PART ONE: PDX/AMSTERDAM Glen Fogel: Hello! Kristan Kennedy: You are right on time. Hello! What are you doing in Amsterdam? GF: I am trying to stay awake! I have been so jet lagged. Those overnight flights really suck unless you have some Ambien. KK: Drugs are usually helpful. Except when they aren’t. GF: Speaking of drugs, I have never been to Amsterdam and everyone is stoned! It’s really funny. KK: Everyone is stoned in Portland as well, sometimes it is funny, sometimes not. You will see we have a fairly regular news segment called “Faces of Meth.” It is not amusing to watch humans shrink before your eyes. GF: Meth is not cute. KK: Exactly. Speaking of cute, why do you think you’ve been the subject of so much adoration? GF: Well, I think it’s kinda over now, but it was really intense for a while—from about third grade through my early 20s. KK: I read your interview with Antony in North Drive Press. It seems your hair had something to do with it. GF: Oh no! I can’t even remember that. Please refresh my memory… KK: Well, you mentioned that you were small for your age, and that you had large, feathered hair bigger than your head. GF: OMG. KK: You made it seem that you were simultaneously trying to hide and stand out. Or that you unintentionally stood out because of your unassuming nature. This is all leading somewhere…It seems that while your work is about portraiture and mining personal terrain, it is also about perception; other eyes seeing you before you see yourself. GF: I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but that sounds about right. It’s as if I was found out before I knew what I was about. KK: Exactly. GF: It happened consistently for many years. I found it at once thrilling, but also really disturbing—I could’t figure out what people were seeing. KK: It makes me think about walking past a mirror and catching a reflection of yourself and having the image in your mind not match up with what you see. Of course, somewhere between the insane, obsessive notes written to you by pre-teen girls, and the embittered letters of your later loves there lies the truth. Is that what you are looking for—some truth? GF: I remember feeling like I was a blank surface that people were projecting themselves onto. Somehow people would look into my eyes and just see what they wanted. I don’t really believe in truth. KK: Now that is interesting. I don’t think I do either, but often we are in hot pursuit of it. Or, maybe a better word is ANSWERS. I don’t want to get psychoanalytic, but do you think this “projection” of self is manifested quite literally in your film work? GF: Do you mean by the very nature of a projection, or in something specific in the work? KK: The very nature of projection? Take a bong hit and answer that one. GF: This conversation is making me feel high—kinda like an intense therapy session. KK: Curator does mean “to care for the soul”…it was a term used to describe people who took care of mental patients, but that is another subject entirely… GF: I think that might be a bit too literal—the projection thing. I really came to making films and videos because I couldn’t make anything else. KK: In the end, I want something from you, just like all of those note-writers. Answers… GF: Too literal of a reading, I meant… KK: Yes, perhaps. Well, let me re-frame this: when did you decide to mine this material to make work? GF: Well, I think it was always present in my work, just not so explicitly. There was a veiled aesthetic, a removal of sorts. Then, four or so years ago, I received a hand-delivered letter from someone I was seeing, and it opened a flood gate. The letter was the ultimate act of projection and the person was fully aware of it. I realized that I had received so many of those letters over the years and simply put them away, always carrying them from place to place in a box, never sure why I was keeping them. I actually don’t keep much of anything. I’m always throwing things away—purging—but I kept the letters. KK: Was there some freedom in exposing them, putting them out in a way, where they became material that did reflect who you were, something you understood, art? GF: It seemed to me that my voice as an artist could be the voice of others, like a conduit. It also felt incredibly wrong and that appealed to me, and continues to appeal to me. KK: The wrongness…meaning the reveal of the personal? GF: Yes, and the apparent narcissism of the act. I think there is a definite cringe factor to the letter paintings—they make people feel uncomfortable. KK: There is that mirror image again—and the disconnect—between the actual and the perceived, but I don’t see this work as being self-obsessed or egotistical, even in its cool removal (how formal the paintings are, how crisp the video is). It is soulful and self-aware. Still, there is a space between the beauty or craft of the work and what it is saying. Is that where the tension lies? GF: That is precisely where I want the tension to be. KK: If someone found a box of your letters hidden under the bed, they would surely read them. It would feed that part of us that wants to know someone’s secrets. But, in their current state, on the wall at such massive scale with bright light illuminating them, the only one who is implicated is the viewer. GF: It does play out like a sleight of hand; in the end, I don’t feel very exposed by the project at all, so perhaps, like you say, it’s not really about me or ‘Glen’… KK: No, it’s too human to be about one Glen; it’s about ALL GLEN’s. Your name does become something else in the painted letters, and in other work…a name that represents a feeling, something repeated over and over for effect. GF: I never liked my name, and at times have thought of changing it, but when I think of the work, it seems as though it wouldn’t have the same effect with another name. ‘Glen’ is just right. Just like with Goldye —that Cadillac—the year, color, model, etc… was the only car that could’ve worked [with that name], even though the car itself is rather unexceptional. KK: Yes, there is a specificity that does not call out something’s uniqueness, but it’s universality. GF: So am I the medium? KK: It seems like it is about iconic symbols of emotionality or relationships. How a car can reflect a persona, or how people start looking like their dogs, or how a love song is about everyone and everything. Yes, you are the medium. “The medium is the message/massage.” Thinking about the iconic symbolism of relationships leads me to your installation, "With Me…You". There is such a perfect imperfection in the rings. GF: I think it’s very important to the piece that they are worn, and that they don’t initially appear that way. KK: All of the work has a patina, but is devoid of nostalgia. To me, that is why it works. It is stunning…you know there is history there, but the stylistic choices strip the work of any schmaltzy, diaristic qualities. It all feels new, even if it references the past, or an era, or a lifetime commitment. GF: I need you to write my grant applications! KK: Hardly! So, talk to me about your use of color, light, sound. This is something that feels like your language, your way of speaking back. GF: I think of those things as being very intuitive, and what I have always been drawn to—clean lines, bright crisp colors, cool spatial light, electronic music—they are things that give me pleasure. I think of those stylistic decisions as a way to create a space to receive the work—both distancing, but also very seductive. KK: I think that we don’t talk about pleasure or joy enough when we talk about art. GF: If it doesn’t provide pleasure or joy, then I’m not sure what good it is. It can also be pleasure in something sad or painful… KK: Certainly there is pathos in the work. Also humor, a slyness. You mentioned slight of hand. Do you see some of your work as trickery? Playing on people’s emotions or perceptions? GF: Kristan! I am so jet lagged and falling asleep! Can we continue tomorrow? KK: Of course!!!! GF: Or we can edit and add something… KK: My intention is not to make your eyes bleed. GF: Well, it’s not your fault, they just bleed anyway!

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