MAXWELL SIMMER: hey.. you go here too?

ATTRACTIVE BLONDE GIRL: [inaudible]

no? you’re just hanging out here? are you a member?

a member? ... maybe?

maybe?.. you’re here enough?

uh.. i don’t know what that means.. i was up at eight am because I have a job, where you actually have an obligation to be somewhere. so i do to that..

ah, i mean, are you somehow involved?

i study.

at what?

i study design.

for theater?

yes.

cool.. their filming ‘Like Mike 2’ on my street till late tonite so maybe i’ll see if they’ll pay me to not to run a lawn mower or something.. i might get free snacks. or coffee or something.

What is ‘Like Mike 2?’

[inaudible]

[inaudible]

where’s that?

it’s like 20 minutes ..

are you traveling around?

traveling?

yeah, for your work or something..

no, i just design.. i work there with other designers.

so are you designing totally to the specifications of someone else? what kind of creative input do you have?

yeah, i don’t like this thing, where it’s thought of as kind of decorating something that the other person wants.. i want to do this sort of thing by myself..

but, i mean, the idea behind design is that you have to work with other people, isn’t it?

i don’t like it. it’s the wrong way. it’s like being with a six-year-old child, whining and giving me lectures and telling me how things are done right. i’m not kidding.. we’re watching a Barbie movie, and then ‘Merlin’ for my character study.

yeah, you should be given complete control over everything that you’re doing.. i mean, i agree..

absolutely.. last night she came over.. she was a lunatic. i just left went for a walk and a tea. when I came back we talked about it calmly. it worked. i still don’t think she’ll ever really understand me and the way that i work, but she’s going to have to be more open minded. we are not mad at each other, but i guess i should be the director then.

it sounds like you have too much vision. have you brought this up? how much input do you have over this stage of the design?

well, it depends. i would like everything. i have all these pictures about how i want it to look, and how it should be, and what direction it should go. i think i have different priorities..

of course.. i think there’s a threshold between art and design, where you can design something so rigidly that it eventually becomes something that nobody would want..

exactly.. and design is so.. big.. like the stage is so big in the theater. i don’t like it. i don’t like that there’s so much.. the theater starts in the stage, and i don’t think that’s the right way. i don’t like the stage to be so prominent. i don’t like when there’s a stage that’s full of glitter and full of things. that’s when it becomes an installation, and i think that the stage has to be..

but the stage should be an installation. how could it be otherwise?

the stage should just be a ground for the people.

yeah, i know what you mean, but i think it sounds like being a proof-reader or something, where you just have to make sure that everything is being spelled properly.. i think it’s inevitable that people are going to want to change the content.. anyway.. why are you here tonight?

i wanted to meet a friend of mine but she’s not here. she lost her phone, so i’m waiting for her to show up.

wow.. tragedy..

what? it’s not tragic.. i’ll sit here, i’ll have a drink..

oh.. right.. um, where are you from? are you from frankfurt?

i’m from frankfurt.

really? how is it?

uh..

i find it medieval.. difficult to get around in. i mean, i guess you’re used to it.

yeah, but i don’t drive, and i stay pretty much in my neighbourhood. although when i leave it i often don’t know where i am.

we drove in here from berlin and it feels like it can easily take half an hour to drive one kilometer.

yeah, it’s really hard to have a car in frankfurt. i don’t drive here, there’s no parking, you can only go right.. if you miss a turn..

i know! you’re completely fucked.. why is that?

i don’t know.

so what, are you planning to stay in frankfurt?

well see. part of my idea, and i don’t know weather this is a good idea or not, is to maybe come to europe, and hang out for the month, and be working a few days a week. people from work would be coming for different things, and i would meet up with them wherever they were. if they were in paris, i’d go to paris.. but , i mean, i don’t know what to do. if i continue i don’t want to stay here, i think i’ll take a break and..

where would you go?

well, i think paris or..

paris?

i think..

no no.. really? paris?

maybe? why not? for a few months.. i remember i wanted to start going to lesbian bars in paris, so we were looking ‘lesbian+bars+paris’, and it was funny because every time i started typing something in these ridiculous things were popping up in predictive text in her browser.. so, if you put it on ‘private browsing’ in safari it wont predictive text, and it wont..

blow your cover?

yeah, it’s kind of awesome. anyway. i just discovered it.

that sounds really useful.

it is useful.. it’s also funny because technically this is work..

how did you find out about this?

oh, well, i was checking to see.. you know how in safari you can delete your history or get rid of your cache memory, and as i was searching to make sure you could do that i saw that they had a ‘private browsing’ function. it said ‘private browsing’ and i was like, ‘oh!’

hm. yeah, but, anyway, i don’t know.. i’m biased. i think paris is the ultimate romantic city, and being a pragmatist i think we clash.

i don’t know.. i am reading a book that takes place in paris, my magazine’s focus this month in on paris, and everywhere i look it’s paris.. i want to be there.. i want to be anywhere but here. but i was in berlin for a few months and i thought i could go back, but now that i’m here i’m a little bit annoyed..

with berlin? why?

well, not berlin exactly, but i was visiting a big design school, and i dont feel like i meshed with the people. but maybe it’s good to get out of frankfurt.

yeah it seems like it’s sort of an idealized european city here.. small cobbled streets and that..

uh, yes.. i have to go.. i’ll be back in a second..

The vibrant geometry in Brent Wadden’s paintings tumbles onto itself, piling into multicoloured mountains of forms. Far from chaotic, though, the work is tempered with the orderliness of his diligent and meticulous nature. Since relocating to Berlin from the (only slightly) less hospitable climate of his native Halifax in 2006, Brent’s psychedelic panoplies have made their way into numerous galleries across the European continent. Brent also told me to read up on the 19th century spiritual/psychedelic artist/miner Augustin Lesage, who, at the age of 35, began making incredibly intricate large-scale paintings when a sonorous voice boomed out of the mine shaft at him: “One day you will be a painter!” When I spoke to Brent, he had just returned from the opening of his show Moodz at the Sid Lee Collective in Amsterdam.

MAXWELL SIMMER: This is on now..

BRENT WADDEN: Since when?

I just turned it on right now.

You shouldn’t have said anything.

I know…  I feel badly pulling one over on you though…

…

…

I feel like my room is a hippy room…  All these feathers and shit everywhere…

Is all this stuff yours?

Yeah.  I don’t know what happened to me. 

Ha!

But I feel like we’re all changing…  Everyone's living spaces are becoming more and more adult.

Adult?

Yeah, I feel like everyone’s stepping up to a different level in their lives.

I think I know what you mean.  I’ve been thinking about my space, trying to figure out how to make it function in some way. 

Do you want to organize it as a typical apartment?  With couches and –

Yeah, I don’t know…  Using it as an office or a studio is a really safe default.  But I do have a couch now…  Y’know, I kind of assumed that this was all someone else’s stuff…

Nope.  It’s all mine.  I mean, not all of the furniture.  I re-arranged everything so that I could work here as well.  I do the same thing at my studio.  It’s a studio, but it also feels homey, it’scomfortable… maybe I’d have a couch.

That’s interesting.  I feel like I thrive in a really sparse environment.

But have you guys always had a bed in your studio?

No, we try really hard not to have a bed…  It’s really disruptive…

Yeah, last year, if I would’ve had a bed in my studio I probably would have never come home. I’d get really into a painting or drawing, and I’d have to work the next day and I’d realize that it would already be 12:30. Of course I didn’t want to bike across town to get five or six hours of sleep and then wake up and do it all again.  I would’ve rather just stayed there, but it probably would’ve been a bad idea to have a bed…

Hm…  Hey, would you ever get a frame built?

No, there’s already so many wonderful bikes that are available and cheap… but I do love this idea, though, that kids are learning how to build their own frames from scratch.  It’s a dying craft that seems inaccessible but obliviously its possible to learn how to do it.

Yeah, it’s cool…  it’s way sexier than say, making watches, but I feel like it’s the same kind of thing, it’s –

[phone chimes]

Aw!

What’s that?

Someone congratulating me on my accomplishment of the day.

Right!  How did that go?

I was super stressed.  You never know what’s going to happen.  I was surprised how smooth it all went. 

Did you have to forge anything?

No, not at all.

That’s really good.  Are you going to celebrate?

Yeah, I celebrated today. 

Did you?

Yeah, I got home and laid in bed for two hours.  It was the first time I could relax in months. 

Haha!

No lie, it was the first time I could actually lay in bed and be like, ‘I can do anything right now, I can just sit here.’  I finished all my art stuff, and then I worked all week, and then after work I had to do visa shit.  It’s been on my mind for ages. 

Yeah, it’s really hard to function like that.

[phone rings]

No deal?

I didn’t know the number.

You don’t answer if you don’t know the number?

I usually do…  That’s another thing, though…  I couldn’t deal with being illegal.  I got to be hyper-paranoid.

One evening a friend prank called, talking in a fake German accent.  He was all like ‘hey I’m calling from the auslanderbehörde, and we have a suspicion that you’re living here illegally, and we have to talk to you immediately.’  And he kept on asking for me, and I kept on not saying anything because I thought it was a serious phone call, and finally he’s like ‘Hey!  It’s me!’ 

Haha!

And I was like, ‘you can’t do that!  It’s not a funny joke!  You don’t know the stress I’m under right now!’

Totally.  I don’t get how people could do that for years.

It’s because you get into a trap, right?  and there’s no way out.  You can’t leave because you might get caught, it’s hard to get legal once you’ve been here for a while… 

I guess if the German government was really serious about illegal immigrants they’d just offer them amnesty. 

Hm. 

I heard that they’re working on decriminalizing cocaine in Mexico.

Have you been to Amsterdam?

No…  is cocaine legal there?

No.  I don’t think so.  It’s just weed.  But honestly it seems like a mistake. I went to an art opening one night at w139 and walked through the red light district and there were thousands and thousands of people completely wasted.  And then I walked through again the next morning at 10am, and there were kids already rolling joints on every corner.  I know that not all of Holland is like that, but in Amsterdam it’s centralized to this one neighbourhood, and it just feels like they made a mistake. 

Yeah… I could see that… Hey, does this still work?

No. Actually, yeah… when my roommate moved in they had just hooked up the whole building with central heating, and she was already settled in the apartment and didn’t want to get dust all over everything so she left the coal heaters. Which kind of sucks.

Really?

Well yeah, I mean look at all the space it takes up… I feel like I would use that space.

Yeah, you’re right. I always thought they were nice because they’re sort of nice ornamental pieces, but I guess it doesn’t really make sense. I think it would be cool if people converted them, though. Like, if you and cut out the front and turned it into shelving or something…

What’s inside? Just air? Is it a solid mass?

Maybe like a zig-zag airway?

… [skeptical]

I don’t know…

Do you have any big trips planned this summer?

No, but it’d be cool to get some people together to go to Venice. There’s this island in Venice that you can camp out on, about fifteen to twenty minutes from the city itself. You take a ferry and the ferry runs every 30 minutes or something. It would be cool to drive around and see a bit of Italy, too. What about you?

I’d also like to go to Venice, and I was invited to do a show with these kids in a small town in Italy, which I think is about 300 kilometers from Venice. I don’t think they speak English very well.They’ve invited me twice to do an exhibition. The first time they asked me, and I responded very positively, and then they just never got back. And then they invite me again and were like ‘we really love your art and really want you to do a show!’ So, I was kind of hoping that we could organize it during the Venice biennale. Maybe take the train down to either this town or Venice and bring my bike on the train… It’d be fun to go to the town first and do the show, spend a few days there, have the opening and whatnot, and then maybe get a crew and bike down to the biennale… that would be one trip that I really want to do and that I hope happens. But I feel like Venice is going to be chaotic during the biennale.

Yeah… especially for the opening…

And all these art people will be there, and everything will be ridiculously over-priced… I don’t want to travel that way. It’s unfortunate that I don’t know anybody there. At all. I don’t know one person from Venice.

Neither do I really. I also heard it sucks if you don’t go to the right parties for the opening… but I don’t think I have any sort of hook-ups that would help me get into parties there. It’s kind of crazy…

But I think you can figure it out quite quickly…

What, just like, going there and schmoozing your way in?

Yeah, I mean, there’s a bunch of Canadian kids that are going for the biennale. At the opening in Amsterdam I was standing there having a beer and this girl walks by and we made eye contact, and werelike ‘what?!’ We’d gone to school together at NSCAD, and now she’s living in Toronto and doing a show in northern Holland. She was like, ‘I’m doing a show here, and then after I’m going to theVenice biennale.’ She got some money from somewhere, or she was invited… I guess she’s going to crash the party a little bit. Her and some people are getting all these canoes flown from Canada…

Ha!

And so they’re going to go to the opening ceremonies with like, fifteen canoes. All these people are coming from Toronto to do this event.

Holy shit. That’s really good… but I think it’d be a kind of terrifying to be on those canals in canoes… I was there at the last biennale and, I mean, there’s all these water taxis everywhere with like, 60 people in these things – or 30 maybe – but they’re packed. And they’re really die-hard, and fighting for space in the waterways… I think if you were in a canoe you’d get some serious wake. You’d really need to be ready to do some Eskimo rolls or something.

In a canoe!

Yeah, I think it’s probably pretty hard to right a canoe… That’s really cool, though…

It’s also kind of extreme to fly fifteen canoes to Venice so that they can paddle up the canals to crash the opening performance.

Yeah.

‘Here we are! We’re weird! We’re doing something different!’

Ha! Yeah, it’s kind of admirable too, because it doesn’t even seem like an indulgent expense… it seems really absurd.

Yeah.

…

Y’know, they never stop jogging. 

What, The people on the track?

Yeah.  Ever.  Sometimes I’ll come home at like, 12:30 or 1 in the morning, and they’re still running around the track.  Today I woke up at 5:30 and people were already running.  It’s amazing. 

Man, I can’t imagine motivating myself to do that.

I never jogged before, but after living here and seeing them everyday I started.  I went about five times before I went to Amsterdam last week, but I would never jog on the track.  I go through the park and into Wedding to the top of this hill, do some stretches and then and come back.  They’re inspiring, but I’m still not ready to go on the track.  I feel like I have to be at a certain level first.

The pools are really serious here too. 

Yeah, I’m more into riding my bike to the lake, lying in the sun, getting over-heated, and then swimming across to cool off.  But there’s something about running that’s really positive.  And peoplewant to keep track of how far they ran, and try to beat that goal.  I think it’s really good. 

[Opens bottle with phone]

Man, I really like that you do that…

Haha!

I was actually thinking about getting a decent phone.  It sort of creates an impression about your social life…

Exactly.

But then I realized that I’d rather just have someone impose the necessity on me.  I guess basically I just want a job where they buy me a Blackberry.

Do you have a nice wallet? 

No, my wallet’s a piece of shit.

My wallet’s embarrassing.  People laugh.  I’m at the grocery store, and –

[Brent pulls out wallet]

Ha!

A friend made it…  one of the wings fell off it…  But I’ll be at the grocery store, and I’ll unzip it, and it always gets stuck, and I’m struggling to open it…  My next wallet will be a really nice one. I’m going to step it up. 

Show the world you’re ready.

It’s kind of cool though, when the change collects in the bottom you can make it stand up…

That’s adorable, actually…  it’s a little bird…

But I always feel like people are looking at me like ‘who’s this freak.’  Whatever.  You can make your own shit.  

Hey what’s the book?

It [Beautiful Losers] was an exhibition that happened in 2003 or 2004.  A lot of the art that’s in it was really inspiring for me when I was in art school.  When I finished and came to Germany for the first time, this was the first book I bought.  The exhibition had just happened, so the catalogue came out, and I usually don’t buy these big art books, but I think it might’ve been the first time that people actually wrote serious essays about this kind of art.  I was really impressed.  There’s actually an exhibition with a few of the artists that just opened here in Berlin at Circleculture.  It’s a really small gallery, but it’s really cool to see such established artists exhibiting in a small space. 

Yeah, I recently started looking back at stuff around when I was a teenager to try to get an understanding of where I came from.

Yeah, and now there’s so much art about music genres and subcultures, like black metal or a use of dark gothic imagery…  I wonder if people at that time were making art about grunge…  But it was before my time, before I became interested in art, and even knew that the art world existed.  But I wonder if people were incorporating grunge aesthetics.

I think during that time there was a big focus on the abject…  I don’t really know what was going on then either, though.  But I mean, it’s cyclical, so –

So baggy jeans are going to come back?

I guess so…

Did you rock them?

Definitely…  You stovepipe?

Oh yeah.

Alright, I’m going to turn the recorder off…

Good, we can finally talk about real stuff…

MARTIN THACKER: We’ll have to stop it because I have to make coffee..

MAXWELL SIMMER: Yeah.. but anyway, his argument was that power structures haven’t changed.

Yeah. I don’t know..

I guess he was sort of unwilling to admit that there had been shifts.. like, he was saying that there was still exploitation, therefore things hadn’t changed, and I was trying to explain that --

Yeah, but I think it’s more chaotic than that. Like, it’s less regulated. Like today, in the bank, there were these two big Turkish guys that were dropping off money and there was only one teller – I was with Denitsa at the Sparkasse – and, it was just this fucked up situation because there was this old woman who, and there was a line of maybe ten people, and everyone was waiting because there was this Turkish guy and his big bodyguard there who kept pacing around with his arms crossed, and they just kept bringing up stacks of like, five-hundreds and two-hundreds, and the woman was getting really flustered and had to keep putting it in this counting machine, and rrrrrrrrrrrrrchk, and then they’d pull out another stack, and then rrrrrrrrrrrrrck. So this old woman, who had one leg too short or something – she had one of those big shoes – and, uh, what she did was walk up to the front of the line and gave the guy a bon-bon out of her purse, and while she’s there at the front of the line, she starts getting pissed off at the Turkish guys who keep bringing out stacks and are taking forever. Eventually they brought in another teller and everyone was processed through while these guys kept going and going.. they finished at the end and the teller was like “176,000 euros” that they just dropped off in cash. And it’s like, you know, you have ideas of power structures, but then anyone can make a lot of money really fast and become a power figure. I don’t think there’s any ideological barriers, and I don’t think you could think of race, or class, or anything, that would sort of relate to structure in terms of like.. like, how power might be dispersed other than just pure wealth.

Right..

Or I don’t know..

Yeah, I agree with you, I think that it does come down to wealth, and I think that it’s probably the most concrete form of power that there is, financial power, but --

Yeah I think it’s the main one, and I think that almost anything is convertible at some level.. like, people are always talking about symbolic power or symbolic capital, and it all ends up being converted at some point.

Yeah..

I mean, it’s true that you can pay people now in purely symbolic capital, but I mean, at some point everything gets converted, or has to be,

Yeah, it’s interesting.. I don’t really understand how the conversion works –

but.. and, well, the key thing is to diversify. Like, you should have gold, you should have property, and you should have symbolic stuff going on..

right..

and.. fuck, where’s the milk?.. I thought we bought milk.. ah, it’s in the bag.. but the reason currency is important is because, it’s like, the same reason that the barter system is no good, is because you can’t trade you know, if they’re selling apples you can only give them to people who want apples, and so, if you want to buy a computer, you can’t really find someone who wants –

who wants, like, a trillion apples –

yeah, and it’s the same thing with the symbolic capital, like it’s only takes you as far as people are willing to accept it, and then you just, I mean, it just gets ridiculous. You end up trying to operate in total poverty and it just gets really limiting really fast.

(Chewing)

yeah, that’s another thing.. I have to say that I don’t really understand how currency works. I was sort of under the impression that money doesn’t even really reflect the number of apples to computers any more..

I don’t know.. I think it’s constantly shifting, and values will always reflect what the aggregate demand is. It’s always a pretty accurate register.. I mean, there’s not that much that happens outside of it I don’t think. But it becomes so limiting in art I think. In order to find people who are willing to trade actual currency in the art world is kind of rare.

You mean that it’s rare that people will actually want to buy work?

Well, for young artists, yeah, I think it’s hard to get any sort of meaningful investment put towards anything at all. I mean, it’s so high risk.. I wouldn’t even know how to go about investing in art, hardly..

For me art seems like a ground zero for exchanging symbolic to real capital, but yeah, I mean, I have no idea how people speculate on the art market.. there’s obviously a lot of risk but.. yeah, I don’t know.. have you ever thought about buying art on eBay?

I don’t know.. I’ve thought about selling it, but recently I’ve just wanted to sell anything.. but it’s such a hassle, eBay.. fuck.. it’s hard to work it. But yeah.. I mean, I’m excited about eBay because it’s an alternative, or a contrast to art, where everything is just denominated right away. Everything immediately converts into currency. Whereas art, that gets delayed and delayed and delayed.. someone might want to buy a piece from you but you don’t even talk price right away..

Right..

I mean, that’s how I’ve experienced it..

One of the first things about eBay that caught my mind was when someone sold the gilled-cheese with mother Theresa or Jesus burned into it..

Haha

But yeah, apart from that kind of stuff, it seems like products on eBay have a solid register or something.. that you can immediately determine value..

Yeah, and like, the auction thing is cool, because it gets determined immediately by multiple individuals.. it’s a market, and it’s a market that decides the value right there. It’s this amount.. it’s not determined by higher monopolistic powers. It’s a totally democratic mechanism for determining what things are worth..

What’s the best deal you ever saw there?

I don’t know.. I bought eight cameras for twenty bucks.. most of them were broken, but still.. I’ve sold stuff to people.. I just sold my old bathroom sink that was in the cellar. I just wanted to get rid of it so I said I’d ship it for nine euros to anywhere in Germany. So someone bought it for three bucks and I was like “oh shit..” I didn’t want to, like.. for three bucks, it’s such a hassle to get this thing into a box –

Haha

And to a place to ship it.. so I told them it was scratched and that they probably wouldn’t want it. But they still wanted it so I had to box it up and ship it.. so that was a good deal..

For them..

But I think you can buy books and stuff really cheap..

Are you going to sell any of your stuff on other sites? Apart from eBay?

I don’t know.. I was wondering if there’s Turkish eBay.. I decided that I should have stuff selling there. And I kind of want to experiment with the design aspects of it, too.. like, I was just at the grocery store where they have möbel oase, where they’re selling stuff for the house, and I’d like to have something for the transformers, like transformer oase, and just use the design styles.. the Turkish design styles are so heavy. And I want to have a really clean, modernist one.. I’m interested in what different design styles connected to the same product will do to the value.

Mm.. have you decided on any design styles?.. I know you were playing around with a couple..

Yeah, I don’t know.. I’ve got one now that’s pretty clean, “German” aesthetic, and then I want to go with a more trashy one – well, not trashy – but I want to do some bad photos, with full frontal flash, and just overload it with colour text so that I have two really contrasting ones..

Competing with one-another..

Yeah, competing with one-another in the same market to see what happens.. I’d be interested to see if one store is going to command a higher price for the exact same item, even the same brand name. I guess it’s a trust thing, too. It’s a preference that you have for one over the other based on what you think the people are like, based on how they do their type.. like, can trust someone who uses Times more than you can someone who uses Helvetica?..

Have you been doing much research?.. looking into other transformers or anything?

Not really.. there’s so many variables to tweak.. things get pretty uniform in a certain market for a particular thing, your store design doesn’t change that much.. this is, like, a hobbyist’s-type electric product, and all those stores tend to be designed in the same kind of way.. if it’s a car stereo store then they all look really macho --

Right..

And have really aggressive design.

and so, how’s the stuff been selling, or have you opened the eBay store yet?

Yeah, we’re just starting auctions, but none of them have even come up yet because when you have no sales record at all then people don’t trust you as much. You have to do ‘buy it now’ type things, and you have to do some auctions first. But it’s hard to say.. I think I can count on tripling my investment based on what I paid up front for it. I think three times or four times is a good range.. I’ve just been selling them in Britain so far, but the German one’s going now so there’s auctions ending in three or four days. Then I’ll have a better idea what they’re going to sell for in Europe.. but, I don’t know if this really relates to art..

I thought that it did related to art.. like what you were just saying about the aesthetic reception of the particular ad driving up the value, I see that as being really related, and the concerns you have with the transformers themselves, it’s.. it seems like.. have you not been thinking of it as?..

(both laugh)

but it seems like business as art, with aesthetic concerns or something, .. it seems like you’ve abstracted every element of the process.. and i think that even the product you’re offering.. it’s literally a black box, it’s literally anything.. you can project whatever onto it.. it’s even called a “transformer..”

yeah, I haven’t really been thinking of it like that.. I’ve been thinking more in terms of like, what do I need to do to pay off some of the debts I’ve got right now.. so, that’s been a major part of it, and yeah, you’re right, with abstract things like that I can’t help but to sort of go off on tangents.. it becomes about the factors you can tweak, and I always sort of want to push something to the point where it becomes a bit ridiculous, which can be sort of self-destructive too..

from your ad that I’ve seen, I got this sense that you want to imbed a sense of self-awareness in these things, or to push the project to the point of it becoming self-aware, which is dangerous because then it gets questionable to people, it introduces doubt..

yeah, I don’t know how far I’d want to push that.. I do need to have this become profitable in the larger sphere. But I really don’t like the condescending thing, like the attitude.. I’m really sick of artists and art students and stuff..

haha.. like, in general? Or..

yeah, just like in general.. just that idea of like.. it’s a horrible thing, it’s why everyone hates art students.. there’s like, this idea that they’re operating on some higher level or something, and so self aware, or self reflexive about everything, and I mean, I think that the art background, like being involved in so much stuff like that just made it sort of a default mode of thinking about something or of behaving, so it sort of gets applied to everything, but I have to snap myself back and think of what’s actually going to work. But yeah, I love eBay for that, because it’s sort of low-risk, you can just try something out and see how people respond to it.

Right..

And I haven’t had that kind of feeling.. with art, it’s hard because you feel like you have to create an identity, a persona, or a body of work that’s coherent, stuff like that. It actually becomes risky for people to experiment with their own practice or career or something because you can immediately alienate any supporters that you may have made. Whereas eBay’s this weird, anonymous sort of thing, where in one night you can create whatever store, selling whatever product, and just see if people are into it or not without it necessarily reflecting on –

You as a person?

Your oeuvre..

Are you worried about your oeuvre?

Nah.. I think I’ve gotten over it a little bit.. I think I can do whatever I want and it’s going to be ok..

But your approach seems like it’s to kind of provide yourself with financial stability so that you can produce whatever you want, so even if you were to be alienated, you could keep producing because you’re self-sufficient. You don’t have to compromise anything.

Yeah, I mean, it was different in Vancouver, I had a different perception of what it was to be in the art world and working as an artist, and stuff like this, and then after being here and seeing how art fairs and stuff operate, I just started to feel that there wasn’t any significant differentiation between that market and any other market.. like the difference between an art fair and any other trade fair is, you know, very little..

Yeah..

I mean, there’s just more money paid for works or whatever, but that’s because they’re not produced in a high volume, whereas at the other trade fairs people are hoping to eventually sell a million units of whatever thing.. but it’s a similar process I think.

Does it put you off of profiting from art?

No, I would love to profit off of art, but at the same time I haven’t figured out a way. I’m trying to make paintings, and I’m trying to figure out products that the art world would receive well, or not.. like, it’s that thing.. I’m more put off by the art world in general, so I want to make something that’s, in a way, critical, or that reveals the mechanism behind it, its conditions or whatever.. but I haven’t found a good way of doing it yet. I mean, it comes back to the capital thing, the capital flows.. you have to push your symbolic capital that you’ve been able to collect into better situations so that you can leverage off of that capital, but I don’t think I have enough of it to do the things I want to do..

Mm..

But no, I’m not totally disillusioned.. the big thing is the transition from thinking that art was a separate sphere, that it was somehow special. I was hoping that was there somehow, and then just sort of felt that it wasn’t. But I don’t know, at the same time it’s sort of a relief, knowing that it’s another faction of the same, that it’s not that different from the transformers.. you know? The work gets done by people who aren’t making very much money and are sort of abused, and God knows how anyone survives the total poverty.. And then there’s a few people who are actually profiting from the work that all those other people are doing. And even the whole idea process, like, the artist is just soaking up whatever culture, or memes are out there, and just like, solidifying that into tangible objects which then get sold..

Right..

.. and these transformers, they’re being made by people in China, who make enough money to feed their family and pay whatever their living costs are, but they’re basically working all the time just to survive. And when you look at the people we know here, you know, it’s not that different. Maybe people’s apartments are a bit nicer or something, but they just make enough for basic sustenance.. and they don’t have to work as hard, and the conditions are better, but it’s still.. all the profits from that endeavour end up in one or two people’s pockets.

yeah..

So it’s a similar thing.. I don’t know how to get around that. There seems to be no will to even change it.. It’s like that thing in the US, where people say that the mentality difference between Americans and Europeans is that Americans, even if they’re down on their luck poor, they think that they’re just one or two steps away from becoming a millionaire. Like, everyone’s just a millionaire who’s just sort of down on their luck or whatever, and they don’t see themselves as being part of a massively impoverished working class.. in the art world too, everyone’s just one step away from having a great show that’s going to launch their career and make them majorly successful..

Right..

And that perpetuates the exploitation..

But I feel, though, that inherently in art, it necessitates an optimistic attitude or something.. fundamentally it’s really perverse, and absurd, but someone making nihilistic art seems contradictory to me. to create any sort of art belies a sort of optimism, or hope..

Yeah, I would say there’s a fundamental optimism.. there’s an element of fantasy, a blurred line between fantasy and accepting the way the real conditions of production and exploitation are, and that everyone’s always looking for a way of transcending that somehow.. in a really dramatic way..

Blood and cocaine..

Yeah, the cocaine is important..

Yeah, it’s an incredible social lubricant..

And I mean, it fuels the optimisim. It’s interesting..

Alcohol I think also plays a really big part.. I think if you drink a lot it makes your life really bearable, until you become a chronic alcoholic and your life becomes totally unbearable, I guess.. but maybe that’s more a coping mechanism than fuel for optimism.. but about the transformers, do you see it integrating with your art practice, or do you see yourself taking steps to integrate it so that it’s sort of like hybridized, or a way of making art that is also financially viable without clinging to the “big break” ideology?

Yeah.. I think so.. I think it’s been really healthy for me.. I think it’s realizing that point that art production isn’t that different from other kinds of business ventures, and you have to invest a lot of capital to hope to get any kind of return on it. In a way, you learn a lot about how to work on something. You get so personally involved in your artwork, I think, so this is a way of distancing yourself from the product a little bit. I think there’ll be opportunities to produce work in ways that are different than going into a studio and making a painting. Or maybe even just taking those ways of working with capital flows or internet commerce and global merchant commerce, and somehow find a way to integrate those practices into an art practice. Like, I’d love to produce works, like, the artist who gets things industrially produced, but it’s totally the norm now, there’s these major shops, even here in Berlin that produce a lot of people’s art, but I think there’s ways of making that happen, and starting to realize now.. yeah.. I don’t know.. I’m sure it’s all going to feedback into whatever I do in art, assuming I still make art..

I’m wondering if you’ve thought of a way of having this reenter the art world, like if you could see it in a gallery.. it seems like --

I think through documentation and photographs, and I’m into working with design and photography, and I think maybe people could find that interesting in a way. I think that –

But I think that the strategy itself is super important.. I wonder if you could reduce to that, where there is no object, and it funds itself –

Haha.. Yeah, my impulse has been – assuming I have enough financial success by trading these sort of consumer items or whatever – to then command more capital and work on other projects in a way that I’d have more influence over them, and make them more estranged from the normal conditons of commerce, or.. yeah, like books are always good.. I’d like to produce books, but sort of mashing up different sorts of ideas, or people, or modes of production into situations that shouldn’t be put together..

How do you mean?

I don’t know.. I was just thinking about fan fiction stuff, like naïve books but done in really well produced ways, and hiring really good illustrators to illustrate, like, really shit fan fiction, and producing a coffee table book for the art world or something..

Any particular fan fiction genre?

I don’t know.. it could be Starwars, or it could be almost anything.. I mean, I haven’t explored all the different internet memes to find out what people are really into, but I guess I should be more of a fan of things..

I feel like that’s one of my downfalls is that I’m not a fan of things.. I don’t have tangible things that I’m really interested in because –

I know, I get jealous of artists who have really obvious fan ..

Predispositions?

Yeah, like someone like Stephen Shearer is an obvious one.. but I can’t just like, produce sci-fi, or space fan stuff, and have that be my thing.. like, I’m sort of fascinated by stuff like that, but at the same time I can’t invest myself in it in the way that some artists do.. like John Kleckner even has all these thematics, or like AIDS-3D have definite themes that sort of like, synchronize everything..

Yeah..

And without that kind of drive I kind of veer off into abstraction because I don’t want to represent anything in particular, like heavy metal, or black metal or something..

But it’s also that people will use whatever they’re a fan of as a framework to try to articulate what it is they’re really interested in.. what they’re interested in might not necessarily have anything to do with the aesthetics in the end, but the object becomes sort of a token of their passion, it could be anything..

I know, I haven’t read writing about it, but there must be people who’ve sort of articulated what’s happened in art in the last 20 years or so, like Christian Marclay, who’s work is sort of just all about music, and bands or whatever, because I don’t think it was ever like that, and it became a really dominant form in a way people produce work, by being fans..

I want to use the word “postmodernism” here..

I feel already that that’s not what I can do. I don’t want to make like, sample work, I don’t want to be a cultural DJ..

Haha.. I hate that phrase.. it’s the worst..

But someone like Christopher Williams is interesting, I think.. I don’t even totally know what it is that he does, but seeing his show in Vancouver was really unexpected.. it’s good when something grabs you but you don’t understand exactly..

What was the show of his in Vancouver?

He had like product photos of lenses –

Shot with that lens?.. or..

I don’t even know.. I don’t even care about conceptual tightness, I think that’s one of things that, for whatever reason, I really don’t feel any necessity to even approach. Like, the Simon Starling things where you have to loop everything into perfect circles of meaning or something.. I’m not after trying to force tightness onto things.. but it was just like, a photo of some Thai dancers, and some camera lenses, and the show made no sense in a way, but somehow it really affected me.. and he just made really beautiful product-photos - which is something that I’ve been trying to do better and better - and explore the dimensions of desire that these things are created to evoke..

When you’re producing product-photos do you think of them as like, works in themselves, or where the photo is also the product you can consume? Or is it just the aesthetics of desire?..

Yeah, it’s like all the facets of desire, and the different forms that desire can assume, like the different colours of desire.. like, there’s a certain colour the tablecloths have to be in a restaurant, or people aren’t going to get hungry and stuff like that.. there’s so many factors that are tweakable and that can create dissonance within a product. I think with Christopher Williams’ stuff they’re.. well, the other ones I’ve see is this woman with a yellow towel on her head, and there’s something about them that’s really strange.. Like the way they’re photographed is different, like, they’re different from a Sears catalogue or something. It’s like, taken to the extreme, this product desire, and then it’s a fairly generic woman, and the yellow towel was just this amazing yellow towel on her head, and.. I don’t know, it’s weird because I could probably see that in a catalogue and not be so drawn into it.. I’m not so independent from that kind of reception to think that I could just see a photograph in a catalogue and just be like “wow, that’s better than any Wolfgang Tillmans photograph I’ve ever seen”.. I totally require context to be able to identify art, I guess.

You were taking pictures of a lot of butts for a while, but the fashion stuff had this tension in that it was actually trying to undo that as well.. Like, it was trying to work against the desire.. you’d have this central object, but then the context that it was placed in would neutralize it to some degree.. or maybe not neutralize it, but it was definitely working against the sensual nature of the subject.. I remember the photo, for example, of this butt, and this messy room.. but the room wasn’t torn apart in this passionate way. There was just a sock or something, or a shoe in the corner, or a frumpy pillow tossed to the side, counteracting the sensuousness of the model.

Yeah, I mean, in that photo I was trying to make a Matisse ass, sort of just a sensual, Matisse thing, but one that was a total failure. But I think it’s good to set-up to do things that are going to inevitably result in failure. Like trying to make a work that you’ll never be able to do.. something like trying to make a fashion photo of a woman on a couch that’s trying to be a Matisse.. it’s just not going to work, and you’re going to be left with a sort of residual situation that has a new context, and new information. I think that’s a good strategy for making work. I don’t know, but trying to do the multiple breasted woman based on the Total Recall three breasted woman from Mars, and then trying to create that with a kind of Man Ray double exposure.. I was more happy with that.. but at the end they have something that’s sort of vulgar and that mixes with a totally classic and canonized beauty, and not just jamming the aesthetic.. Because you could do it digital and actually make a woman who actually has a bunch of breasts or whatever..

Yeah..

I mean, I haven’t been really focused, I haven’t thought specifically “this is the right medium to work with with this theme and in this context..” I haven’t really been predetermining all the factors, it’s been pretty loose, and a lot of it is fucked up, and I look back at things and realize that they could have been done way better. Like, I’ll just shoot black and white film because I like it, and it’s easy to expose or whatever, but then I realize “oh, I should’ve shot it with a just a cheap digital” and it would have made the project way better because those latent meanings would have been way more suited to the project. It’s really easy to fuck up a good idea because of just one step in the process.. I think it’s good to drain out aesthetic assumptions, if possible..

What do you mean?

I mean, working with Heji on photo stuff for example, she has predetermined aesthetic ideas, like she can look at photos and be like “this is a great photo, and this is a shit photo,” and she’s right about it, whereas I have a harder time making those aesthetic decisions. What I can do, maybe, is to not have a style, for example.. when you have a style you think “oh, well this is superior to all other things,” which is limiting, but also problematic. In order to do that you have to make assumptions about what sort of tastes are better than others.. you’re making sort of class allegiances, and so I think that the primo art-way to do that is to make works that change styles according to what the conditions are.. it’s going to result in different, abrasive meetings, and will be more jarring, or more problematic.. but at the same time I’m always getting jealous of everyone else’s practice. I want to just have that one thing I do, that one perfect thing, and just keep doing it..

But it seems really unfulfilling to do that.. what makes you jealous about it? Just that they’re able to continue producing something?

I don’t know.. I guess it’s that the artists I enjoy most looking at are all kind of like that.. when you look at Wolfgang Tillmans he’s just sort of doing his thing, it seems like he has an idea of what is beautiful or something, and how to achieve that, and there’s this unity across the board.

Earlier you were sort of talking about assuming the role of a designer.. like finding the best way of putting something together rather than searching for some sort of essence..

Well, it’d be cool to lock down a design and then just roll with it.. but I mean, I think that I just have to be one of the artists who’s not doing that. Because my natural tendency, like starting this eBay store --

Multiple eBay stores –

Right, multiple eBay stores, multiple aesthetics.. one to sell to these people, one really conservative and nationalist and racist –

Haha

.. and another design aesthetic for these people.. working-class moms will like this one here, a super urban-bourgeois art crowd will like this one here, and just produce stuff for all of them. But I don’t know, there’s the problem of cynicism and irony, but just trying to do something that’s totally beautiful would be really cool. But that’s the thing, is that everything is so class-contextualized and structured, that in order to do that you have to sort of just let go of any problems with it. If you have latent cynicism towards the kind of people who would buy this sort of picture, then in order to make that picture without irony you have to let go of all that baggage. Even with the VICE magazine photography it just becomes a cultural commodity that’s associated with a particular buying demographic, and it doesn’t seem like there’s enough to carry a person through a career anymore.. maybe it’s how fast things commodify and things shift that makes it hard to ally yourself with a particular, say, aesthetic or mode of production or something, and so many interesting artists are making work where they’re not tied down to one particular aesthetic, and their work seems to shift all the time. I mean, we were talking about Jack Goldstein, and I didn’t see the show, but him going through several shifts, like making one thing for the sixties or seventies, and then another thing for the eighties..

I think that he may have been pretty idealistic, and then the cynicism crept in at some point when he felt that he wasn’t making enough money or something.. and I think that maybe that’s a good strategy, or better than sticking to a single process, but in his case I don’t think there was a lot of sincerity..

…

yeah I don’t know..

I was just thinking how someone like Dash Snow inherits the Basquiat legacy, like downtown, eastside, New York artist, and Krebber gets the Kippenberger thing, and how people need that. That’s the story behind it. It’s necessary to be able to make sense of it. I mean, people think through myth. It’s the only way to understand.

Sure, it’s cause and effect..

And the way it happened too in Vancouver, like with Scott Macfarland, protegé of Jeff Wall, for example.. but, I mean, that’s one of the more frustrating things about art, how nothing can be explained without context, or the narrative of the scene is so important. Like, the difference between someone who was technically a member of Fluxus, and someone who just made work that could have been thought of as Fluxus-type work is so different. If you weren’t there, in New York, hanging out with Yoko Ono, then your work was not going to ever be able to attach to that context, and so it goes from the potential of having meaning and value, to never having the possibility of being meaningful to anyone. And that’s the hardest thing, I think, to try and negotiate, and the reason people get stuck doing the same work over.. maybe that they just get hung up on their scene context or something.. But we generally see it from the perspective of the artist, whereas there’s the perspective of the writer, someone who’s trying to comprehend it, that’s totally required. The consumer needs to have the context or the brand consistency to get behind the product.