"There is a type of beauty in all my work," Peter Marra says "I know my poetry isn’t easy to take. The veneer must be stripped, as we all have personas that we present to the masses, we should look under the mask." Underneath that mask is a New York that is no more and its haunted and traumatized characters who are still there on the margins, pushed further and further out by a Disneyfication bordering on obscene. The worlds that Marra narrates are not all that different from the one's found in Samuel R. Delany's Times Square red, Times Square Blue, in a city where cross cultural communication was once much more likely to take place than in its currently gentrified form. Marra's work sits along a continuum of writers who consistently push boundaries as a reflection of the kinds of devastated worlds they've lived in, Kathy Acker, Lydia Lunch, Dennis Cooper, Marra's work is a unique part of that larger story in that the bulk of it takes place through poetry. An alternate, urban Illiad, a pained portrait of a suffering people and the myriad ways in which they attempt to reconcile the hells that they find themselves in. "The biggest misconception about my work is that I write about sex and violence for their own sake," Marra says, "I write about sex and violence in an attempt to find salvation." The balance is maintained, as Peter says, because he's lived it, and the characters are often real people, not pieces of fiction. We might wish things were otherwise, but for many things are not otherwise. And those stories, harsh and unforgiving as they may be, must be told lest their voices become trapped. In many ways Marra's poems are the unleashing of narratives that, much like the Disneyfication of Times Square itself, we've become all too comfortable papering over.


AHC: Fill us in a bit on your artist trajectory. When did you first start writing, how long before you first saw publication, what and who have been your influences throughout the years, have they changed at all since you began writing and where do you see or situate yourself and your work now?

Peter: I wrote my first book, an illustrated children’s book at the tender age of 6. It was composed of about a dozen drawings, one per page. Under each drawing was a descriptive sentence. I don’t remember much of the project but I do recall one page that had a drawing of an airplane on fire. The caption read: “The people are on a plane. It is going to crash. They are very afraid.” I was inspired to create this book because for years my parents had been reading “Where the Wild things are” and Dr. Seuss to me. I was impressed by the general weirdness of these books and wanted to create my own. My mother had always encouraged me to read and I read all the classics, my reading was never censored. My family lived in an Italian Catholic neighborhood and I attended parochial grade school and high school, so I had religion shoved down my throat. This was Gravesend Brooklyn, but it might have as well have been Small-town, USA. The people were very provincial and I never fit in, so I retreated into fantasy.

I would have to say that once I got to Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry and fiction, my path started to form. I wanted to be a horror writer, gradually moving on to Lovecraft by the time I was in early adolescence. I wanted to read every fictional piece in the library, and eagerly awaited the time I could get an adult library card which would gain me admittance to the pleasures of the grownups. There I discovered Henry Miller, the Beats Kerouac, Corso, Ginsberg, Burroughs, cutting edge poetry, the Dadaists and the surrealists. I took a fancy to Joyce Mansour, Tristan Tzara and Andre Breton. Artaud was a major influence with his Theater of Cruelty. Through Bob Dylan’s music I became acquainted with Rimbaud. It was about this time I started gravitating towards poetry – I liked the immediacy and fluidity of the poetic form. I was also exploring the associated fine artists of these movements such as Duchamp and Man Ray. If I didn’t leave Brooklyn soon I felt I would cut my throat.

In 1973 I started going to the Saint Marks Church for poetry readings to hear Ginsberg, Corso and Burroughs. Burroughs in particular had a big influence on me, his melding of science fiction, politics and sex made my brain melt. “Naked Lunch,” and the works of Hubert Selby taught me that narrative could be molded and experimented with. I realized I could deviate from the standard. Selby’s work like “Like Last Exit to Brooklyn” and especially “The Room” got me started thinking about the implications of sex and violence and vengeance in everyday life. They also introduced me to an underworld of society that I didn’t know existed and that it was ok to be fascinated by it and write about it.

I attended one of Patti Smith’s early readings in ’72 an d ’73. Punk was not even inexistence formally at this time although there were rumblings that things were about to change. As I mentioned, I was already interested in writing and had made some attempts at poetry in imitation of my heroes but it seemed unattainable to me. Patti made it seem like it was possible. I think it was her rawness and conviction and foul-mouthed gutsiness that drove the nails of inspiration home. I began hanging out in the East Village bookshops: Eastside Books and the 8th Street Bookshop. I also ventured uptown to the Gotham Bookmart.

Later on in my junior and senior years of high school I started to hang around in CBGB’s, heard and met many who would become the downtown luminaries of the punk scene: Tom Verlaine, Patti, Deborah Harry, Joey Ramone. This was a time of Sturm und Drang for me. I wanted to create pain and pleasure through art, especially the written word, but I was also interested in painting and film. Drugs and alcohol were beginning to come into my life (and would almost take me out permanently). I went to Bard College for 2 years and dropped out, ended up in the East Village making attempts at writing, music and art. I was all over the place, didn’t know what to do or why I was doing it. I had some poetry pieces published, but the work and I were very unfocused. I loved the punk writers such as Patti, Kathy Acker, Richard Hell and especially Lydia Lunch. Lydia’ drug-fueled nihilism and the way she dissected our present lives impressed me. The whole No Wave scene was made for me: total annihilation in a city that was rotten to its very core. I lived a Noir life and I vacillated between contentment and despair.

Starting in High School I began hanging out in times square in the 70’s and into the 80’s. I made the acquaintance of many of the sex workers from that era that populated the area as well as some of the famous performers from the golden age of porn: Annie Sprinkle, Vanessa del Rio, Marlene Willoughby, Velvet Summers as well as many who were never famous, those who became the detritus of the area. They were interesting, weird, wonderful characters: they pushed the envelope or died trying. I frequented the peepshows, strip joints and grindhouse theaters. I ran around with addicts and sex workers. I also consider this attempt to engulf everything and maybe annihilate myself to be part of my artistic training. I would frequently spend the afternoon at museums and fueled on one drug or another end up in Times Square roaming around. I was a lost angel in the sex-ozone. One place that I frequented was the Avon 7 which was situated on Seventh Avenue over the very center of Hell. I immortalized one night there in the piece “Amorphous Hustlers of the Avon 7 Cinema,” published in Danse Macabre du Jour. Here’s a link:

https://dmdujour.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/peter-marra-amorphous-hustlers-of-the-avon-7-cinema/

I get very emotional when I see art and artists that I have idolized in person. The First time I saw a Francis Bacon painting in the flesh, I wept. The same happened when I saw Duchamp’s “The Bride stripped Bare” and Modigliani’s portrait of Jeanne Heubertene.

At this point in my life I would say my writing exists to explore the dark undercurrent of life, whether it’s sex, drugs or the depravity of our political system. The people in my pieces are victims constantly trying to find some sort of redemption and frequently failing. I write through the lenses of punk and the grindhouse, two genres that create reality through a hyper-sensitized reaction to pain and pleasure with black humor thrown in occasionally. It comes close to exploitation sometimes but there is a deeper goal present: to survive, to destroy the status quo. Some people have accused me of being misogynistic. (so far only male critics have made this accusation). If they’re saying that, then I know they haven’t scratched the surface of my writing. I could maybe comprehend if they thought my work was misanthropic because my work might be interpreted as hating all mankind (it’s not), but misogynistic it isn’t.

AHC: You have said that films play a huge role as far as influences go, and much of your work is very cinematic, what is the relationship for you between these two forms and how have they blended together in your poetry Who are some of the filmmakers and films that have made the biggest impact on you?

Peter: Film has influenced me greatly. When I was a child I was really interested in the horror film genre. I idolized Roger Corman, F.W. Murnau, the works of the Hammer Studio Directors and the great horror actors. I adored the trip into the unknow, the “dark side,” they provided, the realm where sex and fear are indiscernible.  

When I was a kid, my parents would often take me to Coney Island, the sleaze was fascinating to me. I was probably only about 7 or 8 but I remember a specific incident where my father and I were waiting to ride the famous Coney Island carousel. The carny running the ride was a biker. He had relatively long greasy hair, filthy jeans and a knife dangling off his belt. He also possessed many tattoos and his arms were riddled with holes. “Daddy what’s those things on that man’s arms?” I asked. “Tattoos.” “No, the other things, the holes.” My father squirmed. He whispered to me, “track marks.” He said he’d explain when we got home. This must have been about 1965 or so. Years later I discovered Kenneth Anger’s “Scorpio Rising” – his film about the Coney Island biker gangs in the 60’s. I like to think that Anger was shooting his landmark film at the same time I was hanging out in Coney Island with my dad.

I discovered the French new wave and the Italian neo-realists and Ingmar Bergman in my freshman year of high school. “Through a Glass Darkly,” was on television late one night. This film floored me: a fractured heroine, hallucinations, the statement that God is a spider: this caused my Catholic Education to go haywire. I was in adolescence so sex was becoming very important to me. I viewed the sexual act as a mystical trip. Women were something to be explored and cherished, they contained mysteries to be unearthed. Godard’s muse Anna Karina was also my muse.

At one point in the late 70’s I came across Amos Vogel’s “Film as a Subversive Art.” What a treasure trove of images and theories of underground film! It opened up a whole new world of film that I was only vaguely aware of: Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Warhol. The images alone fueled my creative mind. I love Warhol’s art and film, the way he explores the freak world and the mundane. The way he makes us look at ourselves.

When I write I usually envision the work as a screenplay or film. In fact I think that many of my poems would make great experimental and experiential short films. Film possesses immediacy and I want the poem to have the same effect.

Bergman’s “Persona” and “Hour of the Wolf,” should be required viewing for all artists especially writers. The manipulation and fluidity of the images, the wrenching emotion forces oneself to explore. I’ve seen both many times in many stages of life: adolescence, youth and middle age. They generate new found fears and discoveries when viewed at every stage of life.

Speaking of which, I recently saw Jean Eustace’s “Mother and the Whore.” I first saw it at the NY Film Festival in the 70’s and loved it. It’s the 3 and ½ hour chronicle of a man’s relationship with two women and their decay and attempts at salvation. Each character assumes the personality of the title in different sections of the film. Seeing it at 57 after being married twice, getting sober and having a child, the film struck right to my core. I identified with each character and at the film’s end I was crying. These emotions are what I want to rip from the readers. My writing is confrontational. I want the reader to think and dream and search.

I strongly identify with Pasolini. He was a contradiction. He was a Marxist Scholar ostracized by the Communist Party, an atheist who made the greatest film about Jesus ever filmed, but he was a poet first and he remained one to the end. His masterpiece “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” is a brutal study of power and commodity fetishism. As he said, “power commercializes the body, it transforms the body into goods.”

Through my exploration of the exploitation genre, I was influenced by Russ Meyer – I enjoyed his concept of the Super Vixen, the violent woman who takes advantage of the dumb male. In all his films the female is the strong protagonist and the male is something to be manipulated or destroyed. The stylized violence of Dario Argento and the other Giallo directors has great appeal for me, especially “Suspiria.” I like Argento because he sometimes incudes a murder scene that doesn’t really make sense, but he includes it because the color and rhythm and style of the murder is appealing and gets under your skin. Sometimes through reading or viewing a violent action we can achieve an epiphany or catharsis.

When I write I see a visual narrative of some kind (usually disjointed time) that goes forward then winds back upon itself transposing film, a visual medium into poetry, a subjective medium

AHC: People who are familiar with your work know that you broach very difficult, controversial and possibly triggering material and topics. Personally I find that you have struck an incredible balance that is hard for most writers to maintain, where the poems could but don't veer into exploitation or mere shock value, but actually try to say some very important things albeit through a very harsh, unforgiving landscape. What do you think the biggest misconception about your work is? What are the common reproaches that you receive and if you were to clarify and make a stand on your work what would it be?

Peter: First, I have to say I despise “PC” people, self-righteous motherfuckers. I must confess that I get a big thrill hearing that my work is a “trigger.” It’s my childhood wanting to be noticed! I love to push buttons and envelopes, rip envelopes apart. People have been lulled into a false sense of security by our current media state. They would rather watch Reality Television and elect a reality TV star as the President, than try and confront their inner addictions, loved-loss, pain and suffering inherent in everyday life. As a child, I found the mundane terrifying. I felt trapped. I had to destroy the boundaries. I think I maintain the balance because I lived through a lot of the incidents I describe graphically. I usually use dialogue as I remember it and many of my characters are people I knew in real life.

I remember one guest editor from “Sein und Werden” sent me the following gem:

                            “I felt uncomfortable at several stages whilst reading these poems, which may well have been your intention.
                             You seem to be making and reinforcing a link between consumerism and the Heisenberg principle, with
                             the female protagonist who populates all three of these pieces being at times manipulated by her own desires and
                             the need to consume, conform, perform and be part of the TV generation… As a diatribe against the way the
                            media controls our actions, you make some valid points. However, at times I felt that the writing veered
                            towards torture porn. I am not in any way saying that this was your intention and it may well be that I
                            should have a stronger tolerance and let the writer make his points as harshly as is necessary…”

That was my intention, to make the reader uncomfortable (not sure where he was going with the Heisenberg principle –measuring uncertainty)? I guess he wanted me to be wittier. The poems he was referring to described a long -ago self-destructive relationship. It was painful for me to write about it and it hurt that he couldn’t see beyond the implied and sometimes real violence. Torture porn was not on my radar. Other editors have said I ignore the beauty in the world, but I do not. There is a type of beauty in all my work. I know my poetry isn’t easy to take. The veneer must be stripped, as we all have personas that we present to the masses, we should look under the mask. It hurts, that’s why I include some black humor that borders on exploitation. It gets to be grand guignol sometimes. Like you said, my poetry doesn’t forgive. Since I kicked a substance abuse problem, I feel that writing is now my addiction. I must write every day. My writing explores addiction, loss, betrayal, secretes and the pain that they cause.

By the way, the poems mentioned in the above rejection were quickly accepted by another journal and received a few compliments. The biggest misconception about my work is that I write about sex and violence for their own sake. I write about sex and violence in an attempt to find salvation.

AHC: Does music figure into some of your influences, if so how and who are some of those influences?

Peter: Many writers right in a silent pristine environment. I don’t. I write with music blasting, movies playing, on the subway. I grab dialogue and impressions from all around. One usually inspires the other. I think in this way I’m recreating the environment in which I experienced a lot of my life that I am extracting for the written page.

As far as influences I’ve always liked the British Invasion, 60’s garage punk (13th Floor Elevators), NY Punk, NY No-Wave (Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Contortions, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, DNA, Mars). For the past few years I’ve really enjoyed listening to the soundtracks of Ennio Morricone, Goblin and any music from Italian and French Horror and the Nouvelle Vague. The soundtrack to “Suspiria” is a big favorite. I try to give a rhythm to my writing through the music.

AHC: Tell us a bit about your two most recent books, what are the themes at work for you in them and how do they differ or complement each other?

Peter: I have two poetry collections out now, “Peep-O-Rama,” published by Hammer & Anvil Books and “Vanished Faces,” published by Writing Knights Press. They complement each other since both are based on my experiences in NY’s East Village and Times Square in the 70’s to 80’s. “Peep-O-Rama” was originally published as a Kindle book. This new edition is a hardcopy book and it also incorporates another e-book of mine called “Sins of the Go-Go Girls,” published by Why Vandalism? Press a long time ago. In 2002 I read that the last peepshow in Times Square was closing, the final coffin nails had been driven into Sleazy Times Square’s coffin, a product of the Giuliani administration’s rape of the area to make it a wholesome environment for Disney and tourists, so “Peep-O-Rama” was born. It is my experiences in that neighborhood before the cleansing and before the gentrification. It contains portraits and describes playtime among the hookers, pimps, sex-workers, sex-show performers, drug addicts and flotsam seen through the eyes of Giallo, erotica and general murder and mayhem. The experiences are all real.

“Vanished Faces,” has many of the same themes but there are some undercurrents in place. The title comes from a quote by Thomas de Quincey in his “Suspiria de Profundis,” a sequel to his “Confessions of an English Opium Eater.” In it he describes the Three Mothers who rule the earth: Mater Lachrymarum – Our Lady of Tears, Mater Suspiriorum—Our Lady of Sighs and Mater Tenebrarum—Our Lady of Darkness. The book is composed of poems, each of which describes the rooms of a hotel. In each of these rooms something unsavory has occurred. It’s a reflection of the SRO’s I used to stay in when on my binges. I can still hear the moans and screams that came through the paper-thin walls of neighboring rooms. These SRO’s have all been gentrified and re-done – mostly by Best Western, I believe.


AHC: Do you have any words of advice for writers struggling with the creative process and who have perhaps yet to see publication and are experiencing huge doubts about what they do? What kinds of things have helped you in times of self-doubt/artistic-desperation? 

Peter: First of all writers should just trust their instincts, get rid of doubt (easier said than done). Read as much as possible, listen to your inner thoughts and hallucinations. Take a chance in your writing and art. Watch as many films as humanly possible, the more non-mainstream, the better. Too bad there are no new music movements like punk around anymore. Listen to the punk rockers of the 70’s and 80’s. Listen to No Wave until your ears bleed. Derange your senses like Rimbaud (you don’t need drugs to do it). Explore the unusual, explore museums. Hang out with other writers and artists wherever you live, we’re out there. Go to open mic’s. Go underground. Most importantly, write and re-write. If you don’t feel inspiration, write anyway. Don’t listen to people who say your work doesn’t have it. They’re full of shit. I think one must develop a confidence in the path that one has chosen. I have never read a writing text book or an “Artist’s Way,” type of book, maybe they help but I’m suspicious.

A lot of times not being published is a result of not submitting to the right publications. Sign up for Duotrope and find the journal that’s the good fit for your work. I’m a poetry editor for Literary Orphans, they are very open minded as is “Danse Macabre” edited by Adam Henry Carriere and “Unlikely Stories” edited by Jonathan Penton. I like Anti-Heroin Chic because you’re flexible and willing to take a chance. Also, you give exposure to writers, artists and musicians.

When I was starting to write as a child, I was told that it was a waste of time by my parents. I kept my writing activities secret for many years which partly led to substance abuse problems. Eventually I kicked the stuff and realized I had to take a stand. Don’t hurt yourself, the people next door will do enough of that to you.

AHC: Any new projects or upcoming events/readings you'd like to tell people about?

​Peter: We just returned from a trip to Italy to visit Rome and Florence. I’m Italian and this was the first time I have ever been to the land of my ancestors. Both cities were amazing in their stature and artwork. I slightly preferred Rome since its origins go back 2500 years, I could sense the phantoms and the auras and the silhouettes.  Its gorgeousness carries a sinister underbelly to it which thrills me and arouses me. Anyway, while browsing the many small shops of the local artisans in Rome I came upon a window which is providing the inspiration for my next book. Not sure what I will call it but the phrase “broken dolls” will be incorporated in the title. I started writing it in Rome and Florence, similar to “Vanished Faces,” which I started in Paris.

I have a featured reading on 10/25/2017 in NYC at Phillip Giambri’s “Rimes of the Ancient Mariner Poetry Series” at the 3 of Cups on 1st Avenue in the East Village, NYC.

I am also featuring at the Risk of Discovery Reading in November 2017 and at Richard Jefferey Newman’s 1st Tuesday reading in Jackson Heights Queens sometime in 2018.  

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​Thicker ​Than​ Water​

   Six ​​years ​​ago—I ​am​ ​ ​twelve​ ​and​ ​I ​​hate ​grocery​ ​stores.​ I​​ ​associate​ ​them ​​with​ apologies.​ “I’m​ ​sorry,​ ​she ​​doesn’t​ ​know​ ​any​ ​better,”​ ​I​ say​ ​​to​ ​the​ ​suburban​ ​mom​ ​with​ ​the​ ​baby​ ​bjorn. ​I​ bite​ my​ ​nails​ on​​ ​the​ ​car​ ​ride​ ​home.​ ​Moving ​​day—my​ ​parents​ ​cry,​ ​she​ ​leaves.​ ​I​ go​ ​​to ​​gymnastics practice​ ​for​ four​ ​hours.​ ​Tears​ ​​roll ​down​ ​ ​their ​​cheeks, ​sweat​ ​ ​droplets​ ​roll​ ​down​ ​mine.​ ​Three​ years​ ago—I​ ​wonder ​​why​ ​I​ ​don’t​ ​miss​ ​her​ ​yet.​ An​ ​​entry​ ​from​ ​my​ ​journal:​ “I​ ​worry​ ​that ​my​ ​empathy​ is fundamentally​ stunted,”​ ​​I​ write.​ ​“I​ ​do​ ​not ​identify​ ​​with​ ​the​ ​experience​ ​of​ ​unconditional​ ​love​ that​ her ​​autism ​​is​ supposed​ ​​to​ ​incite​ ​in​ ​me.”​ Two​ ​months​ ​ ​ago—she​ ​throws​ ​me​ ​to ​​the ​​ground​ with​​ ​a carelessness ​​that ​​terrifies​ me.​ ​​The​ ​tile ​​brands​ ​my​ ​cheek.​ ​“Does​ she​ ​love​ ​ ​me?” ​​I​ ​wonder. ​​Her​ eyes​ are​ ​bright​ ​blue​ ​and​ ​empty. ​​I​ ​stand ​​up.​ ​I ​​am ​scared.​ ​I ​hug​ ​ ​her.

   There ​are​ ​two​ ​narratives​ ​​that​ ​I​ ​have​ ​heard ​​that ​describe​ ​the​ ​experience​ ​​of ​having​ ​​an immediate ​family​ ​member ​​with ​autism.​ ​Narrative ​​one—your ​​family member ​​is ​diagnosed​ ​and​ since ​​you ​​are​ ​human, ​​you​ ​mourn.​ ​You​ ​blame ​​yourself,​ you​ ​try​ ​to​ ​​fix ​it,​​ ​then​ you ​​learn acceptance.​ You​ ​ ​share ​your​ ​ ​story, ​exhibit​ ​ ​resilience,​ and​ ​​become​ ​a​ ​bigger​ person.​ ​​In​ my​ experience, ​this​ ​ ​narrative​ is​​ ​a​ damaging​ ​illusion.​ ​​I​ ​feel ​​guilt​ ​eat ​​at ​​me ​​every​ ​time​ ​I​ watch​ siblings​ share ​​a​ ​meal​ ​or​ ​a​ ​laugh ​because​ ​​I​ start​ ​inventing ​​new ​​personalities ​​for​ ​her—personalities​ ​that aren’t ​​obscured ​by​ ​violence​ ​ and​ ​ ​disconnect. ​​I​ ​do ​​not​ ​feel ​that​ ​I​​ ​became​ ​someone​ with​ ​a​ superhuman ​capability​ ​​to​ ​accept. ​​Narrative​ ​two—your​ ​family​ member​ ​is​​ ​diagnosed ​​and ​you​ never​ ​get​ over​ ​it.​​ ​Your​ life​ ​becomes​ ​filled ​up​​ ​with​ ​the ​speech​ ​therapy,​ ​IEPs, ​averted​​ eyes,​ ​ ​blatant stares, ​and​ ​apologies​ ​that​ ​a​ ​child​ with​ ​severe​ ​​autism ​spectrum​ ​​disorder​ ​tends​ ​to​ provoke.​ ​​You learn​ ​to​ hate​ ​ ​the​ ​pity​ ​of​ ​others.​ ​You ​​cease ​​to​ ​be​ ​yourself​ ​and​ ​you​ ​become ​a​​ ​caregiver—someone who​ does​ ​​not​ ​think ​about​ ​​their​ ​own ​​future ​because​ ​​there​ are​ ​​too ​many​ ​“right​ ​now”​ ​problems ​that​ divert​ ​your ​​attention. ​​This​ is​​ ​not​ ​my​ ​narrative​ ​either.​ I​​ ​do​ ​not​ ​feel​ ​as​ ​though​ ​I​ ​was​ immersed​ in​ autism.​ If​ ​​anything, ​I​​ ​tended​ towards​ ​​escapism. ​Gymnastics,​ ​swimming,​ writing,​ ​reading,​ ​​even chores—anything​ to​​ avoid​ ​living​ ​in​ ​the​ ​suffocating​ bubble​ ​​of ​all​​ ​things​ ​autism.

   Although​ ​accused​ ​of​ ​being ​​a ​​platitude,​ ​it ​​remains ​​true: ​​if​ ​you​ ​know ​​one ​​autistic ​​person, you​ ​know ​one​ ​autistic ​​person.​ ​I ​​know​ ​my​ sister,​ ​ ​Sarah.​ ​She​ ​laughs​ ​loud​ ​at​ ​things​ I​​ ​don’t understand.​ ​She ​​is ​​violent​ when​ ​she​ ​​is​ ​frustrated; ​sometimes​ ​​very ​​violent.​ ​She​ ​is​ the​ ​reason​ ​​I​ ​love the ​movie​ Lilo​​ and Stitch ​​and​ ​know ​the​ ​​ ​words​ ​to​ ​most​ ​Ke$ha​ ​songs.​​ ​She​ is​ ​autistic.​

   This​ is​​ my​ ​narrative:​ ​I​ remember​ ​​all ​​of ​​the ​​moments ​when​ ​Sarah​ ​​and​ ​I ​have ​laughed​ together​ ​because​ ​they​ are​ ​​scarce​ ​and​ ​precious. ​I​​ ​learned​ ​my ​parents’​​ ​limits ​when​ ​I​ ​was ​very​ young​ ​because​ ​the​ ​care​ ​Sarah​ ​demands​ ​stretched​ ​them ​​thin​ and​ ​​wound ​them​ tight. ​I​​ ​have​ ​felt ​the​ need​ to​​ ​shoulder​ ​jobs,​ ​responsibilities,​ ​and​ classes​ ​with​ ​​the​ ​misplaced​ ​intention​ ​of​ ​doubling ​my​ accomplishments​ in​​ an​​ ​effort​ ​to​ ​compensate​ ​for​ ​my​ ​parents’ ​​pain.​ ​I​ ​still​ ​struggle​ ​to​ ​accept​ help​ when​ I​​ ​need​ ​it ​​because​ ​some ​​part​ ​of ​​me ​​still​ ​believes​ ​that​ ​my​ ​needs​ ​are​ ​secondary.​ ​I​ have​ resented​ Sarah.​​ I​​ ​have​ cried​ ​over​ her.​ ​I​​ ​have​ ​claimed​ ​that ​growing​ ​ ​up ​​as ​​her ​​sister​ ​did ​​not ​​affect me​ because​ ​​doing ​​so​ ​felt​ ​like​ defining​ ​myself​ ​in ​​context​ ​of​ ​her. ​However,​ ​ I​ ​​now ​​realize​ ​that​ ​her impact​ ​on ​me​​ is​​ undeniable.​

   There​ ​is ​​a​ taboo​ ​around​ ​expressing ​complicated​ ​feelings​ ​​(in ​​my​ ​case,​ ​many​ ​of​ ​them negative) ​​surrounding​ someone​ ​​that​ ​you​ are​ ​ supposed​ ​to​​ ​unconditionally​ love.​ ​​Admissions ​​of ​​a struggle​ to​ ​​love​ in​​ ​the​ ​midst​ ​of​ ​jarring​ pain​ ​were​ ​never ​made​ ​at​ ​the​ ​​Autism ​Society​ ​ ​events​ ​I attended​ ​or​ ​in​ ​my​ ​own​ home.​ ​​To​ ​a​ ​certain​ ​extent,​ I​ ​understand​​ ​why—such​ ​admissions​ ​can​ ​feel ​as​ if​ ​they​ imply​ ​​a​ ​failure​ ​to ​be​ ​​a​ ​good​ ​person. ​​For​ ​years,​ ​I ​​believed​ ​that​ ​I​ ​was​ ​somehow​ ​defunct​ ​in humanity ​because​ ​ ​the​ ​lack​ ​of​ ​narratives​ ​that​ ​resembled ​​my ​own​​ ​led​ ​me​ ​to​ ​think​ ​that​ my​ experience ​​was​ somehow​ ​​“wrong”.​ ​My ​​feelings​ felt​ ​ugly​ ​​compared​ to​ ​​the​ ​familiar ​​stories​ of​ families​ ​united​ by​ ​​autism​ ​or​ ​families​ ​paralyzed​ by​​ ​grief.​ ​With ​time,​ ​I​ ​have​ ​ ​become ​willing​ ​to admit​ that​ ​my​ ​feelings ​towards​ ​my​​ ​sister​ ​are ​not​ ​​always ​​certain​ ​or​ ​loving.​ ​Unconditional​ love​ ​for​ her​ ​will​ ​always​ ​be​ something​ ​that​ ​I​ ​am​ ​working ​towards;​ ​but​ ​that​ ​is ​​okay—my​ ​willingness​ ​to continue​ ​working​ ​towards​ ​love​ ​despite​ ​pain ​​makes​ ​me​ ​nothing​ ​if​ ​not​ ​human.

​

                     Everyday we throw out things capable of being re-purposed, it's like a second nature, to discard, shed skin, animal like, out of sight, out of mind.  But trash is embedded in the earth, quite literally, and a part of our story, individual as much as universal. Through her art parctice Sina Basila tries to create a world "where wearing trash is normal and a part of high fashion." "I am interested in finding the beauty in our waste while putting a focus on our excessive material refuse," Sina says. "By looking at my own rubbish as potential material for my wearable designs, I have become much more aware of how much I throw out; before throwing things away I try to see if they can become something other than trash." And beyond mere materials Sina also has an eye out for who is discarded in our world as well, who enters our thoughts and considerations and who doesn't. "I am very much inspired by the common person," Basila notes, "I also think that it is important to note (and be aware of) the impact of people who clean up our streets. Collecting recycling materials and garbage is undervalued work, and I have great respect for workers who keep our streets clean. Although these workers don’t necessarily influence my art, they influence my surroundings, my inspirations, and my artistic philosophies." Adding that she could even see herself including some of these workers in a future project. "I would like to include more people into my refashioned garbage work," Basila remarks, "I think it is important in a series that is commenting on the fashion industry to include representations of beauty that are often ignored by the industry." The separations between art and everyday life at a certain point underwent a radical transformation, suddenly the people themselves and the everyday were the subject of art, not royalty or aristocracy, and what could be included in art's domain grew and grew. But for all of its growth a certain vigilance of attention is still required. Art needs both hands at the wheel, a presence of mind, a heaviness of heart, and attention not only to details, but to the periphery as well, to "an absence of voices." Perhaps what is most beautiful isn't what is most obvious. Art, as Sina says, "enriches by creating doors and windows in the imaginary walls that we use to separate ourselves from others. Without it, we are soulless computers—algorithmic animals. Art makes us more human and more alive."


​
AHC: What has your own personal evolution towards a life in art been like, are there a series of moments you can recall where this path, this calling, began to become the one clearly marked for you?

Sina: I have always been interested in transforming materials, whether it is with scissors, glue, or other forms of manipulation. Although I have always been a creative person, when I developed a commitment to social justice and environmental issues in high school I became interested in developing a career in documentary and activism work. During college, I created documentaries on race and representation, and while living in Berlin I worked on environmental and educational issues. My exploration of converting trash into wearable art that engages with justice and politics started in 2007, and, since moving to Brooklyn two years ago, I have been developing my garbage designs into a more comprehensive project.   

As for your specific question about moments in my development as an artist, I will mention a few. I remember in high school learning about the photo development process while starting to understand that adding visuals to a political argument can be very persuasive. Then during college, I interned at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY where I worked with inspiring people whose lives centered on “political art.” Towards the end of college I developed the New York branch of the PaperGirl Project where artists from around the world submit rollable art to be exhibited and then distributed for free and at random to people on the streets. I moved to Berlin for the second time and joined the founding project, PaperGirl Berlin, where I continued to be involved with political and street artists. Now in Brooklyn, I continually meet people who inspire me while also informing my development. These have been important steps on my ladder into a life in art.
​

AHC; Could you explore and expand on some of the motivating ideas at work in both the images that you make and the process behind the making of them?  How does the idea for you begin and what does its evolution look like during the stages of its development?

Sina: Trash is an eyesore, but in some ways the decay that we produce is also aesthetic. I am interested in finding the beauty in our waste while putting a focus on our excessive material refuse. By looking at my own rubbish as potential material for my wearable designs, I have become much more aware of how much I throw out; before throwing things away I try to see if they can become something other than trash. This has also made me hyper-aware of how much others throw out. Whenever I pass trash cans on the street I think about what its contents are and how these materials could be transformed into interesting and meaningful designs. Working with netting and plastic are easy, but I’m currently struggling with coming up with ideas for to-go coffee tops. I keep these materials in the back of my mind, and I sketch and pin visuals that might trigger creativity.

In my small bedroom, I have a collection of detritus that I experiment with and transform. I am fascinated by textile manipulation and the metamorphosis of supposed worthless materials into designs that embody higher values (upcycling).

With an idea for a photo, I put on wearable designs to create images that work on multiple levels combining upcycling and critical commentary on waste along with references both to iconic fashion designs and the history of art. Most of the images are self-portraits made with a self-timer. Self-portraits give me the freedom to be strange and spontaneous, and I don’t have to coordinate with anyone or communicate my vision. However, in pursuit of work that engages with a wider spectrum of cultural and economic issues, I am beginning to include other people in my portrait series. I hope that this will add more layers of engagement to my ongoing series.  
​

AHC: What do you consider, personally, to be the most sacred and enduring aspects of art? How does it enrich our world and our cultural memory? How has it enriched or altered your own life? In your opinion, what does art, at its finest moments, bring into the world that would otherwise leave us more impoverished without it?

Sina: Art is about aesthetics (and since the Romantic period it is about challenging the idea of what is aesthetic—along with challenging many other things). Through the use of light, color, texture, and the various qualities that make something beautiful, art catches our attention. This power can be harnessed to bring attention to political voices, current events, and historical accounts, but it can also represent an absence of voices.

Art has the power to relate us to one another using familiar imagery, and that is why I find it so powerful and necessary. For me, the most sacred art is convivial—not just people-to-people relationships but also people-to-Nature. Art enriches by creating doors and windows in the imaginary walls that we use to separate ourselves from others.

Art is often at the forefront of social change. The most important artists have the courage to show life in different ways. When we see the world differently we start to ask questions that can lead us to social and spiritual development. Art is also about self-expression which is really self-exploration that leads us along the winding paths of our lives to new vistas and understandings.

Art helps us make sense of the world in ways that statistics, reports, and science cannot. Art works at a level that can seem to be more obscure than “science” but that is also more fundamental, more emotional. Perhaps we see this in the extent to which art (images, literature, music, dreams) has inspired many of the most important scientific discoveries. Without art, we are soulless computers—algorithmic animals. Art makes us more human and more alive.

Art helps us see the world differently. Art is a form of critique and reflection. I love that art is complex. The beauty of art can draw you in while telling you a story of sorrow and inequality. It can be captivating because it allows you to see something you didn't think possible. Art can tell us of the past while showing us our future.

​

AHC: What is the first work of art you encountered that took your breath away, that lit a fire in you?

Sina: I can't say there was a specific piece of work that ignited my love for art, but I know that my parents’ love for art and nature have been huge influences in my work. Much of our childhood was spent outdoors, and much of the outdoors was collected to bring home. One summer my mom found a large dried fish skeleton on the beach. She took it home, mounted it as a raised sculpture, and spray painted it silver.

I do remember being fascinated by the moving Tinguely sculptures in Basel, Switzerland, where I have roots. By the old Basel City Theater there is a Tinguely fountain that has personified mechanical figures that are in constant motion. There is much brilliance in his concepts, but I especially like the playfulness that reminds me of the squirt guns and water balloons and wading pools of children’s birthday parties. Tinguely brings the rather staid (and very well-to-do) Swiss together in a sort of water party can bring out people’s early senses of wonder and amazement.  

I adore art that moves, that uses unconventional materials, and that is interactive.

​
AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for young artists and other creatives who are experiencing self-doubt in their art, frustration or blocks? What are the types of things that have helped you to move past moments where you may have become stuck creatively?

Sina: My advice is to see all your experiences as valuable. It took me a while to see that my alternate route was valuable. I now see how all my photography and ideas relate to each other, but it takes time to set your style and carve your own path.

I would also advise others to find a community. Every city functions a bit differently (pricing, work ethic, events), but wherever you are I think you will find it helpful to have friends to ask questions to. It is much easier to get work done when you are part of a community that sees value in your work and encourages you to continue producing. Use this network for practical advice, for artistic inspiration, for encouragement, and to keep you engaged.

All experiences are valuable.

​

AHC: Do you have any upcoming exhibits or new projects you'd like to tell people about?

Sina: I plan to continue to work in self-portraiture, but I would like to include more people into my refashioned garbage work. I think it is important in a series that is commenting on the fashion industry to include representations of beauty that are often ignored by the industry.

Also, I just returned from a second trip to Senegal where I have been interviewing artists as part of a project on the aesthetics and politics of Senegalese art understood in relation to what is (and isn’t) happening in New York. Senegalese artists—including photographers—are doing some exciting things.

There are more things I’m working on, of course, but branching out into new territories with my refashioned garbage project and my work in Senegal are currently on my front burners.

​
All images © Sina Basila
For more visit www.sinabasila.co/
​​

White Noise

The light pollution intrudes through the harsh space
between the plastic window shades,
striping my room like a barcode.
I let the artificial glow
caress the cement ceiling
while the sirens paint my walls
vermillion.

What does it mean to be healthy,
I have asked my nutritionist more than once.
I’ve been looking into seeing a therapist,
but I can’t tell what they do yet.

The cars on north west market street
are white noise
and I think about his hands on my hips
and the Marlboro woman I keep running into
at the 8th and 50th bus stop.
She tells me her last three houses burned down.
Lit cigarettes
and antique medallion rugs.

I’m not saying goodbye yet, but
I’m not sure I’ll know when I have to leave.

Marlboro woman told me last week about her ex-husband
who never taught her guitar.
She asks if I’m any good.
I say not really.
She asks if I have any jokes,
I say not many –– 
never liked a good comedy –– 
but I tell the story of how my cat rotted
to death.

My thoughts blend in to the north west market street
white noise
and all I can think about is how sometimes when you’re alone
in the city
the light pollution isn’t light enough,
and how other times
                                when you need it to
it never gets completely dark.
I go to find Marlboro woman on 8th
because it seems I have missed the bus again.

​



Flightless Gosling

the geese fly south as a crooked vee
to the slit of marmalade sun
in between the outline
of the green mountains
and the stratus clouds

I am not one to watch the birds
but when their silhouettes dance at dusk
I think of the way my father
used to twirl my mother in the kitchen
before she, too, flew

sometimes the trees look like splintered bones
against a blood red November sunset
and I tell myself, Carling,
how beautiful it is that the wind howls bedtime lullabies  
and that shadows can waltz just like your father

I am not scared of the dark
but as the geese are swallowed by the moonless night
my thoughts are written as eulogies
for a past that clenches my spine so tightly with white knuckles
that my legs feel as though they will give out at the knee

​



The Art of Dentistry

there’s a weird intimacy
in the art
of dentistry
but when my dreams concern
rotten molars escaping from pursed lips
with vertigo undertones
I don’t think about how badly
I want to fuck my dentist.

I thought about becoming a dentist
once.
I research the qualifications
of bony enamel enthusiasts
on a ‘how to become a dentist’ website,
probably written by someone
who works a convenience store job:              
              I.             enroll in a bachelor’s degree program
              II.            take the dental admission test
              III.           earn a dental degree
              IV.           obtain licensure
              V.             consider a specialization

I specialize in having nightmares of strangling somebody
but I don’t mean to.
sometimes it’s a stranger.
sometimes it’s not.
but I don’t mean to.
I specialize in sucking in air through my nose,
so much so that I can see
the ridge of my ribs
against my horripilated skin
--
is it illegal to touch my body I do not know.

I drew a picture of my brain
when I was seven
and sectioned off different parts with what I thought about most.
the impending death of my father
occupied the most space
and the hatred for my feminine identity
saturated the rest.
I think about bodies a lot.
I think about the space mine takes up
and the space it does not.

I take the 44 bus to work
and I take the 44 bus home
and I make myself look miserable
by simultaneously watching my semi-opaque reflection
in the window
and the headlights of passerbys beyond it.
I learned this trick when living in Washington D.C.
because people look at you less
when they think they have less to look at.
I take the 44 bus to work
and I take the 44 bus home.

The last time I dreamt
my teeth were falling out
was the first night I slept alone,
falling asleep to the lullaby of sirens
and mumbling the songs my father used to sing to me.
my teeth detached from my gums
but instead of spitting them out,
I choked.

​

​

Amphibious War

He gives me a worm again
and it’s already my fourth one
because the fish
keep biting and my arm is too stiff
to reel them in.

He says,
you are not
the best fisherman and I go
to tell him I have never
fished before

but suddenly I am in a creek
that reminds me of my mother’s womb
and I am tangled in a line
with a worm hovering above my head
but I cannot reach it.

He reels me in and says something
about the fish not biting
so we go to a country store
where my feet keep breaking
through the floorboards.

A man wearing a black suit
looks like my father from behind
and he tells me not to worry
and I tell him
he needs to get his floors fixed.

The sky is blood red when I wake up & my room is too.
There’s a Bright Eyes song humming in my ears –– 
if you walk away, I’ll walk away ––
then a bird’s mundane morning is unpleasantly halted
as its body dances into my windowpane.

​

Amy Jade is Alright
 
I put my headphones on,
And shuffle through the albums,
Studio, live and posthumous,
Of Amy Winehouse.
 
Down the rabbit hole I go,
Filled with brassy, smooth jazz,
And shifts of love and heartbreak.
 
I hear the pleading cries of
Nobody’s sweetheart,
And I simply take them as lullabies.
 
It’s all genius. But I wish
She didn’t have so many
Lady Day-like blues in her life,
And that her pain wasn’t so catchy.
 
Oh disassembled heart,
I wished she didn’t go to the place
Where she lost her innocence.  
 
I’m tapping my foot to her spilled-out soul,
And I hear her final words
In each of her songs,
He’ll treat me right… ​





A Runaway’s Reasoning

Because I
Wanted to hear the Earth’s pregnant, petal chimes,
And be an old man in springtime,
Calling for my bushy-tailed dogs,
And walking with a wife and grandchildren
To sooth my limbs and bones,
I ran away. 

​

                    "We are all experiencing the same things, in completely different ways," says Kelly Mcfarling. "I think revealing your own moment through your limited lens can reveal larger more expansive truths." Many of those truths on her latest record, Water Dog, are told as learning moments of time and experience, how the shaping of our own lives become informed by all that we go and hopefully come through intact. "I struggle with letting go, of expectations, of my childhood, of what I should and shouldn’t be. I’m always trying to learn more about letting go gracefully, because I’m realizing that it is something that continues to be required," says Mcfarling. Growing, as Kelly points out, can be seismic and uncomfortable, but can also be hugely revelatory of inner transformations we've yet to encounter. Music often plugs directly into the parts of us that know what we know because we feel what we know, we wear it in our bodies, stories both told and untold, and if music is a language we all speak, it's also a language that we all share. We may have more in common than not, even if a million things stand in the way of acknowledging that. Songs are those bridges over troubled waters, and water is the stuff of life and the compass point of this record. "I found a lot of inspiration from water. I chose the name water dog because I love to watch the reckless abandon and joy of dogs playing in the water.  It became a totem for me during this time, and a reminder. I think diving into things is how we come to know the things we know, whether that's an outward or inward journey."


AHC: What has this journey in music, so far, been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way? 

Kelly: The journey in music for me began, as I think it does with everyone, musician or not, from when I was really young. I loved to sing, and I always knew that. I never really knew what to do with it, or had big goals for it, it was just part of what I did. I sang in church choirs, I joined youth choirs, I sang along to the radio and memorized lyrics. It was social and safe and fun to be inside of songs with other kids. It soothed me, and gave me a place to be and focus. 

I haven’t had a lot of highs and lows with music. Music has always been consistently satisfying to make, and a tool and a sanctuary. The highs and lows come from a circle of validation and discouragement that comes with trying to make a living from music. Transitioning into that world is something I’m always struggling with. The lows come from the fear of continuing to choose a thing that is hard to stabilize financially, emotionally, creatively. The highs are when you can focus on the music so much that you don’t have space for the fear or doubt and it feels like you are doing the right thing. 

AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them?

Kelly: I was always drawn to singing, and my family encouraged it. I was first exposed to creating music in choirs. I remember discovering singing in harmony, and feeling like it was the most beautiful, important thing. Holding onto a separate note while other voices moved and surrounded and vibrated was revolutionary to me, and I wanted to stay inside of those chords as long as I could. Being in choirs allowed me to learn and memorize a vast array of songs, which I think has been pivotal for me. My brain is conditioned to learn and retain melodies and lyrics. So many songs floored me at different times, but I was always interested in melodies and progressions that created dissonance. Early on I was drawn to songs like scarborough fair, and sally gardens, and the more melancholy folk songs. There’s something haunting and powerful about singing melodies that have been sung for a long time. As a child I was fascinated by that. I’ve always loved the songs that encourage and evoke nostalgia. 

AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote or played? Or that first moment when you picked up a pen and realized that you could create whole worlds just by putting it to paper? 

Kelly: I was a writer and a singer, but separately for a long time. I wrote poetry and short stories, but never put them to music until after college. I sang other peoples songs for such a long time before it even occurred to me that I should write my own. I was very focused on the instrument of my voice, and learning to mimic a certain voice, or blend with other voices. It wasn’t until my adulthood that I started considering my own voice. I remember playing a Gillian Welch tune at an open mic for the first time with a banjo. The rush inspired me to write something of my own to play. The first song was a rush job. I was 25 in my new apartment in San Francisco, late at night trying to have something original to perform at the open mic the next night. It was exciting, but I didn’t feel the weight of it. I had nothing to prove at that point, and no expectations or experience with creating a song of my own. In hindsight that openness was such a gift.  But every song comes so differently from a different place and they are all a gift. I love words, and every moment that I realize I can create them is in its own way a revolution. Writing songs still feels like a bit of a magical thing every time I do it.  

AHC: Which musicians have you learned the most from? Or writers, artists, filmmakers, teachers/mentors etc? What are the works you could not possibly live without?

Kelly: The list of those who influence me continues to reveal itself. It is vast. Musically, I connect to singer-songwriters the most. I loved discovering Ani Difranco when I was 14, and realizing that honesty was a powerful tool in writing. I loved listening to Outkast and memorizing Andrew 3000’s raps, with such clever phrases and the flow of the words and how you could make them rhyme differently depending on emphasis. I loved learning how to sing harmony by learning both parts in all the Indigo Girls’s songs, and singing them with my choir friends growing up. I love Toni Morrison novels, and the lush lyrical details of her characters and their lives. I love Flannery O’ Conner and the dark humor and beauty that come through in her seemingly simple stories. I learned how to read well and write expressively from my Jr. high school teachers Bernie Schein and Martha Caldwell. I learned how to express myself musically, and work hard from Kate Murray. Right now I’m always trying to learn more and pay attention to female artists specifically. 

AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? 

Kelly: I love songs that have clever or poetic turns of phrase. When a song can be about something incredibly specific, yet hold the weight of universal truths within that specificity, that is special to me. I also am fascinated with the human voice, and how a performance can really hold and deliver the meaning of words. With my own songs, each one has its own arrival time and journey. None of them are perfect, but sometimes you have to allow things to remain imperfect and let them go and be what they are. I don’t like to linger too long on things creatively. Not letting things become finished can be a disservice to them, and to the other things that need to come after it. Songs eventually have a life of their own, and if you don’t let them out of the house they can’t bloom. 

AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, a slightly imperfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, states of rupture/rapture, hope lost and regained? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener?

Kelly: I consider music to be a conduit, a time traveler, a teacher, a companion, a mirror, so many things… Vibrations of sound are one of the first things we recognize as human animals, and we know things about ourselves when we hear music that we can’t articulate or define. I think music is a language we all speak and hear differently but are viscerally affected by. It is a vehicle for communication, but one that leaves a lot of space for meaning. It can put emotion into an organized sound when you are grasping to understand what you are feeling and how you are feeling it. Creating a song feels very different then listening to a song for me. When I’m listening, I’m free to absorb, and rustle whatever feelings are awakened or defined by a song. When I’m writing I’m actively trying to express something. Both of these experiences are healing. 

AHC: What are your fondest musical memories? In your house? In your neighborhood or town? On-tour, on-the-road?

Kelly: I have a great memory of dancing with my sisters and my parents to a new Whitney Houston CD when we were really young. I cherish every memory I have with my family that is musical. My sisters and I used to make up dances with our cousins that were hilarious and thrilling to me. My family didn’t pursue music in the ways that I did, but singing and dancing and theater and costumes were always around and encouraged and participated in. There was a creative silliness that I can see rooted in me, and I’m incredibly thankful for it. I also love all the great places playing music has allowed me to travel. Some of my favorite times have been in motion with friends listening to music, on our way to play music. 

AHC: When you set out to write a song, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell?

Kelly: Conscious or not, if you are writing honestly about your experience, I think a larger consciousness is reflected. However, that’s tricky, because I only have my tiny slice of a lens, and that's all I can hope to reveal. I’ve always had a hard time trying to tell stories that aren’t mine, and culturally, politically etc, my experience is just as limited, and just as universal as everyone else’s. I’m fascinated with those limitations. I believe they are what give us a gateway into reality and understanding each other. We are all experiencing the same things, in completely different ways. I think revealing your own moment through your limited lens can reveal larger more expansive truths about the state of things, but for me it has worked in that direction. I can’t write honestly about anyone else’s current moment but mine, but it seems to me that all of our moments are at once individual and in some ways universal. 

AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are just starting out and trying to find their voice and their way in this world? What are the kinds of things that you tell yourself when you begin to have doubts or are struggling with the creative process? Or what kinds of things have others told you that have helped push you past moments of self doubt/creative blocks?

Kelly: I think if there is something you want to do, you have to start by just doing it. If you want to know who you are, action is the best indicator. It’s hard as a musician sometimes to get started when you are focusing on the point, or the pressure to make something good. If you remove that pressure and just start making sounds, things will happen. They may not be the things you want, but everything is a step towards something else. The more you focus on a thing the bigger it gets, so if you want something to be bigger in your life, focus on it. Don’t be afraid of making bad things. Just make them, and let them be what they are - they are part of the process. 

​AHC: Your new record, Water Dog, has a bold, intimate, ultimately necessary message behind it, as you describe it so well, it's about "how we come to know the things we know." Could you expand on your ideas behind this record, what its message/appeal to the world is, its message to yourself even?

Kelly: There are a lot of things in the record that just happened to appear together during this life season for me. A central theme that I cannot get away from is the constant shifting of things. It has become helpful and healing for me to look at life in a more fluid lens. Things change, and they keep changing. I struggle with letting go, of expectations, of my childhood, of what I should and shouldn’t be. I’m always trying to learn more about letting go gracefully, because I’m realizing that it is something that continues to be required.  Moving out to The Sunset, getting into the Pacific ocean, falling in love and choosing to build a life with someone; all of these things happened during this life cycle. There were many mirrors held up to me during these times, and they were not always what I wanted to see. There was a lot of growth, and growing can be seismic and uncomfortable. But it was also a time of lots of light and excitement and hope. I was diving into things larger then I could understand, and that was amazing and scary and the right thing for me. I found a lot of inspiration from water. I chose the name water dog because I love to watch the reckless abandon and joy of dogs playing in the water.  It became a totem for me during this time, and a reminder. I think diving into things is how we come to know the things we know, whether that's an outward or inward journey. ​


For more visit www.kellymcfarling.com/
Water Dog is available now everywhere fine music is sold
and on Bandcamp @: kellymcfarling.bandcamp.com/album/water-dog

It Is Your Neighborhood

Street lamps cast shadows
Through lace curtains,
Illuminate your bed,
Or maybe they are cool, neon lights
Through your hotel window.
It’s hard to remember where you live.
Only your legs have fallen open
Like a bored burlesque queen.
Only his arms can make you safe.
He defines you with his mouth.
Feel yourself float upward into his face.
You know what you can’t have.
You’ll never go away.
Somewhere in your body you know how it is
To rise up almost motionless,
Carry your pain, a dead animal
Out to the street
Light a torch.

​

Bio: Mary Julia Klimenko obtained her BA & MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University where she taught Creative Writing for two years before returning to school to get a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology. She divides her time between her private psychotherapy practice and writing. She has a chapbook published by Spire Press, Source Vein, is published in numerous literary journals and has three limited edition books in print in collaboration with artist, Manuel Neri.

THE QUESTION

It was night and we were drinking in the garden by the church.
I looked at my friend and asked him,
- “Di, are you always aware that you’re black?”
- “No, not really. Sometimes I think about it, if someone is weird with me in a bar,
or on the street … people looking at you funny, know what I mean”?
- “Yeah”
- “Then I think, is this because I’m black?
But you don’t know.
Not really.
It can be for so many reasons
…
-“Yeah; but I think about it.”




MÁRIO

“When your stepfather was dying in the hospital”
Said my mother
He would look at me and say:
“Save me! Save me!”
And I thought he was talking about the medication that caused him pain”
 
She took a sip from her glass and continued.

“But of course I was lying to myself.
He wasn’t talking about the medication…
And,
Yeah…
Not everyone dies well."




THE MOUTH OF BABES

Dad! You have to remember we're not in the twentieth century anymore!
I opened my mouth to speak
and found only remembrances of 79, 85, 95...
Pointing my finger at my daughter
I paused to say something,
and said nothing.
 
Then my wife laughed.

​

 Bio: Miguel Caldas was born in Mozambique in 1972, but now resides in Lisboa, Portugal, since the age of three, where he lives with his wife, daughter and a turtle.

Beauty and Other Forms (detail), 2016, collaborative project with Tal Frank, oil on linen, etched mirrors, dimensions variable. Photo: Shahar Tamir



                    "Coming from a region in conflict," says Keren, "I am interested in exploring how or if my works can attempt to walk the border between political art and escapism. I wish to suggest a gap between them. This is the gap in which the viewer can confront the actual political questions accompanied with aesthetic-art questions." Do we suffer from a lack of imagination or from a lack of options, of livable realms where the visual possibilities, once constructed and encountered could serve to expand what is with all that could be? Is the reduction in scale of what is seen and what can be imagined in our world connected to conflict? If we are confined to a kind of sleep with no dreams, what, if not art, might reveal roads less traveled, worlds less imagined? Anavy's site-specific environments cue us in on the realm that lies just beyond the traps we've set for ourselves. The images ask of us, what do we see, and from where we see, why are such worlds not possible? In bringing out "the longing for unknown or imagined territory" Anavy unveils not just losses in imagination, or the contrasts between real-time suffering and an escapist visual oasis, on a deeper register Keren is constructing Democracies of the sensible, the aesthetic being the realm of all speaking beings, and hence the possibilities for us to imagine more than what we now have before us. "I think art moves on the axis between two extremes of acceptance and non-acceptance of the world: There are artists that accept the world and respond to it and others who choose not to accept the world and to create a strange and imaginary one, a kind of alternative." Such alternatives may be our only hope. Ones worth exploring and adopting in life and in art. What could be is a powerful antidote to what is.


AHC: What has your own personal evolution towards a life in art been like, are there a series of moments you can recall where this path, this calling, began to become the one clearly marked for you?

Keren: I can think of it more in terms of periods in my life. I remember that I was always a child who painted, it seemed very natural to me and I really enjoyed it. A significant period was at the age of 11, after watching a television show for children and youth that dealt with children's hobbies, I asked my parents to register me for a drawing class at the city's largest and central art museum. From that moment, and for many years afterwards, I went on my own by bus once a week to paint and draw in the museum. I remember that in order to get to the workshop I had to cross the exhibitions that were on display at the museum at that time. This routine was a strong observation experience that influenced me very much, as well as painting and drawing the sculptures in the galleries of the museum. It was then that I realized that I wanted to be part of this world of creativity and culture.

Keren Anavy, Ex Territory, 2016, paper cutouts, dimensions variable, Collaboration with Dance Entropy, New York


AHC: Could you explore and expand on some of the motivating ideas at work in your art and the process behind the making of them? How does the idea for you begin and what does its evolution look like during the stages of its development?

Keren: The core of my work is based on painting and its history, but my passion is not only there, but also related to materials and space. What interests me is being able to conceptualize an experience, a story, a place. Sometimes this will happen through painting, sometimes through cutouts, print and more.

In my practice, I continuously examine the spiritual and social significance's that different patterns and geometric forms around us hold. I like to work with charged, familiar and fretted images, where I often deconstruct and manipulate their existing shapes, creating new associative images, revealing and concealing the forms previous context. For example, in the work Utopia I use paper cutouts, where I amalgamate the shape of a diamond with the iconic rose window common in Gothic cathedral. In this work I simplify, deconstruct, and reconstruct existing shapes into a new syntax. This process began with a large scale ink on paper drawing, which I later duplicated in a laser cutting.

My process turns my studio into a kind of experimental laboratory where I dismantle, explore and penetrate into the depths of the image and alter it beyond recognition. While working in the studio each stage is pursued by another, moving forward step by step to reveal yet another creation, a new idea, developing in different directions, sometimes unplanned, experiments alongside planned steps precisely throughout.

My recent body of work was inspired by nature, and Chinese scroll paintings. It includes large-scale paintings, which I created on various materials, such as Mylar, linen and paper. I reference nature, however stripped down to its most abstract form, inferring fantasy. By using ink I attempt to find and express the balance between control and freedom, the liquid forms on the surface.
​

Keren Anavy, Untitled, 2016, ink and colored pencils on paper, triptych 70x150 inches. Photo - Stan Narten


AHC: I'm curious to know more about the element in your work that you define as being a new visual vocabulary, and a universal language, as pertains to seemingly irresolvable political conflicts and differences, this "shape itself" that takes place, when unmoored from its original context, seems to offer something on the level of poetry, that is on the level of open potential and possibility. What are your thoughts behind this shape itself, is it possible to cultivate such vision through and beyond art, in our daily lives, in our precarious, political worlds?


Keren: My works shift between reality, distress and beauty. For example, a pattern that I regularly use in my work is appropriated from the kaffiyah (a traditional Arab headdress frequently seen in Israel, and the Middle East where I grew up) and a tiger’s fur. This work embodies notions of beauty and distress. Similar to the Kaffiyah, which is often represented by the media as a symbol of violence and resistance, the tiger’s appearance too suggests notions of a camouflage element, beauty and threat.

When I use this element in both my two and three dimensional works, the repetitive shapes appearing on the original fabric become both recognizable and nonrepresentational at the same time. By manipulating these shapes, I create a new vocabulary, a universal language that loses its political and social context and focuses on a pure visual experience. This strategy and working process is the point of departure for my large-scale work, and often site-specific installation. I choose to work with forms that reflect on the boundary between concrete and abstract, be it shapes from nature, architecture or everyday life. I do not think I want to get rid of the image's shaped meaning. I think it’s something having to do more with my process of practice and my development of a more accurate expression for me as an artist. Coming from a region in conflict, I am interested in exploring how or if my works can attempt to walk the border between political art and escapism. I wish to suggest a gap between them. This is the gap in which the viewer can confront the actual political questions accompanied with aesthetic-art questions that have to do with the history of Art. As a result of this process, sometimes the outcome may look escapist and will require the viewers to ask themselves what the source of these images are.

Keren Anavy, House & Garden, 2015, site-specific installation (detail) paper cutouts, dimensions variable. Photo - Yigal Pardo


My tendency for escapism in recent years stood out in my solo exhibition ‘House & Garden’ (2015), in which I created a diminished virtual house overlooking an exterior world of nature and fantasy. The perplexing space occupied by the house raises questions on images and their representational capacity. “House & Garden” raised questions on locality and the longing for unknown or imagined territory. I continued this process in New York in my first collaboration with the dance company Dance Entropy at my site-specific installation 'Ex Territory' (2016). I believe that escapism is also an equally strong political position.
​

                                                              Keren Anavy, Crossover, 2013, (detail), collaborative project with Tal Frank,
                                                              water-color, graphite, ink on paper, etched mirrors, dimensions variable


AHC: Who are some of your artistic influences? Is there anyone outside of the art world who has had a huge impact on you and your work or who just generally inspire you on some level, writers, filmmakers, comedians, musicians etc?

Keren: “Most of the new forms are not created from zero but from a slow distortion of a previous form. The vessel adapts itself, very gradually; it absorbs light changes, and the innovation derives from the integrated effect of those changes, becoming revealed most often only at the very end, once the form has been fully realized...”

Michel Houellebecq, To remain alive, 1991.

This text, for example, written by Michel Houellebecq, is one of the writers I most value. Similar to this statement, my images undergo transformation and deformation. The changes create new images that recall a little of their former selves. They are representative in form and conceptually in universal contexts, linking nature and culture. Houellebecq has a special talent for making connections in his writing between current political and social realities and ars-poetics. I am greatly inspired by the connections that he creates between life and art. Other artists who strongly influence me are choreographers such as Pina Bausch, whose visual choices give birth to powerful, symbolic images. The film Pina directed by Wim Wenders highlights this element, handling in an inspiring way with familiar images, materials and places. Ohad Naharin is another important choreographer from whom I am inspired by the connection he creates between body, movement and space. Also as a good example to the expression of political ideas in a minimalist and abstract way.

Keren Anavy, Hothouse, 2012, collaborative project with Tal Frank, ink on paper (detail) Photo - Yigal Pardo


AHC: What do you consider, personally, to be the most sacred and enduring aspects of art? How does it enrich our world and our cultural memory? How has it enriched or altered your own life? In your opinion, what does art, at its finest moments, bring into the world that would otherwise leave us more impoverished without it?

Keren: I think art moves on the axis between two extremes of acceptance and non-acceptance of the world: There are artists that accept the world and respond to it and others who choose not to accept the world and to create a strange and imaginary one, a kind of alternative. Art can illuminate aspects that are difficult for people to see in the daily turmoil of life. In doing so, it produces an event of stalling that stimulates the senses and activates thought. It's because of this that art is first and foremost an event of occurrence, an experience that activates the viewer's thoughts about his own being. Art should not be politically correct.

Making art is a way of life for me. On the one hand, I do what I love most, but on the other hand it's a way of life that requires a lot of discipline and focus. To create art is to try to achieve something complete, which of course is a sisyphean action that causes a state of constant discomfort.

                   Keren Anavy, Untitled (detail) 2016, ink and colored pencils on paper (detail) Photo - Stan Narten

                                                               Keren Anavy, Untitled, 2014, metal cut, burnt hamra soil, dimensions variable
                                                               Photo - Ashdod Art Museum, Israel


AHC: What is the first work of art you encountered that took your breath away that lit a fire in you?

Keren: I probably do not sound so original with my artist choice: Robert Rauschenberg. The works are The Anagram, Arcadian Retreat and Anagram (A Pun) series, from the mid-1990s. I like the powerful new technique that Rauschenberg developed in these works combining dye transfer, large-scale paper and polylaminate panels. Rauschenberg, both in his works and his approach to art - in his collaborations with other artists, visually and conceptually, definitely lit a fire in me.

I was also amazed by the first video I saw of Shirin Neshat Fervor Excerpt, 2000. I was an art student and visiting the Whitney Biennale in 2000. I remember the power of its aesthetics, I loved the congruence created between content - ideas and form and how they are presented to the viewer.

​A lot of different artists, diverse and even contrasting in their styles took my breath away and affected my creativity, I feel that I do not stop learning for a single moment. I take from these impressions what is relevant to me at the time: it could be the related aspects, technique, or the way things are put together.

Keren Anavy, House & Garden, 2015, site-specific installation (detail) paper and wood cutouts. Photo - Shahar Tamir


AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for young artists and other creatives who are experiencing self-doubt in their art, frustration or blocks? What are the types of things that have helped you to move past moments where you may have become stuck creatively?

Keren: Explore as many exhibitions as you can, recommended in various fields, not only in art. Go around with a good camera. Keep working in the studio even if you do not have a clear idea or a clear goal. Working with diverse materials engenders new associations and ideas. This can trigger all sorts of new surprising processes, that you are not always aware of when you are only thinking and not doing: Work leads to new work.

Try to collaborate with artist who are different from you and acquire other skills. This can lead to a productive and most enjoyable process.

Meet with fellow artists, curators and friends and talk about your ideas with others. Create a dialogue and be generous: share your thoughts about their projects, your knowledge and experience. Don’t be afraid to express yourself, and listen to what others have to say about your work, especially when it is in the process stage.

                              Keren Anavy, Untitled, 2017, ink and colored pencils on mylar, 118X36 inches. Photo - Stan Narten

                       Keren Anavy, Untitled, 2015, oil on canvas, 86X66 inches, wood cutout, 47x66 inches


AHC: Do you have any upcoming exhibits or new projects you'd like to tell people about?

Keren: Since my arrival in New York towards the end of 2015, I have been exploring the subject of contrasting elements, of nature and urbanism through gardens dispersed around New York City’s neighborhoods. During my research I have visited and studied many botanical gardens around the United States as well as public gardens and the differences between them. I have conducted research about garden's history and philosophy: from the Persian Islamic garden to the Japanese gardens via the Baroque garden. I am examining the concept of gardens and their political and social context. A place where different natural and human forms of control are exercised. Expanding on these ideas my new projects will also question the medium of painting and its representational value. My new projects stem from this researches and my processes in the studio.

​I will have a solo show in New York during 2018 of site-specific installation in contexts outside of the white-cube gallery setting, an official public announcement on behalf of the site will be published soon.

I will be Artist-in-Residence-in-Everglades Nature Reserve (AIRIE) program in Florida, for a full one month during 2018, together with my friend and colleague Tal Frank, as a continuation of our ongoing collaboration.

I have recently started my second collaboration with the dance company: Dance Entropy based in New York, for their new performance season in 2018.

Also, Next month I will participate in two exhibitions in Israel: at the Haifa Museum of Art and at The Contemporary Gallery at Nature Museum Beit Hankin, Israel.

I am participating in NARS Foundation Fall Open Studio weekend: October 13 and 14, 2017, you are all welcome to visit me in my studio!

​​

             Keren Anavy, Utopia, 2017, paper cutouts, each pillar 118X36, Photo - Hadar Saifan, MUSA, Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv


All images © Keren Anavy
For more visit www.kerenanavy.com/
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