Originally printed in Pr #1, a Proximity companion publication. Paul Chan’s digital videos and projects combine outsider art, surrealism, and popular culture in dystopian visions engendered by events of grave social injustice. His recent exhibition, “My Laws are My Whores” opened at the Renaissance Society on March 1st and continues through April 12, 2009. We caught up with Paul and chatted for a bit. Ed Marszewski: Is it true that Paul Elitzik was one of the people who turned you onto politics and social issues while you were in school? Paul Chan: Well, Paul has a long history with the New Left in America. He used to be a SDS member and did labor organizing in New England, after getting his degree at Harvard in Classics, I think.
And this is a time where SDS was strong and looking to do more organizing. And of course they did what they could, and then times changed, and he ended up teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago. Art schools are a refuge, not only for students but teachers
as well. EM: You know, I’ve never thought about that. A lot of radicals from back in those days probably went into teaching, and they probably helped turn on a couple generations of kids who became a little more politically aware. PC: Sure, that’s right. Right now you’ve got Greg Bordowitz, who has a long tradition of activism. Many people like Greg have done a lot of radical political work in the early 80’s, and refugees needed to go someplace. Art school is where refugees go. EM: Its nice that you were trained by the refugees, the people on the margins, the – oh, I just have to say it – the lumpens of the world. PC: In art school, you’ve got people who want to make art and then people who don’t know what their place is in the world in relation to art. So those people find themselves at F, the school newspaper at the School of the Art Institute. You know it
makes sense. Art schools are a refuge, not only for students but teachers as well. EM: Well, I think people who want to experiment with investigating the world around them naturally come together in a place where they can communicate their ideas with a large group of people. And that place is a publication. PC: Well, that sounds overly optimistic. I think the thing that happened was when we were like eighteen, nineteen. Art was what you saw on the back of Time magazine or in the museums where you felt neither included nor welcomed. So what you have then is a case where you thought you knew what art was, but once you got into a place where there’s actual art, you felt neither safe
nor welcomed. So, for me, the best place to go was a place where I could be with people who were Philistines. Basically, if I didn’t know what my place in art was, I was gonna ignore it. And if I was gonna ignore it, I still needed someplace to go. And I went to journalism. Which is kind of what I knew, because I did some of it in high school. But I found refuge at F, the school newspaper. We were all the art school students who didn’t like art, gathered around the Philistine Paul Elitzik. I was an editor for three years and we just did the craziest shit. We would write stories about drunk teachers. We made this column called “Who Farted?” where we found the most ridiculous sentence we could find in an art mag and reprint it. Making F was our way of coming to art on our terms as opposed to someone elses’. I think it was really important and it couldn’t have happened without
Paul Elitzik. EM: Did you find that he was one of the individuals in school who gave you the inspiration to make you a working artist? PC: No! No! No! Not at all, he hated us! We made this column called ‘Who Farted?’ where we found the most ridiculous sentence we could find in an art mag and reprint it. EM: Who were the key individuals? Was there anyone at SAIC who actually helped you? PC: You know, it was the people I lived with at Dogmatic. In ‘97 I moved into a house with Andrew Natale, Mike Thomas, and Aviv Kruglansky. We all moved into the house at 1822 Desplaines, and six months, seven months into it, the place stank like high heaven. We thought it was just because four guys lived there. But it smelt so bad that Aviv and Michael went to the basement and found that there was an open sewer pipe, and that’s what made it stink so badly.
So they started cleaning up, and as they were cleaning up, they realized well, maybe we should make this space into something. And that’s how Dogmatic started. It was Michael Thomas, Aviv, and Andrew, then I started pitching in to clean up. I was the stubborn, obstinant one. I was the Philistine. I was like, “Ah, fuck it, I don’t want to live in an art gallery, I want to show in one! Fuck it.” So I kind of ignored it. I would try to help out, but I wasn’t a part of the curatorial process. I was just part of the clean up crew sometimes. However, Mike and Aviv were really serious. They really wanted to make it into a competent exhibition space where they could do interesting stuff on their own terms. And that’s how Dogmatic started. EM: There were other people in town, individuals in town who were starting their own spaces at that time. PC: There were a lot of people, I think Body Builder was starting then. The Temporary Services guys didn’t have the Mess Hall space yet, but they were around. The west loop stuff that you see now wasn’t happening. The Butcher Shop was happening though. EM: Did you feel that one of the reasons you guys started the space was because there weren’t many venues? And you needed to create these outlets for
the public? PC: Yes, definitely!  You’ve go to do it yourself. You can’t wait for people to do it, you know. It’s not like someone is going to give you a freakin’ grant. It’s like, who the hell cares? EM: No one cares! PC: No one cares, you just have do it yourself, so that’s what they did. It is really sheer persistence. EM: And this atmosphere is what inspired you to start making work? PC: It was in that atmosphere that made me realize that it was a good life to make things. And the good part was that it was made and hopefully no one else had made it before, and it offered a different view and it offered something, god that sounds really intuitive … so let’s just say yes. Short answer, yes. EM: Haha! Well, this is what the dilemma is for most kids. They’re in or leaving school and they don’t know what to do. Maybe they’re plugged into a network of friends and they’ve got a space. But oftentimes, a lot of kids drop off the face of the earth. They stop making work. Obviously you’re not one of these people. Did you recognize that was happening to your peers or friends or colleagues after leaving SAIC? PC: Sure, I think it inevitable really, because sooner or later you realize, maybe art is not so great. You know, frankly, sometimes art sucks, and so maybe it’s not for everyone. And that’s okay. I think the worst part is if you in fact have the desire or energy, but feel like there’s no outlet. Or feel like no outlet has come to you to enable you to do it. I think that is when resentment sets in. Not only on a psychological term but a philosophical term. And that’s when energy gets bottled up and energy then turns inward and it starts to eat inwards. And I think that’s not so great. When we grew up, you were in Chicago then, in the late 90’s. In the mid 90’s, Chicago was really interesting as a place where people started their own zines, created their own spaces . . . EM: And great music!  It’s based out of this tradition from the 80’s. You had Randolph Street, Name, Artemesia, Tony Fitzpatrick’s World Tattoo Gallery, Ten in One, and then it kind of went sleepy for a while after this huge Louis Sullivan building burned down that housed a bunch of art spaces. Since I’ve been here, there have been a couple of waves of activity. In the 90’s you saw the era of Dogmatic, Heaven etc.
And since the turn of the century there’s a space popping up every month and of course, at the same time one is closing. At any one time, there seems to be at least twenty to thirty alternative art spaces going on in Chicago and that is
pretty intense. You are based in New York. There are tons of spaces like that in New York/Brooklyn area as well, right? PC: You’d be surprised. It’s not as vibrant. The world of commercial art galleries in New York suck up so much energy that people feel that they don’t want to mess with the minor leagues. They want to get to the major leagues. But now with what’s happening in the economy and also the general culture, i think there’s a re-evaluation. What do they call it in economics? Not a reset... EM: Personally, I think we’re resetting the 21st century. It’s like we’ve been given a second chance. It’s possible especially because of the international global economic collapse. Tell me, how do you navigate these different art worlds? How are you making your work? PC: You make your work by going to the studio every day. I think that might be the simplest way. I think it’s not so grand. To navigate different worlds seems to me another way of asking “who are you working with?” Now, people are worlds as much as worlds are worlds. And so, interestingly, it has been the political experience that helps me understand and what you call “navigate” these worlds. Because what political experience gives you is the experience of dealing with people. If it does anything for us, is it gives us a metric, a standard of measurement by which we realize and come to understand what it is we’re looking at. When we’re looking at a person, we should not be afraid. And you should talk or listen, or negotiate and work with people without the use of force. So political experience helps you navigate the world because it helps you understand people.
And that’s how I think of it. Like at the Ren, for instance. People may think of the Ren as an institution, but I think of it as Susan and Hamza. And so, if I keep it within that level, it makes it much easier because I’m not fighting or working with, or have to seduce a world, I just have to work with people. And I think that becomes really important. Which also brings up the kind of political work that makes you not recognize people. You know, there are political works and political perspectives that make you reduce people to objects. I think that is as dangerous as anything else. EM: Speaking about objects, let’s talk about your current work here at the Ren. You are creating fonts that relate to various individuals, historical figures, and how they relate to their personalities,
sexual charges... Yes, definitely!  You’ve got to do
it yourself. You can’t wait for people to do it, you know. It’s not like someone is going to give you a freakin’ grant. PC: They’re pornographic fonts! EM: Pornographic fonts! Why are you making pornographic fonts? PC: Because the evolving new body of work I’m premiering here uses the Marquis de Sade and what he opened up for the rest of us to see as a departure point. What he opened up was the interconnectedness of reason and sex and violence and freedom. This man was jailed for a third of his life, and he struck back at his jailers by making some of the most gruesome work of literature that we’ve ever known. And for a long time, his work was the limit point for what we imagined we could do to a human body. But today it’s just not true anymore. We feel as if we have stepped beyond it. And there are many examples of that, from secret prisons to what’s happening online. To me it’s a good time to reexamine and explore again the legacy of the Marquis de Sade and to imagine what these connections mean to us today. Connections between sex, violence, freedom, and law or reason. EM: I like the way you offer additional documentation, images, recordings, and readings on your website. Can you explain your process? PC: The process came when I visited New Orleans for the first time and recognized that the landscape didn’t make any sense. I thought that instead of seeing the city of New Orleans, what I was seeing was the backdrop of every production of Waiting for Godot that I’d ever seen. There’s this beautiful quote that says that art is the reason that makes reason ridiculous. And the reason for New Orleans is ridiculous. The reason of what happened and what is continuing to happen is ridiculous. So if reason is ridiculous we have to make that ridiculousness reasonable again. And I don’t mean reason in terms of being moderate, but I mean it to be somehow more concrete for us. And strangely, art does that. Things come to you. You’ve just got to be sensitive. Someone once described Jean–Luc Godard as a radio. They said that the way that he works is that he is sensitive enough to pick up the different frequencies of the times. His job in his films then,
is to tune into the different frequencies. So here’s a case that aesthetic strength comes from being sensitive, and being a listener to the frequencies that is all around us. And I think that’s a really compelling way of working. If we allow ourselves to be sensitive, we’ll pick up on the strangest shit out there, and then our job is to tune it in and amplify. EM: What kind of class would you teach to the kids? Or would you even bother? PC: Of course I would bother, but I just wouldn’t do it. EM: What would be ideal? Throwing kids together to start a space? Would it be a combination of honing craft with starting your own projects, initiatives, getting involved with media? PC: That’s hard, I don’t know if I can answer that. In a way all those questions you just asked me were too formal. I find that people cohere more when there is a project in mind. And that project cannot be infrastructure. The project cannot be “let’s start a space and see what happens.” It has to be something else that gives you the potence to create the infrastructure. So, for instance, with Godot it was the play that made the infrastructure. It was the idea of doing this nearly impossible task: setting Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in the middle of the street in New Orleans and having it be free. And it was about all the complications and contradictions and problems that go into that. The infrastructure was then created because of that. And so that becomes important. Creating a space so that things can happen, that tends to have a shorter shelf life. But when you have an idea that you need to create an infrastructure for, that’s when things last. by Ed Marszewski