Over the course of the next few posts, we’ll share artist interviews and insights about this year’s ON SIGHT visual arts line-up. You can experience all of TBA:09’s visual arts installations from Sept 4 – 13, every day 12 – 6:30 pm. And join us for a free opening night party September 3, from 8 – 10:30 pm at Washington High School (map).
Kalup Linzy continues his episodic soap-opera series Conversation Wit de Churen with Episode VII, in which Linzy portrays the melodramatic life of a fictional family. This storyline follows Katonya and several other characters through misguided love affairs punctuated with dreams and distraction. The artist serves as writer, director, cinematographer, editor, and actor–and, in a distinctive strategy, also voices and overdubs the dialogue of multiple characters.
Episode VII combines live action with animated dream sequences which were developed in residency at PICA and in collaboration with LAIKA/house. From his original take on the soap opera and family drama to his foul-mouthed music videos and filmic shorts, Linzy’s work is an exploration of the emotional realities of aspiration, disappointment, sexuality, and belonging.
KK: Your characters speak in a mash-up of different dialects and you do all of the voice overs. Can you speak about this? Where do they come from?
KL: Most of the dialects in my videos are based on the one spoken in my hometown, a close-knit rural community. I also use standard English without eliminating my southern accent. In addition, some characters have more drawl than others.
KK: There is a fair amount of institutional critique in your films, they call out the art world in several ways. Why did you choose to have one of your characters be an artist?
KL: I created a character that was an artist not necessarily to call out the art world, I think the art world is insular and vast at the same time. My intentions were to explore some issues I and others have to consider as an emerging artists. I also explore the anxiety around it all.
KK: How did your work branch out into performance? Who writes and sings these songs, you or Taiwan?
KL: I’ve always performed. How it came about in my graduate work is that I wanted to continue performing, but also explore my theatrical style of performing with the visual work I was creating in the context of the contemporary art world. I write the songs for the characters. I have written songs for myself which have later been given to Taiwan, but I also perform some some songs in different attire. Sort of like, covering Taiwan, or myself so to speak.
Figure VIII: A video still from Linzy’s Lil’ Myron’s Trade.
KK: How do your drawings fit into your work? What was it like to get deeper into animating them in collaboration with Laika/house? What was the process?
KL: The drawings are created through Katonya, the artist in the video series, Conversations wit de Churen. I am so loving the animation. I am beyond excited. I hope I can continue to do more work in this way. As for the process, I recorded all the dialogue, created the drawings, met with them and discussed what I wanted and what were the possibilities. The idea was to go deeper, but keep the rawness there.
KK: We both have a deep appreciation for pop music and the intersection between art and “the other.” When you listen to music from now or way back when, what gets you going?
KL: Whitney Houston any day. Others include Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, Mavis Staples, Labelle, Chaka Khan. I am also a fan of Booty Bass. As well as some good ole Funk as well as some DISCO!!!!
KK: In the Festival we present work by both visual and performance artists, and some artists like yourself cross these boundaries. Do you think of these genres as being two different worlds? Is it important to have a distinction or should we just invent a new term for how artists interpret the world?
KL: Create a new term and organize a world tour and make sure I’m on it!!!!!
About
Kalup Linzy was born in 1977 in Stuckey, Florida. He received an MFA in 2003 from the University of South Florida in Tampa. He has received awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Creative Capital Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation.
Linzy’s work was recently featured in a major solo exhibition at the Studio Museum of Harlem. He has had solo exhibitions in The Moore Space, Miami, (FL); Taxter & Spengemann, New York, (NY); and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, (NY). Linzy’s work was included in Prospect.1 New Orleans, (LA) in November 2008. Linzy lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, (NY).
Conversation With de Churen VII: Lil Myron’s Trade is made possible in part by a grant from the National Performance Network’s Visual Artists Network. Major contributors are the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. www.npnweb.org. The commission and exhibition of this piece is supported in part by the Kristy Edmunds Fund for New Work.
www.kaluplinzy.net
