WEBVTT

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MIKE KELLEY: Right now I'm working
on about the 30th tape

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in a projected series of 365.

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And so it's supposed to be one
tape for every day of the year.

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[ rhythmic drumming and clapping ]

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[ women squeal ]

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[ rhythmic drumming and clapping ]

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I... I knew by the time
I was a teenager

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that I was going
to be an artist.

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There was no doubt about that.

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There was nothing else
for me to be.

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I think coming out
of Catholicism,

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I have a real interest
in ritual.

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I mean, ritual is beautiful,

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but I never was a believer.

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Yet...

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I think my interest in art
all along has been

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in trying to develop a kind
of materialist ritual.

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And I see all art as being
a kind of materialist ritual.

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When I first started working
with stuffed animals,

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I was responding to the... a lot
of the dialogue in the '80s

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about commodity culture.

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But I was really surprised

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that when everybody looked
at these works I made,

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they all thought
it was about child abuse.

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Now, that wasn't anything
I expected

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and not only did they think
it was about child abuse,

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they thought it was
about my abuse.

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So I said, well,
that's really interesting.

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I have to go with that.

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I have to make all my work
about my abuse,

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and not only that--
about everybody's abuse,

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like that this
is our shared culture.

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This is the presumption

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that all motivation is based on some kind
of repressed trauma.

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My work is very reactive.

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I'd make something,

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I get a response
that I'm not...

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I... I had no idea
I was going to get--

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I don't reject it; I embrace it.

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I run with it,

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you know. That tells me what to do.

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I decided to go back
to my originating trauma,

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which was my student training,

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and so I took all these drawings

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that I did in college
as an undergraduate

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which are perversions

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of Hoffmanesque
compositional principles,

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and I relearned
to paint that way.

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And I did this series.

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This is the first series
of paintings I did

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in this regressive manner.

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They're called
"The Thirteen Seasons."

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They're oval-- I broke
from the rectangular form

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because the oval, again,
has no end.

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And so it's eternal.

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It's eternally recurring abuse.

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In this kind
of trauma literature,

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the parts you can't remember
is called "missing time"

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and then you recover it.

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Because I work so much
with various kinds of tropes--

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and they're image tropes
or music tropes

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or performative tropes--

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it interests me to try

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to bring them into my system

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in certain ways, you know, 
incorporate them.

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It's part of this whole process
of working through things.

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Things start simple
and get more complex.

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Sense always comes
after the fact in my work--

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to make it, at first glance,
acceptable,

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like I've seen some of that
before or I understand that.

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So it has to operate
on multiple levels.

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It has to be available

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to the laziest viewer
on a certain level...

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and then on a more sophisticated
viewer as well.

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I think what I make
is beautiful.

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I think it's beautiful,
because terms are confused

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and divisions between categories
start to slip.

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And that produces, um... what
I think is a sublime effect,

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or it produces humor,

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and both things interest me.

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And I... I...

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I guess I'm interested in a kind of 
sublime play or sublime humor.

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—Well, behind... behind...
behind the mule is a man

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and then the fake horse.

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—Oh, that's better.

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That's even better.
—Yeah.

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You got a man in there to fill
up the gap-- that's better.

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—The man is
the pitchfork demon?

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KELLEY: 
It's the pitchfork guy.

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—Stan? It's Stan,
if you could get him.

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—Yeah.

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—And tell him not to swing
his pitchfork around.

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—Yeah, do something
like that.

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Stomp, stomp, stomp.
—Come on in.

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[ whinnies ]
And then go.

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KELLEY:
"Day is Done"-- the project

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I'm working on right now--

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is kind of built around a mythos

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that relates to
an earlier sculpture I did

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called "The Educational Complex," which is

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a model of every school
I ever went to

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plus the home I grew up in,

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with all the parts
I can't remember left blank.

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—I think I want to try it

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when these cheerleaders
get to about here,

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to give me a big scream,
you know like, "Whoa!"

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Like that's the most wonderful
thing you've ever seen.

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—The audience should do a big scream?
—Yeah.

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—Should they raise
their arms like that?

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—No, no, just... just...
well, let me...

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I don't know, let me see it.

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Let's hear a big "Wha!"

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ALL:
Whoo!

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—Yeah, arms is good.

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Lift the arms up. Whoa!

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ALL:
Whoa!

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[ drum cadence playing ]

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—Action.
—Action.

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[ drum cadence playing ]

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KELLEY:
All these

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videos are based
on high school yearbooks.

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It's not because
I have any interest

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in high school
or high school culture,

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but it's one of the few places

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where you can find photographs
of these kinds of rituals.

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—WOMAN:Cut.

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Stand this way
a little bit.

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Yeah, let's go for it.

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MAN:
Okay.

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It's really close.

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It won't be the same.

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Okay, it's fine.

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The... the image is the same.

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MAN:
The image is...

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KELLEY:
The relationships

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are the same.

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Almost all of this comes
from writing,

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and...

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and then later
I tried to say, well,

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how can it be
visually interesting?

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It has narrative elements, but it's... it's not
straight narrative.

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KELLEY:Cut.

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[ laughs ]

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WOMAN:
Good job, Stan.

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All the writing is...
is associative,

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and it comes
from my own experience, but

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it's very hard to,
say, to disentangle memories

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of films or books or cartoons
or plays from "real experience."

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It all gets mixed up.

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So in a way I don't make
such distinctions.

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And I see it all
as a kind of fiction.

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—I can't walk by myself.

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I'm not responsible.

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KELLEY:
When I was younger,

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all my writing was generated
for performance work.

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—I'm the sailor, but I don't have
sea legs, sea legs.

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But I don't walk
and I don't talk.

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[ whistles ]

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So this project is
very much a way for me

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to get back into writing and--

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because I don't have the time
just to do it.

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I have to work it
into my work somehow.

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It's like music.

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I didn't have time
to play music anymore,

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so I had to make a project
where I had...

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that had to have music in it, so
I forced myself to make music.

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[ Kelley playing eerie melody
on electric organ ]

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KELLEY:
Never had any musical training.

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I grew up in a household where there was really

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very little interest in music, and

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they didn't teach music
in school.

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And, uh... I

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grew up on rock and 
roll music, and all

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the musicians I knew
were self-taught.

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I've been playing noise music
for many, many years.

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But this project's
really different

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because this is like
no other music I've ever done,

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because it's all based
on really,

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uh... typical forms, but

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I know enough about that
where I can fake it.

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And, I mean, I don't know what I'm doing. 
Say, I can't say, oh, that's this chord

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or that's this note,
but I know what it sounds like.

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And so we can piece it
all together

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and it's believable.

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—Am I going to hear
the, uh...

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the...

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orchestra sample too?

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—MAN: Uh, yeah, you'll hear,

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you'll hear
what you just did.

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—Okay.

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—Here we go.

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KELLEY:
With the computer,

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we can do everything ourself.

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We don't need to get
an orchestra;

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we can...

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do all the editing here. 
We can make films by ourselves.

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[ cymbals resonating ]

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[ drum cadence playing ]

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ALL:
Whoo!

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[ drum cadence playing ]

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KELLEY:
My dream is to perform it live.

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MAN:
Let the final procession begin.

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KELLEY:
So that

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the whole thing
is performed

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like, say, in a 24-hour period,

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so the day stands for the year.

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[ drum cadence continues ]

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It's very much
like a passion play.

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Though a somewhat formalized
and ridiculous passion play, though its

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its ridiculousness
is purposeful.

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CAST ( harmonizing ):
♪ Mary...♪ ♪ Mary...♪

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♪ Mary...♪

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♪ Mary...♪

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♪ Mary...♪

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♪ Mary...♪

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♪ Mary...♪

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KELLEY:
I think that's

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the joyfulness of it.

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But then it's a black humor;
it's a mean humor,

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so it's a critical joy.

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It's, you know...

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it's negative joy.

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[ laughs ]

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But that's art, I think,
you know, for me at least.

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That's what separates it

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from the folk art
that I'm going to--that

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I still think
the social function of art

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is that kind of...

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negative aesthetic.

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Otherwise there's
no social function for it.

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[ women squealing ]

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[ upbeat jazzy music playing ]