Stanya Kahn

Stanya Kahn looking to the right wearing a blue bandana with white pattern and a blue formal shirt

Stanya Kahn is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in video with a practice that includes drawing, sound, writing, performance and sculpture/installation. Humor, pathos and the uncanny are central to a hybrid media practice that seeks to re-work relationships between fiction and document, the real and the hyper-real, narrative time and the synchronic time of impulse. In a long-term investigation of how rhetoric gains and loses power, Kahn’s projects often situate language in the foreground of works that are dialectically driven by the demands and of the body.

Kahn is a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow in Film/Video. Her solo exhibitions include shows at The Wexner Center for the Arts, MoMA/PS1, New Museum/NY, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Marlborough Chelsea/NY, Weiss Berlin, The Pit/LA, Cornerhouse/Manchester, UK. Select group exhibitions include CAM/St. Louis, the Gwanju Biennial (’18), Hammer Museum, New Museum, MOCA/SD, Fernley Astrup/Norway, Transmediale, The California Biennial (’10). Her collaborative work with Harry Dodge has shown at Elizabeth Dee Gallery/NY, the Whitney Biennial (08), Sundance Film Festival, MOCA/LA, MoMA/NY, ZKM/Karlsrüh, among others. She was a contributing writer and actor in feature film By Hook or By Crook. Her writings and drawings appear in multiple publications including Die Laughing (2nd Cannons), Moving Image (MIT Press), It's Cool, I'm Good (Cornerhouse), and Abstract Video (UC Press.) Her works are in the collections of the Hammer Museum, MoMA/NY, LACMA and the Goetz among others.

It’s Cool, I’m Good (2010) Stanya Kahn Video

This interview was recorded on February 18th, 2020 over the phone

Diego Yanez: The mandatory question that I have to ask is what do the terms feminist and experimental mean to you? Do you identify with these terms? Why or why not?

Stanya Kahn: Well, the term feminist to me... I would answer that sort of in two parts: There’s the simple answer, which is that to be feminist means that you believe all genders should be treated equally to each other. But I would clarify to say my own personal feminism is also rooted in a global perspective, and one that includes an anti-capitalist perspective. So that means my feminism is one that must include struggles of working class people, of indigenous people, of people who are on the front lines of facing where Western patriarchy and Western patriarchal capitalism affect the most damaged. So my version of feminism also ends up, of course, including men and everyone. And I think that's an important distinction to make.

And in terms of experimental... The term experimental in relationship to film has its own very specific history, and it refers almost to a canon (laughing) at this point, so while I do relate to the term, my work also is different than what is considered experimental film. Experimental filmmaking has been around long enough that you could say there are conventions or traditional aspects to it. So, I don't so much identify as an experimental filmmaker I'm just an artist who makes moving picture.

DY: An interdisciplinary artist?

SK: Yeah.

DY: I'm picking this up from an interview from ten years ago in the California Biennial: You use the words Brechtian, Artaudian and Beckettian to describe what you're doing. Is it important to understand your work in context of theatrical performance?

SK: I think that it's helpful... It's not necessary no. Anyone could see the work and have an experience with it. And I think that, actually, Beckett and Artaud and Brecht would all want the same thing of their work. That is why I connect with their histories. It's more like... It can be a useful context in discussing the work. if one also learns about... sorry it's noisy where I am I'm walking on the street and the train is going by–hold on one second.

I think it can be a useful way to contextualize conversations around the work, in that they were pioneers in breaking with the conventions of traditional theater: all three of them were very much challenging class based privilege that surrounded the theatre and access to it. And so they did that both formally and structurally. I'm interested in that. And they made experimental moves in their actual artworks that were meant to disrupt conventional thinking, conventional feeling, and call attention to class inequality. So, I think that those three, in particular, were exciting for me when I encountered their work and learned about what they were doing. And [they] informed some of my own sensibilities. So that's the long answer to say, it's certainly not necessary to understand Artaud or Beckett or Brecht in order to look at my work, but it's a fun extra bonus if I mention those things and someone then gets to learn about who they were, that hopefully they then have an expanded context for understanding more of the subtlety that might be going on in some of my work. Especially the early performative works, where I myself am performing and definitely kind of playing with what was the proscenium of the of the stage in theater, with playing with who's operating the camera, how the camera’s being operated, what the proximity is like. In a lot of those early works, the camera has agency and is kind of like a motivated camera; it's not like an omniscient camera, like a god camera in conventional Hollywood cinema. Those things matter. Referencing early experimentalists in the theater could be helpful for understanding some of the experiments I've been trying with moving pictures. I hope that makes sense.

DY: Yeah! that totally makes sense. I haven't really delved into that, but now that I've seen a lot of your work and heard you talk about it. I want... to know more. This next question comes from just thinking about Stand in the Stream and how eclectic the footage is, how it pulls from different places -- kind of a light question: what is the alternative to just always recording? And conversely, do you ever deal with the grief of not being able to record something beautiful, like the spider egg on top of the mailbox?

Still from Stand in the Stream (2012-2017) Stanya Kahn Trailer

SK: Like, if you see something in the world and you're like, “shoot, I wish I could record it” and for some reason you can't? There are lots of alternatives, right? That was the only piece I ever made that way, and I did make that piece over the course of six years, so I was recording a lot, but I wasn't always recording. I was only recording when I saw things that made me think that I want to record this, this will end up in the film at some point. So, it's not like just constantly documenting everything. I was selectively recording, I wasn't just filming all day every day. That would just be weird. (laughter) There's so many different modes of working. That was one way that I was working, and I was interested in how we see and what we look at; I was interested in screens and the internet. And by the end of making that film, I was not interested in the internet anymore. It just became a ubiquitous tool that we all use. The film that I just finished, I shot on super 16mm film. So it's almost the opposite: It's so expensive of a format to work with, I had to be extremely judicious picking what I filmed, and setting up shots and being super careful. It's almost like a direct opposite process. And so that's one alternative:writing and imagining and crafting ideas and stories, and then trying to create those situations in which you can film those things to make that story—kind of a more conventional way of making film. I think now that we have cameras and all of our devices, and everyone can film anything, anytime, it's like everyone running around with a sketchbook, in a way. I think that I use the camera as as a sketchbook; I'm looking at ideas through the camera.

Stills from Stand in the Stream (2011-2017) Stanya Kahn Trailer

DY: What I noticed with Kelly from Who Do You Think You Are? I feel like there's an uncanny resemblance with some of your performances and Kelly and the way it's edited. Rather than make her look crazy, I think it really grounds her personhood as well as your performances, too. It makes their subjectivity real. Does that have something to with what you're trying to draw out with your work?

SK: Yeah, a lot of the characters who I perform in the early works are existing in the margins in some way. Like, maybe they seem a little off or outside of the norm, and I'm trying to give that voice space and a place to exist. So similarly with Kelly, I mean, I literally just was calling people on Craigslist. I met her on Craigslist and I was just calling different people who were creating jobs for themselves. I was interested in people who are trying to make an economy that's separate from the traditional economy for themselves. And so then I met her and I thought, “oh, wow, there's a lot going on here—just intense.” And I saw a way which I could have edited it that would have maybe been even funnier, but would have gotten too close to an edge of satire or making fun of her, and I didn't want to do that. I guess the simplest way to answer this is to say I'm interested in the ways in which I feel on the edge of crazy, (laughs) and where other people exist in that place, and how can I also show the humanity that's right there next to the tipping point and to crazy. And to give that more humanity, and then one can, you know, maybe interpret [or] use that to think about all kinds of things... like how more poetic ways of thinking or talking or being are, you know, not considered normal or just to give space to whatever is not considered part of the norm. I guess, in all of my work I'm interested in: who has power, who doesn't? Who has agency, who doesn't? How can I represent the discrepancies without just saying it in the most obvious way. So I try to make works for someone to sense that there's a power differential somewhere going on, but it's not necessarily overtly discussed. The viewer gets to sense it and then hopefully unpack it in their own minds that this work could also be read in terms of power and agency.

Still from Who Do You Think You Are (excerpt) (2013) Stanya Kahn Video

DY: How do you feel about the participation of the audience, particularly laughter, when watching work? Does most of your work enter spaces where laughter ensues?

SK: I hope so, yeah. I hope people laugh. Usually people do laugh. And I definitely want people to feel a permission to laugh. So I usually try to put something kind of funny right up front, so that people feel permission right away to laugh out loud. My preference is that people watch things in groups.In other words, it's always more fun if there's more than one viewer, so that people can kind of live off each other's energy and laugh together and that and you know, in a room of other people, “Oh, wait, did you think that was funny? Okay, cool.” They're laughing so I can laugh because, right, that was funny—that kind of thing. A lot of times in art galleries and museums, sometimes there is only one viewer in there at a time. And so it's very hard to find ideal viewing situations for the work. It's just not easy, because they don't really play in regular film venues, but hopefully there’s some chuckling by themselves alone in the dark.

DY: In terms of connections you have made, I can relate most to is the Beavis and Butthead reference you made in the same interview, “a tattoo of a butt on a butt.” But for you, where does the lowbrow humor have its limitations?

SK: I’ll say that I find plenty of grist in “low-brow” humor. Its limitations can be oversimplification, or at its worst, issues of racism, sexism, homophobia etc. For me “Low-brow” references can be quick ways into bigger issues and also are often genuinely hilarious and astute.

DY: A lot of your work is in collaboration with Harry Dodge, and it's somewhat distinct from your “solo” work, what do you find of value in collaborating?

SK: I did collaborate with Harry Dodge from 2000-2008. Previous to that, I spent 15 years making solo performance work. From 2008 to the present, I have made only solo work, so I have in fact made more solo work than collaborative work. Collaborations always make something that one would never make alone because more than one mind is at work on it. And for me personally, it was great to have someone to film my performances, someone who laughed at my jokes while filming and therefore helped elicit even more material from me. Collaborating was fun because each person’s imagination brings a different angle to things. And you have someone to bounce ideas off, to work through problems together.

DY: Is there anything you would like to say about your new film No Go Backs?

SK: I'm really excited for people to see it, and I'm still trying to find ways to get it out in the world. But it's really different. It's almost like a sequel to Stand in The Stream, but it's super different. There's no dialogue. It's all these consistent shots. It's slower, and it follows teenagers leaving the city and going into the wild. I'm excited about it.