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Andy SPECIAL wArhol

Antony And Charles AtlAs melAnie BonAjo BruCe lABruCe AndreA Crews JeAnne detAllAnte dirty proJeCTorS ConstAnt dullAart Koen hAuser Justus Kempthorne oliver lariC slAvA mogutin Aurel sChmidt Kyle tryhorn & Joff wouter VAndenBrinK mAriAnne Vierø Bill ViolA luKas wAssmann and eva maria Kuepfer GrAnt worth

Content Artworks

Andrea Crews — Clean Pussy Palace (A Place To Stay) Grant Worth— Dripping With Gold Marianne Vierø — He A Plant Aurel Schmidt — Fly Face Lukas Wassmann in collaboration with Eva Kuepfer Wouter Vandenbrink Oliver Laric — Skyping Andy Melanie Bonajo Kyle Tryhorn & JOFF — AKA Constant Dullaart — Andy Warhol belongs to Constant Dullaart Jeanne Detallante Justus Kempthorne Slava Mogutin — Stills from Superm Highway (NYC, 2006) Koen Hauser — Rebis III Bruce LaBruce Kyle Tryhorn & JOFF — Andy Darling Dirty Projectors — Warholian Wigs/Gilt Gold Scabs

Content Words

Warholian Worlds — Words by Theo Paijmans Other Voices, Other Rooms — a Second Life for Andy Warhol Interview with Eva Meyer-Hermann — by Mo Veld The lineage of sensory perception Interview with Bill Viola — by Theo Paijmans Turning Interview with Antony and Charles Atlas — by Renata Espinosa

October 20 - November 24 “OH GEE, HOW WONDERFUL“ portraits of Andy Warhol by: Steve Schapiro, Ron Galella, Bobby Grossman, Anton Perich, Carl Fischer, Thomas Hoepker, Burt Glinn and David mcCabe www.galeries.nl/wvl Galerie Wouter van Leeuwen, Hazenstraat 27, 1016 SM Amsterdam, Tel: + 31 6 520 315 40, wend@planet.nl

©OVER: Andy Warhol, Factory New York, 1965, Steve Schapiro, courtesy Galerie Wouter van Leeuwen, Amsterdam

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Warholian Worlds by Theo Paijmans

Take art away from man, and man will lose the one thing that animates our species with a glimpse of the divine. Take man away from art, and art becomes an artifact. A useless object to be pondered upon, perhaps by another civilization visiting our little planet from the stars, when we have all since long perished. Art and man. Man and art. The two, it seems, are inseparable. And sometimes that thin line fades, and man has become art. Andy Warhol is no longer with us, but many things have been written and said by and about him. Scholarly studies about the man and his art, memoirs of those who knew him and claim to have known him, a multitude of publications that fill the shelves of an entire library. Then there is the Warhol archive, a shrine for any Andy-aficionado, where the paper trails that surrounded his life, and that he carefully collected and amassed, are stored in rows upon rows of cardboard boxes. Enough, obviously, has been debated about who Warhol was, or about the carefully nurtured image - mirage or mystery - that he worked so tirelessly his entire life to present. But what is Warhol? What has he come to represent? To some the epitome of the shameless con-artist, ripping off ideas whenever his radar-eye spots them, ultimately resulting in much of the shallowness of 20th century art. To others, he represents a blank canvas of limitless possibilities, of the projection of energy, of the speed, blunt imagery and in-your-face approach of today’s Pop art. To each his own of course, and we doubt this division of opinions will vaporize anytime soon. However, when we embarked upon this special edition of Blend magazine in connection with his Other Voices, Other Rooms exhibit at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, we instinctively knew we would be given a rare opportunity to make an important statement about Warhol’s role and function in today’s world of art, music and fashion. We could say so much, inspired as we all are by great art. Our collaborator, the Stedelijk Museum, had the brilliant idea to solely focus on his corpus of films. For the first time, all of his films would be brought under one roof and would be the center of attraction. Warhol has a multifaceted oeuvre and indeed the situation is such that whole exhibits could be created about facets of the man’s work. Yet here are his films, in a time of MySpace and YouTube, of mpeg and avi, of streaming and downloading, of surveillance cameras, webcams and reality sitcoms, of digital formats and smart weapons with all-seeing eyes, of tell-sell and video gravestones. It seems that this particular achievement now has attained a momentum of its own and has gained a new significance. Would Warhol have agreed? I don’t know, of course, and it is arrogant to speak for the dead. Warhol did unveil Amiga’s Commodore A1000 home computer in 1985 in New York. During the show, Warhol used an Amiga to paint a portrait of Debbie Harry, well-known pop star of the day and lead singer of the rock group Blondie. Warhol also made a short digital film on the Amiga device. This was possible as the home pc had, for that time certainly, powerful audio and video capabilities. Entitled You Are The One, it was rediscovered in 2001 and it is arguably the first digital film made by an important artist. The film consists of 20 painted frames and was found on a floppy in Warhol’s estate. On another floppy the soundtrack was discovered. So it is still possible: thrilling discoveries can still be made. And in context with 5

this, there is room to wonder what use he would have made of current technologies. In 1986, a year after his multimedia unveiling of Amiga’s Commodore, an engineer from Commodore, who was working with Warhol for weeks on his new video for MTV admitted, when being asked if there was anything that Andy liked to talk about: “I don’t know… He doesn’t talk much. He doesn’t talk at all.” Warhol died a year later. During the initial brainstorm sessions one team member rightfully questioned the relevancy of it all if we would create a direct link to Warhol. As Warhol seemed so far ahead of his time in numerous disciplines, it would be anathema to revert that energetic current and in the process create a mausoleum, another stifled necrology. Warhol, then, as a metaphor for a worldview that exists today. From it we developed the parameters for a workable situation. The world-savvy cultural audiences and creators of today are very much part of this current, without all the intellectual ado that burdened some art movements in the past. With an admirable certainty, level headedness and self-consciousness it cuts and pastes, samples and mutates, stretches and elongates, hurtling a new creation in a gallery or on the web, where it begins that alchemical process anew. It may be sampled, saved, referred to, dissected or redefined to another format. Culture is born out of the desire to create and these days the quest for individuality is only hampered by certain media, quick to always define great cultural expressions and initiatives to death by defining these as movements. Have we fallen in the same trap, by asking several artists for their inspired and original contributions for this project? That, by bringing together a collection of this inspired art based on the Warholian worldview, we might face the inherent danger of delineating it somehow, no matter how vague and circumstantial as a movement? We think not. Each artist is an artist in his or her own right, as you’ll read in the intros. And in the case of the interviews, with Bill Viola who is the greatest video artist of the world, we do not discuss Warhol at all. Yet owing to Viola’s magnificent insight, we get a rare opportunity to place Warhol’s cinematic endeavors in the context of the history of experimental film. Then there is the immensely exciting interview with Eva Meyer-Hermann that has as its backdrop the realms of possibilities that current-day media and technology would have given Warhol to express his world in even more unforeseen directions. This special edition then is a collectible to cherish. A magazine to be shamelessly torn apart for a mood board on a creative afternoon. Or a treat that allows you to become inspired by others who have been so very inspired. I thank all who have worked so hard on bringing this special edition to a beautiful conclusion and wish the purveyors well on their journey in Warholian worlds. Theo Paijmans, Editor in chief, Blend magazine theo@blend.nl

Photography: Josie Sykes 足/ Suburbia Styling: Richard Schreefel / Angelique Hoorn Hair & Make-Up: Danine Zwets / Angelique Hoorn Model: Isabella Oets / Elite

October 18, 1973 Andy Warhol at Jimmy´s Disco © Ron Galella, courtesy galerie Wouter van Leeuwen, Amsterdam

Other Voice. Other Rooms — a Second Life or Andy Warhol Interview with Eva Meyer-Hermann by Mo Veld

Let’s indulge in a little all too human temptation and imagine Andy Warhol didn’t die from complications after a routine gall bladder operation on February 22, 1987. Let’s just say he went shopping. That’s what Warhol said he always thought when somebody died: they just went to the shopping mall. So Andy Warhol is alive and among us and we read his minutely kept blog every day. Some of us will try anything to get invited on his MySuperstars online community where Paris Hilton is queen of the day - Warhol would make us think she’s actually super cool. Naturally, he is the king of YouTube, would very likely have masterminded the open source theory, killed copyright all together, and he’d still be launching übercool bands via his Second Life Factory. Like Karl Lagerfeld, Andy Warhol would still look remarkably well preserved for his age and lifestyle, and he’d probably have a few clones ready in the freezer. Would he be stalking Michel Houellebecq today, like he did with Truman Capote? There’s something very troubling about this fantasy scenario, no matter how far you take it. The truth is that although we very much live Andy Warhol’s Pop heritage today - mixing high and low culture, reproducing everything we want at our kitchen table, and launching ourselves as the proverbial 15-minute stars with our web cams and avatars - it is unthinkable that he would snuggly rub shoulders with all of us. Andy Warhol was a genius, the most influential artist of his time, and he would still be revolutionary today. How come? Now that is an interesting question. Who would Andy Warhol be today? Or better yet, who is Andy Warhol today? German curator EVA Meyer-Hermann put together the big Andy Warhol show Other Voices, Other Rooms at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. It is the second big Warhol show at the Stedelijk Museum, following the first big Warhol show in Europe forty years ago. To say that putting together such a show is an enormous undertaking, would be an understatement. I wonder what EVA thinks of my silly, troubled thoughts, and what she did to make us come and look at Warhol’s all too familiar work. So I run my intro by her.

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Andy Warhol, Henry Geldzahler, 1964 16mm film, black-and-white, silent, 99 minutes at 16 frames per second © 2007 Collection The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved

Andy Warhol, Sleep, 1963 16mm film, black-and-white, silent, 5 hours 21 minutes at 16 frames per second © 2007 Collection The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved

Andy Warhol, The Chelsea Girls, 1966 16mm film, black-and-white and color, sound and silent, 3 hours 24 minutes in double screen © 2007 Collection The Andy Warhol Museu;m, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved

EVA: Well, that’s an interesting point to start with. How well do people know him? How do they use him? He was always someone that people projected things onto. People today have certain clichéd views on Warhol. MO: Which he created... EVA: Of course, he was a genius at that. But would he still be revolutionary today? He was generally very creative, doing things other people didn’t do. But if he were still alive and would just repeat and continue what he had done, he would not be considered revolutionary anymore. Maybe it is better to ask ourselves what he would be doing now. I am not a clairvoyant, but maybe he would be doing watercolors. MO: Andy Warhol was a very intelligent person, and even though he always denied it, he obviously had an opinion or philosophy about the world in his time. I am pretty sure he would have something to say about the current overload of mediocrity. These days everybody wants to be famous... EVA: Maybe if we go a bit deeper we will find Warhol there. Indeed, everybody wants to be famous, but why is that? Maybe it is human nature. Maybe we are fed up with the world’s complex and hard-to-grasp mechanisms, from gene technology to very complex global economics in which the individual no longer has a say. We are no longer able to figure out how the world functions, and so we go back to these very human aspects and look at people. That is something we still understand in this whole crazy virtual world, this computer world where everybody thinks they live in one village. Although, we don’t live in one village. We still live apart from each other. MO: It goes deeper than that: these days we have second lives. We live via the media. EVA: And that is a fantasy world. Because there’s no real human contact. We lost that ability. MO: But Andy Warhol said it all. He said that if he could follow all the important parties on monitors at home he would not go out every night like he did. And that he stopped caring about close relationships when he got TV. He said we live through movies because they tell us what to feel and how to act. I find that very depressing and scary because it became reality, I guess.

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EVA: Yes, but I think that with everything Warhol did - and this is actually the thesis of the show - he exposes the human core, and that is what makes his work still relevant today and worth looking at. With Other Voices, Other Rooms we want to show what lies underneath the surface. Everybody knows the famous surface quote: “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” But it’s good to take a look behind and ask why? What was his opinion about people and life? He used certain strategies and reproduced the lives around him to show that opinion. He allowed things to be created on their own and by doing so those things or people showed themselves. The medium that is most appropriate for this is film. Because film requires time. Time from the actors and time from the viewer. Warhol just had a camera there and over time they simply reveal themselves. Even in a screen test of four minutes you can see that somebody can’t keep up a manufactured image. It’s very obvious in the film with Geldzahler, which is one of my favorites. Henry Geldzahler, Warhol’s friend and curator at the Metropolitan Museum, visited Warhol at the Factory and he did a screen test with him, a long screen test. Warhol let him sit on a sofa for one hour. So Geldzahler sits down, lights a cigar, sits erect, and is very much the Metropolitan Museum’s curator. But try to sit still in a sofa for an hour and do nothing besides smoking and looking at a camera. After twenty minutes you will fall apart! Your back aches, you forget about the fact that you are the curator of the Metropolitan, you begin to be human. This film is a stroke of genius. It taught me a lot about Warhol. I realized that Warhol didn’t have to do that much, he just filmed it. He even went away at one point and let the camera run. MO: I experience the same thing when I look at portraits made of Andy Warhol. I have some in front of me by famous photographers like Richard Avedon and Robert Mapplethorpe. I see that first of all Andy Warhol is a piece of art, an image created by Andrew Warhola. When I look in his eyes I see vulnerability, insecurity, I don’t know what it is... EVA: Sadness also..

MO: Exactly, like he is very disillusioned and always doubting everything, even himself. What was he looking for in his life? He was such a workaholic, always working. Even when he wasn’t working, when he was doing everyday things like shopping, he was also working, dictating everything he did to his secretary and making a book out of it - the best selling The Andy Warhol Diaries. Going out to parties was also work, all part of this art work called Andy Warhol. He had a very manic streak... EVA: I am not a psychologist but I think that like every other human being on earth he wanted to make sense. And coming from a poor family, like Warhol did, making sense in America means being successful and making money. Maybe in Europe that is different, even a poor thinker can be a very successful human being. In America it’s much more of a material thing. Don’t forget that early on, Warhol was also very successful as an illustrator. He bought his first house at that time. And then came his success as an artist. But maybe in the end you find out that everything is ending. This whole death issue in his work is crucial. Maybe that’s the sadness that we see in his eyes. MO: Did death become a topic after the shooting incident with that SCUM Valerie Solanas? EVA: No, it was there even before the shooting. The Death and Disaster paintings date back much earlier. Death is also present in a beautiful Marilyn Monroe portrait, of which we have ten different versions in the show. They are colorful, but when the lip sits a bit to the side of the actual lips, you see the superficiality that couldn’t prevent her from dying. It’s all about death in the end. And death is the only thing you can’t reproduce. MO: Andy Warhol said a lot of things about life as well. Like how important it is to learn how to live because life is very short. And that you should not wait around for time to change things but actually change things yourself. He had this weird thing with sex as well, like not doing it is better then doing it. To me he is just much more romantic than he wanted us to believe – Warhol: “I love plastic. I want to be plastic.“ and “The things I want to show are mechanical. Machines have less problems.” A lot of his work just has a very poetic quality to me.

EVA: Yes, that is also my reading of him. It’s interesting that you see him like that, a lot of people don’t go that deep. MO: I just feel that Andy Warhol needs to be looked at in a fresh light. In an honest and curious light. Everybody thinks they know Andy Warhol because they know the soup cans and the record sleeves and the Chelsea Girls and the Velvet Underground... EVA: How to do just that was actually the big question for our show at the Stedelijk. MO: So how did you do that? EVA: By placing the films in the center. Warhol’s vision needs to be refreshed. This also has something to do with the attention span of the viewers. If they see Campbell’s Soup Can, they see it for a fraction of a second and then think they know it. But film requires time. Other Voices, Other Rooms offers people the opportunity to spend a bit more time with Warhol’s work. Warhol said that looking at the films also leaves you with time for yourself. That’s why a film of someone sleeping for five hours could never be boring. We built a huge landscape - a filmscape of nineteen films that will simultaneously be shown on loop on screens that are hanging in the rooms and on the walls. You can walk around and linger for a while. You can sit there for five hours, but you can also go away and come back. It’s total freedom for the visitor. In this show you can go see whatever you are interested in, but of course it will take you time. This is also why we set up the Andy Warhol Club. We wanted to offer visitors the possibility to make the exhibition their home and come back whenever they want to, without having to pay a second time. Conceptually, the show is built around the moving image. We also have a theatre for those films that are not suitable for a loop. All in all, we show 27 films, which is a huge retrospective. Then you also have the possibility to see all 42 television episodes he did. And you can choose to only see the episode with Brooke Shields or the Sex Pistols. You can flip between the channels, just like you would at home. There will also be very unknown early videos by Warhol, kind of trials for television, a bridge between his films in the sixties and his later television episodes.

And then there’s this huge area, the so called Cosmos of Andy Warhol. There you have all the media: drawings, photos of and by Andy Warhol, his papers, Factory video diaries, audio recordings, LP sleeves, his magazine Interview, a time capsule, paintings, prints, you name it. It was very important to me to have everything kind of on the same level. There’s a whole section devoted only to the LP sleeves, also very unknown ones from the fifties. So here we come back to the beginning of our talk. In everything you will see how he is driven to go to the core of the human. MO: I really look forward to seeing all that film material. Warhol moved more and more towards film and eventually even TV, saying film is more real than real life. I find that fascinating and scary at the same time, since we see so much moving images today and don’t even realize this anymore. And today everything is cut so fast, which is a shame because I love slow movies. Maybe I am just getting old... EVA: A lot of his films from the early sixties were actually slowed down, not filmed in slow motion but done in the actual twenty-four frames per second, but then they were projected in sixteen frames per second. It makes you stare a bit longer. But later his television shows were more fast cut to keep people’s attention. So he is also partly responsible for that. You know, there’s this notion that Warhol films are boring. They’re not boring at all, but you have to see a lot of them. MO: Andy said he loved boring things. EVA: If you are really open to looking at them, boring things will make you think. We will have a time counter which tells you what minute of the film you are watching, so you have an idea of time. MO: Smart move... EVA: I am just very curious to see how young people will perceive the show. In terms of overkill of material it is perfect. It’s almost not possible for someone to digest that much material. I confess to EVA that I was never a huge Warhol fan because of what he stands for, the image he created, what he wanted to make us believe, the surface thing. But the genius of Andy Warhol is that he confronts you with exactly that. It is mind boggling that he masterminded the

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whole strategy that resulted in his massive success. Or was it all genuinely autonomous? I can’t figure it out. EVA: He was definitely a genius when it came to promoting himself. Inventing the right things, following the right things, and choosing the right things. He was a very charismatic person, in a very strange way. He was always the alpha person. He was so shy and not very talkative, but always the alpha, always in the center, even if he didn’t say much. Nobody really knows who he was because he really didn’t let people get close to him, even people he worked with for fifteen years. It’s a nice idea to look behind his surface, but he still remains an enigma. A puzzle that I can’t solve, I can only present this and raise these questions. This was my ambition for the show, to open up a new perspective. MO: I personally like Guy Debord more, but now I realize that Andy Warhol and his fame and success has taught us more. He obviously had a bigger effect on the world. EVA: I am also a fan of Guy Debord’s theories, but I like what artists have done starting from there. They show us surfaces and make us believe in the surface like for example Paul McCarthy, he is all about The Spectacle. Because by doing that, they actually show us that there is more than just the surface. An artist creates art that tells us something. I think every artist does it out of this existential feeling. It’s the task of a good show to communicate that, so that people will feel that and take it into their own world. And maybe for younger people it could mean that they decide to end their second life and start doing water colors in nature with a group of friends. Who knows? I think this spirit of the sixties, and the rediscovering of it, could be an issue. It could tell us something. Warhol: “During the sixties, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don’t think they’ve ever remembered.”

Andy Warhol, Empire, 1964 16mm film, black & white, silent, 8 hours 5 minutes at 16 frames per second © 2007 Collection The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved

Andy Warhol, Mario Banana No.1, 1964 16mm film, color, silent, 4 minutes at 16 frames per second © 2007 Collection The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved

Andy Warhol, Blow Job, 1964 16mm film, black-and-white, silent, 41 minutes at 16 frames per second © 2007 Collection The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved

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ANDREA CREWS

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GRANT WORTH

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MARIANNE VIERO

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LUKAS WASSMANN — Eva Kuepfer

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WOUTER VANDENBRINK

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The lineage of sensory perception Interview with Bill Viola by Theo Paijmans

To the world, Bill Viola is one of the great video artists. Meet him in person and he comes across as a humble man, radiating a sense of peace, harmony, and balance. This is a man in tune with himself and the infinite, which might well explain why his art always affects people so deeply. Confronted with his video installations, people sometimes begin to cry spontaneously. Others experience different emotions. You don’t simply watch Viola’s work, you experience it. It’s almost as a rite, a mystical experience that conjures up emotions and feelings that were thought to be long lost, deeply buried or forgotten. Viola’s work unveils a secret. It has a nostalgia that grips the soul and makes you aware of the fact that within each individual there is that divine spark that wants to reach out to the universe. That wants to embrace it, wants to understand. Mend what is broken, care for it. I have twice had the honor of meeting Bill Viola and his wife and collaborator, Kira Perov. Once in London and once in Rotterdam during the Gergiev Festival, where Viola’s work was shown in conjunction with Wagner’s Tristan performance. In London we dined at the seventh floor of the Tate Modern after his talk there, which coincided with the opening of his exhibition at Haunch of Venison gallery. A select coterie gathered inside a dining room with wonderful ceiling-to-floor glass walls. The city of London sprawled beneath, shimmering with light, with iridescent possibility, with angles and curves and trenches of movement: a bewildering maze of ancient masonry and modernistic architecture. The dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral was still visible amidst the horizon of high-rise buildings that have come to dominate the city’s skyline in recent years. The power of Viola’s pure art is such that one of his invitees was the Archdiocese of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Viola engaged in a conversation with the robed priest, looking as if they had been friends for a long time. And who knows, they might have well been. At another occasion, Viola met the Dalai lama. This assured me that, as long as great minds meet at unexpected places, there is still hope for this world.

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A: I have been working with so-called advanced technology for 35 years. In a way all technology is advanced technology, right? Take this chair you are sitting on right now. To Palaeolithic man that would have been a futuristic device, you know? [laughs] As would have this cup of water. Instead of holding your hands in the stream to drink, you now have this cup or bowl – that’s all advanced technology. So the notion of advanced technology or high-tech and low-tech is really very relative, it’s totally dependent on historical time, chronological time. In the short period of time that I have been working with this stuff - 35 years is not long in the larger scheme of things I have seen the technology develop quite dramatically. As you get older you begin to see patterns instead of just individual objects. And so now I’m beginning to see a consistent development, a move away from the manual manipulative mode of handling objects to a much more conceptual mode of manipulating symbols that represent objects. Take for example scientists who study global warming. The vast majority of them are sitting somewhere at a desk. They’re not out in the Arctic. They do their fieldwork, but then they come back and the real work happens on computers where they make very advanced models. And so now many people feel that the models are actually just as accurate and useful as going out into the real world. Everything is dependent on the data you gather, so the gathering of data is critical. But the interpretation and processing of that data does not happen when you’re standing out there. It’s similar to the way in which our bodies gather data: the information comes in through our senses in the live-now moment, but in actual fact we don’t really understand and interpret it until after the perception. Then you realize what you saw and you begin to think about what it means. So meaning and narrative are created after the event. When you’re in the middle of climbing the mountain, there’s no narrative. The narrative comes after you get down, when you’re back in the lodge and people ask you what has happened. That’s a narrative. We’re living in this kind of increasingly narrative-interpretive space where computers function as a kind of information-processing machine, not an information-gathering machine. A tool that actually gives us an insight into the functioning of the world in a symbolic, almost philosophical dimension as opposed to a perceptual dimension.

Q: Do you think that because of this new technology the function and essence of our myths will also change?   A: That’s a very good question, but I really don’t have an answer to that one. I think that myths are timeless and eternal and that they will always be there. They’ll be told in digital form instead of text form, but they’ll continue to tell this kind of human story. I don’t believe that computers are somehow inhuman or make us less human. I mean, I use technology in what I hope and think is a humanistic way, but it’s the same technology that the Pentagon uses to bomb Iraq, you know? So, I think it’s really more about the individual maker rather than the actual machines. I can kill you with this cup here if I wanted to..   Q: Or you could save my life…   A: Or I could save your life. So, as far as our myths go, those are stories that reside within human beings themselves, they will emerge and come out and it’s not coincidental that the people who have studied myths very carefully – I think of Carl Jung as one of the main people – realized that these stories were being told by cultures that never even had contact with each other. Jung was finding myths in African villages that never really had connection to other cultures, yet the stories were very similar to some of the European and Norse myths. He concluded that the stories don’t reside out there, but they reside in here, in the structure of the brain, the structure of the senses and the body, and that people in separate places will eventually develop very similar stories, not identical, but similar kinds of patterns. The mandala is one example that he used a lot, you will find that in almost every culture.   Q: Could you say then that the biological body serves as an interface or the technology for the revelation of that what resides in us? Looking at your work and the emotional reaction it triggers, could we conclude that you touch the very same essence, the building bricks of what myths mean to us?   A: I don’t really know. I try not to think about that because I think self-consciousness is one of the most dangerous developments in the inner life of the artist and unfortunately you see it happen a lot. In this media age the whole idea of self-consciousness is so amplified. People are more concerned with how they appear

to others than how they feel, which is the most essential thing. From when I was really young, I have always been interested in root systems, in the underground level of things. That probably all goes back to the time when I was young and fell into the lake. I almost drowned and I saw this amazing underwater world. I was six years old and just thought it was the most beautiful, amazing thing I had ever seen. Ever since that time I have been aware of the fact that what we are seeing, that which meets the eye, is just the surface of something much deeper. And of course that’s a very common thing for many people, we all have some sense of it. The concept of God is one of the main idea systems that we have to express this feeling that there is more to the experiential moment than we are getting. I just happened to be born at a time when this technology started to really take off. I went to university in the late sixties, early seventies. The post-war era was a time of major technological, social and indeed cultural development. There was a major rebirth of the Western world. Now, if we could just take a moment and trace what I believe to be the lineage of media artists – and in that I include photographers, filmmakers, and video artists – our lineage goes back, for me, to a very specific time. It goes back to the early 16th century. In 1520, Robert Hooke became the first human being to see the microscopic world. His microscope allowed him to see the skin of an onion, which he had cut very thinly. He shone a light through it and saw all these little structures. He recognized right away that they were organic structures – because he was cutting an onion – he also recognized right away that they were highly organized, not chaotic and random, which in that day and age indicated the presence of God. And also he named them after a spiritual idea. He named them ‘cells’ because he was thinking of the cells of the monks in the monasteries, which are all lined up in little square boxes, and that’s where the word ‘cell’ comes from, which is pretty amazing [laughs]. Then after that you had Galileo, the first human being to see the macro-cosmos, to see the moons of Jupiter, which were never even thought of before then. And in the same way that today some people still doubt whether media art is truly art when compared to painting and sculpture, the church fathers doubted that this mechanical device called the telescope - which they associated with workers, dirty work, manual work and 40

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anything involving tools and hammers - could ever get into the divine world. So that controversy is still with us, but I think that those two technologies, when you think about it, are technologies that extend the senses into realms they hadn’t been in before. And the most important thing about these discoveries and developments is that the people who are really concerned about this technology and anti-technology - and even the people who are involved with it - don’t understand that the technology isn’t the point. I mean, right now you and I don’t need to have Robert Hooke’s microscope while walking around in the streets of London in order to know that there are microscopic organisms here. So the true goal of all this technology of the senses is to allow us to see, to hear, to touch deeper and further. And that’s where the lineage of the video artist, the media artist comes in, it’s the lineage of sensory perception expanded. We don’t need to keep carrying around the microscopes that prove that this stuff is about knowledge. Ultimately it’s about knowledge. When the knowledge is gained, you don’t need the tools.

Q: And would you say that it’s not so much a question of gaining knowledge, since it has always been here, but of rediscovering the knowledge residing inside you, and that media art is one way to achieve that?   A: Yes.   Q: Your work has a very strong mythical and emotional dimension, it mirrors what is inside of you... Is that your artistic drive?   A: Yes, one of the main things I’m interested in is awareness, more specifically increasing our awareness. And ideally that is what a camera does, in a very fundamental way. It’s like a microscope, it’s an instrument that basically doesn’t open out onto the whole world, it actually closes down most of the world. It just let’s you see the world through a concentrated channel of sight. So it is an intensification of vision, like a microphone is an intensification of hearing. The intensification happens by screening out a whole bunch of stuff. It’s like drugs that create tunnel vision: they shut you down and intensify something in a narrow channel and make a concentrated form. So it becomes very powerful when it’s reproduced later in a playback situation in a room, which is designed for people to experience as little distractions

as possible. It’s basic cinema: the seats are soft, the room is dark. It’s the oddest situation, especially for people from hundreds of years ago, they would be shocked that you could be in a place where you’re with a group of strangers and you don’t even know what they look like. You don’t even know they’re there. And if they acknowledge that they’re there by coughing or talking, you get angry at them. That is really bizarre, yet you are together…[laughs]. Together anonymously. Totally antisocial, but you’re all looking at this image which in itself is a narrow, tiny, little tube of reality, created by the filmmaker. And it is very powerful to get all human eyes to be focused on the same point of view, from a single lens, a single optical system. That was what Brunelleschi invented in the early 15th century. He invented the camera type image, the optical image, by limiting everything down to a little hole in a piece of wood, which is how he showed everybody the baptistery in Florence and his picture of the baptistery in Florence which was identical. And they only coincided - the real image and the painted image that he made on the back of the wood that you saw - by putting a mirror behind the wood. The people in the early 15th century were shocked. They thought they had seen some kind of 3D hologram or something. They were just blown away. It could only happen by forcing people to be in this one position. That was a big step, that’s not God’s position. He made the dominant position man’s position, which is just one point of view, my point of view, instead of the omnipresent view, which is in the whole of the medieval works before the Renaissance, and which doesn’t have that kind of narrow perspective. So he just channeled it down, which is a very powerful way of seeing.

Q: What is your opinion, as a media artist, on the First Gulf War when the media was given all these images of rockets destroying buildings? Where you astonished or shocked that technology can also be used for evil or destructive means?   A: I thought that was pretty shocking, actually. But at the same time I understood what was really happening. Technology is not like these chairs we’re sitting on or the planes I fly when I go home to California. Once it went visual, once these things started to have display screens that didn’t just display numbers like the old original Microsoft MS-Dos system did, but pictures, you’re in the domain of language. In other words, it is not a functional tool like a

hammer, which you use with your muscle power to knock a nail in a piece of wood. It’s a very distinctly different kind of technology that has in itself a kind of eye. It has perceptual information in it and it gives us that information through these display screens. And so when they put that stuff on the air – first of all, they are totally aware of what they are doing because they are not stupid people, they’re very smart – they knew that especially young males would be really fascinated with this stuff. They were aware that it would be cool, like a movie, to see things blow up and to see the displays and so on. And people are using that exact same technology today in their home computers.

Q: What then is the role of a video artist in this current world full of technology compared to 35 years ago?   A: When you make images, you have much more responsibility. It’s huge because we’re not in contact with the actual object anymore. In ancient times there were two concepts of vision, one was the extra mission theory that some kind of themes of energy, spirit matter, went out from the eyes to touch something and that’s how we could see things. So vision as a sense of touch. And the other competing theory was one in which the objects themselves were emitting these kinds of rays that come into your eye. Personally, I think both are true [laughs]. I don’t think that I can see something without being drawn to it in some way. Part of me goes out to touch it. I think that the idea of touch related to vision is very important. It’s also true, there are photons flying all over the place right here in this courtyard we’re in and they’re actually little things coming into our eyes that stimulate our retinas: it’s pretty powerful.  You can look at things in two ways. You can say that the human eye developed because there was light, but it’s like, why did a thorn develop on a bush? Because there were animals that were going to eat the bush? To protect itself? Or did it just grow this stuff from outside itself to have another structure on its stem? You can look at the eye as a condensation of the environment into a form that was designed to receive light, which already existed. So the light itself in the world caused us to have eyes. Our eyes didn’t evolve independently from that. It’s a completely symbiotic relationship. 41

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Q: Do you consider light as information or rather revelatory in nature? The essence of light?   A: That’s a very profound area. I am reading a book now called ‘The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience,’ which is edited by Matthew T. Kapstein and it’s basically an anthology of various writings from all sorts of traditions: Zoroastrian, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism. Not hardcore science, but a lot of the major world religions’ writing on light. It’s pretty interesting. Light is revelatory. It allows us to see, to touch things. Light is invisible. It is only visible when it hits something. So outer space is filled with light from all these stars. But it is black because the light is not hitting anything. Which is exactly like God, he is invisible, he is everywhere and we only see him when he hits someone or touches our hearts. I have always been interested in the invisible side of light. To me the most boring thing to do, is take a camera out in the midday sun and shoot something. I can’t stand it, it seems so simplistic, so obvious [laughs]. I have always worked at twilight, I like to work at night with night vision cameras. I use telescopic cameras to see something miles away that you can’t see with your eye. I have used a little bit of macro cameras. I made a piece with a drop of water in 1976 in which the camera was focused in on this drop and if you looked closely in the drop you saw yourself and the room you were in. You were imaged in this drop of water and projected on a big screen. I have always liked to work around the edges of things.   Q: Does this also touch the saying that God is in all and everything? This reminds me of a short story by writer Jorge Louis Borges called El Aleph in which a person describes a certain point in which he sees everything that is happening in the world at the same time. You have researched and read a lot – were you often struck by similarities in thought in these things by other artists and writers?   A: These things exist because they are latent in the world around us. They are not our property. I mean, you can have a revelation or an idea about something or a realization, but the whole notion of discovery indicates - even in the word itself - that it is not something that is unprecedented or new, it is an uncovering or a revealing of something that already exists, or a relationship that already existed, but that we didn’t notice before.   44

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Q: These days a kid of 14 might have more general knowledge than the combined scientists of the 14th century together. Yet, where is the progression level of mankind in total?   A: If you read the ancient texts I think you realize that certainly over the last few thousands of years, people haven’t really progressed that much. Materially, yes, Western culture is the culture of the mastery of the material world. Tibetan culture is the culture of the mastery of the immaterial world, the metaphysical world, as is Indian culture. But in terms of the inner nature of human beings, we have not progressed that much. If you read the Iliad or the Odyssey, when they are sitting in the room trying to debate what to do, it’s haunting, the words are haunting, they have the same moral and ethical dilemmas, the same concerns, they are arguing about things in the same way that we do and it is not just that you are reading a modern translation of it. And I think there are scientists, like neurologist Antonio Damasio, who study these things and recognize that in this media age, human beings change emotionally. Many people have done things they regret, things that their rational mind convinced them they needed to do, but that they later regret. At the time they were doing it, these people reported feeling like something wasn’t right, but they did it anyway. And that is that deep unconscious level. Damasio’s work shows that what we call the unconscious is actually a part of our brain that is completely in touch with all aspects of our body and is reading the state of our inner organs and the state of the body. It is getting these messages and is interpreting them in some way, they kind of rise to the surface and we experience them as feelings. Not just feelings like being hurt or cold, but a feeling like ‘this doesn’t feel right to me, there’s something wrong in this situation.’ Damasio and others have shown that we as human beings are not evolving as fast as technology is. This is a very serious thing.  It takes a long time. It has taken a huge amount of time in evolutionary history to put those structures in place in the body, and we’re just shooting high-speed right now with this stuff, all these messages flying at us. Sure, young kids are able to multiplex.

My son has the radio on, while he’s doing his homework, and while he’s talking to his friends on his cell phone. It’s amazing, I can’t do that. But in larger evolutionary terms that’s very slow. The changes are very slow.

Q: Are there forces at work that go with a certain purpose, that in the end the material and immaterial worlds meet and will evolve into something higher?   A: Yes, I am totally convinced that we’re on an evolutionary track in which the material and spiritual will join. I am absolutely convinced of that. Even right now, the way we think in our brains, the duality of it – ‘I like that, I don’t like that.’ Buddhists have an exercise for pupils to walk around and look at things and label them good, bad or neutral. They teach them to do that because we do that unconsciously all the time, which is the cause of a huge amount of problems in the world, usually because we’re actually very bad at determining what is really good for us. The process of discerning these three categories, which we do unconsciously all the time, involves a very high degree of error.   Q: Almost like the binary computer language…   A: Yes, it is like the binary computer language… Q: Like technology evolved out of our Western materialistic state of being…   A; You know what, that is a beautiful thing you just said. I never thought of that. That’s wonderful! What is a computer? A computer is something that can only say yes or no…that sucks! What about maybe? I am a maybe kind of guy [laughs]. Maybe for me is the beauty of life, it’s like the space between, it’s twilight. So we have all these machines all over the world and all they can do is say yes or no, they’re not poets. It is a very amazing system in that sense, ones or zeroes. The maybe is the movement. The maybe is: you can be this person and that person, we’re multiple persons. You know that joke about the guy with the MPD? If he decides to shoot himself, is that a hostage-taking situation? [laughs] It is that maybe space of transition, transformation. Transformation is the essential property of human life. All the cells in the human body will be replaced within seven years. You’re literally not the same physical person, we live through death, the act of dying. Kumaraswami, the great Sri Lankan art historian who influenced me tremendously, said

all creative acts are a kind of dying. It’s beautiful. Even the French call the orgasm that creates human life petite mort. That’s a real deep connection between the part of you that has to be dying and the part of you that has to be born, constantly. And that is who you are, a being that is constantly transforming. Bob Dylan said that the artist must be in a constant state of becoming. You must be that. We all see artists who stop that process and then the same painting keeps coming out. And that’s totally different than say someone like Richard Long who has a very focused oeuvre. In the hands of a lesser artist that would just get boring, but Long’s work actually gains strength over time. He’s doing these walks over and over and over again. And people don’t go ‘oh no, not another walk,’ which they would do with another artist that is not as great is he is. Why? Because he took the more difficult path of the focusing and the intensification of this one direction. And he did it with such conviction, authenticity and honesty, that every work I see of his just gets better and better. It’s profound.

Q: Were you able to convey all this to a person like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails with whom you worked?   A: Trent’s a really interesting person. I didn’t spend a huge amount of time with him. We had a couple of long phone conversations and I hung out with him a little bit when they were beginning their tour for the project I worked on in 2000. He’s an artist, he really is. He’s a showman and he’s a pop star and he runs a very tight ship. I have seen him in the middle of intense performances. The honesty is almost brutal with him. So searing… We were out on rehearsal a year and a half ago, when they were going for their current tour and working on their new material “With Theeth”. We went to one of the last rehearsals before they hit the road with the new band. I went to a couple of rehearsals. The first one I went to, he was there with his laptop. He was stopping everybody every five minutes and he was tweaking and honing it. It was like watching an artist at work. When you finally get into the artist’s studio, when you’re granted that privilege to see them working, it’s actually quite boring. It’s really totally boring [laughs]. You see some guy needling away at some little detail trying to get it right, cause not only is the devil in the details, the angel is in the details as well. The difference between great art and mediocre art 45

is not in the big picture, it’s in the details. It’s what Kaspar David Friedrich did, that 18th very subtle wash on his painting in order to get the atmospheric depth. Someone else did just four and thought that was enough. So it’s really about details and Trent is working on that level. We went back the last night before they went on the road and he just let it loose. There were about twenty people in the room and he just let it loose and it was just so intense and it was so real. He was just completely wasted. He just poured the stuff out of him. And then I’ve seen him on stage in the middle of this massive arena concert and he’s doing these bloodcurdling, deeply emotional things and I see him turn over and indicate to the guy that something was out of whack in the sound. So, part of him is like lost in this seething sea of turning emotions and at the same time part of him is watching over the whole thing. And I think great artists do that. Losing yourself is absolutely necessary. I think falling and splattering paint stuff is still a form of technique in its random chaos. It’s really tricky, but the best artists really are partly out of themselves and partly in themselves. They’re performing a beautiful balancing act on the tightrope, which allows them to negotiate this very dangerous zone of either getting so self-absorbed that people are completely disconnected from their work or getting so selfconscious that everybody senses the ego and not the art.

Q: You have practiced Zen Buddhism and are clearly influenced by Buddhist writings and concepts. Does Buddhism help you achieve this mode of operation?   A: Yes, I definitely think it can help in terms of self-knowledge. When you sit in zazen, in terms of Zen, which Kira and I practiced with a Zen teacher in the early eighties, you’re just sitting and being still. ‘Doing nothing’ is a very profound, and in today’s world an increasingly essential, thing to do. I think in the presence of a teacher it’s even better, you can ask questions and you get some guidance. When you shut up your mind and when it keeps chattering away and you keep trying to focus and it keeps chattering and you think you’ve had a bad meditation…   Q: Isn’t it funny that at the same time that you learn that, you can’t automatically control your own mind?   46

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A; Yes, and the reason why that is so important now is that we have mastered the world technologically. We know what the deep bottom of the ocean looks like, we know what the surface of the moon looks like, we have been there, we know what all the planets look like, we know what the earliest stars and the formation of the beginning of the universe looks like, we have been in the microscopic level, we have been in the macroscopic level, we have mastered time and space, I can make a phone call with anybody on the planet right now. It’s just phenomenal what we have been able to do. On my computer I can get access to the great libraries of the world, it’s just astonishing. But we have not even touched the surface of the nature of our minds.

Q: Is that what you said about having all these great communications delivery systems, yet the messages that we send across them are often so shallow?   A: They are all commercially based. It’s expensive to develop that kind of technology. In the economic system that we have today, they will have to regain the cost of those investments so they have to charge a lot of money for all this stuff. I think this stuff is way overpriced. Spending 2000 dollars on a pc? That’s ridiculous! Telephone is pretty reasonable, but then they get you because you’re paying for the service. In America the new education system is all science and math. When they’re 12, 13 years old, kids are getting science and math, they’re getting the logical analysis of reading a text and analyzing it. But if you don’t include the humanities in the education process like we are doing in America, you end up with guys that can bomb Baghdad. Guys that create the Holocaust without any human emotive compassion and awareness of what suffering is about and what it means to be human. You need to get exposed to those things when you’re relatively young, it is those things that tell you the difference between right and wrong, science and math don’t do that. It’s technology out of control, completely separated from the human issues, our emotional ethical moral selves, that’s what is causing the problems today. And these are very serious problems, especially in America.   Q: Is that why you put so much emphasis on the technological side of things? Am I correct that it sometimes must give you ethical problems, using this technology?

A: I have ambivalent feelings about the fact that I am basically using military technology to make my art. I thought about that a lot, going back and forth with it. Sometimes the mere act of picking up a camera can be painful for me. It’s like a separator. I’d much rather use my eyes. There have been many times where I have felt the instinctual urge to stop…

Q: You weren’t expecting it to be this way when you started 35 years ago?   A: I was so into this stuff when I started…   Q: Did you see Maya Deren’s films?

A: Yes, I saw a lot of experimental film. I really was influenced by Michael Snow, Stan Brakhage and Hollis Frampton. I actually met many of those filmmakers, which was great because they were a sort of sideshow to the main art world. The art world never took them completely seriously, which I found absolutely unacceptable and shocking. Stan Brakhage was one of the great visual artists of the last century, as was Michael Snow. The films that they were making were amazing visual works of art and they were never shown in museums. They were put in the theatre — after all, film is a theatrical art form — but the critics and curators never discussed them. They would say: ‘Oh, that’s film, and we have a film curator.’ Those who were dealing with painting weren’t talking about Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man. And that’s this kind of Enlightenment, 19th century idea of putting things in boxes and different categories. I have heard curators say to me on various occasions throughout my life: ‘that’s not my area of specialization.’ That’s changing. Some of the younger curators now show video together with paintings.

performance in New York in a loft somewhere. You’d see other artists there and everybody knew everybody, it was a kind of a miniature Renaissance in a way. They didn’t exactly collaborate directly although Steve Reich did a piece with swinging microphones where Bruce Nauman was holding one and a couple of other visual artists were there to help him do this piece. That was the late sixties, early seventies, which were really very open.

Q: Was it difficult for them to develop this language, as there were no pr edecessors?   A: Well, there are always predecessors. You had Hans Richter and Oskar Fischinger and Dziga Wertov and people like that in the early 20th century doing some pretty far out things with film. Not to mention the very first guys are always the most experimental: the Lumière brothers, Melies, those are avant-garde films or what we would call avant-garde film, the filmmakers I think need to be really discovered in this DVD age. I have been slowly buying their work. I’ve noticed that this work is being released on DVD now. Stan Brakhage was adamant about never ever letting his work be seen on video, but I sort of don’t agree with that. Yes, it is not a film, and yes, it’s like looking at a photograph of a painting, but still you get a lot of stuff from that. We’ll see, maybe that will happen.   www.billviola.com www.haunchofvenison.com

Q: They are more comfortable with the medium?   A: Yes. A curator doing a big art show today could easily decide to put video into it, not to mention the fact that many more artists are using video now. And they use video with other media as well, like Bruce Nauman did. It’s becoming more common. Those really great artists of the post-war era didn’t have that benefit and even now you rarely see a Stan Brakhage film at an art exhibition. It is one of the great blind spots in art today. They gave us the language, they are my heroes. That was a time too when the art world wasn’t as big as it is now and it wasn’t as expensive as it is now, and you could go to a premiere of a Philip Glass 47

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“Webchat with Andy” Oliver Laric in conversation with Andy Warhol, contacted through a psychic with mediumistic abilities via webchat. Sunday, September 2, 2007 OL: Does Andy have any regrets? Medium: Not a single regret, he doesn‘t regret anything he has done or any part of his life. He says regrets are for non-achievers. If you had the confidence to do something, you should have the confidence to stand great afterwards. Not everything has worked out as he wanted it to, but he is very, very strong, very strong, almost vehement, that regrets play no part in his life. And he is saying, as much to you Oliver, that you should have no regrets, because if something you have attended has not succeeded, that is just a question of timing. And there should not be regrets, regrets for him are a truly wasted emotion. He is very, very strong on this; Its interesting that you should ask a question that really set him on fire. OL: Does he mind that so many people are using his name for their own work? Medium: He says there were many imitators while he was here. The only anger it generated in him was when it cost him money. OL: Does artistic production end with death? Medium: He says people know... People know what true Warhol is. And the answer to your other question is: absolutely not, definitely not. Uhm, in many ways. Number one: the inspiration that an artist projects continues long after they have gone. It is also completely possible for the spirit of an artist to inhabit the body of someone else. These things are self-evident. But to understand that in this life, artistic endeavor might be the prime focus of somebody’s life. That may not be true of their next life. OL: Does he communicate with other deceased artists? Medium: He is very interested in musicians, poets. He does not have a great deal of connection with many deceased artists. He has a great connection with some deceased musicians, because for him there is a blurring of the boundaries between visual art and other forms of art, it is never clear. OL: Are there any young emerging artist he is interested in? Medium: You have to be aware that he worked almost in a vacuum that all truly great thinkers were in and he believes that the following generation of artists after him dropped the ball. They didn‘t pick up and run with what he started. So he is saying that there are signs emerging now, that there has been a vacuum almost since he left, but there are signs emerging, signs of hope in art, emerging now. There are two, maybe three young German or Eastern European artists, and I, I; he is not good with the names. That he says, that, the, the burst almost of the next movement is going to be focused in that area. OL: How will art develope over the next 50 to 100 years? Medium: He does have a fascination with Berlin; there is something there. He is very strong on the blurring of the boundaries between visual arts and the other arts, including performing arts, music and says that visual artists have to step out of their cocoon and embrace the other arts, and he sees a fusion, a fusion as being one of the new developments, one of the strong movements. He is very interested in this fusion of more than one art form. I will give you an example of something that he is mentioning, that he can visualize a painting that can only be played when a particular, or viewed, when a particular piece of music is being played. In other words it is not the painting, or the work of art, it is not the music, it is the fusion of the two. And he is extremely interested in how these things will be brought together. OL: Will he ever reincarnate? Medium: And he does say that... This is the tricky thing, Oliver, and it is, needs an appreciation of time to understand, our concept of time and Andy is very clear about this now. Our concept of time is all over the place and in actual fact he is getting quite animated by making the point that young artist should take a fresh look at time, a fresh look at time, because he may choose to be reincarnated in Berlin in the 1930‘s. You see the reincarnation is not linear, it doesn‘t mean that he will be reincarnated in the future; he may well be reincarnated to the past. So and it is this concept of time, time is like a moebius strip that is interlinked with itself. And it is just any one point on that strip; is close to any other point. And he is quite, quite excited, something you‘ve said has excited him and this concept of time... He is really uhm... (bell rings) Just a sec... That unfortunately signals the end of our time. It has been fascinating talking to you, and I just want to leave you with this message Oliver; the questions that you have asked, have quite excited Andy. There are harmonics of your questions, and when you go away think about the questions you have asked me and the responses you have got. Sadly Oliver I have to go now, and I really have enjoyed speaking to you and I very much hope that I will get the opportunity to do so again, soon. Bye Oliver. www.oliverlaric.com/webchat.htm

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MELANIE BONAJO

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KYLE TRYHORN AND JOFF

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JEANNE DETALLANTE

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KOEN HAUSER

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SLAVA MOGUTIN

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Justus Kempthorne

GILT GOLD SCABS They wear their leaves like Warholian wigs CHORUS: Kangarwomb. HENLEY: If she had not paved in memoriam their wounds with gilt gold scabs... I dream of resting Chorus: Kangarwomb Still asleep, Henley surveys his journey so far. He recalls his bitterness back at the ridge. He insists that Warhol’s wig domesticated the forest, but his faltering voice betrays him. His mental choir suggests the word “Kangarwomb,” because Henley’s place is like the external womb of a kangaroo. He is being born again, and into an outback. Also, the warmth of the womb occurs to him as a fantasy of the shape of Love.

WARHOLIAN WIGS With a longing upward and out, to meet those rosey slopes, and explode into them before they erode: The failing time flattens out like the optimism of the old, whose tribulation has become rosy. My star could crest parabolic over the etched stream and it’s etching.

DIRTY PROJECTORS “Warholian Wigs” & “Gilt Gold Scabs” taken from “The Getty Adress” . New Album “Rise Above” out on the 11th of September. www.westernvinyl.com www.deadoceans.com

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BRUCE LABRUCE

bugaboo.com

Constant Dullaart

Imagine the following: you are in the midst of an impossible shoot at your studio. Tension is mounting, the end of the day draws near, and all your friends that help you out are tired, down, and want to leave. There are only two shots left, and after that the film needs to be brought to the lab. One of the people in the studio offers to go to the lab after the shoot, while you clean up the mess. You react surprised by such a charming gesture of generosity. You see that the person is Andy Warhol. And then you wake up. I told a friend about this dream, and he imagined how great it would be to boss Andy Warhol around, and make him do stuff. I always have trouble admitting that I enjoy bossing people around. I had just decided to buy myself a dog, which would allow me to boss something around without feeling embarrassed. The best name for the dog would be Andy Warhol, I decided. And I could be aware of the fact that I bought an animal to project my feelings onto, but still love it with all my heart, and I would appropriate Warholâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s identity in my life just as he appropriated corporate identities in his work. Andy Warhol is now three and a half years old, and I just removed a tick from her head.

www.supperclub.com

Aurel Schmidt

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cointreaupolitan 5 cl Cointreau 3 cl Cranberry Juice 2 cl Lime Juice Shake de ingrediĂŤnten met veel ijs en schenk uit in een gekoeld cocktail glas.

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Andrea Crews p 14 — 17

Grant Worth p 18 — 19

Marianne Vierø p 20 — 21

Maroussia Rebecq (33, Bordeaux) is the creative director of Andrea Crews, an experimental collective that puts together artistic, fashionable and social campaigns deeply connected to the cause of recycling. It also collaborates with human rights associations.

Grant Worth (Wisconsin, 1979) used Andy Warhol’s book “Ladies and Gentlemen. Sex Parts. Torsos. Polaroids” as inspiration for his contribution named “Dripping with Gold.” In this book, Warhol deals explicitly with the subjects of body parts and sex. Warhol shot close-ups of the body parts, turning them into landscapes and studies about shapes. Worth also incorporates landscapes and shapes in his own work.

Marianne Vierø’s (1979, Copenhagen) favorite Warhol film is “I a Man” (1967), a film about a guy (Tom Baker) who sees six different women in one day in New York. “I have only seen the film twice, but I remember almost every shot,” says Vierø. “The colors are amazing and the light, a little bit on the tungsten-side, thickly layers the whole thing with textures. But what makes the film really special for me is its strange atmosphere: in equal parts casual and tense. It’s an aching intimacy that goes beyond normal cinema.”

The Parisian collective was inspired by The Factory, Andy Warhol’s original studio in New York City, which was a hangout for all sorts of artistic people. Andrea Crews also embraces collaborations and unites people from various creative disciplines and backgrounds. Together they combine fashion with art, performance, videos, murals, music, etc. For their fashion collection they use second hand clothes and transform them into remarkable chic and trendy clothes. Andrea Crews has recently moved to a new space, an abandoned building in the Pigalle area, the red light district of Paris. “Just like with the clothes we design, we’re again making a recycling statement as we’re giving new life to this space we have moved into,” says Rebecq enthusiastically. “It is in fact our own Factory.” www.andreacrews.com

“I want to make work about mysteries, curiosity, magic and light,” he comments. “Dripping with Gold” is Worth’s first attempt at exploring the subject of nudity in his work. “I thought it would be interesting to see what my version of sex would look like. I have a tendency to become annoyed with the gratuitous sex and nudity I see in a lot of the work of my peers. Sex and nudity can be really easy and overused.” Worth is also inspired by Warhol because he was not only an artist, but also an author, a photographer, a record producer, and a filmmaker. “Warhol explored everything,” Worth says. “He is sort of beyond inspiring.” www.missionfantastic.com

Photography and installation art merge in Vierø’s work: “I’m interested in how the two mediums interconnect, and how different kinds of representations can render completely different meanings.” She sees Warhol as one of the great inspirations that got her into art. But, although she believes “voyeurism is a theme very appropriate for photography,” it is not a theme that is present in her own work. “Warhol had the biggest impact on me before I even knew what voyeurism was,” Vierø says. She also points out that her contribution for this Warhol project “is not about voyeurism, but about plants.” However, she does admit that the “casual construction” and the “improvised feeling” of her photography are very reminiscent of Warhol’s avant-garde films. www.marianneviero.com

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Lukas Wassmann p 22 — 27

Wouter Vandenbrink p 28 — 35

Oliver Laric

Lukas Wassmann (1980, Zurich) builds models and photographs them in various surroundings. He only exhibits the pictures of the models and never the models themselves. He calls his work “sculptural photographs.” The inspiration for his Andy Warhol contribution is his favorite Warhol movie “Empire,” which focuses on the Empire State Building in New York City. “I love the industrial construction of the building, and Warhol’s imagery of it is very beautiful,” says Wassmann. “I wanted to do something with the movie for this project. I made use of my carpentry skills, which I acquired during a formal apprenticeship, and I built a scale architectural model of the top half of the Empire State Building. Then I put the building into my convertible and together with Eva Maria Kupfer, my collaborator on this project, I toured the Swiss countryside. While on the road we got some funny comments from people. It made people laugh. Some even thought we just got married!”

Wouter Vandenbrink paints with light and people, transforming the human anatomy into sculptures with unknown qualities that invite to project one’s innermost fantasy or desire. For this series he has focused on the dazzling qualities of pure light. Essential to this series were those elements that fall just outside the photo frame. What is captured then within those frames is a slice of reality. This will enable the viewer to project other emotions on that which he or she views. A surreal sense of magic. Rummaging through his largesized collection of Warhol books and films, Vandenbrink stumbled upon this quote in the booklet “I Am Man,” with which he agrees entirely: “Theory is that, since cinema’s unique ability to capture and preserve reality (i.e. time) it follows that logically, there should be nothing more interesting than specially selected reality. Then there should be no need for the filmmaker to interject him or herself between the image and the viewer.”

In 2004 the versatile artist Oliver Laric (25, Novi Sad, Serbia) interviewed the late artist Marcel Duchamp for Mi magazine. Laric had an interesting conversation with Duchamp, who actually died in 1968, by way of an Austrian psychic with mediumistic abilities. Laric, who had been searching for a psychic in esoteric magazines, fairs and on the Internet, was eventually given a tip by a friend, who had read an article about a woman who was working with the police on an investigation. Laric met with her and claims that through her he was able to make contact with Duchamp. The conversation ended up being a life-changing experience for Laric: the medium told him that Duchamp liked his work and that he was actually his grandson.

Wassmann associates New York with terms like “active,” “playful” and “adventurous,” terms that also apply to his contribution for this project. According to Wassmann, the Empire State building that lights up the New York skyline, symbolizes the exact opposite of being static. “Although its brightest lights may go out, New York will always remain the city that never sleeps.”

www.woutervandenbrink.com

www.lukaswassmann.com

Laric took a similar approach for his Andy Warhol contribution. “I wanted to know what happened to Warhol after 1987,” he explains. “I dealt with my curiosity by contacting Warhol through a psychic with mediumistic abilities via a web chat. And this time the channeling went through a guy, which surprised me since the psychic scene is dominated by women.” The result is a 15minute conversation with Warhol. It gave Laric new insights into Warhol’s work, life and life after death. Warhol talked about reincarnation and the non-linearities in time. Laric was surprised by the fact that Warhol spoke so much. “When you see him in documentaries he comes across as a very shy person, but during our interview he was very talkative.” Hear for yourself at www.blend.nl www.oliverlaric.com

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Melanie Bonajo p 48 — 49

Kyle Tryhorn & JOFF p 50 — 57

Jeanne Detallante p 58 — 61

“When I was a child, I was very restless and never wanted to sleep,” photographer Melanie Bonajo (1978, Heerlen) recalls. “In order to get some rest my parents would tie me to the bed, but I was able to escape running around with a mattress and half the bed tied to me. I would also run away in shopping malls, so they kept me on a leash until I was 16.” In answer to our question how her contribution is linked to Warhol’s work Bonajo answers with this poem:

For their Warhol contribution JOFF (1976, The Netherlands) and photographer Kyle Tryhorn (1982, Canada) were largely inspired by the durational aspects of Warhol movies like “Flesh,” “Blue Movie” and “Women In Revolt”and “how the moving image changes over time by focusing in on one specific shot or moment.” “Things that are sexy become abstract and these abstractions become sexy. There is a weird dialogue created between the viewer and the subject. The subject is unaware of the abstraction, which allows the image to come even closer than either the subject or the voyeur could ever imagine. It’s a strange and magical moment.”

The talents of Jeanne Detallante (1978, Paris) have already been noticed by fashion photographer Steven Meisel, who asked her to make some drawings of model Natalia Vodianova for a series which was featured in the Italian Vogue (2005). For this Warhol project the French illustrator submitted a series of three “layered” drawings, while focusing on Warhol’s relationship with stardom and his creative use of it in promoting existing icons, creating new ones, turning himself into an icon, and playing off the voyeurs and exhibitionists who revered him.

My name is a movie, a love song, a dance and an echo of times past, a night at the disco I am a museum, a foundation of arts, I am a fan site a fantasy in conversations of people trying to impress I am more then 2,5 million hits on the Internet, I am very present I am a diagnosed Asperger, an a-sexual homo and an American master I am shot I am the top of pop, I am a book and 20 biographies I cover posters on people’s wall, I am a quote often mentioned, I am in many people’s dreams, I am probably a dog I am stamps I am coffee mugs, calendars, a pen and tie a collector’s item a 10 dollar t-shirt a puzzle I am a distant memory a tattoo on a shoulder of someone I never met a tear in Lou Reed’s eye I am a girl in a photograph an iconophile I am the inspiration of this Polaroid I am Andy Warhol I love shoes www.d-e-s-a-t-e-r.ch

JOFF and Tryhorn are interested in making work with substance and intuition. “We need a certain poetry and magic,” they explain. “The beauty is to catch that moment, but that moment may never last. These are fickle times as we are constantly subject to mercurial changes which force us to reevaluate the things that we create. This constantly keeps us moving, transforming and reinventing ourselves in order to achieve creative fulfillment.” Warhol inspires the duo to consider the movement and the culture we’re a part of and how it links to everything else. “Warhol created his own superstars partly by believing in them and by encouraging them, but also by way of appropriating or exploiting them. And regardless of the method, he found others to believe in these creations and ideas. Ideally, his notoriety feeds on itself.” But they also believe that Warhol’s work has been perverted. “His success and the greatness of his work has had such a counter effect that you almost can’t look at it anymore in the way it may have been intended. It has saturated pop culture to the point of overkill. This means that the name ‘Andy Warhol’ alone, in a way, surpasses the diversity of his body of work, which many people are not even aware of.”

Detallante’s work is all about creating characters, the relationship between these characters and viewer participation. As was the case in Warhol’s work, exhibitionism and voyeurism are very much part of Detallante’s creations. She also shares Warhol’s attraction to ambiguity and androgyny. “In my work I portray a male figure as more feminine and the other way around,” she says. “I like to be in the middle and play with that.” “The Self Made Body” drawing deals very literally with the concepts of exhibitionism and voyeurism. “Jasmin Says” is an obvious reference to The Velvet Underground song title that referenced some of the characters in The Factory. “I shot Andy Warhol” refers to the movie made about the woman, Valerie Solanas, who shot Warhol in 1968 because she said that he exerted “too much control” over her. How ironic that the man who was able to confer “stardom” on anyone became “the star” of such a disturbingly melodramatic scene. www.jeannedetallante.com

www.kyletryhorn.com www.joff.nl

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amsterdam’s homage to andy warhol

www.iamsterdam.com 86

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Koen Hauser p 62 — 63

Slava Mogutin p 64 — 67

Justus Kempthorne p 69

“What fascinates me most about Warhol’s movies, like for instance ‘Empire’ (1964), is that they make the viewer the ultimate observer of a world, without any meaning or interpretation,” says photographer Koen Hauser (1972, Rijswijk, Netherlands). “This creates a level of deep concentration during which you experience what is presented as reality. This satisfies my inner yearning to reach a state of enlightment in which I am part of everything and of nothing. For me it’s the perfect paradox between the desire to dissolve and the need to act as a creator who wants to create interpretation and meaning, something which is very much part of Warhol’s body of work.”

“I am a New York-based, Siberian-born artist, writer, exiled dissident, porno activist, homo terrorist, Pinko Commie Fag, ‘a propagandist of brutal violence, psychic pathology and sexual perversions,’ and the co-founder of SUPERM. I have 2 nipple rings, 7 tattoos, 3 eyes, 6 arms, 4 legs, 3 dicks, 6 balls and 2 assholes (all fully functional). My skin is white, my hair is blonde, my eyes are blue and my tongue is red.” This is how Slava Mogutin (1974, Russia) introduces himself. At the age of 21 he was exiled from Russia for his queer writings and activism. He was granted political asylum in the US with the support of Amnesty International and American PEN.

“It’s actually a sketch,” says Justus Kempthorne (1986, Manchester, Tennessee) about his Warhol contribution. “I first started playing with mirroring colors, looking for transformations which could help me in my process. Eventually my final work appeared to relate less. Warhol used sketches all the time and was not interested in the finished product. It’s about going through a process.” Kempthorne found the picture for his contribution in the trash one night around the corner from his house. He says that the rainbow effect is all about random used objects and transforming them. “By using crystals, which clean and renew energy in the body and in spaces, and mirrors which create layers of reality.” From the age of 14, Kempthorne has been traveling with a camera, experimenting with photography in any way he could think of. At a young age he moved to NYC and it distracted him from completing projects (“too many people and too much going on”). “I grew up in the country and always considered cities as giant toilets. Now I realize they are giant toilets full of creative amazing people sharing ideas. It is kind of a love/hate thing,” he says.

For his contribution named “Rebis III,” Hauser became something of a chameleon transform ing himself into different shapes and symbolic roles, much like Warhol did in his artistic life. In the submitted work, which is part of a project that is carried out in collaboration with the Dutch photoarchive “Spaarnestad,” Hauser portrayed himself as a woman dressing up as a man. “The image represents the ultimate state of the masculine and feminine united, the state of being one,” he explains. “But the aesthetical strangeness of ‘Rebis III’ also embodies the alienation that is omnipresent in my work. An alienation which is illustrated by juxtaposing this image with that of the colorful crowd on the other side of the page, in which a parallel between the life and work of Andy Warhol emerges.” www.koenhauser.com

His contribution is a set of stills from his video “Superm Highway” (NYC, 2006). The video was shot in complete darkness with an infrared night vision mode. A slide show of 116 unedited black-and-white video stills captures two young guys having sex in front of his camera. “’Superm Highway’ can be seen as a great tribute to the early Warhol movies such as ‘Sleep,’ ‘Kiss,’ and ‘Blow Job,’” says Mogutin. “It’s Warhol’s less celebrated first films, not his classics, that I find most inspiring. I like their obsessive voyeurism, their minimalism and a total absence of any kind of script or narrative. What makes those films so revolutionary – besides their raw, antiHollywood aesthetic – is the thin line between art, porn, and fashion that Warhol managed to maintain up until the point when he sacrificed his underground credibility for the sake of becoming the definition of a capitalist and corporate art star, obsessed with celebrities and superficial values.”

Kempthorne believes there needs to be some serious social changes in this insane violent and polluted world we are living in. “I would really like to try and make some work that inspires people to think about making changes on a local level, but I have to figure out a convincing way of doing that. The more-positivity-in-whatever-form is a good step forward.”

www.slavamogutin.com

NAME OF ARTIST www.pirelli.nl

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Bruce LaBruce p 72 — 73

Aurel Schmidt p 75

In his work, filmmaker and photographer Bruce LaBruce (1964, Toronto) tries to express homosexuality as a serious philosophy and not as a superficial affectation. “For me it’s more existential,” says LaBruce. The artist sees Warhol as a pioneer in foreseeing that fame would eventually become a product (“in fact quite a sinister product”). “Look at someone like David Beckham, who’s now supposed to sell soccer to the Americans. He is seen as an icon for material success, the illusion of family life and inoffensive behavior. And that’s what people worship! I think he’s a bit bland. I can’t detect any personality, and he has a manufactured sexuality, almost plasticity. But Warhol probably would have liked that.”

In her work Aurel Schmidt (1982, Kam-loops BC, Canada) looks at the horrific brutality of the real world. War, disease, molestation, alienation, extinction, environmental catastrophe. Her confronting contribution “Fly Face,” for which she used photographs of flies as a reference point, is a drawing in which the figurative elements that build the face – the flies – at once threaten to attack the face and fly away, leaving no face at all.

For this Warhol project LaBruce decided merely to stick to the Warholian basics – the portrait, the hustler, the beautiful boy, the glamorous pose, the snapshot – rather than doing something heavily referential or deferential. His subject is an eighteenyear-old model from Barcelona who came to Berlin to pose for him. His name is Jose Satorre, known in certain fashion circles as “Baby Tony Ward,” a reference to the male supermodel, ex-Madonna consort, and star of LaBruce’s movie “Hustler White.” “That movie was a kind of tribute to the great Warhol/Morrissey hustler films like ‘Flesh,’ ‘Trash,’ and ‘Heat,’ with Tony Ward unequivocally cast in the Joe Dallesandro role. I figured it would be very Warholian to make a copy of a copy: Baby Tony doing Tony Ward doing Little Joe. Just like Warhol, I photographed Jose in both black and white and color, and I used film and digital because Warhol worked in the film medium, but was also a video pioneer. Had he lived longer, he would have undoubtedly used the most modern technology available.”

Schmidt says that there is a link between Andy Warhol’s Screen Test films (1965) and the piece she submitted. “The huge looming silver black and white faces. The slow pace and the slight movement. These almost still films are fully and disturbingly alive. ‘Fly Face’ is a face that doesn’t exist. It is neither alive nor dead. In the end, it is every face. You imagine the flies move like the flutter of eyelashes, all over the face, creating the face, destroying the face and in essence leaving no face at all,” Schmidt explains. Schmidt is especially inspired by Warhol’s idea and manipulation of celebrity and identity. “He took the superficial and the mundane and made it into fine art. Not art with an emotional message, but art almost completely devoid of depth, meaning or feeling. By doing this, Warhol opened a new door of exploration in art. He openly embraced and manipulated celebrity, money and consumerism. He pointed out that art didn’t have to be precious or original to be valuable. It was just an illusion.” www.tinyvices.com

www.brucelabruce.com

Turning Interview with Antony and Charles Atlas by Renata Espinosa

It has been almost a year since Antony Hegarty and Charles Atlas toured Europe with their collaborative project entitled Turning. It’s a meditative piece on transformation that features thirteen “beauties” placed individually on a rotating turntable, a live video feed mixed by Atlas and a musical performance by Antony and the Johnsons. As Antony sings, a single beauty stands still on stage, moved by the turning pedestal. Behind the band and Antony, their faces are projected onto a giant screen, filmed by two cameras with a delay, so that as they turn away from one camera, we always see the front of their faces. Atlas layers images on the spot, creating a mesmerizing live portrait with Antony’s haunting voice and lyrics forming the psychological soundtrack. Think Warhol’s screen tests, but on a larger, more public and more spiritually dense scale. But whereas one senses an emotional detachment between Warhol and his subjects, Turning is far more complicated, and when you get down to it, holistic, than that. After hearing Antony describe the almost psychic bond he felt between himself and his models - all female, but with diverse, unique experiences with their gender identity - you realize that Turning moves well beyond the simple relationship of object and objectifier. The performers and the audience are watching each other, the camera, Antony: all reacting to and interacting with each other in a way that comes, well, full circle. Atlas is a filmmaker and video artist whose oeuvre ranges from collaborations with choreographers and performers to documentaries such as Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance (Atlas was the dance company’s filmmaker-in-residence for 10 years) and The Legend of Leigh Bowery. In the early nineties he met Antony, who had just moved to New York and was performing shows as part of the Blacklips collective at Pyramid, a small club in the East Village. The two of them are currently working on a film about Turning that combines footage of the show as well as a documentary about the tour, which they plan to release on DVD. When I meet Hegarty at Atlas’ studio-slash-home in lower Manhattan, they are animatedly discussing feng shui. Atlas - he goes by Charlie - has apparently taken Antony’s advice on the subject and has incorporated feng shui elements into the place, like a special plant in one corner and a crystal in another. “Does it work?” I ask. “Of course!” Antony exclaims. We then go back to Charlie’s editing suite to view a rough cut of one of the songs that is to be included in the film, which Antony is seeing for the first time. As we sit in the darkness, Antony is mesmerized, and the conversation turns quite serious. “I now know what I need to do, how I need to mix the music,” he says to Charlie as we sit down to discuss Turning from the very beginning, starting with how Antony and Charlie came to be friends. 90

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Renata Espinosa: What was the motivation to work with one another? Charles Atlas: I usually work with friends, with people I like, and I was friends with Antony before...and I became friends after having seen him, so I was already kind of a fan. This was like years ago. RE: Where did you see him? CA: At a benefit for something. I can’t remember. A benefit at like...some...I think you were doing The Star Spangled Banner... Anthony Hegarty: I can’t believe you saw that... CA: With Johanna [Constantine], and [Psychotic] Eve...[laughs] AH: [Laughs] Did they actually sing The Star Spangled Banner? CA: Yes, it was fantastic. [laughs] AH: The whole group came, though. We did a parade. CA: Well, I only saw the show on stage. AH: It was at that club Life or something. CA: It was some club I never really went to. That was such a long time ago, 1992. RE: [to Antony] When did you move here? AH: When I was 19. CA: I’ve been around a long time. [laughs] RE: So you saw him and you became friends after that. CA: Yeah. And then I would go to the shows. He put on shows, you know, as Blacklips, in the early days. RE: Were you ever filming him at that point? CA: No. In the eighties, I used to go out with my camera to clubs and film stuff - I have tons of stuff that I haven’t even looked at, I’m afraid to play it - but, um, you know, it got to be like, I didn’t want to work when I went out to watch things. And I wasn’t working when I was doing it in the eighties, but I was sort of drunk and one of the main sounds on the soundtrack is me laughing, [mimics] uh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha... [Everyone laughs.]

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RE: [to Antony] So where were you performing at that time? AH: At Pyramid Club, on Avenue A. RE: And the show changed every week? AH: Yeah, it was a collective, so someone different in the group would put on a show and we’d all pitch in. It was a diabolical, haphazard process. RE: And when did you stop doing that and move into more of your own show – the stuff you’re doing now? AH: For quite a few years, I’d been turning all musical ideas into a sort of performance arty type of thing, you know, as plays or tableaux. And at some point in 1997, I decided I was just going to focus on the music for a while. I got a band together, as opposed to performing with a cassette with pre-recorded music that I put together on keyboards and stuff. I think one of the reasons I did the plays was to create some context for me to pop out and do a song. What kind of came full circle I think, especially with the Turning piece, for me, was that it came back to some of the...well, a lot of the visual and performance ideas that I cared about the most. CA: It was great, you know, bringing that theatrical context back into the music. AH: I’d gotten to a point in the mid to late nineties where it was like: just put someone on the stage and just look at them. Especially with Dr. Julia [Yasuda]. Julia was kind of like our muse and during the early concerts she would introduce us. And she’s actually in this piece [Turning]. RE: And she would just be on stage, standing there? CA: She was sort of the introductory presence to all of the early shows, and it was just her. I mean, she said a few things, but it was really a presentation of her unique quality that was the main thing. AH: For instance, in Miracle Now, her role in the play was to just sit there and be watched for the duration of the song. For me it was like the precursor to this. There’s sort of connection to that, to just sitting and watching Julia transform, in stillness.

RE: She was literally transforming on stage?

CA: Oh really!

CA: No, no, she was just being. [laughs]

AH: Sitting still for 15 minutes.

AH: You know when you watch something, you just stare at something for a while, it’s like you’re on acid. You start seeing the colors in different ways, you see the space around a person. Especially in a theater, with light. When you put someone on a stage on a pedestal or in a tableaux, you can just watch it unfold, in stillness. It’s just a really nice thing. When we’re in pedestrian mode, we don’t really spend time looking at anything. We just spend the amount of time we’re allowed to look. But when you put it on the stage, you can really observe it. We have a different kind of permission. And we can step out of pedestrian time and absorb things in a different way. And I think I loved that, I loved spending time with people...being present.

CA: Oh, fantastic.

RE: It’s a very different kind of portrait than something that is flat, two-dimensional. It’s really in three dimensions... AH: You get time, too. I remember in Blacklips we did a staging of Warhol portraits....how long were the portraits, like 15 minutes? CA: They were different lengths, weren’t they? AH: I think we did 15 minutes where we put four people on stage and they kept still. And everyone was like, “This is crap,” but that was at the point where I was really separating from the mother ship, [puts on director-type voice], “Okay, now, it’s 3am, and you’re all going to sit on the stage for 15 minutes!” And we did it, but I remember we all felt like we were on acid by the end of it. CA: Who were the four people? AH: It was Ebony Jet, Hattie [Hathaway]...I can’t remember the other two people. CA: Were you and Johanna in it? AH: I wasn’t in it, I was just watching. I was just in heaven! I was like: “I cannot believe we are just sitting still.” And you know, no one in the audience knew what to expect. By the fifth minute, people were like, “NOOOOOO!” I mean, they had no idea how long it was going to last, but it was so magical! That was the Candy Darling night. Four people dressed as Candy Darling.

AH: 15 minutes of fame. RE: All side by side? And seated? AH: Seated, still. RE: Woooow. AH: That was like, a favorite. RE: And then just...silence. AH: Silence. Just to see what would happen. I mean, obviously nothing was going to happen, but... CA: [laughs] To see whether the audience was going to riot or not! RE: It is funny to see what a person’s tolerance is for being still, particularly in New York City. CA: Well, in the seventies, I have to say, there was a lot more of that kind of longer stuff. When I now watch things from the seventies, it’s a little hard to watch, even the things that I did. I knew I did it on purpose, make things last long. People were really into these long pieces. A different time frame. That changed in the eighties. RE: Well, yeah, I mean, just look at Warhol... watching a person sleep for six hours. [laughs]. CA: Well, no one ever really watched that [laughs]. I think those events were really more social events. It was an object and people got together around it. Maybe in the later days they treated it more like a film. RE: So then, Turning, when did you really start developing that? AH: We did it all in ‘94. Charlie had done a portrait of my best friend Johanna, turning, in a gallery. CA: Yeah, I’ve been doing stuff on turntables since about ‘89. And Johanna was one of the people that I used as models, and I started doing a lot of turning portraits of her, only one of which I ever finished and made a piece out of. RE: And it was always the concept that they would stand still and you would shoot them?

CA: It was basically a head shot, no more. For me, it was about time, because of the 24 seconds it takes to make a complete turn. So I was doing things where I was mixing the time. With Johanna’s piece I split up the screen, with different things playing at different speeds that caught up with each other around the full circle. This [Turning] was really a development of that, because of the liveness and the different kinds of technology that I could use. RE: Who are the beauties. There are fourteen of them, right? AH: Thirteen. They’re all friends, really. With a couple of exceptions, almost everyone is someone I know and admire. People that I like to look at and who are just very authentic. Very, very specific, beautiful people. All different women from NY. CA: Besides being themselves, the song seemed to relate when we were figuring out who was doing which song. RE: How did it work during the show? How did they come onto stage? CA: They sat in the front, watching the show, and then they came in after the audience was seated in a procession and sat down and then one went on the stage. It was just continual change between songs. AH: It was almost like we created a circle. There’s the audience, then they were in the audience, and then the band. The structure of the piece is very circular. It’s sort of insular, and then it kind of expands to open to the audience, to participate and to observe. it has a very internal metabolism or rhythm to it. It’s very much the idea of putting the models in the audience, because it was for us. RE: You’re also watching them. AH: We were there watching each other. There’s a strong sense of relationship between each other, in the piece, that kind of binds it together. And in that way, it’s very different, from like, a fashion show or something. CA: The first time we did it, it was at St. Ann’s and it was a whole different scale, and more intimate. But as we performed it for a much larger audience, we had to expand the scale, so the image became huge, and if they had any relationship it was with the camera, which was like, two feet away. So, it was this contained thing,

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a very intimate view, but in a very public way, that they didn’t participate in really. RE: They weren’t really out in front... CA: They weren’t performing out into the audience. I mean, they were obviously the perfomers and they were on stage and they knew people were watching. But, they weren’t selling it. RE: Was there ever a sense of self-consciousness? All the people who did it, were they all performers, or were some of them just non-performers who were just put up on the stage and everyone was just forced to look at them? AH: A lot of them were not performers. I’d give them suggestions before we’d go on each night, something to focus on. And then they’d develop their own set of things that they would focus on. I’d tend to suggest that they’d sort of cast their gaze or their thoughts internally and think about something. The first time we did it, we’d give them a point of focus that’s sort of internal and then of course they would see each other on the video screen, so they became very aware of how things looked. CA: So we’d have to battle that a little bit. RE: [to Antony] So as you were performing and singing, what was your relationship to them.? AH: We’d both observe the song that we were doing at the same time, so I think that really cast a certain feel over each small role. My thing was to be like a piece of glass, where people could see through me. So really I focused on my sense of each of them. The less people were focused on themselves the more it could kind of be...luminous. The way I direct the musicians, they just disappear into someone else. Be invisible. Be a shadow behind shadows. Imagine that someone else’s voice is coming out of your mouth. There’s a form, but it ended up feeling like a kind of mystical or magic form, where everyone’s just giving off enough where it starts to really glow and have life of its own. RE: Where there’s all these different, smaller parts of this bigger thing. AH: And you just have to give it up, like everyone did. Everyone just starts to lose themselves in it. RE: No individual egos.

AH: It’s not so much the ego, just the self-consciousness. There’s a certain kind of awkward grounding to being very self-conscious or very aware of yourself. I think it’s more magic to watch something that almost isn’t aware of itself. Kind of like watching a cat or something. Like watching an animal. RE: It’s a totally different level of consciousness, almost like being unconscious. AH: Just dream that you’re someone else and then you forget who you are. CA: Well, I couldn’t do that at all... AH: Well, you had a very different experience. CA: Every night was very nerve-wracking for me. I haven’t been a longtime performer, I’ve usually been behind the scenes. AH: Well, you couldn’t do that at all, you had to do a lot. CA: Because I knew the music well, the music was really in me. And I count on the fact that there’s something about it, even something that I consider fucked up, that still works. Sometimes I wasn’t that happy, but I realized it worked okay for the audience. RE: So you were mixing in live feeds...were there multiple cameras? CA: There were two cameras. I put an image in delay, so when I was getting their back, I was also getting a front from the delay. I always had access to some version of the face. That was kind of the key concept for me, that’s why Turning was a good way to do an on-stage portrait. RE: It’s interesting, because when you turn away, you are always turning away from the spotlight. CA: Yes, well some of the girls learned to do the minimal turn. They would stay...stay...stay... and then turn. [laughs] I mean, certain ones would keep the gaze. They were a little more conscious of those things. RE: Was there ever any feeling of narcissism? CA: Well, Joie [Polaroid] in particular was so good at that [laughs]. She knew how to be on the pedestal. RE: Was it them projecting themselves or was it the audience objectifying them?

CA: It didn’t feel like that, really. There were multiple things to experience and to feel, yet it all came into one thing. It’s not like when you see it in the film, where you have to choose. I have to make a choice for you, as to what you’re looking at in the film. RE: Antony, where was your head in the beginning of the tour, versus the end? AH: I was a little bit overwhelmed, because I felt very responsible for all the models, so I was kind of herding them and directing them every night. There were a lot of things that had to be considered, just making sure everyone was okay. I was a little bit split in terms of my focus. CA: It was very ambitious and I don’t know if we really realized how ambitious it really was. AH: It’s like being surrounded by all your favorite people...and also....[laughs]... RE: It’s work, as well! AH: I had to be outside a bit and in the center at the same time, so it was really overwhelming. And then also we were making this film, and as it went on, I became really obsessed with interviewing everyone for it. Towards the end of the tour in Portugal we sort of washed up in this really beautiful castle on top of the hill, it was really kind of an oasis, and I spent those last days interviewing everyone for an hour each. Charlie was completely preoccupied as well. CA: I was at the theater from morning until night. AH: There were the technical aspects of the space and then setting up the technical aspects of the film. We both had our hands full. And while that was happening, there was the incredible theater of the group! Outside, and off the stage. CA: But in the end it was so memorable. No matter how fraught it got, in the end it was just a pleasure. It was the kind of experience you hoped to have. RE: There seemed to be a real group spirit. When you interviewed them, how did they feel about being a part of the project? AH: One of the things I was trying to get to the bottom of was: what is this piece about? I think that’s why I was interviewing people, because I didn’t dare say what it was about.

I came to realize that it wasn’t really about any one thing, it was about the sum of everyone’s thoughts and experiences. You couldn’t say that it was about anything less than that. What we brought to it, ultimately, was the form, and the context. But then, it was so incredibly personal and completely unspoken. It was really magic! [laughs]. When I was interviewing them, I would just say: “Well, what’s it about for you?” And we just got into some really heavy talking about that. And so for each person it was different. They had a very specific thing that they were bringing to the table. There was also a very strong sense of community on that tour. People were very bonded. And it was also quite wild. [Antony and Charles laugh]. They were out there. CA: On the one hand, they had to be there and be present. On the other hand, it wasn’t like they had to do a dance or anything like that, and be really in shape. They just had to come and be themselves. AH: With thirteen bombshells, as well, what do you think is going to happen? [laughs] Late night chaos! RE: Was the number of girls significant? I was just thinking of Warhol’s 13 Most Beautiful Women or 13 Most Beautiful Boys. AH: I never thought of that, thirteen just seemed like a good number. Also, you’ve got to keep the show under an hour. That’s the new rule. RE: What is going on in the audience during the show? Are people very quiet? CA: Incredibly quiet. So attentive. AH: There’s something about magnifying, too. The images were so big that it really captured people, it really brought people in to the feeling that they were right next to something even if they were in quite a big room. We were worried that it wouldn’t translate into a bigger audience. And, to be honest, I didn’t want to focus on being watched. I learned that lesson the first time, though. After the first couple of shows, I was really struggling with that, with how to participate in the visual presentation. I was used to being the visual focus, but really, I have to do that thing I said, where I just completely disappear. RE: It’s almost like you’re the musical accompaniment to a silent film. 96

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AH: Yeah. Sometimes I would imagine that my face was their face. I’d just try to do a thing where I’d morph into the person. RE: And you’re also watching them? AH: Well, no, I couldn’t see them. So I just tried to be present for them. It really wasn’t about me. The first time at St. Ann’s, it was very emotional and very personal. There was something very testimonial for me about being in the show. I really was drawing a lot on my own personal story. This time, I hardly thought about myself in presenting the songs. I really, really thought about the group. If something came up for me emotionally, it was just unconscious. RE: It’s a much different experience, then, as you’re performing the songs, which come out of such a personal experience, but then the songs, they shift in meaning. AH: Well, what’s happened since the first show is that I’ve toured the world. Before, I was really a New York performer. Between the first show and this show, I’d had all this success and my relationship to the audience had totally changed. And yet, this performing experience really grounded me in my commitment to where I came from. This is really where I come from. RE: When you say it’s where you come from, you mean, on an emotional level? AH: Emotionally, aesthetically, experientially, in every way. That’s my community, that’s where I come from. These are the things that I care about and these are the images that I care about, bottom line. After the first show, I said if I had to be somewhere for eternity, which is a thought that horrifies me, I would like to be watching the Turning show. That would comfort me. www.antonyandthejohnsons.com

ANDY DARLING by Kyle Tryhorn & JOFF

Wardrobe Jeremy Laing Autumn/Winter 2007/2008

Model Gillian at elmerolsenmodels

Hair & make up Sarah Campbell

jeremylaing.com shamelessbeauty.ca elmerolsenmodels.com

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Wichy Hassan (1955, Tripoli, Libya) is the Founder and Creative Director of fashion label Miss Sixty, known for its sexy women’s jeans. The latest collection is inspired by Andy Warhol’s movie “Chelsea Girls.” Why did you choose the sixties as inspiration for Miss Sixty? The sixties and also the seventies were a very inspirational period for me. I like it very much. It’s an expressive period that saw a big revolution in fashion with the bright colors, pink and yellow, bold prints, and the sharp silhouettes in the dresses and the trousers. And also the introduction of the miniskirt which made women feel free and more sexy. The sixties were really a period of hope and optimism for me. Could you describe the Miss Sixty woman? What does she stand for? For me it’s a girl who likes to play with fashion. She likes to experiment and mix vintage with fashion and something handmade. She doesn’t take fashion too serious. She approaches it with a bit of humor and sometimes even with a little irony. She likes to be different and she is curious. She is not a fashion victim. How do you explain the current success and popularity of Miss Sixty? I really don’t know [laughs]. I just make something that I like, in collaboration with my nice staff. We talk about the direction of each collection. We want to stay connected with the people and the times we live in. Our success might have something to do with the fact that we like to experiment: every collection differs from the last one. People who visit a Miss Sixty store can discover something new every time they visit. The new Miss Sixty Spring / Summer collection 2008, which was presented in New York, is inspired by Andy Warhol’s film “Chelsea Girls.” How exactly did this film inspire your collection? The collection is divided into two groups. One part is very romantic, with soft fabrics and bright colors. The other part has a modern style with lots of black, leather, plastic belts and silver. The combination of these two different styles reminds me of Andy Warhol’s Film “Chelsea Girls,” which was shot at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. What’s so special about the Film is that it consisted of two reels of Film which were projected onto two different screens simultaneously. The duality of the Film inspired the duality in the collection. Today’s women also like to show different aspects of their personalities. Do you have an Andy Warhol collection? Yes, I have something he made with Keith Haring, something he did with Jean-Michel Basquiat and some of his Marilyn Monroe lithographs. There were a lot of celebrities at the Miss Sixty Spring / Summer 2008 fashion show, like Hilary Swank, Demi Moore and Clive Owen. How important is it for you that these celebrities visit your show? Well, I see them more as friends. When you work for six months on a collection and it’s presented in a very short period of time - ten minutes - it’s nice to share and celebrate this moment with all your friends. It makes me very happy.

Isabella: Vigigal Body: â&#x201A;Ź 114,90

Fotografie: Josie Sykes @ Suburbia Styling: Richard Schreefel @ Angelique Hoorn - Haar en Make-up: Danine Zwets @ Angelique Hoorn Modellen: Stehanie van Arendonk & Isabellea Oelz @ Elite Models,Daryll @ Tony Jones Modelmanagement, Laurens Out @ HOO Models. Ass. Fotografie: Sanne Schouwink - Ass. Styling: Sjoerd van Hemert & Patricia Blanco - Digital operator: Frank de Graaf @ Deeptoneraw Met dank aan Arthur van Rongen - All boys clothes by ENERGIE, all girls clothes by MISS SIXTY - Glasses prop made by Ijm Studios.

Laurens: Narvik Jacket € 114,90, High Pro Trousers € 104,90, Hat € 39,90, Sunglasses by Ray-Ban at Oogappeloptiek € 130,Isabella: Evelyn Dress € 104,90, Berenice Bag € 114,90

Isabella: Play Fuseaux Legging € 74,90, Mae Singlet € 59,90, Michel Bag € 64,90

Stephanie: Nair Jacket € 129,90, Lughe Mix Short € 44,90, Key Chain € 39,90, Handbag € 99,90, Shoes by Prada at Shoebaloo € 430,Daryll: Mack jacket € 314,90, Braces Brad short € 114,90, Shoes by Underground Engeland € 154,90-, Sunglasses by Ray-Ban at Oogappeloptiek € 130,Laurens: Croizer jacket € 139,90, Emerson2 trousers € 124,90, Shoes by Les Hommes at Shoebaloo Men € 347,50, Sunglasses by Ray-Ban at Oogappeloptiek €130,Isabella: Juju Singlet € 134,90, Radio Jeans € 149,90, Shoes by Prada at Shoebaloo € 360,-

ADS

ADS Stephanie: Jakki Singlet Body € 64,90, Boxinggloves by Twins at Asahi Sports € 78,- Daryll: Short Chestery € 94,90, Bonesteel Jacket € 229,90

Stephanie: Catch t-shirt € 54,90, Shoes by Prada at Shoebaloo € 290,Daryll: 4x0 Pullover € 64,90, Highelin 5 trousers € 104,90, Sunglasses by Ray-Ban at Oogappeloptiek € 130,Isabella: Giorgia One Shirt € 124,90, Blue Daikon Trousers € 144,90 Laurens: AlesHy sweater € 74,90

ANDY SAYS: ‘WATCH YOUR STEP’ In Andy Warhols’ Shoes, 12 October-5 November 2007 K-Swiss/ KS1, Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal 262 Amsterdam open Wednesday-Saturday from 12.00-19.00 www.kspace.tv Ad by Simon Wald-Lasowski

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Andy Warhol with scarf, Factory New York, 1965 ÂŠ Steve Schapiro, courtesy Galerie Wouter van Leeuwen, Amsterdam

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Ook zonder pc kan je chatten, mailen en bloggen.

Nokia N76

Nokia N73

Nokia N95

Beleef Windows Live met Nokia Nseries. Ben je op stap, dan blijf je chatten via Windows Live Messenger of e-mailen met Hotmail. Zie je onderweg wat moois? Maak er een foto van, en zet die meteen in je Live Spaces galerij. Ontdek de complete Windows Live ervaring op je Nokia Nseries, de multimedia computer in je binnenzak. © Nokia 2007 Live Search, Windows Live Spaces, Hotmail en Contacts zijn gratis diensten. Voor Windows Live Messenger heb je een 30-dagen pas nodig. Registreer je nu & je krijgt een gratis proefperiode van minstens 30 dagen. Microsoft brengt je 30 dagen vooraf al op de hoogte van de kosten voor Windows Live Messenger. Je mobiele operator kan kosten aanrekenen voor het downloaden van de Windows Live software en het gebruik van de Windows Live diensten.

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Windows Live is nu al beschikbaar voor de Nokia N73, N76, N80ie, N93i, N95. Hoe meteen installeren? Ga naar ‘Download’ in het hoofdmenu van je Nokia Nseries. Meer info op www.nseries.nl

December 2, 1978, Lester Persky, Andy Warhol and Truman Capote at Steve RubellÂ´s birthday party ÂŠ Ron Galella, courtesy galerie Wouter van Leeuwen, Amsterdam

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“WHAT’S GREAT...

...about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Red Bull, and you know that the President drinks Red Bull, Liz Taylor drinks Red Bull, and just think, you can drink Red Bull, too. A bull is a bull and no amount of money can get you a better bull than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Red Bull are the same and all the Red Bull are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”

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rbk.com

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Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

“A PLACE TO FEEL GOOD” Amsterdam Airport Schiphol offers travellers an ‘all-new’ world between the time they check in and the time they board their planes. With the airport fast developing into an inspirational environment for pleasure seekers, it is no coincidence that successful brands like Holland Casino, Nike, Starbucks and the Rijksmuseum have set up shop at the airport.

The steady flow of departing Dutch travellers and international

artists with a variety of artistic visions and sources of inspiration.

transfer passengers make for a dynamic atmosphere, and if you

Throughout the terminal, passengers can enjoy the works of

have some time to explore the area before your departure,

successful artists such as Mark Brusse, photographer Dennis Adams,

there’ll be plenty of new and exciting experiences for you to enjoy.

and the American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer.

You can try your luck at one of the casinos, relax during a chair massage, sample some of the delicious cuisine, a lavish 4-course

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol has evolved into a true “place to feel

dinner or tantalising bites in the sushi bar, and check your e-mail

good”, offering visitors a unique experience. So next time you head

at one of the communication centres. The airport’s Holland

off for a foreign holiday, put down your iPod for a moment and

Boulevard is now also home to a an annex of the Rijksmuseum,

allow yourself to be seduced by this inspiring environment.

where you can enjoy art from a variety of 17th century Dutch masters. The annex, which is currently celebrating its fifth anniversary, is unique in the world!

Places tot be at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Schiphol, which changes its collection

Rijksmuseum, Holland Boulevard, between Piers E and F

several times a year, is currently staging a special exhibition as part

Sushi Bar in Lounge 2

of its anniversary celebrations: ‘Battle at Schiphol’. 450 years ago,

Bubbles Seafood and Wine bar in Lounge 1

the current Schiphol site was the scene of a major naval battle

De Brasserie Restaurant, Level 2, Lounge 2

during the Dutch rebellion against Spanish rule (the Spanish-Dutch

Back to Life chair massage, Holland Boulevard, between Piers E and F

War). The exhibition at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Schiphol, which

Holland Casino in Lounge 1 and Holland Boulevard, between Piers E and F

commemorates this historic event, will run at the airport through

Starbucks in Lounge 1

16 December 2007. But apart from Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Schiphol, there are many other places at the airport for art lovers to enjoy high-quality works of art. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is home to a rich collection of contemporary art by a wide range of

www.schiphol.nl

Colophon

Publisher: Jurriaan Bakker Editor in chief: Theo Paijmans Copy editor: Anneloes van Gaalen Writer: Thierry Somers Creative director: Wouter Vandenbrink Fashion editor and creative contribution: JOFF Art director: Vela Arbutina Pre-press: Colorscan, Voorhout Printing: Dijkman offset, Diemen Sales: sales@blend.nl This publication was typeset in Warhola 15, an original design created for this publication by Ian Brown. Subscriptions: for overseas inquiries, send a mail to: lezersservice@blend.nl, phone: 0031-20-7512753 Blend magazine & Blend B.V. P.O. Box 59680, 1040 LD Amsterdam Phone: 0031-20-7512730 Fax: 0031-7512731 All rights of this publication are reserved by Blend or third parties. All artwork is copyright of the contributing artists and may not be reproduced without their explicit permission. This publication cannot be reproduced electronically, digitally, in printed or any other form, format or media without the explicit, written permission and approval of Blend and the copyright holders. Blend is not responsible for any damages incurred caused by improper processing of any information in this publication. Copyright 2007 The Blend magazine Warhol special was made in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Marie-JosĂŠ Raven, Press Office, Stedelijk Museum. First edition

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Andy Warhol, Polaroid, Factory, 1971 ÂŠ Anton Perich, courtesy Galerie Wouter van Leeuwen, Amsterdam