(Before you read this, go read the first part of the interview!)

Vuk Radic: When you talk about money, and you mentioned art before, are you familiar with Uwe Boll’s work?

Lloyd Kaufman: Yes, yes! I like him, because Uwe Boll saved a drowning dog, so he’s a big hero, I think. I don’t eat meat, I don’t eat chicken, and I don’t eat fish, because I feel bad for the animals. And Uwe Boll obviously, you know, jumped in the water and saved a dog.

VR: His films are considered bad. By critics, I mean. I liked some of them…

LK: I think they are bad, except for Postal. I think he said he was inspired to try to do something with a Troma flavor. But he had a much bigger budget…

VR: That’s what I’m getting at. Uwe Boll set up a company, his films are products that come from a corporation, even if a very small one, they are funded by banks… So, where’s the line of sacrifice for art? He knows that he will make a bad movie, because he’s doing three movies in Zaghreb in one sitting, for ten million dollars. And he says “Yeah, I know two of those wil be horrible horrible pieces of shit, but one will sell out on DVD.” So he accepts capitalist money and then sacrifices his art, but he’s still not getting, you know, a hundred million dollars, he’s getting probably what you could get if you wanted to… You could probably raise that budget.

LK: Yeah, I just don’t wanna work that way… I’ve had a good life, I’ve had my children, they’ve been to the best schools, I live in a good neighborhood… You know, I don’t need much. So I’d rather have artistic freedom and do what I want and be a bit of a shit-disturber, try to make a difference… My wife always says that to our children: just try to make a difference somehow. So I’m also the chairman of the Independent Film and Television Alliance, which is the trade association of the independent movie companies, and Uwe Boll’s company is a member of the association.

VR: Those are truly independent companies?

LK: They make indepentent movies. Independent movies are defined by movies that are financed independently, outside of the major studios. Some of them, like Twilight, are almost major studios, but are independently financed. So some of those movies, like Million Dollar Baby, that Clint Eastwood directed, are distributed by a major studio, but are independently financed. But most of our members are smaller than Troma, so we’re all together and we’re all lobbying… I got elected, I don’t get paid, I have no salary, but there is a staff who does gets paid, and I got myself elected to fight against Rupert Murdoch and the cartel that is controlling the media in the whole world. And in Washington we are lobbying to try to get more independent movies on television.

VR: What’s your plan to fight Rupert Murdoch? How do you fight the most powerful man in the media industry? (more…)

When me and fellow movie-addict Vuk Radic met Lloyd Kaufman at the Tromathon, the retrospective Eye organized at Amsterdam’s Filmmuseum last March, to begin with he interviewed us. He grabs that mini-DV cam he carries all over the world – when he was in Syria a sand grain got stuck in the lens and now it doesn’t work that good anymore – and points it to your face. Then he asks you questions, such as: Why are you in Amsterdam? And of course you have to answer you came for the Tromathon.

As you can guess by its title, the retrospective was about Troma, the cult production company which Kaufman and his partner in crime Michael Hertz founded more than 3 decades ago. I say partner in crime because the duo is mostly famous for (very) low-budget horror-splatter comedies, many of which have now become classics – most of all the Toxic Avenger, which you might also known by its nickname “Toxie”, Troma’s mascotte.

Despite being an over 60-year-old with a wife and grown up daughters, Lloyd is still touring the world to sell DVDs, spread some DIY wisdom in his workshops, and carry on his institutional struggle against media moguls. Even with such a tight schedule, he also manages to find the time to whip out his Toxie mask and pose for embarassing pictures with his more or less shaved interviewers (which you can appreciate in this page).

Me and Vuk, whose Twitter skills and Troma savviness got us the interview in the first place, had come up with a lot of questions, but Lloyd answered them all in his own straight-forward way, mixing cultural references to musical and movie classics with harsh remarks about the star system that excludes him. To somebody who has done sort of everything (adult movie director under pseudonym, location manager for Saturday Night Fever, even guide for the Peace Corps in Ciad) you could ask anything, but in our long talk we discussed piracy, South Park, John Waters, Rupert Murdoch, Uwe Boll, the Oscars, and musicals, with a few unexpected interruptions from the animal world. (more…)

(Interview originally published on Ymag. Go read the first and the second part.)

Nicola: A couple more questions about the Zuidas. You work with urban issues a lot, and – when it comes to Amsterdam – two things come to mind: housing shortage and the myth of the “Creative City”. Given the “business district” profile of the Zuidas, how does the artist, most stereotypically associated with a bohemian lifestyle, relate to such an environment? After information aesthetics, can we talk about business aesthetics?

Tom: As more and more business districts pop up, they form a kind of global grid of financial activity and influence. In a sense this is a new form or territoriality – in a topological space. As the power of multinational companies grows beyond that of states or cities, the networked space they consume can potentially one day declare itself a sovereign nation. (more…)

(Interview originally published on Ymag. Images courtesy of Tom Tlalim unless specified otherwise. You can also read the beginning and the end of the interview.)

Two skyscrapers in De Zuidas. Photo by Nicola Bozzi

Nicola: I liked your video because it is visually simple and engaging, but at the same time dense with actuality. Both the Israeli military practices, which you also mention in your video, and the World Trade Center in Manhattan, from which the Zuidas are inspired, remind of a complex global scenario (as described by urban theorists like Saskia Sassen) where the urban sites of business and war’s battlegrounds are increasingly overlapping.As an Israeli artist, how do you feel this global dimension is affecting your work and what do you think is the best way to critically investigate it?

Tom: I often feel humbled by the flow of information in the 21st century. I used to look for an absolute truth while I was growing up in Israel, but now I don’t anymore. I accept the fact that media reality is increasingly overlapping and networked in all fields, including conflict. It becomes much more difficult to trace a clear reality in the flurry cauldron of opinions and stories. So I prefer to treat both quantitative and qualitative information as rumors or stories. But arguably politics finance and the military have always been cross-linked. In the book Lords of Finance as one example, Liaquat Ahmed describes how in 1694 a group of protestant city merchants got permission to form the Bank of England – with exclusive rights to service the government, in return for lending the government £1.2 million which saved the country from bankruptcy over a war with France. This happens throughout history. It’s just that with the volume of media flow today, the public experiences all of these complex networks as they are formed, in real time. So the data attack becomes as overwhelming as any powerful weapon. (more…)

(The interview was originally published on Ymag, where you can still read it. Images courtesy of Tom Tlalim, unless specified otherwise.)

In occasion of The Smooth and The Striated, a Gilles Deleuze-inspired art exhibition which took place at the Nieuwe Dakota and Huize Frankendael venues in Amsterdam, I had the chance to meet Israeli artist Tom Tlalim. Tlalim has been living in the Netherlands for a decade now, and recently he has been in the new business district of De Zuidas in South Amsterdam for a five months residency at the Virtueel Museum Zuidas. The works he exhibited dealt with contemporary themes of conflict, politics, war, finance, and urbanization, while maintaining simple yet technologically-layered aesthetics. The long interview that follows (and which will be published in three parts) covers a variety of issues, ranging from the intersections of art and science to public ground privatization, from the contemporary role of the artist to the Palestine/Israel conflict. All with the urban landscape of the developing business district of De Zuidas as a background.

De Zuidas. Photo by Nicola Bozzi

Nicola: First of all, before being an installation artist or a video-maker, you are a musician. While visiting the Zuidas myself, I noticed the landscape is quite desolated and dispersed and, apart from a few bars – for example near the metro stop, next to the Accenture building – the area is very quiet. How did the sound of the Zuidas inspire you?

Tom: It’s interesting that you indicate the location of the bars by their proximity to a multinational company building. This happens a lot at the Zuidas. For me it was essential to keep a critical view of the place in my work, and not to use readymades such as brand names or PR materials. I wanted to experience this environment for what it is and let my opinion on it form gradually. In such a politically charged environment, the info, news and views, however impartial they may seem, often do tend to reaffirm the brand by placing it on the map. (more…)