THITH: You have a love affair with some of the big “Isms” of art from the early 20th century and talked openly about mimicking them stylistically while embracing the differences in context from which your work originates and challenging the mythology of some of these movements. Can you speak a little more about that?

ZANDER BLOM: There’s not much I can add to that without launching into a long story about how I grew up. I don’t know what else to tell you, so here comes the long story:
I grew up in an environment where every wall was painted a different color, and there were paintings, murals, and assorted crafts all over the house. You couldn’t stretch your arms without knocking some object off a table or a wall. Rugs and decorated pots and statues and plates and vases, tassels on every door handle, not an open spot in sight. My mother is a Jeweler, potter, painter and general expert of all sorts of crafts. Our family home was filled with her creations. The moment my siblings and I were old enough to hold a brush we became part of my mother’s project.

We helped paint the murals; we made pottery, jewelry, drawings, paintings, etc. We were also regularly roped in to repaint walls, or move furniture around when there needed to be a change, and change was a constant phenomenon. We had a little holiday home at the coast. There were murals on both the front and back walls. Every room was sponged a different color with gold stars spray-painted on the blue ceilings. Every year we would paint something a new color and add new things to the murals. This is how my mother liked to spend the holidays. The front of the house was pink, and the murals on it featured a lion, some birds, and plants. It looked a like a Henri Rousseau painting. The back of the house was turquoise. The murals on it displayed a beach, an underwater scene, and some more birds. The lounge was bright yellow and my mother painted a Christmas tree on the wall in the corner of the room. It wasn’t any kind of Christmas tree you would expect either. It was a massive creeper like plant in a pot. The stems looked like they were floating in the sky but at the same time crawling up the wall. She and my father hooked little Christmas lights to nails all over the painted pot plant and we laid all the presents on the floor underneath it. There was another similar plant in a pot painted on the front of the house that also had lights hooked to nails all over it. It was lit up on December holiday nights. People would walk past the house and stop and stare at it for ages. We would laugh and peer at them through the windows.

There weren’t many books around in our home during my youth. My father is blind and my mother was not a big reader, so the small amount of books that we did have were my mother’s art books. This is where I discovered the world that lay outside of our warm little family universe. The one book that I distinctly remember from my childhood, the book that had the biggest impact on me as a child was A History of Modern Art by H.H. Arnason. I was a quiet child and I would sit and page through that book over and over for years and years. I copied a lot of the pictures in it, and it was where I first encountered the work of people like Picasso and Francis Bacon. Of course at first I had very little understanding of the isms, but I could at least measure Mondrian against the world of my mother. I remember vividly how I stared completely mesmerized at a color plate reproduction of Francis Bacon’s painting Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef (Study After Velazquez) 1954, I must have been about seven or eight years old. It was an incredibly strange image to me. It attracted and repelled me, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was a sort of horror but not like a scary movie, it was quite exciting and strange. It was just this weird image that hovered around in my head and couldn’t go anywhere. I kept coming back to it over the years trying to figure out what it was about or what it meant. There were many other images that intrigued and puzzled me. Over the years my curiosity about the history of art and Modern Art in particular turned into an obsessive private study.

THITH: You’ve talked about your relationship to Modernism being mediated by the distance between South Africa, Europe and America. We’re wondering how it might cut the other way and if you can mediate some things for us about being a contemporary artist in SA.

ZB: I can’t really say how it might cut the other way, because then I’ll have to speculate, but I can tell you about my experience as a contemporary SA artist. This is how my life is at the moment: I live in my house in Brixton Johannesburg, and I spend my days painting, drawing, taking pictures, making music etc. The things I make get sent to STEVENSON Gallery (Cape Town or Johannesburg) who represent me. They show the work here in SA, and send it abroad. Luckily I don’t have to go with the work. From time to time I go for dinner or a couple of drinks with my girlfriend who lives with me. Every now and then I’ll go out and play a gig or do a show with one of the group projects or bands that I’m involved in. Sometimes on Sundays I’ll drive through to Pretoria to visit my family who lives there. I buy nice groceries at Woolworth’s, sometimes Pick ‘n Pay, these days I’m not as broke as I used to be a couple of years back. Once in while I am invited to go abroad on a residency or for an exhibition, I always try my best to get out of it. I enjoy my life in Johannesburg so much that I would much rather stay at home and focus on producing work. I live in a very specific kind of Johannesburg. It is rough and exciting, yet quiet and peaceful. In my mind it’s very far away form the rest of the world where there are massive art fairs and movie stars and media spectacles and incredibly advanced social hierarchies.

THITH: Your work from a couple years ago–The Drain of Progress (2004-2007) & The Travels of Bad (2007-2009)–was really immediate and striking. There you’re using some of the provocative installation techniques of early 20th century artists calling to mind Futurist exhibitions like those of Vladmir Tatlin, the 1938 “International Exposition Of Surrealism” in Paris or even the German “Exhibition Of Degenerate Art” in 1937. Those were all really shocking, and for different reasons, but have been softened by time. Your work reclaims the impact of those styles with a new originality even while distancing itself from any political or social necessities of those movements. Outside of just really liking the look of those works, is there particular meaning in being able to approach those works without all the historical meanings?

ZB: I look at what I do today as a kind of science of the picture plane. I’m perpetually trying to solve new problems, and creating new problems to try and solve. I want to make new pictures or images for myself for today, and with that comes a whole range of problems (conceptual, contextual, aesthetic etc) and potential solutions. The history of art is in a way a sort of dictionary that can assist one in writing new stories in the present. The way I see it is that history is only useful if we can plunder it. The social and political aspects of the artist’s and movements that I reference cannot be nullified, (in fact they add value and depth to my own work) but I am also free to use the parts that interest me and discard the rest.

THITH: In working with music, making books, creating works that extend out into the physical space of your home and then reworking the photographs of these installations it seems you’re partly playing with what the art object is as well as what the difference between the artist and their story is. Are you and how or what’s it all about?

ZB: When I did The Drain of Progress and The Travels of Bad I was very interested in the art object and the narrative of the artist’s life in terms of how I had consumed it through art history books growing up. Being obsessed with Art history, and given the way I grew up, when I got my own space to live in I just naturally turned it into these immersive environments. In one sense you can say that I had built these sets for photographs, but in another sense I was also just documenting the environments that I chose to live in.

Constructing environments like that also have a lot to do with creating a space that is conducive to the production of a very specific kind of work. Now that I’m focusing on oil painting, my house looks like a mix between Francis Bacon and Picasso’s studios.

THITH: Your work seems either incredibly playful or painfully time consuming and exacting to make, is it?

ZB: Some works are executed very quick and easily, others take up a lot of time and physical energy. Some works often look like they were painfully time consuming when they were in fact done very quick and effortlessly, the reverse is also true. There is no winning formula. Each piece requires something different. The difficult thing is knowing when to stop. I work on many different things at the same time because it is easy to get trapped in one work and end up ruining it.

Some works stand around in my house for ages and I’ll do very little to them before they are ready, but they need that time for me to figure out how to solve them. You make one mark and then you have to make another mark to counter balance and then you have to make another till the composition works. About 40% or more of the things I make never leave the house because I spend too much time on them, get very close to solving the composition, but then go too far and end up destroying the work.

THITH: We really love the work you presented in your first North American show “Place and Space”. What is your process for creating those?

ZB: Thank you. That show is a good mix of the kind of work if been doing the past three years. The photographic work is from a new ongoing series called The Black Hole Universe. The paintings are part of a long-term painting undertaking (I’ve only recently started showing oil paintings, but I’ve been working towards it for a long time, and I will continue to explore it for a long time to come.) And the drawings are part of an ongoing series of monochrome ink drawings that I’ve been doing for years. These three things are driven by different objectives and reference points, and the process differs with each, but all are intrinsically linked through it’s exploration of things like mark making, composition and perspective.

THITH: Back in the 90’s Alexander Brener made a big stink in the art world, weirdly championed by the likes of Flash Art, for defacing a Malevich painting because it no longer served it’s revolutionary spirit. He also took a shit in front of a Van Gough and in a group show of East meets West artists, his contribution was to destroy the work of another artist in the show without permission, ruining an enormous and elegant piece made of woven hair. Everything you’re about would seem the exact opposite of his project. Infinite creation instead of absolute destruction but, in your own way you’re also challenging the folklore of the Avant Garde albeit with a much, much more calming attitude. Is that something you think about?

ZB: That’s interesting. It’s funny actually because my first response to this question is that I’m not interested in reactionary work of any kind, and that I would rather spend my time at home painting and playing the piano. But then I suppose that’s not entirely true. Maybe the difference is that I’m curious about things and then I investigate them for myself. What ends up in a gallery with my name on it is generally the resulting residue of my investigations and experiments. I’m more geared towards making things to satisfy my own desires, than to make statement for an audience.

Of course, all art’s existence in the world is based on and measured by it’s reception and appreciation by others, fortunately each individual is free to choose how they would like to approach art making. I get excited just thinking about working on new paintings and photographs and books and music. To me it’s about challenging myself, seeing if I’ll be able to pull something off, or to excite and surprise myself, or try and make something that measures up to my personal standards and goals. The work does eventually end up in front of an audience, but it is not made for anyone but myself.

Perhaps my perspective also has to do with the political climate and the daily obstacles we face in South Africa. We have very real and pressing problems. Destroying valuable art because it supposedly does not serve its original revolutionary spirit anymore seems incredibly frivolous, even pompous and ridiculous to me. I think that, that kind of political idealism is a luxury of thought that we can’t afford.
That said, I saw a work of Brener online when I googled him now (I’d never heard of him before), which I thought was genius. It is a graffiti piece on a wall that reads: “Every morning I wake up on the wrong side of Capitalism.”

THITH: Finally, you speak a lot about creating uncomplicated, peaceful environments to think about and produce art, is the perception of artists as suffering something you actually find antithetical to making good art?

ZB: I do find the archetypal figure of the tragic artist to be an interesting phenomenon, and it has been subject to much criticism and ridicule in my work. I wouldn’t say that it’s antithetical to making good art, but I do think that self-inflicted suffering is tragic and no way to live. We’ve seen it in music as much as we’ve seen it in visual art in the last hundred years.

The tragic-suffering-genius-toiling-away-alone-in-his-studio is an old stereotype. I don’t think it’s that relevant anymore. Today’s visual artist’s generally seem to work towards having massive studio’s and a team of assistants. Contemporary art is big business, and artist’s want to be successful businessmen. But Contemporary art is such free and open context today that you can literally insert anything you want into it. If you think of all the different kind of art people are making today, the context is really like a global ‘Show ‘n Tell’. There is space for any kind of voice from any kind of context. People are looking for interesting new things, and new ways to look at the world. By implication, being an artist today offers a potential day-to-day freedom that you would not find in any other profession.

With this freedom I choose to live a simple life. I want to make things with my own hands, at my own pace, learn from everything I do, and enjoy the process. There’s no space for suffering, and no need for a factory. I want to wake up in the morning and have the freedom to decide how I’m going to spend my day. Am I going to paint? Am I going to make music? Maybe Rock’n’Roll, perhaps Dance? Maybe I’d rather spend the day making compositions on the piano? Am I going to read a book and make some drawings? Am I going to smash a hole in my ceiling? Am I going to build some installation? etc etc. Living this way is fulfilling and enriching. It is hard work to get and keep your life this simple, but it is absolutely possible. And it is absolutely worth it. What more do you need?

More on Zander at: STEVENSON GALLERY

THITH: Congratulations on all the success with the new Zola LP! How long has the label been going and how did it start?

Caleb Braatan: Thanks! 2012 will mark Sacred Bones’ fifth year of existence. It started as anything really does- it just happened. A friend wanted to release a 7″, I’d worked in record stores forever, so I just thought I’d give it a shot.

THITH: How do you make it work?

Taylor Brode: We cry a lot, rarely sleep and only eat food you can buy from a bodega.

THITH: Is there an ethos behind the artists you look for and the events you want to be a part of?

T: We like to only work with people with whom we feel a personal affinity towards. In other words, “no assholes.” Everyone on the label is family. Caleb and I have both worked at record stores on and off for the last 15 years. We aren’t necessarily “elitist” but we certainly aren’t very easily impressed either. Neither of us care much for “indie rock” and we tend to both gravitate towards artists/bands who are either redefining genres and/or are the leaders in their genre.

THITH: With more ways to make better sounding records for less and less money–with the abundance of blogs and social sites exposing more and more artists–in a lot of ways it seems this might be a golden age for independent bands but at the same time it seems all anyone wants to focus on is the lack of profit and the “end of the biznezz”. Reminds us of this Louis CK bit:

T: That Louis CK bit was amazing, the co-modification of music and the MP3 has certainly created a lot of ADD-style “non”-listeners but i also think it has brought about a newly dawning golden era of vinyl purists rebelling against that which the label is certainly benefiting from.
We aren’t in this for the money. We both know it is near impossible to run a label that is both ethical and profitable. We tend to err on the side of not-profitable but yet utterly transparent every time. We don’t bullshit our bands or tell them they are going to be “rich” unless they are ready to quit their jobs, tour seven months a year in what are often grueling conditions, and write albums that are going to appeal to the masses (read: “bland”).

C: Indeed, it is harder and harder to make music a full time job.
think of that Louie CK bit every time I fly. The man is a fucking genius.

THITH: As a label, what do you think is the balance between commerce and art making?

T: We are figuring out the commerce part every day as we go. The new Zola Jesus album just charted on the Billboard Top 200 and we were interviewed during CMJ by the “Billboard Biz” section. We started doing large run presses on album jackets at an actual printer instead of screening each one by hand. That was probably the largest artistic concession we have had to make thus far.

C: This is a good follow up question to the last actually. Since we realize that everyone in the world can get any record they want for free, we make sure that the actual physical product is in itself a piece of art (or at least we like to think that).

THITH: Are there things you think are available to artists and labels now that we all do not take advantage of enough?

T: Nothing really comes to mind…Caleb had a genius idea the other day which was “what if mediafire downloads counted towards Soundscan?” This could be the future but it could also end physical product as we know it which would be terribly sad.

C: I don’t know, are there government grants we can get? http://www.leskobooks.com/

THITH: At the same time, we often think about the parallels to when vaudeville died in the teens and went from being the most popular form of entertainment to non-existent within 15 years. There are some extraordinary financial pressures put on labels and bands these days. With that in mind, Are there ways in which you feel the art itself suffers because of financial pressure?

T: Absolutely. The fact that bands have to take their audience into consideration really sucks. The fact that all of my friends in bands who have had kids in the last few years have had to sacrifice watching them grow up so they could get in the van to earn a living is also kinda pretty harsh.

C: The artist suffers without a doubt, but sometimes the art itself excels. Having to work hard for something usually makes the end result better.

THITH: what is the most difficult thing about running an independent label?

T: Not sleeping or eating, crying all the time.
C: Paying rent/bills.

THITH: When you were younger, what were the labels you loved and why?

T: Wax Trax cause I was born & raised in Chicago and that label and store defined my taste in punk music and does to this day.

C: Factory was probably the first label that really made me realize was a label was. Peter Saville’s design was revolutionary to me. Joy Division was also one of the first bands whose records I started to collect.

Support Sacred Bones here.

THITH: It’s interesting that you’re manipulating these paintings digitally but you’re doing so in a way that evokes actual painting techniques. What to your mind is the division between digital illusions and painterly ones?

Chad Wys: Someone recently wrote that I am more of a “con artist than a real artisan”. That particular person, I think, had such an aversion to the digital medium — and perhaps to any art that fails to live up to his personal criteria — that he felt “lied-to” and, even worse, “robbed” of something deeply valuable and personal. I think that statement was meant as scathing criticism, but I find it quite apropos and honest. Digital manipulation is all around us: in advertisements, where models are brushed to perfection; in the movie theater, where impossible actions come to “life”; in the increasing distrust people have for digital photography, through which anyone can alter anything and present it like a reflection of reality. No wonder folks feel “lied-to”.

THITH: There does seem to be a lot of theory suggested by these images of yours but at the same time, they are also just simply pretty to look at. It seems one one level, you’re just playing with color and form in a very formalist manner. Is there a division between these two aspects of your work or in some way are you challenging that too?

CW: There is often an unnecessary division between aestheticism and conceptualism — and much of that division is routed in Art schools today. Studio artists are often taught to be conceptual above all else, and that to merely be an aesthetic artist, interested foremost in beauty, is the kiss of death; on this I don’t completely disagree — but how much weight we should grant concept might be a point on which I diverge in my process. This speaks to the dichotomy that is kitsch versus fine art: or, for example, someone like Thomas Kinkade versus Lucian Freud. Why is one painter “legitimate” in the eyes of art critics, and the other not? What makes “good art”? The ratio of concept to aesthetics factors greatly.

THITH: The danger is to be too overwhelmed by one side?

CW: Relying on beauty and/or sentimentality and, on the opposite end, relying significantly on concept can be equally poor artistic choices. I prefer to indulge in both equally. I revel in a certain amount of guilty pleasure concerning the objects that I unearth at thrift stores and garage sales. A quaint, pastel figurine of two love birds can be, at its most literal core, a beautiful object that mimics great European porcelains that came long before it. But, I am conflicted when I come in contact with kitschy, economical art objects; on the one hand I like indulging in the object’s easy, dumb beauty, but on the other hand my sensibilities as an initiated art enthusiast are insulted by the object’s poor, derivative qualities. I certainly grapple with these conflicts and I play with the idea that beauty can coexist, if not engage in combat, with the intricate critical theories that are given so much weight today.

THITH: Does all this make computers the perfect place to tackle these kinds of questions?

CW: I think computers have a profound place in the visual arts and graphic design has never been richer than it is at this moment. I think some people just miss the ironic or subversive use of digital manipulation in art. I’m both using it to serve my concept and I’m also using the digital medium because I cherish it. One can do so much with computers; for example, even mimic painting techniques. The work in my Nocturne series is meant to question tradition, to question the literal “objectness” of artwork (why we collect it, why we hang it, why we admire it for its decorative and aesthetic qualities), to question art historical motifs (through the juxtaposition of realism and anti-realism), and to question the concept of the “original”.

THITH: What is the process with the Nocturnes?

CW: I had been working with relatively traditional media for quite a while and I wanted to experiment with digital applications. I began by digitally painting over sections of old Victorian portraits that I’d encountered on the web or in art textbooks. Quite literally, I’ve appropriated a digital reproduction that imitates the original painting, and I’ve digitally deconstructed it through imitations of decay and overpainting. Have I offended the original? Or have I offended the lie of the original? My guess is the original painting was “offended” the moment its reproduction was created and used in its stead. And because my resultant work is digital in nature, where is it’s original? I’ve spent years studying how different types of paint drip down a canvas. Are those long-gone drips the originals? Or is the original (e.g. the concept) in the my, or my viewer’s, mind? What’s more: does it matter?

THITH: At the same time these techniques themselves simulate the look of unfinished paintings but you yourself are in fact doing the opposite and deconstructing the painting so, the final image shifts between appearance and disappearance. Is this relationship between Being and Becoming important to you or, what do you see as going on?

CW: I think the ambiguity of precisely what is going on in the Nocturne images is what allows them to either irritate or inspire the viewer. As I look over the body of my work in various mediums — be it film, photography, mixed-media collage, readymade, painting, digital design, etc. — it becomes clear that I wish to capture a sense of ambiguity in the inane objects and images I appropriate. A Victorian portrait of a gentleman was painted by its 19th century creator to be just that: a portrait of a gentleman. When I crop out most of the gentleman’s identity, what purpose does the portrait now serve? To point out the fact that it was merely a portrait of a gentleman in the first place? I see my role as creating a new conversation around particular objects and images. I attempt to critique a cultural understanding of visuality as well as the institution of art itself. It’s up to the viewer to decide what it means in the context of the 21st century.

THITH: The reference to the 19th century seems really important. Is there an intention in this time and in the wealthy in general?

CW: Most definitely. The 19th century, in particular, was a time when aesthetic modernism was boldly embraced in place of narrative realism in visual art. At that time it was a dramatic thing to want beautiful pictures that were simply beautiful pictures, rather than to perpetuate the romantic lie that art provides a window into reality and that all art must serve a higher narrative purpose. One of the most crucial players in the game of aestheticism was James Whistler. His near non-representational landscapes were revolutionary at the time (Google his Nocturne in Black and Gold!) and caused art critics and the public alike to doubt visual modernism (Whistler actually took to court an art critic who trashed his work!). In fact, I’ve named my series after his Nocturnes — which were ambiguous British landscapes that were neither meant to mimic the natural world in exactness, nor to convey any sense of narrative outside the picture plane. It is to this sense of absolute aestheticism, or absolute romanticism in the years before modernism, or absolute religiosity in the years before romanticism, that I look — both respectfully and critically.

THITH: Oh, is that where the name comes from? Because, there’s also an association to music. It was a really popular style of compistion for the first wave of modernist composers. Chopin, Liszt, Debussy and Bartok all of wrote them. Was that intentional at all a reference for you or was it Whistler who was inspired by the current fashions going on in the concert world?

CW: Actually, most of Whistler’s work has a strong association to music. Besides his Nocturne landscapes, titles of some of his works include: “Symphony in White”; “Arrangement in Grey and Black” (which is actually the formal name of the famous painting of is mother); “Harmony in Grey and Green”. This was very much a feature of modernism — the merging of music and visual art. Wassily Kandinsky, who was, arguably, the first non-representational artist, created vibrant works with titles like “Composition V” and “Improvisation X” — effectively equating paint to musical notes. My reference in title to Whistler’s Nocturnes is a direct and literal reference to the modernists’ riffs on musicality across mediums. This is yet another way that I’ve linked my exploration with motifs to the explorations of other artists throughout history… a melting and “dripping” pot of ideology and aesthetic motifs.

THITH: These original paintings really suggest a very specific opulence, and you’re displacing and replacing the image with equally elegant and refined contemporary art mannerisms, is there a commentary in this about the roll art plays as a status symbol and luxury good?

CW: The role that art plays as a luxury good is perhaps the constant strand throughout much of my artwork and much of my academic research. I’m very interested in this and most of my writing is squarely fixed on the problem of art as a commodity. That is to say: how does art function in culture as both a deeply poetic utterance to be thoughtfully considered, and also as a commodity to be traded and displayed for decorative and luxurious reasons? Similar concerns are also pointed at by much of my artwork. I enter thrift stores and fixate on economical pieces that have lived an easy life on the shelves or above the fireplaces of their middle-class owners; many of the objects I find mimic finer pieces held within the world’s grandest museums — objects that neither the middle-class owner, nor I, could ever hope to afford. We decorate our lives with objects that make us feel more complete or more elevated intellectually and/or financially… when it’s all very much an illusion.

THITH: All but one of the Nocturnes is of an individual, is there something about ideas of the individual itself that you’re playing with here? Does it matter that these are wealthy individuals and why the one couple?

CW: I think one of the strongest obstacles we face today is alienation from one another. Despite the obvious promise that the Internet and its plethora of “social networks” provides, it’s apparent that, while we’re literally more “connected” than ever before, we’ve never been less dependent on one another, nor less emotionally involved. A large part of our general drifting apart has to do with technology: We don’t speak face-to-face, but through a technological mediator like a webcam, or a webpage. Not that I personally have any great desire to be physically and emotionally connected to so many people, nor do I necessarily mourn this great “alienation” that I reference, but I do find it to be an intriguing and oxymoronic feature of contemporary life.

My selection of what I perceive to be cold, dry, isolating, stark, formalistic portraiture speaks to these contemporary concerns. Even Nocturne 112, that you referenced in your question — which appropriates a portrait of, I would guess, two wealthy, 19th century sisters — is so formal, so unemotional, so isolated by all the suffocating negative space around the two women that I can’t help but feel some sense of total removal from society; even despite the fact that the portrait was surely intended to confirm that these two women are, in fact, a major part of (aristocratic) “society”. I see in portraits like these a similar sense of (oxymoronic) alienation.

THITH: Some of the styles you’re playing with evoke the high art modernism of people like DeKooning but the very nature of what you’re playing with here seems to stem from someone like Baldessari or to, one of the grandpappies of Modernisim, Duchamp. Who are the older artists you look at?

CW: Duchamp was light years ahead of his time and to label him a modernist is only taking into account the era he was born into. Still, my references to any or all of these artists is another extension of my act of appropriating objects, images, styles, and motifs from history. The gestures I make with paint, or digital “paint”, on the surface of any object or image is not always an intentional maneuver (in this way, I also share some methodology with Jackson Pollock!); so I cannot claim to always be conscious of what precisely I am appropriating. But there is a conscious effort on my part to blend ideas from art history. The blending of a Rembrandt painting with minimalist, colorfield shapes is certainly a purposeful effort to juxtapose (or clash) elements that don’t belong together. I’m essentially a non-literal mash-up artist.

You can see more of Chad’s work and look into buying prints and posters here.

THITH: We don’t know too much about you and the official bio on your site isn’t much help, so, what can you tell us about yourself?

Assaf Shaham: O.K so, I’m 27 years old, born in Jerusalem live and have worked in Tel Aviv for over 7 years. I Graduated from MINSHAR School Of Art where I studied photography and art but my biggest loves and inspirations are cinema and music and I worked as a film editor for many years.

THITH: Your ‘American Dream’ series is what we first noticed. Really, they are just beautiful images. Color photographs of monuments stretched but there are some other images mixed in, what’s the narrative of these works collectively?

AS: Thank you!! Maybe it’s early to say what the narrative is… I’m not sure that I know what it is in this point, it is an ongoing project that deals with the power, capital technology and the (western) human desire to always want it bigger & faster for only 0.99$. I try to undermine the icons that represent it the best because capital have many forms… sculptures, architecture, cars and many many more, for me they are all Representations of Aggressive power that we all have a love hate relationship with.

THITH: There’s also a kind of nostalgic veneer to the whole thing with the colours evoking old postcards of national U.S. landmarks that were, perhaps, more respected in the past. Is this a nostalgia for a certain kind of America or a deconstruction of that nostalgia? Is it nostalgia for a type of photographic image?

AS: It is defeletlly a deconstruction of that America/Israel–which tries to simulate the U.S everything it does–and almost all western cultures-I don’t have any nostalgic feelings for this money and power monuments–but the nostalgic veneer come from the material that I use, once again as you said-from old postcards. This postcards were sent from U.S to Israel by Israeli people on vacations–I like the stories that are written on them–and the title of this project also refers to Israeli people that dream to travel America and see the monuments—people here in Israel used to think that the U.S was really larger than life.

THITH: The rough stretched pixilation is obviously far more tactile then what digital manipulations are capable of now, what does the surface of these images mean to you?

AS: The material that i use is very important to me, I could easily downloaded any images like this from the internet and manipulated them, but the tension between the actual old material (the old postcards) and the digital manipulation is an axis that I love to work around, also the way that I work doesn’t give full control over the result, the places that you don’t have that control and things happens by mistake is the places that interest me the most and give the images this tactile feeling

THITH: I have to say, that as a New Yorker, I still have a visceral reaction to the absence of the towers in my skyline and I actually miss them. I often find myself walking down certain streets and and trying to remmber where they used to be. So, I weirdly found your image of them stretched impossibly tall kind of cathartic. I realize that probably wasn’t your intention but there does seem to be collective memory of September 11 that was lived through television and the media. Your image with it’s warped pixilation and towers growing in the opposite directions can’t escape that connection. What role does media play in the construction of our memory of contemporary history?

AS: No I cant escape that connection even if I try. I can tell you that I remember where I was what I did and everything that happened on 9/11, we all share this collective memory that you mentioned. The media is absolutely controlling our history narrative, this has been the roll of the media since always, but I think that the most important issue is how we remember. The media has all kind of Interests beside telling us the “real” story.

THITH: Most of your work seems to play with media interfaces—websites, video pixilation—what is it about these systems that interest you?

AS: Most of the time we take things for granted, we know the story and we are happy with that–I try take advantage of the gaps inside the narrative and offer a different one, maybe not the “right” one but I never seek Truth, it doesn’t exist and its not interesting is my opinion. So I want to undermine and deconstruct certain stories and the these systems allows me to do it, especially the internet, in the internet space the possibility to undermine the system from inside is bigger because power relations are more democratic and a Mediator factor isn’t as much of a factor. Its a great space to do art.

THITH: Through interactive pieces to Facebook, you command us listen to whole works by Bach, Bernhard Herman then study move scenes like the bomber in Dr. Stranglove shot by shot. In some cases (all cases?) the music is from the scene you’re deconstructing. It’s Youtube without video, film without motion, music delivered through compressed laptop speakers and perhaps most contradictory, Facebook with an attention span. Is that your intention or what do you think of all that?

AS: I think that the key word for my work and for this one in particular is deconstruction, but really in this project I’m in the roll of decomposing the original and the viewer is composing a new creation. I really like how you put it and I think that the project deals a lot with the systems of Youtube and Facebook and how we use it. I would add that for me its also deals with the relations between the artist and the viewer and how we can switch rolls so fast in the age of the Internet. In the situation I set up, there is nothing until you decide to click rapidly over and over on you mouse.

THITH: What about the sites themselves? Other than their immense popularity, is there anything that makes them useful to you?

AS: One of the reasons I chose Facebook is that I wanted to make use of it’s picture album platform. It has a built in loop mechanism and because of it the movies can never end. I isolate shots so that the lead nowhere and the hereos/viewers are stuck in the loop. And to make it more effective, I chose climactic scenes which become stripped of their normal film drama and action and offer a new one that leads to nowhere.
Youtube is one of the most democratic tools on the internet, you can find almost anything there and anyone can upload their own video. Really though, my chosen soundtracks were only a suggestions. I wanted people to use the comments an suggest them own chosen soundtracks and to create a dialogue between people–it never happened.

THITH: What about the films themselves? Do you see yourself as attacking, defending or neutral to your source material?

AS: Well, I use materials that I love, Kubrick, Hitchcock and home made videos.. im not in the position to attack/defend them I just remix themes and create something new… most of the time I’m just trying to have fun.

THITH: What are you working on now?

AS: I always like to work on more than one thing but my project these days is actually involve with another American icon and one of my favorite actors: John Wayne. It’s going to be a film collage made out of hundreds scenes from all of his movies I would love to tell you more but i dont know yet what it’s going like to be in the end. The most interesting things happens by mistake.

See more of Assaf’s work here

THITH: What is your writing process? How long do you spend building up your tracks?

Rachel Evans: I don’t really have a writing process. Most of my tracks start off as improvisations. For MSOTT I do a lot of improvising over myself until I feel like the track is full enough and solid enough. Some tracks are done after two or three takes, other tracks can wind up reaching 20 or more layers of audio before I feel like they’re complete. Regardless, the majority of my music is made in one sitting. “Luminaries & Synastry” is one exception to that rule. With that album me & Brad at Digitalis did a whole lot of back and forth with the tracks. However, for my recent tapes on Hobo Cult & Digitalis, and my upcoming LP for Spectrum Spools are exactly the way they were, no going back & editing, just straight up improvised MSOTT.

THITH: How much is improvised and how much is specifically written? And how much only exists in the recording? Is there a balance between analogue manipulations that you perform and textures and sounds only created using editing software?

RE: Nothing is specifically written. Motion Sickness of Time Travel recordings are naturally stronger than a live MSOTT performance since I’m able to do a lot more manipulation of the sound in a recorded setting than I am in a live setting. That having been said, my recent solo performance in Asheville, NC I feel went really well, and was truer to my recorded sound than I’ve ever been able to achieve before in a live setting. To do this I incorporated 2 microphones instead of 1, and ran my second mic through my computer’s recording software using the effects that you hear on my recorded albums. It worked out really well. Although my recordings will always be “thicker” sounding since I’m able to layer more on an album than I am in real life, being only one person.

THITH: How do you play live? Do you like to create brand new pieces or do you perform the songs as written?

RE: Performing live is certainly interesting for me. It’s a different experience every time. With my recent solo sets I make notes to myself for pieces to perform which consist basically of a starting note/key and the sounds to start off with on each instrument. The vocals are always totally improvised and turn out slightly different each time. So the majority is improvised live, but at my last show I really wanted to try and recreate at least one piece from one of my LPs. I chose “Synastry” since its fairly short and has simple instrumentation. I found a similar sound to the main voicing used for that track on my new keyboard and just sort of picked it out while listening to that track. It worked pretty well. I’ve listened to that track enough times that I know my own words now, even though they weren’t originally written down or in my memory. I’m looking forward to doing another solo set in Atlanta Wednesday August 24th doing the two live improvised tracks and recreating “Synastry” again. It’s quite tricky trying to recreate the sound that I have on record, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.

THITH: Are you a gear nerd or more of a make use of whatever is at hand type? What is at hand and what gear do you obsess about?

RE: Well I’m not the biggest gear nerd ever, but I could probably fall into that category at times. I’d LOVE to own more gear, but of course whatever is at hand what I always end up using. I LOVE my dave smith mopho and my space synth deluxe. Those are my two favorite pieces of gear. I used to have a roland fantom workstation, which is what the majority of “Luminaries…” and “Seeping…” were recorded with. It was amazing versatile but so difficult to carry around. Plus, there’s nothing better than true analog gear. I hope to eventually own more analog synthesizers and maybe even some nice vintage gear too. I could obsess over old synths all day if I had the time and money to do it.

THITH: We’ve seen a few things where people have made connections between you Boards Of Canada and Grouper. It’s always funny to us when reviewers just seem to assume that you must only listen to things they hear as a reference. So, what are some things you’re always listening to or influenced by that sound nothing like what you do?

RE: Haha. It’s funny you mention those two artists. Boards Of Canada has actually been a big influence on me, but Grouper hasn’t been. I’m constantly asking myself where the Grouper comparison comes from… although I’ve listened to her music and really love it when the mood is right, it’s certainly not a big influence on my music’s sound. I’ve said this so many times before, but it never hurts to say it again I guess… Valet has been the biggest female artist influence on my sound. I’m still waiting for a reviewer to mention that! Obviously Emeralds and all their various projects have been a big influence for me. Other artists like Fennez, Tim Hecker and William Bassinski have been big influences too. I don’t think I sound too much like them, although I wish I did! On the topic of music that doesn’t really sound like mine but that has had an influence on my sound, I’d have to say the Breeders and Stereolab were both a big deal for me. And I was really obsessed with Pocahaunted and Best Coast for the longest time too. I guess if you melded all those things I mentioned together you might get something like what MSOTT is.

THITH: As the album came together, did certain tracks influence other ones or do you treat each one as it’s own universe?

RE: For “Luminaries” all of the tracks definitely influenced one another. The whole album is a universe all its own. And as I said, I worked a great deal back and forth with Brad at Digitalis on the “Luminaries” album. In many ways, I feel the album is much stronger because of that, and much more focused than it would have been if it’d been just me making the decisions.

THITH: You’re also making music, a lot of music, as Quiet Evenings with your husband(?) brother(?) Grant. How different is it to work on music together?

RE: Ha ha! Grant is my husband. We’ve been married since summer 2008, and started making music together as Quiet Evenings in early 2009. Making music with Grant has been such an amazing experience. Quiet Evenings is constantly evolving, and in many ways it influences my MSOTT sound a great deal. Grant has really helped me to become more comfortable with the idea of not thinking too much about music before I make it and just doing it. I never felt comfortable improvising until after I met him and we started making music together. Part of my journey in finding MSOTT’s sound has been in trying to copy the processes and things that Grant does in his own music. He’s been my single biggest musical influence of all time. I never would have started making this type of music at all if it wasn’t for him. He’s who got me into Valet and other female artists like that. With Quiet Evenings the two of us are really able to come together and bring our two different viewpoints of music to the table and share them. He really approaches things from more of an artists point of view, while I’ve always approached them from a musician or composers point of view. With Quiet Evenings I’m most comfortable being the artist and using sound like a medium rather than thinking of things in terms of keys or notes. It’s a whole other way of thinking about it. For that reason, I really feel like Quiet Evenings is the strongest music I’ve ever been a part of.

THITH: What is next?

RE: Good question! Lots of things… Grant & I have a split LP coming out in the next month or two on Aguirre Records (Belguim). One side is MSOTT, and the other is Grant’s solo project, Nova Scotian Arms. On the Quiet Evenings front, our own label Hooker Vision will be releasing a split LP with Seziki Tetrasheaf as a split release with our good friends at Rotifer Cassettes. That’s also due out in the next month. And solo MSOTT-wise, I’m currently finishing up my first double LP for Spectrum Spools which will feature artwork by Caroline Teagle (Tranquility Tapes) and will be mixed by John Elliott. It’s due out this December/January.

more MSOTT here.

THITH: Who’s in the band, how long have you been together, where you from, what’s story?

Asa: Matthew and I are Electric Guest but we have three other friends that make up the live band. I’m from Berkeley, California.

Cornbread: I’m from Virginia.

THITH: We’ve heard a rumor about an EP you might be sitting on. Are the three songs on your Band Camp page from that? Is there more and when do we get to hear it?

Matthew: We have plans to put out an EP with White Iris. We’ve been a part of their camp for years now.

Asa: We have a finished album too but we’re not signed or anything so we’re not sure when it’ll be out. The songs on the EP will be different from the ones on the bandcamp.

THITH: Where did you make it and who?

Asa: I wrote most of the record in my room, in a big house in Los Angeles. There were a lot of kids who lived there over the three years I was there. One of the main guys had a studio in the basement and a lot of great instruments so I was able to use his stuff and also fill the house with my own gigantic organs, pianos and gear which I would have otherwise never gotten away with. That’s where I met Cornbread-That’s Matthew’s other name- in fact. He was a friend of someone who lived there. He ended up coming over a bunch and we hit it off pretty immediately. I remember I had made a pact with myself not become friends with anybody for at least a year and just focus on music. I did it for about a year and a half but then I met him and we’ve been friends ever since. He’s an amazing musician and plays a lot of instruments so the album is almost all me, him and Brian Burton.

Matthew: Yeah, Brian heard Asa’s songs and asked him to work on an album. I would come over all the time and play whatever he needed. We worked like that for years. Then, when Brian was free we all went into his studio together and recorded the album.

THITH: What things things about getting into a studio for the first time were most exciting?

Matthew: It felt like whenever i came in to play parts, there was a really good energy. It seemed like everybody was really excited about the music.

Asa: Me personally, I was kind of terrified. It was mostly an amazing experience but it was also pretty distressing at times. I actually got Shingles from all of the stress while we were recording and had to take like, a month off.

Matthew: Oh yeah, there was that. I forgot about that.

THITH: Were you playing shows before going into the studio or are you having to learn to be a live band now?

Asa: We never played before the album. Well, I had never even played live before. The rest of the guys have though.

Matthew: We worked for months playing the songs together before playing a live show. We really wanted to feel confidant about playing the songs live.

Asa: Yeah, the energy in our band is really good. I think we’re all kind of surprised at how well we get on and how fun it’s been to play live.

THITH: What’s the biggest difference between shows and recording for you?

Matthew: They feel like two totally different things. Some of the intimate moments in the studio have a new energy live that can be really exciting.

Asa: For me, the two are almost opposite. Writing is such an insular process that has nothing to do with the outside world, while preforming is all about putting yourself out there and sharing that energy.

THITH: We get a kind of Mutant–albeit somewhat cleaned and electronic–60′s garage thing in your songs. You ever listen to collections like Nuggets or bands like The Troggs, The Seeds or The Zombies. Is that a thing for you or where does that sound come from?

Matthew: I like the Zombies, of course. I think we ended up being influenced by a lot of different genres.

Asa: I have a sweet tooth for terrible music so I won’t even say what I’m influenced by. I wish it was some of those cool bands though.

THITH: What bands around you do feel are your allies. Who amongst your friend’s bands are you always anxious to share what you’ve done with and always want to hear more of?

Matthew: We are friends with Fool’s Gold and really support those guys. Also, we’re close to our friend’s in The Moor and our friend Matt Popieluck just finished an album under the name Big Search, which is great.

Asa: Yeah, I mostly listen to older music or our friends’ bands but I do like some new music. I went see my friend John’s band Salem who I’m really into and the opener was Light Asylum, who I loved! I also quite liked that new James Blake record. And about sharing music with people, I usually share my music with Brian, Matthew or my parents.

more here.

We sat in the plane to Germany last weekend trading the headphones on Andy Stott’s “Passed Me By”. It’s grim and cold, heaving slow paced with low frequencies that suck in and inhale you. On ‘North To South’ the slow kicks beat like blood vessels while shards of distorted electronics slam in and out landing on crystalline pads. At these tempos, and with these atmospherics, it’s a kind of space with roots in dub played against the more ominous side of classic house.

Snare rolls made out of caged frequencies rattling, stark electronic buzzing in warbled sheets, disembodied vocals inverted, inhuman and vaporous played like samples which on “Dark Details” become the pitched down voice of doom, all of this might seem like it’s a record of brutal dreariness but it’s beautiful in it’s way and all that darkness plays against the sensual textures of the universe he’s creating. The final gasp of the title track is the most serene of these, a murderous night spent wandering under the industrial buzz of power-lines coming to end in gentle intoxication.

More here.

THITH: You’re originally from San Diego and just moved to L.A.. How’s the move been? What’s the best thing about L.A.?

AUSTIN TIRADO: The best thing about LA. I’d say probably the community of fellow bands coming out and doing things right now. Its really inspiring and nice to be able to hang at eachother shows or have bbq’s with all your friends that consist of 9 different bands. I feel loved.

THITH: What are these bands around you that you feel connected to?

RT: Theres a handful but id say my closest buds in bands around me are Superhumanoids, Hands, White Arrows, Princeton, Pepper Rabbit are all killing it right now and are all people i respect so much. its nice to bounce ideas off with such fine folk.

THITH: You recently made an EP. Where and how did you record it?

RT: I started the EP alone in my bedroom then it slowly formed into recording at friends houses and lofts. There were supposed to be 7 songs on it but i ended up cutting a few to make the ep feel and sound more cohesive. I recording into my laptop running Logic and Ableton and used plug -ins and analog synths. I was very new to the recording world so it was definitely a learning experience and has helped me now that I’m recording my first full length.

THITH: Were these songs that had been sitting around from a larger pile of songs or did you think about the EP itself as a singular work?

RT: It was a singular piece of work. All the songs on the ep were recording at the beginning of last year and i wrote and recorded all the songs in a matter of 2 months.

More Lesands here.

THITH: How long have you been publishing and how did you start?

Kirsten McCrea: I got the idea when I was working in a restaurant that had beautiful prints on the walls that were $2000 each. They were stunning, but I can’t even foresee a future where I’ll be able to drop that kind of cash on artwork. I have a lot of friends who are in the same boat – people who love and appreciate contemporary art but can’t afford original work. I started thinking that maybe if I removed the person from the equation and made prints using a machine, that I could lower the price. I looked into it and discovered that that’s exactly what Sheppard Fairy does: he releases an offset lithograph print every month. They sell for $45 each, which I think is still too steep. I settled on 5 bucks as the going rate for my prints.
Papirmasse debuted at the Royal Bison craft fair in Edmonton, Alberta in early December 2008. I’d only had the idea for a couple weeks, but I liked the idea of doing a yearly run that would start in January and didn’t want to wait a whole year to get started.

For our first issue, I took a photo of one of my paintings, called a printshop, and a few days later had a stack of 1,000 prints sitting in my living room.

THITH: How do you fund it and how do you distribute it?

KM: When I moved back to Montreal in early 2009 Papirmasse moved with me. At the end of the first year I put the project on pause, because funding was an issue. I was making massive quantities of prints and wanted to find a way to restructure the project so that I wouldn’t be left with excess stock every month.

Then in 2010 I teamed up with the fabulous Maison Kasini, a gallery and small publishing company in Montreal. They have an in-house printshop and had the fantastic idea that we make the switch from offset printing to digital printing. This allows us to print on demand (which basically means that we never make a print until a subscription has been sold, so there is no waste and no extra cost). This change means that Papirmasse really can’t lose money, so we’re going to be around for a loooong time! They handle the distribution too, which basically involves stuffing hundreds of envelopes every month and carting them down to good old Canada Post.

THITH: Is it a labour of love? What else are you working on?

Ha ha, yes. No one is getting rich off $5 prints. But I am very happy to be filling the world with more art in my own small way.

I am also a painter and a free-lance illustrator. Right now I’m working on a series of giant 7-foot tall atom bomb explosion paintings that are patterned and highly decorative.

I guess for a few years my artwork has been focused on the way we construct mythologies around political events. Nuclear proliferation ends up coming across in the news almost like a wild west story or a soap opera, with good guys and bad guys and elaborate explanations for why the good guys get to have weapons and the bad guys don’t. It takes focus away from the fact that no one should be in possession of something so destructive.

I also do a lot of collaborative art-making with two collectives here in Montreal. Cease (www.cease.it) puts on art parties and makes collaborative wheatpaste murals, and En Masse (www.enmasse.info) paints large-scale collaborative black and white murals with anywhere from 4 to 40 artists. I don’t know if there’s something in our foul water here in Montreal or if collaborative stuff is happening everywhere these days… Either way, I feel lucky to be a part of both groups, because it’s liberating to make something that doesn’t belong to you afterwards, and it’s always really inspiring to work alongside such talented people.

THITH: Who are your collaborators?

KM: I work with Chris and Ric from Maison Kasini (www.maisonkasini.com) to produce the prints.

Every month we feature the work of a different artist and writer, so the list of collaboraters has gotten pretty long. So far in 2011 we have worked with Jeff Kulak, Guillaume Morrissette, JP King, Alan Ganev, Matt Hovey, Stephen Schaub, Robert Yune, David Orfé, and Johnny Forever. Some of our contributors are both artists and writers and have tackled both sides of an issue.

THITH: What are your goals for Papermasse?

KM: We are really excited right now because we just hit our year-end goal of 300 subscribers. We’ve now upped the goal to 500 subscribers, which I feel really confident will happen. The more people we get the more we can take on ambitious projects (like making a small book for an issue, or making a really huge print). It’s pretty awesome too because a lot of our subscribers are in far-away places like Malaysia and Switzerland, and it’s exciting knowing that the work of our artists is travelling so far.

THITH: Can anyone submit their art or writing for publication?

KM: We will open our next call to artists and writers in late 2011, so anyone who is interested should join our mailing list or fan us on Facebook so that they hear about it!

More HERE.

more tracks on these great blogs:
keytars & violins
alain finkiel krautrock
rcrdlbl
waves at night
feel my bicep