tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Interviewee
I confess, I'm an interview slut. I live for the times when I'm interviewed - which has been often, but never enough. Keep those interviews coming! If you think I've run out of opinions, think again!
The 1st interview I can remember giving was probably in 1974 when I was 20. It was with a reporter from a Johns Hopkins University magazine. I was interviewed about having been a research volunteer for a NASA-funded simulated space station living experiment at The Phipps Clinic part of Johns Hopkins Hospital. I'd been in an isolation environment for 15 days along with 2 friends, Ken Moore & Mark. The experiment was basically a behavior modification test to try to keep people in space stations physically fit & mentally active. I enjoyed it very much.
When I was interviewed I probably talked about MY purposes for being in the experiment. I may've talked about how I was deliberately reading William S. Burroughs's 'classic' anti-control novel "The Wild Boys" while I was in the environment as a way of critiqueing behavior modification. I may've talked about how I was pulling tufts out of the carpet & making a collage with it as a way of manipulating the perceptions of the people who kept the research subjects under surveillance 24/7. I may've talked about Marcel Duchamp's relevance to it all.
The interview was never published & I've never been able to get a copy of it. Was I too weird for the magazine? Quite probably.
1979? Interviewed about fashion by Bonnie Bonnell
One of my earliest friends in downtown Baltimore interviews me in her very casual style.
1983.10.28 the WJHU Fear session with Ron Cummings
I was living in a neighborhood full of street drunks & other desperadoes in South BalTimOre & most of the buildings around me were deserted by their owners. As such, they were occupied by the drunks who were a VERY violent crowd. Instead of calling the cops on them (we shared an alleyway & a courtyard so I had plenty of contact with them) I was friendly with them even though they were bad neighbors to an extreme. They were always fighting & trashing the whole area. Nonetheless, I thought "live & let live" or some anarchist variation on that. My windows got broken by them & I STILL didn't call the cops. After all, I was pretty desperate at the time too. I could relate.
One of the more psychotic drunks, Norman, had taken a dislike to me & took it upon himself to threaten me & to try to blackmail me. I talked about this with some of the other drunks who'd grown to respect me & they offered to beat him up for me. I declined on their offer but I think they did it anyway. After that Norman really had it in for me. On October 28, 1983, I caught Norman unscrewing the lightbulb on my porch. I then overheard him talking with one of the other drunks saying something to the effect of "force him to kill". Since I was very vulnerable & since, as an anarchist, I STILL didn't want to call the police, I called RAN at JHU instead & we recorded Tracks 9 to 12 of me talking about the situation while RAN played various musics that he thought were appropriate or funny.
1985.04.02 Interviewed by Tim Clifford of WMFO, Medford, MA
There's nothing quite like having your place set fire to by an arsonist coincide with having a gig that you've spent the last of your money on be cancelled because the management's afraid of you followed by being knifed by someone on the streets followed by getting a fortune cookie with no fortune in it followed by being awoken late at night for a radio interview.
I transcribed this interview as well as provided pictures & the audio link so that you can get a bit of the 'full flavor' of this era of my life.
1986.04 Interviewed by REVO for Surreal Estates
The 1st zine interview with me ever published by Trevor Blake of Knoxville, Tennessee.
1986.05 Interviewed by Scott Stark for Cinematograph
Scott Stark was the 1st filmmaker to take me seriously enough to interview me about my work in this area.
1987.09 Interviewed on Montréal radio about Ultimatum II
On Sunday, September 13, 1987, I performed my "Generic As-Beenism" for the 1st time as part of a performance festival organized by fellow neoist Alan Lord. This turned out to be one of my most famous & popular performances.
Shortly thereafter, 4 of the participants in Ultimatum II (Jean-Luc Bonspiel, Gordon W. Zealot, myself (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE), & Jack Five) were featured on a radio program explaining our participation & promoting the festival. I don't seem to have a full recording of the radio program & my part of it is only a few minutes long but I like this interview as the only one I ever conducted even partially in French - with translating assistance.
1990.01.22 Tentatively an enigma
While traveling in Hawaii making a masked nudist film called "The Signs & Symptoms of Leptospirosis" I was interviewed by someone from Honolulu's daily newspaper the Honolulu Star Bulletin.
1992.08.07 Interviewed on the CKUT "Late Night Atrocity Exhibition" program
While on tour w/ The "Official" Project, a band that changed its name every time we played, we did an interview on CKUT radio in which 3 of us, Neil Feather, John Eaton, & myself (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE) conducted the interview by performing using our CAMUs (Cue Activated Modular Units).
1994.03 or 04 Interview at TV Hospital, Berlin, Germany
While on collaborating with Herr Stiletto Studios in Berlin on his installation/tv program I was asked for an interview by a woman visiting its location. I spontaneously diverted the interview into something that was documented by surveillance camera.
1999.06.18 Street Rat Liberation Front interviewed on No Censorship Radio
Um, if you like political irreverence, this one just might be for you. Rita Rodentia, Will Rat for Iraq, & RATical spontaneously wax Imp Activist to people they'd never met before on WMBR in Boston: spouting tales, jokes, & propaganda - emphasizing the eviction of the ruling class from our mental real-estate.
etta cetera & I had met Roman through being in Adelaide for the 1st International Non-Existent Neoist Apartment Festival & he invited us onto his Environments program where we talked about media environments.
2000.03.22 2nd Secret Meeting of the 1st Non-Existent International Neoist Apartment Festival
[W]e decided to have the secret meeting on the radio if the people at 3D would allow it. Karen & I went there & talked with various people - eventually asking for permission from the Station Manager. It was quite a challenge for my charm to explain that we were in the midst of having the 1st NON-EXISTENT INTERNATIONAL NEOIST APARTMENT FESTIVAL & that our plans to have our Secret Meeting in the stormdrain had been foiled by the rain & that we wanted to have our Secret Meeting over the air (&, therefore, audible to the general public) as an alternative because we thought it was FUNNY &, uh, is that ok? It's to the enormous credit of the 3D personnel & their true COMMUNITY SPIRIT that they were amenable to the idea & @ 6:00PM (when else?) we began the 2nd Secret Meeting broadcast as a part of the show hosted by Hannah called something like "Drive-Time" & aimed at people driving home from work.
2000.05.17 Money Against Capitalism on Anarchist World This Week
Anarchist World This Week is an Australian nationally syndicated anarchist radio program. My group with etta cetera, Money Against Capitalism, was invited to be guests at its point-of-origin, 3CR Radio Station, Melbourne, Australia. Joe, the host, had a particularly belligerent & aggressive sense of humor so I decided to immediately reverse the tables by being even more aggressive to him. A good time was had by all.
2000.06.08 tENT & etta interviewed for Late for Breakfast, Australia
etta cetera & I'd been invited to promote our upcoming 2 Adelaide presentations & to otherwise shoot the shit back on Adelaide's beloved community 3D radio station. The 2 hosts were Andrew Bunny & Suzy Ramone. Andrew had actually, GASP!, done research on us & had read an early version of the "Report on the 1st Nonexistent International Neoist Apartment Festival". etta & I discussing our movies in the flow of Andrew talking about Woody Allen & about neoism & anti-neoism. We played a bit of the CD of studio versions of "Conjuring", a collaboration with Warren Burt, & I explained a bit of that technically.
One of the best things about Pittsburgh is its truly remarkably open-minded & community supportive City Paper. Unlike some weeklies in other cities, the Pittsburgh City Paper goes to great lengths to be socially responsible instead of just a snarky gossip rag for trends. It also doesn't suppress creativity in its interviewees. Bless 'em, may they (& my friend the interviewer Jo Reichenbacher) live long & prosper (Live Schlong & Prospero's Books!).
2001.07 Interviewed by Andrew Smith for Smokescreens
An interview conducted by an anarchist from Australia who'd been traveling extensively in North & South America.
2002.02.16 Interviewed by Kent Bye
Kent Bye approached me about making a documentary about me in 2001. He'd made one documentary previously, a commissioned one about a summer camp for kids with Downs Syndrome. We worked on his documentary about me for 7 months together from 2001 to 2002 & then he gave up because I was too complex of a subject. He just wanted to make a single subject documentary about me as a political activist. I suggested that he make it about me as a free thinker instead. We shot some amazing footage together which I got VHS copies of. This footage has been almost entirely not screened but I recently discovered this interview & liked it so much I decided to make a separate movie out of it - augmenting it with some other relevant footage.
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/6E8U-O0b21U
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/tENTInterviewKent
2002.12 Interviewed by aundre-g for Strike
An interview by a precocious young Gallery Attendant at the Andy Warhol Museum about Outsider Art.
1983 / 2003 Timothy Leary & G. Gordon Liddy with tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE self-interpolated
Arch-conservative Liddy & arch-radical Leary had just done a debate tour & had a film by Alan Rudolph made about them when this possibly unpublished interview (certainly unpublished in such a complete form) was done. 20 years later I took the liberty of interpolating myself into it as if I'd been there.
2003.02.08 Interviewed for "Film Close-ups" on KALX
It'd been arranged for me to promote a show I was doing in San Francisco on an arts program on KALX. Instead of doing a straight-forward promotion, which didn't interest me, I asked the 2 hosts to play along with my pretending to run a Guitarists Anonymous Therapy Session (or some such). I'm not sure but I suspect the hosts might've preferred something more straight-forward informative. I doubt that anyone came to the show as a result of this deliberate chaos but I think the results are pretty funny. Subversive, Subvert Thyself!
2003.03 etta & tENT interviewed by Emily Jack
The editors of the anarchist magazine "The Street Ratbag" discuss their philosophy & the state of anarchism as they perceive it at the time for hypothetical publication in The Thomas Merton Center's "The New People".
2004.11 Interviewed by Madeleine Gallagher & Skylar Vale (?)
Not one of my best interviews but still pretty funny for anyone who wants to understand neoism. I think I'd been awake for about 5 minutes when I started talking. Skylar (?) & Madeleine did an excellent job of preparing themselves to ask me questions & took my sometimes very 'fanciful' answers in stride - despite their obvious confusion.
Also under discussion was the legal plight of Steve Kurtz who was on trial for charges that started out as bio-terrorism ones & mutated into an ambitious prosecutor's attempt to exploit Kurtz's dilemma where the ludicrous 'bio-terrorism' was conveniently side-stepped.
2005.11.11 Skizz Cyzyk interviews tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE for the MicroCineFest catalog
Skizz Cyzyk has been one of the most untiring champions of fringe cultures in BalTimOre & beyond since the 1990s (or even the 1980s). In 2005 he honored me with an interview in connection with my feature "Story of a Fructiferous Society" which was screening at his MicroCineFest.
2006.03.08 A Conversation with tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
An interview by Melissa Meinzer for the Pittsburgh City Paper regarding names & flexible entity boundaries & such-like.
An interview conducted by the Pittsburgh City Paper's Bill O'Driscoll, arguably one of Pittsburgh's greatest "cultural assets", on the occasion of the release of my 10th book, "footnotes".
I, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, have been one of the primary movers & shakers in Neoism. Irish artist Justin Mckeown gathers info from my extensive knowledge & database on the subject for his PHD thesis.
2008.10 Interviewed by Olivia Ciummo
In October of 2008 filmmaker Olivia Ciummo interviewed me about my practice & philosophy as a book collector & archivist for a Collecting Seminar. Appended to the interview is my voluminous email signature with a huge amount of links.
2010.02.25 Interviewed by Gerry Fialka
Over a 4 hr period, Gerry Fialka interviews tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE over the phone using a series of prepared questions largely revolving around quotes from various mostly 20th century prominent cultural thinkers. Initially fraught w/ technical problems eventually concluded to be from phone card time running out, the interview is interrupted & recording quality varies. The 4 hrs produced the 2:37:57 presented here.
2010.04.14 What, Who is tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE?
An article for the Leo Weekly in Louisville, Kentucky in connection with my screening at "21c", a hotel / museum / venue.
2010.07.04 tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE discusses the answer to the question:"What's your name?" with [no longer identified woman]
A movie interview conducted in Grinnell, Iowa, in which I discuss the meaning of what I call my 'master' set name. Unfortunately, the woman who was in this movie with me continued to cause trouble for me with YouTube 10 years after we broke up so I removed all 5 of the movies that I'd uploaded featuring her.
2010.10.10 Interviewed on KGNU in Boulder by Little Fyodor
As with so many of the radio programs I've been on, this is less a straight interview with me than a situation in which I play recordings of mine & am interviewed between these. Nonetheless, I AM interviewed & I DO have alot to say so it's worth linking to here. Little Fyodor is the grand old singer/songwriter/radio-DJ personality of Colorado whose old band, "Walls of Genius" has recently reincarnated.
2010.11-2011.09 tENTATIVELY, aN iNTERVIEW
Alan Davies is a dear old friend of mine that I've known since the invigorating days of 'L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writing' in the late 1970s. In November of 2010, he instigated an interview with me originally titled "The Last Interview" with the idea that it would be published in book form. As I developed it in my typically perverse way, it became less 'publishable'.
Nonetheless, by October 29, 2012, it WAS published in a form slightly less complete than what's here, on Mark Young's excellent "Otoliths 27" here: http://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/alan-davies-tentatively-interview.html Unbeknownst to me at the time, Otoliths also comes out in hard-copy. As such, I could've had a hard-copy version of it with a couple of months of the online appearance.
Young didn't want to include the largest word in the English language in either version so he just used a link to a place where it appears online with 5 typos. Hence, I sought out another publisher & picked one that I'd already had completely shitty experiences with that I thought was going to do a better job this time because there was a new person to deal with. I thought no-one could be worse than the 1st guy I'd dealt with. THINK AGAIN.
After jerking me around for 14 months, the publisher-to-be insulted me & turned into the-publisher-who-never-is. I still hope to publish this book in hard-copy but given that I'm totally impoverished, the ravening hordes who can barely live from one twitching moment to the next without a fix of Alan's & my brilliance will just have to wait.
2011.04 Interviewed by David Bernabo for "becoming more and more"
David Bernabo is doing an excellent job of documenting the process of many creative people in Pittsburgh for a project that seems to've been initially called "becoming more and more" & that seems to've transformed into "Ongoing Box: A Film About Process". I was honored to be one of the 1st people he interviewed - in this case largely about (M)Usic.
I remember reading an interview that the great writer Steve McCaffery conducted with himself under the category of an "infraview". Perhaps he didn't know anyone likely to ask him the appropriate intelligent questions he needed to preface the explanations for his thoughts & activities. This, too, is an "infraview" in which I explain basic activities of mine.. to myself.
2013.08.01 Interviewed by Anthony Levin-Decanini for his Crucible Sound blog
Anthony Levin-Decanini started his Crucible Sound improvised music series at Modernformations Gallery on Thursday, May 9, 2013. In the spirit of truly making it substantive, he interviews someone connected to an upcoming concert & posts the interview online on his Crucible Sound blog. Anthony went all-out in my case by listing some of my favorite records from the early days of my record collecting AND by allowing my interview to be so long that he posted it in 2 parts.
2014.03.15 Interviewed by Matt Aelmore
On March 15, 2014, my friend the composer/musician Matt Aelmore interviewed me for possible use for an online journal called Contemporaneity at the University of Pittsburgh where he's a student. At the time of the interview he was very busy with schoolwork & the deadline for the target issue passed. After that, we both let it slide & the management of the journal changed to people who were possibly less interested in what Matt had to offer.
The interview largely centers around Neoism, a subject that I have almost no interest in at the moment but one that's been important to me at various times in my life. Neoism Now & Then! as I like to half-heartedly 'exclaim'. In fact, to anyone who may be associating themselves with a movement I advise that you also make sure to disassociate yourself too so that you don't become overly-pigeonholed. A common, but to my mind unfortunate, side-effect of being associated with a movement is that whatever you do may become associated with the movement regardless of how inappropriate that may be.
However, the interview is more wide-ranging than that & touches on my philosophy, Mail Art, the banality of pictures as an art-form. Anything is Anything, time, mms, PHEW!, Modern Dance, critical reading, Generic Tours, etc.
2014.07.30 Interviewed by Carolyn Smith for her APT. E14 blog
I met Carolyn Smith in Hungary in 1997. We've stayed in touch since then, partially because of yet-another mysterious group called "Whillikers". She did me the honor of interviewing me for her blog.
2016.11.02-19 Interviewed by AG Davis
As I recall, my attention was 1st called to the work of AG Davis by Monty Cantsin in Belarus who told me that Davis was one of his favorite sound artists or some such. Not long thereafter, an offer was made to publish a split 7" lathecut record with a piece by me on one side & one by Davis on the other.
We got in touch with each other online & traded by snail-mail. Davis sent me a CD & a tape done in collaboration with {AN}-Eel & a book of his entitled "Báthory". The proposed split 7" didn't happen & AG proposed that we collaborate. I counter-proposed that we each interview each other for my "Interviewee" & "Interviewer" websites.
2018.06.11 Interviewed for the Straight Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival
I know that I'm in the '21st Century' now that I'm participating in a film festival that exists only online. I've made 158 feature-length movies (an hour or longer in my terminology) to date & I rarely get to screen them. Many or most of the more recent ones go online immediately. If anyone witnesses them all the way through is doubtful. One of these that I've tried to get screened is "Monte con o sin safos Rides Again", a coproduction with Ryan Broughman. I submitted this to the Straight Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival & they accepted it. What this means in terms of a(n) (v)audience is unknown to me.
But it is inspiring to see the Straight Jacket folks create these interview pages for all the moviemakers to be presented. That, in itself, is a valuable service. The above link is to my somewhat expanded version of the interview. This URL is to where Straight Jacket has it online as of my writing this: http://pink8manifesto.blogspot.com/2018/06/interview-with-filmmaker-tentatively.html . I don't know how long their presentation of it will stay online. Hence I've made my own version to try to give it some longevity.
2019.04.02 Interviewed by Bill O'Driscoll on WESA about "365"
WESA is a Pittsburgh NPR radio station. Bill O'Driscoll had been the Arts Editor of the weekly Pittsburgh City Paper before moving on to ESA. He invited me to the studio for an interview about my year-long project entitled "365" for which I shot footage of me playing (M)Usic every day, usually alone but sometimes with others. The resultant movie was to premier at the Regent Square Theater with 7 of the musicians who're in it on April 7, 2019, & Bill interviewed me about that to help me promote it. The movie that this entry links to is of the entire interview. Only a very small portion of this made it to the air.
2019.08 tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE interviewed by Pata-No UN LTD by email
Pata-No UN LTD approached me as Karen Eliot by email to contribute to a Neoist book to be published by Autonomedia in honor of the 40th anniversary of Neoism. Having had troubles with the main initiator of the project, Monty Cantsin Amen (Istvan Kantor), I was pessimistic that anything that I would provide would be used. I was pessimistic in general as to whether the book would even exist &/or whether the whole thing was a hoax. It didn't seem like the type of thing that Auronomedia would necessarily be interested in & Autonomedia hadn't been very active as a publisher for awhile. Nonetheless, Pata-No turned out to be an interesting correspondent so I proposed that we interview each other & that one or both of the interviews be part of the book as well as things that I'd put online. "2019.08 Pata-No UN LTD interviewed by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE by email" is also online.
2022.10.29 "tENT : a documentary about the worlds most prolific film maker"
My old pal Joy Toujours aka "dusty joy life" had been telling me he wanted to make a documentary about me for about a decade or so. It was pretty obvious to me that it wasn't going to happen so I asked him to stop talking about it. THEN, on October 29, 2022, he came to my house & interviewed me about my being the world's most prolific moviemaker. This was a start. I was under the impression that he was planning to excerpt from relevant movies of mine that I mention in my interview or to somehow augment this raw footage. Well, that wasn't exactly to be & in September, 2023, he uploaded this. Fortunately for me, I think I was sufficiently ON that day for this to still be of interest. Thank you, Joy!
2023.03.08 InnerViews#218 tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE interviewed by Gerry Fialka
Gerry & I have known each other since he read about my 1991 PXL-2000 Festival in Mondo 2000 shortly before the festival happened. This inspired him to start his own "PXL This" festival which is now in its 33rd year! On 2010.02.25 he interviewed me over the phone & the result ended up on the Internet Archive as an audio file broken into subject sections. Gerry now is a prolific YouTube live streaming pod-caster & he invited me to be interviewed once again - this time with image. His interview style revolves almost entirely around quotes, especially quotes from Marshall McLuhan. On the day when I was to be interviewed I was in a terrible mood but talking with Gerry was so fun that I snapped right out of it. Eventually, there'll be 2 versions of this interview online because I intend to make a version of the movie that includes footage shot at my end - but, for the moment, the link above takes you to Gerry's version of the InnerView. Thank you, Gerry!
2023.05.27 "Interview PM"
A series of intercut interviews that include me being interviewed by Zivan Vasquez & me interiewing April Gilmore. The series was created as a part of "Sylli-G" that further includes Kelly Stiles, Matthu Stull, & Morgan Cahn. Think absurdism, people.
2023.09.21 "Zang Tumb Tumb"
Arcanepainterr & Zoopainterr of the Zang Tumb Tumb Radio Hour on 88.7FM, Harrisonburg, VA, us@, & I met after we'd each witnessed each other perform as part of After-MAF (Marginal Arts Festival) in Roanoke, VA, on June 24, 2023. I was then contacted by them to be interviewed on their college radio program. We communicated by iJoneses (cell phones). I used my laptop & another camera to document my end & they used a friend's iJones to document theirs. There was also some fun call-in action. This is the movie I made from our footage & other footage in my aRCHIVE relevant to what I was talking about.
idioideo at google dot com
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Anti-Neoism page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Audiography page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Bibliography page
to my "Blaster" Al Ackerman index
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE BYOC page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Censored or Rejected page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Collaborations page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (d) compositions page
to Amir-ul Kafirs' Facebook page
to the "FLICKER" home-page for the alternative cinematic experience
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's GoodReads profile
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Haircuts page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Home Tapers page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE index page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Instagram Poetry page
to a listing of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's manifestations on the Internet Archive
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Interviewee index
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Interviewer index
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE'S Linked-In profile
to the mm index
to see an underdeveloped site re the N.A.A.M.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Multi-Colored Peoples)
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Neoism page
to the DEFINITIVE Neoism/Anti-Neoism website
to the Philosopher's Union website
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE movie-making "Press: Criticism, Interviews, Reviews" home-page
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Score Movies
to SMILEs
to find out more about why the S.P.C.S.M.E.F. (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Sea Monkeys by Experimental Filmmakers) is so important
to the "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - Sprocket Scientist" home-page
to Psychic Weed's Twitter page
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Vimeo index
to Vine movies relevant to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE made by Ryan Broughman
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's presence in the Visual Music Village
for info on tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's tape/CD publishing label: WIdémoUTH
to a very small selection of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Writing