Emily Downes

Why Can’t we Find You? 2019. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30”

emily downes interviews

Emily Downes: Basically, more or less what I understand about your process is that you find an image or a reference that has content and you break down the image, not by leaving things in or taking things out and changing them, but taking the meaning away from an image and appropriating it conceptually, not necessarily physically.

John McCabe: I was just kind of thinking, when I am decontextualizing something, putting my perception of reality into it, I’ll talk about something different, like that one sort of weird family portrait where everyone’s a juggalo…

ED: That honestly, that was the image that made me want to interview you [both laugh] because I want to hear so much more about this!

JM: So that was just like a tongue in cheek, or maybe it’s just completely absurd. I guess tongue in cheek is underplaying it but basically, that image is this weird, fun image where people look at it like, “Whoa, what is this? What is going on here?” But it was that same process I was reacting to what’s going on in the world and at the time, and still am, but Jesus, 2019 feels like it was so long ago. There were a lot of news stories that were talking about, once again, because I was always up to date on the Hong Kong stuff, they were talking about how authoritarian their whole society is with facial recognition and cameras everywhere. I was seeing all of these news stories of, I’m sure it’s here to a certain capacity in the US and I don’t want to get too tin-foil-hat conspiracy person but with people using facial recognition software on their cell phones, their iPhones or whatever to unlock their phone or their computer and in China, they took this to the next level where you can literally use your face as your

nterviews John mccabe

Emily Downes: Basically, more or less what I understand about your process is that you find an image or a reference that has content and you break down the image, not by leaving things in or taking things out and changing them, but taking the meaning away from an image and appropriating it conceptually, not

John McCabe: I was just kind of thinking, when I am decontextualizing something, putting my perception of reality into it, I’ll talk about something different, like that one sort of weird family portrait where everyone’s a

ED: That honestly, that was the image that made me want to interview you [both laugh] because I want to hear so much more about this!

JM: So that was just like a tongue in cheek, or maybe it’s just completely absurd. I guess tongue in cheek is underplaying it but basically, that image is this weird, fun image where people look at it like, “Whoa, what is this? What is going on here?” But it was that same process I was reacting to what’s going on in the world and at the time, and still am, but Jesus, 2019 feels like it was so long ago. There were a lot of news stories that were talking about, once again, because I was always up to date on the Hong Kong stuff, they were talking about how authoritarian their whole society is with facial recognition and cameras everywhere. I was seeing all of these news stories of, I’m sure it’s here to a certain capacity in the US and I don’t want to get too tin-foil-hat conspiracy person but with people using facial recognition software on their cell phones, their iPhones or whatever to unlock their phone or their computer and in China, they took this to the next level where you can literally use your face as your currency because your face is tied to your ID and they just cut out the middleman, like “Oh yeah, we read your face and know how much social credit you have” to go to the vending machine to get your soda. Just imagine, you don’t even need your wallet and just walk up and do that whole thing.

But I was seeing these articles that were like scaring me because I was seeing the CIA or the FBI or whoever is in charge of that here was like “Yeah we can definitely do this and have this up and running like sooner than you think” and I’m like, “Jesus, please no” and then I saw this hilarious article that said juggalo face paint made it so whatever facial mapping process it goes through to recognize faces, the juggalo paint made it so the cameras couldn’t read faces because the stark white and black made it so it can’t decipher the landmarks on the face; where the tops of the cheeks are and the chin, and where everything is. So I was sort of imagining this funny, utopian society where everybody had juggalo face paint on to stick it to the man in a sense.

ED: That would be so funny.

JM: [laughs] Like everybody’s got their juggalo paint on so the Big Brother authoritarian regime would leave them alone. So I picked the funniest, family stock photo that I could find which was this super generic, white bread, white people family. And everybody in the picture, like the kids were clearly not related but I don’t know, I guess it was just this layer upon layer of inside jokes but it all kind of culminated into this fuckin’ family photo with juggalo paint on. I don’t know if that helps answer the question. ED: Yeah, I think it does because I think what I was trying to get at was just how do you apply these broader themes in a different way than how they are originally preconceived? And it’s really funny, when you were first talking about the thought of this painting, my initial reaction was “Aw, you’re protecting them from the government with this juggalo face paint” and I don’t know, that kind of, in a paranoid, pandemic brain way, it kind brought me to the whole mask thing. Just in terms of thinking about blocking out areas of the face. And with the politics and the freedom behind the whole anti-masker movement saying that wearing masks is “anti-freedom” when the freedom is the protection of you and others. I’m assuming that this was painted before that and everything. But the thing that’s really cool about your work, but also just art in general is that you can look at something in twenty different ways and can be like “this makes sense in this context” or “this makes sense in that context” and that this imagery is just so powerful, just because of the connotations we have.

JM : That’s a fun parallel you drew. The 2019 juggalo is the 2020 medical mask, you know? That’s funny.