published in: North Drive Press #4, New York 2007     

Members of the Same Symbiotaxium, But Probably Not Collaborators - A conversation between Matt Keegan and Fia Backström

MK: So, we just looked at your web project for NYFA (www.fiabackstrom.com/nyfa). When I was a kid, there were these books called Choose Your Own Adventure, and when you got to the end of the narrative, it would give you options of the different paths you could take to continue the story. There wasn't one finite ending and you could decide if you wanted a character to go one way or another. This seems very linked to your web project and in some ways has a relationship to ÎHerd Instinct 360†, in terms of how information was presented to an audience, while simultaneously showing iMovie stills that created both moments of total resonance and disjuncture. It seems like both projects purport an understanding that there's so much more information available than what is presented with the audio/visuals. One of my favorite moments within your NYFA site is when you rollover an image of the Gagosian gallery facade, and hear: Gagosian, Gagosian, Gagosian.

FB: Like the ocean... (laughs). Exactly, we are in information society! Something like ÎHerd Instinct 360† is frontal or totalitarian in terms of the viewer, the viewer is simply a receiver, on seats set-up like a herd to receive that sermon. In this case of a website, you can introduce hyper links anywhere at any time, to layer the information in another way. You can branch out in many dimensions to give seeming agency to the viewer, who can click or choose not to click.

MK: But in terms of a viewer in the audience for ÎHerd Instinct 360†, versus the interface of a computer, do you think that as much as you can click on something- do you think that the audience member who's listening, will also think of this subset or multi way of thinking, or do you think that in the nature of being part of a particular thematic afternoon, that those parameters are tightened?

FB: If you go to a corporate website, we are made to believe that we have all this freedom on the web compared to a movie for example, where you can't choose the course.

MK: You can't choose your own adventure.

FB: Now the Îfeeling' is free choice, while most websites are actually very linear, for clicking in a specific order. From an understanding of usability studies and navigation consistency etc, in the NYFA project I challenge some of those conceptions, such as the amount of pop ups. Many users turn them off because of the porn and the commercials. Another web-architecture term is Îover-navigation'. This project is no doubt over-navigated, you can click on almost anything. There's no information hierarchy indicated. On a corporate website important information for you as a customer is clearly marked, while information about the company itself usually is hard to find. The idea of freedom in the virtual rings pretty hollow, though our way of sorting information is less linear, and more layered compared to say a 50's straighter and thinner information flow.

MK: But with the website, since you have worked on big websites- with the pop up blocker, is there a way to program it in, so that even if you have anti-pop up software, that you can still view that site?

FB: One can never affect the user's computer it has to be locally decided. In this case there is a first pop up which says Îfuck, you need to allow pop-ups'. F.U.C.K. is written using various kinds of brands like C-town for C, and so forth...very corporate...

MK: Oh okay, so there's an initial warning that allows you to then move forward.

FB: Yes, but you have decide to do it yourself.

MK: I like that you showed me the NYFA project before talking a little bit about William Greaves' film ÎSymbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One', because I think that it's interesting to think about the parameters of a given system, especially when it is contingent on people activating it. For the NYFA piece, there are all these different parts, but it is up to the viewer to decide how far to delve in, or how much information they want to extract. But, at the same time, there's also the idea that the information is there for the taking, whether someone decides to activate it or not. It is kind of self sufficient in its own way. For the Greaves' film, I think it's interesting that rather, it's the complete opposite since the film's success or what became of it was contingent on the crew and the camera man and the sound people fully engaging with the system that Greaves sets up, of recording all things at all times. Even though they don't understand where it's all going, without their participation, there wouldn't be this film. Then there's your web project which has the property of being activated by the viewer, and this is very different than the audience member for ÎHerd Instinct 360†. I don't know where to go with all these different parts, but there seems to be some interplay there.

FB: In your work as well you have people who are executing different tasks in different ways. Do you think that in ÎSymbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One' that the crew and the actors have the same function for the project at large?

MK: I think they're all fulfilling different functions. I think the way in which he addresses the actors is completely different than the way in which he interacts with the sound people or the camera people.

FB: Why do you think so? I'm not sure that I agree.

MK: I think that because, at least what we see on camera, the way in which he engages with the actors, one on one, he focuses on cultivating their performances and this is very different than the way he would talk to a camera man. It's the camera man's job to record, so he sets up this more tight parameter of record what is happening and what's happening peripherally, but to the actor, Greaves asks, "how do you see the role playing? How do you feel it should be played?" So there's more input from the actor.

FB: When I saw it I hadn't read anything about it. I had no idea about the structural set up.

MK: Yeah, same for me.

FB: ...this faux communal concept in Central Park in the later sixties...

MK: Yeah, '68.

FB: A great year to be in Central Park. When it starts out, I wondered what was going on? It seemed like nobody knew. This black guy from a race point of view obviously could not be the leader Û as a viewer and a citizen of this society, we're programmed. This guy, on top of it, replies to the cameraman; ÏOh, I don't know, I have no idea.Ó The same interaction happens with the actors. When you realize that he actually is the director, it becomes really scary, somebody who doesn't even know how the machines work or who should do what. How did he get in charge? I don't know how you feel about it, to me this lack of authority becomes very uncomfortable.

MK: He says there's notes that he kept. For the booklet that accompanies the Criterion dvd, they reproduced notes from his notebook, and Greaves says at some point in his notes that he should relay as little as possible to the film crew and actors. And in the film, there are multiple points where he asks the crew and actors, "well, did you look at the film concept?" But no one seems to understand the film concept, nor does he ever explain the film concept, so he refers to this thing that's supposed to be the key, but no one really knows it and half the people haven't really read it. At this point in his career, Greaves was already very established, and was the main person doing programming for Black Journal.

FB: For the U.N.

MK: Yeah, for the U.N. He had been in feature films. He had been in many Broadway plays. He was a member of the actor's studio. He was very accomplished. So, there's the understanding that the crew is working with someone who's very accomplished. This is opposite to his positioning himself as someone who doesn't he even know how to load a magazine for a camera.

FB: Of course, it's about placing oneself in a background position so the structural elements in the making of a movie, a country or a corporation or whatsoever emerge to the forefront. Talking about agency, if we were responsible people, we would keep better informed. In this case they can't even inform themselves about the movie they are working on. It's incredibly tragic and illuminating about human interaction.

MK: And that power structure of only after eight days does one of the crew members start to critique the dialogue and say that it's derivative. But in his critique of Greaves, the crewmember reveals his ideas of gender roles and identity.

FB: Ideology.

MK: And the ideology completely shows itself or reveals itself. But then it's interesting because there's what you said before, about the idea of the rarity of a black filmmaker being in charge of a production without race being explicit in the making of the film. Race is not touched upon, sexuality is touched upon, gender roles are touched upon, authorship.

FB: Class.

MK: And class and all these other things are touched upon, but that isn't something that's at the forefront. Yet, at the same time, there's the perpetual shot of Greaves as the filmmaker and as the person coordinating everything. FB: Refusing to coordinate.

MK: And to understand the particular time that this film was made and by showing people in Central Park to perpetually set a social context while working towards the making of a "Hollywood" film. The complexities of it are really amazing. This was also interesting in terms of the idea of working in a way that doesn't have such set parameters, and there being like a consistent desire by the crew to create more finite terms to reign in what is going on, or what exactly it's all leading to.

FB: I was browsing the web about this movie before you came. There is a site where the meaning of the title: ÎSymbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One' is discussed. Symbiotaxiplasm is a social-science term, which social scientist Arthur Bentley had come up with for material created in the social realm between individuals.

MK: For groupings as well, right?

FB: Um-hum. Human beings in social relations, what it takes to have a mass. Greaves added the term psycho to emphasize the psychological and creative part to fit the situation. The site was a blog about language. One person was surprised that the term symbiotaxiplasm never had taken off. Someone replied that it actually is not surprising at all, as nobody can remember it.

MK: (laughs) Right.

FB: Here is a blog where people are laughing about the stupidity of a title, which no one can remember. I usually don't do this, but I felt an urge to reply, you know discussion mode. I think that choice is really interesting of a term or a movie title that is impossible to remember, apropos the idea of fencing something in to describe exactly what it is. Obviously, these guys are not dumb, like Îuh, nobody can remember it'. They would obviously have been aware of this effect. You cannot run a marketing campaign for a product with this name. I can't even remember it now. Thinking of how the use of language, terms and definitions are constricting for our social beings, setting boundaries for race or gender or whatever. Well, language is reductive, coming in from nominalism and Nietzsche. So my reply was on this way to stay out of the imprisonment of easy tag lines. Perhaps that was one of his reasons to use that title.

MK: Yeah, and everything about the film has that kind of slippery quality to it. Miles Davis made the soundtrack. It was the first time that he worked with sampling himself, so there's a cyclical quality, which makes total sense within the film, with it's perpetual remaking and representing of the short bit of dialogue that the actors go over and over within their screen tests.

FB: He didn't have any support for this mode of working at all.

MK: It was made the year after Godard's ÎLes Chinoises' I think. It's interesting to think about how incredibly well known and influential Godard was even at that time, but that it took almost thirty years, for this film to gain an audience.

FB: There are two issues relating them. First this idea of the artist's genius as the white male, which is just as boring as it seems classic, and here the case of the black director who becomes Îdiscovered'.

MK: I guess that's true.

FB: The second is the way they play up their artist personas: both use a loose self-reflective format. There are numerous stories about Goddard's method of driving around in a car, and all of a sudden after hours of driving, he gives directions; Îokay, here it is', everybody jumps off to do their spontaneous thing, there's no script, it's produced on the spot. Greaves plays up the model of the incompetent or the fool, whereas Goddard is perpetuating some version of the madman-genius.

MK: A spontaneous genius.

FB: Exactly, the male genius who can do things on the fly any which way. On the surface it looks similar, but these are two very different models.

MK: But more than a parallel way of making film, it's interesting to know that there's this kind of energy and investment in the way in which a social narrative can be imbedded in something that is inherently experimental.

FB: Yeah, they are both working on a social somewhat Marxist structured narrative; exposing the conditions of its own production, but how they position themselves as leaders and it's effects are very far apart.

MK: In terms of thinking about the idea of the frustration of language, maybe that's an interesting thing to talk about, especially in terms of the idea in talking about this film, what it sets up as what's the expectation of the film. So, in translating that conversation to something related to visual arts, this idea of making an artwork that also includes the work of another artist. I know that you used to be told you're a collaborator, or it's a collaboration. My interest in doing curatorial work, I always shy away from you saying curated by or organized, and I used the word arranged. I think that a conversation that you and I have had multiple times, is the idea that even when you are very clear in the way you frame yourself with language, that since these roles are so rigid and so expected, that even if you say, I'm not a collaborator, this is not a collaboration, this is not participatory, it's not relational aesthetics. And I say, I'm interested in working collaboratively but I don't use this term, but it goes to these default roles. So, it's interesting to think of the idea of the NYFA project, in terms of setting up a system in which the language and words have no footing and foundation, because the second you click on them, they kind of pull the rug out from them, and lead to another thought, lead to another idea. Then there's this kind of perpetual cycle to that. It seems kind of the best form of a statement or something as antiquated as an artist statement, that's supposed to have any kind of summation quality, so I guess my question would be, at this point, have you given up on the idea of trying to guide the discourse of how your work is received? Because, knowing that there are these default ways in which people would talk about them, or do you find that doing something like this web project, that is about a slippage of information, that it's more interesting to perpetually try to complicate the conversation, rather then beating your head with the idea of, get if fucking right for once? How does that come in?

FB: I think in any artist's work, for example North Drive Press, which is coming out for the fourth time, concerns get clarified over time. Moves might be temporarily mis-constructed, or not visible in the current, but you can trust that eventually it will come together, one would hope that over the course of a lifetime it becomes legible. For example, the use of other people's artwork could be seen as a lifelong way to deflect, and perhaps playing up an idea of, if not direct incompetence, a refusal of the making, setting up relations, ways of using images to cut between artworks and other artifacts from image culture. Not to say they are the same; appropriated imagery and artworks, see them function as material or inside of another discourse, which is a very different thing than the job of a curator, whose primary concern ought to be to take care of the work, not to use it. Between both of us, we have very different ways of dealing with it.

MK: Yeah, absolutely.

FB: It's very important to be clear, once we start collapsing our readings as the same there is a loss of difference in language and between actions, basically we lose potential for agency. We're no longer able to distinguish. It seems in New York now there a total praising of collaborations for example, certain market friendly kinds, it's more like strategic positioning or a corporate merger to accrue higher value, which is layered with this romantic view, this goes for collectives as well, as something inherently good. Why has it become so attractive to label something a collaboration or someone a curator. There is a kind of threat-scenario or censorship going on, perhaps it's to be read similar to the Greaves race issue, not dealt with at the forefront. Why is it not discussed?

MK: Well, it's interesting also, in terms of this short essay on ÎSymbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One' written by Amy Taubin, where she talks about how in 1968, in terms of film activity and film and theatre activity, she starts off her writing by saying that, at that time there were two strains of working; there was the genius auteur and then there was the collective activity. So, for Greaves, he came out of working with the Actor's Studio and the way in which he worked definitely had more of this collective property to it. But with the collective activity, there's a meshed quality to social and political activity. So that those who function in terms of collective, tended to be liberal and tended to be anti the Vietnam war, and very much engaged in conversations in regards to civil rights. It's interesting, that conversation, that what you're discussing, this idea of the commercially easily digested and processed collaboration is also, in terms of this idea of co-branding, because then it removes any kind of social conversation and it's about these two powers coming together. I know many different collaborations that exist in such a way, but it's interesting to think of that in comparison to a Orchard in the Lower East Side of New York, which frames itself in more of the idea of a rigorous or intellectual practice. Where as, they do have projects that maybe have more social engagement but in terms of an idea of this further level of social practice and kind of integration within what's going on at a particular time, it seems like there's such a further displacement of what goes on within the art world and what goes on within a greater social sphere. That this idea of talking about film and theatre and its direct connectivity to civil rights movement, it almost seems impossible to think about the art world having a direct relationship or direct activity with an anti war movement of this moment, or the fact that a bus could go to an anti war rally from the lower east side or something. But what is that possibility of such a gesture and such an activity seems really dramatically so distilled in this way that- I don't know, it's a very different conversation.

FB: It seems unfeasible, maybe that has to do with cynicism. Also, should art really sign-up for a political color, or have a cause? Many collaborations might not be socially conscious, more branding oriented, most of the time it's a messy mixture. What is clear in either of these cases the focus is on power structures, what one can say, who can say what in which role; the collective not necessarily being liberal, nor the individual or the singular unit being reactionary or right wing.

MK: Or invested in the role of auteur, like it doesn't mean working singularly you're not interested in a collectivity. Not by any means does that set the understanding that those are the only two ways in which people work, but it's an interesting frame to think about this film in terms of these two possibilities and then thinking about the idea of contemporary art where thirty plus years beyond this point, so you would think that in terms of an idea of quote, unquote progress, that there would be more slippery ways in which approaching media parameters and inter-activity and collaboration and whatever the case may be, but that those parameters get further and further fenced in. It seems like, one would hope, there's a point in which there's a transition to not requiring or not being invested in a finite understanding or such set parameters, linguistically or otherwise.

FB: The finite as a shell, the individual singular artist ego acting out that fantasy rather than an idea more of osmosis or a membrane structure. We're all working in some kind of collective cluster, whether we want it or not we're engaging on so many levels. We discuss, there is always social interaction before and after the work. The work will always be made under these circumstances. It depends on the kind of fantasy you want to play up; your own name as your label to send from, that singular vantage point, or a more amorphous one.

MK: Maybe there's something interesting, in terms of this movie and the psychology and interconnections of a group, and how groups are defined by social relations. It almost sets up a structure, which I can say that I'm engaged with and your work seems to be engaged with, that is invested in the audience and in kind of a peer group, whatever that may be.

FB: We differ in the way we work with the notion of an audience or peers. In regards to a peer group, I am a slut and a user with the idea of that group being a signifying shifter depending on the parameters of the work. As for an investment in the audience, in the ÎHerd Instinct 360†gatherings the act of meeting or gathering was the main topic, the audience was turned into the content, continuing this investigation of what an audience can be and do. Each time different groups of people came, many of them I had never met before. Somebody commented that the regular community or the usual suspects weren't there. I didn't even know there was such a thing. So there is nothing closed or defined as ÎThe Group', it will fluctuate depending on what's going on where, with whom; we gather temporarily then gather again in another situation, new people will join, others will fall off. Once you make clubs and put a label, there is an exclusion, which is fine, but let's be honest about it.

MK: Yeah.

FB: The same thing goes for North Drive Press, I happen to have been contributing to all of them, it doesn't mean I am any more or any less part of it then the other contributors who come and go into your structure.

MK: Yeah. The thing that I like about North Drive Press is that, since there isn't a theme, I'm always excited to go through all the interviews and multiples to see where there are natural places of overlap. With this idea of looking at similar work, reading similar texts, reading similar articles, there's bound to be a place of overlap. Rather than having it be predetermined or over determined by a theme, I love the moments where people just naturally talk about a similar topic and in some cases, completely counter an opinion, and it seems much more in keeping with the way a conversation transpires, so rather then it being built upon- the initial way I thought about NDP was as a mobile group exhibition, and thinking about the components of that exhibition being malleable and kind of rearranged by a reader. I think that it's more interesting in terms of the project having this quality that is inherently distributable, which allows for something conversational and invested in an exchange. So, if it's about exchange, then to pin it down with a theme, seems counter to the idea of that exchangeability. It seems about putting more emphasis on an editorial role, rather then on the role of a reader. I think that, in terms of what you were saying, as something that gains momentum over time, I also think that as NDP exists longer, maybe it sets up more open ended parameters for a contributor to kind of do what they wish with it.

FB: Back to the film and the director's way of delegating or deflecting power. As a leader you are not delegating the way he is, at least you're setting up a firm structure for people to act within. He's deflecting to such a degree that the crew and the actors sets a meeting to go over what's going on. They question his capacity as a director, wondering if he even has a vision. As if the vision would be what establishes his leadership. They express bad conscience as they're talking behind his back, which they immediately fix by saying that he probably would like them to rebel. They are making a mutiny, yet at the same time they understand it as the wish of the leader.

MK: Yeah, it's a productive mutiny.

FB: If it is the wish of the director is it really a mutiny? If the leader wishes you to revolt, this is obviously a very big problem. You can never give away your revolution, the power has to be seized, it cannot be granted. In some projects, I play up a totalitarian situation in a response to what could be labeled relational aesthetics - if we now can use that term Ò that is open format projects with a democratic or corporate leader, where it is clear that the artist is the leader. For example in Îlesser new york' I did a quite totalitarian move in the display, in terms of the audience and their possibilities of taking in the work. They had to stand up and read it like a communistic wall-paper as opposed to the more common lounge situation.

MK: And the property of it being wheat pasted, as well, had that quality.

FB: Another totalitarian effect was in the interface, the structure of the display. The materials from the contributors were sorted into a coherent seductive repetitive Rorschach image. For this extreme action there was no mutiny, everybody seemed okay with the treatment. In ÎHerd Instinct 360† there was a switch, as mentioned earlier, where the audience was made into the image and bodily incarnation of the project itself, they were also aligning. A while ago you mentioned ÎSymbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One' in conjunction with ÎEco Day', another project.

MK: Yeah.

FB: For ÎEco day' I went into the opposite directorial mode. It was open parameters in a sculpture park. I gave the participators and the audience basic technology of how to develop. Some children were performing a dance with toilet paper, writing different words such as waste. Others people were set to work on a fake pond, next to a real pond, cutting up black garbage bags, turned unusable and flattened. There were musicians who I asked to play a perpetual drone. They actually made mutiny; they were not comfortable in playing something, which wasn't going anywhere. They refused and instead they started to play songs. Eventually the children and the garbage bag people also felt meaningless and a lack of purpose, though it was hard work. I guess these are similar problems to the movie, only now purposelessness is worked into fashion and life-style culture, we are familiar with it somehow, it plays out differently.

MK: Yeah, of what's expected, especially of the idea of an ÎEco Day'. What does it mean? Everyone will learn how to use less power, use less heat? The idea of what's expected, I think, is also very interesting. To try and create an event, that actually doesn't fulfill any of those expectations and doesn't fulfill the traditional notions of what should be discussed. And how this works as a public artwork, is also complex and interesting to think about. I was thinking about this in relation to scheduling events in commercial galleries, and the idea of what you had briefly mentioned of the unexpected audience or not the usual suspects. Something that I'm very interested in, which I think that you do very well, is to use the exhibition site by showing its malleable possibilities to function as a space for a meetings, a space for exhibition, a space for a lecture, a space with multiple functions. Even though it is private property, and there's the possibility of it being open during x hours and people are able to come and not pay a fee, there are these different possibilities that I find interesting, which exist within a space that is completely set up for commerce. I also think that with ÎHerd Instinct 360† or within ÎEco Day', since everything is made transparent from not necessarily the beginning to the end labor, but that lots of things are made transparent to a viewer. That also complicates the role in which you play, or the role in which I play, when it comes down to this idea of, okay, how do you figure into all these different parts, or how do you position yourself within all these different parts when... it sets up a place to rethink that site, and maybe that's too broad of a comment to say, because, at the end of the day, it's still a gallery or an exhibition space, or a sculpture park that will have these other functions but, just in terms of that idea of thinking of the malleability of this location that you choose, how does that kind of piggy back on the prior conversation of thinking about the rigidity of language or the rigidity of these kind of pre-determined roles?

FB: What you say carries back on the idea of given structures, how one can set them out of sync or twist the function in some sense. Let's say a commercial gallery, for example Greene-Naftali, where I had the ÎForged Community Posters', 60s' political slogans superimposed over images from artists represented by another gallery. This fake community displaced to another gallery looked more like a marketing campaign. There definitely was a horizontal shift between the galleries.

MK: Seeing your project at the temporary Andrew Kreps space and then seeing it almost immediately recorded for the Greene Naftali show, and in this second space it created such a nice kind of shift of the event and then what's been archived in such close proximity that there's also active memory of what transpired and the shift within these different spaces and the way in which the information and record was presented. (laughs) I wish that people could see your mapping of your ideas as we talk- I'm more of a rambler.

FB: (laughs) Oh yes, it was almost the real thing... On another note, we were both asked to do an intrusion into Karin Schneider's show at Orchard. I asked two men; the director of the Swiss Institute Gianni Jetzer and the other a younger artist Alexandre Singh who has not yet started to show much, to both re-enact an interview between Simone De Beauvoir and Alice Schwartz. Gianni was Simone and Alex was the interviewer. I filmed it. You instead went in drag on Halloween as Karin Schneider, giving candy to the kids. Looking at the idea of the author and your own artist persona from where you're writing. In my case we couldn't find chairs only two pedestals, on which two men had to sit, it was a nice presentation. We displaced ourselves into these scenarios in different ways; you went in as the artist herself, while I planted an older woman in there, in the form of a man. I sent in two men on pedestals.

MK: It's interesting, because I'm also starting early phases of writing a review of Karin's show. And I thought very much about ÎSymbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One' because the way in which her installation exists, what it turns out to be is completely contingent on the participants. And, although the structure itself is fixed, and the way in which Amy Granat and Eileen Quinlan and Sarina Basta and Melanie Giligan have contributed, has a fixity to it. Everything else is up for grabs. The ability to enter into this work is kind of endless. As long as the space is open, someone can be doing something in there to change what's happening. And by that action of changing it, it also changes the reading of the show. So when Karin asked me to do a performance, my immediate response was, I don't do performances. So, I thought the logic of it would be that I'll perform on the night when everyone is performing. And I did a very surface rendition of Karen, which consisted of wearing a long, dark haired wig, and her signature baseball cap. I stood outside of Orchard as a representative of the space, because as a collective space, there's also an interaction with the community with which it's located. The show spills into the sneaker store next-door and there's a light that projects out on to Orchard Street. There are these parts where her show brings in the block without it necessarily knowing, and in some ways it's fully participatory. I thought it would be interesting to truly engage the block as a "neighbor", and from growing up in the suburbs, when it's Halloween, you open your door and people come to your home and you get candy, and it's more of this feeling of collectivity, as a neighborhood. It also made a lot of sense to do it on Halloween, and in thinking about prior projects that Karin's done in which she's given out psychotropic drugs to artist friends and then instructed them to make artwork that was included as part of her solo exhibition, and although I was not giving out any LSD to the children, I thought that they, directly become part of the performance, and they were recorded as such by both Karin and by Amy Granat, who were shooting sixteen millimeter film of the event. But it is really interesting to think that we did similar gender flipping roles and for me, it's also cyclical, because I thought a lot about the Greaves film for both of your projects.

FB: Uhhm. When you use the word collaboration, what do you think it means? For me there is an idea of exchange of ideas. One person might initiate it, eventually both would be involved in the development. It's not about equal labor. Organic exchange, which grows, though there is always a power structure present there needs to be some kind of equal consent to be a part of it. What do you think?

MK: I think from collaborating for a long time, I think that when it's good, it is very equal. I also think that a good collaboration is good because the other party contributes something that the one party can't, and that there's a rigor to it. Then there's a conversation that leads to something that is of shared intention. Although there's always going to be some power dynamic, whether it's the ideal collaboration or otherwise, I think that it gets synthesized over conversation and over meetings and over whatever, e-mails, phone calls, to lead to something that does feel like it's been filtered through both parties. But it is much better, the end result is much better then it ever would have been through a singular brain, voice, hands, whatever. I think that in the collaborations that I have done since my sophomore year of undergrad, that when they are good, I know that they are just so much better then if I ever did it by myself.

FB: Or at least something else...

MK: Or something else. And that it's not invested in it because it is better, but because it's more complicated. It's like having a great conversation with a friend. Where you realize that there's so much more to that conversation and so much more to the project then you could have ever really been aware of just by yourself. For me, that's an interest in North Drive Press and an interest in why I did the Etc. project, is rather then framing it as a historian, and thinking of it as something that's thesis based, or thinking about something that's theme based, that I'm very interested in the idea of something that's perpetually being discussed and exchanged, so that it's not so much about leading to a finite endpoint, but creating a space for constant dialogue or shifting. The actual act of the exhibition, project, or publication can be something in flux.

FB: It becomes strange when the word is used for any relation. It's not such a great idea to use collaboration for almost anything.

MK: Well, it becomes something that's used to talk about anything that's more then one person.

FB: Yes, in the end, even Bush could be said to collaborate with the prisoners on Guantanamo Bay, as if something nice is going on. For any parties who have a relation of some sort, or if curators start to say that they are collaborating with all of these artists...

MK: Or that you collaborate with a curator, because you're in a particular exhibition that's a collaboration, which it under minds and negates the social in both of your examples from the political of discussing Bush or talking to something in practice based with a curator, this idea that it negates the social, it negates the idea in going back to what you were saying earlier in terms of agency, when it's used improperly, I think it under minds agency- it's just a simplification, and it can be an over simplification.

FB: What it does, is that it sets up an erasure of difference. Different functions are no longer visible if it all has the same name.

MK: I think about Julie Ault and Martin Beck, and the way in which they've worked together over the years, and in reading about projects and seeing some projects, it seems like they have a complex collaborative relationship that is not- I added some red, you added some blue and then we have this new thing.

FB: There is exchange, a fusion, there's a new fruit actually.

MK: Yeah, that's what I was trying to allude to earlier, is the new fruit. It's inherently a hybrid because the you and the me isn't discernable, when it's good, I believe. I think that synthesis is crucial. I would never say that North Drive Press is a collaborative project, because the contributors aren't in dialogue with each other to determine what is produced. I would say that between Sara, Su and I, we work collaboratively because we have different ideas of what the project should be, and we interrogate each in terms of the direction the project should move in. But, I wouldn't say that there's any collaborative quality that goes beyond that. And for it to be framed in that way, would be false.

FB: You create a false sense of agency this way, as if I would have any say in anything. I can tell you what I think, but you never asked me: ÏIs it okay if we publish this in green or if it is released at Printed Matter?

MK: Right, or if it's next to this other interview. There are these other things that I also think that collaboration and collective are also misunderstood in terms of being two different things. I think that there's a lot of words that lose their power when they're interchanged without really understanding what the difference is. I also think that maybe goes back to the initial part of the conversation of talking about language and how difficult it is to clearly articulate, it is this thing, not this thing, when they touch each other. So, I can understand and emphasize with confusion, but I'm also not interested in making an artist statement that is supposed to create the five points or bullet points or something. Going back to the web project for NYFA, I think that it's very interesting in terms of processing the way in which you work, because I think that it doesn't make any sense for it to be streamlined, because then that leads to a way of pigeon holing the practice that I think is as successful as it is because of subset and because of the multiple ways in which you've continued to work.

FB: Isn't it our responsibility to use language precisely or rather purposefully imprecise perhaps.

MK: But I will say that in the end, the thing that after exhibiting over the last years and living in New York for nine years now, I also think that at the end of the day, the thing that I'm always certain about in terms of a notion of collectivity is a full investment in your friends and peer's way of working, because I think that in addition to the importance of it being reviewed and written about and exhibited and what not, I think that to really, truly be engaged with your colleagues work, is something that in terms of duration and in terms of something that's cumulative and something to be able to explain the work and understand the complexities of each other's practices, in a way that isn't allowed or is impossible within an Art Forum review or something that has a set word count. Nothing can be discussed in such set parameters so to figure out ways to work together or to do projects that kind of facilitate that kind of exchange, I think are crucial, especially in New York, which is the place I know best, where a commercial paradigm definitely hovers.

FB: That's it, to write?

MK: I don't know. What did you just write? (laughs)

FB: That's nothing, just a thing that I remembered.