Ten questions from Lauren Edwards for Melina Ausikaitis regarding her exhibition Long Distance Dedication: The Fall of Asclepius 4581.
1.
LE
So much of your content seems to be sourced from a personal experience and/or archive. Do you see your interactions with that material as a re-authoring or a retelling and do you take on the role of a third-person narrating these stories?
MA
At some point a few years back, I found this journal from when I was a kid. There were entries about God, my fears for the future, and horrible romantic poetry. But the most pervasive element was this deep, intense relationship with the idea of love. Falling in love, being loved.
I really enjoy telling… and retelling stories. But they are always true. I don’t need to embellish them. I happen to have a fairly strange history and a strange family so I don’t need to. It’s really interesting to look at oneself from an outside perspective. I think that’s what I feel when I tell a story about myself to an audience. I see a different reflection.
2.
LE
In recounting the week of 1989, is the work produced culled from a similar personal, lived experience or are you making from the position of an avatar that can embody stories outside of their own direct participation?
MA
Both! All of the work in the show is directly connected to my personal history; things I knew, believed, and cared about as a 12 year old in 1989. But I also ended up using a fairly random daydream as a jumping off point for much of the work. When I read about the asteroid Asclepius 4581, I kept wondering what would have happened if the asteroid had hit Earth. And what if, after the impact, time on Earth just stopped. Everything stopped. The planet just sat in space and 300 years went by. Finally some aliens decided to investigate. They found little things that had not yet turned to dust; parts of a child’s stuffed bear and a chapter from a beloved book, copied down hurriedly by some poor soul, just before the catastrophe of the asteroid’s impact. It was fun trying to see what the aliens might have seen. To think about what they might have made of these objects which were so very precious to me back in ’89.
Writing this (here comes a story) makes me think of a movie I saw on TV. This lady was having a horrible day and she screamed “Stop!” and everything in the whole world stopped but her. Her husband was frozen. She went outside and all the cars and people were statues. In the last shot she notices this person looking up at the sky and there’s a giant missile, frozen in the air, right above them. I remember thinking about ways she could try to move the missile. So that it wouldn’t hit the ground whenever she started time back up again. But I couldn’t figure it out and it became clear that she could never start time up without killing everybody. She would have to stay like that and be so lonely.
3.
LE
Almost all the work in the show has an appearance of being handled or manipulated by a body (presumably yours). Is it important that these objects hold that unique form? For example, hand-cutting parts of the vinyl out of each record instead of using a cnc router.
MA
It’s important that the things I make look like they were made by me. I think a lot about the fear of being forgotten.
There’s a quality that a handled object has that is undeniable. Also it makes each pieces unique. I grew up in the country and I think that fact speaks to a lot of my aesthetic choices.
4.
LE
I understand the logic as to why there are 40 vinyl cut-outs on the wall. How did you decide to make other works as multiples? Are these meant to be seen as individual works within a series, or as one piece consisting of multiple parts?
MA
There’s a futility in making multiples of something, when it is reproduced by hand, that I find funny. (especially by me, an artist who is not concerned with perfection) No one multiple is alike. It’s different than seeing a rack of red t-shirts at the store. Multiples of any one thing obviously produces a different effect than just one would. In my case I think the idea behind the multiples has a lot to do with humor and that moment when you see a piece of art and think to yourself, “What kind of crazy you-know-what gets an idea like this, thinks that it is a great idea, and then goes ahead and makes it?” I love looking at art and thinking about this question.
5.
LE
When in costume, as Robert Smith in your performance at Regards or as Gene Simmons for examples, are you playing the role of Robert Smith as artist? In other words, in your performance, who is Robert Smith?
MA
I do know that there is real power in costumes. It’s a real thing. For instance; you haven’t seen me dance until you have seen me dance dressed up like David Lee Roth. I can’t shame Diamond Dave. When I was dressed as Robert Smith singing felt strange. I don’t think I was playing Robert so much as trying to feel as good about The Cure and that song as I could. I love Pictures of You and I never felt as close to it as I did when we were playing.
6.
LE
As a follow-up, how does play enter into your practice, if at all?
MA
I think play is what keeps me going.
7.
LE
Your body is visible in almost all your work. How do you negotiate your body as it shifts between maker and material?
MA
My work is autobiographical. I communicate and make contact through my experiences and my history. I hope the work has a familiarity to it. I used common objects like records of popular songs, stuffed bears, and men’s shirts for that reason. They all have evidence of use, by me.
8.
LE
Do you feel a particular kinship with pop music? Specifically perhaps with how pop musicians have borrowed the physical language of performance art or vice versa?
MA
Yes! Pop music is everything. My parents had music blasting in the car non-stop when we were kids. (Elvis, Queen, The Beatles, Captain Beefheart, Talking Heads) The radio was on constantly at home. I used to dream about the voices coming out of the speakers. Have you ever noticed how many songs are about people hurting because of love? I bet you 80% of music on the radio since 1955 is about heartache. I’ve always been drawn to the force of those songs and their emotive power.
(I just googled “pop music”. Wikipedia reports that as of 2011 the most frequently played song in US radio history is The Righteous Brother’s You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’. My Dad is helping me write this over the phone. He just told me that he saw the Righteous Brothers perform that song in 1965. I asked him if it was good. He said it was amazing. The whole place was thunderstruck.)
9.
LE
Thinking about time as a flexible, non-linear measure (as I often do), the objects in Long Distance Dedication: The Fall of Asclepius 4581 wear various signs of history. Some are worn from use and some elements seem either untouched or impossible to use in a traditional way. Are you interested in the ambiguity of time, or do you want these objects to rest in a place definitively of the past?
MA
I like thinking about the pieces in the show as objects from the future. I imagine that some of the objects were found in the future and some were made in the future. They are remnants of history, just history of the future.
10.
LE
I have seen some of your sculptures and performances resurface in different iterations, some in exhibitions, some are used in other performances, and some are used in an online context. Do you see the work you make as striving to adhere to the rules of art or as props that can be used and reused?
MA
I do think all artists have a set of personal rules that they follow. Like what’s ok to do and what’s not. My relationship to my work and its rules just happened naturally. Straddling two roles (musician and artist) required some compromise.
Melina Ausikaitis is an artist and musician living in Chicago.
Lauren Edwards is an artist living in Chicago.