Listening to You
Cedar Lewisohn
If climate change one day causes all of the museum world’s text labels to peel off and fall to the ground, one artist who will not be in danger of being misidentified is Barbara Kruger. Indeed, Kruger’s iconic juxtapositions of black and white images and Futura Bold Italic text are amongst the most recognizable art images of the late 20th century. Here, we get the rare chance to hear a contemporary master of visual bombardment speak exclusively about an entirely different domain of the senses–music.
CL: Have you been to any gigs recently?
BK: I used to go and see so much music, but in the past few years I just haven’t gone that much. There are some great clubs in LA that I used to go to a lot, like Spaceland and The Garage and sometimes Interverdoora had really good stuff.
CL: What kind of music would they play?
BK: Well you know I just hate labels… I really can’t stand it. So I really can’t go there. But I like a mix of different kinds of music and that’s the best I can say. One thing I can proudly say about L.A. is it has, what to me is, the best record and music stores, one of the best in the world, which is called Amoeba. It’s just the best, its just huge and it’s not a chain, they have one in Oakland. It’s the greatest place and you can get anything from anywhere. From like, mix tape stuff to Techno to Alt to so called avant-garde to classical stuff to Jazz. It’s just the greatest place. Unfortunately, I spend more time in there than I should. I don’t buy as much stuff as I used to because I just think there’s a difference between being able to just listen to and enjoy stuff and just gathering it and fetishizing it.
CL: Do you use song lyrics in your texts?
BK: I really haven’t done that, no. "We Don’t Need Another Hero" was, definitely, but other than that, no, I really haven’t. But I could and I’ve thought of it in the past.
CL: When I was looking in your catalogues I noticed some quotes from Billy Holiday, the "Don’t Threaten Me With Love" quote.
BK. Yeah, I thought that was just great.
CL: Do you see music as a commodity in the same way other products function?
BK: Do you know, it’s really hard to say, within the throws of, unfortunately, globalized market economies, what is and what isn’t a commodity. You know? I mean really, it’s just so hard to do that. Because what does that mean, that something is non-circulated and pure and something that’s circulated becomes somehow tainted on a certain level. I mean because in the general discourse, the word commodity has of course a pejorative sense. To a degree, you know. But in fact, speaking more anthropologically it’s just how things circulate.
CL: And back to the catalogue, I also saw a quote from Patti Smith. Was she someone you hung out with, or collaborated with?
BK: Well, she was a tremendous influence on me when I was just beginning to write. I had done some poetry readings and she had introduced the first one. But this was before Patti Smith was… you know. And she was doing readings at Saint Marks. I thought she was tremendously influential, her early work was important. I haven’t really followed her work since then. Not that she hasn’t remained important, but I’m not really interested in was she’s doing now. I mean just songs that say power to the people, you know, I’m saying she’s done more than that. But to me her historical work had more to do with… watching a figure play with notions of sexuality and gender. And to really challenge the traditional, "Poetry scene," dominated by academics from Columbia. And then to be appropriated by and really move into a conventional music world. I remember being so used to seeing Patti at Saint Marks and I’d gone to teach at Berkley about a year later and I started hearing her music come out of dorm rooms. And there was a big article in the New York Times, she was on the cover of the New York Times magazine. And it’s just the way people become, or the way figures become bodies. You know, rather than the way bodies become figures.
CL: You did some work with Rage Against The Machine, how was that to work with those guys?
BK: It was terrific. Unfortunately they don’t exist anymore, though AudioSlave seems to be doing pretty well here. They live quite close to me in Los Angles. But I’m sure Glasgow, I know the music scene there is really terrific, that’s one of the really exiting things, now that I’ll be spending more time there for the show.
CL: You’re going to check out some music while your here?
BK: Sure.
CL: Its a lot more Rocky, in the North of the UK… when you get South its a lot more "Urban" which is a music term I don’t like.
BK: What does that term signify to you?
CL: Urban? It just means black.
BK: Exactly. That’s why the category thing is just like yikes. I mean the older I get, the less I sort of indulge in that, but of course it’s just the way things work, it’s how they’re marketed.
CL: Have you ever made any pop videos?
BK: Well, I worked with Rage Against The Machine on one of their videos, but I haven’t directed one. Not that I haven’t thought about it.
CL: I imagine your work would lend itself so well to that, almost too well. I remember seeing a film once which looked like one of your installations.
BK: There have been so many, I mean I’ve seen videos which are actual enactment’s of work I’ve done.
CL: How do you feel about that?
BK: Oh, fine.
CL: Do you play any musical instruments?
BK: No, no. I mean I’ve always sang a lot, especially when I was younger, but not now.
CL: What would you say was the music of your youth?
BK: Oh, gee, the music of my youth? Er.. youth would be like early teens and stuff, I’d say would be Al Green and Aretha Franklin,, and er… I’m from Newark, New Jersey, which is a total Black city. So that’s sort of what I grew up with. And also Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound was incredibly huge.
CL: Were you more of a Disco person?
BK: Oh, I was never Disco. This was really pre Disco… But Phil Spector, The Ronnettes all that stuff…
CL: Phil Spector is great.
BK: And he’s as crazy as a loon.
CL: So you were a bit of a Soul girl.
BK: Well that was my earliest listening because of where I grew up and stuff. But I love Rock, I’ve always loved Rock. But Rock has changed, so I love all the threads that its split into,., but I think its interesting the way Disco which has been so tarred with content, a lot because of gender reasons.. I think that in America Disco came to signify gay. So I think it’s interesting how threads of Disco became what could be called in Britain, a term that could never be used here at the time, Jungle. Or became House, or became Techno. So I think its so interesting to see the ties between British and American House and Techno and even black urban House stuff from America and German stuff like Kraftwerk. So I think that’s really interesting. I just see it as a broader field which is why I was so flummoxed when you asked me in the beginning to like name stuff. Things have so, sort of, melded together and of course computers have changed so much of music and allowed a development of a certain niche type of production. Because marketing changes everything and MTV changed everything. So you had the fall of the Hair bands and the rise of Alt Rock and then the fall of Alt Rock and the rise of Rap and you know, its like all that stuff. But now I think people are working in different ways simultaneously.
CL: Where or when do you listen to music?
BK: Erm.. I listen to music at home a lot, I have to say because I spend most of my time out in Los Angles. My relations to cars and radio is different from when I’m here in New York where I don’t have a car and were radio sucks in New York. Radio out in LA is much better. I mean, I think radio in Britain is terrific. So I like radio, but I listen to radio a lot more when I’m driving…
