the time. Other people treat you like an object. It's just a fact. And you are identifiable by your behavior, by your look, by every all these things. We name something and we get confused when we can't. Things become little bit scary when we can't identify it and put a name on it. And that goes, it seems to go for the market as well, the so-called art market, that they need to know what they're selling. Otherwise, they can't. Or buying ⁓ both sides of that coin. And to play into that hand, you have to shape yourself and groom yourself to be able to play that sort of game. And I don't think, I mean, honestly, I don't think that advertising's evil or anything like that. I need to know when there's a sale on canned peas, otherwise I'm gonna spend too much on canned peas. And an advertisement does that for me. Or all the bands ⁓ that I I went to go see ages ago. And this actually is developed a little bit with learning German because they talk about advertising because it is one of these things that you have to read to navigate the world. A lot of people learning German are refugees and whatnot and trying to build a life here. And so they need to navigate the world in in a very practical way. So they ra in one of the classes I took a few years ago, they raised a question about advertising and, you know, I in a minute reaction is like, ⁓ fucking advertising, who needs it? But it actually is Everything down to the flyers you used to make to go to punk shows, that's advertising. Like not anti-advertising, it's advertising. It's letting your peer group know this time, this date, these bands, be there or be square. So self-advertising is the tough part and being in that professional realm. And when I say professionalization, I mean specialization. I think I have a similar, if we want to call it a problem, as you do, where it's like, I don't like being told That I'm one thing or that I can't do things. And so it often inspires in me a defiance. And and I find myself, you know, even if I like with music, ⁓ I would say I just played a little bit when I was in New York on this trip. And, you know, I think when we saw each other in New York, I was doing a lot of that. And in some ways, it's like I that's one of my great loves. I don't know that I am a musician in the way that some people are, you know. But part of my drive was the love for it, but was also the sense that people didn't want me to do it. And I I think that there's a question in that that I think about all the time that I think connects to what you're saying about advertising and about incentives, outside incentives, around, you know, you mentioned art as a communication. And the thing that I often think about is what happens when that communication is not something that people necessarily want to receive? And does one insist on communicating whatever it is they feel they must at any given moment, even if other people are not necessarily interested. Also curious if like any of your colleagues have given you pushback in spreading out your mediums. Cause I've heard from some people that I know that make video where now they're making paintings and they've had their own friends tell them stay in your own lane, which I think is wild. No, I wish someone would tell me to stay in my own lane, because no one does. There's sort of a rift between the way you feel based on quote society, which is mostly your own insecurities speaking to you. And that's a problematic thing to say because that can get broadened out into conversations about gender roles, et cetera. Because there's unspoken rules. Who's telling me that I can't paint? Nobody. Nobody's actually saying don't paint, like at all. Maybe I've got the privilege of having a broad network of ⁓ not network, a broad community that isn't a tight knit one. So like I'm very close with a number of people and I they're all spread out. Almost I worry that my funeral will be a bunch of strangers going, I think I've heard about you. That's so funny. I wonder does any of that have to do with geography, you know, because you were in LA before you went to Berlin. Is that right? I went from Boston to New York, New York to Massachusetts and Seattle for a minute and then back to New York, which I swore I'd never go back to ever again. But SVA offered me a job which was laughable. They offered me basically the same job I had at Columbia and they offered something like twenty grand or twenty-three grand per year. I'm like, I'm not move I didn't want to move back to New York. Why would I fucking move back? And they offered a free graduate ⁓ degree. And I was like, I don't want that. I want money to live in a big fucking city where you can't live on twenty grand. But I stressed about it because it'd I'd taken a year and a half off Of a workforce to finish a the card catalog project that I was ⁓ working on and really fretted and finally just said, I'm gonna roll the dice. No, I can't take the job. And then Columbia called me and had an interview, and very quickly my boss Peter really went like through the administrative ringer to get me on board. Then Columbia lasted nine years. I didn't have a couch in my apartment for four years because I was like, ⁓ It's temporary. Life's temporary. I'm I don't deserve a couch. Also didn't have any money because I drained everything on that year and a half off. But then moved to California to get back to filmmaking, to get back on set, to work as a freelancer, I guess, but quickly realized that when you move 3000 miles and have a different network, you're the low run on the ladder. I worked for free again, which I hadn't done since college. I mean it helped friends with projects, but that's different than like, hey, come do a job that Don't want to believe has paycheck and you're not gonna get paid. P8 again for the first time in 20 years. And just like I didn't realize I had an ego until you get confronted with that stuff and you're like, fuck, this is below me. Fuck this shit. Yeah. Yeah. Well he talks down to you, for instance, and tries to explain to you how a lens works. I'm like, mm-hmm, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, I know. I taught this at Columbia. Can you just tell me the lens you're using? Cause I need to set dress for you to get it in the frame. I think that. You know, teaching for me is a version of that, ⁓ but a much more positive one perhaps. But like, you know, going from one industry and then realizing both upon moving, but also in like what is it that I actually want out of life? It's harder to start when you're older, ⁓ to start anew, ⁓ because you actually have a certain amount of experience and people just don't know that, right? Yeah. So you asked if if the loose network of tight people is ⁓ function moving. Right. I'd be still in low if ⁓ my high school crushs decided to crush on me too. ⁓ unfortunately I moved because nothing keeps me anywhere. Well, I wanted to ask you, where is home for you? ⁓ nowhere really. ⁓ unfortunately that's the way it goes. If you've fallen in love and that dissipates and your childhood home's no longer a place for you to return to, then you don't you you just become homeless. I mean, I have a roof over my head and I paid my rent and all that. So I don't want to misuse that word, but you're a vagrant. Your heart's a vagrant. And yeah, I can make you into some sort of desperate lonely person that is a repellent to other people, which compounds the problem. But yeah, ⁓ to answer plainly, Sydney, ⁓ nowhere. And everywhere. Yeah. I like to think I can get along with a lot of people, but ⁓ you know, I think I'm old enough to know that I can't get along with everybody. There's some people that I'm just allergic to. We don't see the world in the same way. Has that felt different in different places? So, in other words, was LA a place where you ran into a lot of those allergy-inducing folks, or is that just something that you feel because you're moving, that you've kind of experienced that everywhere? I think you end up trying to people you get along with. It's just a matter of the ratio to the allergens. There's places that are so fucking lonely and desolate that it's like, how do you grow up there with any sense of a future outside of this fifty mile radius? 'Cause the next town is two hundred miles away. I think things have changed a little bit. I noticed some changes last time I drove, which was from LA to Massachusetts before flying here. But yeah, you drive and drive and drive and there's a big, beautiful nothing out there. How do you see art? And film music functioning for people who are in those lonely places. I still like to think I maintain a modicum of ⁓ useful punk ideology. Maybe not ideology because of that's a that's that's a complicated word. I believe in punk ethos. Let's say ethos. So that that largely is entertaining yourself and your friends. Like gather stuff together, play for each other each week and cycle through bands together and play for each other. If it spreads out further than that, good. If it doesn't, fine. We're still having fun. We're not sitting as couch potatoes watching Desperate Housewives or something. I don't know what I I haven't watched it, so I can't talk down about it. But some of it's pretty good. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. It's like when I finally watched Dawson's Creek and watched I binge watched all of Dawson's Creek. I was like, ⁓ fuck, what an idiot with a Mohawk I was back in high school. Like this is phenomenal television. R.I.P. James Vanderbeek, who was ⁓ an Austinite ⁓ most recently. Yeah. I didn't know that. Just died, I think, last year. Well, I knew he died, but I didn't know who was an Austinite. Yeah, well, right outside Austin. He had a ranch or something. Yeah. Imagine me trying to explain to Columbia film graduate program students that Dawson's Creek is worth their time and it's genius filmmaking. Because I did think that at that. I I've fully believed it. I got I it's a perfect metaphor for being stuck in one of these small towns. That's what Dawson's Creek is this guy whose favorite filmmaker is Steven Spielberg, because he can't see any other filmmaker but Steven Spielberg and is terrible at making films because he's in this stupid small town. He's the most talented guy, right? But like you watch the film and the film and be like, Jesus, these are fucking terrible. And the screen itself becomes a metaphor. Like the viewing audience is a metaphor for holding you in your small town. The expectations that each week you're gonna still be there. It's genius. This show is genius. And and you don't think that that highbrow, lowbrow thing has collapsed at all? So if if there's kids coming out of high high school, I'm assuming this was undergrad, right? That you're teaching? ⁓ no, I was teaching graduate program. ⁓ you were teaching graduate. So maybe older people. But I'm t I yeah. Yeah. I got into it when I was still j I wasn't teaching yet and I was just handling and training the ⁓ graduate students on the gear. Well, nevertheless, I'm just curious, like, I wanna believe. That that idea of high and lowbrow has collapsed a little bit, right? That like the level of pretentiousness or the level of, you know, because I was the same way. And actually, I had this very important moment when I was in Pratt with the person I was dating at the time. We went to see legally blonde to to date myself here. And I was shitting on. And she was like, What the fuck's wrong with it? It was just like that was such a good movie. Like you stop basically you stop being a pretentious dickhead. And it really it always stuck with me because I was like, You're right. Like I I'm taking this posture that's like my kind of film is, you know, Stan Brackage or whoever. And I'm, you know, too good for legally blonde. And I hope for everyone to have a moment like that, right? Where they recognize that. there is ⁓ genius and beauty and ⁓ great storytelling and ⁓ all of these different areas, whether that's in what can be the really lofty ⁓ space of like a White Cube gallery, or it's in a theater. And so I don't know, maybe I'm just sad if that's really still true of, you know, the Columbia I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but at the moment I've been away from Columbia for about five years, so I can't speak for that. My feeling is that it comes from people's insecurities. ⁓ and like you said, posturing and it is this protection of the self. I want to be taken seriously. So ⁓ there's some weird expectation that serious films are stand bracketage. And if you don't know stand brackage then you're not a serious filmmaker. Right. And that comes down to identity and how you're projecting your self identity out into the world when personally I could care less. ⁓ that's not true. Everyone gives a shit and ⁓ project as many things as Anybody but or telegraph them might be a better word. I don't know. I've always looked at things that way since I went to Mass Art and wanted to make movies, movies, capital movies, big budgets and all that. And like I left there knowing that the only way to survive would be to sever my narrative inclinations from my filmic inclinations and explore the non narrative picture making with a tiny video camera that I bought. I could afford. And just maybe we'll shoot every day something. And then I wrote voraciously because I'd held writing in such high regard and mostly still do as a medium of expression and thinking. And wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. And I mean that was most of what I did in my twenties and early thirties was write. And then made these videos separate from it. And of course, at one point decided that I was identifying myself one way. I'm a filmmaker. I'm a writer and I'm a filmmaker. That's it. But I had this idea percolating to catalogue all my possessions. And I tried desperately to find some reason not to do it because I thought it was a good idea. And just strove. Okay, card catalog art, let's look up that. Let's ask people. Cataloging of possessions. the research phase of of the project, as as the professionals like to call it, was me trying not to do the project, not figuring out the history of catalogs or something like this, or the Dewey Decimal system. What was making you not want to do it? Why why did 'cause it's so fucking exhausting. It took me a year and a half. At the show where I had to put a price tag on it for insurance purposes, I had to put something like $70 or $80,000 because I calculated my hourly labor at the price that I was being paid at Columbia, not like some fancy made up number. Hourly labor materials, and it was like $75,000 to remake that should it get fucked. And I don't know that it could get remade because I used Fuji instant film with the idea that that's a unique image to replace the unique object in the thing. I ended up Thinking too much about the project, like how just so everything should be. But yeah, I mean, I built the card catalog. I didn't have assistance, can't afford assistance to do this stuff. And that's one of my gripes, is in the fine art world, assistants not getting their recognition. And fine artists of a certain point and beyond using assistance, maybe they're too absorbed in the administrative stuff and the day-to-day. advertising machine that you have to engage with to actually go and prime a canvas or build the thing that you're supposed to build or whatever. And there's this really disingenuous connection that's made to the old masters and their schools. The problem with that is that that connection is an absolutely false connection in that those schools were designed with a master and lay people and students and you learned a craft and you moved up and you gradually got more responsibilities in the making of the image. And sure, Titian came in and did his last glaze and signed his name, but he was teaching. Then they moved on to their own studios if they had the chutzpah to do it. And if they didn't, they became a blacksmith or something and went into another trade. But the current system doesn't do that. Current system is basically someone with an idea that knows absolutely nothing about constructing anything and hires other people to do it. Better people than them. Nobody's being taught. They just have money. to do it from one source or another, either it's personal money or granted money, which had I known about that at the card cataloges, I would have applied for some grants. Instead I saved up ⁓ my savings and some major savings and lit It makes me think that film, 'cause I think about this too, and you know, film, even if there's a DP who's being an asshole to you when you're in the position of PA, and even if you're not being paid or paid really meagerly, you will usually get a credit, right? Legally you have to with the unions. Yeah. And so that is definitely is something that is interesting. And I don't know if it's because film in the form we know it, you know, putting aside the camera obscure and everything that you were sort of getting at earlier, it's a relatively new Medium industry, et cetera. So there were standards. ⁓ there are unions. There are these things that have been put in place. And it is interesting the way that we look so far back to make a justification for ⁓ exploitation. Yes. Yeah. I mean, people are well paid and commissioned out, but I think most of the big art that's made, and I don't mean Anishkapur bean, which of course needs a lot of people to be constructed, but even small art, there was a gallery week here. I got hired to help install something for someone who had an idea and didn't know how to actually use the materials that they were working with, like at all. I don't think that any of it could have been made by that person. But I maybe I'm wrong. I I met them on the job. That's the sense I got. It seems bizarre to me. It's like it's like the fine art realm absorbed the ⁓ mentality of the architecture realm, which even they, which is an old business ⁓ model, credit the different people making the thing. At least in contemporary times, of course. Before a certain point it wasn't an architect and then contracted out. It was try to build it, you have an idea, but you build it and then it's kind of make build at the same time. And if it doesn't work, you take it apart and then redo it. Chapels and all this. ⁓ as I under in my medium understanding of art history. Yes. Well, it feels like you're circling a question of class there. And also it is interesting and connecting back. To the idea of professionalization, because again, with the question of the pitfalls and the benefits of professionalization, it feels like on the one hand, I guess what I'm saying is maybe that's an area in which some form of tweaking in the professional realm could be useful. And I think it is always fascinating to me the way in which the art world, as far as we can understand that as an entity. people's reluctance to do anything differently. Like I can imagine if for instance one was to put on a show where you did your version of the Coons Balloon Dogs or something and you had everybody actually listed on a placard who had participated. I don't know. I can see that being read as gauche. And I wonder if that does relate to a bigger class question. There is this idea of someone who is in charge versus the people who are the hired help. And it sounds like part of what you have confronted. I think all three of us have in different ways. And sadly, this is even in the realm of teaching, right? Really, what I'm getting at is if you have thoughts around how that could be improved, I guess. It seems like a simple solution would be artists' assistance unite and have a union and get each other to un ⁓ jo join. But most of them are pretty well paid, so they have no incentive. As I understand it, like if you're part of that machine, you're probably pretty well paid. And maybe you're better paid because there's the code of silence or what have you. But you know, I have a number of friends who've got, and I'm sure you guys do too, master's degrees that went into art handling, then just saw how the sausage was made basically and got turned off from it altogether to the point where they no longer were driven to paint or to draw or take photos or what have you. And it took a long time to get through and over that. And I think if they do. I know I I was in a run club in LA and and this really lovely guy we'd run together pretty frequently. He works for one of the big galleries and used to he went he got a grad ⁓ he got a master's degree in painting and painted a like a ton 'cause he went to what's that tiny New York state school? Albertson's or it's not Alfred. Alfred. Yeah. He's the one who convinced me to actually to fly with my painting to the first group show I had in Berlin because I was lipping it, shipping it and it costs less to fly with it. So I flew out, shook a bunch of hands and came back to LA. Had thirty-six hours in Berlin. Yeah, it was fun. I had the privilege of not having a day job, so I could do that. But also the disadvantage of not having much money. I just had to do the cheapest thing possible to get my painting in the show. And is that what inspired the move to Berlin? ⁓ no, it was a whole bunch of stuff. The Germans asked why I moved and I told ⁓ it's the bottles on the ground. And actually I was I was mis saying it. I saying Fläche auf dem Boden. Which is like surfaces off the floor on the floor. ⁓ cause I pluralized bottles flash a wrong, stupid idiot. ⁓ they c they they catch on and just be like, ⁓ okay, well he's trying. ⁓ and they knew what I was talking about. But Germany has a a redemption system. Bottles you get fifteen cents back or something like that. And people take it seriously. That's not like in the US where you just throw it out and maybe someone will dig through your trash and grab it. Well, the thing is Here they don't want to as I understand it, they don't want to make anybody, including the homeless who need the bottles, dig through the trash. So to me it's a sense of protecting someone else's dignity. That everyone, not the government, but everyone have just made a compact with one another. No, why would we make someone dig through the trash? You just put it on the ground next to it. Easy peasy. The I don't know if there's any rule of it as being considered littering, but it's it's done everywhere so I found that fascinating and lovely. ⁓ that was explained to me by someone I was on a trip with. So at least that's how she explained it, or at least how I remember she explained it. That that's like a that's like one thing that tells me something about outside of politics, the general feeling of a people. And it's a cosmopolitan city. So when I say a people, I don't necessarily mean the Germans. Yeah. But there's like a pattern of existence in this part of the world. 'Cause there's also many myriad bad things that the German government have done, obviously, and are still doing it. So any government generally has a whole slew of awful things that they do and a whole slew of good things that they do. We can concentrate on both of them and I think that's where a lot of the political divides come from. ⁓ the polarizations at least. The good stuff. ⁓ what feels exciting alive or worth paying attention to right now for you. Ugh The good stuff is all we could just skip that yeah we could skip that one. Joy of grip thing. Yeah. ⁓ hell yeah. That's that is our mission statement for this moment. I think I haven't actually involved myself in it because ⁓ I'm like too shy to get involved in scenes, even though I have this fancy idea that I I'll find a community somewhere and I'll just be I I like in the punk scene in high school, I'll relive my glory days and just we'll all know each other and always want to hang out and hug each other. Like there I was really thrilled by the illustration scene here. ⁓ and how kind of I wanna say avant-garde it is in in Germany, but at the same time, now that I'm here and I'm looking at it, there's a lot of repetition of of similar ideas and themes. But the a few years ago I really got interested in it. I got curious about the risograph that everyone's using that is this creates a fairly specific image. And I get why it's popular now as not only an acron anachronism out of the eighties and nineties when it was used industrially to cheaply print stuff. But it's got an aesthetic recognizable ex aesthetic property or properties that you can exploit for illustrative purposes. And was excited by that because it hadn't at least in my circles, hadn't ⁓ entered my field of vision in the US yet. ⁓ of course I went to an art book fair and thereafter started s noticing it a little bit more. Sure. But it took this this romance that I had and with an illustrator to kind of opened my eyes to that. So that was that was one thing. And then actually to recover from that ⁓ disappointment, it was a very big disappointment. I ended up working on comics again for the first time, comic strips since I was in high school, and read a lot of comic books, ⁓ like graphic novels and that sort of thing, and kind of trying to explore the avant-garde of ⁓ comics. There's one artist who is German actually just by chance, but it was like in a compendium or a a list of avant-garde and experimental comic artists ⁓ named Stephanie Leinhos. And she's the first piece that really struck me is I think it's like eight panels in the typical setup telling the story of just a curtain in the breeze. And it's the same image in each one, but because it's sec sequentially not the same image in that she's copied and pasted it. She drew each one, but it's identical. But because of the sequential nature of the comic, it implies movement without actually showing movement. And it implies time passing, which I mean thrilled me because I had made a f a video years ago of just watching the sun come up from within a room, trying to make an anti narrative narrative film. I think there's a line in it where like nothing happens, like it's text on the screen, nothing happens, but the sun's coming up. Like That's most like a mind boggling thing on earth is the sun coming up every day or the sun the earth rotating around the sun. Sure. The mysteries of of why that works. I wanted to ask you, and I'm I guess it's a painting film and songwriting question or playing question, but can you describe the different feelings you feel while you're doing those things? Cause I I would assume that you feel different things internally while you're painting versus playing a song or, you know, recording a film. And I don't know, I'm kind of curious what you feel doing those different things. If it's a job well done, it's a job well done. I'm a workaholic. And so that's that's sort of a that needs more explanation bec or elucidation, I guess. Because what's a job well done? There'll be a moment where you're the you're genius from top of the world. Fucking nailed it. Nailed it. But that's the time when you really have to be the most doubtful, I think. But I want to enjoy those moments because most of the rest of it is you're stupid, worthless. Why the fuck are you? And they you can pink pick up the paint brows. You wasted a bunch of time and energy and money. I don't think that there's any different feeling of well, okay. There's like essential feelings to me. The real struggle is identifying your feelings in any moment. I spent some tri Training as an actor with a specific technique, the Meisner techni technique, and not to be a big go get them. That's that's the technique to use. Use whatever one works for you if you want to be an actor. ⁓ but it does get you to identify clearly how you feel about someone else in the moment and how you react to them, and how to react to yourself as well. Allow yourself to react and feel the thing clearly, clearly, essentially. ⁓ the teacher I had, a guy named Freud. Always like to talk about acting happens from here down. Whether or not he was quoting someone else, I don't know, but acting happens from here down. And the person who suggested it to me, a former student employee who was a soap opera writer, she's a really sweet person. She's like, No, no, Meisner's for you. She doesn't remember telling this. I brought it up to her. ⁓ Meisner's for you. And I didn't know why until I figured out that it's about getting out of your head. You can think about acting all you want. What you need to do is act. You need to actually feel things. Right. So the technique draws you closer to feeling and reacting. And then you apply that to a script. The words are the words. The emotions and the justifications for the words come from everything that you do underneath the words. It's never the words. You know, I'll often talk about where in the body we're painting or drawing from when I'm talking to students. And maybe if you're all in your wrist, which I tend to be. Which is sort of ironic because I often encourage people to get out of their wrists a little bit and into their elbow, into their shoulder. ⁓ and so it's making me think about the physicality of all of those things. And maybe it's another question about how they connect, if you know, w what the distance is between the miser technique and then thinking about how you play music or how you hold a paintbrush. do you feel fluidity between those things or yeah. Well, and I'm thinking about how it's the process, right? Also versus the the feeling afterward. And it sounds like process you feel pretty at peace with, but it's perhaps how the work travels afterwards is another story. Is that fair? Yeah, maybe. I don't really w want to concern myself too much with how it travels afterwards. I get a little bent out of shape or hung up if I'm I'm a baby painter. I came to it in earnest about six years ago, five years ago. Six. Cause before that I basically taught myself how to paint by reading books and watching a few this really good ⁓ you want to talk about good stuff. Tom Keating's On Painting, I think it's called. Or On Painters. It's this old BBC thing. He was a master forger. He was a con conservationist, ⁓ conser ⁓ conservator, and then was also a master forger that got arrested. for for this stuff. ⁓ that's fine. And through health issues, got released from prison and then to make money to pay his legal fees and health stuff, as I understand it, got this show on the BBC and taught you in this very dry, very British, hilarious way, how Titian, how Turner, how Rembrandt painted. And being a conservator, he knew he like had X-rayed paintings. He knows how the mechanics of those old masters work. And I'm floored by that stuff. I w I went to the portrait gallery at the Met Museum more than I went to MoMA or the Whitney because that to me was so much more enriching to look at. And I wasn't even painting at that time. I mean I w I'd started to paint for for this one installation that was a failure absolute failure. But yeah, I was studying how that worked, there's layering techniques, like the just the plain old knowledge of tissue and that like I'm gonna get this color through five months of layering. Like through translucency. Yeah. It's a great segue though, actually, to the ghosts question. Our prompt is influences, history's lingering presences shaping the current work. I thought about this one a bit 'cause it's complicated. I think the things that I consider my biggest influences are not painting. the things that have always thrilled me are there's a musician in Chicago that still kinda thrills me. I mean, it's now a twenty year relationship to his music, but ⁓ Tim Kinsella, who had said something in some interview about he works at a bar and he does that and it satisfies his social need. And so he can spend his time away from work working on weirdo stuff. He's basically subsidizing his weirdness that doesn't need to fit into a commercial mechanism. But he's sort of a fixture in this Chicago scene, so like he does have some mechanisms at his disposal. labels that he's involved with and all that. And now he publishes ⁓ written works. But that sort of experimentation and the ability to experiment and openly do so. Similarly, the painter and garage rock musician ⁓ Billy Childish out in ⁓ Chatham. I think Chatham, Chatham, right? His it's not more, not it's his ethos more than his images. Although I do like his recent paintings, which he's been repeating for a while and I think he's found an idiom that he wants to stick with for now. But like he's if you look back through his history of painting, he's explored every way he can apply paint to the canvas. ⁓ and he's another one that doesn't fit in a box. So it took him till his fifties to to really get any traction. Sixties now. But he always played music and he writes poetry, publishes stuff, publishes zines, paints. Yeah. One of these humbling ⁓ pro humblingly pro prolific people. The image making itself, it's still these old masters, but this transparencies and translucencies, this opaque see-through thing that creates depth is still interesting to me. My friend ⁓ Amber Boardman, she had this thing during the pandemic of like studio visits. If you sign up, ⁓ she's she's got a really good traction over in Australia. She moved from New York to Australia and yeah, just made a big splash in the painting scene of the art scene there. I've signed up for a studio visit, hadn't seen her in ages, so I thought it would be funny because I had like twenty, whatever, maybe a a handful of paintings that I had been working on. And she had told me to just loosen up. I was abstracting the body through contortion. I'd like used myself as subject 'cause of the pandemic. I lived alone and would take photos of my body contorted based on some ideas that I had of those contortions. And certain gestures lifted out of antiquity, one being this symbol of like thinking. This these old philosopher paintings would be doing this. The ⁓ Jacques Couis David in the death of Socrates, he's doing this, pointing to the gods. There's the school of Athens. But it's just like this massive painting of all the philosophers. Plato's there, Euripides is there, and I think it's fuck who's the geographer? ⁓ he's doing this. And you've got this one gesture that's a symbol. in this way that public art is supposed to tell stories. So I was using gestures from those paintings and photographing myself in those gestures with my testicles hanging out. ⁓ stuck hot rain. I was attacking some f idea of masculinity in in the those realms 'cause it's mostly male figures. So it was kind of a joke to me to have bright wet testicles. Is that where these fight paintings are coming from too? This idea of masculinity? Well, I had to look back at one point. So because I was started applying to residencies and grants and that sort of thing, and they make you write about what you're doing. And I wasn't thinking about anything. Really, I was just pursuing things, going here, going there. All I really knew is I liked abstracting the figure. And with Amber's note get looser, was struggling to find ways to do that. So looking at Willem de Kooning and his attacks on the female form. looking at Philip Gustin, who's having a like seems like having a bright resurgence at the moment, which I think is a lot to do with Hauser and Virth taking over his estate, maybe, because they have to protect their assets and promote things. Yeah, looking at these these ways to abstract the human form and Then I had to look back and figure out that what is called toxic masculinity is probably more closely performative masculinity. So any b everyone's performing everything. Like we're all I don't know who said it, I'm sure someone really important and I'm blanking on a name, but we're all wearing drag pretty much. Judas Butler, maybe. Okay. Yeah. Sounds right. Yeah. I'll accept that. But we're all in drag, essentially, right? Like we're all projecting something to be loved. and or hated or to be cared for w or found interesting. Largely I think it comes down to wanting to be fucked. Like flatly, like I say interesting things might make me attractive. ⁓ we had been talking about how your fight paintings made us think of the George Bellows fight paintings. I like the ones that are seen if I'm remembering the right artist. ⁓ I didn't study them in any serious way, nor did I really look at predecessors of painting, depictions of fights. I'm trying to get actually closer to an image that I have that I'm I'm reluctant to vocalize right now, but there's there's an image that I'm getting c I want to get closer to that comes out of a misunderstanding of Gerhard Richter's Tisch painting. I can identify that. That I had seen at some point as a reproduction and misunderstood what I was seeing, but liked my misunderstanding and was like running through these ideas in my head of how he accomplished what I thought he did, which is not what he did. Which I think, if I'm honest, is probably the only way things actually progress. If you aim to do something, then you're just doing the thing. If you fail to do something is when you develop something. And that's not really an original thought, but just fail really good is when I feel the best. It's like, ooh, nice try. The other guy who I was thinking about, who I don't know how you'll feel about it, and somehow I feel like we might have talked about is bacon. what you're saying about failure, not quite the same thing, but it's making me think about those sort of ⁓ you know, broken isn't the right word, but kind of stretched and warped scenes. Is that somebody who's I mean, yeah on your mind? This is it's impossible. I got I think the nicest thing about painting and sharing or making anything in sharing is the conversation that ensues with people and the stuff that you're wearing. So from those testicles and empty rooms, people kept saying Bacon. And I'm like, what the fuck? And I actually at first thought, like, the philosopher Bacon. Like, what are they talking about? I had seen Francis Bacon's paintings, and I have to go back to my I I still have my undergrad ⁓ art history, but one half of it, because I think the other half got lost somewhere. And there's one image of his, and it's not even like It's most exciting image to look at. It's a really blue painting and there's a car in it. ⁓ it's about it's of a friend of his, I think. But I then just got thrilled by it and I was totally confused the same way looking at a Rembrandt ⁓ Rembrandt painting, like, all right, I'm looking at black, but I'm not really looking at black. What the fuck am I looking at? And you just fall into it. Sometimes fall backwards from it, like you just fall on the ground because stand in front of a Rembrandt painting. There's no way to actually recover from it. You have to force yourself to get back up and try to paint. So I haven't had the chance since the Met retrospective, which I did go to, but it was because a friend was really into it. And it was just a melee, a crowded melee, where I quit it was like going to see the the Mona Lisa. I didn't get a chance to actually spend any time with the painting, so I actually completely forgot about them till I was painting these nudes in these rooms and someone brought him up. And I was like, ⁓ I don't see the connection because the textures are way off. the application of paint is way off. The figures are still very solid, which is what Amber was re r ⁓ responding to. Then I was like, I need to figure out how he painted. So I did a bunch of in the style of stuff, which I think there's a couple left on my ⁓ Instagram, that are really specifically like, Okay, I'm gonna tackle this because I want to learn how to paint. I don't have any painting instruction learn by doing. And unfortunately there was no Tom Keating episode about how ⁓ paint like bacon. I wonder on that note, ⁓ if we can throw to guts. Guts is process, frisk, and what it actually takes to make the work. I like that it's called guts 'cause I think you really just need to get the guts to to do the thing. I wish I were the type of spirit that I ca maybe I am in a way. I just have to keep making things, but I'm also extremely reluctant because I'm lazy. Like the card catalog, I really like balked, I hemmed and hawed. I really didn't want to do that. It took a lot of effort to make, but once I made the decision, treated it like a job and did it. And I think that's why, because I have to protect myself from my work ethic where it's like, it's gonna take a lot of fucking energy, dude. Do you really want to go down that path? And That could swing us back to gripes for a moment, where actually Emily sent me a CNN press release of a Belgian artist twelve years later cataloging all of her possessions and having a big show for hers in Paris. And mine just happened to show with the Mass Art Biennial and at the at Harvard's, one of Harvard's galleries. So like this Kleiner a Kleiner, I just went to German. Wow. This smaller. Wow. That's progress. That's exciting. No, that's actually really nice. Wow. I'm doing it. I'm doing it, guys. I yeah, I I avoid making something until I know that I need to make it and then do it. And luckily for me, I I have various things that I want to do. But that each process is different, ⁓ Sydney, to answer the question about process. Like when I'm collaborating with filmmakers, I really want to let go of the reins and surround myself with like smarter and more talented people than me. And I do, I think. I mean, the times that I've had the privilege of making narrative films, I I have. Like the DP on two two of my narrative short, the two narrative shorts that I have. He is a super curious guy. He's a thinker, a challenger of the image. If it needs to be clear and simple. He let me borrow his copy of ⁓ the DP for Lawrence of Arabia. Freddie Young. And he was reading that when we were shooting this film, or before we were leading up to shooting this film. And he's just thinking, like, okay, how do I clearly express a story? And like he's looking at we were talking about establishing shots in art film and art re realms, they're all there, but no one wants to actually talk about the rudimentary nuts and bolts of this is an establishing shot. This tells you where we are. It does its work and it disappears. It doesn't hurt anybody, it just does its work. And it can be a standout establishing shot. But it's still s it's like red as an establishing shot. So we're ta chatting like that, and he excites images in me. I get challenged by my what I think are good images by him. And we work through how to construct a sequence of images that tell a story together. And same with the actors, a different process, but ⁓ really just try to find time to play beforehand in so-called rehearsals and open up and get loose. And allow room for them to do their job well. And I'll just tell them when they're when I see bullshit. That's it. It stressed some of the actors out, but I had a good relationship with all of them. Most of them were friends. And we trusted each other. Suspended in walnut or linseed oil. I have a corny question ⁓ though. That could be an interesting one. So that idea of establishing shots, I like what you're saying because it's like this very necessary. I don't know if it's glue because it's more surface than that, but it's a grammar. It's a basic grammar. Yeah. And my question, ⁓ that's a bit corny, but I do mean it sincerely, is how the paintings, what style of shot, understanding that they are not ⁓ stills from a motion picture or even that they don't function like photographs. But do you think about composition in those and the way that those compositions behave as being a particular sort of frame, like an establishing shot or like a close-up, or, you know, because it it struck me when you were saying that that, you know, often I think paintings are a bit more, this is overstated, but a lot of contemporary painting, I think, in some way function more like a close up. Even if they're not literally a close-up. I don't actually know how that that functions. I know that I've started doing more sketches beforehand, like these charcoal drawings. And with the idiom that I'm struggling with at the moment, it's a lot of scribbling and wiping and scribbling and wiping. And I do it fast and loose and I realize that actually a lot of times you kind of have to practice something, audition it to then make the mark. Like And it'll look spontaneous, but you're actually doing You've already done it three times. Yeah. Yeah. Or ten or whatever. But yeah. Yeah. But I'm doing these scribbled things. Like the wrestlers came out of almost drawing with two hands at really fast looking at wrestling magazines and ⁓ printouts from websites. ⁓ yeah. So these preliminary auditions of images to figure out what of the vague shape in my head that something has might work. And then something might happen in this charcoal drawing. And this is really just the last set of wrestler paintings, which aren't fully out there just yet because I felt with the residency where I painted them that maybe this is something that I should hold to find a show for them. And I've been working on that, but I haven't gotten any bites. Maybe because I moved and people are looking for more people in New York want someone closer by. I don't know. But I can't chip them here 'cause they're like five feet by five feet. That was one of the joys of working in this residency was like Let's go big. What's really, really and that's long meadow, right? Yeah. ⁓ really good residency, by the way. I actually have a trust question because you did you talked about trust when working with, you know, your collaborators while doing a film, but even with music. But then when you're painting, it's just you, right? Yeah. So it's like more trusting yourself. And I don't know if you have any comments on that experience or just the differences, because I don't know, whenever I'm making a painting I'm like, What the fuck is happening? And it's all by yourself. Like you have nobody to rely on or to pick you up if it is a disaster. I mean, unless you call up a friend or something, but Yeah. The phone of friends, yeah. Get over here now. It's too much vermilion. ⁓ f I'm a pretty solitary person, unfortunately, or fortunately. I don't know the right way to put it. I think painting making anything feels like just a way to pass the time, honestly, for me. That might be a douchey thing to say, but I think boredom's important in any anything because you need to avoid it. Like it gives you something to do. And I wish that I had more drive to make more. Like I mention Billy Childish. I'm sure he didn't sit and binge watch Doss Mess Creek, ⁓ up late writing poems and reciting them to himself, ⁓ in my imagination of his evenings alone. ⁓ I paint, I try to treat it a little bit more like a day job. But not a day job, like this is my hours to work. Part of why I moved here is to have a separate studio from my living space, which I haven't Turns out that it's actually harder to even find a living space. I'm still subletting and I've been fortunate enough to have two sub soup sublets that allowed me to paint in the place. but soon, eventually, I hope to have a separate studio to commute to to separate it. I think you mentioned that ⁓ in one of the last ones about having your studio in your garage and that commute being very short. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I never had a separate studio. Like making videos is a computer screen. or going out gathering images on the field, but then coming back to edit. And the card catalog I had a family wood shop I commuted to was in my grandmother's basement. And commuted, went, had lunch with her at lunch break, and then went back downstairs into the basement until my uncle came back from work and he'd chat and look and either approve or push me further because my craft wasn't strong enough. being a carpenter and me just being a dilettante. Yeah, and that I would love to find that again. But when I moved back to New York, I concentrated on writing, partly as a way to protect my ego against the film students and the art students, because they were all in a grad program that would probably never accept me. So I just concentrated on writing and writing and writing. And therefore I was never a threat to the students and they were never a threat to me. I could make weirdo videos and they can be like, what the heck's going on? They never really could denigrate me and hurt me, or I couldn't say anything to them when we talked about their work that felt like it was weighted down with the importance of their professors, let's say. Some of whom were like these luminous filmmakers like Tom Kalen or Michael Hausman, who worked with Milo Schwarman on all of his films. Jesus Christ, talk about big time. I'm listening to the audio book, I will admit, of The Lonely City, and you've made me want to ask you a number of times if you've read it. And now, who is it? Hi. It is Olivia Lang, I think is her name. And I just started it the other day. And it's this really beautiful. It's a British woman who moved to New York thinking that she was ⁓ starting this relationship, the love of her life. And of course, once she actually said, I'm moving to New York to be with you, the guy bailed and got cold feet. So what she does is she used her own loneliness in New York City. as a way to seek out these artists who were thinking about loneliness. And you know, so she talks about Hopper and and Warhol in an interesting way. ⁓ but it was also making me think, though he was a Chicago Chicago guy, she talks about Henry Darger. And when you were talking about solitude and also just the reasons for making, you know, that Character is such an endlessly fascinating one to me because he really did just make that stuff because he had to. And you know, she talks a bit about how nobody ever really talks about his work as just simply he was this great artist who just preferred not to show the stuff to anybody. They're always trying to psychoanalyze him. And you know, and he to be fair, does seem to adjust penises on young girls. It's true. He did. Right. And he is, you know. He was institutionalized, I think, at some points. But ⁓ fair game. Yeah. So it's not, you know, but it but it struck me listening to that how how similar it is to like Van Gogh's story and how, you know, despite knowing that Van Gogh was mentally ill, that, you know, it's not the primary thing that we talk about. And I don't exactly know where I'm going with this other than you were making me think about you know, in particular the solitude, the motivations for making and even what you were just saying about sort of the comparison or the sort of competitiveness ⁓ that can happen with particular media. And, you know, you were referring to yourself as a baby painter. And I mean but which is interesting by the way, because I feel like that residency, what I remember of it, it it's long, right? It's like Five or six months or something? ⁓ it's two it's two months. I think it started with four, but then they wanted to support more artists, so they shrink it, shrink it, shrink it, and that's it for ⁓ two months now. I just remember it being enough months that I was like, Well, I could never do that. I have the privilege of having no family, loved ones, kids, or anything. I'm desperately lonely. But I bring it up to say that well, maybe we can talk about the lonely thing if you don't mind, because I part of what I think the book is positing. It's all about how, you know, maybe loneliness isn't entirely a bad thing. I think like those paintings, they kind of feel like breakthrough paintings for me. Like looking at them, I was like, it feels like you've been painting for years. And I was like, why can't I do this in my paintings and I've been painting for years? Are you talking about my paintings? Are you saying something nice? Yes. ⁓ thanks. Okay. I couldn't tell 'cause you brought up Hopper and Darger and I wasn't sure if those were revelatory to you. Thank you. That's nice. No, I had to just clarify because I was like, yeah, I love Hopper too. No, your paintings, your paintings I feel are so strong. I appreciate that. Sydney actually was getting to exactly what I was trying to say, which is that you referred to yourself as a baby painter, but it's like they do not feel naive. Well, I think this this probably ties into your earlier question about the feeling with the different media. I don't see painting as very much separate from the other media. So I'm a baby painter in the application of paint to canvas in a serious way, because I had used it in a mock version of the old master's techniques, the Baroque techniques for this dumb installation that I did at Columbia. that took years. I made a rule, it was a performance, more or less. I made a rule that if you worked for me, you got a a portrait painted of you in this really ridiculously fine style. So then I had to own up to my own rule and learn how to paint in that style. And that's when I started studying Titian and studying about rabbit skin glue, all the technical aspects that you you need to know to be able to paint in a very like basic rudimentary sense. Because I remember, you know, as a kid, I got an oil paint set at some point. And I think like every child, you go, you don't know what it takes to mix colors or apply colors or what colors can and can't get mixed together. And you end up with this gray, muddy mess, and you get depressed and you say, I'm done with this. I don't want to do this. At least that was for me ⁓ when I was a child. And I learned how to paint through what was kind of like mocking painting, specifically the portraits that are commissioned for institutions like Columbia University. My first week at that school, and I'm doing all these toys to see the facilities. I'm like, ⁓ there's a a ⁓ giant portrait of some professor emeritus. There's a giant portrait of more l more commonly a president or trustee, people with the money and the power. And yet I'm employing, I'm doing the job of five people at a normal commercial facility. And I'm employing, or I'm supervising, I'm not paying them. I think at the end 20 students. ⁓ they all were part time, but there's about 20 students that worked ⁓ with me ⁓ that I was supervising. And they ran the place. I just made sure things were going smoothly and I trained them and I really did take my job seriously to train them well. I figured that they should have a concrete skill from the so-called work study or whatever it was called. It was like fellowship, paid a paid work position. Without them, that place couldn't function. So I wanted to honor them in this sarcastic, pointed way by painting everybody that worked for me. And that's how I learned to paint. So took those nine years to get to a point where I felt confident in this silly Baroque style. And I ended up painting like a two wedding portraits for two different friends. And when I go visit their house, this one, I don't know how I did it. I look at them, fuck, I don't know how I did that. Pretty sure that I did that. I don't I know because I can look back at the photos of progress, because I would always take a photo of each day to kind of remember what I was up to. All those effects, those illusions that you get from those techniques, it's impossible to pinpoint. You can't see a brushstroke brushstroke, or you can only see the impasto underneath that's then glazed over ten times. So the color is not the texture of the brushstroke, the brushstrokes from the titanium white or whatever you built up underneath. So when I say baby painter, I mean like more in artist pursuing static images that are not stills from films, but like Images that either trouble me or are nag at me. I can pinpoint at least one that I knew I needed to do was ⁓ these cowboys. A friend sent me Mark Maggiori. If you know this painter. This is a gripe and it's a pointed gripe. Yes. He's a Frenchman who has a new metal band who decided to new move to New Mexico because he's got this really fantastic illustrative painterly style. And he's basically wearing what like he's doing the equivalent of blackface in the sense that like Picasso was doing this with the demoiselle painting, where looking at African art and applying African sensibilities to ⁓ Spaniards, to a Spanish cosmopolitan ⁓ art market, art world, art scene. ⁓ he's basically doing the same thing with American West and in fact even painting black cowboys for the sensationalism of a black lonesome, solitary ⁓ figure. And I'm like, what the fuck does this nitwit have anything to do with the American West other than a romantic ideal? And he's painting in an already uber romantic genre, in which there's many fascinating and wonderful painters, mostly not contemporary. There's a few that are really good. There's a guy named Phil, I'll have to look it up. ⁓ Phil something or other, but he's got this beautiful reign on horses, just like. lonely horses really small in the frame and like a landscape and this surreal rain clouds just swooping down on him in like a really cartoonish way, not not surreal like, well, I'm looking at a fractal image and non-drugs tuck away. Or like Mark Maggiori's cloudscapes that he does. But I got so fucking pissed at that. And really, really like this is in s this is inspiration. The process and inspiration. The inspiration was fuck this guy. I really didn't think he had any business dealing with that subject matter. I really didn't like the kitsch that I see in most of the Western art and the celebration of this ⁓ solitary figure in the American West, which is a cover-up of not a cover-up, because I don't think anything's actually that systematic. When we look at ⁓ Frederick Remington's paintings, he's actually traveling out west. And documenting what he sees. The romanticization comes in the nostalgia of it. And there's not many contemporary painters in that genre that are painting contemporary cowboy life, which still exists. It's not exploration, but it is herders out on the range that do drive pickup trucks and drink out of solo cups and smoke weed and like party. They still wear their 10-gallon hats. There's all the trappings like that. But That's like a style thing. Like, of course, it looks fucking cool. If you keep watching the pod, we've got a lot of nitwit to paint about the mythology of the American West in this ⁓ this here town. That is a huge thing here because there are a lot of people who want to have that work as a sort of souvenir of ⁓ a visit to Texas, right? But is it any different than a billionaire wanting a souvenir of a cosmopolitan font? I mean, I think that's a great question. And I think it gets back again to the the class thing, you know, and the romanticization of perhaps the working class, which is it's interesting when there is, yes, a painting of a particular subject that could be sold to someone who is maybe not in that ⁓ situation. Or like you said, maybe now it's even a painting of someone who's cosplaying some earlier. version of you know a worker and putting that in a cottage somewhere or or a a house in the hill country here. I don't know also ⁓ what's his name? Pearson? Who re photographed the Marlboro ads? ⁓ Prince. Yeah Richard Pearson Prince. ⁓ someone reminded me of that when I started painting Cowboys and I was like, ⁓ yeah, those are fucking awesome in the same range as like Sherry Ladine's rephotographing projects. Yeah. were. Which maybe I'm getting a little cooler on both of them at this point in in particular Prince. ⁓ I still hold Sherry Levine up pretty high, but I think Richard Prince is a genius, I gotta say. ⁓ I mean Sherry Levine too, yeah. Go ahead. When I think about the outsourcing and the privilege of outsourcing, and that bothers me with his paintings. I was gonna say that I'm surprised that you would like appropriation in general based on the earlier comment about ⁓ studio assistance. Yeah. Remnants of pseudo intellectual fatishness in there. Yeah. I haven't beat it all out yet. It it's hard. It's hard to let go. I mean it it allows you to do certain things like with the cowboys that I was doing, I did take Marlboro ads. My uncle was also dying of lung cancer. So Something personally. I wasn't very close with him, but my mother was. It's her brother. And she's had a lot of death in her family. They they both lost a brother when she was a kid. They both lost their mother when I was a kid. Like baby baby. Was he the carpenter? He was a carpenter, but he's not the carpenter that I was at all close with. ⁓ interest. The other side of the family. Yeah. ⁓ it's mostly a family of like carpenters or HVAC or various skilled blue collar jobs. Because everyone's super smart, but no one had too much value for the intellectual pursuits. All readers though, it wasn't that it wasn't that uncle is what I mean to say. My uncle, ⁓ on the dad's side was one who came and helped me with the carpenter. I'm wanting to pull a thread and I want to see if I can do it articulately, which is that the rephotographing of advertisement does feel like it ties back in part, not entirely, but in part to some of those questions around The distribution of images and you know who has control over what gets put into our eyeballs. And so I think there is a strain of something that is more working class in those Richard Prince works, even though also there is the question of, you know, the compensation for the original photographers and all of that. ⁓ but there's something that just feels like it's recurring as we talk ⁓ for you, which I feel like I share, I don't want to speak for Sydney, but you know, a real per ⁓ a persistent itch around an artist as a worker versus an artist as a worker within a certain market or set of markets. ⁓ and it feels like you are returning as you are telling stories about both your work and ⁓ about different points in your life to that theme. And my question is really a lifestyle one. I'm kind of curious about if the roving and the continuous exploration, is it the condition you're trying to set up? And second to that, if somebody s you know, the imagined Gagosian or whoever was in the room. And was offering you the show in the blue chip gallery or whatever it was, would you go there, or do you feel like is there kind of a philosophical stance that you have? That that's really what it is I'm wondering. I think that people like Larry Gagoshin have a g a really fine tuned ability to identify the type of person, not type of artist that wants that and that they can work with. ⁓ That's my feeling. I don't know that that's be true, but if I if I take what I know about human interactions generally and how people work together, because that's a business relationship, you're mostly trying to figure out not who's the most skilled person, but who can you get along with? Who can you work with? And so I think this is not feedback I've gotten. I think that I'm not the type of person that can be worked with because I don't fit in they might like me. Who knows? I've I think I'm desperately charming. But they'd be able to see ⁓ he's a loser. He doesn't want this. He doesn't have the hunger towards either wealth or fame or he's got these too many insecurities or something like this. Whatever it is that prevents me from succeeding in love or any of the other myriad failures in my life. People can see that, I think. To to exercise the fantasy of Larry Gagoshin coming and being like, hey buddy, really dig those those wrestlers of yours. Let's ⁓ let's talk. But can you churn out twenty more for me because I need to make a living or, you know, sustain it? There then becomes an ethical ⁓ ethical, ethical question. With film, I could fundraise and pay other people. And that's actually one of the nice joys of it. Writing a novel alone, you basically don't employ anybody. Working on paintings alone, you don't employ anybody to a certain point where you have a functioning mechanism and a studio that you hire other people. So you're basically a job creator in a market. And my feeling is that I like creating work. I really enjoy when I put on my producer hat, not the director hat, because then then we're all playing together, but the producer hat. How do I create some jobs? Plays are almost the most wonderful art form in that way, because it's remade consistently. So you don't just employ whatever the Marvel number is. Mar Marvel film has 180. people on set at any given moment. That's 180 jobs for 90 days. Done. Kaput. Sh. Then it's guys in suits earning money on the property that they own, that they funded, they backed. Which is fine. That's I mean, that realm needs financial backing to be made. Filmmaking always that type of filmmaking always does. But with theaters, ⁓ with theater itself, yeah, you've got basically the similar stuff being underwritten on Broadway. But The fact is, however the money comes through, actors get employed, they're still getting employed by Shakespeare. And a a painting is then just an object once it's done. So if you become one of these machines with Larry Gagossian and you pump out work, and that's the requirement and the re the working relationship you have, you're employing a team, including lawyers, et cetera, all around you. And you are then creating a product. You're calling it art, you're you're basically Performing art, that's fine. But you're making a product for uber wealthy people. That's that's the little closed circle that that r world works in. Do I want to engage with that type of person? No, not necessarily. Do I want to ⁓ be compensated for the object that I made? Yeah. And the skill involved in making it? Yeah. And I when I do sell, I ask what I think it's worth at the moment, with room to talk about it. But would I love to outsource that? And have a gallerist take over that? Yes. I don't know if you're saying that being part of one of those machines would be a positive or a negative to you, or if you're kind of saying it just feels like an impossibility not worth thinking about. I think it's an impossibility not worth thinking about for one thing. As I understand those realms, once you get to a certain point, sure they might pursue you, but a lot of it is just people that know each other and like each other, which is basically all business. like all business is that we often put in a a negative light the boys' clubs and so forth. I think that's an unfortunate symptom of something that is like a natural pattern of affiliation. That's putting it mildly, right? I could get vitriolic about it, but there's enough people s screaming and moaning about that stuff. I don't need to add anything to that. I guess one of my greatest feelings of failure is not having found that community that does That I fit into. I think that's a pretty simple like way to put it. I had been struggling with it for a long time, even when you mentioned going to the movies alone, ⁓ in that book, ⁓ Lonely City. Well, at some point in high school I started going to movies alone because I was like I'd be too hurt by friends that just simply didn't have the the time. It wasn't any an insult to me. But then I'd be like, I guess I'm not gonna go out. And I started thinking, well, that's Fucking dumb, get over yourself, idiot, and started going to movies alone. And mostly go to movies alone, honestly. Kind of the best way to watch a movie, honestly. Barbara Mitchum says something to the effect in a romantic film to a woman who's falling in love with, like, nothing's ever any good alone. I'm like, Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it's echoed similarly in another film, ⁓ Human Nature, ⁓ that Michelle Gondry directed, but ⁓ Charlie Kaufman wrote. Where the lead character becomes like a famous author, bec a naturalist feminist author, because she's out in the woods, totally her suit, writing alone in her solitary, and she's writing about sunsets and everyone's falling in love with sunsets back in civilization. She's like, fuck this. I've seen too many sunsets alone. I want to just look at someone and go, Yup, isn't that as lovely? Yeah, nothing's ever good alone. Unfortunately, if you don't find those people to connect with, you do things alone. And there's also ⁓ this can touch into inspirations and the good stuff, but Joe Frank is a radio artist back going back to the seventies. But he's got a moment in one of the things where he discusses loneliness. Has he taught he's in a monologue or he's telling a story, I forget which, and he digresses to talk about how loneliness is only good if you have something to come back to. Or no, being alone is only good when you have something to come back to. When you feel like you get nothing to come back to, you're just living your life and you're just Doing that thing. People it's maybe it's a grass another fancy way to say the grass is always greener because I have married friends who are like, God, I gotta get away. And I'm like, Jesus, fuck off, dude. When you're sick, someone brings you soup. And when they're sick, you bring them soup and that's nice. And being alone on your fishing trip to use a cliche is nice because you can come back. Yeah. That's a married couple thing. But that could also be your group of friends. It could be any number of things. Or a gallery. When you're completely out on a limb, I mean, I've spent a lot of time thinking about meaninglessness ⁓ and what that can look like in a in a life. A real nihilistic in a positive sense. Because that word gets a bad rap. That philosophy gets a bad rap. And I thought I'd come to that in Seattle where I didn't have a job. I was sitting on a bench. No one knew where I was, and I had no reason to be on that bench. I'm just looking at these green hills, reading way too much Samuel Beckett, but not on the bench. ⁓ and thinking this might be the lowest point to which I can go. So at the same time I was writing about writing trying to write a story about Gigi Allen's cousin, which never gelled, but still kicking around. His real cousin? I don't want to get No, no, fake. Romano. Okay, all right. Yeah, like a totally fake, made up individual. That's very very funny. I got really into Gigi because he's he's this figure performance artist, to to put it in a pod more positive light than he'd normally put in. Yeah. Who he was, but yes, yeah. Very deep like he wanted to make himself the lowest of low, which is something that is in essence brave. Talk about highbrow, low bow brow collapse. He's enacting that which Julia Kristeva talks about it ad infinitum. And he's just doing it without knowing anything about the abject. Yeah, it's just naturally natural objection. Yes. Yeah. Through his life experiences, having been ⁓ named Jesus Christ Allen as a child and the objection of Christ giving his blood and spilling his blood in his body and sharing that ⁓ that that figure in the Bible. Like the things in his life led him to these logical conclusions that shitting on stage and flinging it at people is The only way to be hated, and he was willing to be hated. In the like I would never want to go to one of his shows. He seems like a fucking asshole that I would never I'm too much of a pussy to go see. Would have been. Of course, I would have been ten, so I would have gotten creamed by all of his fans, and not in a sexy way. God. He's willing to be lowest of low, and almost everybody mean we can we could talk about his playing that up for punk. Bona five. But he recognized the value in the same way that wrestlers do in their performance of being the heel and actually being lowest and being hated. Which if we touch on politics, there's a good article, I think it was in McSweeney's maybe, or The Believer or something like that, talking about this a while ago now, ⁓ what Donald Trump takes from wrestling and playing the heel. ⁓ yeah. Okay, so growth. Where do you see yourself in the future and what are you working on? I've got a backlog of ideas I want to pursue, but like I said, I'm lazy and right now I'm spending about five hours a day commuting to and being in a German class. And so growth is learning German a new language and the humiliation that is involved in that, which is nice and good. I mean I'm looking forward to the show very much. I think Elle is a really good painter. I think Alex who brought us together He's onto something as far as the connections that are there aesthetically and thematically, but in different directions. And so I'm very curious to see what they look like next to one another. I'm like and I'm already doing some th I'm sure you can see them behind me here. I hate that I can see myself and I can do this, but I just did some thumbnails. I'm looking at one of my hometown heroes, James McNeil Whistler, and how he applied paint. And these really low key, low contrast nocturnes, but for figuration, for an idea that I have for a series of five or six, depending on how many I fuck up, images, that's gonna bring together some of my flower ⁓ still life with figuration. Employing that reactionary technique or reactionary process that ⁓ Dakooning is said to have had where you the underpainting it could be a black and white painting, but there's color underneath that he started with and he had to react to to get to this stark black and white with little hints of yellow or something. I wonder if you ever got into Elaine ⁓ de Kooning. Cause I feel like ⁓ no. So his wife, I feel like the way so they both kind of moved in and out of abstraction and figuration and Elaine de Kooning's handling of the figure is great. It's because all of what Willem did w it was more these sort of monstrous mutated figures, and hers are still you can see the traditional figure painting in it. She did a fucking great painting of ⁓ JFK that's in the I think she did a few JFKs, but one of them's in the National Portrait Gallery. And something tells me you might get something out of her approach to the figure. So the hard plug. The hard plug. The hard plug. Well. Hacked gallery. P A K B, run by some really sweet guys. They're all artists in different veins. ⁓ but there's three cousins and one three cousins from Syria. ⁓ one lived in London for a long time, but they're Syrian fellows, and then one American dude, the guy who put this show together, Alec. The opening will be August 7th and then the at the at 6 p.m. And so if you if anybody's watching and wants to pop by, have a drink, ⁓ chat a bit, shake some hands. Opening's almost never about the art, it's about being social and trying to get laid. There's a poster for the an advertisement for a show the night of my opening for the band. Whose first tour was our last tour. We were on the same label and we broke up at the end of the tour and they are still making their rent with their band and playing European tours, etc. Nice guys. Fuck ⁓ up. No, I'm not skipping my opening. You could just dip out for like. Yeah, where did you go? I think he's gonna go beat up some post rock nerds. ⁓ But August seventh, six PM is this show opening and then it's up to the twenty eighth of August in Rummelsberg, ⁓ here in Berlin. And like I said, they're really lovely guys and Elle's already got a couple of pre sales. It's gonna be a good show, generally. I think everyone will be in good spirits, ⁓ based strictly on that. He's doing all the heavy lifting. Well, hey man, you're our first international guest, which is a really big deal. So thank you for that. Yes, thank you so much. I'm realizing Marshand. Whoa. How do you say your last name? You grew up in in New England. Pronounce it for me because we're gonna do after an intro. Yeah, after you go, we're gonna record an intro, and it just occurred to me I better ask the right way to pronounce your name because I'm gonna do it wrong. I understand it as an American to be marshand. Marshand, okay. But it is a French word and in France or in Canada, Quebec, it's marchand. And for a little while I was pretentious enough to attempt putting that cloak on when I was at Ithaca College. That's awesome. I'm not going to attempt the French. Yeah. I the grade school teachers and my grandparents were machant. ⁓ really? The like the grade school French Canadian nuns that taught me Monsieur Machand. ⁓ and my grandparents spoke French first, so they're machin. But it became Martian with my parents' generation. So I was close. Yeah, yeah, there's this role that you did that a lot of people do. But it's better than like when you're on the phone with a telephone company and they're like, Mr. March. Yeah yeah Marchand. Yeah. Like they're working through it, but they've never seen a French word in their life. It's a very common French word. ⁓ yeah. Bef before we let you go, will you say it how I said it? Marchand. That sounded great. Marchand. Harde, harde, we're from New England. Marchand, okay. Marchand. But it'd be my machand, right? You can say however you want, really. I don't really care. This is like a mashand. Yeah. Yeah, Adam Marshand Adam H Marshand if you wanted to be the the thing that I use f for art generally. Do you yeah, I'll I'll we'll use the H