How infuriating to be asked to define my world within this miserable, shitty little box AGAIN. I am of course fascinated by EVERYTHING around me, from fashion models to fascist symbols, from the perfume of a Russian whore to the smell of urine in a dark alley, from torture to terrorism, from bird flu to bombing, I have a love/hate relationship with all things popular and unpopular. All forms of Visual Art appeal, from the dying slaves of Michelangelo and the dwarfs of Velazquez, to the dark paintings of Goya. Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe, Joel Peter Witkin's mutilated corpses, the brutal performances of Bob Flanagan not to mention the pleasure I get from seeing pretty people in costumes of their own making in trendy London clubs such as Kashpoint and AYCE. Provocation, political dissent and underground culture rock.
ARTISTS, ARTISTS, ARTISTS!!Painters, performers and perverts. Creative people who live on the edge and have something to say.
How can I define my taste in music? When I am feeling experimental, any kind of noise will do. I like a band from the late 70's called "Furious Pig" whom no-one knows. When I am melancholy, I like the gymnopedies of Eric Satie, the plaintive voice of Billie Holiday or the alcohol-fuelled lyrics of Leadbelly and Tom Waits. When I am painting, I like to be mesmerised by "The Velvet Underground" or "The Doors" . At a party I become nostalgic for 60s and 70s cheese like Nancy Sinatra. When I am at a club I like unchallenging rock bands like "The White Stripes". When I am angry, I prefer "Death metal" and "Rage against the machine". The truth is, like most people, I like a lot of different types of music ranging from Classical to early Jazz, from Gershwin to "Gangster".
At school I was influenced by "Lord of the Flies" and the revolution scene in "If". When I am looking for something light I go to Hollywood, the wit of Woody Allen, the colour and scope of "Gone with the Wind", Huxley's script in the 1930s version of "Pride and Prejudice". The mood in Hitchcock's "Psycho" and "Vertigo" enhanced by Bernard Hermann's music. De Niro's acting in "Taxi Driver". David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet. If I need something deeper I go for 'Inland Empire', the films of Tarkovski, in particular, "Stalker", "Solaris" and "Mirror" and "Ivan's childhood", Paradjanov's "Colour of Pomegranites" "El Topo" and "The Holy Mountain", Fellini's La Strada, Jean Renoir's 'La grand Illusion', the shorts of Francis Picabia, Maya Deren, Andy Warhol, "The Ballet Mechanique" of Fernand Leger, the low-budget "Tetsuo", the documentaries of Frederic Wiseman, not to mention that masterpiece of US government propaganda, "Reefer Madness"
I should throw my TV out the window but I can't. Watching Monty Python and the famous interview with the "Sex Pistols" totally changed my life
I was brought up on the classics so I still have a soft spot for Plato, Euripides and Homer. I HATE all mention of Shakespeare as he has come to represent for me everything I loathe about England. The weird sophistry of Bishop Berkeley, the misanthropy and trangression of the Marquis De Sade, George Bataille and Antonin Artaud, Wittgenstein, Marx and Chomsky, the novels of Dostoyevsky, Dickens and Camus, the short stories of Kafka, the poems of Omar Khayam, Blake, Schwitters, Eliot and Ginsberg, the plays of Beckett, the imagination of Primo Levi, the immediacy of Burroughs, Bukovsky, James Frey and Dennis Cooper. When I can't be bothered to think I read PG Woodhouse.
Andy Warhol for saying everyone can be famous for fifteen minutes. Zhu Yu for eating a foetus