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.