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Molek FMYACHT: A Discourse on Art, Culture, Education, and Science
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“There’s this aesthetic thing that’s happening now where people are taking television and VHS qualities of the ‘80s and remixing them. [They’re] using that aesthetic in a weird new way informed by a certain era of popular culture but in a really broken and damaged, f*cked up way.” – Claire
On the subject of TV shows, what do you think of the medium now? It seems to have become very literary with the advent of cable shows.
C I think TV is the artform of right now, this is the golden age of television and I think it’s not just television necessarily, it’s the delivery platform of television. The fact that television has now transcended the box and become something that can be viewed episodically on the internet or on DVDs of the entire series. Then all of a sudden the stories are much longer, the narratives are much longer, it’s much more complex and it’s like an epic saga and I think that’s very fascinating. It’s funny how we live in the age now that everything is quick and simultaneous and people’s attention span is very short but at the same time we’re starting to get really interested in these kinds of really long stories. I don’t know what that means about the world we’re living in, but there’s a need for that, people want it.
It’s kind of funny that people used to refer to it as the idiot box and now it’s one artform that people really take seriously, with long ass stories to boot!
C Yeah, I think it’s also writing. There are a lot of really good writers these days and they’re being given more freedom. It’s really the age of the writer, it used to be the age of the star or director but it’s really about good writing. And shows are made or broken by the strength of their words.
What are some of your favourite TV shows right now?
C Veep. I think everything that HBO does now is really good. Enlightened, it just got cancelled but it’s so good with Laura Dern. Mad Men’s good too – very strong writing and provocative. The new Vice show on HBO is pretty great and interesting, seems like they have a lot of freedom, which is cool. Oh yes, Girls! I really like House of Cards too. But I haven’t gotten into the whole Game of Thrones thing yet.
J Tim & Eric, everything that they do, we’re big fans. Nathan for You, a comedy on Comedy Central. We’re really excited about Arrested Development coming back.
You mentioned Tim & Eric. A lot of smart people that we know love the show (shout out to Kaz!), but we don’t get it…
J It’s okay! (laughs) I think that 90% of it is a little too much, but 10% of it is actual genius, like really great conceptual jokes that are funny and smart but you have to go through a lot to get there.
C I think that later future historians will look back at this period of history and I don’t know if they’d be able to identify who began this trend, maybe they’ll say it was Tim and Eric. There’s this aesthetic thing that’s happening now where people are taking television and VHS qualities of the ‘80s and remixing them. [They’re] using that aesthetic in a weird new way informed by a certain era of popular culture but in a really broken and damaged, f*cked up way and I think that is of importance as a sort of like an aesthetic movement happening. Tim and Eric maybe, if not entirely, is partially responsible for it.
J It’s trickled down into music as well. Like, lo fi music informed by VHS.
C It’s like an entire generation is looking back at its upbringing through the lens of the crazy world that we live in now.
You guys are strong advocates of arts, what would you say to someone who is really trying to do art but just doesn’t have the will to do it?
C You have to have the will. I think a lot of people think that they cannot be creative because they’re not creative people or something. But creativity is like a neurological function in the human brain that everybody has. It’s just that everybody is not willing to be vulnerable and fail. I think the important thing is being able to fail and to try and fail, and then to try something new afterwards and keep building on those failures until you have something you could be proud of. But if it makes anyone who’s reading this feels better, we’re never proud of anything we make. Everything we make is like “Oh sh!t, this sucks. Let’s do the next thing.” There’s no moment of feeling that you’ve created the most perfect piece of art because art is all about experimenting and failing all the time.
YACHT played at the newly revamped Laundry on Thursday 16 March ’13.
