It is not uncommon to find oneself dreaming of Michael Robinson‘s films weeks after having watched them. By that I mean it happened to me once. Specifically, it happened to one of us once. I (the other one) have not had that dream, but have had the opposite reaction. I felt I was dreaming amid some of Robinson’s films. The oneiric tradition within the cinema is as long and storied as it is obvious to most anyone who has spent time in “the biggest, darkest, loudest theater possible.” So we won’t go too far in to it but to say that his works in film and video are highly atmospheric.

Sliding easily between original and wide ranging found footage, they are simultaneously direct in their concerns and beguiling in their approach. Much has been made of his ability to use arch kitsch (Full House, Little House on the Prairie) in ways that are both evocative and humorous. And while the use of mass media is considered in its irony, it doesn’t feel cheap.

Adroitly harnessing the techniques of past avant-garde film, Robinson adapts them to fit shifts in contemporary culture, taking the infant (and often infantile) form of YouTube mashups towards greater and stranger heights. And while the films are highly atmospheric and make terrific use of the form’s unique vocabularies, they each have specific trajectories. They are conceptual, with a small c and formal with a small f, allowing for great flexibility.

Originally from Upstate New York, Michael holds a BFA from Ithaca College, a MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema at Binghamton University. His work has shown in many prominent festivals and beginning tomorrow his films will be featured as part of the Whitney Biennial for the following four days, culminating with a conversation between Robinson and experimental filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh.
(Note: this interview was co-conducted by Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa)

You use both found and original footage. Can you talk about what changes and what remains the same when using the different methods for gathering images? For example, the difference between the production of If There Be Thorns, which is made of 16mm film you shot yourself, and These Hammers Don’t Hurt Us, which is all found footage.

When I’m working with my own footage, it takes me a lot longer to detach from the material, and know what to ditch.  With found materials, I’m already approaching them with enough distance to know more quickly whether or not they will work.  But the flipside is that I tend to not mangle or alter my own footage very much, so the picture editing process is usually more straightforward for the works I shoot myself.  Part of this is also about setting boundaries – with a work like If There Be Thorns, I shot footage in a few different places over the course of a year, and then made the best of what I had.  With These Hammers Don’t Hurt Us – there was a lot of specific types of material I wanted to find (CGI pyramids, mummies, ice dancers) and there seemed no reason to stop until I found it all.  So the gathering process was also part of the editing process.

Can you describe your editing process? How does using Final Cut Pro (if that is actually what you use) influence your aesthetic? How do you navigate the abundance of options and effects to find the one which works?

The process is a little different for each piece, but generally it involves a ton of trial and error, figuring things out in small sections.  In regards to Final Cut, I don’t actually use many of the pre-set filters, but tend to get the results I want through layering (copy and pasting the same shot on top of itself, methodically offsetting each one, and playing with the compositing).  I learned 16mm film editing in college, and taught myself Final Cut afterwards, so I veer towards those aspects of digital editing which are meant to replicate a more visual, analogue experience.

Many of the effects that you employ (flickering or strobe-like editing, solarizing or inverting colors, multiple superimposed images) are stalwarts of avant-garde film, yet your use of these effects feels extremely unique. How do you see your use of such techniques in relationship to their use in the past? Are there art movements from the past that you feel influence your practice, or whom you feel your work responds to?

I suppose I like everything I’m doing to feel a bit transparent (flicker feels like flicker, slow motion feels like slow motion) and part of that transparency involves nodding to the traditions of film and video art, while hopefully steering things elsewhere.  Within lot of the more famous uses of flicker – or any formal technique for that matter – the effect was explored as an entity unto itself, deployed through a very specific, or mathematical structure.  So while Tony Conrad’s The Flicker or Paul Sharits’ T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, are psychologically very rich and in no way purely formal films, the technique itself is at the core of these works.  My films use effects and techniques as emotional cues, or as narrative elements in and of themselves, guiding and contributing to the atmosphere or thrust of a piece without actually being the heart of it.

You mention an interest in the narrative aspects of video games (in particular of the Super Nintendo generation). I found this instructive as a potential entry into what elements of narrative (might) exist in your work. The hazy, indefinite but cyclical nature of “story” seems related. Can you talk a bit about both the influence a generation of games had on your practice and also how you conceive of narrativity within your work?

It’s all about what we allow ourselves project emotion and meaning onto, whether that’s pushing a stone in the right direction to unlock a door in a Zelda game, or the exchange of keys, knives and doppelgangers in Meshes of the Afternoon.  I’m not interested in the “save the princess/universe” narrative of games, but rather the attaching of logic and motivation to completely abstract situations.  So guiding characters through video games is in a sense not unlike navigating a complex film.  All of my pieces follow a narrative arc of one form or another, with establishment, rising action, climax, etc.  I would be completely lost without that arc.

Can you talk about your use of popular music? Do you see an analog between instrumental karaoke versions of songs and heavily processed visual media? There was a period of time in avant-garde cinema during which popular music was eschewed, but that seems finished. Young(er) artists often feel more adroit at using elements of popular culture in ways that are unironic without being saccharine or humorless. They–you–are able to harness the power of these cultural artifacts without ceding control to them.

Pop music, like most television, is a really strange thing when you take a step back and think about what it is, and how it’s working – mechanically, commercially, and emotionally.  Despite that, there is an undeniable power to things like melody and refrain, particularly when they manage to carry some lasting cultural influence or imprint.  I see karaoke as a very emotional, sometimes spiritual exercise – wherein the Word is recited, is often known by heart, and summons a certain amount of heartfelt projection.  In using instrumental tracks in my films, I like the idea that some audience members will be forced to sing along in their heads, or at least have some kind of sense memory triggered.

There’s a phrase that I remember being attributed to Guy Maddin on the poster for Jim Finn’s Interkosmos which has always stuck with me: so full of rare atmospheres. I’ve thought of that phrase often while watching your films. More than conveying single ideas or attacking a problem, the works are very atmospheric. Can you discuss your process of making? Do notes for films come from trying to achieve a certain feeling? From having an amount of footage that you’re trying to unite?

I usually know what I want a given film to feel like, in terms of atmosphere, before I know what it will look or sound like.  So the gathering and editing processes then become about trying to figure out how to convey that feeling.  The sound design is really the most important part of this, and the most finicky, in that things don’t really work until they’re just right.  I do take a lot of notes and make a lot of lists, relating to specific shots or edits, and attempting to get my head around broader ideas.

Switching gears slightly, let’s discuss about distribution. Your films are available to be watched, in their entirety, on your website and on vimeo. They’re also distributed by VDB, have screened widely at festivals and, now, will be included in the Whitney Biennial. Did you ever have a question about having the work online? Do you conceive of your website/the web broadly as a screening space as opposed to simply a portfolio? Do you have an interest in making videos for gallery environments? Do you have an ideal viewing environment in mind when creating your work?

I hesitated to put my work online for a while, but then realized I was happily watching other artists’ work online, and was taking the online viewing experience with the necessary grain of salt.  I trust that contemporary viewers of all kinds are doing the same, and that if someone is interested enough in something online, they will want to see it out in the world too.  And if not, then they would otherwise never see it, so they might as well see it online.  This is not the case for all kinds of cinema, but I think my films do hold up reasonably well online.  I have shown my work installed in a black-box gallery mode a few times, and I am interested in exploring that more, because when it’s done well I think it can bridge the disconnect between film and art audiences.  But still, the ideal environment to see my work is the biggest, darkest, loudest theater possible (preferably sold out).

Can you talk about your approaches as a professor? Has teaching altered the way you think about your own work, the history of cinema or, potentially, its futures?

My approach is really just to expose students to the things I love, and to the histories that have been important to me, and hope that they might find inspiration there too.  There is no one history of cinema, or of experimental cinema, so every artist connects the dots in their own way.  In connecting my dots for the purposes of teaching, I’ve gotten a lot closer to the work of certain artists, such as Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger, who I’ve admired for a long time, but appreciate more and more with every viewing.  But I wouldn’t say that teaching has altered my work, or my overall views on cinema.

What are your artistic roots? Did you always know you wanted to make films? Were you in ska bands? Were you in ski bands? Did you study painting or make plays?

As a kid, I loved to draw and paint, and gravitated towards photography and music as a teenager.  I was never in a proper band, but did play drums, and once recorded a pretty great cover version of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” with two high school friends.  Around that time I also went to a very lovey-dovey Catholic summer camp, where all the campers were frequently made to hold hands in circles and sing sad pop songs (Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, etc.), which obviously had a lasting effect on me.  I went to college thinking I would concentrate on photography, or maybe film editing, but was pretty quickly seduced by experimental cinema.  I didn’t see it coming, but it was a perfect catchall for my various impulses.

This interview was co-conducted by Jesse Malmed and Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa, an artist, theorist, and independent curator based out of Brooklyn, New York.

 

I was dying for some Thai food that would make my eyes swell and my forehead sweat. The kind that lets you know three hours later how often you pick your nose. I wanted SriPraPhai, or any of five neighborhood places that make me cough from the ambient chili in the air when I walk inside to pick up my order.

But I was in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, where my ethnic choices are limited to nachos at a bar and grille, fried cheese curds and pretzel nibs (if those count as German,) or gelatinous Chinese from a restaurant that recently moved into a space occupied by a furniture store. Funny, there’s a jewelry store in town that inexplicably occupies a gaudily ornate and out-of-place Chinese Pagoda. I’ve always thought the two businesses should trade digs.

On my way to a lonely complex of box stores that rise like ominous commercial silos from the pastures along Highway 43, I spotted a promising option: “Noodles and Company.” I fantasized that it was a Phở restaurant as I drove past. Sure it was in a sanitized strip mall with a loopy corporate looking sign, but in Cedarburg one would put up a sign if they were selling weed out of their basement. It’s standard issue.

First, I went to the Michael’s hobby store, the only place within 20 miles to buy art supplies, salivating in anticipation of peppery noodles. In the aisles, kind ladies politely smiled and I charged past them machine-gunning head nods back, crazed by a jones for hot chilies and a fear of the dopamine-sapping low that overcomes me when I stay inside a large craft store for more than five minutes. Taylor Dayne’s 1987 hit “Tell it to my Heart” was playing, giving me even less time before I cratered. I overpaid for some matte medium and exploded out the building in under three minutes like a ten year old coming up for air after grabbing thrown pocket change from the bottom of a pool. I aimed my mother-in-law’s SUV, with its personalized plates announcing her by name, D-O-R-E-E-N, and headed for “Noodles and Company.”

Surprisingly there was a line. And there were siracha bottles on each of the well-spaced tables. Two promising signs. A teenager who would be played by Paul Dano in the movie about his life gave me a lukewarm smile with his fingers poised over a keypad to enter my order. Not a promising sign.

The menu featured “Bacon, Mac & Cheeseburger,” “Wisconsin Mac and Cheese,” “Beef Stroganoff,” and a couple of perfunctory pan-Asian style dishes, “Bangkok Curry” and “Japanese Pan Noodles.” I honestly thought Beef Stroganoff was something only my grandmother on my dad’s side made. I thought it was her own recipe. I grudgingly ordered some pan noodles, took a number and sat down at a clean table by a window looking out on a mattress superstore, recognizing that in the greater scheme of foody pretense, offering a beef stroganoff dish was a fairly advanced move.

Paul Dano’s girlfriend arrived with a tray of disappointing stir-fry of bland noodles and sautéed vegetables, a pack of soy sauce and a fork and knife set. The plate was sprinkled with black sesame seeds, the cheap signifier for Asian food of any sort. Put sesame seeds on a bratwurst and it’s an “Asian Dog.” I had to go back to the counter to ask for chopsticks. Udon noodles with a fork? Really? When I did, Paul Dano looked at me like a dog does when you hide food behind your back.

“Do you have chopsticks?”

“Maybe…I’ll check in the back.”

Dano came back a few minutes later with a pair of basswood sticks in a paper sheath. The girl who brought out my tray was looking at me now, and so were two people waiting in line to be served. I felt like an alien troublemaker.

I ate my noodles alone without reading material. And my table was too far away from the others to see what others were reading, to look into purses, or to overhear conversations; all favorite New York pastimes that almost make up for having to dine like chickens in a Perdue plant. I thought of Ray Liotta’s line at the end of Goodfellas, “Right after I got here I ordered spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles with ketchup.”

Four days later, I got my chance to eat like a penned chicken, when my wife and I tried a popular restaurant in Long Island City. It was really dark..either that or my cones had reset to Milwaukee dining light levels. I started talking to my wife in my loud voice, not realizing the lack of a 12-foot buffer between tables that I’m used to at my local fine dining establishment in Wisco. I ramped up into a magnificent polemic about a writer who wrote a lazy review of a recent exhibition. My wife moved my glass of water toward her in anticipation wild hand motions. Before I could reach my Al Pacino-scent-of-a-woman finale, a head appeared from my blind spot.

“Shane?”

I couldn’t make him out in the dark, but my stomach jumped into my throat. I felt as found out as Rumpelstiltskin. My rant was wine-fuelled, ad-hominem and not meant for anyone who didn’t know me well enough to know why I hate riding in the back of pickup trucks.

“I overheard your, uh, conversation.”

I took my candle and brought it up to his face sheepishly. “JOHN! How much of that did you hear…and how much hush money do you want?”

“It happened 14 inches from my head, I couldn’t help it. I could taste your hostility in my root vegetable gratin. I’m kidding..Don’t’ worry,  I’m on your side, but you have to know everyone’s reading over your shoulder on a New York subway in rush hour and hearing your conversation at dinner. That’s part of the fun of living like sardines.”

“..I always say penned chickens.”

“What!?”

The dry, frequently mouth-puckering style of beer called lambic is brewed almost exclusively in one small corner of Belgium. Unlike most beer—which is brewed with unvarying amounts and calculated strains of yeast—lambic is subjected to spontaneous fermentation. This is done by exposing the wort to outside air in a structure called a coolship. It’s sort of like leaving the windows open and it goes against the popular image of a brewery as an ultra-hygienic temple of stainless steel. Wild yeast and bacteria present in the air wander into the wort, lending each batch of lambic specific characteristics created by chance. Lambic is crucial for the production of gueuze, another traditional beer style from Belgium’s Pajottenland. Gueuze is essentially blended lambic. Younger lambics that still have some sugar left in them are combined with lambics that have been aged longer. The reintroduction of sugar in the young lambic sparks a second round of fermentation. The result of this process is called gueuze.

The artist, homebrewer, and organizer Eric Steen blends roles with the creativity and skill of a Belgian brewmaster blending lambics in pursuit of the perfect gueuze. Each role informs the other, sparking transformations in his work as a whole as the artist in him feeds on the sugar of homebrewing, mellowed all over by the aged subtleties of organizing. Steen went to grad school in beer-savvy Portland, OR and is now based in Colorado Springs, a beer Mecca in its own right. He has brewed his own beer, collaborated with amateur and professional brewers, and organized countless events rooted in the experience of drinking beer. While his work as an artist is by no means limited to beer, he also runs a beer blog (Focus on the Beer) specific to Colorado Springs (his home base these days) that allows him to interface with both the local beer community and the art audiences cultivated by his many projects.

In the interview below, conducted by email over the past few weeks, Steen and I discuss, among other things, how he came to beer, how some of his projects have manifested, and skills  and processes that might translate between the worlds of brewing and art.

***

Bryce Dwyer: What was the first beer you loved? What was the last beer you drank?

Eric Steen: The beer that changed my life was Deschutes Mirror Pond Pale Ale. My friend Brian Hall used to make fun of me because I couldn’t finish a pint of any beer, but something clicked with that one and I’ve never been the same since. Some people develop their taste buds and get sick of their early interests, but I still will buy myself a pack of that beer. It always reminds me of Oregon and some great times.

The last beer I drank was actually at a Wild Game and Wild Beer dinner at Trinity Brewing in Colorado Springs a day ago. Three breweries participated and brought in beers that use wild yeast strains. It was the best beer dinner I’ve been to. So, technically, the last beer was at that. It was called Buddha Nuvo, a collaboration between 14 different breweries, it had buddha’s hand fruit, lots of pumpkin and spices, ten different strains of Brett yeast, and was aged in Chardonnay wine barrels. It was an amazing beer too.

BD: Can you relate an anecdote about your path from artist with a casual interest in beer to artist with a solid involvement with beer? More and more artists are taking interest in fields further flung from art and need to know how to navigate that journey. Do you have any insight about this from your own experience? 

ES: I’m tempted to say it will vary from field to field but I suppose I can let my anecdote serve as a way to navigate the question, without coming to any real conclusion one way or another. My trajectory as an artist really changed in grad school [at Portland State University's Art and Social Practice MFA Program] when I was asked “What are you passionate about?” Reluctantly and maybe even jokingly I said that I love beer. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. So I tried out a project or two, nothing I really care to mention here, but I learned a lot about it and realized that it would be worth making an effort to really focus in on beer as a major element of my work.

At this point I really loved to drink and taste beer but I didn’t really know enough about it to spark the interest of people I wanted to collaborate with. It was never a conscious decision to wiggle my way into the beer community, but I started keeping a beer blog and I started reading about beer for hours every day. At some point I was able to have conversations with people in the industry so that they took me reasonably seriously and could get on board with something I asked them to do. From there it has just grown and was a bit of a step by step process. It was certainly not at all a sudden realization that I desired and (I hesitate to say it) needed people in the industry to believe that what I was doing was worthwhile. It’s not that I needed their approval or affirmation, it just was a growing impression that I had that I was not only making art, that these folks need not see it as art, but that it was definitely also part of their world. That’s one huge reason why the beer becomes sculpture to me. I work with ideas but the beer itself as an object must remain central to what I do in order for it to be taken at all seriously. Anyway, the more I’ve written, the more I use social media to connect, the more I’ve attached myself to that community. I’ve even begun organizing events that I wouldn’t call my “art” but that I do to further educate my readers (and myself) and I think things like that are super important as well. I’m not just constantly doing my own thing as an artist, but I’m really a part of this thing and now work in multiple ways to stay a part of it.

BD: Can you speak more specifically about some of your beer-related projects?

ES:  I’ll go through the ones that I think may be most relevant. Concerning actually making beer myself: I am a homebrewer and I have made a few beers that were part of art related events. In general when I make a beer for art, meaning not just homebrew to be consumed at home, I make a Heather Ale. The recipe is based on a beer, also called Heather Ale, made by William Bros. Brewing in Alloa, Scotland. It uses heather flower tips to get much of the aroma and flavor. The beer has an interesting history. In eighteenth century Scotland, the English outlawed the use of any ingredients in beer besides water, hops, and malt. Because of this, Heather Ale was not produced commercially until the 1980′s when a Gaelic family gave their recipe to Williams Bros. This brewery has inspired me in multiple ways, and I have actually taken their recipe, changed it, and used it for art events. I’ve used this beer for Open Engagement, Eat Art in NYC, a show in Southern Oregon that was about the mythical state of Jefferson and a few other circumstances. For Open Engagement 2011, I actually had Coalition Brewery in Portland re-brew the recipe on their commercial system so it could be served at a real brewery.

In addition to brewing myself I have a number of projects. Beers Made By Walking was a summer long series where a public audience went on a nature hike with a homebrewer and a naturalist. We identified edible and medicinal plants along the way. Afterwards, the homebrewer created a recipe based off ingredients we identified on the hike and brewed the beer at a local commercial brewery. There were eight beers, served in two different tasting sessions, and because we produced the beer commercially the event took place not in a gallery, but at a local pub. I really liked the idea that each beer became a portrait of the particular trail its ingredients came from. In the future I’ll be doing this again, but in various iterations. One will be working with commercial breweries in Colorado and in Oregon. They will send their brewers on a hike and then the beer produced will actually raise money for local environmental non-profit groups.

I’ve also created a couple pop-up pubs. In Glasgow I worked with 17 local homebrewers, and they made about 25 beers which we served for free to the public. There were ten beers on tap at a time, getting rotated out every ten or so minutes. It lasted about four hours and then we shut it down. This was in a gallery and was part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. It was also a culmination of a month long series of educational beer activities called Pub School. For Performa 11 I also created a pop-up pub, Performa Brew Pub, this time working with 33 NYC homebrewers. There were 33 beers and all were on tap at the same time. In both situations I worked directly with the homebrewers to present their beer in a way they thought would be special. The beers were on display as was their equipment, although we could still utilize the equipment like at a normal bar.

The last one I’ll mention for now was called Art & Beer and happened twice at the Portland Art Museum. Each time I invited three local commercial brewers to tour the museum. They picked out art that they liked, we researched it for them and then they made a beer based off the artwork. So the beer was served at the museum, and you could see the artwork, and for a few weeks afterword some of the beer was available in town as well.

BD: Have any skills or tendencies from your training as an artist come to bear on your brewing? Is there some relationship between your brewing and your art practice (even if it’s a way to support work monetarily), or do they mostly exist separately from one another?

ES: There is definitely a relationship to my brewing habits, beer habits and my art. The majority of my work in some way uses beer and/or is about beer. In many ways these projects are “beer events” as much as they are “art projects”‘ and I particularly like the blurring of these boundaries. As an artist I am interested in looking at the particular aesthetics and creativity of beer and brewing. I see the brewer as an artist and in my work I try to make the beer the highlight of the experience, so it becomes a type of drinkable sculpture in a way. However, I’m also really interested in social forms of art and so my work is also about finding intersections between fields of interest, such as beer, geography, education, and art. Another aspect of socially-engaged art that I really incorporate is the common theme of blurring the role between artist and audience. I work with commercial brewers and homebrewers and when someone comes to one of these events they may not even realize that it was organized by me. Instead, they become interested in the work of the other brewers (artists) that have been involved from the beginning. Those are some of my “formal” considerations, if you could call them that.

About the last part of that question though, the part where you say it could be way to support work monetarily, I would like to say something. In addition to making beer-related art projects I also spend a large amount of my time reading and writing about beer. I have a blog called Focus on the Beer I update almost every day. I have other writers and a photographer as well. The blog can be promotional at times, but it’s definitely a way to both build and understand the craft beer community as well. I often post my thoughts on particular beers as well as thoughts on the industry in general. I am able to be both promotional and critical. Through the blog, I organize educational events such as Meet the Brewer and I’m even starting up a granting program where readers can realize their own community-based beer events to be funded by the blog. We do accept local advertising through breweries and beer companies that I believe in, so I have recently become more capable of supporting what we could call “field research.” I’m hesitant to call the blog an art project, but certainly it keeps me highly informed on the industry.

Perhaps the thing that I appreciate most of all about the blog (and I didn’t intend for this to happen) is that it has really legitimized some of the strange things I do. People in the beer industry are now interested in what I do. They follow me online and even attend events that I organize and seek to be a part of it. The more I do this, the more I realize how important it is to not only possess authentic enthusiasm for the expanded field I’m engaged in, but also to have the thumbs up from the people in that particular field.

BD: Can you point to any beer-related projects, art or otherwise, that have been helpful to you in your experience with beer? Projects that have helped you think through aesthetic quandaries are as relevant as technical help or inspirational small businesspeople. 

ES: To be honest, I had not heard of Tom Marioni’s project (The Act of Drinking Beer is the Highest Form of Art)or Superflex’s Free Beer before the first one or two projects I did. I did soon thereafter become familiar with them and while they don’t necessarily influence me directly, I do think about the title of Tom Marioni’s piece as I’m drinking beer with my friends. “Drinking beer with friends is the highest form of art” is true, and I realize this on a regular basis.

I’ve been influenced by plenty of artists and art projects, and many have changed the way I do what I do. Sunday Soup and Josh Greene’s Service Works have been on my mind recently as I’ve been thinking about a granting program for our readers. Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, and REBAR have been on my mind a lot too, in terms of walking. When I think about the roles of artist/audience I often consider the work of Harrell Fletcher and Temporary Services. Additionally I’d say when I think about my work I like to think that it’s site specific, both in the physical place I do something but also in the “field of beer.” I’m also inspired by people like Mierle Laderman Ukeles and her work with NY Sanitation Department.

I’m also hugely influenced by people working in various ways in the beer industry. Many people have influenced and inspired me as much as the artists mentioned above. I’m particular inspired by Williams Bros. Brewing, who I mentioned already. They began a whole program of historical Scottish beers that use ingredients from the landscape including seaweed, elderberries, dandelions, Scottish pine, and more. I also mentioned Coalition Brewing in Portland. They have a program where they bring in a homebrewer and allow them to brew a beer (they approve the recipe first) on a large commercial scale, so then the homebrewer has a real commercially produced beer. I think that’s awesome. There’s also this guy in Portland named Dean Pottle who has a speakeasy at his house called Dean’s Scene. When his neon light is on, you know that you are welcome to come downstairs and pour yourself whatever you want. He’s regularly opening his house up to the public.

I’m inspired by all kinds of tasty and beautifully crafted beer, from subtle flavors to loud and obnoxious flavors. Perhaps there’s too many to mention. I will mention one brewery, Crooked Stave, that has been experimenting with a wild yeast called Brettanomyces. Normally associated with sour beers here in the US, this brewery is redefining the way we think of Brett yeast strains by making delicately soft beers, concentrating on parts of the yeast that we’ve not really thought about before. I’m also influenced by other beer bloggers that go out of their way to create events around something they’ve been thinking a lot about. One of my favorite examples is Ezra Johnson Greenough of the New School Beer Blog. He organized a fruit beer festival in which he challenged breweries to create fruit beers that will make beer drinkers rethink what they know of fruit beer.

Maybe this doesn’t need to be mentioned but I’m also really influenced by people who do alternative education and by people who write about it. All my projects incorporate varying levels of what I think is experimental pedagogy, but maybe this is for another discussion?

BD: From your point of view, what is important for someone who encounters the project to take away? The taste of the beer leaves the senses soon after the glass is drained, but are there other aesthetic qualities, historical perspectives, learned habits, or thought processes that you hope stick with the participants your work reaches?

ES: Actually, one thing that I hope people take away is a sense that they just tasted something that might change the way they think about beer. I think that beer is often seen as a party drink, associated with drunk driving, objectifying advertisements, and little flavor. So I hope that when someone drinks a “Smoked Wheat Chili Sour,” their socks are knocked off.

Concerning other qualities, it really depends on the project. For example, in Beers Made By Walking I hope that people interested in beer will gain something from the botanist or naturalist, that they will learn about the landscape in new ways. I hope people interested in the outdoors will begin to appreciate the mind of the brewer and understand beer differently, and I hope the brewer will understand the landscape anew. In that project I provide two venues for those people to connect: on the hikes and at the pub. Perhaps most importantly, the project is motivated by my desire to have people simply experience being outside, and to grow an appreciation for nature. I’d also like people to have a more holistic understanding of the landscape that they’ve walked through.

Other projects are totally different, some engage more heavily in forms of alternative education than others. In Building in the Post-Apocalypse, which I haven’t mentioned yet, I look at a number of options for doing education and learning differently than a typical classroom set up, and I point to the pub, or perhaps the table with the pitcher of beer as being a more suitable place for learning. In the pop-up pubs I work directly with homebrewers and I’m thinking more about participation, the common language used among homebrewers, as well as looking at these folks as artists, people engaged in a craft for the fun and enjoyment of what they are doing. They experiment or hone their skills, although they are not professionals in the field. I build those spaces to focus on the beer as sculpture, but also build a pub atmosphere that encourages people to hang out and talk (not just sit alone, not just get drunk) with the brewers about what they do. I suppose in these pubs it is a more direct look at the beer as a craft, the brewer as the artist, than in some of the other projects.

BD: How do you think about documenting your work? How do you shape the experience of someone encountering your work at a remove?

ES: This is a tough call for me. In general, documentation for me refers to online articles, my website, and artist presentations. I’ve tried taking some of the physical remnants from an event and transplanting them into another gallery and I was very dissatisfied with how that turned out and haven’t wanted to do it since. In one or two cases the leftovers (of, say, the pop-up pubs) were literally left in a gallery, complete with sticky floors, beer smells, and bottles everywhere. People came into the gallery, walked around, knew they missed something, and could sit on the picnic benches and read through the menu.

I really like creating menus for these projects, they serve the role of both a menu for what’s on tap but also an artist catalog with additional information about the participating artists, information about the beer, and, with Beers Made By Walking, a write up on the whole experience. That way, someone who misses the event can at least begin to understand that there were, say, 33 beers available, and read up on what the brewer is all about. For projects that don’t have an exhibition element to them, I may write about it on the blog, without being heavy handed about all the ideas I’m working through, usually a dry type of telling what happened with brief information about why I do what I do. There may be better ways to do these things that I’ll figure out, but this is what I’m most comfortable with at the moment.

I recently attended the College Art Association conference in Los Angeles. Before leaved, I asked my fellow alumni from the Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art whether any of them planned on attending. (MICA hosts a reception for its alumni at the conference.) One of the responses, from alum Raymond Majerski (Hoffberger 2003), was typical of the understandable frustration many job seeking MFAs feel towards the conference: “Hundreds of black-clothed people wringing their hands for two teaching jobs? I’ll pass.”

It is a perfectly common and reasonable response, especially when one considers the standard format for employers interviewing at CAA. You apply for the job, and they ask you to indicate on your cover letter “whether you plan on attending the College Art Association conference, as that is where we will be conducting interviews,” or something similar. It sounds innocent enough, until you think about it: it rougly translates as “Do you plan on paying your own airfare, lodging, and other costs, to attend a conference at which we may or may not choose to interview you?” Those of us with terminal degrees in art are seeking to sell our skills, and unfortunately, it’s a buyer’s market. Fair or not, it’s the way things are, for the same reason that you collect your paycheck after completing two weeks’ work, but you pay your rent before you spend a month living there.

It’s easy enough to become embittered by the process. I certainly felt a pang of resentment as I typed out those cover letters, saying at the time something to the effect of, “I am happy to travel to the College Art Association Conference for an interview scheduled well in advance, but will not otherwise be attending.” None of those applications resulted in an interview, and as I walked through the Interview Hall, seeing those same institutions conducting interviews with, what did Commodus say in Gladiator? “Which wiser, older man is to take my place?”  Certainly I felt some jealousy.

I made the decision to attend the conference even after I had become fairly certain that I wasn’t going to be interviewed there. There is a lot more to the conference than the job search. This was my third time attending, and I made the decision to attend based on the panel sessions I saw the last two times (New York 2007, Chicago 2010). The CAA panel sessions cover a wide range of topics pertinent to contemporary art, art history, career development for artists, pedagogy, and related topics. Some highlights:

We headed to “Perceptions and Assumptions: Whiteness,” hosted by the National Alliance of Artists from Historical Black Colleges and Universities. We came in partway through a presentation on “race movies,” which were basically films made by and for African Americans at a time when they were largely denied starring roles in mainstream (white) cinema. Because movie theaters were segregated at that time, at least in some areas, these movies were either shown in theaters catering specifically to black audiences, or in mainstream theaters at special midnight showings for black audiences, called “midnight rambles.” Midnight Rambles is also the title of a documentary film on the subject. The last presenter presented images from the exhibition, “Perceptions of Whiteness: New Works by the National Alliance of Artists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” Both of these presentations were welcome exposures to pieces of visual culture of which I would have been otherwise unaware.

I headed over to see “Native American Surrealisms.” I had to find out the answer to a riddle inherent to the title of one of the presenters: “The Opposite of Snake.” It turns out, the opposite of snake is bird. Also, the opposite of one is ten, and the opposite of water is ice. These were the revelations of a narrative from the childhood of Cherokee artist Jimmie Durham, as retold in this presentation by Mary Modeen from the University of Dundee. As I watched the presentation, I realized that I’d seen a piece of Durham’s recently, at the MCA Chicago. I hadn’t been previously familiar with Durham’s work, but his Self-Portrait (1986) is included in the exhibition “This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s.” Like all of his work, it displays an absurdist wit and a sharp-edged sense of humor. It’s included in the section “Gender Trouble,” perhaps because of the rainbow phallus captioned, “Indian penises are unusually large and colorful.” Like the kid said in Goonies, “That was my favorite part.”

I went to “What Makes a Competitive Candidate?” Unfortunately, I spent too much time at lunch, and missed the first presenter (Scott Contreras-Koterbay from East Tennessee State University), but from what I heard he had some good advice. I’m going to look him up and see if I can’t get a copy of his paper or notes. Dennis Y. Ichiyama from Purdue University talked about some of the challenges you’ll face once you get that full time job: useful, I’m sure, but one of those “let’s cross that bridge when we get to it” things for me. Linda Neely from Lander University was more straightforward to the topic, and gave some basic suggestions for job seekers. They were pretty common sense (have a good cover letter, etc.) but solid advice, especially for those just starting out their search. Lastly, Sam Yates, listed as an “independent artist” but actually a teacher with experience at a variety of institutions, gave his take. He gave some good, if also common sense, advice, like: Don’t get too chatty in your cover letter, and if you do, make sure your chat is accurate: for example, the disastrous cover letter, perhaps and perhaps not hypothetical, attributing things about Kentucky to Tennessee, and another mis-locating a university from Nashville to Knoxville. He also stressed how disastrous a single typo can be in a cover letter or resume. The Q&A session that followed revealed a lot about the hopes of the aspiring college art teachers who’ve come to the conference hoping for their first teaching job. “Is it really necessary to do an adjunct job before getting a full time job?” (The panelists agreed that yes, that’s usually the way it happens, but I know of exceptions.) “If a job specifies a minimum of a certain number of years of experience, is it even worth applying if you’re short of that?” (The panelists, Ichiyama in particular, were emphatic that you shouldn’t waste the selection committees time applying if you don’t meet the minimum qualifications, but again, I know of at least one case in which an applicant with only two years experience got hired for a job when the posting said you needed four.) “Aren’t adjunct jobs basically just word-of-mouth? Or can an unsolicited letter of interest work?” (The consensus was that yes, they were usually word of mouth, but Koterbay mentioned that he’d gotten his first adjunct job via an unsolicited letter of interest, and I myself got my first adjunct job by walking into the art department’s office, packet in hand, and asking to meet with the department head.)

My favorite panel session, though, was “Your Labels Make Me Feel Stupid.” This session was amazingly well-attended; people were standing or sitting against the walls, although predominantly because of an insipid tendency for audience members to sit in the seats on the outside of each row, forcing subsequent sitters to shuffle awkwardly past, a la Fight Club: “Now a question of etiquette as I pass: do I give you the crotch, or the ass?” Many professionals opt out of the ass-crotch dilemma and stand awkwardly in the back until their legs get tired, at which point those under 30 sit on the floor for “story time,” while those over 30 finally mutter “Excuse me” while grinding their nethers into the fashionably bespectacled faces of those who sat first but didn’t think to move to the middle of the row…or, perhaps, love the scent of art historian ass. This crowding at least spoke to the popularity of the topic…wait, museum labeling practices? No, not the popularity of the topic: the importance of giving your panel session a clever title.

Clever titles aside, though, the session was really good. “Space, Seam, Scenario: The Many Operations of the Museum Label,” presented by Laura H. Hollengreen, Georgia Institute of Technology, contrasted the National Gallery of Austria in Vienna with the Donald Judd museum in Marfa, Texas. In Vienna, each painting in a room has a wall label discussing a different aspect of that painting. So for example, one painting might have its provenance discussed (but nothing about technique, or subject matter, or artist’s biography), while the next might have an explanation of the life of the artist (but nothing about the other topics). On the other hand, in Judd’s museum, there is no wall text whatsoever, allowing the monolithic aluminum sculptures to speak for themselves against the silent backdrop of the desert. Both solutions were presented as viable antidotes to the formulaic “name, date, title, short paragraph about the work and the artist” format common to most museums.

Kim Beil, of University of California, Irvine, presented “Countercheck Your Crude Impressions”: Interpretive Texts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1872-1912. This was basically a description of this museum’s accompanying catalog and guidebook, the latter of which was presented as a narrative in which a Virgil-like friend guides the Dante-analog protagonist through the exhibition, explaining it all the way along. Elitist undertones (the protagonist had been to Europe and fraternized with the Queen’s gardeners!) belied the founding statement of the museum as a place for people of all classes to be improved by culture.

Things really started getting hot with Kate Green, University of Texas at Austin, discussing “Nazi Wall Text: The 1937 ‘Degenerate Art Show’.” For those unfamiliar with the exhibition, it presented the work of early Modernists alongside that of mental patients and “primitive” cultures, as evidence of its inferiority, foreignness, and Jewish and Communist influences, all of which the Nazis sought to contrast with the pure, Neoclassical, and oddly homoerotic Socialist Realism they championed in a simultaneous exhibition in an adjacent (and much more opulent) building. The Degenerate exhibition is infamous for the sloppy, propagandistic curation, which sought not to present the work in its best light, but in its worst. It’s easy to condemn the Nazis for co-opting art in service of their ideology, but, Green asks us, is this because we object to the intellectual dishonesty of their argument, or merely because we disagree with their premise of Aryan superiority and German nationalism? It’s a thought that gives me pause when I reflect on recent and powerful exhibitions with a strong message, such as “This Will Have Been: Art, Love, And Politics in the 1980s” at the MCA Chicago.

Leo G. Mazow, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville presented “‘Holy Rollers’ and the Dual Nature of Labeling, “ in the wake of some minor controversy following an exhibition of Thomas Hart Benton’s work. Benton depicted members of Pentecostal Christian churches, whom he (Benton) called “Holy Rollers,” a term now widely considered pejorative. In some accompanying text, Mazow failed to indicate that he was using Benton’s preferred term for his subjects, despite the negative connotations now (and perhaps then) associated with it. Mazow was adequately contrite, and the audience laughed sympathetically at the appropriate moments. It functioned for me largely as anecdotal evidence for the importance of being careful with one’s choice of words, particularly when dealing collectively with a population who could be offended by those words.

Last, and most salient to my interests, was Jennifer Tyburczy of Rice University, discussing “Warning: Explicit Display in Museums.” She gave numerous examples of the kind of “you might not like what you see” cautionary signage which often accompanies exhibitions or otherwise potentially offensive subject matter. The presentations’ point, or at least what I got out of it, was this: Cautionary signage does indeed allow parents to steer clear of a Mapplethorpe exhibition when they’re not ready to explain to their children in tow what fisting is. “You see Timmy and Sally, sometimes when two people love each other very much…” But, at the same time, it validates that viewer’s conception of that artwork as offensive. In the case of Mapplethorpe, this may not be much of a problem. But when the Old Master’s nude paintings of women carry no warning labels (despite John Berger’s analysis of their problematic history in Ways of Seeing, as well as the Guerilla Girls’ campaign re: the same), but an exhibition including images of transgendered nudes does, then the museum implicitly agrees that (or at least fails to question why) a nude non-transgendered women is inoffensive to a reasonable person, but a nude transgendered man or woman may be offensive to a reasonable person. Ditto a photograph of two men kissing, or of two women kissing. Similarly, if a religious icon carries no warning that it may be offensive to atheists, but a piece critiquing religion does carry a warning label, then the religious point of view is upheld as normative or at least meriting special consideration. These issues should come to mind when, in the future, we see exhibitions that carry warning labels, and also when we see those that don’t…and we might ask why, or why not.

These panel sessions were the main reason Steph and I attended the conference, but they weren’t the only reason. The conference was a great excuse to get out of Chicago during the winter (the weather in LA was great), and to put real life on hold for a few days. It was also a great chance to check out the art scene in a new city. On Thursday, we checked out the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles’ “Naked Hollywood: Weegee In Los Angeles,” and “Kenneth Anger: Icons.” Steph’s a big Weegee fan; I’d never heard of him.

After a pretty brisk circuit of the museum, we headed down to the Westin Bonaventure hotel for a reception for alumni of the Maryland Institute College of Art. Meeting up with old friends is another, often-neglected aspect of CAA. Faculty member Barry Nemett was there, and he remembered me and my work, which was cool, and I met some people who turned out to be friends of friends in that pleasant, “what a small world it is” kind of way. We also ran into Jenny Kendler, a Chicago artist whose work we’ve curated as part of the Chicago Artist’s Coalition BOLT residency (and who hosts our portfolio websites through her company, Other People’s Pixels). The next night we headed over to the Velaslavasay Panorama, for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni reception. Steph and Jenny both got their MFAs from SAIC, so they were there, as was our friend Oli Rodriguez. Then, as a very pleasant surprise, we ran into our friend Conrad Freiburg (BFA SAIC 2000), and a fellow Hoffberger MFA who had gone to SAIC for undergrad, Katherine Rohrbacher.

Saturday we visited Conrad’s studio, he played us some tunes on his ukulele, and got some burritos, then headed out to see the art openings in Culver City and Santa Monica. We hear a lot about LA’s art scene, as being the sort of parallel equal to New York, consigning Chicago to a bronze medal third place, at least in terms of reputation. In practice, what we saw seemed fine, equal maybe to a good night in Chicago, but nothing to be intimidated by. Blum & Poe was showing “Requiem For The Sun: The Art of Mono-Ha,” a lot of monumental, resource-intensive looking sculptures. Carter & Citizen, friends of Conrad’s, were showing my favorite work of the night: “Dmitry Strakovsky: The Way We Tell Stories That Tell The Way.” Due to some zoning restrictions regarding the side of the street they were on, they were also the only gallery able to serve alcoholic beverages, so while everybody else was handing out grape juice and peanuts, they had beer. Luis de Jesus, the one LA gallery whose name I was familiar with, was showing “Tilt Shift LA: New Queer Perspectives on The Western Edge,” a group show that was very solid, albeit appearing (at least superficially, to me) to have been made by artists who happen to identify as queer, rather than of artworks specifically addressing queerness. The last gallery we hit, Honor Fraser, was showing large monochromatic paintings by Rosson Crow, “Ballyhoo Hullabaloo Haboob.” As we were leaving, Conrad pointed out to me that Dustin Hoffman was standing in the window of the gallery, talking to someone. I turned, looked, and realized that seeing him standing there, a celebrity, but in an art gallery, was the perfect ending to my trip to LA.

The next, 101st College Art Association Conference will take place in New York, from Wednesday, February 13th to Saturday, February 16th, 2013. I plan on attending…interviews or no. I hope to see you there.

1. Recent Drawings by Mariana Sissia at The Mission

New work by Mariana Sissia.

The Mission is located at 1431 W. Chicago Ave. Reception is Friday from 6-9pm.

2. Force Majeure at DEFIBRILLATOR

Performance by NON GRATA, co-presented by DEFIBRILLATOR and New Capitol.

DEFIBRILLATOR is located at 1136 N Milwaukee Ave. Reception for Cjoloniewski installation begins at 6pm. Bus to performance (at undisclosed location) boards at 7pm. Bus returns to DEFIBRILLATOR for reception at 8:30pm.

3. Reality Slips at Robert Bills Contemporary

Work by Veronica Bruce, Morgan Sims, and Brian McNearney.

Robert Bills Contemporary is located at 222 N. Desplaines. Reception is Saturday from 7-9pm.

4. What It Is at Hinge Gallery

Work curated by Tom Burtonwood and Holly Holmes of What It Is in Oak Park.

Hinge Gallery is located at 1955 W. Chicago. Reception is Saturday from 6-9pm.