![]() KG I think it happens to artists constantly. In regards to the concept of retrospection and honoring artists like these after death, do you see any aspect of insidiousness in that? Like passing people over in life. That’s the way the future turned out, just as he predicted. Rammellzee was a visionary-he did everything-music, art, video, sculpture, etc.-and wore that proudly. It used to feel like there was only one way to be at a time and now it’s a vast horizontal practice, where things as disparate as conceptualism sit alongside figuration which hang next to graffiti, and they all seem to be in dialogue. KG New York art today is more generous, more open, less hierarchical. In what ways did his work embody New York, and in what ways have you seen it live on? The show is an eye opener and the best kind of revisionism or reevaluation of an important artist imaginable. Now we see that Rammellzee was a visionary, a folk artist or outsider closer to, say, Reverend Howard Finster that to graffiti art or you now feel the affinities with Sun Ra, which was impossible to see back then. This is the problem with isms-they eradicate individual practices. The name, unfortunately, was tossed into the huge movement of graffiti art, which was big for a year or two, and then kicked to the curb. KG I must’ve run into him at parties or openings over the years, but I don’t recall meeting him. Soho took over again and the East Village art scene died. Within a few years, a consumerist brand of conceptualism (a la Koons) had made headway into the East Village and seemingly overnight, thousands of figurative and expressionistic artists were out of fashion. Fun Gallery showed graffiti artists and lots of cartoony art. There was a gallery called Fun Gallery, for instance, that emphasized that it was going to be the opposite of Soho, which by then was established and touristy. KG I was there when the East Village took off and it was like the kids took over the playground. Was the emergence of this scene a social response to any particular phenomenon? Or just the natural evolution of a city? ![]() I think that the time that you’re living in New York City is the always the best time-except for just before you got there. I remember going to CBGB in 1979 and it was so dead-all the real action had finished there years before. By that time, downtown had already been declared dead. I had come to NYC from Long Island to attend NYU in the fall of 1979. Kenneth Goldsmith Although I was there, I really wasn’t there. Can you describe this scene for our readers? ![]() But as I preface the call and do my best to gracefully settle into my role as eavesdropper, Harmony just can’t help but to make things weird, leaving me with a wry, discomfiting threat.ĭowntown '81 paints a picture of the downtown New York scene. Minutes later our technical issues have been sorted, nerves have settled, James has joined us on the line and the audio is clear. Though more garish and glamorized than his earlier work, the movie is characteristic of his canon-unsettling, bizarrely entertaining and sordidly human. With his most recent film, the backwater Florida crime caper Spring Breakers, he used guns, girls, and stars-including Franco, Selena Gomez and rapper Gucci Mane-to reach a more traditional viewership with a tale of bikini-clad party girls drawn in and quickly corrupted by a showy dope dealer. Over the next two decades he would write and direct about twenty projects, from shorts to features, continuing to polarize but often impressing critics and festival juries by sowing his oddly intimate brand of unease by casting non-actors, disarranging narrative structures, and providing insight into deranged and neglected pockets of America. The now infamous film, shot with convincing realism and released in 1995, made audiences squirm and kicked off Korine’s career with high-profile controversy. His script for Kids, written for photographer and director Larry Clark after the two struck up a conversation in Washington Square Park, tracks a wayward group of downtown New York teens satisfying adolescent compulsions-fucking, fighting, getting high-with the looming dread of AIDS casting the story in a particularly harrowing light. Meanwhile Harmony ad libs with the eerie sound effects, amusing himself as I scramble to sort things out.Īs a writer, director and artist, Harmony Korine loves to experiment with discomfort. We’ve arranged for him to talk with actor and artist James Franco, a recent collaborator of his, who mercifully has yet to join the call. Rather, I’ve got him on the phone, but as I’m realizing with heart-wrenching panic, the overlapping recording apps I’ve opened to ensure I capture the conversation have created an echo chamber, parroting every word we speak in psychedelic recursion.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |