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A: In the beginning of your artistic career you explored performance in public spaces: an obvious example is the JC Penny window, but also Tales of the Taboo performing itself through the speakers of dance clubs. How do these spaces offer opportunities for a different kind of performance? How do they serve you?

K: I think at that time, and I still think this way, of the space as... as an artist to have an intervention in that space, to disrupt the space in how it's traditionally utilized. And so that's how I go about in selecting the spaces or if I have an opportunity to do that. So that one, the first one, was–since you were a student with me–that was something I did when I was a student, at JC Penny windows.



A: What inspired your musical career?

K: Well, I worked in dance clubs and at that time performance... I considered performance to be a political act where you were leaving the corporatization of art. You know, so that you were removing the idea of acquiring the object or collecting the object. So museums too were very–even though we're in a museum right now and I think that this museum has really tried to incorporate a different type of public's engagement in the space–but, at that time, in the museum you would be very quiet. There's a sense of low and high art: who can be looking, who understands the work, someone owns the art and you're kind of giving the adoration with the space. So, I thought at that time, that the actual club, or night club, was the audience that I wanted to speak to. So, I would have, you know, disruptions. When I first came to New York, I worked at Area, which was a club in the 80's, and it was run by artists who created tableaux vivants within the club and then I curated events there as well. So, that was the audience. Why does art have to be within this... during the day?  Why can't it be, you know, at night, why does it have to... why can't you function, or have it where it's more ceremonial? And then in terms of music, oh yeah, in terms of music, at that time I worked at Danceteria. I was a bartender in clubs, so that's what I did when I was first starting out. I worked in clubs. Why? Because it was fun, I enjoyed the people, I like the music.  And so I worked on the dance floor, which at that time was considered to be the most populated dance floor in New York City. So you can imagine the amount of people, it was like non-stop. And you're listening to some of the top DJs in the world and listening to their music, but I noticed that so much of the music was, at that time, with the lyrics, was so behind in terms of visually, in terms of art, because you couldn't say certain words. And so I wanted to take sort of a female place and really push the sexual language and so that's what I wanted to do. I didn't stay with music for two reasons: one, during my political problems with censorship I just couldn't handle it. But, two, I did not want to become a rock star, that wasn't the idea, and at one point it was kind of going in that direction. I was opening for New Order, you know, Sinead O'Connor wanted me to, Nine Inch Nails wanted me to, you know so it was kind of going in, and...



A: So you had to sort of steer away from that.

K: Yeah.

A: Right now, there are a lot of female artists using similar diction to Tales of the Taboo, what do you think about these artists? i.e. Nikki Minage, Ke$ha...

K: I think it's wonderful, but I don't know always know when artists are using the language, if it's the same reason behind it. For me, I had this consciousness of kind of appropriating the work. So, that was also another reason that I stopped, because I thought that what was happening is that I was going to just be exploited by the culture rather than being this interrogator, you know. But, I am happy for artists that make it so... I don't know it's great, in some ways. That's the idea of the avant-garde, it does affect popular culture, so people kind of think "oh you're doing this, why are you doing this?" But no, it does have an impact in popular culture... eventually... [Laughs]

 

A: When you find a subject that you want to respond to, how to begin working towards a product? I know you have explored many different art forms or mediums, but typically...

K: I think that's such an important question that I ask myself all the time. I think that I first go with concepts, rather than I just have an idea, in fact, one of my classes is Conceptual Studio. I think that when you just get an idea, that isn't enough for me. I like to consider a subject or a problem that I am concerned about and then I spend time considering that problem in society, something that I want to change. And so that's where it will start first, where I feel there needs to be some type of interruption or interrogation by an artist voice. Then I have to consider and do research and spend time, and then sometimes the idea just comes after spending that time. So in addition to the answer, how as artists do we come up with these ideas? I think that is a magical enchanting question. I kind of wait for that moment to open myself up to it.

 

A: In thinking about research, what propelled you to enter the world of academia as a teacher?

K: I was always interested in education. I would be helping out when I was in Chicago Art Institute, I was in middle school when I would be helping out. I think being the eldest of six children, I would just help. I was interested in education. Plus, I feel that it was my educational opportunities that provided so much assistance for me in being able to get where I am today. Because when I had my NEA problems, Supreme Court case, I think that the far right didn't realize that I was educated and I could speak about what I was doing. When I was going to art school though, we didn't have provisions or a program where we would speak about our work with a political consciousness, where you understanding that depth of something happens. So, when the police came when I was in JC Penny windows, I was not prepared for that and I wanted to... I felt that it was an obligation that I would participate in teaching artists how to look at their work more critically and really propel their work into the public sphere. So, it became a... it was a commitment, but I will have to say, that that became more so with my NEA... my political problems. I came into the Experimental Theater Wing because I had been asked to teach at many schools, but it was through a fluke of events that Kevin Kulke had asked me–

A: I didn't know that you taught at ETW.

K: Yes, I started in ETW.



A: Oh my gosh! What did you teach there?

K: Self Scripting.



A: Oh, that makes sense.

K: So, Kevin Kulke had invited me to come there once and I was going to be there for, let's say six weeks or some period of time. And I was pregnant and I got the flu and so I had to cancel. And I was living in Los Angeles, different kind of scenarios, and when I came back to New York I thought, I'm gonna call him up because I had to cancel, because I knew he had to raise money and all this type of work, so I called him up and said I'm sorry and if there was any way I could make that up. So I started then, and then it really worked out well, but I think that my approach towards creating work, always has had an academic way. I like to have tables and writing in my classrooms. I like to think. And Mary Schmidt-Campbell, who I had a relationship with as the cultural arts person representing New York City, has a big component of freedom of expression, so then I started in Art and Public Policy.



A: Can you speak about your roll as a professor and as an artist, do these selves intermingle or do you find them more compartmentalized? Do they inform each other?

K: I don't like to talk about my own work in the classroom. Like for example, many professors, they're going to put their books on the syllabus. I don't do that, because students...they don't have to like my work. I am interested in helping artists learn how to think. And I think it does [help], because I'm sharing, it's very intimate, my classroom is very intimate, we're sharing how do you think, how do you really go about the work. The classroom becomes a lab, or becomes a reflection of how I think about the world, or how I'm thinking about approaching work. So, I think that the intimacy is there, that's the relationship, the intimacy. But, see at the same time, I get so much out of it, I mean I cannot wait to get to the classroom. I mean, I wake up in the middle of the night, before it goes on, I can't wait to get to my class.

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A: I understand that. I really felt that as your student.

K: And we had a classroom, the classroom we were in. It was tiny. It was in cinema studies, it was not meant to be a performance room. This room was probably, I don't know, was it 15' x 15'?

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A: Yeah.. Maybe even–

K: Yeah. Probably even smaller. Yet we had installations, we did performances, we had projections, we just didn't care. [Laughs] It was unbelievable what we created in this room.

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A: Yeah, it really was.

K: And so it was so inspiring to be... I mean, I love it. The saddest day for me is when it's the last day of class.



A: For sure. Well, this class "Creative Response - Performance Matters," it felt to me that the class was a creative response of your own. Was that true for you? And if so, what was it a creative response to?

K: Well, each class is different because what I have to do is listen to the student, find out where they are.  We have to get to a certain place where I can translate where the student is and for them to become aware. That what they are saying or thinking about has a creative potential. And so it's about relationships that I have, it's a relationship of creating the dynamic with the student, but also to spend time with the students, but many times I'm not doing that in the classroom. Sometimes when you see me I'm taking the notes and reflecting. I actually take time during the week and I kind of meditate on each student and think about them and reflect and then come back into the room.

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A: Almost similarly to the way you do research on a piece of work, that after taking this time you're just sort of waiting for that moment to know...

K: I never thought about it that way, but I think you're, I think you've, I think you're...you're right about that. I didn't think about it that way. Thank you.



A: Yeah!  When did you start using food in performance? And what did it give back to you that made you continue to use it in your work?

K: In my work I was talking about abuse, or violence, or sexual violence. So, in terms of theatricality, there is usually a preferred theatrical way of performing which is naturalism. But doing performance and coming with an art background, I'm less interested in making something look natural and I felt that I could never make that moment natural enough and so I used metaphors or substitutions with food, to kind of replace the body, or replace the body liquids, the food for sex or power. And, in terms of economics, there was a point when I came to New York as well, working two full-time jobs and a part-time job, just trying to make ends meet. I did not have a studio. I did not have a ton of arts supplies, but what I did have was a pantry. I just went, what's there? What's there? What's immediate? You could just go get your groceries and then walk. There's no saving of it. Everyone goes, that's the art supplies store, food. And so that relationship between food is one of the earliest ceremonies. So performance in relation to ceremony in relation to food. That was part of the ceremony. And I think you can look at Alli–did we study Allison Knowles the salad? Remember in our class–
 

A: Yes we did! The big salad.

K: So there's a relationship to where food had been used within Fluxus. So, it was also a discourse with work that had been done before.

 

A: I think it is interesting the way you said that food aides in the performance of your characters as a substitute for naturalism. But, you also have this sort of channeling aspect to the way you speak through these bodies. Specifically, post NEA, post 9/11-- the characters that are not you. When you speak through them there is an intimate channeling of them and I'm curious about that relationship you have with these characters.

K: I think the voice would go to many different forms of voicing, or voice, or speaking out, or giving voice to someone who can't voice. I do think that there would be a trance or some other embodiment, but at another point that's a reason why I would read from my text, because people would misinterpret my performance thinking that I'm just a hysterical woman just making this up at the top of my head instead of thinking that the work was written and articulated and that there was a time, and energy, and patience with creating the work. And the female still is looked at as being... that she couldn't necessarily be deliberate. And that's why I read the work so it becomes a musical score. So I consider the voice actually to be an instrument. Now moving to characters and interpreting kind of like famous people.

 

A: Yeah, like George W. Bush, Elliot Spitzer, and Silda Spitzer.

K: Yes! After I became more famous, I got in the way of my own work because people would have an understanding of who Karen Finley would be. So I had to then enter a character and I was interested in how public figures become a source for a narrative for working out national problems or psychic problems for society. And so that's what I would do. They become like a replacement. In the same way that in Greece, who have Zeus and the gods who work out certain narratives and myths. That's what I think happens with public figures. And the dimensions are usually very human, about these frailties and so that's what I'm interested in, is the humanness of people that are supposed to be in positions of power and greatness and they're human. And I think the Elliot Spitzer piece is actually my most successful in that way, or the piece that I wrote on Terry Schiavo. Where I'm taking all the different positions of those interested in Terry Schiavo, but the last one is her mother and I change the piece around because I'm actually very empathic to the mother, saying how could she actually... she cannot remove the plug, she just can't as a mother. I'm interested in exploring those different dimensions and the reason is, so as people we can become more sensitive when we're listening and maybe we can understand that when we become so preoccupied with public people, maybe we can look closer and more deeply in our own lives.

 

A: I think this is so fascinating because you tend to be depicted as this "angry woman" or this obscene thing, and yet I feel that there is all of this intimacy and empathy underneath all of your work and I find that to be contradictory.

K: That's one of the difficulties of being a public figure, because then you have the projections, you live with the projections. Other projections onto you, because they're actually talking about themselves not about you.

 

A: Do you ever miss being able to speak through Karen Finley?

K: I'm going to do that this fall because I have a new performance I am doing, called Broken Negative, which I have been working on for almost two years, a year and half. I'm relooking at my chocolate performance and I hope I'm going to perform it at Dixon Place. It's a large performance, it involves music, piano, video, and then I reenact these rituals that I have done before. So, I hope you can go to that.

 

A: Yes, I will definitely be there.

K: And I am speaking as Karen Finley in this piece.

 

A: I was noticing that your work is difficult to find online, in video forms specifically, or even just visual documentation, there's a lot of evidence of it in interviews but not so much–

K: I don't want to be that well known. Well, you can buy, I have the video you can buy, Shut Up and Love Me and Make Love and that's available. But, after my political problems I've just removed some of the videos from distribution because they would be dissected and I just don't have the strength for the far right to be using it against me. Ah, but I'm rethinking about that, but I would have to get some sort of funding or figure out some way how I would do that, how I would make that available, so I have to think about that. I'm not really interested in having... the website isn't really the main website thats up there, that's not my website. Someone made that, who I care for very much, thinking I should have a website, and also to have the video that we made, the DVD available. But, it's a lot of energy to be constantly... I'm more of an introvert, people wouldn't think that, but I don't want to be out and to be accessible and for everyone to know where I am all the time. I like my private space and that's what... that's what I like, I love the privacy, so I like to control the certain amount of fame. [Laughs] I guess most people they want to become more famous and for me, that's why I like academia, you're in your classroom, you're meeting with the people, but once you've had threats on your life you just don't want to have everyone knowing where you are all the time.

 

A: Is there a work you're not often asked about that you feel strongly towards?

K: I think people ask, but usually when I'm working on new work people ask about that. But work that I'm thinking about now is, I'm going to be involved in the AIDS 25th anniversary exhibit that's going to be opening June 1st. And I'm so happy because I'm asked to revive some of those works, so one of those pieces is called Written in Sand. And I had created an installation about the suffering of AIDS in the early 90s. I had people in the museum, you know, live, being in beds and they would be as if they were suffering from AIDS and then I would have people taking care of them. And this travelled. And in fact, when I did this at MOKA there were 400 volunteers in shifts, so it would be at the height of people dying with AIDS and then I had text. But, I had rituals that I would do because at that time there wasn't enough of a public sanctioning to have memorials. And some of my installation work. One was, I had veils of lace and people would put carnations in the lace curtains in memory of someone. Or another one would be, in terms of, a ribbon gate, where I had a large prominent kind of antique brass gate and then we would put ribbons in memory of someone and then another one was called Written in Sand, and I would have a chest and in the sand people would write the names of those they had loved and lost from AIDS. And I'm being asked to redo that piece, but it's so painful for me, that I have the chest in a storage space and I don't even want to look at it, so I'm trying to get a new one... yesterday, I was trying to find a new one. My answer is sometimes they're being forgotten, but some of the work... it's about painful times, or times in history you don't want to be reminded of, so I have to think about it again and I don't even... I don't want to think about it. I mean it's still happening now, but I don't even want to look at the text, it's too painful for me. That would be a different way of thinking. Sometimes, it's difficult with certain subject matter to revive and relook at things like time, sometimes it takes a long time to pass before you can relook at work.

 

A: What do think the frontier that we are arriving at now in the art world is? When you began your artistic career there was this opening you were stepping into with others, where do you think that opening is now?

K: I think it's the Internet, creating your own opportunities for acknowledgment and space and audience and I think it's absolutely wonderful. I think it's wonderful that there are so many artists doing so much work and involved in their distribution of work with the Internet, with social media. That's what I think the frontier is, but that's only involved in terms of space and access and let's talk about content. I think that content is vital and I'm very concerned about trans artists and that they have a voice and representation...and diversity, so that there can be encouraging immigrants, people of color, the LGBT community... and women, that we encourage the voicing of those you don't always have access.

 

A: This is making me think about the relationship between censorship and power and how I feel that as soon as you begin censoring work your giving it this power, your saying it is too powerful to exist freely. I'm wondering if you felt that at all, a sense of power in your relationship with censorship. Or if you feel that perhaps these new voices–

K: I think you're right, I hear what you're saying. Isn't that what's so complicated about these issues? That there isn't a binary to it because at the one point, when there's a censorship, it is an opportunity to be discussing the work and that there are other experiences of censorship, like invisibility, and that concerns me. I mean anyone who belongs to Penn knows about writers that are being censored all over the world right now. We can be looking at Syria, China, Guantanamo. So I hear what your saying about that and that is true, and I have an awareness of it. That's also another reason why, when you have a voice, you have a reason to be in education because that's probably the most powerful place where you can have an effect. So yes. I think you're absolutely right about that and I think that's an important point. And at that juncture, at that time with the NEA 4, you know, the other three artists being gay and lesbian and I, being a woman, or considered gay friendly, that's what we saw that opening up. What with gay marriage, ending of "don't ask don't tell," certain laws... that time when I was creating work-- and I did have a wedding cake once with two men or two women on it--it was still like a dream. There has been progress, and so sometimes the censorship or the censor voice is right before, it's the push, that push. Yes, so within that struggle, one has to think about taking one step, one step, what step can you take? Yeah, you can think about that a long time. It's very powerful what you're looking at, and once you understand you don't have to be censored--for me, it was in the papers, it was in the Supreme Court--but there's many other ways it happens as well and how do you work with that and create your work?

 

A: What are some of those other ways?

K: Well you think about, we can look at art forms, cultural art forms. Whether it would be, the great negro spiritual, if you look in the lines of what those words are saying, how you figure out ways to be, people figure out how to speak in ways where they can speak about issues that matter, or even in abstraction. Let's say, in experimental theater and improvisation there might be reasons why people don't want to be thinking about it too much or talking about it too much, and it's very kind of light and you're just supposed to feel the body, but it comes out of a place where you can't be talking within certain political times. Humor is a way of that: black humor, Jewish humor, Irish humor, it's a way to kind of divert situations. Like Joan Rivers, she's makes the Holocaust jokes. She said, "Well, I'm getting people to talk about it."

 

A: Do you think there's a limit to that? I remember seeing Joan Rivers with you. It was a very intense experience. [Laughs]

K: Oh right! Oh, I couldn't handle it. I still can't handle it. It makes me nervous. But I love her. I find her inspiring. I think if she was born now she would be a... she's in experimental theater.

 

A: Well, thank you Karen.

K: Oh great. Thank you.