BOMB 119/Spring 2012
Kalup Linzy as Katonya in his Chewing Gum, 2008, digital video, sound. Courtesy of the artist and Taxter and Spengemann, New York.
Nick Stillman Viewed against the majority of contemporary art, your stuff is totally bonkers—way out. I mean that in a completely complimentary way. You’re a video artist who has been making an ongoing series of soap operas for a while now. You once told me you wanted to act in soaps.
Kalup Linzy I did. I was obsessed with the Spaulding family on Guiding Light. Soap operas were a part of life. Every house you went to had the soap opera on.
NS So it was a method of social organization, a way for people to hang out?
KL People would talk about the characters as if they were real people. There was so much pride in them, especially Guiding Light. I’d hear things like, “Oh, you know, your great-grandmother, Mama Zada, used to watch this.” It got passed down in the family, so when you watched Guiding Light, you felt you were a part of a lineage. Then I got fascinated with the acting and intensity of it. When I was a small child, my aunts would go, “Kalup, how does so and so act?” And I would imitate them. I already had that in me, and it was nurtured, watching these soap operas and thinking that I wanted to be in them someday.
— from BOMB’s interview of Kalup Linzy by Nick Stillman, Summer 2008, Issue 104
DISCLAIMER: This video is intended for mature audiences only. It includes content that is not suitable for children and may be considered objectionable or obscene.
Asshole Remix, 2008, music video, running time: 8 minutes.
Courtesy of the artist and Taxter and Spengemann, New York.
Read the text of Kalup Linzy by Nick Stillman in BOMB 104, Summer 2008, now available on newsstands everywhere. Subscribe today and receive your FREE copy!
(Web Extras, Video)