Bruce Conner: The Afternoon Interviews
NY MOMA staged a huge Bruce Conner retrospective which moved to SF MOMA October 2016. In the show are the “Punk” photos Conner shot for V. Vale’s “Search & Destroy” Punk Magazine 1977-79.
From the late ’70s to 2005, V. Vale interviewed Bruce Conner by telephone and in person mostly in the afternoons. Spontaneous yet insightful in his conversation, Conner is revealed as an innovative improvisatory artist whose goal in life seemed to be freedom and the transcendence of hidebound careerist conformity in all its bureaucratic manifestations. Therefore he created art that annihilated boundaries, categories and predictability.
These interviews have never been transcribed and made public, until now.
Bruce Conner: The Afternoon Interviews includes a revelatory introduction by art curator, writer and philosopher Natasha Boas. Boas positions Conner as a key artist of the late 20th- to early 21st-century, profiling Conner as a surprising role model for today’s emergent and future artists.
*Janet Norris: I am enjoying immensely The Afternoon Interviews – thank goodness, V. Vale did them!
*Val Vale: Also, thank goodness Marian Wallace had the wherewithal to digitize the ancient cassettes and turn them into a book. Thank Natasha Boas for enthusiasm to push the project forward!
*Janet Norris: I often loved your reactions to his words, Val. 🙂
*Natasha Boas: Janet Norris–aren’t they hilarious and revealing?
*Janet Norris: The “real” Bruce is there! So nice to be reminded.
*Thank you for my copy!!! I’m reading it now…. it is so NECESSARY—Dena Beard, The Lab
*Just came in the mail, what a treat; really great read right off!!!—@ultracontemporary
