Interview with FK Alexander
Talking performance art, celebrity, and shifts in morality.
"If thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. ”
Friedrich Nietzsche
FK Alexander is a performance artist in whose work the abyss doesn't just gaze back, but might pull you in and kiss you. In 2016, she won Summerhall’s Autopsy Award for "I Could Go On Singing (Over the Rainbow)”, described by Lyn Gardner in The Guardian as a “stupendous show that is as distressing as it is beguiling.”
On 14 October 2023 in Glasgow’s Queen Margaret Union, FK Alexander will be performing “The Problem with Music”, a technology demolition sound clash death match with two Scottish Hardcore bands, Coffin Mulch and Endless Swarm. It promises to be intense and sweet, disturbing and cathartic. It’s also a durational performance, meaning you can come and go as you like. How long can you gaze into the abyss?
After I wrote about BUZZCUT festival earlier in the year, FK messaged me and we discussed how the performance art world has changed. I thought it would be fun to continue the conversation in person. We met in a pub in Edinburgh just at the time when the allegations about Russell Brand were emerging.
FK Alexander
He's not the only one. There's going to be other comedians. [Redacted] is likely to be another one. My production manager has worked in comedy for a long time and has known a lot of guys who have been rapists and abusers. All this stuff about Russell Brand has been an open secret and his pivot away from mainstream comedy into his weird right-wing YouTube channel has been him knowing that this is coming. He’s played a long game to get all these people like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson on his side.
Neil Scott
It's going to be painted as "Look, this is what they did to Julian Assange."
FK Alexander
Exactly. That is what his video last night was like: “So you'll see this tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. But just remember, ask yourself questions. Why would they want me to stop talking? The government thinks I'm dangerous.”
Neil Scott
In the press release for your new piece, you have a line about it being “activated by a 30-year existential crisis, a history of bad men and dead rock stars.” Are these the kind of bad men you are talking about?
FK Alexander
Part of the new show is trying to confront the confusion of how someone like Russell Brand gets in the position to get lots of women. There will have been three times as many women that were lining up to be with him. When we talk about David Bowie or Jimmy Page or Iggy Pop, having sex with young teenagers, those are not underground bad men. You'll see somebody with a David Bowie T-shirt in the next half an hour. Some of them we decide to celebrate and get a pass because their art is so great. How many girls are going to wake up tomorrow and be like, “Oh my God. I can't believe I fucked that guy.” You drink booze, do some drugs, you dance, and you get off with someone.
Neil Scott
There was a line on Twitter recently, which was something like: “Whenever you see anyone doing art or music or anything, you've got to remember it’s just an advertising campaign for their genitals.”1
FK Alexander
Absolutely.
Neil Scott
Although you are married to a musician, right?
FK Alexander
Yeah, I've never had a proper relationship with somebody that wasn't a musician. I once dated a skater. That was probably about as far as I went beyond musicians.
Neil Scott
The question with someone like Bowie is that, although he should have been punished for any crimes he committed, I still think the art is separate. No one is banning me from listening to people like him, but I feel some people would like to do that. Like I’m morally culpable for consuming something from an impure source.
FK Alexander
Exactly. But this is a huge generational shift now because young people take their morality from celebrities. It's depressing. When I was a kid the only thing you could access about the artist was a magazine interview. And if that interview wasn't published, then you wouldn't know what they said. I didn't know who the people were, I was just there listening to a record.
Neil Scott
What has changed? Why is a new generation coming up that equates art and morality as the same thing?
FK Alexander
I think because, in many ways, the internet gives young people parasocial relationships with these acts. If you are a kid and you're bullied at school and you don't have many real-life friends and you watch a YouTuber who comes on camera and goes, “Hey, I am talking to you, we're having a relationship. If you message, if you comment, I might read it.” There's instant access to these people.
Neil Scott
… and they're selling themselves, they’re not selling a product.
FK Alexander
If they sell a product, it's on the basis of their personality. So if somebody brings out a make-up line, it's because people will buy make-up made by them.
Neil Scott
Or that stupid Prime drink.
FK Alexander
That's such an insane example. That's a really poor-quality product. But then in the 90s, when it was Christmas, you would have parents queuing outside Jenner's for My Little Pony or whatever. Every year there would be a hot toy. That’s from advertising and all the rest of it. But the difference between something like a Care Bear and a YouTuber is that, with a Care Bear, you can put your imagination into it.
Neil Scott
Like Barbie. Are you Barbie or Oppenheimer? Because you have used videos of nuclear explosions in previous performances, right?
FK Alexander
I have! But I didn't even watch Oppenheimer. Part of why I loved the Barbie thing was because it's stuff that I like: pink and sparkles, kitsch and cartoons. On the day it came out I went out with a group of girls and all dressed up … obviously I dressed up the most.
Neil Scott
I learned recently that Greta Gerwig [director of Barbie] has ADHD and it made sense. It's such a good ADHD film. It never stops …
FK Alexander
…everything's hyper: everything’s pink, everything's shiny, everything's perfect.
Neil Scott
I know people who refused to see Barbie because they see it as a big corporate product, but I think they are being blinded by their preconceptions. Speaking of preconceptions, imagine someone has never been to see performance art. What should they expect? Say someone has seen a poster for Take Me Somewhere, which features you not smoking, but looking enticing and scary at the same time …
FK Alexander
Thank you. That's what I aim for.
Neil Scott
But they might see this poster and they think, “Oh, that looks intriguing.” What kind of thing should they expect?
FK Alexander
There’s always an element of trusting your instincts. If you walk into a room and you want to stay then something in you gets it. I think people get worried that they're gonna have to do something, like sitting in the front row of a comedy gig. But it's not like that.
Neil Scott
And how did you get into performance art?
FK Alexander
There was an episode of The South Bank Show which focused on Bob Flanagan, Ron Athey, and Franko B. I saw this episode by chance. I was sitting at my Gran’s, she’s gone to bed, I'm drinking schnapps, smoking her fags, and I'm clicking through the four channels and then I see something and I'm recognising something that could be from album artwork. They were using their bodies, they were using blood, and at that time I was cutting myself a lot. And I was told that I was crazy but they were on The South Bank Show!
Neil Scott
How old were you at this point?
FK Alexander
17 maybe. But I'd been cutting myself at that point for five years. Everybody went mental at me because they were scared.
Neil Scott
And now suddenly on The South Bank Show, Melvin Bragg is introducing Ron Athey and Franko B.
FK Alexander
Franko was just standing there fucking pissing blood and I was like... I mean my first observation was that, “Oh they're all men. So isn't it interesting that they're doing something that I do in secret and they're celebrating it.”
Neil Scott
A lot of that energy of the early performance art came from a desire to transgress boundaries. One of the reasons I wanted to do this conversation was because we had a chat about the performance art world in Glasgow since the National Review of Live Art and New Territories finished. There was a sense of it being the end of an era. Other things have emerged — BUZZCUT and Take Me Somewhere — but they feel very different. Perhaps young people don't have that same relationship to authenticity that they did during the Grunge era.
FK Alexander
It was co-opted while Kurt Cobain was still alive. Remember Prozac Nation? Prozac Nation was the template for the confessional internet.
Neil Scott
Yeah, Prozac Nation was very much part of the depressive Gen-X meaninglessness of the 90s. But now we are more focused on self-care. At the most recent BUZZCUT festival, you curated a chill-out room with pink cushions and fluffy clouds. We’re much more aware that we need to look after each other better.
FK Alexander
I want both. I want pink fluffy clothes and kittens and safety and cuddles. At the same time, I want to go out and thrash about in front of a metal band.
Neil Scott
Maybe the authenticity of Gen-X is impossible to sustain for more than a few years. Nowadays it feels like the performance world and is more sensitive. There was a story this week that suggested that adding trigger warnings to content makes it more traumatising. Some of my most traumatic experiences have occurred when watching performance art, but it felt like that trauma was character-building.
FK Alexander
But it is always in a context. When I was at the National Review of Live Art, I understood that this is somewhere that you might come and see stuff like Franko B. It was like “Do you wanna go through that door? Fuck knows what's gonna happen behind that door. You up for it? Let's go.” But it might be scary. Like a horror movie was scary.
Neil Scott
There are things that I turn away from, things I try and avoid seeing online because it's horrible. Performance art provides a safe space to experience some of these uncomfortable realities.
FK Alexander
Yeah, it's sensational. I want sensations, I want feelings. This show is called “The Problem With Music”. I'm not making a show that offers you a nice alternative or a utopia. One time, I was performing at a club that was like “Let's imagine a better way. Let's imagine a queerer, weirder future and all this stuff.” But it came on the same day as the Tory government had been voted in. Instead, we said “Come and rage. Come and be sad. Come and see these people who are going to do some screaming for you.” It's catharsis. I've always hated this thing of “Oh, imagine if I won the lottery, I would buy this big house and all my friends would live there.” Under no circumstances would communal living be a good thing.
Neil Scott
And what about your experience of horrible realities? You have this fluffy home life, but do you feel a need to confront the realities of the world?
FK Alexander
One of the things that Andy and I talked about when we got married was that we've been through enough. I want to be able to rest, stop, be warm, have a clean home. I turn off True Crime. I absolutely cannot, for a single second, watch even implied animal abuse. Even just like a normal pub fight, I'm like, get me out of it.
Neil Scott
There has been all this stuff in the news about Bully XL dogs recently …
FK Alexander
Dangerous dogs have always been a problem in Britain. But that video of that Bully dragging that child … there's a particular type of scream that you only get with that type of thing.
Neil Scott
Do you want to tour this new show?
FK Alexander
No, it can't be toured. It's a complete one-off. It’s a purging.
Neil Scott
What’s the difference between purging and catharsis?
FK Alexander
Purging is like getting rid of something that doesn't serve you, like getting rid of it, like being sick. Catharsis is like you weep or something. But a purge is more guttural, less intellectual.
Neil Scott
Catharsis implies that you feel better afterwards. Whereas purging … actually you probably do feel a bit better after purging …
FK Alexander
Catharsis is more emotional, purging is more physical.
Neil Scott
People used to do primal screen therapy in the 1970s …
FK Alexander
… and that's how a lot of performance art was seen, it was like, somebody just screaming or whatever, and it was like, “I hope you got some catharsis from that because we were just all standing there watching and it looked pretty self-indulgent.”
Neil Scott
A lot of performance art in the 60s and 70s looked cool. But because so few people get to see it, it is like the documentation that counts more than the piece.
FK Alexander
Do you know Jamie McMurray? He did these cool publications of unrepeatable pieces. There's one that has these incredible pictures of him in shades looking like Elvis. He’s covered in paint. Then he's on a mattress tied to the back of a pickup truck and he's being driven through the streets of downtown LA in the snow. I saw him do a two-hour durational performance and the two hours came and went, and I was like, “I have to do the [performance art] course.”
Neil Scott
That's the unique thing about performance art. You wouldn't get that anywhere else, that feeling of total rapture for two hours. I sometimes think the difference between the art world and the performance world is that the art world is very anti-cringe. They hate looking embarrassing. Whereas the performance world can go through cringe and come out the other side.
FK Alexander
It just fucking owns it, right?
Neil Scott
So why is performance art more sensitive now?
FK Alexander
Again, I think that's got a lot to do with the internet. If people have an argument and I'm going to film them, put it on my TikTok and then it's going go viral and that fills them with real horror.
Neil Scott
The genius of Donald Trump is that he made himself uncancellable by having so many indiscretions that each additional one doesn't make a difference. On the modern left I get the sense that people want to be this perfect person who has never done anything wrong and is always on the right side of history.
FK Alexander
But it's impossible. And this is what I mean when I say I don't want to have opinions anymore. I don't want to contribute to that. I don't want to be part of it. I admire that young people care and they give a shit. I would prefer young people to be opinionated and get it wrong and take up space and not apologise and not feel like shit for being a fucking human being. I would rather that than girls at home not wanting to leave the house because they don't look right.
FK Alexander performs The Problem with Music on 14 October 2023 at Queen Margaret Union as part of Take Me Somewhere.
Great stuff. I confess I've always been very boomery in my reaction towards performance art (struggling to get much from it). However, when you both discuss its attitude towards cringe—an embrace of cringe—c.f. the rest of the art world, now *that* attracts me to performance art.
The traditional art world has a deeply disappointing lack of self awareness about its own triviality. Especially when it comes to contemporary art. It's unfashionable to laud the greats of the canon like Michelangelo, but it's apparently OK to do the same hero worship to people who are alive. A bit of humour, a bit of moderation would often do great favours.
Well… that was an interesting read !