interview with Kal Spelletich from
the book "THRESHOLDS"
Published by The Univesity of California Santa Barbara
1. Who do you think your audience is and what do
you think attracts them?
People
who are
interested in non mainstream entertainment, thrill seekers, gearheads,
arty types, punk rockers/music scene people, outcasts and just plain
old folks. People whose existence is never threatened. I
feel my performances cross borders all over the place. Hence quite a
range of people.
They
respond in all these ways and more. There really is no expected
response. My hope is that they will help me see things differently. I
always feel funny being lumped into social phenomena/Burning Man,
industrial San Francisco culture, the scene in Austin in the
mid-eighties/Slackers/ but these are all important subcultures. I often
feel as if I am working in a vacuum even when I may be in the eye of
the storm.
And
yes of course people are drawn to visceral art, art that can kill or
maim you and at the same time bring up other issues besides technology
run amok. To stare directly at your own mortality, what could be more
life affirming? Fucking? Making Love?
The
more people stay at home sitting in front of computers, playing video
games and watching movies on video (staying passive audience members)
instead of going out and getting real experiences (escapist vs.
reality), the more they will be drawn to events that allow them to
witness and experience their own mortality and humanity. We will always
want to experience live things. To experience something live, not
Memorex. Where something may not work as expected, where the outcome is
different each time. People want real life adventures. The more
deprived you get the sicker you become. Thrill sports are booming
because of this.
I
have never been very good at passive entertainment. Most people have
never loaded a gun, gone out, hunted down an animal, killed it,
cleaned, cooked and finally ate it. These are the most base simple and
early man experiences, like fighting. I am not saying fighting and
killing are right but they are primeval experiences that most humans
are no longer experiencing. At least women are still capable of giving
birth, this has not been removed from their experiences yet. Now here
you have truly experienced and made something. I
attempt both, to give people a cathartic release and to challenge their
preconceptions of what art and art content can be. The key is to keep
the aesthetic image connected to a narrative or concept. Feasting,
celebrating, bingeing, drug abuse, alcoholism, violence, sex, the human
condition breaking down and pulling itself back up, are all real life
things that can shape and change lives. Like Carnival.
I
think the real question is what needs to be done, what has to be done,
that is how I decide what I am going to work on next. Yes
to both, Debord and the spectacle we are born into and that I
exuberantly participate in. We can participate and tweak it and no it
isn't limited of course, yet very entertaining. Also quite early in my
art career I read about a theater in France called the Grand Guignol in
1908, The Dadaists and Surrealists (Duchamp, Hugo Ball, Artaud, Max
Ernst, Picabia, Man Ray, Schwitters, Dali). Also Robert Wilson, Mel
Andringa and the Drawing Legion, Joseph Beuys, Jean Tinguely, Paul
McCarthy, Chris Burden, The Bread and Puppet Theater, and even earlier
as a wee lad growing up in Iowa went to all kinds of tractor pulls and
demolition derbies, rock concerts and large family parties. These all
inspired me to no end.
To
create an art that is truly of time, that can not be repeated, that
should not be repeated that is timeless. That is forever evolving.
Being sure to never know what could happen.
What
is really important though is to participate in the spectacle. To stay
in the mix. To contribute, to be active. To stay true to the
underground. To be part of the spectacle on your own terms.
There
will never be closed possibilities, the learning curve for technology
is infinite, you could not learn a fraction of it if you studied for
the rest of your life. The same holds true for the study of psychology.
This
past year at Burning Man, SEEMEN made a restaurant with our buddy
Flash. We built a structure, covered it with bones, a flamethrower at
the entrance, filled it with couches and machines, blared music at
them, we had a misting Virgin Mary spraying a cooling mist from her
outstretched palms on the cooking masses (up to 125 degrees there), we
had an air conditioner on a bale of hay we turned on for select
participants, a fire pit, The Backstabbing couple, The Cornhuskers, a
couple of flamethrower barbecues, we bought a case of Chivas Regal,
countless kegs of beer, 1000's of burgers and dogs, assorted
"sundries", Slabs of Ribs, Steaks, Turkeys, Tri Tip and on and on. New
levels in total desire saturation. Some people were terrified, wouldn't
eat our stuff, some couldn't tell it was a restaurant, I think they
just didn't trust us, that we could cook something healthy or good, our
restaurant design just looked to weird and scary to them. At night we
had guest stars on stage. People like Donald from Three Day Stubble,
lotsa drag queens, the Space Cowgirls, Scot Jenerik, drunk violent
poets, ya know the gang. I did these phenomenal performances with Bob
Madigan, he's hideously beautiful, he'd get naked in front of every one
and I'd fill my air cannon with a gallon of beer or water or whatever
and blast him with it, he'd practically get blown over, the liquid
hitting his body like a full body slap. I always made sure to get both
sides of him. We'd do it at least once a day. Now here we are starting
to approach the Grand Guigol, to create a gruesome spectacle of horror.
Nina
Simone, The
Boredoms, Willie Nelson, Butthole Surfers, Tom Waits, Scot Jenerik, The
Birthday Party, Johnny Cash, Godflesh, Suicide, Crass, Povarrotti, Herb
Alpert, Milk Cult, Cibo Matto. Well
I Dunno. Can you make that clean money? Would you get edited? Would you
self-edit?
I
would want you to kill me after I gave all of the money I made to the
San Francisco Cacophony society. The soul (let alone any fear or panic)
would be sucked right out of any show like that-so it would be
presentable to a mainstream audience. I think it's a shame that success
is so often judged by the mass appeal of an idea. The truly innovative
stuff is so far ahead of it's time the critics and most public
shouldn't know how to address it.
I've
never been in a war so I'm sure I am just barely beginning to scratch
the surface. There is something about a war that people are drawn to.
Working in a fearful mechanized way does serve the instinctual drive
for war and bloodletting. The nearness of death exhalts life. Why
should the military be the only ones who get to play with the big toys.
Yeah
sure, better than bungee jumping though, especially if you are my
audience member who gets chosen to run the flamethrower. Fire needs
context though, just like any other medium, be it paint, plaster or
film. No medium is the be-all end all that instantly transforms into
art. I have used fire as a landscape cleanser, metaphor for male
ejaculate, as a river of fire to follow or cross, a waterfall of fire,
as a salute to the day, as bad breath from Rush Limbaugh, trees armed
with flamethrowers, underwater seamonsters spitting fire from watery
depths, flaming robots fucking, fighting and lovemaking, a bride
carrying her own torch, Serberus the three headed dog with each head
spitting fire, a pope figure blessing his flock with flaming arms, a
molotov cocktail thrower for the oppressed worker, a 20 ft. pair of
Icarus wings flapping in a room full of fire, as a homage to the
Futurists and technology, a figure on fire hurling itself into a tub of
water and jumping back out still aflame as a baptism by fire or born
again through a trial, as man defecating into the air or pissin in the
wind, then it becomes more than just a fire.
I
let this little granny run a flamethrower once, it was incredible. She
was brilliant, there is a skill to operating one. But yer right it's to
easy to just strap on a flamethrower to any robot or machine I build
and let her rip. I always bum out when friends come over to my shop and
they see something new I'm building and they ask "where's the fire
going to be?"
There
is nothing wrong with being enraptured by a fire. This was the original
TV. You can stare at it for hours. It is as beautiful as a landscape
with deer, waterfall, flowers and trees. But it is as retinal a trap as
thick lush gobs of paint.
Sure
they do, why not. It's about people coming together with their
community. Getting together to experience something. Getting away from
those tv's and computers. Last fall my partner Jason Brummel put
together a demolition derby car here in my shop and we raced it at THE
Altamont Speedway. It was an incredibly fun day of barbecue, beer and
destruction. With no art intentions at all, we did paint the car a
beautiful deep gold, had Seemen tagged on it as sponsors and a western
landscape mural on the side. A fine fall day full of adventures and
hijinks.
It's
interesting how jaded people get without ever experiencing the thing
they are cynical towards, I've heard it all, it's like a defense
mechanism, the lines are, oh that stuff, my friends friend worked for
them, I read about that a long time ago or my brother saw that stuff
once. A certain percentage refuse to show interest , let alone fear or
panic. I hope I am forever mesmerized by things and never disregard
ideas without giving them a chance. Its about becoming an innocent, a
child again. To unlearn what you have already learned. It's been said a
million times and it will be said millions more for each successive
generation. The only thing to fear is fear itself. It holds you back,
fears stop you from acting on your real desires. Stops you from growing
and evolving, from becoming more human, they stop you from taking
chances, from putting yer ass on the line, from becoming genius, I
would rather fall flat on my ass than play it safe and not try.
Otherwise I would have stayed in Iowa and taken over my fathers
construction company, I always knew I had a higher or lower calling.
Merzbow
rules. Sound is the same as paint, clay, steel or hydraulics, material
and tools to an end, sound is an especially delightful tool because you
can force it down your audiences throats, they can close their eyes to
something they don't want to see and stay in the room, but to plug your
ears to 20,000 watts is tough. Sound definitely triggers fear. My claw
on a sheet of metal always brings up the fingernails on the chalkboard
analogy. It can't be tuned out, it crawls up your neck and down your
chest. To make the bass pound in your chest stronger than your own
heart.
I
clamp contact mics to different spots on my machines and amplify them,
sometimes using effects like distortion, reverb and delay (like a rock
guitarist). You can get an infinite variety of sounds and effects from
each machine. Each machine becomes an instrument. Some of the better
noise and sounds from the machines are the claws scratching I
mentioned, tanks and barrels that get gonged and pounded, giant steel
cymbals on CLAPPY BOY that clap balls of fire, amplified jet engines,
steel fists that pound other machines (HEAD PUNCHER). I've used
explosions as a soundtrack to a performance, snapping 50 toothed jaws,
miced every conceivable tool and motor, I built a machine called GRUNGY
BOY that strokes and pounds a guitar (it can play 3 chords), horns,
bells, every kind of spinning thing, the SUICIDE CHAIR sounds
fantastic, I just finished a smaller machine of 2 ANGELS FUCKING for a
fundraiser at the Lab (gallery here in SF that we all show at) that is
quite a little hellraiser, HEADBUTTING COUPLES slamming sheets of
steel, they all have their own little voice it really is endless
especially when you run 2 or more machines and let them essentially
"play themselves". Sometimes the sounds, not the actions are the big
surprise from a new machine.
I've
always known deep down inside that whatever grade of technology I could
get my hands on I could liberate from any past history that may be
holding it back.
Yes,
absolutely every person that attends one of my performances has a
chance at running a machine. I have been obsessed with breaking the
barrier down between the audience and the performers. You have a much
more tangible and real life experience when you are physically involved
in an event versus being a passive observer. Somehow back when they
designed the proscenium arch the line was drawn and now they have burly
bouncers protecting the performers from the fanatics. The role the
audience falls into when the stage is set in that way keeps them locked
out. It isn't much different if you attend a gallery exhibit of
paintings. Its pretty funny though a lot of people don't want to get
involved, they are afraid. Be it stage fright or an actual fear of the
machines. I'll run around to the back of the audience and find friends
hiding out in the back or the ones who don't want any attention, I'm
always grabbing them trying to get them in the mix. Well
I wrote those lines 10 years ago and they are more true now than ever.
Most of our realities are shaped by the media. It's kinda sad but how
many times do you think or say "wow that's just like on tv or in the
movies". Or you see an event and it didn't seem real cuz the 14,000
times you saw it on tv (a car wreck, a murder, a fight) the guy didn't
end up dead smushed into the asphalt. I think in some ways we have lost
some fear from seeing people survive car wrecks and fights in the
movies and tv. It's the same as never having very primitive base animal
experiences like when I mentioned hunting or just really going off ,
becoming obsessed with somethings, drunk and addled, really just FUCK
someone, drop mushrooms in the woods after a week of running naked
covered in poison ivy and bug bites. Whatever it takes, just become
more aware of life. In the best case scenario this is what death
defying art can illicit. You do need that live experience, magnetic or
digital recording will never replace a real time evolving event and I'm
not talking a rehearsed set or play that is timed to a heartbeat, there
is a beauty in that but a loss of spontaneity, of reality.
This
a big problem I have with postmodernism. Everyone has their references
down but nobody has any real life experiences, they read Bukowski and
then try and act like him for a while then they write about it. Or
their friend did it so they've seen it all, now they're 28 and they're
tired of the struggle and they get married and start breeding or they
become alcoholics and stay at home watching tv bummed cuz they never
made it as an artist. Most people are so busy emulating someone or some
movement they never find out what they are really about. There are too
many references for people now. Who doesn't think back to when they
were punk rocker ("yeah, I had a mohawk"), hell everyone's tried it.
Disco
is back only now its presented as spectacle. Ravers have reinvented
disco music for the next generation. People will always want to dance,
somewhere its back there in the primordial man just as are fire,
killing, hunting and fighting. There were some huge disco's but they
never went multimedia with video and slide projections. Not very fear
or panic inducing. To think music could once do that. GG Allin and The
Sex Pistols for instance, they make Marilyn Manson look like Karen
Carpenter. Who knows maybe someone can come along and shake up that
medium and truly put a new twist on it again. Thats the problem now
with most art forms, we have worked through most of the potential
variations with them, there isn't a lot left to do. The human mind and
it's unique take on things will never be tapped out, most mediums are
so limiting, fortunately technology came along for me the infinite
medium. Some
people love this kind of fear, as compared to getting mugged or in a
car wreck. Controlled danger is always more fun than the uncontrolled.
It is absolutely amazing how much people trust me when I'm running
machines. I'll be running a flamethrower, pause for just a second and
have people walk directly in front of it. I just stand there aghast, I
think this is that syndrome where people have been exposed to all of
this danger in the media and when they see the real thing they don't
recognize it.
I
think they should have rollercoasters that sideswipe walls, fire hoses
blast at the riders, you get paint bombed, get thrown into sharpened
bamboo sticks, have the track end in mid air to send you flying, go
through walls of fire, do a loop where you fall out, people are
guaranteed to get hurt. To
a great extent I control wether a show is safe or not, I fine tune it
to each venue and audience, most of my performances are pretty damn
dangerous. First I have to gain peoples' trust, explaining to them I'm
not trying to maim them or destroy the gallery, club or venue. It's a
power trip for all parties, the audience the venue and me, it's
incredibly different and interesting each time. I'm working on a
machine called the lawsuit machine that is working with these ideas. Yeah,
snuff art would have already happened if we didn't live in such a
litigious society. It's funny you should ask that. A while back I had a
conversation with a philosopher / artist friend of mine from Tucson,
Steven Eye about what was shocking to us and we came to the conclusion
that the only thing was human cruelty. Not that just shocking art alone
is necessarily of any worth or value though it can be quite fun as long
as all parties are of legal age and consenting. This all brings me back
to my SUICIDE CHAIR, built after I experienced slow wasting deaths by
my brother to AIDS and my father and one off my best friends to Cancer.
Yeah
(see thrill sports or shock tv, Top police chases, COPS, Jerry
Springer).
You
could. Why not? It would be an interesting sociological experiment if
nothing else. It would be more accessible than at a gallery or museum.
Unfortunately I'm not too interested in the mall lifestyle or any pop
lifestyle or it probably would have happened. I always thought
Lollapalooza has that mall thing going with their midway full of
clothes, trinkets and crap. It's fine to exhibit at Mary Boone, a mall,
Burning Man or even Lollapalooza, it just doesn't necessarily make it
art of any relevance. Hell maybe I'd exhibit at those places if it was
on MY terms........ I dunno, they all have a dark corrupting side you
would need to keep your guard up against. If you want to reach people
that's where the masses are though. It just isn't appealing to think
that I would even connect to that audience let alone try and court
them. I think I'm to far out of the mainstream to reach the mallers and
it brings up the same issues we talked about for the Pepsico Mountain
Dew BotSlam Fest or the Levi's 501 Flaming Pants Tribal Gathering.
The
underground. I'm not sure what else to call it. Not necessarily the
music scene. People who are brilliant but can't make it in pop culture
big time mainstream but are still making it on their own terms, the
true freaks. This is what makes that initial foundation, the very
fabric of a culture. I'm surrounded by them here in San Francisco.
People like Robert Burke whom I have helped stage elaborate shooting
and hunting spectacles. Michael Peppe, The Billboard Liberation Front,
Pepe Ozan's operas, Scot and Bob previously mentioned, the scene in my
neighborhood, Nelson, Chicken John and his game show, Circus X, Fred
Rinne, Allister, The Illegal Soapbox gang, Rich Stone, Whitey Sims,
Seth Maxwell Malice, Bambi Lake, Winston Tong, Tom Stolsman and the
rest of the insane drunken poet scene, The Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence, Morgan the fisherman / inventor / welder, Nao Bustamonte,
Christian Ristow's machines, Rudy Rucker Jr.'s rockets, all the people
who have helped with my shows (literally 100's of them), Larry Harvey,
The gang of SRL, huge barbecue parties, Will Rodger, Flash, The
Cacophony Societies, Pyrotechnic "hunting weekends", The Burning Man
scene.
This
is life. The pulse of life. Brilliance, insanity and energy abound.
With that you have a culture. It was not planned, it happened quite
organically, and for a reason. People are working for the sheer joy of
it. Everyone pays to do their art, it literally costs them. This
unfortunately is what it takes to do work that is truly free, work that
isn't fettered by money or curators. To take complete responsibility
for your work, to not allow outside factors to affect it. If it is
paying off than you are doing mainstream work, if there is a market for
it then you are polluted. We all think you can work with out the
influences of people that want to buy your stuff but when was the last
time Nick Cave or Tarantino had to worry about the bills, if they were
faced with having to work a construction job or cranking out another
hit what would they go for. It can be done, but quite rarely. It's
quite simple. I think that is how Van Gough reached his genius. And
Duchamp. The curators and critics sure as hell don't know what is avant
garde today in 1998. Is it the scientist that makes microscopic
scrubber robots that scour fat clogged arteries and produces beautiful
films of it? Or some hillbilly in the woods making moonshine with hand
drawn labels. I am sure they don't know. It is the piece of life in the
work. This is art. This is what changes lives. This is what has a
profound effect. This is what slams you to the ground. This is what
allows you to walk down the street and see a new world. It will take
years or decades for these new mediums and ideas to assimilate and be
able to reach the masses. The stuff pushing the envelope will not
payoff for the true innovators. It'll be some hackneyed 2nd or 3rd
generation who reinterprets the originators who get the payoff and by
then most of us will probably be doing work that is already on to the
next level or we'll be dead.
This
is my favorite part of American Culture, homegrown art. This modern
Folk art. Art of the people. People doing their work because they have
to, it is a part of them. They would not know what else to do. These
are the people I surround myself with.
2. How do people react to the
shows? Fear? Joy? Gibbering Panic? Do they react as you expect/hope?
3. Do you see your work as part of
a larger cultural shift with things
like Burning Man becoming so popular? Is there a growing desire for
dangerous (or dangerous-looking) experience?
4. What relationship do you see in
your work and the work of others to
Carnival -- temporary moments of social release which reinforce the
social structure or a genuine lunge towards conceptualizing freedom?
5. Talk a about the "Art of the
Ephemeral
Spectacle" - are you specifically referencing Debord's Spectacle
Society? Debord saw the Spectacle as unescapable vast - do you see the
possibility of manipulating the spectacle itself in order to rupture
it, or is participation in the spectacular just an entertaining pastime
in a universe of closed possibilities?
6. What's your favorite kind of
music?
7. Wired, an ecstatically
capitalist and
business oriented publication, adores Burning Man to no end. What would
you think if "cool" multinational corporations started putting together
Seemen/SRL/Burningman/Crash Worship style shows? i.e. the Pepsico
Mountain Dew BotSlam Fest or the Levi's 501 Flaming Pants Tribal
Gathering?
8. Do you think that
experimenting/playing with death machines offers
a visceral understanding of what is involved with war, acting as an
antidote
to the televisual conceptualization of war and mass destruction as a
video game?
9. Another argument is that
playing with such
destructive toys amounts to something like "Bevis Art" (ie: "Fire!
FIRE! heh heh. Cool!") So that rather than acting as an antidote, it's
just one more extremity to be inured to.
10. Related to this is the way the
SRL show in
Austin worked out (whole families out for the evening, a big patriotic
"WooooooooHooo!" when the tower fell....) Some "big city" critics and
theorists aren't quite willing to admit just how close Art Shows like
SRL are to drag races or demolition derbies. Do such performances act
sort of as gentrified tractor pulls for the nose ring crowd?
11. Have you
heard/experienced/worked with
Merzbow or other extreme noise artists? I was actually physically sore
for a couple of days after a Merzbow show, just from the sound. What do
you think of actually assaulting a paying audience with "non-leathal"
weapons-grade technology?
12. You have the members of the
audience at your shows act as the
operators of the performers -- the machines. How do you imagine the
role of the audience at your shows? Is everyone a part of the show or a
potential participant?
13. Some people involved with
Burning Man have debated about the
differing roles of participants and observers, some suggesting that
people who come just to watch and take pictures are lifeless leeches
upon the phenomenon. Also, at the Austin show I was given some very
dire warnings before the show about bringing in any recording
technology whatsoever - I was told that "they'll have several people
scanning the crowd and you WILL be targeted." The show itself was so
overwhelming and short that I have the sense that I'll be able to
perceive a lot more of it from the videos.... What do you think this
relationship between physical and televisual spectator, and do you see
a relationship to your work? (Especially since the "TV Guy" scene in
"Slacker" has become a description of a particular type of
viewership/citizenship, even for people who haven't seen the movie --
perceiving a physically present death as being all wrong because it's
not like TV.)
14. What do you think of raves?
15. What do you think of
increasingly scary roller coasters?
16. Despite the sense of threat,
Seemen,
Burning Man, SRL, etc all pride themselves on the extreme safety of
their shows. As people "get used to" these performances, do you see the
future possibility of some kind of snuff art -- where there isn't
merely the funhouse sense of risk, but the genuine threat if not
promise of actual maiming and death to the audience? Even if legal
entanglements prevent this from happening, is this perhaps what some
people in Western society desire in an increasingly "safe" environment?
17. Could Seemen (et al) someday
have outlets in suburban malls where
people could bathe their anomie in mechanized and aestheticised risk?
18. What's your favorite aspect of
American Culture?