Cedar Lewisohn: Politics, Art, Music. I don’t know what the question is, maybe, how do you relate the three?
Kim Gordon: Err.., politics, art, music. Well that’s certainly true. (Laughs). I mean, well in America it’s hard to be political at all really. You know, its so consumerist orientated or geared toward comfort. So, you know, but to offer some sort of enjoyment of expression that’s geared away from Mall culture, shopping culture, is the only way to be political in America. Unless you’re Fugarzi, or something.

Do you think it’s easier to be political in the art field or the music field?
I think it’s equally hard, it’s equally difficult and I think that the same sort of strategies towards offering some alternative is similar. I mean art’s not free either... 

I was reading that you like certain adverts, have you ever done any music for any adverts, what would be your ideal?
Its funny you should ask that. I haven’t done any, we, actually once did a song for Picabo [Street], the down hill skier, and then she broke her leg and they didn’t use it. I mean I’ve been interested in car ad’s for a while. It was kind of like ad copy, but I was listening too... Right before I came over to do this performance, they were playing this Volvo commercial and it had a Bob Dylan song in it, like Blowing In The Wind and that just blew me away …I have to say. 

Wrong context, yeah?
Yeah, you know, it was just really..., whatever… 

Do you have a favourite music video, ever? Not one of your own.
Well, I was a huge fan of this early LL Kool Jay video, “Going Back To Cali” and that the really inspired. Cool thing... 

Yeah, I saw that on the Corporate Ghost... I didn’t know that though, about the LL Kool Jay video.
Then there was like this Rob Base video, which was just this girl; it was super low-fi, and it was just this girl, insistently dancing (laughs..), just like dancing to the camera, and it kind of dark and quirky..… (Laughs...) 

If you could choose any art work for your house, what would it be? That’s a diner party question.
Wow. Any artwork … Maybe a Jack <Pierson>. You know, there are others...

But that comes to the top of your head first, which is what I like. You make sound art, but could you ever live with a piece of sound art in your house?
I feel my house is a bunch of sound art. You know, Thurston [Moore] is always playing, ; he’s taken to playing, in his office, he’s one of those oldfashioned cassette players. He got it from the school next door for the deaf. And he’s been playing like noise tapes out of it. And then we have this dog named Merzval, who, err… barks. 

So, he is like a living sculpture. Have you ever had a life-changing art moment? (Laughs) You’ll have to excuse the stupidity of these questions.
I don’t know, I can’t really think of anything.... I know I’ve had... I was at the DADA show recently in Paris, I though that was pretty great. I don’t know if it was life changing. 

Have you ever had a life changing music experience?
Er… Well er… I mean when I saw DNA play in New York that was pretty great. And The Static, Glenn Branca’s first early band, with Barbara Ess and Christine Hahn. 

Cool. Do you have an iPod, what’s on it?
I do have an iPod. There’s a lot of old music on it, Neil Young and Buffalo Springfield, M.I.A., different stuff. 

How did the Sonic Nurse cover come about and what attracted you/the band to that image?
I guess Richard [Prince] had a show of those paintings a couple of years ago, at that point a year previously and we really liked them. Thurston and I are always really on the same wave length, like, he suggested it. Because I’m always like thinking it... 

What did you like about those images...?
I mean I liked the way they were painted for one thing. You know, I’ve always liked those pulp paper backs. I thought it was ambiguously misogynist. (Laughs) There’s an element of… it wasn’t necessarily quite acceptable. 

It’s definitely attractive, despite yourself, you find it attractive.
Yeah, exactly, you can’t help it. And you know, when I called Richard he was like “oh, I was listening to Murray Street while I was doing those paintings and blah blah blah...” 

And same question re: Daydream Nation, how did that one come around?
Kind of in the same way. Like I knew , I had met Gerhard Richter, I was friends with Isa Genzken who was married to him for a time and… and I knew Dan Graham and we asked Isa… I loved those little candle paintings, talk about a piece of art I’d like in my house… and yeah, they’re quite small, so the scale of it seemed like it would really work on a record cover, because we were still thinking albums, so it had this intimate size of being like a ready made. 

Then the photo inside is so different.
And the fact that the painting looks so conservative, that was sort of good in a way. 

So how would you describe the work in the current show?
Er…, well it’s sort of DADA, although that was kind of an after thought. It’s sort of architectural. I mean to me, when I first saw the space I thought it was so huge, so the idea of a tent, just dealt with the space in a certain way. Jutta [Koether] and I had done a collaborative show together at the space of Kenny Schachter’s conTEMPorary in New York. Vito Acconci had designed the inside and it had all this awful metal mesh, it was like art looked really bad on it. But it looked like an 1980’s-style CL ub and we called it “CL ub in the Shadow”, we kind of hung mylar strips with minimalist decorative foam squares and we had a video lounge, and it was right by the Westside highway at the end of an ally, right by this Richard Meier tower, - these two towers which were still kind of under construction. And people like Calvin Klein and Martha Stewart had brought them. We liked the idea of this being like a neighbourhood art Club for the people who lived there... (Laughs)

Do you see sound art and music crossing over more in the future?
Sure. Why not, I mean, I don’t really think of myself as a sound artist. I think of myself really as a visual artist, conceptual artist. 

Do you find it difficult, separating your two personas?
Well I used to like only - I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with shows where they were asking musicians -, those sorts of things. And my previous work had pretty much steered 
clear of music stuff, but then I realised at some point that that was really stupid. It doesn’t really matter after a while. You know, I am who I am so I can do whatever I want. But I’ve definitely always had this thing of not wanting to be perceived as a dilettante.

CL Do you distinguish between stuff you hear on a record and stuff you hear in a gallery?
KG Sure. Though, I think there are people, like Alyssa from Magic Markers, who I think should be considered in the same category. I mean she’s almost a performance artist. 


CEDAR LEWISOHN is an artist and writer. He is currently working as a curatorial fellow at Tate Modern in London.