Thursday 10 February 2011

Chad VanGaalen









I just read the downloadable Issue n.1  ICA magazine, it has a couple of interesting interviews. 

One with Ekow Eshun  the ICA's artistic Director in 2009 by Aisha Christison, here is an extract:


'...one of the things that I tend to think about is how
visual artists now occupy the role that philosophers
once had. Artists are some of the few
people left in our society whose job it is to ask
questions. Not particularly to give answers,
but to keep asking questions. In terms of how
that even relates to somewhere like here…
I used to resent any sense of my parents deciding
somehow that I should do this or I should
do that. It’s not the issue. The issue actually is
how you come to a decision about what you
do and about how you decide that’s the right
thing, which doesn’t mean you get it right, but
I think the important thing is how we come to
be individuals and how we come to find the
ways that we can express ourselves as fully or
as freely as possible, I’m not interested in being
told what you should be or what you should
do.The important thing is to be able to have
your place and have your voice in the culture
that we live in. The important thing is to be
able to say what you think.'

And the other one is with Chad VanGaalen, whom now I love even more. Chloë Simos writes rather bitterly about his disinterest on the interview, his evasive answers on his personal life and you can even sense her irritation when he replied he doesn't really listen to music when asked which are his musical inspirations. And  just after she has decided he is just an anti-social hermit, he comes to stage and jokes around with the  audience and gives them more information than she could spoon out with her celebrity like questionnaire. 

'But then I was expecting as much
from a man who is notorious
for spending months locked up
in his studio with nothing but
his instruments and pens for
company. On this subject he is
also brief: ‘I have a home studio.
I have a lot of shit to do… it’s
not like I’m anti-social.’
I disagree.'

But in between the tantrum she game me a beautiful piece of unknown information. In 2009 he released Snow Blindness Is Crystal Antz, an instrumental album under the pseudonym Black Mold, and its so much fun to listen to. 

Check him out, he also does the animation work. You can Download for free (with his permission)  two of his songs.

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