BY STEPHEN WOLF
Recently, on a cloudy spring afternoon a slender and stylish woman dressed customarily in New York black (with a bit of color beneath her coat, of course) sipped black coffee and gazed with amazement and a tinge of regret across Bryant Park.

A Downtown girl (Bronx-born but on Bank Street for the past 30 years), she hasn’t stood beneath these healthy trees in the center of Midtown since the bad old days. Then this was no Eden amid the traffic and skyscrapers. Back then this was Needle Park — where junkies in the shadows and shot heroin scored at Times Square down the block; where the hookers earned what their catch paid them and garbage, not water, filled the fountain.

“There’s even children here,” she says above the delicate tables and chairs, chess games and laptops, the genuine flowerbeds, and the lawn as green as the plastic grass in Easter baskets.

She wears heels and her blonde hair long, carries a street-smart attitude and maybe a knife (“if you tread/ on me,” she wrote, “you tread on apple, / snake, eve.”). Her eyes are observant, lively, and with none of that most un-New York fear or resistance to look at people: “do not tell me not to talk to strangers” she wrote in “I AM A NY WOMAN.”

This New York woman is Eve Packer, and she’s written remarkably about “all that secret shame” when “there were whores & pimps & thiefs & all kinda stuff.” Her poems tell of a time when, if you were a young woman, “I mean you just didn’t go the 42nd St.”

But Eve did, and with a sharp and sensitive eye wound her own way through 42nd Street where all the theaters showed bad Kung Fu movies, when Eighth Avenue had peep show palaces and “Playland” and “Playpen.” At “Show World” on 8th and 42nd, she was at first kicked out for being a girl; and there was Sally’s — the transvestite showplace beneath the old Times tower. Even the police station now at W. 43rd (where Broadway crosses 7th Avenue) was a sex shop with XXX in the windows between sex toys and promises of “fantasy and fun.”

She explored this male world forbidden to women (except for the strippers and hookers) with compassion. Sinister, sleazy, dangerous, sexy, this world also teemed with dreams and desire, theatrics and even humor. Initially she watched. Later, she took notes. In time, the strippers and hookers, shemales and pimps, junkies and dealers recognized her. Some even trusted her.

“What is love?” she asked them and learned enough to write in her poem “fantasy booth” the voice of the girl who dances (actually just gyrates) for men enclosed in booths for 15 seconds for a quarter: “I go up real/ close, it’s all about giving them/ some & pulling back.”

Her eye and pen captured more than just the sex shops and drugs, for gravitating to this world on the city’s ragged edge despite its centrality were the homeless, the disposed, the forgotten, the lost — staggering and desperate through a time when New York’s murder rate was five times what it is now; when crack vials and tiny plastic bags of different colors, empty of heroin, were everywhere; like a million plastic, fallen leaves throughout Bryant Park.

Educated first at New York’s High School of Music and Art, then the University of Michigan with degrees from the London School of Economics and NYU in psychology, she’s received grants from New York Foundation of the Arts, a National Endowment for Poetry, twice “Downtown” Poet of the Year, and has read/performed at all the finest poetry clubs in the city. She’s taught at Queens College, the New School, and the NYC Department of Education’s Learning to Read Through the Arts program — but her real education and her varied life’s best work came from these busy, gaudy, once-treacherous streets. Her poems are fun, thrilling, provocative; her wit, sharp as stiletto heels.

Her poetry collection “playland: poems 1994-2005” was published by Fly Night Press. Hearing her read is even better (though we miss then her inventive spelling and typography), for Eve doesn’t just read her poetry as most poets do. Eve performs them, giving words emphasis, even acting the girl in the fantasy booth. Her voice can fall into secrecy, slowing down, speaking softly — while at other times, she talks tough or audibly strokes the images with a sensuous, even erotic (though never vulgar) voice, all entwined with an alto saxophone provided by the esteemed Noah Howard, or on piano, the inimitable, the timeless Stephanie Stone.

There’s an exciting CD of her reading, “west from 42nd” — and with a jazz accompaniment, she reads her work on the CD “Now Playing” (also available at Left Bank Books on Eighth Avenue near W. 12th Street). Both CDs are easily gotten on-line through CDBaby as well as NCD Sales. But best is to see/hear her live, on stage, in performance.

“do not tell me what I cannot & can do,” she wrote in her signature piece “I’M A NY WOMAN, I DO WHAT I WANT.”

“do not tell me to wear long black baggy pants
when I wanna wear a short sheer orange
see-thru mini on subway, bus…
“do not tell me not to bite my nails,
color my hair…stop giving taxi drivers
a hard time piece of my mind,
cross against the light…
do not tell me not to talk to
strangers, flirt, network my cleavage, keep my legs
and mouth shut…
“do not tell me what I cannot & can do”

Eve saw the change coming, of course; first, the Disney deal, and there’s a Duane Reade’s where Show World once lit and lured on 8th Avenue and 42nd Street. With families now hurrying to see “Mary Poppins” in Times Square, with flowers growing in the ivy and true lovers strolling Bryant Park, she knows the change is for the better, blinks slowly, and says just above a whisper, “Yet like the song says, but not for me.”

Eve Packer’s poem “playland” appears in “I Speak of the City: Poems of New York” (Columbia University Press), edited by Stephen Wolf. On May 14th, she’s part of CCNY’s Annual Spring Poetry Festival, and performs solo on May 22nd (between 5 and 7 p.m.) at Small’s Jazz Club, 183 W. 10th Street, just west of Seventh Avenue.

 BF: Why do you think so many activists become less directly involved in political activism as they get older? Some, like Tom Hayden have entered mainstream politics, others have maintained a revolutionary stance in response to politics and the world at large, but many have retreated from the front lines. Where are they? What are they doing?

SS: I don’t think it’s true many have become less directly involved. Maybe a handful of the more famous activists, and that might not even be true. We just don’t hear about them. I was at a memorial recently for Grace Paley that was held by the War Resister’s League and the Women’s Pentagon Action and it was full of people who were active in the Sixties, many even before, and are still struggling for social justice in many areas from mainstream politics to the anti-war movement to local struggles for fair housing. Much of the really important struggle takes place on a local level and that is just not “sexy” enough for the media to report. Also there has obviously been a concerted effort after the Sixties not to cover progressive politics or activity.

BF: How do you see your own activism manifested in your life now?

SS: In a number of ways. Through my writing, teaching, working with our union—we are affiliated with the UAW—at Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College, both part of The New School, and through social justice work both community and nation based at Middle Church, a wonderfully diverse socially progressive community. And of course any demonstration that comes up, although that is harder for me now because of an injury which makes it difficult for me to walk.

BF: What issues are pivotal for you at this time? What about China and Tibet, for example? What do you see as the most important things relentless and passionate young activists should be putting their energy into? Do you see any indications that there is a youth movement? Is it a healthy one? Considering the state of things in the world at present, what do you think is necessary to create an atmosphere that will encourage more radical activism today—How much worse does it have to get? Or is it a case of depleted energies and catastrophe/issue fatigue?

SS: We hardly have to create an atmosphere that will encourage more radical activism given the situation in Iraq and the economic, environmental and social problems surrounding us today. I think that activism is all around us. Yes, it’s important to support Tibet, of course, but we have issues here at home that are vital—hurricane Katrina, survivors of which are still suffering and are scattered all over the US, the devastation in the Midwest, and the ever present issues of HIV/AIDS, sexism, racism, homophobia, economic injustice. As well as the myriad issues around immigration. Globalism is an overriding concern if these other issues are to be adequately addressed. There are all kinds of indications that a healthy youth movement is alive and well—and a healthy older movement too. The Obama campaign regardless of the nuances was built to a large extent on the need young people feel for greater social equity, for a life that has more meaning than just the number of objects you can acquire. We were lucky in a way in the Fifties and Sixties because products were not so slick and compelling and advertising was not so insidious and widespread. On the other hand while it is still in our hands we can use technology like the internet—just look at the influence of blogs, Youtube, organizations like Move On. I think people should put their energy into whatever issues move, excite, touch them most. I would recommend magazines like Colorlines, which focus on young people of color and the struggles they are engaged in at the present if you want to know what is happening now.

BF: What direction does Cuba seem to be headed in from your point of view and how do you assess the “success” of the revolution?

SS: Again another very complex issue that would take a lot more than a simple answer to even begin to do justice to. When I was in Cuba in the Sixties—my last trip was in 1992—the Cubans liked to say that the rebellion succeeded in 1959 but that the revolution was an on-going process. I think we have a tendency here to think of things still in terms of beginning, middle, end instead of accepting the fact that all struggle is a process and a hugely complex one at that and ongoing. For specific information, analysis of the situation in Cuba I highly recommend a book by Margaret Randall, who figures prominently in my memoir, which will be published by Rutgers University Fall 2008 titled To Change the World: My Years in Cuba. Margaret lived in Cuba for ten years during the revolution’s formative period and has much more information and analysis about the situation then and now.

BF: Can you talk about Marcuse and Hegel’s ideas on individual choice and self-determination based on reason and rational thought— what kind of forces they were for you and those around you, in trying to build a world based on these principles rather than accepting the forces and facts of life as “the way things are,” etc?

SS: I’m not sure how much Marcuse and Hegel were on people’s minds that were struggling to fight against the many threads of repression and violence in the Sixties, particularly in the United States—which I think is the period you were referring to in this question. The catalyst would be found more in the energy and idealism of the Civil Rights Movement. The recognition that underneath the surface there were layers and layers of injustice that had to be addressed. Young people joined others already engaged in struggle who felt that two cars in every garage was not the motivation that moved them, the future they looked forward to. Marcuse’s book, The One Dimensional Man, was important because it laid out the vacuousness and emptiness of the period. Marx, particularly early Marx and Marx’s analysis of capitalism and his incorporation of Hegel (turned on his head) into his theory of historical determinism were more widely read and discussed, particularly in respect to the resolution of contradiction—the old thesis, antithesis, synthesis, negation of negation! A more pertinent question today I think—not putting down the gentlemen you name—would be the growth of media and advertising and its subliminal appeal to emotional needs that extend from the smallest parts of our lives—the toothpaste we buy—to electing our most important officials.

BF: Can you talk about the sources of memory for this book? You mention the destroyed correspondence and pictures necessitated by the need to protect people from government surveillance?

SS: We actually never took many photos in the Sixties because we never knew how they would be used and I did destroy a great deal of my correspondence in the middle Seventies when women from the women’s movement were being targeted by the grand juries. That is a whole other story. Fortunately I kept letters from Margaret Randall who I had an extensive correspondence with during the Sixties. I actually had to go to the NYU library to get my corresponding letters to her—my letters are archived there with in El Corno Emplumado collection. I had some essays and articles, which were published at the time, from which I could get valuable specifics about my trips to England and Cuba. I did some research. But for the most part relying on my memory wasn’t really a problem since the incidents in the book for the most part were highlights of those years I wasn’t likely to forget!

BF: What do you feel was left out of this book that in, retrospect, you wish you’d included?

SS: I would have liked to have taken the book to at least 1975 to include the women’s and gay liberation movements, a trip to Chile, the end of the Vietnam War and in 1975 a very important summer session at Sagaris, a feminist institute where I served on the faculty. But I felt that, as it was, there was a lot of information packed into one book. Who knows maybe some day I’ll write America’s Child Part Two! To repeat what I wrote in the last chapter of the book I feel what we call the Sixties really extended from the late Fifties until 1975 and that in actuality that period, even if extended, has to be viewed within a continuum of struggle in the United States. It cannot be compartmentalized.

BF: Yes, I completely agree. I think books such as yours can serve as inspiration and hope for each generation of activists that come along to continue the struggle. I hope America’s Child Part Two is on your front burner.

Mario Vargas Llosa
Travesuras de la niña mala/The Mischiefs of the Bad Girl
Lectura en la 92nd “Y” de Nueva York
15 de octubre de 2007
Por Linda Morales Caballero

Mario Vargas Llosa, el escritor hispano-peruano de reconocida trayectoria  dio una lectura de su más reciente novela Travesuras de la niña mala el día 15 de octubre en el  Kaufmann Concert Hall de la YMCA sobre la calle 92 en Manhattan, más conocido como la “Y” en Nueva York.
Después de la bienvenida al evento por el representante del director de la Y, vino la presentación del Sr. Jonathan Galassi, su editor, quien anunció que luego de la lectura, el escritor respondería a algunas preguntas formuladas por el público mediante tarjetas y firmaría libros en otro salón. Mario Vargas Llosa hizo entonces su entrada al escenario frente a una sala llena por una audiencia de habla inglesa y castellana, más o menos a partes iguales, quien le brindó una bienvenida con efusivos aplausos.
Vargas Llosa, Vestido de riguroso traje negro y lentes en mano explicó que haría una lectura bilingüe del libro traducido al inglés por Edith Grossman, a quién elogió por su trabajo. Acto seguido, comenzó en español con una breve lectura del primer capítulo de la novela, dónde Ricardito, el protagonista, y la niña mala, Lily, hacen su primera aparición. A continuación y en un inglés de marcado acento hispano hizo una larga lectura del capítulo II del libro.
Vargas Llosa bebiendo sorbitos de agua, de cuando en cuando, llevó al público por las páginas de su más reciente novela. Los asistentes rieron celebrando su sentido del humor, lo que  hace pensar que: o Vargas Llosa ha desarrollado un sentido del humor internacional o bien logra hacer entrar a los lectores en su mundo.
Cuando la lectura en inglés comenzó a resultar un poco extensa algunos asistentes se retiraron mientras otros comenzaron a distraerse, especialmente un grupo de muchachos de la escuela quienes tenían reservada gran parte de la platea. Pero Vargas Llosa no pareció enterarse si bien tal vez le produjo alguna distracción ya que, a pesar de la fluidez con que leía, a partir de este punto tuvo que repetir la entonación de algunas palabras.
Sin embargo llegada la hora de las preguntas, toda la audiencia (que seguía siendo la mayoría) volvió a concentrarse:
¿Ud. cree que los libros deben entretener?
A lo que respondió que sí, que si no entretenían eran un fracaso. “Deben atrapar al lector o tratar de hacerlo”, añadió.
¿Fue difícil escribir Travesuras de la niña mala?
“Siempre es difícil para mí” dijo, “a veces doloroso”. Explicó que un libro puede llevarle entre dos y tres años. Comentó que poco a poco se “infecta” de su atmósfera “y es entonces cuando me envuelvo”. Y confesó, “Al principio estoy distante”
¿Re-inventar a Madame Bovary lo inspiró?
“No, para nada. Tuve esta idea (la suya) por mucho tiempo. Quería escribir una novela romántica moderna, en un mundo dónde las cosas han cambiado mucho” Y aclaró que éste es ahora un mundo dónde las mujeres pueden tomar decisiones. La idea de la novela romántica se sumó al recuerdo de los lugares donde el escritor vivió y quiso utilizar su memoria histórica y personal. Aclaró que en la novela la parte del romance era la que tenía más ficción.
¿Vivir en el extranjero ha influido en su trabajo?
“Por su puesto, yo no sería el escritor que soy si no hubiera vivido en el extranjero” Dijo que sería un escritor de todas formas, pero uno diferente. Agregó que había sido influenciado tanto en la metodología que usa como en el tener unos horizontes más amplios que a su vez lo habían llevado a un mejor entendimiento de las relaciones humanas y del Perú.
“Fue en Francia que descubrí que era latinoamericano. Yo no me reconocía como un latino, me sentía como un peruano que deseaba ser un escritor en Francia”. Añadió que fue allí, en París, dónde descubrió a los otros integrantes del boom Latinoamericano y mencionó entre otros a Carpentier, Borges y Cortazar. “Esto enriqueció mi vida” dijo, y añadió que Octavio Paz llamaba a Paris “la capital de los escritores latinoamericanos” Atribuyó esta falta de reconocimiento a la ausencia de comunicación entre los países latinoamericanos.
“Yo respiré los años de la utopía” dijo, tal vez para aclarar su simpatía por los temas de izquierda de esa época. “Era prácticamente imposible no ser seducido por estas ideas. Entonces descubrí que los mitos y las ideas no eran parte del mundo real. Creíamos que la literatura tomaba parte en la transformación del mundo político y esto nos daba energía. Hasta que en los años 60’s las cosas comenzaron a cambiar”.
¿Es Ricardo (el protagonista de la novela) un patético, un romántico o ambas cosas?
“Mirándolo de lejos es un mediocre que solamente quiere vivir en Paris, eso llena sus expectativas. Pero por el tipo de amor que siente por la niña mala él vive una aventura extraordinaria a nivel personal”. Sobre la niña mala dijo, con una sonrisa de satisfacción, que ella era muy diferente, que la vida para ella era luchar, que era feroz para sobrevivir, alguien que vista de lejos podía ser condenada pero de cerca se volvía un ser humano mucho más creativo e interesante (que Ricardito)
La pregunta final no pudo estar mejor seleccionada a propósito de que la novela habla de lugares, moda, bebidas y comidas:
¿Qué elegiría Ud. si supiera que va a comer su última cena?
“¡Si supiera que esta es mi última cena no podría comer nada!” terminó diciendo y cerrando la presentación con un sentido del humor que todos celebraron riendo y con  muchos aplausos.

Luego de concluida la lectura se pasó a un salón donde una fila muy  larga de lectores esperó a que Vargas Llosa les firmara sus libros.

Nota: La sección de preguntas y respuestas fue llevada a cabo en inglés, para traerlas al público hispano parlante estas han sido traducidas lo más fielmente posible por la periodista.

En la Y de Nueva York

Presentación de Travesuras de la niña mala

Octubre de 2007

Foto, cortesía de Elizabeth Matamoros

    Having just collaborated on a collection of his own writings, the renowned pianist talks to us about the writing that’s inspired him

By Erich Christiansen

Matthew Shipp is one of the leading figures of the downtown improvisational scene that came out of the 1980’s and 90’s, along with frequent collaborators William Parker, David S. Ware, Whit Dickey, and Daniel Carter, just to name a few. His piano style has expanded the radical vocabulary established by sixties giants like Cecil Taylor, establishing a fresh voice all his own. He experiments restlessly and works tirelessly, having released more albums than I can count. And as artistic director for Thirsty Ear’s Blue series, he also works to bring similarly innovative artists to the world’s attention. His latest album is 2007’s Piano Vortex, on the Blue Note Continuum label. He has also collaborated with Steve Dalachinsky on a new book, Logos and Language: A Post-Jazz Metaphorical Dialogue, available from Rogue Art.
This conversation is part of an on-going series that seeks to make connections between the arts. On this leg of the journey, I’ll be talking to musicians about the books and literature that have inspired them. This led us into a discussion about Shipp’s view of music in particular and creativity in general as a kind of spiritual practice, a way of exploring the inner and outer universe. And it was fortuitous that this would correspond with Matthew’s own foray into publishing with Logos and Language.

E.C.: Is there anything in particular that you’re reading right now, or that has been particularly important to you, that you’d like to tell us about, or that the world should be aware of?
Shipp: Been reading some pretty heavy mysticism stuff-Sri Aurobindo- Jacob Boehme-and the Tao Te Ching.
E.C.: There’s an interesting balance among the texts that you listed, in the sense that you have one from the Eastern tradition, one from the Western, and one who’s known for drawing on ideas from both (Aurobinda). What do you think that the two sets of traditions can teach each other? Or is that a false dichotomy– when you get below the surface of institutionalized creeds, are the different religions, especially their mystical traditions, really exploring the same kind of territory?
Shipp: Truth is truth- all religions are just symbols and surfaces or constellations of energy- once you break through the surface you are dealing with the same light or energy-whether you come from the east or west.
E.C.: You probably already knew this, but I just learned today about how Stockhausen discovered Aurobindo’s ideas in May of ’68, and how that was the beginning of a shift toward overtly mystical themes in his work. And that got me thinking about the spiritual paths of a number of other experimental musicians of the last hundred years– Scriabin, Coltrane, Stockhausen, Cage, Dolphy, Sun Ra, David S. Ware, Albert Ayler. Is there something about twentieth century free music that lends itself to mysticism, or a mystical kind of experience? Or is it just that people who aren’t dogmatic about music tend not to be philosophically or religiously dogmatic either?
Shipp: I never knew Stockhausen was into Aurobindo- but anyway, I think music being an abstract language has always been involved in mystical thought-I mean, Bach was a religious mystic and music has always been involved with transcendental experience.
E.C.: You mentioned the Tao Te Ching. An interesting aspect of that is that a certain concept of “flow” is so central to Taoism– as it is to music, especially in regard to improvised music or highly rhythmic music, or both, in terms of something like your album Nu-Bop, which adds hip-hop elements to your repertoire. And of course, you played on an album with the David S. Ware quartet called Tao. The liner notes of that record talk about the dynamic of that group in terms of wu wei, translated there as “creative quietude.” That is, getting the conscious, deliberating mind and its constant commentary and evaluations out of the way so that a kind of naturalness and purity can emerge. Maybe you can talk to us about some of these ways in which understanding the flow of creativity helps us understand Taoism, or some ways that understanding Taoism can broaden our musical horizons?
Shipp: To me Taoism and Zen are the greatest religions just because they are not religion-I mean in Zen they have taken all the abstruse metaphysics and got it down to a few propositions like-when hungry eat-when tired, lay down, and when you have to take a shit, take a shit. In the Tao we know everything is interconnected because the universe obviously comes out of a single matrix so there is some principle that we cannot see or grasp that holds everything together. Enlightenment means letting go and living in accord with that principle. Can you think of a better way to think of music? If someone could truly make music in accord with that principal they would be in ecstatic inspiration all the time-because of a naturalism they would embody.
E.C.: Is there a specific piece of music, that you composed or played on, that was directly inspired by something you read, that you’d like to talk about?
Shipp: I don’t usually do anything where a particular text is the genesis for a piece. I usually work off an overall framework of my own cosmic vision which pieces come off. The closest I’ve come to where a particular piece is inspired by a particular writer and/or text is the CD I did on the French label, Rogue Art, named Declared Enemy, which is based on some pieces that Jean Genet did when he came over to America during the 1968 Democratic convention.
E.C.: Yeah, I know the Declared Enemy album very well. Your engagement with Genet’s work brings up some interesting questions for me. First, in the interview you did with Steve Dalachinsky that’s included in that album, you discuss how your artistic vision parallels Jean Genet’s, in that he rejected the ugliness of the world as it is by creating a universe of characters and symbols that were transformed and transfigured, in a subversion of Christian symbols, like transubstantiation. How you both reject and protest against the world through the creation of an alternative reality.
One thing that it seems to me that you share with Genet that reflects that is a certain element of ecstasy in both your styles. Even though he’s ostensibly a “prose” writer, his work has such a poetic quality, that seizes you and transports you. In other words, let’s you transcend your given, reified, taken-for-granted reality. And your music has that same quality, that surges ahead and carries you with it.

Shipp: I agree with you on the ecstasy element in myself and Genet-there is not much more to say than what I said in the liner notes to Declared Enemy but I would say about our shared sensibility and my music is that growing up in an Episcopalian household and having gone to Catholic school the Eucharist looms big in the underground in what I do-or the idea of a subverted abstraction of the Eucharist-I am obsessed with the idea of taking in the body and the blood of the godhead so the abstract language of the music is food to feed the mind in a sense and the language –musical language – becomes the logos or the godhead.

E.C.: In that interview that I was just referring to, you seemed to be pessimistic about a political solution to the state of the world, relying instead on preserving one’s own soul through art. Yet, on that album dedicated to Genet, you seemed to focus on Genet’s most political period, when he was in the streets fighting for very militant causes. And that same thing seems to resonate in your interest in Sri Aurobindo, who was a political activist and militant before, and in addition to being a spiritual teacher. (And the fact that Stockhausen discovered him in a very political time, May of ’68) Isn’t there kind of a paradox there?

Shipp: no- the texts I used on the CD where what the producer, who was French, wanted to use-and when Genet came to America in 1968 to cover the Democratic national convention in Chicago, he started hanging out with some Black Panthers and these writings stem from that period. The mystical and political branches can coexist-the reason I do not see any political resolution possible is because I do see greed as the root of just about every problem and don’t see any political solution to greed that could work- the metaphorical kingdom of god is something that could come to earth if each human discovered it in their own heart and decided to live on earth like it was here.

E.C.: Again, in that interview, you refer to yourself as a “Christian-American mystic” but then later say that “… god is just a word. I have no use for that word.” And you’ve also mentioned a current interest in Jacob Boehme, another Christian mystic. Could you talk a little about this seeming paradox? What can the path of the Christian mystics say to those of us who don’t believe in what William Burroughs calls the “One Big God universe” of an anthropomorphic, authoritarian personal God, which I’ve always understood as being central to Christianity?

Shipp: That is the thing- a one big anthropomorphic god is not central to Christianity-it is central to institutional Christianity-Jacob Boehm deals with the god as the great abyss-which sucks in space and time and all partials and the great abyss is some integral whole that is beyond all opposites-this godhead is impersonal and personal at the same time-it is impersonal but personal in the sense that it is the ultimate gestalt so it would contain all personality

E.C.: In a conversation you had with Paul Miller (DJ Spooky) that’s on his website, you talked about Mallarme, and how what you liked was “that his poetry is just so dense, and I never understand exactly what he’s saying, but I always walk away with 2 or 3 images that are just somewhere out there in space and I really get something out of it.”
For one thing, maybe you could talk about Mallarme a little bit more. His vision seems complimentary to your in some ways, like this sort of alchemy of art, in his case, the word specifically.

Shipp: Boulez had put a couple of Mallarme’s pieces to music; that’s where I know him from.

E.C.: And more generally, I notice you refer to poetry a great deal: Whitman’s vision of America, quoting Blake in the piece with Spooky, Mallarme, doing an album backing Steve Dalachinsky reading. Who are some of the poets who have been most important to you and why? And that seems to go along with your interest in mysticism. Many of the mystics have expressed themselves through poetry or poetic writings, and many poets have tried to gain a mystical experience through their work.
Shipp: Poetry is a big part of what inspires me- I aspire to the purity of language that poetry can get to. T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” are my favorite and I actually consider them on the level with the Tao Te Ching as far as a great mystical text. Blake’s whole theory of the imagination. Whitman’s cosmic sweep. The psalms – I like a lot of images I’ve seen in Wallace Stevens especially one image I remember-the garbage can at the end of the world.
And of course, Emerson’s essays are the bible to me.

Joseph Nechvatal is a very interesting contemporary artist-cum theoretician who has read Baudrillard’s take on the thought such as « everything is a virus » and listened to Howard Devoto’s song « there’s no answer- everything has a cancer »… I have met with Nechvatal in his French gallery « Jean-Luc and Takako Richard »where he has just shown

his most recent work, beautiful and educational – both!

Question: When and how did you decide to become an artist?

Joseph Nechvatal: This might sound a little strange Nina, but I made the
decision to be an artist rather suddenly: in one night and in a split
second.
I was a sophomore at University pursuing a degree in Sociology, deeply
involved in the political/social issues of the early 1970s; i.e. the
anti-war, woman’s liberation and equal rights movements. I was home in
Chicago for the summer, working at some shit job to pay for my University
expenses. Art had been a hobby-interest with me up to that point. Anyway,
I was riding around downtown Chicago on a motorcycle, somewhat in a
psychic funk. As I zoomed pass some cathedral, a large illuminated
stain-glass window caught my eye. It was an intense moment of color in a
black night. Something told me then and there that the way to social
change was the way of art – in that art addresses the inner unique
individual rather than the group, the sociological statistical. In that
sense I saw art as a means to foster social change from the bottom-up,
rather than top down, if you will.
So bing. That was it. I felt compelled to go around the city and
photograph stain-glassed windows for the rest of the summer. I wanted to
try to understand what had happened to me. Back at University I changed my
major to studio art and never regretted it for an instant.

Question:Where does your fascination with technology come from?
Why this particular genre – electronic medium – and not something else?

Joseph Nechvatal: As you can tell Nina by what I just told you, I see art
as a means of practicing politics on one level. In the mid-1980s I could
already observe the coming rise of electronic media (computational media,
more precisely) as the controlling, organizing force of social power. I
felt that to adequately address this topic I should approach it from
inside of electronic medium, and not from an artisanal pre-electronic
practice.

Question: Could you elaborate on your idea of using art as a
means of practicing politics?

Joseph Nechvatal: The key political notion for me concerning art is
omnijectivity, which is the concept stemming from the discoveries of
quantum physics which teaches us that mind (previously considered the
subjective realm) and matter (previously considered as the objective
realm) are inextricably linked. It is a political concept for me because
omnijectivity is possible only with the conflation of polarities; a stance
which recognizes the mutual interpenetration that unites apparent
opposites (specifically the subjectivity and objectivity). For me art
which takes seriously such scientific understanding supersedes the tabular
space laid out by classical political thought. A new sort of political
art then may promote a non-teleological noology that makes use of the
mutual interpenetrational and rhizomatic nature of the thought process
typical of the art experience – multiplicitous and heterogeneous.

For me, the basic function of a new sort of political art is to create
mental spaces that allow unaccustomed creative situations and sensations
to connect socially. My idea of a political art is where the particular is
seen as part of an accrual total system by virtue of its being connected
to everything else. The strategy of hyper-anything includes principles of
networked connections and electronic links that give multiple choices of
passages to follow and continually new branching possibilities. The
total-hyper-being model for a new connected political art is the
self-re-programmable internal function that explicitly offers a
furtherance in envisioning anti-hierarchical models of political thought
to ourselves.

Question: How do you relate your art to contemporary performance
and theater, such as Pina Baush’s? What does it mean to you – and to your
work, to your inspiration, to see such giants of performance?

Joseph Nechvatal: An early formative experience I had, in this respect,
was the time I attended The Jimi Hendrix Experience concert December 1,
1968 at the Chicago Coliseum and sat in the very last row – far far away
from the stage. Hendrix appeared miniscule, however the speakers were
located just behind my head and the sound was earsplitting; an intensely
pleasant, if disjunctive, experience. This experience of technologically
pulling things apart was stunning for me as it suggested an explosion that
collage implosion implies.

Working as an archivist for LaMonte Young, meeting John Cage, and learning
of the famous “9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering” of 1966 that Robert
Rauschenberg helped organize with the engineer Billy Kluver was salient to
my formation in this regard. Rauschenberg understood that through the
mediation of chance and machines, the technological built-in can be
contorted, thus changing our awareness of what technology is or can be.
Surely I have a great appreciation of Merce Cunningham’s dance company. In
the mid-1970s I moved to New York City into the Tribeca area. I was dating
a dancer at the time who’s prior boyfriend worked for Bob Rauschenberg and
one day we went to Rauschenberg’s studio on Lafayette for a visit, but he
was not in. Still he soon came to represent for me an exemplary artist,
one engaged in political concerns tied to technological means. He seemed
to me capable of harnessing both the forces of explosion and implosion
that manifested a new hyper-rhizomatic era in the making. This was an era
in which the new technologies of media distribution, virtual systems,
computer networks, and information processing began supplanting industrial
production and the gold-based economy as the organizing
synthesis/principle of society.

Question: You’ve worked with theory a lot. Is it important for
an artist and what did this theoretical approach do for you; for your
creative expression?

Joseph Nechvatal: I can say that it has been important for me. When I read
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari describe non-hierarchical networks of
all kinds in their seminal book A Thousand Plateaus, my mind was liberated
and this fostered a wave of creativity in me. Through my reading (and
thinking through) of Deleuze-Guattari I came to hypothesize (and hopefully
demonstrate through my art) a counter-mannerist approach to life based on
principles of latent excess. The idea was to establish a new critical
distance via viral excess, a critical distance which Jean Baudrillard
pessimistically had claimed was no longer possible.

Through latent excess I wanted to establish an ambiguous private critical
distance: a distance achieved through the challenge of (and disparity
between) pleasurable frustration. This means an art that demands of
society an active visualizing participation in private interpretations -
and thus is a legitimate metaphor for contemporary art as a form of
simulation-shattering engagement.

During the time I was engaged in these ideas, the notion of the simulation
was prevalent. I chose to argue for the contrary (de-simulation); that is,
a post-pop art that would be fundamental to free thought by demonstrating
how an art of counter-mannerist latent excess (produced in the
Baudrillardian milieu of image superabundance and information
proliferation) is an art that can problematise the pop simulacra and hence
enliven us to the privateness – and unique separateness – of the human
condition in lieu of the fabulously constructed social spectacle which
engulfs and (supposedly) controls us. My idea was that this private
separateness could offer us a personal critical distance (gap), and thus
another perspective on (and from) the given social simulacra.

My hope was that such an art of latent viral excess (circuitous,
extravagant and décadent) might provide us with two essential aspects
relevant to our lives. First, it can provide a private context in which to
suitably understand our simulacra situation. Secondly (but more
importantly) it may then undermine this understanding of the simulacra by
overwhelming our immersion in the customary simulacra – along with our own
prudent pose as observer and judge. Through the destructive-creative
bacchanalia at the root of an art of latent excess we might be prodded to
lose our position of detached observer, as it is a style of art that
demands our engaged intellectual and perceptual production. For me that
meant that I had to develop a viral style which takes us from the state of
the social to the state of the secret distinguishable “I” by overloading
ideological representation to a point where it becomes
non-representational. It is this non-representational counter-mannerist
representation which I think can break us out of the fascination and
complicity with pop information and the mass media mode of communication.

Question: Can art be taught in school – to an artist? If yes -
Is it important?

Joseph Nechvatal: I think it can be taught, and it is, but that does not
mean that it is the only route to becoming an artist. As a teacher at the
School of Visual Arts in New York City I stress passing along knowledge
about radical art ideas and dada art techniques. I tell the students about
what some notable recent artists have done – and expose them to the work
directly. I intentionally avoid suggesting to the students what kind of
art to make or how to make it. That is their own personal quest, in my
view. What is important is for the pre-artist to be inner driven to become
an artist regardless of the fact that it is a frustrating way to lead a
life.

Question: What do you think about contemporary American art
scene? Any movement you admire?

Joseph Nechvatal: Yes I admire greatly certain American artist who work
primarily digitally, such as Bill Seaman, Frank Gillette, Victoria Vesna,
Robert Lazzarini, G.H. Hovagimyan and Michael Reese. Of course artificial
life art is one of my keen interests, the basis of my computer virus work.
For me artificial life is a way to do magic by any means necessary. The
sculptor Ken Rinaldo is a very good artist in this realm.

Also there are what I might call digital conceptualists in the USA that
interest me, such as Jenny Holzer, Patrick Lichty, Suzanne Anker, Kenneth
Goldsmith and Matthew Ritchie. I also have a keen interest in audio art
that deals with noise and/or ambience and have been following the career
of Phillip B. Klingler (PBK), Minoy, Randy Grief and others over the
years. Some painters as well hold my interest, like Benjamin Edwards,
David Reed, Carl Fudge, Chris Finley and Shirley Kaneda. But can we really
speak of art in terms of nationality any more? What about fantastic
European and Asian artist that sometimes work in the US, like Carlos
Casado, Gilles Barbier, Merzbow, Pascal Dombis and Matthias Groebel? It is
only a certain quality of thought and sensibility that I admire. Not their
passport.

However, I’m not very interested in artists that use capture technology
anymore (straight photography and video). What engages me is the meeting
of art, science and technology in the virtual land of the digital -
because I think that digital technology allows and facilitates changes in
consciousness by primarily allowing artists to act differently with new
tools. For example, digital painters, like myself, work and think much
differently from traditional painters through their mastering of digital
tools.

This digital realm connects to a new sensibility that I am feeling which I
have called Cybism. It is a sensibility based on my observation that art
and science, after centuries of separation, are becoming entangled again
through the discredidation of the concept – one might say presumption – of
objectivity. Richard Rorty writes persuasively about this as does Manuel
Delanda; particularly in his book Intensive Science and Virtual
Philosophy

Question: Any tendency you despise?

Joseph Nechvatal: Yes. The “bad painting” (or “MFA outsider art”) movement
disgusts me. It is both ugly to behold and stupid to contemplate. It seems
blatantly a creature of top-down marketing to me (think pyramid scheme)
and as such it, or any market driven art, will not stand the smell test of
time.

Question: How is it different from the French scene? Advantages
of the French?

Joseph Nechvatal: Oh la la! Though there are elements of globalized
marketing in Paris, the French scene is much smaller. It is marginal by
comparison – and this can be a good thing. For example I have experienced
in France a wonderful sense of collaborative community and have
established important relationships, like with my artificial life
programmer Stephane Sikora. The philosophy and music scenes here are
superior to those in the USA, in my estimation.

One feels in France a sense of preservation of artistic ideals, such as
the idea of art performing a visionary function, which at this juncture
seems increasingly important given the homogenization of thought and
perception that has been taking place

Question: Disadvantages?
Joseph Nechvatal:

No baseball.

Q: Sound Unbound contains thoughts from a wide array of people, and
brings together names I would never have expected to see in a single book.  What were you looking for when getting this compilation together?How did you know that this mix would work?

A: The whole idea, right now, is that we need eclecticism more than ever. In a world driven by playlists, and “collaborative filtering” that tells you every song and every book you might like, what happens to material that is hyper diverse? The answer is easy: it slips beneath the radar. I have a passion for championing voices that let us know another world is possible. It is so important to not be trapped by the false binaries of the 20th century – good/bad,black/white, old/new, original/derivative etc etc Everytthing is connected. I really wanted to put together a collection of voices like I’d put together a mix CD. You read the CD and listen to the book. Switch modes!
Q: This book is clearly about now, even though everyone is concerned with
the way in which now has developed.  Do you think any of the ideas
have a staying power for the future?  Did any lasting truths of music
and creation in a digitized reality come to the surface which can
guide us for at least a little while?
A: Time is elastic. What was true a long time ago, might not be relevant now. What’s relevant now might not be relevant in the future. Everything is non-linear, impact dynamics. “Sound Unbound” embraces that kind of non-linear thinking and uses it to foster a milieu where alot of people with alot of different perspectives can have a space to dialog. So many anthologies and books make everything locked into categories – web searches, amazon.com collaborative filters, last.fm etc – they all look to culture itself as infinitely controlable, with no hidden connections. Where anoynymous posts, hidden identities, and a drive towards privacy held sway over the internet 1.0, the net 2.0 turns everything inside out. People don’t want privacy – they want to put their entire life online! Sound Unbound looks at digital culture as a nonlinear process that makes alot of this kind of stuff explainable as part of every day  reality. That’s hip-hop, that’s current storytelling…that’s the way we live now.

Q: In the middle of the last century, both Boulez and Cage theorized the potentials of technology for the sampling and synthesis of new sounds for music.  Their ideas were closely connected to their wider, very much modern, philosophies of musical creation (and their philosophies in general).  How do you see these two composers in the light of your perhaps more postmodern musical creation with all of its mixing, sampling, and participation in our larger sonic reality?  Do their ideas still have significance now that technology is surpassing their early comprehension of it?
A: I think composers like Varese and Boulez (that rhymes!) set the tone for unapologetic experimentation. That was a good thing. On the other hand, as we’ve seen with so much of the experimental scene, is that people then go on to set up other rules. Most of which bore me… I really think it’s amazing that experimental hip hop gets such short shrift in the sound art scene (that was one reason I didn’t include any of the “normal” sound art people like Christian Marclay, but did include people like Carsten Nicolai. “Modern” composition is a really complex realm – ideologies like Communism (!!!?) and stuff like individual initiative were inspirations for alot of the modernist composers (look at people like Prokofiev!), but we also had to think about how Wetsern composers responded to other parts of the world – like Debussy’s fascination with Javanese Gamelan music or Steve Reich’s interest in West African percussion, or Phillip Glass’s interest in Asia. This is to be celebrated – but I wanted the dialog to be a 2-way street. Too often it was Europeans appropriating from “Others.” “Sound Unbound” seeks to create a kind of equilibirum, and that means things get non-linear. There ain’t no grand progress to the end of history in this book!

Q: One theme in Sound Unbound seems to be giving a response to

contemporary legal concerns about sampling/mixing and intellectual rights.  Those issues aside, do we still have other ethical boundaries which might make certain sounds, perhaps that of the sacred, off-limits to a public sphere?  Are there still bounds to sound?

A: Daphne Keller is the Senior Legal Counsel to Google. She’s a rockstar lawyer! That’s why I asked her to write some of the pieces about the legal aspect of sampling. To me, when you look at sampling, you should go back to the original idea: it was a mathematical construct meant to be able to give you a solid picture. “Statistic modelling” is a process. You take a small fragment of a population (this could be the Census, or it could be atomic measurement of gas particulates etc etc) and use the sample to create a mathematical picture of a larger situation. The law as we know it in most Western countries is still based on physical goods – i.e. stuff that can fall on your head or clog mail box (letters, books, boxes, tractors, airplanes, machines etc). Software is dematerializing the whole scenario. Suppose you need something but just download a blueprint of it and have it made. You’re violating some kind of law. On the other hand, if you need a nuanced view of things like “fair use” or “public domain” – Sound Unbound is a partisan shot about that kind of thing.

Q: Along those lines, it seems that mixing in itself has the danger of decontextualizing certain information which ought to be connected with its historical truths.  How should we continue to remember when sounds and images become unfettered from larger contexts?  How do you think we should perpetuate and propagate history in this digital age?

A: Sound Unbound is all about the un-announced tension between context and content. Radically different essays are put one after another. On the audio companion, you have crazy rare material from Joyce Joyce mixed with, oh I don’t know… Wu Tang Clan type hip hop. That’s OK. Your average person now understands the “logic of addition” that the mashup invoked. You hear some kind of remix, and you get the point – all meaning is relative. All creativity is essentially a conversation between alot of components of the imagination. Sound Unbound celebrates that kind of hybridity. Everything you see – from a photo shop edited image on a subway train, to sliced and diced, sequenced newsreels from Fox TV to Al Jazeera all have this in common: collage based narratives are something we all in the 21st century, know and understand.

Q: Technology has always been a tool for our use.  In many ways it seems that musicians today, and music technology today remains within that very old concept of techne.  But it also seems that something has changed fundamentally.  What did change?  When/how do you think it happened, and how should we describe it?

A: Naeem Mohaimen’s article on Islam in hip hop resonates with this question. I really think that it’s not about tools at all, but the culture of perception that surrounds how we think about the tools. Software is a tool. It carries certain contexts built into its code – you have to be literate to understand what it’s about, and what you can do with it. What “Sound Unbound” does is posit a different kind of literacy that can move between the ever shifting roles of digital media’s relationship to physical objects. What Mohaimen did was talk about Islam and hip hop. I positioned his essay as a response to the kind of “cultural superiority complex” the West has at the moment. Islam was ahead of the West for many centuries. I like to put that kind of paradox out there for people to think about why terms like “algorithm” or “algebra” are Arabic, or even composers like Halim El Dabh (one of the first Arab electronic music composers. The audio mix that accompanies Sound Unbound has all sorts of “hidden connections” – Jean Cocteau, Kurt Schwitters, Iggy Pop, Gertrude Stein, etc etc All of these people have only one thing in common: they were interesting to sample. The same kind of “logic of selection” applies when you look at any interaction with technology. What kind of attraction impulse drives the imagination when you’re coding software? What kind of impulse drives a jazz saxophone solo. I posit that somewhere in the creative act, there’s a common denominator.

Q: Does our participation in this digital culture change what we are as humans?  It seems the notion of ‘the self’ that most traditional music/cultural studies use is insufficient, but it is not clear what the next formulation requires.  Do you have any requirements for a new form of humanity, the new idea of the self which is emerging?
A: Sure – I guess it means that everything is “flow.” I can’t get too deep into whatever current direction people think humanity is going. If you look back at the 20th century, you had people who thought the Soviet Union would be around for a long time, or that Hitler would have some kind of 1000 year situation. History is littered with the debris of people who thought in one way or another that they could shape or direct history. Sound Unbound posits that there will always be multiple paths of entry and exit onto the world stage, and that sampling is a tool that we can use to “deconstruct” alot of the media landscape that surrounds and innundates anyone living in an information based economy.

Q: Your recent Antarctica project is premiering this summer at the Democratic convention.  Is it an overtly political statement, or does it simply contain material which naturally fits in with environmental concerns?

A: The world is changing. That is almost the only constant we have right now. I wanted to go to Antarctica and do a project that would be an inquiry into how to look at the environment itself as a kind of record. Guess what? Scientists use what they call “core samples” to measure the changes in the ice. I don’t want to give away the project just yet, but the basic idea is to figure out some “resonant issues” out of the ice’s transformation.

Q: You mention in the trailer that Antarctica is itself information of sorts, a meaningful articulation of the Earth.  Do you make an effort at decoding Antarctica yourself, or are you presenting it as a pure enigma still to be figured out?  How do you see your work interacting with the political?

A: For me, Antarctica is a kind of geological clock. It measures the tempo of the world. So does dj culture.

Check the trailer for the film at:

http://www.djspooky.com/art/terra_nova.php