Category: Art

Myanmar’s forgotten people

In the Western media, nowadays at least, the word ‘Myanmar’ rarely appears far from the cosy little phrase ‘former military dictatorship’, and barely a day goes by but we aren’t privy to a picture of President Thein Sein, peace prize nomination in back pocket, glad-handing with Washington big-wigs and signing Chinese free-trade agreements with a flourish. It’s as if the ’88 revolution, the imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi and 60 years of military dictatorship were generally things which, for the incumbent Burmese leader, were unpleasant little hiccups which happened to other people.

Some of those unfortunate other people are the Rohingya. Members of Muslim minority resident in Myanmar for almost two centuries, the Rohingya are nonetheless denied Burmese statehood and are subject to a campaign of government-sanctioned hostility so intense it has been described by Human Rights Watch as ‘ethnic cleansing’. Accepted as citizens by neither Myanmar nor their originary homeland of Bangladesh, the Rohingya have become increasingly isolated in the desolated hinterland between the two countries, living day to day in refugee camps yet denied refugee status.

For seven years, US photojournalist Greg Constantine has travelled between the countless camps on the mountainous Burma-Bangladesh border, documenting the plight of the stateless Rohingya. And he’s coming to Phnom Penh soon to present a slideshow of selected photographs from his new book Exiled To Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya.

Shot in bone white and black, Constantine’s photographs recount the stories of the tens of thousands who have fled to the border region to escape violence only to find themselves adrift and alone, corralled in no-man’s land. Myanmar’s forgotten minority, they are, as the book title suggests, exiles to nowhere.

Constantine returned to the Burma-Bangladesh border area eight times between 2006 and 2012, capturing life in various camps with an unswerving gaze. They are not easy to look at, these images. There are close-up portraits of grandfathers, confusion and distress cross-hatched into the grey skin on their temples. There are men more skin than bones staring resignedly, or children carrying heavy burdens. Mud is the over-riding landscape feature. Weirdly, as with much conflict photography, Constantine’s lens somehow renders the Rohingya’s misery uncannily beautiful.

Accusations of photo voyeurism or, worse, conflict pornography sometimes haunt photojournalists. The best shots are the most likely to raise eyebrows the highest: a Vietcong being executed at point-blank range, eyes screwed shut; a Somali stoning. There’s something taboo about looking at someone else’s suffering and then walking away. But Constantine raises the experience above that of mere viewer or voyeur by interspersing the images in his book with interviews with the Rohingya of the photographs, contextualising their experiences as exiled and abandoned people. His Meta House presentation will achieve the same effect through the photographer’s retelling of their stories and his own, giving a voice to Myanmar’s forgotten minority.

Exiled To Nowhere is part of Nowhere People, a larger project in which Constantine documents stateless peoples from countries around the world, including Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Nepal, Bangladesh and Ukraine.

WHO: Greg Constantine
WHAT: Exiled To Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya slideshow and presentation
WHERE: Meta House, Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: To be confirmed (Watch This Space!)
WHY: The Rohingya may be exiled, but they’re not forgotten

 

Splice meister

His mission: reconnecting culture and art. His medium: everything from cooking to comedy. And he’s here to entertain you. Robert Farid Karimi, whose spoken word has featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, took a brief moment between belly laughs to talk orange juice, Monty Python and poems about mosh pits. 

 

Rubber-faced poet/actor/artist/cook and Iranian-Guatemalan humourist: how on Earth do you find the time? And how do you fuse them all together?

It’s about this idea that you are who you are and all these things intertwine. I use my poems to take the ideas I’m thinking about and make a kind of orange juice concentrate: my ideas in concentrated form so that when I need them for bigger projects, I can add some more water to them and ‘Poof!’ they expand. I see myself as a performative cook and it’s all just ingredients. I can take the same ingredients and feed you an appetiser or I can feed you a whole meal. It’s all about the amount, the mixing, the experimentation: that’s how it all comes together.

Excellent splicing, Sir. Now, let’s dial the clock back. You’re a rather exotic creature: Iranian-Guatemalan. How much does that influence what you do?

A lot! I’ve been travelling Latin America and Asia for the past two months and what started that quest was how people perceived me. No one ever perceives me as Iranian-Guatemalan, or as American. People still have to think about what I am. In Bali, people thought I was from Bali until I opened my mouth. If I was mute, no one would ever know. I’ve always had to shape shift; I never quite fit in any culture. Rather than lament that – that’s what my teenage years were – it’s more about the gift it is and the power it is to have a consciousness of many cultures. In that comes a way to dance around things. I did a night of storytelling and poems and someone said: ‘How can you do a political poem, then do a sex poem, then do a poem about being in a mosh pit?’ That’s me! That’s my life!

Hold on a second: a poem about being in a mosh pit?!  

Yes! I’ve been through disco and I went through hip hop and punk rock and they all represent a certain sensibility. Music has always been very important to me. I’m from the area that birthed The Dead Kennedys, for God’s sake. In the 1990s I realised the mosh pit was the best metaphor for identity because it’s complicated. It’s collisions and that’s exactly what’s going on globally.

What’s your most outstanding mosh pit memory?  

I was in LA and I was knocked on my ass and these two women picked me up and were like: ‘Let’s keep going!’ It’s like being in the ocean: you feel like everything’s going to take care of you. I remember the first time I just went for it – just wanting to get hit, wanting to collide. In the weirdest way you want to collide and then when you do, and you’ve done it a few times, you just bounce. It’s a really good feeling. I always liked to get on the inside. I even had an earring get stuck on this bass player’s guitar while I was moshing, which was very painful. That’s why I don’t wear earrings any more.

You’ve performed in a few unusual places, too: grocery stores, backyards…

I believe the majority of the human race doesn’t go to the theatre any more. We’ve done cooking shows in grocery stores, where we do a man-on-the-street sample table and there’s the host of the cooking show right there, feeding you and making you laugh while you’re shopping. I’ve dome poetry readings in people’s backyards. It’s trying to find different ways to bring it to the people. I’ve done a poetry reading in a hotel bedroom where all the poets were on a bed and the crowd was around us. [Laughs] My favourite performers could take it anywhere. My favourite was whispering a poem into someone’s ear.

That sounds a little risqué.

But it’s not! Poetry and performance are out there, but how do you create intimacy? How about four of you get together and you just tell it to them, like a conversation, or whispering a poem in someone’s ear while they look out over a skyline and you describe to them the entire skyline in a haiku? I’m trying to blur the division between audience and performer. At Angkor Wat I was amazed at how many intimate moments are lost. I would love to get a group of poets together and have them make poems about Angkor Wat and then for people to be read these poems while they’re looking at the temples. Are you familiar with Monty Python?

I’m English. Cut me and I bleed Monty Python. 

Monty Python had this great sketch where it was a static view of the horizon and people walked past and said silly things every few minutes. I kept wanting that to happen because it would have been hilarious and it would have woken up the tourists. They were just so slumbering, as if they were viewing the temples the way they’d view the TV, in such a passive way. I want to bring back interactivity so that the artist is the spark for human-to-human interaction and reduce passivity in art as much as possible.

Live wire. What did you grow up wanting to be?

[Laughs] I wanted to be a comedian, but then I met all these stand ups who had really horrible lives. I also have a really low tolerance of cocaine, so I couldn’t do as much as they did. [More laughter] I could do the weed, but not the cocaine. But I really love physical comedians: I study comics and I study laughter. It’s very hard for me to sit down, too.

Who inspires you?

Whoopi Goldberg, Lily Tomlin, Richard Pryor: those kind of comics because they were very physical performers. If you look at really good Richard Pryor stuff – there’s an audio tape not many people have heard in which he does the entire Romeo and Juliet in prison. He’s in a Santa Monica nightclub and plays every role of inmates doing Romeo and Juliet… in a prison.

Holy crap!

Holy crap indeed. That’s awesome! A lot of my other inspiration comes from music: watching people like Prince and Freddie Mercury, people who could really take the room. And all the great San Franciscan poets who inspired me while I was growing up. That’s what I strive for every night: that I can create a relationship with the audience so that, if nothing else, we know we danced together and that dance together was memorable.

So what can we expect on Thursday?

A remix of different pieces of mine put together. It’s like a VH1 storyteller’s night: I’m going to tell a story while I tell a poem. There’s a very famous Iranian comedian in the UK, Omid Djalili, and he’ll tell a story then sing a Smiths song or Eye Of The Tiger. I’m going to do something like that but the song will be a poem. Sometimes the song will be a song and sometimes the audience will have to sing in order to get me to go on.

WHO: Robert Farid Karimi
WHAT: Rubber-faced poet/actor/artist/cook and Iranian-Guatemalan humourist
WHERE: Java Arts Cafe, #56 Sihanouk Blvd.
WHEN: 7:30pm May 2
WHY: See ‘what’

 

Inner space

Vast intestines crafted from fabric that’s part krama, part sarong and part mosquito net spill onto the gallery floor. These forms, says their creator Srey Bandaul, “look inward, seeing the body as a metaphorical site of tension”. The artist “speaks to the cycle of life whereby the psychological and cause and effect of outside forces meet. Using fabrics synonymous with daily life and the protection of the body… locates this tension in Cambodia’s communal consciousness, as well as more broadly within South Asia.” Bandaul’s Technicolour guts are intended to spark a critical dialogue on politics, both local and global, by suggesting how the digestion of external global influences can do serious internal damage. Keep your eyes peeled for a dash of performance art from Phou Cheany on opening night.

WHO: Artist Srey Bandaul
WHAT: Digestion exhibition and performance installation
WHERE: Romeet Gallery, #34E St. 178
WHEN: From 6:30pm March 26 (performance starts at 7pm)
WHY: It speaks to the cycle of life

 

To infinity & beyond

Infinity. By definition it’s a rather large subject for an artist to take on. The unfurling of the unbound cosmos, the illimitable arcs of space and time, the endless hours you wasted going to see Les Miserables; none of these are concepts easily captured on canvas.

Em Riem, however, is an artist unafraid of tackling subjects of epic scope. Trained in Cambodia and France, Em’s artworks have shown around the world from Cartagena to Darjeeling. In 2011 here in Phnom Penh he exhibited Eternity, a series of abstract works addressing the enduring shadows of the Khmer Rouge era; on March 13 at The Insider Gallery, InterContinental, he will show Infinity, a series which pushes beyond simplistic representation and represents nothing less than infinity itself.

The idea of conjuring the infinite within the definite confines of 160cm squared canvas hanging in a hotel foyer may sound a bit farfetched. But as Em explains, “the freedom of abstraction is that of colour,” and so he uses this to transcend the limitations of boring old physicality. The paintings of Infinity display slabs of drenched pigment which refuse a representative function: peony pinks and oceanic blues have an almost three-dimensional sensuality to them, creating an indefinable interchange of form and tone. Is it a shape? Is it a colour? Neither. It’s the infinite, depicted in glorious Technicolor.

Infinity stands in contrast to some of Em’s previous work. In Tenderness (2012) he gave us portraits of couples and families painted to resemble black and white photographs from the pre-Khmer Rouge era. A meditation on the moribundity of traditional Khmer cultural mores, the series was time-bound both in its aesthetic and its idea-old-timey look, nostalgia for old-timey values. Nothing could be further from infinite space and time.

Nothing except fashion, of course. The fashion industry, predicated upon time-limited trends and styles which will make you cringe roughly five minutes from now, would surely be anathema to an artist producing work like Infinity? Not Em Riem.  A man of protean abilities – visual artist, sculptor, designer, gallerist – you’re as likely to find Em designing sculptural gold and leather breastplates as you are to see him making pictorial observations on the space-time continuum.

Em explains this apparent contradiction by invoking Picasso, who described two categories of artist: those who transform the sun into a yellow spot and those who transform a yellow spot into the sun. Em describes himself as belonging to both categories at once, able to slip between representative and metaphorical at the drop of a hat: “My eclecticism often expresses in the reversibility of those two functions because, despite a long-time commitment to figurative art, I always comes back to abstract painting.”

It’s abstract art to which he returns with Infinity, hoping, as he explained in an interview with art4d.asia, to capture something beyond the infinite: “With art, imagination expresses a transcendent and indefinable truth… art projects us beyond time and makes us a present unconditionally.” Transcendent truth and the immortality of the moment? Not a bad way to spend infinity.
WHO: Em Riem
WHAT: Infinity exhibition
WHERE: The Insider Gallery, InterContinental Phnom Penh, Mao Tse Tung Blvd.
WHEN: March 13 – 31
WHY: You don’t have to be Buzz Lightyear to experience Infinity

 

The fine art of being fabulous

Speculums, lampshades, earrings crafted out of castrated dog’s testicles: hardly your average drag queen props, but then Holestar is hardly your average drag queen. Billed by Time Out magazine as “London’s favourite tranny with a fanny” (Americans, please note: this does not mean quite what you think it means), she emerged from the world of dandyism-as-performance-art created in the 1980s by avant-garde fashion designer Leigh Bowery – he of latex dress/teetering platforms fame. Today, in day-glo wigs, vertiginous heels and impossibly long eyelashes, Holestar occupies similar cult status as a cross-dressing curio a la RuPaul and Divine. There is, however, one rather notable difference.

This former soldier with a degree in photography and masters in fine art from St Martins isn’t simply a man dressed as a woman. An altogether rarer breed, she is in fact – following the grand tradition of Julie Andrews in Victor Victoria – a (gay) woman dressed as a man dressed as a woman. Her modus operandi: “Reclaiming camp femininity from drag queens and glorifying it.”

“I never had a drag mother,” she says from a Bangkok cafe, en route to Phnom Penh. “Lots of drag queens combine forces but no one ever taught me. I just came up with the idea as an art project. It was supposed to be a one-off: me lip-synching to Shirley Bassey as a video piece. I moved to Vienna and met this DJ at a big Aids benefit, The Life Ball. A lot of my artwork at the time was to do with sexuality and gender, flamboyance and questioning those things. It was the perfect time to workshop it in front of an audience. The DJ didn’t know I was going to turn up in the worst drag ever; I had no idea what I was doing. I had a feather boa wrapped around my head; drew big lines across my forehead and put glitter on. It was just an art idea in a club and people liked it. The next thing I know I’m travelling around central Europe and making a living out of it.”

When central Europe proved too passé to contain her gender-bending persona, Holestar – real name Julie Hole (“It’s a joke but I say it because it’s true: I was Private Hole. That’s not made up. It’s my real name and it’s much better than being Private Arse.”) – gravitated towards the Big City of London where she performs everywhere “from bright stages to dingy basements” and hosts gay dating show, Take Me On. But daring to be different – to embrace the ‘other’ – isn’t without its drawbacks, even in London’s relatively liberal metropolis. Clients have cancelled gigs on discovering Holestar is genuinely female, and on New Year’s Eve she was punched in the face for intervening in a ‘queer bashing’.

“Hideous. Even in London, somewhere that’s supposed to be so open-minded. It’s New Year’s Eve, we’re all dressed up and this guy took offence to someone wearing a dress. And this is the thing: he wasn’t pretty drag; he was alternative drag, which is kind of where I’m coming from. The guy who got attacked is very avant-garde. He had these big black square eyes and a big red mouth down to his chin and he had a beard. It was quite obscure drag and this guy went ‘Eurrrghhh! What’s that?!’ and beat him up. I got a punch in the face for it as well. Absolutely disgusting.” After a complaint was lodged with the authorities, Westminster Police failed to turn up for a scheduled interview then made Julie wait 50 minutes to give a statement about the attack while they busied themselves processing someone who’d lost their keys.

“We think people are groovy and accepting of different types of people but they’re not. There’s still a lot of hatred and fear. I get people grabbing my tits and my crotch because I’m questioning their sensibilities and they can’t quite comprehend that. Don’t touch the freak! I’m here for entertainment. Something in their brain doesn’t compute what they’re looking at so they freak out. It’s rude. I’m still a human being. Come and talk to me and I’ll have a conversation with you; I’ll tell you why I do what I do. In the West, there’s a very binary sense of gender – the extreme male and female – and if you’re playing in between those roles, however temporarily, people still can’t decipher it. I like to think/hope that by the time I leave this mortal coil those boundaries will have been broken down a bit more. There needs to be more of us visible in the mainstream, which is why I believe in art and pop culture. Society is influenced a lot by pop culture.”

As an artist, Holestar deliberately sets out “to blur the boundaries between the avant-garde and mass entertainment, pop culture and the underground; indulging both those who worship at the altar of the contemporary art gallery and at the bowels of mass media”. But can such disparate forces ever be reconciled? “It took me a long time to accept that I fall in between the two. The mainstream side doesn’t get me; the avant-garde arts side doesn’t get me and I don’t really care. I know where I’m coming from and I know my intentions are good.

“There’s snobbery about what I do from certain sections and a lot of misogyny as well. It’s about accepted norms; that idea that anyone dressing up and playing gender roles is going from one to the other. It’s the fact they want a straightforward male-to-female or female-to-male. They don’t want people playing with those gender roles. Even in England, what I do is confusing for people and a little bit racy. We have so-called equality in terms of being gay or whatever but we’re still a long way off that and gender is a big taboo. People don’t want to acknowledge that there are people who play with that.”

Our conversation returns for a moment to the fusion of high and low culture, her boldest would-be act of which revolves around a tale of two testicles – those of her pet dog. The plan was to give these severed orbs a new lease of life as earrings, a plan that induced a state of near-apoplexia in animal rights’ activists. “I didn’t do it in the end but only because I moved house recently.” She lets loose a gleeful snigger. “They were in the freezer for a long time and I didn’t have the chance to put them in another freezer while I was moving. And I was getting abuse from animal rights people. It’s interesting that people think I’m doing these things to aggravate them but really it’s just the way my brain works. I’m not interested in shocking people. I don’t think it’s weird but I forget that my normal is very weird for other people. I Googled it and thought it was quite obvious. I just thought: ‘Well, no one has done it before.’”

Besides, how does that differ from fellow British artist Damien Hirst’s predilection for pickling everything from sharks to sheep? “Exactly! And this is MY dog. He’s fine; he’s not being attacked by other dogs now because he’s lost his testosterone. Otherwise, they’d just go in an incinerator. The people who attacked me for it, they just wouldn’t come round. I’ve come to the realisation that anyone who’s militant about anything, you can’t talk them out of it; whether they’re militantly religious or militant about animal rights. I don’t care. I just do what I do – and I do regret not doing it. This is my normality and it’s not freaky or weird but when I occasionally look at the world through my parents’ eyes – they’re very conventional; they read the Daily Mail, unfortunately – to people like them I’m odd but I don’t think I am at all.”

It’s Holestar’s resolute sense of self that has led her to lecture in the subject of alternative drag at several British universities, including Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance – something she intends to replicate here in Phnom Penh, in between scripting a new hour-long show and revelling in the success of her latest EP, Queen Of Fucking Everything. “I’ve done quite a few lecturing courses in alternative drag because there’s a history of queer studies and I was asked to do a drag queen workshop. I wasn’t really interested in the old theatrical side of things, so I did a post-Divine alternative new gender identity course and it was fabulous. It was really interesting to see people who’d never done anything at all with drag before just fall into it. There was one girl with a shaved head; a biker, really butch. By the end of it we’d put a wig on her, put some heels on her and she was fabulous!

“I felt like a mother hen with her little chicks, setting them free – ‘I’m so proud of my babies!’ It’s nice to show people there’s a new style of drag and it doesn’t really matter what’s in your underpants. It’s just about expressing yourself, so if you want to wear a lampshade on your head and have a beard and wear a pair of panties and lipstick, that’s completely fine. From what I understand about this part of the world, drag and gender are very tied up in romanticised ideas of being a pretty female lip-synching to romantic love songs, which is fine, but there are other options.”

The two-day workshop will include an introduction to the work of avant-garde pioneers Divine and Leigh Bowery – “the innovators of alternative styles of gender bending, fashion and art” – and culminate in what promises to be a deliciously flamboyant Paris Is Burning-style alternative drag pageant. “There are lots of pseudo-political things going on but ultimately it’s about having fun and being positive and empowered no matter what your gender is. I get people contacting me, especially biological women, and saying: ‘Oooh, I really want to do this.’ Well, do it! Express yourself. It’s about playing with gender roles and what people expect them to be. I don’t believe gender is binary.”

Any final words of advice? Holestar laughs her raucous, throaty laugh. “Just be fabulous, darling!”

WHO: Holestar
WHAT: A woman dressed as a man dressed as a woman
WHERE: Pontoon, St. 172
WHEN: 9pm January 24
WHY: Explore the fine art of being fabulous

Manic impression

 “When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do.” – Jimi Hendrix

The greatest electric guitarist in the history of music was just 27 years old when he was found on the floor of his girlfriend Monika Dannemann’s home in Notting Hill, London. And it was at precisely the same age that Darrell Young, better known as Niki Buzz – founder of 1980s US hard-rock power trios Vendetta and M-80 – picked up a guitar for the very first time. It would not be the last. “I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes,” Hendrix once said. What his Rock Hall biography describes as ‘the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music’ would make of Play Like Jimi, an Amsterdam-based tribute band fronted by Buzz, can only be imagined. For as John Mayer writes in Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Greatest Artists Of All Time, “Hendrix invented a kind of cool. The cool of a big conch-shell belt. The cool of boots that your jeans are tucked into. If Jimi Hendrix is an influence on somebody, you can immediately tell. Give me a guy who’s got some kind of weird-ass goatee and an applejack hat, and you just go, ‘He got to you, didn’t he?’” As Hendrix devotees celebrate what would have been his 70th birthday on November 27, days after the news that previously unreleased Hendrix material is due out next year (People, Hell and Angels will be the 11th posthumous Hendrix album), The Advisor corners Play Like Jimi’s flamboyant front man, who plays 13 instruments; won a James Brown-sponsored music contest when he was 13; has performed with everyone from The Ramones to Patti Smith, once formed a band with the only man ever to get thrown out by Ozzy Osbourne for being too badass (Ozzy himself once bit the head off a live bat on stage), and, yes, has got some kind of weird-ass goatee. Joining him are bass player Martin Seij, a Dutch metalhead, and former Wailers drummer Winston Scholsberg.

What would Jimi be doing if he were alive today?

Niki: At this point, he’d probably be doing jazz fusion of some sort. He was going in that direction; he was already jamming with Miles Davis and a rap group back then, a group called Lost Poets. Jimi would have been at the forefront of rap.

The new album has been described as pioneering what became Earth, Wind and Fire’s sound.

Niki: Toward the end of Jimi’s career, he wanted to experiment a lot but his manager didn’t want that at all; he wanted the original experience. The last thing he wanted the world to see was Jimi as a black man. He wanted the world to see Jimi as a white rock star with a good tan, and the blacker Jimi became the more it upset him.

How much of a political force was Jimi?

Winston: The way he used his music, the way he spoke about the war, the way Machine Gun talked about the injustice of the war – that was the most political statement he made. If you listen to Machine Gun, you understand how deeply concerned he was with what was happening.

The song Machine Gun has been described by musicologist Andy Aledort as ‘the premier example of Hendrix’s unparalleled genius as a rock guitarist.’

Niki: I was a drummer when I first heard the Band of Gypsys album. I’ll never forget the first time I heard Machine Gun. It completely changed the way I looked at guitar – and I wasn’t even a guitarist then. I didn’t start playing guitar until I was 27, which is strange because Jimi died at 27. When I heard the sound of his guitar crying and wailing, just like a mother or father watching their child being shot down… On top of that, he made the guitar actually sound like a machine gun and bombs dropping. I never thought such emotion and visualisation could come out of any instrument. There’s no way you can listen to Machine Gun and not feel every ounce of the pain of war. It’s probably the best song that’s ever been recorded in the history of music.

You’ve said before the only way to play like Jimi is to let the guitar play you.

Martin: If you let the instrument play for you, instead of struggling with the notes to make the song sound like it sounds; if you let the music flow through you and let the guitar do its thing, that’s when it becomes like Jimi.

Niki: Most people, especially guitarists, believe that playing like Jimi is putting on the record and learning it note for note. Any moron can do that; it doesn’t take any talent. If you want to play like Jimi, first of all you have to be in touch with nature then you have to be in touch with your emotions. Jimi played in colours and he played completely from his emotions. He was very shy so he expressed all of his feelings through his guitar: his love, his anger, his hopes, his dreams.

Curtis Knight, who was close to Hendrix, has described you as the best guitarist he’s ever played with since Jimi. That’s one hell of a compliment.   

Niki: I really love Jimi Hendrix, but didn’t play him at first. I had a band in 1982 called Vendetta. A dream come true for most guitar players would have been being produced by Eddie Kramer, who produced Hendrix. Kramer came to me and said ‘I want to produce you.’ And I said no. I chose Max Norman to produce the album, because I didn’t want the stigma of being Jimi Hendrix. Everybody was comparing me to him anyway. I should tell you about how I met Curtis Knight. He used to manage Pure Hell, the first black punk rock band. I was the resident Dr Fix-it sort of guitarist at Planet Studios. I came in one day to play and Curtis was sitting on the couch. He looks at me and says: ‘Yeah, you look like you can play.’

That’s how he gauged your musical ability: ‘You look the part!’?

Niki: [laughs] So he says ‘Come listen to this!’ and he took me into the studio and played a track. I then played it and he goes: ‘OK, you’re my guitar player now.’ We mostly just did studio stuff, and he owned a limousine service. I finally talked him into doing a couple of gigs down in South Carolina and we were on stage, playing, and there was a guy in the front row who was weeping and sobbing to the point where it was disturbing. I told someone to bring him back stage and he’s on his knees, sobbing. He thought Curtis Knight was dead and I was dead because he was a big Vendetta and M-80 fan, and I hadn’t been on the scene in a while. He couldn’t believe he was seeing two of his biggest idols on the same stage and they were alive.

You’ve rubbed some extraordinary shoulders: Joan Jett, Patti Smith, The Ramones. Who stands out?

Winston: [laughs] That’s a good question. Answer that, brother! Come on!

Niki: Since you’re a punk vocalist, I have a great story for you. Do you know The Dead Boys? OK, so me and The Dead Boys’ lead singer Stiv Bators were best friends. He was an absolute intellectual; we’d sit in a coffee shop and discuss politics for hours. The drummer, whose nickname was Beaver, he was a normal guy but he really wanted to be a punk. The Dead Boys were down near Avenue A, Avenue B – we call it Alphabet City. At that point in New York, Alphabet City made Beirut look like Beverly Hills. The only people there were Hells Angels and drug dealers; it was serious. Anyway, the drummer decided to earn his punk badge by going into Alphabet City and throwing some racial slurs at the Puerto Ricans there. He ended up getting stabbed 32 times. That’s a hell of a way to earn your punk badge.

And what was it like in M-80 working with Don Costa, the only man ever to get kicked out of Ozzy Osborne’s band for being too much of a badass?

Niki: Oh, Jesus. OK, I’m going to tell you about the most famous M-80 gig ever. We were at The Troubador in LA, going to the gig, and Don Costa says: ‘Look, I can’t go in the limo with you. I’m going in my own limo.’ Alright, whatever. So we arrive at the gig and Don Costa is wrapped up like The Mummy; he was taped up head to toe, there was nothing but his eyes showing, and he had smeared cat shit all over himself.

Oh no.

Niki: Oh yes! [laughs] And the drummer sat down and played in an LA jail cell. He literally went to the LA County Jail, where they were replacing the cells, and reconstructed a complete jail cell as our stage set. He had to go into the cell to get on the drums and when he went in he took one of Costa’s extra bass guitars, which I thought was his own. Here we go: we start the concert, and of course there’s this girl on her boyfriend’s shoulders and she starts flashing the band with her big tits. Costa leans over and starts sucking them while he’s playing, which the boyfriend didn’t take too kindly to. So he puts the girl down and starts to swing at Costa. Costa then goes to the back of the stage and comes back out with a pickaxe and starts swinging it at the guy. So now we don’t have a bass player any more because he’s too busy swinging a pickaxe at this guy he’s fighting with. I’m saying to myself OK, I’m the lead singer and the guitar player; I’ll carry the show until he quits this. All of a sudden the drums stop. Sam opens up the case for what I thought was a spare bass guitar and it’s a 12-gauge shotgun…

No! 

Niki: …and he starts blowing holes in the ceiling of the club! Now I’m the only one left actually playing music here, and at that point I was only wearing a chamois – I’m part native American – and so you’ve got this guy in a loin cloth playing guitar; one guy blowing holes in the ceiling, and another guy swinging a pickaxe. That was M-80. Costa was certifiably insane. This wasn’t an act. You know why he got kicked out by Ozzy?

Something to do with a cheese-grater…

Niki: Worse. He used to bring live bunnies on stage and gut them. And he had a cheese-grater on the back of his guitar, which would grate his stomach while he was playing until there was blood everywhere.

And you thought forming a band with this guy would be a good idea why?

[laughter]

Winston: Yeah, Niki. Why?! Thank you for asking that question, Phoenix. We’ve been waiting for him to answer that for years.

Niki: He was the best bass player ever. I just got a fan mail the other day asking if he was still alive and someone told me they think he’s dead, because no one’s heard from his since. Last time I saw him was at The Rainbow, where he showed up in women’s lingerie, motorcycle boots and smoking a cigar.

So how does one go from shotguns, pickaxes and cheese-graters to recording the soundtrack for The Personals, a documentary about the sex lives of the elderly in New York? Just how kinky ARE old people in Manhattan?

[Laughter]

Niki: Every time I land at JFK, my phone starts ringing. People just know I’m in town. This time, it was Planet Studios. I go down there and am just shooting the shit when this guy comes running down the stairs with complete panic on his face. ‘I need a drummer! I need a drummer!’ Everyone pointed at me. It was Miles Davis’ road manager; we hadn’t seen each other in ten years. Miles used to have a recording studio next to mine and would come in and watch me play. Anyway, this guy was recording the soundtrack for a documentary but his drummer hadn’t shown up. So we played through it for about 45 minutes and then I took off the headphones and said OK, I’m ready to do it. And the guy says: ‘No, you’re done. Don’t touch it.’ They had four days to do it; I did it in 45 minutes, first take – and holy shit, it won an Oscar! You know what my wife said to me? ‘That’s good. What are you going to cook for dinner?’

So your Oscar-winning experience will forever be wedded to the visual of old people having sex?    

[More laughter, none of it Niki’s]

Niki: No! Let me tell you something: I have never to this day seen the damned film…
WHO: Play Like Jimi
WHAT: Hendrix resurrected
WHERE: Memphis Bar, St. 118 (Nov 30) & Sharky Bar, St. 130 (Dec 1)
WHEN: 8pm November 30 (Memphis) & December 1 (Sharky’s)
WHY: See ‘What’

 

Space, man

12th Planet, the don of US dubstep, on ancient aliens, chicken and wobble, and what to do when the world ends

EARTH TO COLLIDE WITH NIBIRU ON NOVEMBER 21, 2012! The headline – writ large in block capitals, lest readers underestimate just how swiftly the human race is to be snuffed out – first appeared on weeklyworldnews.com in June of this year. But before you go barricading yourself into an underground bunker/drinking yourself to death with Hershey’s chocolate syrup/seizing the pre-apocalypse chance to carve your ex-lovers up with a chainsaw, perhaps a little context is in order. Not only does the headline appear next to a story announcing the world will in fact end a full month earlier, the same site also declares that Mitt Romney is running for president of Facebook and Joe Biden has joined outlaw motorcycle club the Hell’s Angels.

 

Confused? You’re not alone. And neither, according to controversial Azerbaijani-born American author Zecharia Stitchin, are we – at least in the ‘human race descended from ancient aliens’ sense. For Nibiru, according to Stitchin, is a giant planet first identified by Babylonians that passes Earth every 3,600 years, allowing its ‘sentient inhabitants’ to drop in for the intergalactic equivalent of a quick cuppa. It was during one such fly-by that the occupants of this so-called 12th planet grew tired of plundering Earth for its raw materials and so genetically engineered us, homo sapiens, to do the heavy digging on their behalf.

Or so the legend goes, for the late author’s theories have been derided by almost every member of the world’s scientific community (as Brian Switek writes on Smithsonian.com, referring to the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series, “I had a feeling that if I watched the show – which popularises far-fetched, evidence-free idiocy about how human history has been moulded by extraterrestrial visitors – my brain would jostle its way out of my skull and stalk the Earth in search of a kinder host. Or, at the very least, watching the show would kill about as many brain cells as a weekend bender in Las Vegas.”).

Still, the beliefs persist – so much so that the man credited with introducing dubstep to America, Los Angeles-based John Dadzie (due to play at Pontoon this week), actually named himself after Stitchin’s fictional object. 12th Planet, as this West Coast junglist is now known, counts ancient aliens among his inspirations and in January released an EP with the ominous-sounding title The End is Near! We invaded his inbox to talk hamburgers, boots-in-a-dryer dubstep and how to go out with a bang when – and if – the world finally ends.

Inspired by ancient alien stories, eh? Tell us about the first time you picked up a copy of Zecharia Sitchin’s first Earth Chronicles book, The 12th Planet.

Ha ha! I had the name 12th Planet before Ancient Aliens episode one aired. I originally received the book around 2003 from DMC champ DJ Craze’s wife, Ros. The book pretty much changed my life.

The head of the European Space Agency once told me he’s convinced life exists on other planets, even if it’s just microbial. Do you have a theory on the existence of extraterrestrial life? What might it look like? And what would you do if aliens tried to abduct you?

I feel there is life out there 100%. And if it does exist on a terrestrial planet like ours, then I would assume that they would have a similar make-up to human beings. I would even go as far to say that extraterrestrial life probably walks among us right now.

Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas has just made his intergalactic debut with a song of his broadcast from the Mars rover Curiosity. Any plans to send your music to Nibiru?

My music is a direct message from Nibiru.

The subtext of The End is Near! EP: if the eschatologists are right and 2012 really is the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, how would you go out with a bang? 

I’m not sure if the world will truly end on December 21, but I can tell you that I’ll be performing at the Piramides de Cholula in Mexico with Skrillex and Nadastrom. If the world ends that day, I’m glad I got to celebrate with a great group of individuals.

Skrillex: he’s your best mate. Tell us about the vibe between you two.

I love working and hanging out with Skril! He’s an awesome person and inspires me to be a better producer, person and performer at all times.

What are your memories of when your mum bought you your first radio cassette, which you once described as the best thing that ever happened to you?

I think my first cassette single was Young MC’s Bust a Move, or Kool Moe Dee’s I Go To Work. I remember being so happy I could play the songs whenever I wanted, without having to wait for them to come on MTV or the radio. It was a great day.

From drum ‘n’ bass to the equally bass-centric dubstep: what exactly is it about bass that reaches parts other frequencies can’t?

I think DNB and dubstep are pretty much cut from the same cloth. The over-emphasis on low frequencies gives you a sort of fight-or-flight response. For instance, when you hear a fighter jet fly over and all of a sudden you get this feeling in your stomach like ‘Prepare, something is about to happen.’ This is the same feeling you receive on the initial impact of a big dubstep/DNB drop.

You’ve said the biggest misconception about dubstep is that “it’s only made up of chicken and wobble”. I laughed out loud when I read that. Can you explain? Also, how is the sound evolving?

I was making a reference to a famous American dish called chicken and waffles. I should have used a different metaphor for this quote. Dubstep is like a hamburger: sure, meat and bread are its prime ingredients, but it’s what you add to the burger that makes it different. With that said, dubstep will always have the two main primary elements, bass and drums, but it’s what you add to it that makes the genre evolve. Korn, Asking Alexandria, and Hollywood Undead added heavy metal and all made revolutionary advances. James Blake, Usher and Bieber gave it a pop edge and now people who would have never listened to dubstep have an idea of what the music is. The list goes on and on, and will continue to grow, as long as people are up for a change of the taste of the hamburger they’re eating.

As the man who brought the British dubstep movement to the US, inspired by BBC Radio 1’s Mary Ann Hobbs, you’ve been hailed as ‘The don of American dubstep.’ Are you blushing right now?

I wouldn’t say that I brought the movement to the US, because there were guys pushing the music long before me. I gotta give it up to people like Joe Nice, Dave Q, Matty G and Juju for really laying down the initial groundwork. My partner in Smog, Drew Best, once told a magazine from LA that I was the “Johnny Appleseed of dubstep; sure there were apples before Johnny, but now there are orchards.”

You’ve said you’d love to work with Rage Against The Machine. What is it about them that gets you going?

RATM taught me to think outside of the box and to question authority. The Evil Empire inner CD had a picture of 50 books that I tried to read all throughout high school and my early adult life, to understand other perspectives on life. It helped me find books like The Anarchist Cookbook, Guerrilla Warfare, Art of War, Wretched of the Earth, and so on and so forth. So for me to work with them would be an incredible experience, because that band was one of my initial true inspirations to become a better man through music.

Reasons (Doctor P Remix) was named one of the ‘30 Greatest Dubstep Songs of All Time’ by Spin magazine. Did you have a hunch it was going to be that big?

At the time I commissioned the Doctor P remix of Reasons, I would have never imagined the magnitude that the remix would have. I was looking for a more dance-floor direction for the Smog EP and that’s why I went for my DNB chum Picto. He made it around the same time as Sweet Shop and Badman Sound, and all three kind of jumped to the top of the charts at the same time. I can’t believe that it is still in rotation to this day, and I am thankful to everyone for the support.

And finally, is there anything else you’d like to talk about that we’ve forgotten to ask?

This is my first time coming to Cambodia, so I have no idea of what to expect. I can’t wait to get to DJ out there and I would like to say thanks to everyone who might attend.*

*The Advisor accepts no responsibility for the gig being cancelled due to alien invasion.
WHO: 12th Planet
WHAT: The don of US dubstep
WHERE: Pontoon, St. 172
WHEN: 11pm September 14
WHY: The end is near!

 

The Eyes Have It

When I go back to my village, the children look at me with wide eyes because I look strange to them


Hour Seyha and Nget Chanpenh, recent graduates of the Phare Ponleu Selpak Visual Art School, live side-by-side in Battambang – lauded as the epicentre of Cambodia’s arts scene. But their styles, on exhibition at Romeet Gallery, remain distinct. Seyha’s Children of the Countryside is a series of stark portraits, composed of layers of circles and lurid in colour. “One day, I was painting while I was angry,” he says. “I painted in big brushstrokes, violently; then the paintbrush fell out of my hand. I picked it up and decided to paint without anger; I had to control my anger. Painting in circles is meditation for me.”

Chanpenh’s During the Dark bears more relation to the Expressionist style: darkly rendered hues, illuminated from beneath by lighter shades, form distorted and blurred images of his family. But both artists share the sentiment, summed up by curator Kate O’Hara, that “Art and life are closely related.”

Seyha’s Children of the Countryside is playful, even when the subject is morbid or mournful. A full-body portrait of a crying girl hangs in the centre of a long wall, but she’s realised as a cartoon character or caricature through the enhancement of certain features. Her eyes, like those of all of the children in the series, are massive. “When I go back to my village, the children look at me with wide eyes because I look strange to them,” the artist says.

Although he may appear strange, Seyha is no stranger. The relationship he has with the children of the countryside mirrors our own relationship with his subjects. It is a relationship which simultaneously feels the pangs of intimacy while experiencing the distance of an observer. Seyha speaks of a need to return our gaze to the hardships of such children, forgotten by the residents of fast-developing cities. But the gaze works both ways: the children’s wide-eyed stares recall us to ourselves, to our own state, most likely enviable by comparison.

Children of the Countryside requires the audience to recognise the faces and experiences of Seyha’s subjects and to consciously experience that recognition as a shift from egocentrism to empathy. This is the common impetus behind Seyha and Chanpenh’s work. “Development is local to the city,” says Chanpenh, whose series concentrates on the lives of his family in the provinces. “I want to return attention to the countryside.” During the Dark is the artist’s attempt to divert the capital’s gaze from itself to those closest to him: his own flesh and blood. Sometimes eyes recede into wide faces and are difficult to discern; others blur into the block colour of the visage. Perhaps he wants us to scrutinise those faces; to get closer or stand back; to interact.

“Every painting that I make is of what I know very well,” Chanpenh says, but both artists share a concern that their audience doesn’t know their subjects’ lives well enough. Their painting constitutes an attempt to move the image from the countryside to the city and to transmit knowledge from the artist to his audience. When we see the image, we know the subject: that’s their philosophy.

WHO: Hour Seyha and Nget Chanpenh
WHAT: Children of the Countryside and During the Dark
WHERE: Romeet Gallery, St. 178
WHEN: Now
WHY: A privileged insight into a provincial world

 

Art with no name

Khvay Samnang used to sell his paintings at the market for $15 apiece. Now, favouring the camera lens over the paintbrush, he’s forging a reputation in the international art world – although his focus remains firmly at home.

Untitled, a series of photographs of the artist standing in a downpour of sand half-submerged in lakes, evinces Khvay’s humanitarian and environmental concerns. Untitled uses an invented language of gesture to predicate the impending event of development on land where immense lakes now sit. We are mostly aware of these development plans, but Khvay’s exposition of the anticipated change inspires the sort of reaction no news report can.

A news report is a commentary, which Khvay is determined Untitled is not. Untitled is a parody – a serious parody – which exists prior to the event. It’s a cipher: encrypting the event in a language of gesture, while decrypting it by rendering the event in simple terms, all without the help (or hindrance) of the written or spoken word.

Oddly, the seriousness of the consequences of such development is only accessible in this form. Khay’s is an intimate parody, which seems to say ‘This is too much,’ rather than asserting how it is. It bespeaks the unnarratable, but the language of gesture is understandable. It functions to illuminate the condition and it is beautiful in its simplicity.

This month, Khvay will show a documentary film which accompanies Untitled in the group show New Artefacts at Sa Sa Bassac Gallery. This film has never been shown before because, up until now, Khvay hasn’t found an appropriate platform for it.

“When I exhibited Untitled in 2011, I included one video with the photographs. I wanted to have more video, but I felt the documentary video was fighting with the photographs. The documentary is the opposite from the photographs. I would have liked to show them all together but the contrast made me decide to show together with only the video of the dropping sand, not a documentary video. When Roger (Nelson, curator) talked with me about the idea for New Artefacts, I feel like ‘Oh my God, I have the video!’”

Khvay’s urge to record his process bespeaks a natural drive to document. It’s a form of savouring the temporary: that which is threatened, which is the landscape itself, but also the instantaneous nature of the photograph, without context. He seems to establish another base on which his vision can stand.

The documentary reveals a new ‘truth’: the truth of Khvay’s creative experience. “In the video you can see the local people keeping busy working but still looking. I didn’t ask them what they think about my work because I think maybe the security is coming, so I needed to hurry up.” The video highlights the individuality of the locals, some of whom feature in the photographs, but appear as potential subjects of the images’ aesthetic.

Another conflict between photograph and video occurs on the site of Khvay’s body. The photographs evince Chinese contemporary arts pioneer Wang Jianwei’s notion that “the artist as an individual participates in the process and eliminates his personal power so as to eliminate all desire for self-expression” as a completed process by the time the photograph is taken.

The video demonstrates the process of that elimination. Khvay wading into the water is an experience which centres more on the individual’s struggle towards achieving his vision, eliciting moments of disgust and compassion. It is as though during the walk towards the point at which Khvay will be photographed, he is shedding his self-expression, his corporeal skin, to become the gesturing figure, the symbol of the drowned.

WHO: Khvay Samnang
WHAT: Untitled documentary and photography exhibition
WHERE: Sa Sa Bassac Gallery, #18 2nd Floor, Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: August
WHY: An intimate parody of development

 

Releasing the McCracken

A key historical connection exists between Cambodia and Australia: “We are both touched or scarred by colonialism.” So says Clare McCracken, an emerging artist from Down Under whose own work is driven by the manifest damage to local communities. Scars evince past hardship while carrying its memory into the present.

There’s nothing funny about scars, but McCracken has a unique way of dealing with them: she turns to humour. Speed Check is a permanent installation in Noble Park in Victoria, and the piece’s working materials will be exhibited in New Artefacts, the first group show at Sa Sa Bassac Gallery. Passers-by have their speed of walking, running, cycling ‘checked’ by the speed camera, encouraging various antics and races between people who happen across it.

It may seem like fun and games, but McCracken is keen to point out the serious intent. “Almost all of [my public] works have been created with, and for, communities that have experienced some type of trauma. Yes, they are encouraging them to interact and react to their public space, but this is only because they are not connecting with it.” A large-scale toll road now runs through the Noble Park suburb. When it was being developed, the local council turned to McCracken for help in re-engaging people with their public spaces – and with each other.

McCracken’s public works certainly break the mundanity of the walk to work. They interrupt the everyday; sometimes making people laugh, sometimes think. Concept for a Boer War Memorial exemplifies the artist’s awareness of communal scars and her belief in the cathartic power of remembering. It is tempting to view such sombre works as distinct from the more playful installations, such as Speed Check, but McCracken is quick to rectify the mistake. “I think all my works are a type of monument.” Her art, whether drawing, installation or funny hat (she recently made a ‘sloth hat’), is meant to induce reflection on an event. More generally true of monuments (and subsequently her work), they are meant to be seen.

The same can be said for McCracken’s working materials, which she perceives as of equal importance as the end point. “I think I find the process important because it demystifies the outcome. It’s really important, to me, that my work is current and relevant. A transparent process allows people to follow your thoughts, which helps people ask you important questions about your practice, which in turn helps you to continue to think critically about your work and develop it.”

Not only is her work meant to be seen, it is meant to be understood. “People make a city great.” One could imagine her arguing that people make art great, too: she values Nelson’s desire to show only working materials because she wants people to be with her every step of the way.

Even work the artist defines as ‘private’ are public monuments: offerings to the world, even when they are not seen in parks or by road-sides. They are also invitations to take part in something. The demystifying effect of seeing working materials might be local only to McCracken’s art, but that effect is a valid one, which an audience might find particularly engaging in an exhibition which promises to be complex in its variety of artist backgrounds and media.

WHO: Clare McCracken
WHAT: New Artefacts exhibition
WHERE: Sa Sa Bassac Gallery, #18 2nd Floor, Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: August 9
WHY: The process demystifies the outcome