ALESSANDRO BOSETTI TAKES A NAP

Photographs taken in the sculpture park of San Sebastian's Museo Chillida-Leku.

The images of you sleeping next to Chillida sculpture is exciting to see; your passive take sort of relaxes the sculptures for the viewer. It occupies a netherworld where one is both viewer/ apprehender of the work and participant in it, and the audience of park-goers is accidentally forced to reconcile your presence near the work as part of the work. doesn't it reflect something we always want to do? To interact with sculpture and with objects receptively?

not really, i always had a difficult relation with objects. i tried to investigate the life and feelings of objects in series of (probably quite unsuccessful) compositions in 2007. i failed then. but learned how to treat objects or sculptures as i treat everything else. they are just part of the band.

Did the objects call out for you?

some did some didn't. the flat sculpture was really unfriendly. the vertical one and the stone one (sorry i forgot the title, lousy titles by the way, like "looking for the light" or something like that) were more friendly and i could really sleep soundly there.

Chillida's work is described as dramatic, open-ended, endowed with tension. Was sleep your natural reaction to the sculpture's pull, or did you seek to address the tension by reacting passively, gently?

well, before being asked by the museum and local organizers to do a project in relation to [Chillida]. i didnt know anything about neither him or his work. i had a look to the website and saw the photo of the park and I thought i wanted to nap there. it became a sound project in the extent that xabier erkiza recorded the reactions of the visitors and i will compose something out of those recordings. i also was invited to san sebastian to deliver a lecture and this lecture was about lethargy. so, yes, sleep. i am in berlin right now and i should sleep. but i am not doing it. i liked chillida art the first day there, less and less the following days. its masterful though very safe. its opacity is not threatening, its rather polite. it shows admiration for japanese aesthetic but it lacks all the ephemeral fragility of it. its after all very comforting art. and i let it comfort me.

What does a Basque mini-golf course look like? Does it look the same in your mind? Do you mind?

well, you know, last night i had a long stick made of cheese in my hand. and a black man showed me a secret exit out of the airport. on top of the stick there was a hook. i held the stick as a weapon or a sign or a tool for divination. the exit of the airport was were they put the trash for disposal. i could go, no pass required. after going out the airport i could proceed in my explorations. i entered that part of the funky villa i had no access for many years. its a sweet sequence of secret rooms, steep wooden stairs and darkness. somewhere there was an unknown music instrument. my stick was probably it but i missed to realize it. right at the end the stick was slightly bent. minigolf looks same. in my mind too. i dont mind.

images c. Alessandro Bosetti

ALESSANDRO BOSETTI: Smurfs as Emblems

ALESSANDRO BOSETTI, born 1973, calls Milan Italy, Baltimore Maryland, and Berlin Germany home. His work in sound, text and experimental music has taken him to Sardinia, Toscana, The Canary Islands, and Africa in addition to tours in Taiwan, Japan, China, Europe, UK and the US. Bosetti seems to truly cherish the gaps where communication absolves itself of meaning and something else must occur; although his work and ideas are elaborated extensively on his personal website, the very soul of his projects seeks to commune with the unspeakable and to draw out the unanswerable using a wide variety of creative questioning. While many of his experiments are often complex (Mask/ Mirror's max/msp-midi processing interface, The Pool and the Soup's specific set of rules), the results are accessible, humorous and playfully musical. Storytelling, performance, the meaninglessness of meaning, objecthood, comprehension, and above all, genuine engagement with humanity are all hallmarks of Bosetti's inquisitive oeuvre.

What do you do? What are you doing the most lately?
I sleep. I try to sleep. I try to move from a lacanian state of interpassivity to a state of genuine passivity. I am the moon. I am the hanging man. I wait for judgment. I just entered a dark room with the window open. Outside it rains. Its pitch black. The rain is sucking every sound from the room. The dark is sucking out the room from the room. I sleep beside things and people. Try to dream of them. I idolize corrado costa that once said : "i do nothing but i do it slowly". I slept beside chillida sculptures in a sculpture park. I thought about the minigolf nearby. I thought about the smurfs. Smurfs as emblems of political minorities. I listen to smurfs and visitors of the sculpture park. I listen to people i never met just in order to be missing them. I pose in a pose of longing. I wear a dress of nostalgia. I desire. I try to sing. Not much comes out. I repeat phrases. Over and over. Until i can fall asleep. I try to fall asleep on stage. I stage. I stand between my mouth and my voice. I say. I sleep.

How long have you done these things?
Maybe a month from now.

Why do you do them? How does it make you feel?

Drowsy.

When was That Moment in your life that told you you would become what you are? What happened?

I wasn't there. It was my mom getting on a cab. Smiling in beauty. It must have been a sunny day. I own the pictures of that day. I owe everything to that day.

How has your life changed or not changed to accommodate that moment's effect on you?
I started working. Every day my aura fell down as the dry skin of an avocado. I started holding my breath and grinding my teeth. I wept in despair. I walked on land that wasn't there right before putting my foot down. I created geography. I loved women. I went on working without knowing i was. I read Dune and the Never Ending Story. Ive been a fighter and a coward. Ive been solitary. I ruled my kingdom in a magnanimous way. A center extremist. I grew into being a bourgeois. I did put stuff inside my body.

How has your work affected your life in return?

It gave me some money and gave me fun. It gave me honey and made me run. It killed my pony without a gun. It made me sleep right under the sun. I like my job.

What does David Lee Roth mean to you?

LA

Alessandro's website is
www.melgun.net
these are his favorites:
roberto bolano : the wild detectives , Wg Sebald : Austerlitz or After nature (in the last two hours, in the next two hours) sokurov : any movie (in the last two hours, in the next two hours) every dog (all my life ) no cats please (all my life)

www.eduardo-chillida.com/

KURT GOTTSCHALK: Cup of Ice

KURT GOTTSCHALK is a writer in New York City. He has a radio show on WFMU, and he writes for a variety of publications and blogs including Signal to Noise, allaboutjazz.com, The Village Voice, The Wire and Time Out NY. He is primarily interested in free jazz, obscurities of musical culture, and playing guitar with his band Ecstasy Mule.

What do you do? What are you doing the most lately?
I am usually trying to figure out what music is. That involves playing records, playing records on the radio, playing instruments, going to concerts, writing about concerts, writing about records and writing about people who make records. I continue to be mystified.

How long have you done these things?

The first record I bought was a 45 of Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" at a garage sale. I was probably 6 or 7. I started piano lessons when I was 9. My first published writing about music was when I was 13.

Where was your first writing published when you were 13?

The first thing I had in print was a letter to Trouser Press magazine defending David Bowie against all the New Wave tyrants. Shortly after that, I started reviewing records for the Waverly Journal, a weekly paper in Central Illinois.

What are your primary areas of musical interest?
Like genre-wise? I like energy, I like improvisation, and I like stillness. There's also a Tanya Tucker song I've been real into lately. But mostly risky, genuine, spontaneous, I guess.

How does it make you feel?

I really don't know what else to do. It makes me feel happy, confused, engaged, ecstatic, frustrated and self-assured. The emotion I can most easily elicit in myself by playing guitar is sadness.

When was That Moment in your life that told you you would become what you are? What happened?

Oh, god. Really? OK, walking home from the mall (back home in Springfield, Illinois) when I was 14 or so with two friends acting goofy. I had a cup of ice, having finished whatever drink I was drinking, and I was jumping around and threw the ice in the highway. A guy in a pick-up truck pulled over and said asked what I was doing, said it could have been broken glass or something in the cup, how could he know, shoved me around, knocked me down and kicked me in the head. A cop happened to be driving past, got out, stopped the guy and let him go without question or taking his name, then asked me what I thought I was doing. The only thing I thought I was doing right then was bleeding.

When I got home, I wrote some pretentious thing about the Arrogance of Man or something. I didn't really think it was good, but it felt good writing it. Good in a way I'd never felt before.

How has your work affected your life in return?

I don't know what I'd be if I wasn't a writer. Perhaps "employed." And maybe I would have been a writer even if I didn't get kicked in the head. But I don't know how to think of my life and that moment as separate things.

What's your favorite thing about David Lee Roth? Least favorite?

I love how every line in every song is sung, is performed, is considered. Like Sinatra. Or Ella Fitzgerald. Or Axl Rose - on "Appetite," anyway. I don't like his jaw.

What about David Lee Roth's jaw rubs you the wrong way?

OK, it's too studly manly jocky. The whole thing with him, really. But his powers are isolated in that massive, square jawbone. He's not a bad singer, but he's so preposterous. And the jaw's the first thing in when he comes through the door.

Is your interest in the outer reaches of fandom reflective of the outer reach of fandom that you yourself occupy?
I can relate to it. I don't think I have reached that. I might. More likely I'll be someone who can't sit down in his apartment because of the books and records.

For more by and about Kurt, check out

http://spearmintmusic.blogspot.com/
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/KU

MIKE TAYLOR: Rad to Look Like a Carnie

MIKE TAYLOR is an artist living and working in Miami, FL. His drawing and printmaking style reflects the environment of his artistic post-adolescence in Providence, RI, as well as a broader range of influences from Gary Panter and Raymond Pettibon to the psychedelic palette of the seventies and sixties. His tattoo work, similarly reflects creative contemporaries Daniel Higgs, Robert Ryan and others: a mythic sensibility that transforms the interpretation of the myth, in a traditional style. While reactionary, politicized and endowed with sneaky commentary, Taylor's work is often light-hearted and excitable.

What do you do? What are you doing the most lately?
Mostly I draw. But that has lead to a years-long bout of screenprinting, painting, collage, crappy sculpture, a couple of videos, and a few years back I began to tattoo. I play music, I cook, I hang out with Jessica. I go to work. This month I've drawn a lot of comics, but when I'm working on an image for a print, it's all I do for a week or so. So lately, as in this week, I'm doing comics.

How long have you done these things?
Not to sound snarky, but since I could hold a pencil I've been drawing on stacks of the old computer paper my dad would bring home from work. I would draw pictures of guitars, barbarians, superheroes, and later, all the bands I knew I would be in. Of course, by the time I was in bands, it would have been fully uncool to look like the carnies I drew back then (however, I know that right now, it's back to being rad to look like a carnie, and I love carnivals too!). I started screenprinting in college and then immediately shelved the skillset...I only screenprinted t shirts when my band toured. College makes you hate art, you know? Or it made me hate art. I went back to screenprinting a couple of years later, like in 2001, and then hit in earnest. I started tattooing in 2004, maybe? A friend kind of arranged it...I had been getting work done for many years and expressed interest in learning, but at 29 or whatever felt I was too old to begin another path. Turns out I wasn't. We're never too old to feel like amateurs!

Why do you do them? How does it make you feel?
I may be unqualified to say why I do these things. I could make a list to tackle both questions, and that will touch around the issue:
-I love immediacy
-I have an innate need to feel understood
-I have to keep my hands busy (I grew up in a smoking household)
-as a child I was very skinny with very hairy arms
-art had always moved me
-I feel unqualified to live in the world as -it-is-becoming

When was That Moment in your life that told you you would become what you are? What happened?
Mostly it was movements against what I interpreted as the world trying to predetermine me into submission. I suppose every artist that draws gets told as a child that they'll grow up to be an artist. So when I went to college on an art scholarship I wanted to be a history teacher. Then I taught for a while and realized that I was on the right track with the art thing and I shouldn't be ashamed to feel compelled towards such an "irresponsible" calling as the fabrication of images.

How has your life changed or not changed to accommodate that moment's effect on you?
Hmmm...well, I'm not married and don't have any expensive diseases. But I am poor, so I guess I'm doing it right. Maybe the seriousest answer is that my needs are modest, which is practical for an artist in a capitalist economy.

How has your work affected your life in return?
I am seldom suicidal because I feel compelled onward by a purposefulness that comes in and out of focus...when I'm trying to be serious I sound like a dick. I just want to be wonderful at what I chose to do. So I don't make time for what a lot of people think is fun and I'm bad at keeping touch with my extended family. I analyze things to much/enough to enjoy them.

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about David Lee Roth?
Diver Down's pre-eminence as a classic record EVEN WITH the lame covers. It can be enjoyed spiritually, academically, and physically. DLR's early support of punk. His relationship with Henry Rollins. He claims to read a book a week and know three languages. The fact that he publicly stated that spending early Van Halen money on cars and women wore out, so he began taking classes, because knowledge is an actual investment.

Do you have anything you'd like to ask me?
Lexie, do you think I should move to Baltimore?
Yes, definitely! You will not be homesick for humidity, mosquitoes and violence.

Do you think you make "feminine" art?
No, not really. But probably. I think all good art embraces the masculine/feminine as recombinable elements of the same mutating whole. I'm not saying I make good art. If I make anything feminine, its definitely fighting against itself.

What attracts you to Baltimore?
It is weird, affordable and crammed to the brim with creative, interesting people.

What artists do you admire?
Ashley Snow Macomber, Shaun Flynn, Jen Kirby, Kehinde Wiley. Every one who gets away with it. Whoever it is that designs tapestries you can buy at the MegaMall. My roommates Nate Nelson, Sarah Jablecki and David Spelce Jr.

What was your first band like?
Pop punk. We covered "Skulls" and had one show. It made our friend Janaka barf.

Do you make art every day?
No.

Would you prefer to not work a day job?
Yes.

Thanks, Mike!
Mike Taylor's work can be seen at www.emptymountain.org

images by Mike Taylor. Top to bottom:

Pursuit, 200?
(Mike Taylor's self-porttrait)
Orthodoxy Looms, 200?

His favorite book is Crime and Punishment, his favorite movies are Blue Velvet, The Bicycle Thief and The Wizard of Oz.
He loves all animals and all colors, but especially cyan and bright orange and mint green.