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Interview with Paper Rad Over the past five years, the artists collectively known as Paper Rad—Jessica Ciocci, Jacob Ciocci, and Ben Jones—have been producing work in a variety of media, including video, music, performance, installation, comics, and internet art. Their art draws heavily from both past and present pop culture, joining material as dissimilar as children’s cartoons, Nintendo, and gangster rap with a jittery, lofi aesthetic. Paper Rad found both inspiration and an audience in Providence, where a thriving warehouse art scene centered around the now-defunct Fort Thunder (famed clubhouse and installation/performance space) adored their brand of psychedelic pastiche. However, despite Paper Rad’s popularity among like-minded Providence artists, none of them are actually from Providence, a detail that many art critics have overlooked. Of course, this distinction isn’t particularly important for the members of Paper Rad either, who deliberately cultivate ambiguous accounts of their history. These ambiguities have proven especially frustrating to art critics, whose enthusiasm for the emerging “new low-tech” generation is tempered only by a general sense of confusion over its origins and intentions. What do artists like Paper Rad want to accomplish? Their work is “Blakean”, one critic ventured, likening Paper Rad’s colorful pop cultural epiphanies to the heretical-divine visions of William Blake’s poetry. But Paper Rad feels less Blakean rebel angel than Holy Fool, confusing cleverness with naivete, giggling all the way to the gulag. The Harvard Advocate had an opportunity to talk with Jessica Ciocci and Ben Jones of Paper Rad at a recent screening of their work at 21 South Street. Harvard Advocate: In addition to Paper Rad, your website mentions Paper Rodeo, Paper Radio, and Radical Nation. What are these different projects, and how do they relate to the current Paper Rad line-up? Ben Jones: Alright, let me try to give you an official, easy story. The first thing out of all those that happened was Paper Radio and that was started by myself and my friend Chris Forgues in Allston in 1998. He and I started Paper Radio when we were both at college. He came up with the name; he came up with the idea. He was making hand-made books for awhile—zines, little comics—and he suggested that we try to do something weekly, photocopied, so he and I started to do it. It was called Paper Radio and a lot of different people were in it, but he and I were the ones who would usually be at the copy shop every week making it, folding it and stapling it. So that went on for a little bit, and he and I started to do other projects, like bands. All the while we were obviously influenced by the stuff in Providence, because they were doing the same kind of stuff. This is after all those kids in Providence made a ton of awesome silk-screened comics. But Lightning Bolt wasn’t really playing out a lot; I think it was kind of a lull in Providence. We started to send them the Paper Radio stuff and they were like, “Oh this is kind of cool. Maybe we should start to do a publication again.” And so they named their publication Paper Rodeo, which was a newspaper that two people down there started. The first issue had a bunch of people: it had Chris and I from Paper Radio. And so Paper Rodeo went on for a while while Paper Radio went in an out. We tried to do a couple more weekly runs of five issues. Then Chris moved to Providence—graduated—and then I met Jessica and Jacob. Jessica Ciocci: [Jacob] and I were big fans of all the Providence art and we knew about what Ben and Chris were doing, so we finally met Ben and we all started doing stuff together. BJ: I started to make books with Jessica and Jacob. We shortened the name Paper Radio to Rad because I felt like I wanted to take the spirit of Paper Radio and carry it on. It was like what Paper Rodeo did with the name: it was an evolution off Paper Radio. So I thought it would be nice to have an evolution off Paper Radio named Paper Rad, and I didn’t mean to end Paper Radio or break it up. To this day we still try to keep that confusing. The lines between [Paper Rad, Paper Radio, and Paper Rodeo] just aren’t that important because I feel like there is collaboration between us and what Chris and Paper Radio is doing, and what the kids from Paper Rodeo are doing. JC: It’s not always literal collaboration. BJ: Sometimes it is. Sometimes we have nothing to do with what they’re doing and sometimes I feel like we shove ourselves in there pretty deep. HA: A lot of art critics see Paper Rad, along with groups like Forcefield or Derraindrop, as a revival of the collective-based art of the’60s and ‘70s. When you talk about Paper Rad as an “artist collective”, does the term have a political or countercultural connotation for you, or is it more straightforward than that? BJ: We never used the word “collective”. It’s a weird thing: one person in New York started to use that word and— JC: And they didn’t even know what they were talking about. BJ: And they didn’t know what they were talking about. I don’t know anything about ‘60s art collectives. What we’re doing is just common sense. I think it’s an extension of our everyday philosophy: how we wake up, what we eat, what we do every day. There isn’t a separate manifesto of what we’re trying to do in terms of art. We’re not trying to fuck up galleries or do weird websites. It’s a more holistic approach to art. That includes collaboration, but people in New York see this collaborative element and latch onto that because it’s easy for them to write about, and it’s easy for them to market. JC: And categorize... BJ: And because these are people from the ‘60s who are like “Oh yeah...” HA: Do you think the collaborative aspect has something to do with your handmade low-tech aesthetic? BJ: It’s like a militia. It’s taking it to the next level. It’s about doing it yourself. There’s only so much stuff one person can do. Either that person has to go and try to work with a company or he can get a bunch of his friends together. That’s how I feel. JC: I would also say that the collaborative part of it has something to do with this vague goal of not wanting to have your ego be a part of your art. That’s something we always hated, when people would sign everything they do. BJ: It makes sense for me to champion a brand instead of championing myself: “Hi, I’m Ben Jones! Buy this button.” I feel like it’s a little bit more sincere if I’m trying to champion this energy. JC: Something that you can’t pin down to one person really. HA: The New York Times recently likened your videos to “tripped-out children’s television.” And while there’s a lot of childhood in your work, it has much more to do with the children’s cartoons of the ‘80s than with those of today. Is there something about a certain era of children’s television that lends itself to psychedelia? Why Gumby and not something like Pokemon? BJ: We could spend a lot of time talking about that. JC: It’s kind of personal to us. There’s something essentially different from what we’re doing and people that would just grab anything from pop culture. We’re pretty selective, whether or not it seems like it. BJ: I don’t disagree with saying it’s like tripped out child’s cartoons. But we’re not taking drugs and we’re not trying to be nostalgic. It’s not like we’re using Planet of the Apes. There is this nostalgic thing that’s happening and happened in art . . . When I go back and use Gumby it’s more related to fantasy than nostalgia. I associate Gumby with fantasy more than I do with my childhood. HA: You recently collaborated with Cory Arcangel to produce “Super Mario Movie”, a fifteen-minute video produced from a hacked Nintendo cartridge. Do you see this project as coming from the same place as your other work? Is there a connection between an ‘80s video game character like Mario and an ‘80s children’s cartoon like Gumby? BJ: That’s just it, because that project was totally fantasy. It was like taking Mario to the next level in our minds. It wasn’t rehashing. It wasn’t like, “Let’s make Mario bumper stickers. Let’s make a Mario sticker and put it around town and make a Mario game.” JC: It wasn’t like, “Oh now I’m going to wear this Mario t-shirt. And that’s funny. Ha-ha.” I think all of us genuinely like Gumby (who’s not really from the 80s anyway), and Garfield, which is another character we use a lot. And Mario. We can see something in them. BJ: And there’s something deeper there. The easiest way for me to explain is that the guy who made Gumby is this insane guy who had all these insane spiritual avenues in his life. I’m not saying Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, is the same way, but I didn’t really like Garfield growing up. But now, whatever. HA: Aside from pop culture, what are your influences? Do you think there are art-historical precedents for your work? BJ: This dude [G. I.] Gurdjieff wrote this insane sci-fi spiritual book and I’ve been trying to read that and I take that as a big influence. JC: Jacob is in grad school now so I’m sure he would have a lot to say. I’ve been reading a lot about American public space: cars and how they ruin the way we live. HA: One final question. As you begin to exhibit at larger events like the Armory Show or the Liverpool Biennial, do you feel pressured to produce more of a certain kind of work, such as multiple channel installation? BJ: I feel a pressure to give them stuff that they want. I’ve been getting into this mode where I’m like, “Look, what do you want? Let me just take out a couple days, I’ll give it to you, and you’ll leave me alone.” It’s like anything else. It’s like raking your neighbor’s yard: it’s just a thing to do. Whether it’s the Armory or other stuff. I think my approach recently has been to try to analyze what the situation is about and how we could execute something successfully for it. Yeah, with multi-channel videos, it’s easy: people can digest that. Jessica, what do you think? JC: Whether we’re pressured? BJ: Or how we react to these situations? JC: Of course we have to tailor what we’re doing to the situation. I guess you could see that as negative, but it doesn’t have to be. We just try to make everything ours and do our best. BJ: That’s a good ending.
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