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Sue Coe
May 10, 2008
Your early art focused on the struggle of
oppressed humans and injustice that was going on around the world—rape,
the prison system, Malcolm X, Apartheid in South Africa. In the past few years
you’ve been focusing more on the abuse and oppression of animals, factory
farming and slaughterhouses, as in your books “Dead Meat” and “Pitt’s Letter”.
Then I heard you had moved away from New York City and living in a cabin in the
mountains in upstate New York, I was so joyful. I knew you had found your path.
That’s all we can do sometimes. We can’t carry
the whole world. We can’t have that rage. That can’t be the fuel that keeps you
going. It only keeps you going for so long, and then you go on empty. When I
was in Sri Lanka I talked to a lot of people and what they said to me is, “The
world isn’t all evil, Sue.” They explained to me how bad things happen. They
said, “In a village there might be 2 really bad people. We know their names.
They’ll take that ebony tree and they’ll kill that monkey. But there’s only two
of them and we know who they are.” It was very clear that they felt that the
problem isn’t insurmountable like we feel here. We feel completely swamped by
the negativity. We’re drowning, we feel helpless. But when you go to a really
poor country you see how empowered the people are. How strong they are, how
creative they are. They have creative solutions and they don’t believe human
beings are all evil. They believe two people are, but actually they believe one
is bad and he talked the other guy into it. It’s their understanding that gave
me inspiration. I see what people have done in Costa Rica and in Sri Lanka.
They’re way ahead of this country. Way ahead. How they’re dealing with the
humans, the environment, education. Yeah, they’re in the middle of a war zone,
but they’re dealing with it and moving forward. We can learn a lot from people
in those countries. Look at Africa, the Dogon tribe, how people are dealing
with HIV. It’s very creative and it’s wonderful.
What’s going on with the Dogon tribe? I’ve
always been interested in them. People all over the world do these kinds of
things, and the Western people can’t understand. They think, why would they do
these silly things?
Exactly. The art of the Dogon is so mind-blowing
and great. Picasso stole it. Picasso wanted that art.
The influence of African art in Picasso’s work
is undeniable. I was happy to learn that you had moved to the country in
Upstate New York and you’re living in the mountains in a cabin. What made you
decide to leave the city?
It was being with nature and animals and dogs
and birds. Just to live in the woods, live in the forest. What happened was I
rescued an animal and took the animal to Farm Sanctuary. My friends and I went
to Farm Sanctuary, it was a long long way to Upstate. We left the animal at
Farm Sanctuary and then realized that maybe we needed rescuing. Maybe we should
live in the country too. It was more just to have the beauty of being with
other animals.
When I see your vision through your work, I
always wondered how you could stand to live in the city. It’s so grim and
hopeless. Did you see a big change when you moved up to the mountains? You probably felt like you became one with the
whole of existence.
Yes! Listen, when I was in Sri Lanka I went in
this cave and there were like 2000 devils all painted blue! That was like a
religious experience. I’d never seen anything like it. It was incredible!
I don’t know if you’ve heard much about the
Veddahs, the aboriginal people of Sri Lanka. Our ancestors are Veddahs. We
worship our ancestral spirits (nae yakku). The devil is not a negative force to
us. We have hundreds of “yakku”—all our dead ancestors. When you went to
Sri Lanka you were with a group who were trying to improve the situation for
the wild monkeys. Did you travel around or just do that? How long were you in Sri Lanka? A lot of people think Sri Lankan food will taste
like Indian food, but it’s very different. We don’t use a lot of spices. We use
coconut milk and chilies and the vegetables are very mildly cooked.
I was the only one in the group that ate local
food. All the others ate Western food and they got food poisoning. They had to
ship in like bacon and eggs for them! They got food poisoning on day 2. They
were vomiting and had diarrhea. I was fine because I ate local food. And it was
all vegan, and it was fabulous! But there was one fruit that tasted rotten.
They said it was a delicacy, but it tasted like it was fermented. I ate it and
I was trying to be polite about it. I don’t know what it was.
Maybe it is a fruit called durian. It has a very
strong smell.
When I was in Sri Lanka it was right next to
these big lakes. In the morning all the animals would come down. People bring
their big dogs and wash them. What I loved about it was little children would
be going through the rainforest hand in hand alone, and they weren’t frightened
of being molested or attacked. Amazing!
Black Dog, when did you come back from Sri
Lanka?
About 6 weeks ago. I was working on a
photography book about Sri Lanka that I started a few years ago. I went back to
do some more photos; I was there for 10 months. After that I was in Chiapas,
Mexico. Sometimes you need to get away. I understand why it is happening, but
it’s so depressing to see how rappers are trying to join the system. It’s all
about money, nothing else. Do you know what I’m saying?
Of course I do, but that makes sense if you had
nothing. You want so much what you’ve never had. But there is another part.
It’s American culture, it’s all about having stuff. Then you go to Sri Lanka
and people have just a cloth to wear. That could be their sheet, it’s their
clothing, and they bathe in it. And they’re happy! And they have great
knowledge of the world. It’s like 99% literacy in Sri Lanka. That is amazing!
People have health care. Despite it being a really poor country, the people
have everything there that they need. And people live in the forest and they
live with animals. They don’t see a perfect environment as something without
humans beings. Human beings live in there. You know all this! Then you go into
those caves with the Buddha’s. When I went into those caves it was like seventh
wonder of the world. I had never seen anything like that in my entire life.
You were in Sigiriya? where King Kashyapa made
his palace on top of that huge mountain, which is all rock. I always go to Sigiriya and Dabulla and spend
time on those mountains and caves. I grew up north of there, in an area called
Kaduruwella. It’s the dry zone.
It’s cool, the dry rainforest.
When I was in Sri Lanka this time I was in the
wet rainforest area, near Sinharaja forest. It’s more south. The Sinharaja
forest is a protected area because there are a lot of medicinal herbs and
rainforest trees and birds and animals that are not anywhere else in the world.
I was taking a lot of photographs.
It’s so amazing to talk to you about Sri Lanka.
Can you put more of that sensibility into the magazine? Like put more of Sri
Lanka in Murder Dog?
In this next issue we’re doing a big feature on
the Rap music of Sri Lanka. We will also be running a regular article called
“Primal”. In that we will include primitive art and tribal music from all
around the world. We will also include interviews with shamans, mystics, and
healers. In tribal societies shamans are the singers, dancers, poets. Shamans
are also good artists; they are very creative. In Sri Lanka shamans dance and
chant all night in a healing ceremony.
That sounds fabulous. I know we met several
years ago. Where were we?
I met you and Mandy Coe in San Francisco. You
were having an exhibition from the series called “Police State”. It was on
Geary Street in a gallery. I did an interview with you. How is your sister
Mandy doing? In a lot of art the artist witnesses a subject
or something happening in the world and they paint what they see. When I see
your art I see the physical content, but there is so much more in your art.
It’s like what you’re saying about the pyramids in Mexico—it has that
power, like an unseen force. It’s more than the physical. It’s like you have a
song with the words and the music, but there’s a silence in between. To me the
silence is more powerful than the words. I see that element in your art.
That’s a very nice thing to say.
In your art you show us something from the
unknown world, the unseen mystery, something of the spirit. People call your
art “political art”, but I was attracted to your art, not because of the
subject matter, but I could see the unseen there.
I don’t stress anything like that in this
culture because it tends to go into a being a commodity. I feel like the mystic
part is like a secret. It’s a secret that’s not there for everybody. I have to
have the humility to keep the secret. That’s what I see in Sri Lanka in the art
there. It’s very much of a mystery and it has a lot of power.
What are you working on now?
What I’m working on now is about an elephant
from Sri Lanka called “Topsy”. She was captured in Sri Lanka in the 1870’s and
she was tested on by Thomas Edison for his new invention at the time, the
electric chair. I want to work on those stories of how in Africa and India and
Sri Lanka they plunder animals to fill the zoos and circuses. This particular
elephant, and I knew she was from Sri Lanka because of the markings on her in
the film. The film is on youtube. It’s the electrocution of Topsy by Thomas
Edison. He wanted the electric chair contract and he wanted to show that it was
so lethal it could kill an elephant. It was entertaining for people. The
elephant was at Coney Island. They wanted to entertain people because it was
off season, so they killed her with all of this electricity. I just wanted to
do her story. Every time we switch on an electric light it’s like murder. It’s
a whole history of murder. What we’ve done to get that power. It’s filthy. What
Thomas Edison did, which was to take one beautiful elephant and to kill
her—and it’s on youtube. It was one of the first films ever made.
I never knew that. It breaks your heart to hear
it.
And it’s not painless. Edison in his laboratory,
he covered up everything, how they were testing it. They used all stray dogs
and cats at first to show how lethal the electricity was. And they bled from
the eyes, the cats and dogs. We wouldn’t have had the electric chair today, we
wouldn’t have had it all these years, if the truth of it had been known. The
animals didn’t die, they were repeatedly electrocuted. I don’t want to use
Topsy’s story to say anything other than her story, which is powerful enough.
How the circus was used to propagandized colonialism. They would use animals
from other countries. They’d always photograph the lions standing on the top of
elephants, tigers standing on top of lions. And on top of that, a man with a
whip. It’s a whole pyramid of dominance. Those stories are stories I want to
tell. I think of Sri Lanka and I think of the elephants in the sanctuary in
Pinnawala. Did you ever go to the sanctuary there? It’s so sad to know those elephants are coming
from the Civil War. They’ve stepped on landmines. These are creatures that live
until 65 years of age. They have so much compassion and intelligence. There are
so many stories I want to tell. I don’t want to go on and on. Anyway, I like
what you said about my work. I hope that it has that humility and mystery.
No matter how important a role the message about
injustice plays in your work, you are also an artist. To me, you might not like
what I’m saying, but that comes first. Your drawing style, the atmosphere you
create, it’s important. Art is a primitive form of communication and it’s very
powerful. If we as humans had retained more of our primitive self, we wouldn’t
be in the mess we’re in right now. The Mayan people built a huge civilization,
but when it wasn’t working for them they walked away from it. In this Western
civilization, we took a wrong turn somewhere but we keep building it, fixing it
up, hoping the next scientific discovery will save this civilization. We are
running into brick walls every day. It’s so ridiculous. We feel like we have
technology to make it all better, but we keep getting deeper and deeper in
trouble.
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. For art to
become a weapon for change it first has to be art. That’s one thing. Another
thing is we’re living this type of populism that I find almost like fashion.
Like Hilary Clinton when she speaks is almost like populist, but it’s not the
truth. This has replaced any real questioning or real people’s culture. This is
supposed to satisfy us. And I find it like proto-fascism, this type of
populism, where we’re not walking away from it. We keep coming back like
elastic bands to these same old tired—our disaster is a slow burn. If we
had another sort of vision maybe like a non-human animal, we could see
ourselves burning now. But we have the illusion we’re not on fire. We think
we’re alright, but we’re not alright. I don’t know what it would take. Maybe
we’re doomed for extinction, I don’t know. I don’t think so somehow. That art
that you mentioned—the Mayan art, the Aztec art—is so powerful and
beyond time and space, that there is something else. We know it, we know that
intuitively.
That’s what I see in your art. If it wasn’t
that, if it was just purely political art, I don’t think I would feel it the
way I do. It was only after I interviewed you for Wiring Dept Magazine, that my
whole life changed. I started to see everything with different eyes. I changed
360 degrees after I interviewed you. Your art and your words had a major impact
on my life. The reason I asked you to do this interview after all these years
is that Murder Dog is celebrating our 15th year anniversary and I can tell you
truly: there would be no Murder Dog if it wasn’t for you. The first thing I did
after I met you was read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” because you had told
me to read Malcolm X. I have never seen any art with your vision or your
feeling. I have to wonder where it comes from. I have been looking for other
artists like you, but I haven’t found any anywhere. I talk to a lot of people
who say they were influenced by Sue Coe, but their art is totally different.
Yeah, but supposing I’m Nina Simone: how many
Nina Simone’s are out there? So, I’m Nina Simone! I’m presumptuously saying
that.
That’s true. A lot of people like Nina Simone,
but there is only one of her.
I heard you lived near a slaughterhouse when you
were growing up in England. You were surrounded by the atmosphere of these
helpless animals about to be murdered, who never had a voice. I feel like their
spirit moved into you so their voice could be heard through you. Your recent
art about factory farming and scientific testing on animals I can feel their
despair. There is an desperation in your new work—it doesn’t let you go,
it keeps haunting you. What’s sad is that, even though a lot of people see your
art, they don’t always hear your message.
I definitely do see that all the animals who
were slaughtered, I have to be their voice. That’s my job.
You being a vegan, you know what variety of
great food there is available. You wonder why anybody would insist on eating
meat.
It’s the cultural propaganda. People say to me,
“How do you get your protein?” And I say, “there’s more protein in a bean than
in a steak. I think it’s a lot of lies and propaganda. I was just touring in
the prisons—this was a year ago in Texas. You have no fresh fruit and no
vegetables. This is in the women’s prison system. This is where people have
HIV, they have hepatitis. They’re given fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy,
pizza…not fresh fruit or vegetables whatsoever. I said I’d eat what they eat,
and I just had mashed potatoes. That’s all I could eat, just out of a packet.
That’s what they’re feeding people. It’s another way of murdering people. They’re
sick already because they’re locked in addiction. Then they get this diet in
prison because it’s cheaper. It’s cheaper!
Just to hear that story, I’m sitting here
sweating. To think that the prisoners are sick and that’s what they get to eat.
It’s such a helpless situation.Why can’t humans see? When I hear these stories,
what they’re doing to us, it’s unbearable. One thing I’m disappointed about is that there’s
no book of your collected artwork available. There are many books about
specific issues, but no big Sue Coe art book. Do you think of releasing
something like that? When I look closely at your work, the figures,
the details and the textures are so beautiful. It’s almost like cave art.
That’s so sweet of you to say. And you know,
there are lots of good things about Murder Dog.
We try to keep a balance. It’s hard.
I wouldn’t say it’s balanced! I wouldn’t go so far
as to say balanced.
For a long time I wanted to do an interview with
you for Murder Dog, but I thought Sue Coe would never do an interview when you
heard the name “Murder Dog”.
No. I feel these young men. They’ve got sweet
faces. They’ve got sweet little faces and they’re just standing there. I feel
like their mother. Their White mother from hell. They’re so adorable. They’re
just like boys, holding money and guns, their little penises. They’re adorable.
And the interviews are really good. I think it’s an excellent magazine,
actually.
These rappers come from a world where they had
very few opportunities. When they get a chance to have some money and power,
they just have to show the world. But it’s a phase they’re going through. It
will change. But like you say, they are actually the most loving, sweetest
people I’ve met. I trust and love all these so-called Gangsta rappers. It’s the
people of science and technology that I don’t trust.
I totally understand that. They’ve come from
very hard times. They’ve struggled and they’ve suffered. It’s a level of truth
in the work. I like that magazine, the way it looks. It’s very lively.
Before I met you I was in another world. You
pointed me in a different direction, you showed me Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton,
and many other things that changed my life. I feel that Murder Dog would never
be here if I hadn’t met Sue Coe. Art is very powerful in that way. Music is the
same way. It can change the world like nothing else.
We’re surrounded by truth and energy all the time,
but can we hear it and can we see it? When you’re ready to hear something
that’s creative and truthful for you, you’re ready to hear it. It’s nothing to
do with me or anyone else. When you are ready for something different and
something challenging, you will listen a bit more. It’s the same with me.
People have told me things, and I’ve been incapable of hearing what they were
saying. When I was so political when I was young, I’m still very political but
I was very angry, people said, “No, that’s not the way to talk to people.” I
was full of anger and arrogance and rage.
When I met you I felt like you were very angry,
angry at what was happening to the world.
I was angry. I realize that doesn’t help people.
That doesn’t save their lives. It intimidates people and makes them very
defensive. It’s a very Western/American way to be so aggressive. It’s part of
who we are as a culture. But before we change anything we have to understand
what we’re doing. We have to take responsibility and own what we’re doing. Our
personalities are dictated by capitalism, which is always forced on us. Not by
choice. No one here has chosen this economic system. It is like an apparition.
It’s a wrong path. We need to step off this road and leave it behind. It’s
already dead. It’s dead already.
We don’t know how to leave it behind. Our ego
feels like we’ve created this great civilization. It’s hard for people to admit
it is a disaster. So they keep participating and feeding it.
What do you think would make them leave it,
Black Dog? I’m actually amazed. That’s very bad science.
It’s very expensive to produce and yet it’s happening. That to me is where
ideology has taken over from the economic viability of eating genetically
cloned animals. It doesn’t make economic sense. But neither did fascism.
Fascism didn’t make economic logic however. It’s an arrogance that’s almost
incomprehensible. Monsanto takes seeds and destroy that seed and make it into
something unnatural, and then they stop other farmers from growing their seeds.
I understand monopoly capitalism. I understand that capitalism is all about
expanding like a balloon that you keep blowing into. Then you burst it and it
collapse. In that collapse there’s profits to be made. There’s always profits
to be made. That’s called catastrophe capitalism. If we have a nuclear waste
spill, there’ll be someone there to clean up. It’s so degrading for the human
soul. We’ve reached this stage of complete degradation of our potential as
human beings. You know that old story. There’s a kid on this beach and all of
these jellyfish have washed up and they’re drying in the sun. The child goes
along the beach and throws back the jellyfish into the water. Someone comes
along and says, there’s millions of jellyfish on the beach; they’re all dying;
why do you even bother? We have to bother because it matters to that one
jellyfish. It matters to that one tree. It matters to that one rescued animal.
It matters to that one person that’s incarcerated. It matters. We can’t
despair, because that’s part of the program—we’re supposed to be
despairing. Then we’re infantilized, and then we’re looking for a benign
dictator. Our culture is one of despairing. It makes people helpless. Part of
the people’s revolution of this country is crying. That’s how rebellion
manifests here. That is a resistance. However displaced, however crazy, that is
a resistance to being under constant pressure, just have the boot on the back of
your head all the time. Crying is in itself a type of rebellion. But can we
change it? I don’t know. We can’t look into a crystal ball. We know when you’re
in the rainforest you can look up and see the stars. You can see a power and a
symmetry that we usually cannot see, but we know it’s there. We know that
there’s all kinds of spirits. All the unseen is there. Even if we see a flash
of lightening, we don’t despair a flash of lightening. It’s only there for a
second, but it illuminated everything in that one fraction of a second. You can
see, but then you lose it again. We are sort of struggling through, and we know
that flash of enlightenment is there, but we can’t grasp it.
It seems like when you moved away from the city
you started seeing things differently and it rejuvenated you. To me it was like
that when I was living in the rainforest. When I’m here I see a state of
helplessness all around me. It makes me want to hide. When I’m in Sri Lanka I
feel like the power of existence is immense. We could never destroy this, we’re
so tiny.
That’s a real comfort though. Right now I’m
listening to maybe a million frogs singing to each other. They sing in harmony,
I don’t know how they do it. And when they want to stop, they all stop. And
they stop immediately. Next month will come lightening bugs. They can light up
simultaneously all together. Then when they want to stop, they stop
immediately. A million of them decide to stop—I don’t know why and I
don’t know how they do it, but they do it. All around us are these mysteries,
very very powerful mysteries. What I said about burning, I do think we’re
burning. I think us humans are burning. We’re burning like fire, but there’s
such a time delay that we don’t know it, because we’re always looking in the
past so we don’t know we’re burning at this second. Our species is burning up.
Trees can see it, because they’re more wise and aware. There are trees that are
10,000 years old. They can see us, we’re moving so fast and burning. There’s
all these different layers of understanding and I can only see a tiny tiny
fraction of what’s going on. I can‘t even put it into words. I can’t.
You say you can’t put it into words, but
whatever you can’t explain in words, it’s in your art. That’s the magic of your
art. That’s why I love art. When you talk about the frogs and the lightening
bugs, it reminds me of the Sri Lankan rainforest.
Do you see macaque monkeys there?
When the fruit season is happening there are
hundreds of monkeys, but then they move deeper into the jungle. People always
tell me the deer are going to come and eat the fruit trees or I should stop the
wild boars from coming to eat the sweet potatoes and manioc roots. I tell them,
I’m planting these trees for the animals, for the whole village. They think I’m
totally crazy.
When the monkeys nest, they make a night nest,
it’s like a whole castle, a whole bunch of little tiny cities in one tree. They
choose the highest tree and make all their nests in it. They make a new nest
every night. It’s so beautiful! And they have those little faces, those crinkly
little old faces.
I noticed that the women’s faces are very
different from the male face.
The male monkey’s have a very sad life. Because
they just fight all the time. They’re thrown out of the tribe and they have to
just keep fighting. Unless they’re really good at grooming, unless they’re
really good hairdressers, they’re never allowed back in.
Did you get a chance to go to Polunaruwa up
north in the dry zone, where they have the ancient ruins? You should really come and spend some time in
the rainforest, just be with the trees.
I should show you my Sri Lankan sketchbook.
When you went to Sri Lanka you saw something a
lot of people don’t see. Someone else might see war or poverty, but you saw the
power of nature and the spirit of the village people. You saw something most
can’t see. With your art it’s the same. You show us what we can’t see. For
example, the new project you’re working on. Before you put it into your
artwork, we never heard the story of Topsy the Sri Lankan elephant who was
tortured by Thomas Edison. You always work in a certain format. You do a series
of drawings around one theme.
Whatever captures me, captures me at that time.
Then I have to keep doing that. I’m obsessed with it.
It’s like when you make a record. The whole CD
or record would have a certain feeling, and then you move onto another record.
Yes.
I can hear your dogs barking.
Yes, there is a bear out there. I can hear a
bear moving around outside my cabin.
I have seen a lot of your work on the website
galleries, but some of those have not been published in books yet.
The women in prison book is not out yet, because
the text has to be written by a doctor who hasn’t written the text yet. That
book is not ready. And the elephant book is not out yet.
In your early artwork, like the Malcolm X book
and “How to Commit Suicide in South Africa” the art was very dark. You used a
lot of black and a lot of contrast. Also it was more like cut and past, collage
style. Your new work has less contrast, less black. Is that a direction you’re
moving in? About artwork
The funniest thing you said was about Murder
Dog—trying to put balance into it.
I guess you have to go all the way. The Artists
Really shape what Murder Dog is. You deal a lot in the mistreatment of animals,
the oppression. When I see the images of the animals it reminds me of what
children have to go through living in the system. The whole school system is so
oppressive. It dehumanizes us, it doesn’t make us creative, it makes us
homogenized, like everybody else. We just become cogs in the wheel of
civilization. I’ve seen, when parents homeschool their children, you can see a
big difference in their children. They are more creative.
That’s great! With children they get
adulterated. As they get older they stop becoming artists.
Even when people go to art school it seems like
they lose their creativity. They look like everyone else. They try so hard to
be different. You went through art school when you were young. How did you keep
your originality, keep your Sue Coeness.
By keeping the content before the form. I think
when kids go to art school they try to be different, like you said. They try to
have a different style. They try to stand out. Really the teaching should be:
how can you best be a voice for that content. You always put the content first.
Something I remind myself of every day is that the beauty of that human being
or animal or tree has to come before my vision of them. They have their own
vision. Somehow that has to come through. I also think art school is about not
really making sure every student is very special. Because they have low
self-confidence, which is why they think they can Google everything. I hate to
keep bringing the subject back to Sri Lanka, but the most important thing I
ever learned was taught to me in Sri Lanka. They said, “Western people see
everything through glass. They look at everything—it’s either through a
computer screen or through a glass window or it’s actually a glass window.”
What they were saying was, don’t keep looking through a screen. Look at it
directly. Art students, if I tell them “let’s go to a slaughterhouse,” they’re
gonna Google slaughterhouses. Instead of getting up and going to one next door
to them—cause there’s always a slaughterhouse next door to you or a prison—instead
of trying to get in there and draw it or even draw that you can’t get in there,
which is even more interesting, they Google something. That’s another
disassociation, where people aren’t living at all. They think they can just
pick it up on a computer. But when you go out there and make yourself
vulnerable and put yourself in that world, then you get so much more
information. It makes the artwork or the music or the poetry so much more
vibrant. Any vision you had directly is more powerful than reading about it. If
you tell me what you saw, you saw it with your own eyes, that can never be
denied by another person.
Everybody in this civilization is locked into
the same system—going to the same school, reading the same books,
watching the same TV or Internet. In nature there is limitless variety. No day
is alike. The days of rain, the days of sun, it’s a book I could never finish
reading. It’s a mystery I could never solve. What do you mean when you say
“content”?
Instead of looking at my eyes, I want you to
look through my eyes. If you have a painting, I don’t want you to look at my
painting. I want you to look through my painting at what I’m saying. If you
look at my eyes they’re blue. I don’t want you to look at my eyes. Most art is
saying: look at me, look at me, look at me. I think people’s art is saying:
don’t look at me, look through me. I’m just a vehicle trying to show you
something. It sounds so simple but very few artists can do that. Because of the
ego and their fear, they constantly have to try and be different. They have to
have newness to stand out, instead of standing out by the content they choose.
A lot of people don’t find content. You are
lucky to have found it.
It’s about letting the content find you. You
have to be open.
You have to hear it and see it.
Yes. Let’s say I’m lookin at these kids, these
sweet kids in Murder Dog. It’s guns, it’s gold jewelry, but really their mum is
doing the laundry somewhere. I want to see that picture. It’s not all guns and
jewelry, it’s not all that. Someone’s doing their laundry, and that’s what I
want to see in a picture. I want to see that in a painting. Who’s doing your
laundry, you sweet boys? Who’s doing something so prosaic as going down to the
launderette and stuffing your clothing in it? That’s seeing the whole picture.
You’re saying “see behind my eyes”. When you saw
in Murder Dog you looked beyond the surface, beyond the guns and jewelry,
behind their eyes, and you saw creative humans. When I started doing Murder Dog
that’s what I saw. When you see behind their eyes you don’t see their color or
their culture. You see the essence.
Maybe the rise of Obama reflects a new era. He’s
saying we have to get beyond division, beyond race. We need to get our
commonalities and work together. I’m not saying he’s a messenger and it’s going
to be glorious. He’s still promoting capitalism. But it’s something positive,
there’s an actual positive idea behind him. I think he’ll bring in a whole
pyramid of other people. We can’t always look at individuals, but he’ll bring
in a whole different group of people. You like the graphics? I thought you might get the wrong idea about the
name Murder Dog. You know, it’s nothing against dogs. It’s more like a vicious
dog who is going to murder this whole system. It’s like your pitbulls. It’s
like: enough now! Some people get it wrong. We get chased out of some stores
because of the title.
That’s what I’m saying about popularism. It’s so
reductive. It’s already typecast people and cultures and ideas. It’s fascism to
me. That’s all.
I feel that our school system is not creating
kids to be creative or to be strong. It’s creating people who will serve the
system. By the time you come out of school you’re dead. Forget about
creativity, their love is not there.
Yeah, it’s bullying. It’s starting them off in
the capitalist society in these schools. It’s all about bullying and fear.
Especially behaviorism—the behaviorism doesn’t work. That’s the content
of the school, behaviorism. Do this and you’re rewarded; do that and you’re
punished. That doesn’t work. It’s
the same with the prison system. We have massive recidivism. We have the
science to change all that, but we don’t because the political will is not
there. In this society they want behaviorism in schools so they can have the
army. You’re trained to follow orders. It’s training, it’s like factory farming
of children.
That’s exactly what it is. The way things are
going the human race could become extinct. I just wonder, why even try to stop
that? We’re the ones who are polluting the earth and killing the animals and
trees. Why save humans?
Because we are part of nature too. We come from
nature. We’re not separate from that. Wherever we are, it’s part of the natural
world. We have illusions to think we’re all powerful, but we’re not. I hope
we’re not like tadpoles—like there were 3 million tadpoles in a pond and
then there are only 10 left. I hope that doesn’t happen. But we’re not any
better than any of those tadpoles. We’re not better than anything else. We will
see what happens. But we can’t just control nature, it’s anti-life. Like the Al
Gore documentary, I saw it and I saw this White Eurocentric man viewing his
world. He wanted to keep his world pristine, cause it’s his, it belongs to him.
That to me is as dangerous as destroying it. You’re still positioning yourself
as all-powerful. Right now there are TB viruses that are antibiotic resistant
that will just eat us up alive. Then there’s something called MSR, which is
antibiotic resistant too. It’s very possible that we’re creating those super
viruses that are not even a life form, that can wipe us out in a couple of
months.
Where are they happening? The Mayans talk about the year 2012 as a major
point of change.
The prophecy is that the end or our world will
begin when we steal something from the moon and bring it back to earth. That was
prophesized a thousand years ago.
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