BIOGRAPHY
Fischerspooner was created by Warren Fischer & Casey Spooner. Based in New York
Performances 2004 25th Anniversary Gala, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles
2003 Centre Pompidou, Paris
2002 Home of art collector, Miami; Top of the Pops, BBC, London; Royal Festival Hall; The Bridge, London; Deitch Projects, New York
Exhibitions 2003 Changing Roles Gallery, Naples, Italy.
INTERVIEW
Lilian Tone: What are you planning for the 28th Bienal de São Paulo?
Fischerspooner: We are presenting a performance that includes music, dance, video, special effects, and lighting. It will include music and performance that we have written at all phases of our career. A concert.
Lilian Tone: Aside from the several collaborative instances already inherent to Fischerspooner, is this the first time you have worked with another group?
Fischerspooner: Casey Spooner has been working with the Wooster Group for about two years as an actor, and I [Warren Fischer] had written some music for their recent staging of
Hamlet. From that relationship we began speaking with them about collaborating on a piece. It started over coffee where we discussed doing something about weightlessness and claustrophobia. At this point we have been working together for about seven months on a new piece.
Lilian Tone: Fischerspooner’s practice continuously navigates among multiple cultural worlds, crossing over music, art, and performance, between high art and pop.
Fischerspooner: Our project was founded on the idea of trying to explore a dynamic between the populist language of entertainment and the more reflective language of art. We have always been striving to place ourselves in different psychological spaces… art galleries, pop music television shows, private homes, cultural institutions, businesses, music festivals, dj concerts, fashion shows, construction sites, etc. We have always been driven to turn away from any one definable place, in order to resist being clearly anywhere. NOT pop show, NOT dance troupe, NOT art collective, NOT performance art.
This tendency is informing the new piece that we are developing with the Wooster Group,
Between Worlds. It is the story of an artistic balancing act as seen through the contrary nature of what it means to be American. We will be using some of the elements from this new piece in our performance in São Paulo.
The title for our next group of songs is
Entertainment, many of which comment on and are inspired by show business. In our work with the Wooster Group we have been incorporating many different source texts (i.e., video, books, etc.). They include a documentary about the United States space program in the 1960s,
Roughing It by Mark Twain,
Walden by Thoreau,
Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima, and videos of Japanese Noh theater. We carefully select bits and pieces from these and layer them, finding thematic connections between them and the songs. In general, there is an inherent “American-ness.” Cowboys, Astronauts, Outer Space, The Frontier, Vaudeville, tv, cinema, etc. We are handing over our typical over-the-top song and dance show and letting the Wooster Group infect and dismantle our usual approach. It has become clear that in order to fully explore this kind of integration it will take a great deal more time than we all have at this point, so we are finding ways to pluck parts from our ongoing rehearsals and integrate them into a more traditional music concert. The dynamic range between experimental theater and pop music is exciting and strange. And we hope to push the limits in both directions.
Lilian Tone: Any thoughts / impressions about the city of São Paulo and how the paulistano audience will receive Between Worlds?
Fischerspooner: We have had a few experiences with São Paulo, and all have been great! Last year we DJ’D in the gay-pride parade and could not believe the amount of people in constant celebration. I love the idea of the samba schools as well, and I hope to visit one someday. From what I can understand they are a combination of music studio, dance studio, athletic style competition, political organization, nightclub, and community center. Truly “between worlds.”
Lilian Tone is a curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture of The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Projects with updated content
