Mike Kelley in “Memory” - Season 3 | “Art in the Twenty-First Century"

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

in a projected series of 365.

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

[ rhythmic drumming and clapping ]

[ women squeal ]

[ rhythmic drumming and clapping ]

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

that I was going
to be an artist.

There was no doubt about that.

There was nothing else
for me to be.

I think coming out
of Catholicism,

I have a real interest
in ritual.

I mean, ritual is beautiful,

but I never was a believer.

Yet...

I think my interest in art
all along has been

in trying to develop a kind
of materialist ritual.

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

When I first started working
with stuffed animals,

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

about commodity culture.

But I was really surprised

that when everybody looked
at these works I made,

they all thought
it was about child abuse.

Now, that wasn't anything
I expected

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

they thought it was
about my abuse.

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

I have to go with that.

I have to make all my work
about my abuse,

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

like that this
is our shared culture.

This is the presumption

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

My work is very reactive.

I'd make something,

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

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

I don't reject it; I embrace it.

I run with it,

you know. That tells me what to do.

I decided to go back
to my originating trauma,

which was my student training,

and so I took all these drawings

that I did in college
as an undergraduate

which are perversions

of Hoffmanesque
compositional principles,

and I relearned
to paint that way.

And I did this series.

This is the first series
of paintings I did

in this regressive manner.

They're called
"The Thirteen Seasons."

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

because the oval, again,
has no end.

And so it's eternal.

It's eternally recurring abuse.

In this kind
of trauma literature,

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

and then you recover it.

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

and they're image tropes
or music tropes

or performative tropes--

it interests me to try

to bring them into my system

in certain ways, you know,
incorporate them.

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

Things start simple
and get more complex.

Sense always comes
after the fact in my work--

to make it, at first glance,
acceptable,

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

So it has to operate
on multiple levels.

It has to be available

to the laziest viewer
on a certain level...

and then on a more sophisticated
viewer as well.

I think what I make
is beautiful.

I think it's beautiful,
because terms are confused

and divisions between categories
start to slip.

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

or it produces humor,

and both things interest me.

And I... I...

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

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

and then the fake horse.

—Oh, that's better.

That's even better.
—Yeah.

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

—The man is
the pitchfork demon?

KELLEY:
It's the pitchfork guy.

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

—Yeah.

—And tell him not to swing
his pitchfork around.

—Yeah, do something
like that.

Stomp, stomp, stomp.
—Come on in.

[ whinnies ]
And then go.

KELLEY:
"Day is Done"-- the project

I'm working on right now--

is kind of built around a mythos

that relates to
an earlier sculpture I did

called "The Educational Complex," which is

a model of every school
I ever went to

plus the home I grew up in,

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

—I think I want to try it

when these cheerleaders
get to about here,

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

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

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

—Should they raise
their arms like that?

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

I don't know, let me see it.

Let's hear a big "Wha!"

ALL:
Whoo!

—Yeah, arms is good.

Lift the arms up. Whoa!

ALL:
Whoa!

[ drum cadence playing ]

—Action.
—Action.

[ drum cadence playing ]

KELLEY:
All these

videos are based
on high school yearbooks.

It's not because
I have any interest

in high school
or high school culture,

but it's one of the few places

where you can find photographs
of these kinds of rituals.

—WOMAN:Cut.

Stand this way
a little bit.

Yeah, let's go for it.

MAN:
Okay.

It's really close.

It won't be the same.

Okay, it's fine.

The... the image is the same.

MAN:
The image is...

KELLEY:
The relationships

are the same.

Almost all of this comes
from writing,

and...

and then later
I tried to say, well,

how can it be
visually interesting?

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

KELLEY:Cut.

[ laughs ]

WOMAN:
Good job, Stan.

All the writing is...
is associative,

and it comes
from my own experience, but

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

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

It all gets mixed up.

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

And I see it all
as a kind of fiction.

—I can't walk by myself.

I'm not responsible.

KELLEY:
When I was younger,

all my writing was generated
for performance work.

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

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

[ whistles ]

So this project is
very much a way for me

to get back into writing and--

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

I have to work it
into my work somehow.

It's like music.

I didn't have time
to play music anymore,

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

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

[ Kelley playing eerie melody
on electric organ ]

KELLEY:
Never had any musical training.

I grew up in a household where there was really

very little interest in music, and

they didn't teach music
in school.

And, uh... I

grew up on rock and
roll music, and all

the musicians I knew
were self-taught.

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

But this project's
really different

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

because it's all based
on really,

uh... typical forms, but

I know enough about that
where I can fake it.

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

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

And so we can piece it
all together

and it's believable.

—Am I going to hear
the, uh...

the...

orchestra sample too?

—MAN: Uh, yeah, you'll hear,

you'll hear
what you just did.

—Okay.

—Here we go.

KELLEY:
With the computer,

we can do everything ourself.

We don't need to get
an orchestra;

we can...

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

[ cymbals resonating ]

[ drum cadence playing ]

ALL:
Whoo!

[ drum cadence playing ]

KELLEY:
My dream is to perform it live.

MAN:
Let the final procession begin.

KELLEY:
So that

the whole thing
is performed

like, say, in a 24-hour period,

so the day stands for the year.

[ drum cadence continues ]

It's very much
like a passion play.

Though a somewhat formalized
and ridiculous passion play, though its

its ridiculousness
is purposeful.

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

♪ Mary...♪

♪ Mary...♪

♪ Mary...♪

♪ Mary...♪

♪ Mary...♪

KELLEY:
I think that's

the joyfulness of it.

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

so it's a critical joy.

It's, you know...

it's negative joy.

[ laughs ]

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

That's what separates it

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

I still think
the social function of art

is that kind of...

negative aesthetic.

Otherwise there's
no social function for it.

[ women squealing ]

[ upbeat jazzy music playing ]