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market avoid collaborations as much as in video clip production or commercial cinema. There is definitely a more loose structure in terms of business, which can be determined project by project. With a lot of video art collaborations money is much less important—sometimes I’m paid, sometimes I trade for services, sometimes, when I used to be in bands, someone would say, would you make me music, and I’d say, okay, then would you make a video clip for my band.

Learning from Fluxus

I’ve been very lucky throughout my life that I’ve met some amazing people and a lot of times before I even knew who they were. When I was at EAI, Nam June Paik lived very close by and he would come in and he would look at me and just ignore me and walk away. After three years of being at EAI he came in one day and there was a video by Peter Callas, an Australian video artist, on the monitor. He laughs and says: Oh, very good, what is that? And I said: It’s Peter Callas and it’s my music. He looked at me and he said: Okay, we go to Blimpy’s! Blimpy’s is this terrible American sandwich

 

fastfood shop and he took me to Blimpy’s and said: You are a musician, you call Mr. Bad Brain—which was The Bad Brains, an amazing post-punk rock band –, ask them to play with me and video of Joseph Beuys, ok, good luck!

And it began then what ended up being our twelve-year work together. I never worked as one of Nam June Paik’s studio assistants but he put me even in credits as a collaborator. And at times I’ve made music for him and other times I’ve made video and other times I’ve worked as his archivist. But generally he had me work on things that weren’t the things that I wanted to do or knew how to do well. At one point he said: There is a Fluxus festival starting tomorrow, one month of Fluxus performances. You videotape every night! And I said: I’m a musician, I don’t have a camera, I don’t even know how to use one! And he said: No, no, no, this will make you a better musician! And he was right, exposing me to Fluxus, a whole other kind of performances, learning to use a video camera, learning to look in different ways, connected to my listening.

On the drive home from his «Concert with The Bad

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