WHY DO YOU DO IT? WHAT DRIVES YOU?
I am hopelessly devoted to this & I have no choice in the matter. The call to create & the transmissions that follow are deeply intertwined with my spirituality - how it works is wholly beyond me. Art & music were the only subjects I ever excelled at in school. Creativity became a tool for me to synthesize the world around me & better communicate my ideas. I am fulfilled & motivated by the fact that I can use my art to support fellow artists - especially those working outside traditional systems or typically overlooked. A documentarian vein runs through all of my creative practices. The motivating factor there is the threat of erasure, especially in heavily censored & scary times like these. I want to make sure that real culture & the stories of real people won’t be forgotten or revised. I think it’s so important to document all that we can & back it up & back it up again.
WHAT IS ONE THING YOU DO FOR SANITY MAINTENANCE?
Moving the body & praying. Solitude.
WHAT IS THE SCRAPPIEST THING YOU’VE DONE TO MAKE OR SAVE $$?
Scrappy is a lifestyle I had to adopt early on. Too many schemes to recall & some I've tried to forget. I’ve been itching to write about this, along with all the eccentric jobs I’ve held down over the years: Cleaning toilets, building guitar pedals, producing a paranormal reality show, peddling punk zines on the street with Kitty. The whole one-woman-production-company thing I've got going on is pretty scrappy, or so I've been told.
YOUR TASK IS TO PRESCRIBE ONE BOOK OR FILM TO THE COLLECTIVE. WHAT IS IT?
READ: CLOSE TO THE KNIVES: A MEMOIR OF DISINTEGRATION by David Wojnarowicz
WATCH: SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE by William Greaves
Current obsession?
My projects, automatons, a specific love hotel in Nagoya that I've never been to, magenta Capris, memoir, Nelson Sullivan’s video archive, collecting more smut & comic books, Cafe Reggio, Evil Dead Trap, playing Fela Kuti on repeat after recently finding out he was also a Libra, spicy tuna onigiri, street bibliomancy or the art of letting a book find you, rewatching THE OSBOURNES, finding the perfect winter boots, the VIDEODROME score, vintage headphones, obscure Catholic saints… I won't bore you.
MOST USEFUL FAILURE?
My failures have brought me back to myself & revealed to me what I really wanted. My most recent and grand flop was moving to the city to pursue a career in the Film & TV industry. I thought that’s just what you did - what I thought I was working up to for so many years. Once I finally got onto these sets, I realized that I didn’t quite fit & felt I was wasting my creative energy. I fell back into my own music video & documentary work, as well as falling into a new & unexpected career as a media archivist. Every failure is an opportunity for readjustment & I welcome it.
My most prized possession is a silver & enamel brooch given to me by my grandma. I used to fixate on it - pinned to a lampshade in her kitchen of all places. A few years back, she noticed me gazing at it & lovingly gifted it to me. Part of it broke & I’ve been meaning to fix it!
