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Questions and Appearances with Curran Hatleberg

Specs

Written by

Joseph del Pesco

Questions & Appearances is a collaborative publishing endeavor launched by KADIST. Q&A follows a very simple format: Curators pose questions, and artists answer with images. The strategy is borrowed from Hans-Peter Feldmann, who has, since the 70s, answered interview questions with pictures.

Q&A offers a unique opportunity to ask difficult, fantastic, probing, abstract, and exceptional questions that might otherwise be deemed too eccentric, irrelevant, or presumptuous to surface in a standard interview. In this iteration of the format, KADIST international director Joseph del Pesco has invited the peripatetic image-maker Curran Hatleberg to answer 14 questions.

Still frictions to follow?

What’s better left?

Forget, forgive or forgo?

And wheresoever the other may find us?

Can you ever really see your own face?

What if the front door is a picture frame?

Does the moon have a language?

Did they catch it in the wind?

Which dark wish can be sung?

Are the trees immune?

What does it feel like, a father’s first breath?

Is memory a seed, only blooming years later?

When in the milk-blue night, do we sleep?

Thanks to Natalia Filimonova and ZETTAI for their collaboration in producing this article.

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Footsteps Into the Future

Morton Subotnick is a name synonymous with the evolution of electronic music. In 1963, he began collaborating with inventor Don Buchla in San Francisco to develop what is widely regarded as the world’s first analog synthesizer. His groundbreaking 1967 album, Silver Apples of the Moon, was the first music commissioned specifically for the LP format. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Subotnick appeared on Paul Holdengräber’s podcast, The Quarantine Tapes, to reflect on his life, work, and how he was navigating the challenges of the time. The conversation is now available to read online.

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The Mysterious Mr. Ashley

Robert Ashley is widely considered one of the great American composers of the post-Cage generation. Ashley created radical new forms of opera, incorporating electronic music and pioneering the use of opera in television. His multimedia projects expanded upon the form in surprising, often perplexing ways. Kurt Gottschalk spoke to Ashley in 2013 for a major feature in the 13th issue of White Fungus. At the time, Ashley was working on his opera Quicksand, which he completed before his passing in March 2014. The article can now be read online.

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Bird-like antique chatter

Bruce Russell writes about the history of New Zealand DIY electronic music, which he argues sprang from a strategy of “mis-competence”. That is a deliberate misuse of instruments and audio equipment to achieve a sound beyond the machinations of the music industry. Misuse, Russell says, is the defining feature of New Zealand sound work. This article was originally commissioned in 2012 by White Fungus for the first issue of its sister publication The Subconscious Restaurant.

Douglas Lilburn recording sounds in a barn, Wiltshire, England - Photograph taken by Peter Russell Crowe

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Amor Fati

Roger Boyce explores through lucid, evocative prose the photographic still lifes of New Zealand artist Fiona Pardington. Casting an eye back across the history of painting, Boyce addresses the rich pathos of Pardington’s photography and its visually arresting forms. He describes in them an audacious “through a glass darkly” veneration of things and their inviolable circumstance, an amor fati.

"Still Life with Iris, Skull and Magnolia", 2013, courtesy of the artist and Starkwhite, New Zealand.

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Territorial Pissing

Yao Jui-Chung is one of Taiwan’s most prolific and esteemed contemporary artists. In 2020, White Fungus editor Ron Hanson interviewed Yao for a major profile on the occasion of the artist’s mid-career retrospective, Republic of Cynic, at C-LAB in Taipei. The feature was to be published in a new online Japanese art magazine commissioned by a Tokyo art collector. After the project was aborted due to a clash over the publication’s title, this profile sat dormant in our archives for almost four years. It has now been published for the first time.

Yao Jui-Chung, "Republic of Cynic: 1989" (2020) (still). Courtesy the artist.

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The Reinvention of Justice Yeldham

Sydney noise musician Lucas Abela, AKA Justice Yeldham, is one of the avant-garde's most electrifying performers. Playing music by orally manipulating mic'd-up shards of glass, he employs a range of unusual vocal and rhythmic techniques. His performances can be extreme, even bloody, but are also notable for the rich diversity of sounds he achieves through this rudimentary instrument. White Fungus editor Ron Hanson spoke to Abela about his unique musical trajectory and how a pandemic-enforced break from the stage altered his approach.

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Batlove Redux

In the wake of the Covid pandemic, bats have once again been unfairly maligned. As the go-to scapegoat of choice for many, some even called for the mammals’ eradication. In Batlove Redux, Tessa Laird, author of the book Bat, part of Reaktion’s much-loved Animal series, mounts an impassioned defense of these marvelous creatures. Laird celebrates bats, recalling art and literature inspired by the mammals, while raising the alarm over their plight amidst a warming planet. She recalls her own heartbreaking experiences volunteering to rescue flying-foxes during forest fires at Yarra Bend Park in Australia.

A spectacled flying-fox (pteropus conspicillatus) feeding on blue quandong fruit (elaeocarpus Grandis) in australia. Copyright Merlin Tuttle’s bat conservation.

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An Interview with Wang Fujui

In the realms of Taiwanese noise, sound, and media art, no figure is more influential than Wang Fujui. As an artist, publisher, curator, and organizer, Wang’s contribution to establishing these fields in Taiwan has been indispensable. In 2014, Alistair Noble interviewed Wang about his artistic trajectory. The interview was first published in the 14th print issue of White Fungus but is now available here.

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The Pleasure Principle: Part One

Do animals create and enjoy music on a similar level to humans? Or are their magnificent displays of sound merely functional? Tobias Fischer, co-editor of the book Animal Music, lays out the arguments for and against, drawing upon a trove of research and creative works by artists and scientists alike.

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Modern Marco Polos

In 1959, Wallis Islander Aloï Pilioko met Russian French artist Nicolaï Michoutouchkine in what is now Vanuatu. The encounter proved pivotal as Michoutouchkine encouraged Piliko to become an artist, and he would go on to become one of the most famous Pacific artists of his generation. The pair became inseparable and began a remarkable decades-long adventure of traveling, collecting, exhibiting, and making Oceanic art all over the world. Peter Brunt wrote about the unique artistic collaboration for White Fungus.

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The Metamorphosis of Taipei Popcorn

In the space of only a few years, Taipei Popcorn, the creation of New Zealander Nick van Halderen, has emerged as one of Taiwan’s most iconic drag queens. Whether performing at underground clubs, doing photo shoots for Vogue, or starring in art films, Popcorn has become an omnipresent and pivotal figure in the island’s vibrant queer culture. Yet surprisingly, prior to relocating to Taiwan, Van Halderen had never ventured into the world of drag. White Fungus editor Ron Hanson spoke with Popcorn about their unusual journey and gained a window into their personal transformation and Taiwan’s surging queer scene.

Popcorn and Wu Ke-Xi in the film Future Shock, directed by Su Hui-Yu.

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Becoming the Masters

Avant-garde jazz group The Art Ensemble of Chicago has been breaking boundaries for more than five decades. Kurt Gottschalk takes a deep dive into the group's history and its continuing evolution in the present. "A revolutionary who’s unwilling to change won’t likely be revolutionary for long," Gottschalk writes. Read an extended excerpt from the author's feature which runs over 30 pages in the new 17th issue of White Fungus.

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Alienation as Art Form

Social Dissonance is a handbook published by the artist, performer and theorist Mattin which contextualizes his composition "Social Dissonance'', performed at documenta 14 in 2017. The score dispenses with conventional musical instruments and instead instructs the performer to make the audience their instrument. Music cataloger Colin Morgan reviews Social Dissonance and considers how he would catalogue Mattin's disruptive medium.

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Hell Is the Main Attraction

In this series of wide-angle polaroids, Yao Jui-Chung photographs Madou Temple's animatronic religious display and other similar depictions of hell from throughout Taiwan and Singapore.

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Violent Mirage

Betty Apple is a musician and performance artist based in Taipei. Apple engages in what she terms "live art", intensely physical performances that deconstruct tightly composed constructions of corporeal and aural space. Advancing concepts of the feminine, Apple reworks the leftover rickety architecture of Taiwan's former military state while exploring new postcolonial subjectivities in its present reality, democracy saturated in hypercapitalism. Kyra Kordoski wrote about Apple's work for White Fungus.

Betty Apple (鄭宜蘋) performing at Sublate, presented by Liquid Architecture and White Fungus, at Korner, Taipei, 2017. Photo Etang Chen (陳藝堂).

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Wang Fujui and the Fascination of Mysterious Sounds

Wang Fujui is one of the pioneers of Taiwanese noise music and sound art. Wang emerged in the 1990s during the explosion of Taiwanese experimental music following the lifting of martial law. In 1993, he founded NOISE, Taiwan's first zine and record label dedicated to experimental music. Wang's own work ranges from ecstatic extreme noise to sublime sound and light installations. Alistair Noble wrote about Wang's unique body of work for White Fungus.

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The Pleasure Principle: Part Two

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So why should we want a paradigm of Asian art anyway?

David Frazier charts the growth of inter-Asian dialogue and networks in the art world amidst the fissures of globalization and a still-dominant Western paradigm for viewing art.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul + Chai Siris, “Sunshower”, 2017. Mixed media. Installation view: SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, The National Art Center, Tokyo / Mori Art Museum, 2017. Photo: Kioku Keizo. Photo courtesy: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

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Subverting the Voice of God

Nicholas Thoburn's "Anti-Book" is a 'book' that interrogates the book-form. In his critique of this beloved commodity, Thoburn challenges our understanding of books as transcendent moral and aesthetic objects unsullied by commerce. Rather, he says, books are pulsing with capitalist relations. Thoburn proposes instead a "communism of textual matter". White Fungus editor Ron Hanson has been corresponding with Thoburn and, in the first of a series of articles based on this communication, introduces Thoburn's concept of the anti-book and its historical precedents.

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To Sleep, Perchance to Hear

Kurt Gottschalk attended a New York performance of Max Richter's SLEEP, in which audience members are invited to stay overnight at a concert, slowing down to share a collective, somatic experience of music. Gottschalk reported on the experience for White Fungus. Speaking to other composers on the topic, and revisiting historic works, he extended his inquiry to consider at length this different process of listening.

Max Richter and the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) performing Sleep at Spring Studios, New York, 2018. Photos Mike Terry.

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Flatness vs Matsutake

Kyra Kordoski revisits the pantheon-building art theory of Clement Greenberg and its connection to modernity through the prism of the matsutake mushroom.

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Floating Vision

Sam Wallman is an award-winning Melbourne comics artist who utilizes journalism and the expanded canvas of the web to detail the lives of his subjects while delivering a penetrating social message. Drawing on his co-pursuits as a trade unionist and political activist, Wallman explores topics ranging from the history of trade unionism, meth use among gay, bi, and queer men, to the arbitrariness of human detention. Tim Bollinger interviewed Wallman and wrote an overview of his work for White Fungus.

Sam Wallman, "So Below: A Comic About Land" (comic excerpt), supported by Nomad Projects

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Strange Days on Lake Rotomahana

New Zealand's Pink and White Terraces were dubbed the "8th wonder of the world." But in 1886, they were lost forever in a single night of violent volcanic destruction. Tim Bollinger wrote about the Terraces and their storied history for White Fungus.

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Reawakening the Killing-Tone

Lin Chi-Wei is a key member of the pioneering generation of Taiwanese noise/sound artists that emerged in the 1990s. Lin has made landmark contributions as a writer, performer, artist, and member of Z.S.L.O (Zero Sound Liberation Organization). In Lin’s Tape Work, the artist sits in the center of the audience and unfurls a tape of ribbon or paper upon which characters are hand-printed or embroidered. Passed hand to hand through the crowd, each audience member/participant vocalizes the succession of phonetic symbols. The result is the creation of a multi-headed human tape machine. In the Taiwanese-language version of the work, Lin reactivates the “killing tone” or (Rù tone 入聲) from the medieval Chinese seven-tone system.

Lin Chi-Wei, "Tape Music", simplified Chinese version, 2012, photo by Damien Owen Trainor

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The Pig and Its Friend

Kalisolaite ‘Uhila is a Tongan performance artist based in New Zealand. In his 2011 work "Pigs in the Yard", 'Uhila challenged western notions and treatment of the pig. In traditional Tongan culture, the pig is sacred. 'Uhila's performance afforded pigs this reverence while challenging audiences to reappraise their relationship to these sentient creatures.

Kalisolaite ‘Uhila, “Pigs in the Yard”, 2011, documentation of performance, Aotea Square Performance Arcade, Auckland

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Uncanny Processes

Fast-advancing AI technologies are throwing our notions of authorship and creativity again into flux. In creating their seventh album, Blossoms, the electronic music duo Emptyset created a machine-learning system to interpret their back catalog and recordings of improvisations. The musicians sought to identify results beyond mimicry and which constituted unique sonic expressions in and of themselves. What emerged was a bizarre, alien logic. Tobias Fischer interviewed the duo about the process.

Cover art by Clayton Welham from Emptyset LP Bossoms, 2019

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Wasteland Utopia

Noise music in Taiwan emerged in the 1990s, a tumultuous period of social upheaval following the lifting of 38 years of martial law. In the frenzied atmosphere of street clashes and political demonstrations, artists explored previously taboo subjects and experimented with radical forms. It was in this context that Taiwan's noise movement was born. Jeph Lo witnessed the evolution and reflects on that messy but protean time. His article is accompanied by photographs of political demonstrations of the period by Leon Tsai and Tsai Ming-Te.

Street scenes in front of the Legislative Yuan and surrounding area during the 520 Farmers Protest (520農民運動),Taipei, 1988. Photos Leon Tsai (蔡文祥).

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Of the Other Places

Sumitomo Fumihiko writes about the video works of Okinawan artist Chikako Yamashiro. Sumitomo writes that the artist deals with local political issues and a history of sexual violence by enveloping them into poetic meditations on nature and the instability of human desire.

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Making the Stones Sing

Paul Celan is often called the greatest of postwar European poets. Barry Schwabsky looks back on Celan's life and work following the 100th anniversary of the poet's birth, and the 50th of his death.

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you're subverting things

The Brazil-based artist duo Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca produce films blurring the lines between fiction and documentary. Collaborating with their performers—often figures on the margins—the duo creates works that raise notions of visibility, self-representation, and the subversion of dominant cultural forms. Marcella Faustini spoke to the artists and wrote about their work.

Bárbara Wagner_Benjamin de Burca_2017_Estás Vendo Coisas

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Once Upon a Time

Roger Boyce interviews Pavel Pepperstein for White Fungus. The enigmatic Russian painter of hallucinatory landscapes is also known as a writer, critic, art theorist, fashion designer, and rapper.

Pavel Pepperstein, ”Three old men talking and the Broken suprema”, 2015.

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The Divisive Moment

Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographs of the last days of the Chinese Civil War were exhibited at Taipei Fine Arts Museum in late 2020. The exhibition was scheduled to be held in Beijing in 2021 but was canceled due to COVID-19. David Frazier writes about the exhibition and its complicated surrounding context.

“Celebrations for the 9th anniversary of the People’s Republic”, Beijing, 1 October 1958

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Translating the Personal

Kurt Gottschalk speaks to Charmaine Lee about her ever-expanding musical practice.

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A Kind of Circuity

Nicola Trezzi interviewed Slavs and Tatars about topics ranging from pickles to the collective's embrace of antithetical thought.

Slavs and Tatars, "A Monobrow Manifesto", 2011. Screen print on balloons, installation view at the Sharjah Biennale, 2011. Courtesy of The Third Line, Dubai. Photo: Elizabeth Rappaport.

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Spin into Being

Kyra Kordoski speaks to performance artist Melati Suryodarmo and dives into her deep corpus of durational works.

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Ghosts, Radio Waves, Spiritualism and Contextualism in the Art of Aki Onda

Kurt Gottschalk talks to Aki Onda about channelling the spirit of Nam June Paik.

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Listening to Tagaloa

Leafa Wilson writes about Paula Schaafhausen's installation series Ebbing Tagaloa, featuring Tagaloa (Polynesian God of the Ocean) figures molded from coconut oil and sand.

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Double Knowledge

In one of her last major interviews, Carolee Schneemann spoke to White Fungus editor Ron Hanson and looked back on her life, stretching back to her early childhood drawings and adolescent adventures in Mexico.

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The Pleasure Principle: Part Three

A varied tit (Sittiparus varius), a perching bird of the tit family common to Northeast Asia. Image licensed under CC0 1.0.

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Activating Autonomy

Taipei-based artist Anchi Lin (Ciwas Tahos) creates work dealing with the impact of colonization on the First Nations Atayal people of Taiwan while exploring the possibilities within her Indigenous culture for activating a queer space. In Lin's recent artworks, she seeks to recreate the spirit of Temahahoi, a place, according to Atayal oral stories, where a self-governed community of women resided independent of men.

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