This is my email interview with Rachad B. I sent him a series of questions, he answered and I’ve responded to his answers in( )’s to make it more of a conversation. The digital interview was a little odd but it did allow us to use information that isn’t necessarily memorized in our brains:
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I know your work references where you grew up & the kind of neighborhoods you’ve lived in. You mentioned in your talk, shotgun houses, and you said things like “from frying pan to skillet.� I’d like to get more of a feel for where you came from, and what your life has been like thus far. Feel free to relate this to your work.
Has living in Minneapolis, working at the nomad, being in art school
directly affected your work. I guess I wonder how your current personal
experience figures into what you make.
What is an idea or theory or concept that you’ve been thinking about
lately, something that has been heavily on your mind most recently?
In your studio we talked about the political animal in relation to networks of bees and ants. Could you tell me a little more about this idea and how you do or intend to express this in your work.
That’s all I have. Feel free to expand on these questions, get off topic or whatever feels comfortable.
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Living in a larger and culturally different city has affected my outlook on the rest of the world/humanity more than it has affected my work. It takes time for me to process that information and purposely fuse it with my work. But it definitely has some affect. My work tends to lean in a very dark and somber direction. I've experienced an upbringing in many unpleasant environments throughout most of my life and I've had interactions with very cruel people. Not much has changed with the move to Minneapolis. Interestingly enough, working at the Nomad has shown me that some of the happiest and most content people I've come across are a part of the bar scene/culture. One of the most important things I've learned as a bartender, in that specific style of bar, is the necessity to build a client base of people that can benefit from what I have to offer besides inebriation. This same client base returns to the bar, in part, because of the enjoyable atmosphere that bartenders help to create. It's an escape for me. A place that I can go and be with others who want nothing else but to escape the torments and stress that fill their lives. For these people, bars are the escape and many individuals seem very welcoming of pleasant dialogue and good times. That's an atmosphere I've only experienced, to this degree, with 8 years experience in the service industry.
(What you said about the bar scene is great, I’ve been involved in similar bar scenes. Working shitty day jobs and drinking out each night with hords of people doing the same thing. There is something to say about that way of life. It’s not all good or bad, but there is always something happening and that is important.)
A concept that I've thought about lately has been human apathy. The ability for one person to totally detach themselves from any concern outside of themselves. Without a trace of feeling, sympathy, or thought for others. The bitter cold of human consciousness. A further investigation of human apathy in relation to dialogue, confrontation, and death is something that has weighed heavily on my mind lately.
(ultimately we only care about ourselves, for the most part anyway. We talked about this in a crit class I had once in a discussion of what beauty is. One person said that when you see beauty you are not, for that moment at least, the center of the universe. What your talking about is much colder & self-centered, it makes me think of fighting vandalism, or hate. I’ve had a handful of dreams where I was being stabbed to death, And as I lay there helpless, I felt omniscent and ok and I’d would try to make a very personal and human connection with my eyes to the stabber’s eyes while he stuck me. In the dreams, I can never make the connection but I keep trying until I’m gone.)
I'm not really sure on how it will come across in my work, but I'll leave you with an excerpt from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. This is the source of my content.
"It is true that certain living creatures, as bees and ants, live sociably one with another (which are therefore by Aristotle numbered amongst political creatures), and yet have no other direction than their particular judgments and appetites; nor speech, whereby one of them can signify to another what he thinks expedient for the common benefit: and therefore some man may perhaps desire to know why mankind cannot do the same. To which I answer,
First, that men are continually in competition for honour and dignity,
which these creatures are not; and consequently amongst men there ariseth on that ground, envy, and hatred, and finally war; but amongst these not so.
Secondly, that amongst these creatures the common good differeth not from the private; and being by nature inclined to their private, they procure thereby the common benefit. But man, whose joy consisteth in comparing himself with other men, can relish nothing but what is eminent.
Thirdly, that these creatures, having not, as man, the use of reason, do not see, nor think they see, any fault in the administration of their common business: whereas amongst men there are very many that think themselves wiser and abler to govern the public better than the rest, and these strive to reform and innovate, one this way, another that way; and thereby bring it into distraction and civil war.
Fourthly, that these creatures, though they have some use of voice in
making known to one another their desires and other affections, yet they want that art of words by which some men can represent to others that which is good in the likeness of evil; and evil, in the likeness of good; and augment or diminish the apparent greatness of good and evil, discontenting men and troubling their peace at their pleasure.
Fifthly, irrational creatures cannot distinguish between injury and damage; and therefore as long as they be at ease, they are not offended with their fellows: whereas man is then most troublesome when he is most at ease; for then it is that he loves to show his wisdom, and control the actions of them that govern the Commonwealth.
Lastly, the agreement of these creatures is natural; that of men is by
covenant only, which is artificial: and therefore it is no wonder if there be somewhat else required, besides covenant, to make their agreement constant and lasting; which is a common power to keep them in awe and to direct their actions to the common benefit."
(It’s great to have this idea outlined so concisely. It opens a lot of doors. Ignorant artful socialism?, it’s like a managed tiered society, Brave New World-ish, but with the insects it’s not dark, it light, it’s nature. It’s like all the parts of the massive tree working together to get water from the earth all the way up to the leaves. How nature makes the best of any situation in a natural mechanical way. I wonder how you will/are conveying this idea in your sculpture, whether it be vague, obvious, or what.
This may be unrelated but the stuff about the fault of reason and also empathy made me think of Voltaire, in his Candide where the main character suffers the most terrible hardships one might imagine but he goes on repeatedly saying, it is how it is, there is no other way for it to be, his main quote is “this is the best of all possible worlds.� If you haven’t read Candide, you may be interested. It directly and repeatedly comments on human apathy. I think he is criticizing the reason of the enlightenment.
I’ve also been looking at a book of Wallace Stephens essays where he faults reason in the resolution of reality. The book is called “The Necessary Angel.� The imagination is the necessary angel of the book title. He says poets and artists go at finding reality with their imaginations while philosophers apply reason to explain reality. The problem with the philosophs is that they never get anywhere, they just compile theories then die. The art people present their insides in their work, their realities. They give us something tangible to deal with, something individual. What is more real and human than the inside of an individuals mind? Wallace says it “Reality is not the eternal scene, but the life lived in it.� The philosophs give us clouds. The poets give us angels.)
Pardon the woodiness of all this, but it seemed appropriate to respond to your responses. Feel free to re-respond if you’d like.
Josh