Art : Interview

All Tomorrow's Parties

by Barbara Kruger & Richard Prince

Richard Prince, 1982.

Barbara Kruger What about all these recorded conversations we hear about these
days?
Richard Prince Presidents, interview, things like that?

BK Yes.

RP I think if you know you’re being taped it guarantees a certain amount of self-
consciousness. An excessive amount of intention. An “on purpose” attitude.

BK What about without the tape?

RP Same thing, but without the guarantee.

BK Same thing?

RP Well right now there seems to be a serious lack of being uncaringly lost. And
any condition under which one might be able to say “the paramount concern is
not the care” . . . really doesn’t exist.

BK Do you wish it did?

RP I used to. But not now.

BK How come?

RP I don’t mind the acting anymore.

BK What do you mean . . . acting?

RP It’s just not recorded conversation that sounds rehearsed or staged. You know,
the way it can come off sounding truer than it really is, I mean for some of us,
even in day to day conversation we tend to sound like someone else talking,
we’re so self-conscious already, so overloaded with information, we play-act with
voices produced from sources other than our own.

BK Does this have anything to do with the pictures you’re looking at? The fact
that they look truer than they really are?

RP I think so. It’s one of the things. As long as the looking doesn’t become the
subject. These pictures appear to know nothing about the practical and serious
ways of a practical and serious world. They do reduce conflict to a triviality.
Especially the advertising ones. That’s what I like about them most. It’s as if these
pictures are a kind of mutation . . . an un-inheritable form of something.
BK You often use the term receivership. What do you mean by that?

RP I’m not sure. It’s an unusual feeling. It’s like a healthy conceit. Almost as if we
already know the information we transport is going to transport us. This prior
availability becomes wonderfully unnatural. We know the trap is baited. The
control already out of our hands…but we take the bait anyway. I suppose it has to
do with a willingness to be a sucker.

BK A sucker?

RP Yeah. It’s really that state of consciousness you know…a receivership. You’re
there. You’re there and it sets up a certain degree of belief in a reality, a pseudo-
reality whose effect, in some cases, can be felt really deeply because you have
this willingness, this desire, to believe in what is less true.

BK Where do you think the receiver is located and what about the idea of
exchange?

RP Well . . . is located is difficult to say. Later, maybe, the receiver will be

domestically located. In our homes I suspect. We’ll be getting subscription
pictures over the cable. It’ll change the whole notion of what’s “homemade”. It’ll
be fun. It’ll be threatening too. A lot depends on who thinks they have control.
Individual ownership of an orbiting satellite becoming increasingly desirous.
Looking under rocks is on its way out. As far as exchange goes . . . I would
imagine most receiverships to be subject to negotiation.

BK Negotiation meaning?

RP Open season as far as I’m concerned. The degrees between amateur and
professional will possibly become quite indistinguishable. Anyway, they’ll be a lot
more ripping off or at least a contesting of each other’s territory.

BK You like Paul Outerbridge. His later work.

RP Yes. A lot of people still see those productions, the ones he did for Maxwell
House Coffee, as abnormal. But I think they pretty much transcend pathology. At
least now anyway. They’re some of the few things I can look at and point to and
say “that’s it.” I could sleep with those pictures.

BK “That’s it” being a standard?

RP Yes.
BK And sleep with?

RP Just more Tarzan talk.

BK What about your own work and process?

RP The first things I took were texts. They got published in Tricks Magazine in
1976. They were called Eleven Conversations. The texts were taken from the back
of Elvis Presley bubble gum cards. The next year I started taking pictures.

BK What was that like?

RP At first it was pretty reckless. Re-photographing someone else’s photograph,

making a new picture effortlessly. Making the exposure, looking through the lens
and clicking, felt like an unwelling . . . a whole new history without the old one. It
absolutely destroyed any associations I had experienced with putting things
together. And of course the whole thing about the naturalness of the film’s ability
to appropriate. I always thought it had alot to do with having a chip on your
shoulder.

BK What about now?

RP Now it’s harder to talk about. Appropriation had a lot to do with being faithful .
. . beating yourself up really. Now its become more sophisticated, more
adulterated. I have this feeling the pictures I’m taking look like they’ve been sent
away for . . . you know? Like Battle Creek, Michigan. I don’t know how else to put
it.
 Barbara Kruger, 1981, photo montage.

RP What about all these recorded conversations we hear about these days?

BK Presidents, interview, things like that?

RP Yes.

BK Well, in most cases recording seems to offer both the curiosity of replication
and the resoluteness of evidence.

RP Does this have anything to do with the pictures we’re looking at?

BK Yes. I think in some ways their definitions are interchangeable.

RP Fiction feels good and recanting causes stress. Like lying, in the physiological
sense, the telling of a true story is an unnatural act. Do you think fiction has
anything to do with replication?

BK Pictures and words seem to become the rallying points for certain
assumptions. There are assumptions of truth and falsity and I guess the
narratives of falsity are called fictions. I replicate certain words and watch them
stray from or coincide with the notions of fact and fiction.

RP Some people think that things that sell the most are the best. How do you feel
about being seduced by popular culture? Or are you?

BK Being socialized within similar constructs of myth and desire, it is not

surprising that most people are comforted by popular depictions. Sometimes
these images emerge as “semblances of beauty;” as confluences of desirous
points. They seem to locate themselves in a kind of free zone, offering
dispensations from the mundane particularities of everyday life; tickets to a sort
of unrelenting terrain of gorgeousness and glamour expenditure. If you and I
think that we are not susceptible to these images and stereotypes than we are
sadly deluded. But to have some understanding of the machinations of power in
culture and to still joyously entertain these emblems as kitschy divinities is even
more ridiculous. And for women it’s an extreme form of masochism.

RP The fact that we use things that have possibly been observed or
unconsciously collected by people other than ourselves…things that have
previously been available to anyone who cared to use them—that kind of thing,
given these conditions, do you think your work is produced or reproduced?

BK Well, given your criteria it would seem that all work can be called
reproductions to some degree since it incorporates certain styles or codes which
preceded it. I think the difference lies in the acknowledgment of previous
production within the work. This acknowledgment can function as a device which
removes the “original” image from naturalness, perhaps suggesting either an
implicit or explicit commentary. In my work I am interested in an alternation
between implicit and explicit, between ingratiation and criticality. I also think
about assumption, disbelief and authority, but there are no “correct” readings.
Only reproductions and possibilities.

RP A while ago we talked about “cool”. I remember saying something to the effect
that “cool” was a prehistoric style. A little like being a dinosaur.
BK If you think about words like primary and secondary, you could say that cool
is mired in the secondary address. It is self-conscious without the presence of
cameras and tape recorders. It has internalized their promises and threats. It is
totally subsumed by style. Often, its repertoire is composed of gesture. It is
celibate, but in an emergency it can fake pleasure pretty well. Its language is not
of words but a kind of physical short handing; a verbal withholding. It wants you
to think it’s detached. Do you think a lot about style?

RP I’m misinformed about style. I always thought it had to do with being able to
wear the same kind of a jacket for ten years. I don’t know. What I wonder is . . . is
it possible to have style and be unreasonable at the same time?

BK I think unreasonableness can mean any number of possible locations nearer

or further away from the idea of reason. Because many of these positions are
already coded, their shock value is tempered by style. A lot of times the idea of
transgression really turns on a romantic conception of otherness; of a rebellion
already tolerated. You know, the charming rogue, the picaresque cuteness of the
bull in the china shop and in the art world, badness invades the atelier. Driving
limos through heavy neighborhoods to look at the graffiti. Unstylish
unreasonableness may be limited to the categories of the insane and the
unpleasant (the poor, the unbeautiful, the unempowered). The non-romanticism
of these kinds of otherness makes them unsightly and “vulgar” considerations
for the polite company of international bohemia.

Tags: Appropriation, Popular culture, Collage, Mixed media

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