WEBVTT

00:00:00.086 --> 00:00:03.003
(orchestral music)

00:00:04.710 --> 00:00:07.860
- Hi everyone, welcome to
the Cooking Show today.

00:00:07.860 --> 00:00:09.610
- Thank you so much for joining me.

00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:13.680
We'll be building, we'll be cooking,

00:00:13.680 --> 00:00:15.780
and we'll be having a great time.

00:00:23.289 --> 00:00:25.410
When I started making videos,

00:00:25.410 --> 00:00:28.260
I was just watching on
my downtime on YouTube,

00:00:28.260 --> 00:00:31.170
a lot of aspirational
media like cooking shows

00:00:31.170 --> 00:00:35.223
and music videos and home improvement TV.

00:00:37.830 --> 00:00:40.950
I was playing around with maybe
the formal elements of how

00:00:40.950 --> 00:00:44.940
the material world is shown
inside of these things

00:00:44.940 --> 00:00:49.523
that are halfway advertising
and halfway instructional.

00:00:57.270 --> 00:00:59.760
- Then I started to really
think about the hosts

00:00:59.760 --> 00:01:04.080
of these things, the perfection
that is tempered with

00:01:04.080 --> 00:01:07.810
this often sort of fake
or performed vulnerability

00:01:08.880 --> 00:01:10.980
where it seems like certain
things that are probably

00:01:10.980 --> 00:01:14.661
beyond most of our own grasp
could be graspable or held.

00:01:19.620 --> 00:01:21.488
We'll be right back.

00:01:21.488 --> 00:01:24.071
(upbeat music)

00:01:24.990 --> 00:01:27.480
I grew up in central Brooklyn.

00:01:27.480 --> 00:01:30.213
I think I was a pretty
sort of solitary kid.

00:01:32.340 --> 00:01:35.220
I would spend a lot of time
just kind of looking at things,

00:01:35.220 --> 00:01:38.430
surfaces and the outsides of buildings,

00:01:38.430 --> 00:01:41.073
sort of making up stories for myself.

00:01:43.320 --> 00:01:45.330
So this is the house I grew up in.

00:01:45.330 --> 00:01:48.180
We like to take a kind
of laissez-faire approach

00:01:48.180 --> 00:01:49.773
to the front lawn.

00:01:51.060 --> 00:01:53.940
I was doing a lot of things
that would sort of seem like

00:01:53.940 --> 00:01:57.243
art or felt like art
from a pretty young age.

00:01:59.400 --> 00:02:02.340
It was like the space where
the world made sense for me.

00:02:02.340 --> 00:02:04.260
This one is like a Halloween,

00:02:04.260 --> 00:02:06.060
I think I was a dead house wife,

00:02:06.060 --> 00:02:08.310
that's what I said I was that year.

00:02:08.310 --> 00:02:12.300
- Even at this age, she was stubborn,

00:02:12.300 --> 00:02:14.717
she kind of knew what she wanted to do.

00:02:16.200 --> 00:02:17.884
She had her own mind.

00:02:17.884 --> 00:02:20.467
(upbeat music)

00:02:27.180 --> 00:02:30.183
- Early on actually, I had
called myself a painter.

00:02:33.420 --> 00:02:35.430
And I think really what
attracted me to that

00:02:35.430 --> 00:02:37.053
was like paint itself.

00:02:38.310 --> 00:02:42.150
The sort of alchemical magical
way colors came together

00:02:42.150 --> 00:02:44.463
on the surface of a canvas.

00:02:47.850 --> 00:02:50.940
And I realized that like state of becoming

00:02:50.940 --> 00:02:52.833
was what was really exciting to me.

00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:56.550
That's how I started making
video, actually was sort of

00:02:56.550 --> 00:03:00.150
recording myself in the
process of making paintings

00:03:00.150 --> 00:03:01.440
and then remixing that

00:03:01.440 --> 00:03:04.140
or reediting that later on to share

00:03:04.140 --> 00:03:06.778
what I really cared
about with other people.

00:03:06.778 --> 00:03:10.288
(upbeat music)

00:03:10.288 --> 00:03:13.650
And then that evolved into
sculptures and installations

00:03:13.650 --> 00:03:17.870
to sort of house and
recontextualize those moving images.

00:03:17.870 --> 00:03:20.453
(upbeat music)

00:03:24.727 --> 00:03:27.873
Oh look, here's you with
your beautiful face mask.

00:03:32.010 --> 00:03:35.640
- If my kids ask me to
go to the moon with them,

00:03:35.640 --> 00:03:37.053
I'm gonna try to go there.

00:03:37.920 --> 00:03:41.187
You know, I'm learning, she's teaching me.

00:03:41.187 --> 00:03:45.750
And that's what artists
do, they enlighten us

00:03:45.750 --> 00:03:49.083
because they see things
on a subconscious level.

00:03:52.530 --> 00:03:54.753
- I knew that my mom was such a ham.

00:03:56.100 --> 00:03:59.310
I never saw her actually
cooking food in the kitchen

00:03:59.310 --> 00:04:02.280
when we were growing up, but
we had these long mirrors

00:04:02.280 --> 00:04:04.710
in front of the kitchen and
she would do these sort of like

00:04:04.710 --> 00:04:07.980
fake Julia Child's
performances for herself

00:04:07.980 --> 00:04:10.920
and maybe like burn a piece
of toast and then walk away.

00:04:10.920 --> 00:04:15.630
- Today I'll be showing you
my daily clean beauty routine.

00:04:15.630 --> 00:04:18.450
This one is so much fun to use.

00:04:18.450 --> 00:04:20.400
I'm going to show you how to make this.

00:04:21.630 --> 00:04:24.030
- So it felt really natural
to sort of invite her

00:04:24.030 --> 00:04:26.133
into my process in that way.

00:04:28.050 --> 00:04:31.200
- It smells like Cheetos.

00:04:31.200 --> 00:04:34.080
- I do like to kind of
operate in this space

00:04:34.080 --> 00:04:36.450
where the videos at
first look like something

00:04:36.450 --> 00:04:39.120
you're really familiar
with, and then I start to

00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:41.490
insert these uncomfortable things,

00:04:41.490 --> 00:04:45.183
maybe these uncomfortable
truths into a familiar form,

00:04:47.160 --> 00:04:49.050
and then sort of see what happens

00:04:49.050 --> 00:04:51.383
when that friction comes up.

00:04:56.220 --> 00:04:57.600
- I think a lot of these themes

00:04:57.600 --> 00:04:59.880
that I think about like aspiration

00:04:59.880 --> 00:05:03.960
and how we try to seek
control over our lives,

00:05:03.960 --> 00:05:07.560
they come so much to the forefront
in this space of wellness

00:05:07.560 --> 00:05:08.670
and wellness culture.

00:05:08.670 --> 00:05:11.550
And our bodies are obviously
the site where so many

00:05:11.550 --> 00:05:13.533
of these things really play out.

00:05:17.250 --> 00:05:21.930
In 2019, that company, Mirror,
started doing a lot of ads

00:05:21.930 --> 00:05:23.043
on the subway.

00:05:24.600 --> 00:05:27.930
You could have this instructor
beam straight into your room

00:05:27.930 --> 00:05:30.120
and it could look like high-end design

00:05:30.120 --> 00:05:31.890
and they could be kind of coaxing you out

00:05:31.890 --> 00:05:33.813
of whatever into exercising.

00:05:34.710 --> 00:05:37.860
And so I just wanted to try to make my own

00:05:37.860 --> 00:05:39.869
and see what would happen.

00:05:39.869 --> 00:05:42.619
(downbeat music)

00:05:48.210 --> 00:05:51.603
I thought about them kind of
like haunted medicine cabinets.

00:05:54.630 --> 00:05:56.940
Rather than giving you clear instruction

00:05:56.940 --> 00:06:01.320
about how to work out or
what the weather is like,

00:06:01.320 --> 00:06:04.770
they're just as much sort of
asking you for instruction

00:06:04.770 --> 00:06:07.260
or giving confounding advice

00:06:07.260 --> 00:06:10.440
or they're playing CAPTCHA tests

00:06:10.440 --> 00:06:12.890
and maybe wanting you to
help them out with them.

00:06:14.515 --> 00:06:17.265
(downbeat music)

00:06:20.188 --> 00:06:23.160
I called the piece Needy
Machines in that way

00:06:23.160 --> 00:06:26.403
because I thought of these
objects as sort of needy.

00:06:28.950 --> 00:06:31.740
But also wondering within this
space, especially the space

00:06:31.740 --> 00:06:35.613
of the bathroom, if we are
needy machines somehow.

00:06:42.510 --> 00:06:44.250
I think it's also a friction I'm living

00:06:44.250 --> 00:06:45.480
with constantly, right?

00:06:45.480 --> 00:06:46.833
And I think we all are.

00:06:48.450 --> 00:06:51.970
Between the sort of space of
fantasy we want to live in

00:06:53.760 --> 00:06:55.851
and then the truth that we kind of know

00:06:55.851 --> 00:06:57.376
even in an embodied way

00:06:58.825 --> 00:07:01.143
about the instability of everything.

00:07:02.256 --> 00:07:05.089
(downbeat music)