|
Conversation with a Nihilist
By: Samantha Skelton
Currently, the idea of nihilism doesn’t evoke shock from people. When author and artist Elisha Shapiro first began toying with conceptual art and embracing nihilism in the 80s, he notes the idea was not widely accepted. For over forty years, Elisha’s conceptual art has garnered much media attention.
In his new book, LA Freak, Shapiro chronicles stories of being an artist and resident in Los Angeles and the city itself from his lens. Never straying from employing humor and satire in his work, Elisha’s own spin on prevalent events like the Olympics or presidential campaigns, has gained an appreciation among many.
He has been both a participant and viewer of LA’s changing artistic and comedic landscape.
Obviously, you have so many stories from being in LA and your background, but what finally compelled you to write this memoir?
Well, over the past, I don't know, 10 years, I've been doing storytelling shows. Then, I retired three years ago, and we were all locked down because of COVID.
I started looking over the stories I had written down. I just looked through my files, and I said, ‘Oh, I could put these together.’ It would kind of hang together as a narrative I thought would work. I had the time; I had most of the work done already. So, there you go.
Part of what I've noticed about your art is, there's definitely humor in there. How did your humor and worldview inform your art?
Yeah, it does. I guess humor is central to me in some way or another. The first piece I did that was kind of coordinated was the Nihilist Olympics in ‘84. I just started by sitting around with my friends, who I guess are funny people also.
It was 1980, and the first article came out that the Olympics were coming to LA, and people were freaking out. They were thinking it's gonna be terrible, and they won't be able to park. And, my friends are just coming up with the silliest, funniest Olympic events that we should do instead of the real ones.
So, our reaction instead of being horrified the Olympics were coming to town was to come up with satiric, alternative Olympic events. It's always been their reaction whether it's politics or just cultural events or whatever; it would just be, what’s a funny way I could make fun of that?
In what ways does your work also demystify or poke fun at the concept of celebrity, especially being in LA, at the mecca of celebrity culture?
Yes, it is. Everyone thinks of LA, and they say, oh, there are movie stars walking down the street. For me, I guess there were ... And, I'm just thinking, it's funny that people are taking the celebrity of these people so seriously.
It's what my perspective on it was—that they’re ordinary people, and they're dumb, and they're nice or whatever; but they're just people.
It seems conceptual art itself began proliferating in the 60s and 70s, right? When did you begin your foray into conceptual art?
Yeah, the Nihilist Olympics was the first real one. And, that was 1981, I think. I sent out the press release. I think at the time I was hanging around some people who were part of the LA performance art world. And so, I was starting to kind of be influenced by that. I knew several people who were wonderful performance artists, and somehow they got me to participate in their performances here and there.
Around that time I was working as a press release writer for Inglewood Parks and Recreation. I was fascinated by the media, and how the media kind of shapes our view of the world and our reality. I just started kind of putting that together and thinking, it would be fun to play with the media, what we think when we look at the media, and so that's part of how it all worked together.
The performance art people were also doing different kinds of weird art in LA, and they just kind of made me start thinking about different ways of communicating that.
Besides satire and other common themes in your work, nihilism feels like the chief theme to me. I was wondering how you came about embracing nihilism?
I do have my little story of my ticket seller … She said that some senator called another senator a nihilist, and she asked me what that meant. And I told her … it means you don’t believe in anything. I said I guess I’m a nihilist. We laughed.
In the 70s, that was just a terrible thing to call someone. I just wanted to twist that around and play with it a little bit. I started just using it, mostly, like, on my answering machine, saying, thank you for calling the nihilist industries or whatever. It's actually still on my answering machine.
That’s amazing.
So, I just had to play around with it that way, just because I thought it was funny that, at the time, it was such an insult to call someone that. As whatever intellectual, educated person I was, I thought it was a completely valid worldview.
It's strange to think that it was so egregious and shocking at the time to be called a nihilist.
It’s not that way anymore. I take full credit for that.
What has been your favorite work that you've done so far?
I love them all, you know. I've been making The Nihilist Calendar every year for forty years. I've been doing the Nihilist Film Festival every year for twenty years. I guess I do love the [Nihilist] Olympics, just because it surprised me how much publicity it got, and it was my first breakthrough into this idea of, oh, my medium is media attention.
That was pretty fun for me, and just before the Olympics started, I got some press coverage. And then, once the Olympics started, it was like, newspapers and media from all around the world were so bored with covering the Olympics, that they wrote articles about the Nihilist Olympics. I lucked out on that. That was pretty fun, but they were all fun. And, they all generally did get media attention.
On a personal level, if it’s not about media attention, I did enjoy putting this book together … I did tell these stories, a lot of them, in these public venues, storytelling shows, and I just remember people responding to them in a really nice way.
I did like performing them in front of people and telling these stories to audiences because that's a nice feeling when people are interested and laugh and are touched by a story.
I don't get to see people doing that and reading the book, but it's a more personal thing than the Nihilist Olympics. When I do these public events— or Olympics or political campaigns or something— I'm playing a character. I'm acting … And, that's fun.
But, there's also something a little different about the stories that are me and not the character. That was nice about the book and nice about the stories before I turned them into a book. I'm not a character anymore. I'm the real Elisha.
Are you thinking of writing any other books?
Everyone wants to know that and right after I wrote the first one, maybe a quarter of my stories ended up in the first book. So, I have a list of a bunch of stories that did not end up in the first book. I’m not quite sure how to put them together. At some point, I will. There’s a lot of funny stories that weren’t in the book.
Growing up in the 60s and 70s, I did have to try drugs every now and then, and I did have a funny childhood. I didn’t talk much about performance art; that was toward the end of the book.
There are other stories, but I have not quite figured out how to put them into a book form, but I am playing with the idea. There will be another book at some point.
For more information on Elisha Shapiro visit www.nihilists.net.
Home |
Actors/Models |
Art |
Books |
Dining
Film & Video |
Food & Wine |
Health & Fitness
MediaWatch |
Money and Business |
Music |
Profiles
Professional Services |
Sports |
Style & Fashion
Technology |
Theatre |
Travel & Leisure
Copyright 1995 - 2024 inmag.com
inmag.com (on line) and in Magazine (in print)
are published by in! communications, Inc.
www.inmag.com
|
Advertiser Info
Subscription Form
Contact Us
|
