Interview with Interview magazine

Interview magazine, founded by artist Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga in 1969, has just published an interview they conducted with me over the last week ("The Future of Amerika"). The writer, Ana Finel Honigman, asked me some really smart questions that triggered some unexpected responses. I was lucky that she just happened to be in Seoul for an exhibition of my video work at the opening of a new video wall at the luxury W. Hotel in Seoul Walker-Hill last week. This created a nice convergence of topics to discuss in relation to the opening of Immobilité in New York last week too.

Here's an excerpt:

ANA FINEL HONIGMAN: So far, the most famous cell-phone films are the "Happy Slapping" evidence movies of kids performing acts of violence. Were you hoping that the beauty of your film would redeem the medium its associations with "Happy Slapping," amateur porn and DIY recordings of other anti-social behaviour?

MARK AMERIKA: Yes. Having lived through both postmodernism and poststructuralism, I think it's safe to say that we are on the verge of something that feels much more intense and requires a new attitude about our approach to life in an age of aesthetics. Instead of feeling jaded by everything there is now this feeling that we need to tap into this enormous creative potential that we're just beginning to connect to via the network. One word that people keep using to describe both Immobilité and my role as the artist who made it is "romantic." At first, I was suspicious of that term, but now I embrace it. We are definitely living in a pre-romantic era and the "pre" is disappearing quickly. The election of Obama has totally verified that.

The entire interview is here.

There's also an excellent interview that Interview recently posted with Sophie Calle, whose new exhibition at Paula Cooper just opened on Thursday night:

Sophie Calle’s art mixes image and text to provoke the kind of intense emotional response usually inspired by epic literature or film.

Something to aspire to, no doubt.

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Metadata: Immobilité, Interview magazine, Mark Amerika, film, exhibition, new media, Immobilite.com, mobile phone