Fischerspooner. First Time at the Arena

In 2002, viewers of the BBC television programme Top of the Pops, instead of the usual hip-hoppers and chewing-gum-like artists, were watching a strange picture. A young man dressed in a white suit, an obvious lover of the tanning bed and the gym, together with a flock of girls, was dancing and leaping about to the sounds of a cheap synthesiser, wailing at the top of his lungs "You don't need to emerge from nothing". On the next chorus, without stopping his dancing for a second, with one very light movement he ripped the suit off himself, remaining in white swimming trunks of the same colour. That was how British housewives got acquainted with Casey Spooner, the frontman of one of the most amusing groups of our time, Fischerspooner. In September of this year, this "circus for adults" has finally got round to making it to Moscow.

The full version of the interview with Casey Spooner, published in TimeOut Moscow magazine (C).

Oh yes. Do you not want to call me back - the connection is not good. Dial me on my mobile.

That is much better. Hang on, I have got another line. Redial once more.

...yes, I have a house here in the mountains, far from the clubs. A village surrounded by green-covered mountains and the blue sea. It is quiet, all I can hear is the miaowing of cats. There is a small pool in the back yard.

No, I share the bungalow with our musical director, so it works out as the perfect combination of relaxation with the emergency option of getting some work done.

We have been living on Ibiza for three months now, and every Monday we do a show at the club Privilege. And on the rest of the week we travel around to various European festivals, giving concerts in major cities. Over the summer we managed to visit London, Paris, Zurich, Oslo, we performed at the Benicassim festival in Spain and at the Belgian Pukkelpop.

No, not once. And one of the reasons we decided to spend the summer in Europe is the chance to go to places where we have never been before and where we would not get to from the USA. After all, flying weekly from New York to the Old World is quite difficult. But from Ibiza you can go anywhere, for example, to Greece, Turkey or Moscow.

Well, first of all, a contract with the club gives you the chance to live in and move around Europe. Second - I like the idea of live music in a dance club. It is cool. Privilege is a huge club, it is successful, on Mondays even without us there are 10,000 people there. And imagine the DJ lifting the needle off the vinyl and a band coming out on stage to play music live. It comes out as sheer wildness. To pull off this crazy idea was very presumptuous on the venue's part. Besides, we had never worked with anyone on a permanent basis - we wanted to try the genre of a club show. Now we are already thinking about other genres. Maybe next year we will give a series of concerts in Vegas. I want Fischerspooner to be as legendary and long-running as Webber's musicals. Although, when Privilege's managers first called me, I refused point-blank and shouted "You must be joking!? I will never go to a disco island! That scene does not interest me. I do not like progressive trance."

I do not give a damn about people's opinion, because Fischerspooner is constantly changing. We try not to limit ourselves in the choice of spaces and contexts. We live in the present moment and are ready to transform completely depending on the circumstances. Last year Fischerspooner was a performance piece, and now it is, first and foremost, a concert project. People will change their minds when we prepare another big show and stage it in an art gallery.

We developed a special structure for Manumission. It resembles a collage: the DJ plays, then suddenly the sound fades to nothing, we appear and perform one song. Then we disappear, the DJ starts up the records again, something else goes on, and an hour later Fischerspooner come out on stage again and perform two more songs. Such a scheme turns a club party into an evening of variety, only a very strange and oversaturated one: with go-go dancing, fire-eaters and strippers.

At 3.15.

Yes, exactly. The first song at 3.15, the second appearance at 4.30 and at 6 in the morning we do one more song. In between we hang out in the dressing rooms, periodically heading off for a stroll through the crowd. When we first started, there were more songs, but we quickly realised that an hour-long live concert is an assault that spoils the club experience. We tried performing at different times, on different stages, we got to experiment with the venue. Our function is to create several points of affect, several live climaxes for the party.

I cannot count myself among the club drug-and-booze crowd, I am not a party monster. That, by the way, is why I refused a residency on Ibiza. I will not lie to you that I have never tried anything - yesterday, for instance, we stayed up all night. It is just that I clearly understand you cannot gorge on all sorts of rubbish every week.
This is how our week breaks down: on Mondays Manumission at Privilege, on Tuesday we sleep it off, and on Wednesday-Thursday we head off from here to the continent. Right now there is a two-week break from Ibiza - we are preparing for two final shows here. And from 5 September the schedule will be unbelievably brutal: Monday here, Tuesday in Greece, Wednesday to Turkey, Saturday to Moscow, performing that same night, Monday back to Ibiza, Tuesday to London and back again. This is probably the most insane schedule in the history of music.

An American tour will begin, but as for studio work - I am not sure. "Odyssey" turned out to be a labour-intensive undertaking that took us two years, so I want to do something pleasant and of-the-moment. We will start putting out singles. There is an idea to analyse the songs from "Odyssey" and make a big exhibition based on them.

Exactly. I like moving from the art world into the music world and back, developing material in one space and then transferring it into another sphere of culture and endowing it with new meanings. On the second album we brought the idea of a traditional concert band to perfection, and now I want to ride into the gallery on guitars, drums and backing vocals and unfold in a form more familiar to contemporary art.

(squeals) I do not know! I mean, that whole crowd supported us a lot, especially at the moment we appeared. But the meaning of what we do is not born in dialogue with the art establishment. There is a certain immediate essence to the Fischerspooner project, there is a body of our work that constantly moves through different contexts and receives different interpretations. I do not know where such a strategy came from. Maybe it is my personal investigation of the problem of multiple meanings. My own search for the boundary between the artistic and the entertaining. There are these undeveloped zones I want to dwell on in detail. And I like to make something dubious, not as indisputable as paintings or sculptures.

Our first album greatly confused both the art crowd and the people from show business. Many musicians reckoned that Fischerspooner were mocking them, as if we had gone too far with our irony and were brazenly demonstrating our superiority. Then we noticed that representatives of the art community were also looking askance. We came to be seen as traitors, as if we had made their secrets the property of the masses. This resentment troubled me when we were figuring out how to present "Odyssey". That is when a beautiful plan appeared which, unfortunately, turned out to be unworkable in its logistics. I wanted to make two completely independent projects - a musical one and an artistic one - and draw a clear line between them. I started developing the project "FS Unplugged", coming up with the scenography, the costumes, but I was convinced that people would not be interested in THAT kind of Fischerspooner. There is no point in moving in the direction of pure music. And so we remained a combination of performance with a musical act. You could even try to calculate the percentage ratio of the one to the other. Although, naturally, Fischerspooner forbids itself nothing. For example, Warren's life goal is opera. And I want to make a film.

Yes. But, on the other hand, Barney is known in a particular milieu. A negligible number of people watch his films.

Okay, I did not know. Barney has a very sculptural approach to cinema; in his films time flows like wax.

Our song "Cloud" was inspired by Ludwig of Bavaria, for whom Wagner wrote his operas. But for me the theme of total art is refracted through the temple scenography of Bernini and the art of the Baroque era, not through Wagner.

The Baroque is a very American style, in which, firstly, frivolity was legalised for the first time, and secondly - it is a commercial art, designed to indulge the base tastes of the elite.

I think so, yes. I have an art education, and I use in show business what I was taught. Although I will not be doing pop for the rest of my life. It is tiring. To make use of such an accessible and broad channel of influence on people's minds is, of course, a noble attempt to change the world, but one day I will grow disillusioned with popularity. Not only because of the moral aspect. The thing is, I prefer pretending to be a superstar to dissolving completely into the system. I want to keep my distance...

No way at all. I mean, like everyone. I understand that light is impossible to imagine without darkness, and all living beings combine good and evil traits within themselves. As for Manson, I recently talked to him for the first time and became convinced that he embodies an absolutely adolescent version of evil. Gothic with a capital "G" (by the way, it is funny that the goths took us for their own). Evil as Fischerspooner understand it is more poetic, whereas Marilyn is a cartoon character. Still, I cannot say anything bad about him. He came up with a very coherent character, and in his persona he looks magnificent. Perhaps political concern is the only point where we and Manson converge.

Life in New York has undoubtedly left its mark on me. It infuriates me terribly, the way the events of 9/11, the way fear and despair were used by American politicians. I experienced an even greater shock when on 11 September 2002 I saw T-shirts, mugs and keychains with the smoking Twin Towers being sold on 14th Street.

No, I perceive it as disrespect - towards New York, towards the people who died. In fact, it is an extremely complex subject and, however we discuss it, it still comes out as a one-sided interpretation of the catastrophe. The more it is harped on, the further we move away from the true meaning of the events of 9/11.

But speaking out on difficult subjects is necessary too.

Yes. She tried to demonstrate the danger of the temptation of revenge. And her words - this is literally a call to war - sound far more horrifying than anti-war sermons describing the abuse of prisoners and other such horrors.

A curator introduced us at some party, and she let slip that she had always wanted to write lyrics for a song.

She had not the faintest notion: first she got acquainted with me, and only then with our music. She did not perceive us as artists. She was actually interested in making a song for a pop group.

Next to her I felt like an old man - Susan was an astonishing person, who kept her youth to the very end. By the time "We Need A War" came out, Susan was already gravely ill, and we no longer had the chance to meet in person. But I know that she heard it, and she liked it. She died, and "We Need A War" became our tribute of respect to Sontag.

I do not know. Actually, after "We Need A War" she lived a good year.

I wanted to come, but there was no opportunity. Her grave is in Paris. What is that cemetery called?... Not Pere Lachaise. Something starting with an "m"... Maybe Montparnasse? No, Montparnasse is not a cemetery...

Excellent question. What the hell does he do?

Nothing at all, he dances among the backing dancers. Actually, at the start of the "Odyssey" promo campaign he communicated with the press far more actively. He is my colleague, he is my sounding board and he is the author of the music.

Warren and I live very different lives. He continues to shoot commercials, he has his own studio, a wife, two children - he has less time left for Fischerspooner, whereas I am completely consumed by the project. Unlike me, Fischer does not get much of a kick out of performing. He prefers looking through the viewfinder - of a photo or video camera.

No, he is just as chatty as I am
.
Is he older than you?

Yes, by a year.

Because in the alphabet "f" comes before "s". Because phonetically Fischerspooner sounds softer. His surname before mine balances out the tilt on stage.

No, we have not taken part in American shows. You know, it seems to me America still has not fully worked out what to do with us, which category to file us under. Actually I would be glad to end up on "Saturday Night Live". One of my childhood memories is Laurie Anderson performing on the Saturday TV show. I would rather become famous in Russia than in the USA.

Not one. You are the first.

Yesterday, it seems, there were not any either.

No, I have not been.

Yes, I dream of getting into the Amber Room and riding across the whole of Siberia.

Oh, I terribly liked the Army Museum in Paris.

Nijinsky, Nureyev, Russian ballet. I asked my make-up artist to develop a make-up in the style of "ballet Russe". I have a big problem - I am very uneducated. I was always a bad pupil, but I reached for knowledge. I take in printed text poorly, but I love looking at pictures. I do not like reading, but I adore museums and travel. I ought to look somewhere further than Dostoevsky and Chekhov. But the truth is that I am far less clever and well-read than I should be.

I do not think I ever said anything like that. There was one wildly strange interview for Russian Playboy or something. Yes, yes, a journalist called, asking questions like "Do you like pizza?".

Some Frenchman started confessing to the sexual feats my music had prompted him to. It was disgusting...

Plenty of people have managed to needle me about Elton, although, in inventing such an image for myself, I had Dirk Bogarde from "Death in Venice" in mind. There again is an example of Casey Spooner being a bad image-maker: I mean "Death in Venice", and everyone takes me for Elton John. Some people think I am Keith Haring. They also say I am doing an impression of our gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, the owner of Deitch Projects. It is all the fault of my glasses, although I have now given them up - the era of "ballet Russe" has arrived.

I think I am comfortable in whichever one I am in.

No, no. I mean that I fit organically into any image. Every six months I change radically. I have always remained a freak and had an inclination towards dressing up.

No, because without make-up, thank God, no one recognises me. Of course, I might do something outrageous and put on make-up for a party, but right now, for example, I am unshaven and in a dressing gown. I probably look like a doorman from Morocco. After all, it was the hippies who first settled Ibiza, and here you can allow yourself to forget about social self-representation in clothing. I got into the history of costume, and I like old military uniforms, the oriental style, ethnic robes. I feel absolutely organic in any image.

That is too grandiose an expression - "heirs".

Consciously. Although we chose the cover layout by intuition, and only afterwards realised how similar it is to "ASOTM". I wanted the design to be simple and universal, so that it could not become dated. Like the Japanese flag.

A London graphic designer, Harris, worked with us.

Just "the symbol". It is quite hard to reproduce from memory because of the combination of 14 colours. So the next symbol will be some sort of single-colour squiggle.

Well, I declared that about taste out of a spirit of contradiction. In fact, my preferences in music are not that terrible, it is just that I am open to everything. I am amazed at how black and white cultures have evolved and interacted, how in pop music phenomena like Christina Aguilera and The Strokes, Whitney Houston and Kraftwerk can combine. So the statement about bad taste concerned my omnivorousness. I really do have no musical education whatsoever, but that is exactly what makes Fischerspooner interesting. As I already said, I am a bad student, theory comes hard to me, and I prefer to get to know life through experience.

No, not in the slightest.

Warren is my flock of nerdy producers. We have a division: I am responsible for the creative, and he for its technical realisation. But I have constantly been in music or around music, communicating with musicians all the time. When I lived in Athens and Chicago, literally all my friends were musicians.

Yep. It is all his fault. Recently I bought a piano.

No, much to my great regret. I remembered that as a child I had a guitar, and I wanted to learn to play it, but the teacher put me off any attempts to master musical notation.

Yes, but I do not much like it. I can play at an exhibition opening, where some familiar people gather, but I respect the DJ's craft, and you either need to do it seriously or not go near the turntables at all. Having seen how DJ Hell or Miss Kittin play, I understood that I would never achieve their mastery. Besides, at a party I prefer to see everyone, to socialise and dance, rather than stand behind the decks.

I would ask him to take me back with him to his time. Although I am not sure that late-19th-century England is the ideal place. That is why I would like to see how everything was arranged there, and come back.

Yes, I study the world by means of travel.

Yes, evidently so. I live as if I have left home, and I want to get as far away from it as possible. I have a little flat in Brooklyn where all my things are kept, but I cannot say that it is my home.

Zeppelin - Extravaganza - a circus for adults
Fischerspooner live, DJ: Tommie Sunshine, Griff, Housekeeper, Katrin Vesna, List, Rudyk