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© 1983 Artforum / Kim Gordon

In the spring of 1981 the rock group Public Image Ltd. (PiL) played at the Ritz in New York. That club’s movie-scale video screen, which functioned as a barrier and was used to create or motivate the crowd’s reaction, was the center of the performance. PiL’s three members were projected on the screen, both as shadows (they were lit from behind for the video cameras) and as a video picture. A giant image of John Lydon’s face, laughing, appeared, larger than the Wizard of Oz. He began singing, and then the live image was changed to a pre-recorded tape of a demented commercial rock video. Furious at the ghostlike, ritualistic silhouettes of the group behind the screen—instead of, as usual, directly in front of them—the crowd constantly interrupted the music. They barraged the screen with bottles, finally tearing it down. The group hadn’t intended to cause a riot; in their words, they were trying something new. They did not want to mechanistically continue the learned role of rock entertainers. As PiL’s Keith Levene remarked in an interview in ZigZag magazine in August 1981, "You’re more honest putting on a video or sending a video round to do 30 dates, rather than sending a band around to do it ... You’re standing up there and saying ‘after you’ve bought my album for so many pounds and heard how great we are now you can stand in front of us and see how great we are....’" PiL has since returned to conventional rock performance.

It is almost necessary for a working rock band on the club circuit to have a booking agent and/or manager. If a club owner deals directly with the band involved, and not with a business peer, then less money is likely to be offered. The large rock clubs in Manhattan all have basically the same policy of dealing with bands. Some of these are real showcases and some are just facades. Mailings are sent out for special evenings; these nights are not actually special, but they do give the appearance of being playgrounds for the art world, thus luring the non-art world to a supposedly chic event for which they will pay. (As in past movements of the avant-garde, these clubs appropriate the "law of assemblage" in the sense that the "real world" and the "art world" become layered.) In order to maintain an elite aura the clubs also offer their space for "art night" parties or video and film parties which are invitational only. By constantly renovating, opening up new floors and redecorating, each club vies for the position of "favored art club," as a yet newer alternative to the art world’s alternative spaces. It seems to be what the art world wants. And on the flip side, the video/music nights at the official "alternative spaces" are designed to replicate the lounge atmosphere of the clubs, with monitors and cushions dispersed informally throughout the rooms. Thus symbiotic relationship has almost become a formula for a certain kind of success in both the art and the club worlds.

CLICK LINK FOR THE REST OF THE ARTICLE...
http://www.fodderstompf.com/ARCHIVES...ordonritz.html

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BOMB MAGAZINE interview with Kim G.
Issue 89 Fall 2004

Kim Gordon: Have you seen Neil Young’s current tour?

Rodney Graham: No, I haven’t.

KG: It’s pretty amazing. The Greendale shows are like supersized folk art. I guess it never occurred to him to do anything in a gallery—he just works in an arena. So he brought it all to it. It was really incredible.

RG: I think the last time I saw him perform was years ago, with Crazy Horse in Vancouver, when you guys were opening for him. You guys were great back then too.

KG: Thanks. Yeah, he’s a pretty interesting guy. You would like his film, Greendale, the way he used film with the music. He incorporated the crew and his band. It was almost like a school play. In fact, the girl whom his daughter went to high school with, who was always in the school plays, was the main dancer. Your new show, does it have music in it?

RG: No, it’s just a film. It’s mainly one large projection piece called Rheinmetall/Victoria 8. It’s a documentary of this 1930s typewriter that I found in a junk store five or six years ago: Rheinmetall is the name of the company that made the typewriter, and Victoria 8 is the name of the projector. It’s a Cinemeccanica, an Italian projector from the ‘50s. Rheinmetall, it turns out, was also a big arms manufacturer for the Third Reich. It was just this incredibly beautifully made, solidly designed typewriter. Not one key had ever been pressed on it. It had somehow made it over to Vancouver. I had it around for a while and then I thought I’d do something with it. I thought I’d make a slick car-commercial kind of film, using just static shots of this typewriter. I worked with a cinematographer and we made a series, like a documentary, but every shot is static. It’s shot in 35 mm and projected using this vintage projector from a fairly large cinema, very beautiful, kind of overly powerful, so that when I show it in a gallery context, the film is smaller and brighter, and the light reflects back on the projector. So it’s these two objects confronting one another. Two obsolete technologies facing off: the typewriter and the projector.

KG: It’s interesting that you mention car commercials, because I’m currently obsessed with car ads, car copy, ad copy. Mostly print ads with elaborate slogans that involve celebrity lifestyles, like you can’t even tell it’s an ad. A lot of times they’ll just have these pictures of people—in fact I was in one of those ads a while ago, for a Lexus or something. And they just had a little blurb about me. It was really weird.

RG: Like a lifestyle thing, like this is the kind of car you would drive?

KG: I guess so, but it wasn’t even that much of a connection. It was just the strangest thing. But you know how the cars kind of represent everything. The ad can be like, What is your desire? It will take you to your desire. I always thought they were modern-day landscapes: you see cars sitting around lakes, and driving through nature. It’s right up your alley.

RG: I pulled back from the car commercial idea because I would’ve had a lot of moving shots, super sexy shots, and I wanted to focus on static. In the end, in this particular context, it really worked, to my surprise, because if you look at the video, it’s very boring—it’s these very long shots, sometimes a couple of minutes, just these keys in extreme close-up. But when it’s projected, the quality has a super effective sharpness, because the grain is kind of moving around. It’s inherently fascinating. So I found that it worked without the movement.

THE REST - http://www.bombsite.com/issues/89/articles/2670

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SUPERNATURAL - Lindsay Brice
http://www.percevalpress.com/supernatural.html

In these beautifully-made photographs, Lindsay Brice's hypersensitive eye leads us onto pathways of the subconscious. As vessels for the imagination, Brice's sometimes disturbing but always suggestive tableaus open channels to our individual and collective memories, seeming to share confidences in a manner as disarming as it is seductive. Her dolls have no visible owners, no masters. They appear, rather, in their often faded and forlorn states, to shape their own narratives - stories that invite our participation. Introduction by Kim Gordon of seminal rock band Sonic Youth. Also, includes Flannery

 

O'Connor's short story "A Temple of the Holy Ghost."
Paper over board
ISBN 0-9774869-0-7
68pp, 61/4 x 91/4.
$30.00

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Kim G. interview with Erase Errata, for Index Magazine - http://www.indexmagazine.com/intervi...e_errata.shtml

Kim G. interview with Varmintcong - http://varmintcong.com/gordoninterview.htm

In the July, 2004 edition of Arthur magazine, there is an interview with Kim Gordon who discusses her passion of Pattern Recognition. Here is the excerpt from the interview:


Arthur: Are you reading anything good right now?


Kim Gordon: "...you know what book I loved, which actually the song 'Pattern Recognition" [on Sonic Nurse] was taken from, Pattern Recognition, William Gibson's last book. It's not sci-fi, it takes place like now. Anyway, I can highly recommend that. It's about a cool hunter - somebody who's hired to find out trends and stuff - but this person is allergic to logos, she has some kind of panic attacks when she sees certain kinds of logos, so she cuts all the tags out of her clothes. It's kinda funny. And then she's part of a kind of Internet group that's obsessed with these film stills that are released on the Internet. Nobody knows what what the film is, there's this weird footage and every now and then a new part of it turns up somewhere. So she has some Internet relationship through this footage chatroom."


Arthur: Somehow that sounds a little bit -I never got to see it cuz it didn't play here - like Demonlover, which you guys did the music for.


Kim Gordon: "Yeah, that to me is more like, kind of almost like an updated Godard or something. It's a very visceral, very textural film. And I think someone actually has optioned Pattern Recognition, I'm curious who's gonna end up directing it."

...

Crud magazine - http://www.2-4-7-music.com/newsitems...sonicyouth.asp

Body (an excerpt) by Lisa Carver from Rollerderby #12, 7/19/93

http://petdance.com/actionpark/bigblack/press/rollerderby12.php



Lisa Carver: There's a Rapeman song called "Kim Gordon's Panties."

Kim Gordon: Yeah, I guess there is. I never really listened to it. Big Black were playing in Amsterdam, it was their last tour, and we happened to be there. In the train stations they have machines where you can buy women's underwear. It was Steve's birthday, so I bought some to throw at him so he would feel like a rock god on his birthday.

Lisa Carver: You really never listened to the song? You aren't interested to know what he thinks of your panties?

Kim Gordon: He mixes the lyrics so low, what's the point?

Lisa Carver: Right around that time, in the late '80s, people who didn't know you suddenly decided to start contemplating sex with you. Do you think that song had anything to do with catapulting you into sex symbol status?

Kim Gordon: I don't know -- maybe it did. A few people have asked me in interviews after that, "Oh, how does it feel to be a sex symbol? Steve Albini wrote this song..."

Lisa Carver: People think a person is beautiful or sexy if it's "known" that that person is beautiful or sexy. If Steve Albini says you're sexy, then all of a sudden you are.
Kim Gordon: It's incredible how the media works like that. It's fascinating.

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I'm Really Scared When I Kill In My Dreams is most definitely a great piece of work. She totally knows what she is talking about and she gives a very precise interpretation of what goes on onstage. This article was a nice discovery, thanx for posting!!!