Well, I mean in your exhibition right now. When I look at the videos and the drawings, I get mesmerized—there’s this hypnotic effect in the patterns or the motions. It seems to suggest some kind of spiritual something.
A trance state is a real thing. We get into them all the time because of like driving or scrolling on the phone. Everyone is hypnotized! These states can have a spiritual interpretation, or a purely physiological one. I personally find the droplets I filmed for the video extremely hypnotizing. For me, it was partly about getting you into a hypnotic state—delivering a kind of tremor—but also about showing some kind of reverence for the fringier or discarded theories of the universe, like Pilot Wave Theory. And despite the fact that the experiment does not prove Louis De Broglie and David Bohm’s theory, it does show us some pretty weird “particle” behavior, as this droplet interacts with its own wave.
If you look at the droplets from above, it looks like they're moving around in a way that doesn't make any sense. It seems random but weirdly purposeful, because they'll move one way and then change direction abruptly. They just seem to have a mind of their own. If you record them for a long period of time it becomes clear that they end up in some areas more than others—in rings of varying probability. The equation that describes the probability is the same as the one that describes particles position on the tiny quantum scale—like electrons and photons. So even if it doesn’t prove anything, it MAYBE gives up a taste of quantum weirdness. I want to be with that weirdness—with the qualitative features of the experiment, not the quantitative ones.
I really appreciate people’s—even failed—attempts to make sense of the universe. To me that endeavor has a spiritual flavor even if you’re a hard core, materialist. To think about everything that is, how it all connects and works, well that’s what religions concern themselves with too.
I also want to talk to you about Flow Separation, the show with Public Art Fund that I had the pleasure to work with you on, where you painted an entire fireboat. Have you ever worked at that type of scale before?
I made a curtain for the Vienna Opera House, which was physically large but it was a flat, printed surface. The fireboat was curved and we painted every bit of it by hand. It was technically a big learning experience!!!
How was that experience overall?
Just incredible, start to finish. I mean one of the most memorable, special things in my life so far, honestly. Just getting to be part of a community that I had no contact with until a few months ago has been so special. I went on a trip with the fireboat and its volunteer crew up to Albany and Waterford this summer. We pulled up next to another dazzled boat, the USS Slater, which is painted in its original dazzle, and then lead a boat parade up the river with dozens of tugs to a “tugboat roundup”. Everybody was so welcoming and kind and we all come from very different walks of life. And the work of making the piece… it was so fun and so difficult. I learned how to marble—not necessarily well, but well enough to make the design. I and I worked with an amazing, almost all female crew—a group scenic painters (Infinite Scenic). The conditions where physically very challenging and we didn't have a a lot of time, so we worked very long days. I’d kind of shuffle home sore at the end of every day, but it was the best kind of tired.
You’ve called New York home for a little while now.
10 years.
Coming from the West Coast, what what brought you here, what what made you stay?
I always thought I would be a New Yorker for life, but now I’m thinking, maybe not.
Why not?
I miss nature so much, Not being able to see a long distance, breathe fresh air—I miss that. I want to walk on dirt and learn about trees. Why do humans come to a place and just kill everything around?
I love that I grew up in the Bay Area, but I felt it was sleepy at the time that I left, and I had a lot of energy and I wanted to be in a place that had a lot of energy. So I wanted to move into the middle of it, right into Lower Manhattan, and that felt great until pretty recently. Experiences like the fireboat make me still love this place though. There are thousands of little universes in New York, you just have to discover them, and remember that yours is just a drop.
Part of the reason I’m going away for a while is that I hope I’ll get some insight on where I want to be. I'm also noticing that as people around me are having children—and I don't intend to do so myself—I am envious of one thing, which is that they have this page turn in their life, like a total paradigm shift where reality changes and a new way of thinking is required. I want to create that next chapter for myself in some other way, and to sink my teeth into a new way of living and thinking.
'A Broken Stream' installation view, and 'Where there had once been a snag in the fabric,' (detail) 2018; courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery.