16
SOL: WHO is your favorite artist?
EN: I’m supposed to pick one favorite artist? In the moment it’s probably the Chilean folklorist music group Inti Illimani, who are now at a quite advanced age.
SOL:WHAT type(s) of art do you prefer?
EN: I prefer music, or to look at performance art like public pranks, and I always loved sculpture and ceramics.
SOL: When did you start getting into art? Was it drawing, painting, or doodles at first?
EN: My grandparents saw to it that I was into art before I could read. My first comic was a strip about Darkwing Duck. I also can still remember reading a second grade classmate’s comic cover, which was drawn and written incomprehensibly. The title was “The dim. The deth. The to.”
SOL: Do you like to doodle?
EN: I like to doodle. Unfortunately at work I don’t have any time to doodle. However I miss the part of my brain that’s going when I doodle so I may start a doodling time after work.
SOL: Is there an artist you relate to?
EN: I feel like I can strongly relate to some artists’ work. I like how Michael Gira approaches the music he writes for the band Swans, how Samuel Delaney does science fiction, and I also feel very close to the film work of Lars von Trier and John Waters. I appreciate an artist who demands that we examine real life not just with a spectator’s eye on other perspectives, but from within a living, functioning other world created by common behaviors in our own world. I think the ability to do that is what makes a great artist.
SOL: When Johnny Depp acted in John Waters' film CryBaby he said it was very important to him and that it was almost needed that he got to make fun of that playboy images he was branded with. Do you find it necessary to make fun of things that people take to seriously or are forced upon you?
EN: In order to clarify the forces behind anything in the world you have to be able to place the thing in a platonic context. The process is the same whether it’s for acting, satire or for understanding Marx. Or for writing Marx! Anytime we arrive at understanding it’s healthy and therapeutic, particularly when it involves our own conditions and behaviors. I understand that for Depp playing that role probably represented a widening of his world and he probably was able to analyze the thing he’d been in, and then move on from it. A person has to acquire that skill at any cost.
In my personal case, making fun of things is helpful. For one, it places values and behaviors in a place where they are no longer assumed to be the only choice, or even necessary, and that takes the power and stress away from the person. It’s artistically