What she said

Newadays

Just checking this new interview between Johanna Fateman and Wynne Greenwood, aka was Tracey and the Plastics:

http://artforum.com/slant/id=56168

She talks about Tracey and the Plastics (a girl band where she played all the band mates):

JF: Yeah. So, with these characters, and their interactions, I feel like you broached some sensitive stuff, new territory. You were looking at the dynamics of a “girl band.” While our scene was radically honest about a lot of stuff—or wanted to be—no one was really publicly addressing tension and dysfunction between feminists, or specifically between feminist bandmates.
WG: I don’t think I set out knowing I would explore how women are creative together, but from the very beginning there was tension in Tracy + the Plastics. I remember the first time Cola spoke directly to Tracy. It’s missing from this show because I couldn’t find the original backing video, but in that early scene, Cola is wearing the same outfit as Tracy. She’s even wearing a headband that says “Tracy” on it. And Tracy asks her, “Why are you wearing my outfit?” She replies, “Well, anybody can do what you’re doing.” Their exchange was a way to establish the band’s questioning of authority. Who’s the leader? And why? And what’s that about? When I was in high school, I used to think that if I were in a band we would all be soulmates. I was yearning for that kind of relationship and this was a way of confronting that desire. Confronting the reality that relationships and collaborations are imperfect.

It made me think about the conversation we had over skype about the solo artist/writer and the confessional tone, and how as a collaboration that was both politically compelling, and somehow impossible to imagine within our idea of the incoherent selves/elfs. And I was thinking about our 'movie' and if we could think about it as a kind of reverse of what Wynne was doing with Tracey and the Plastics. In terms of working as a group to look at the individualised confessional as a mode of address....

THOUGHTS.