Respect the Boss

“Let’s have some fun/This beat is sick/This is what we do on our business trip”–DRCM

A draft résumé from 1999 translates as: “Am pornographer, columnist and wreck. Would like to talk.”

The Four Horsemen by Aphrodite’s Child

IV Fan Tracey Guinsburg says:

Hi all at Implied Violence. I saw your performance piece at the island in NYC and was impressed enough to buy the book and enjoyed the DVD very much and all the information provided about this group.
The photos I have sent here are of the 19th of Sept taken in NYC at the New Island Festival by my sister Tania Guinsberg, and I have just made a montage of the images as an expansion of the conceptual vision. All the best on this production and others for the future.

When I was visiting Manhattan for the Dorothy K, I went to the Cake Shop one night to see The Pharmacy. While sitting though a paralyzingly boring noise rock act, I started talking to this tiny guy in a neon windbreaker-thing and one of those gold sticker baseball caps.  The conversation began when we made eye contact by chance and noticed that we each had the same pained look on our face.

“I like all kinds of music,” he said, “but not like when you ask a little kid what kind of music they like and they say everything. I mean, it’s something I really think about. I’ve studied sound design at three different universities and been kicked out of all of them.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I like to drink. And I don’t like authority. And sometimes I sell pills.”

I was impressed when he was able to predict exactly when a beat-long silence in a song would occur, and use this beat to yell, “Not impressed!”

He told me that though he liked everything, he had a certain preference for rap, so I told him that recently I had been really into Wu-Tang. This obviously pleased him.

“You know how they do a Behind The Music about Britney Spears or Madonna or whatever. There’s a reason there’s never been one about Wu-Tang. It’s because they’re on hallucinogens all the time. Every one of their albums was recorded while on mushrooms or acid.”

“I wondered how they thought of some of that stuff,” I said.

“Yeah. They did some crazy shit. They were making a video one time, and every night during the production of the video, Ghostface bought a bucket of chicken and buried it in the director’s yard.”

“Why?”

“For luck, I guess. I don’t know, he was fucked up on mushrooms. But anyway, at the end of the week, the director saw his cat scratching around in the yard–which, you know, is really unusual for a cat–and he found them, all the buckets of chicken.”

The Pharmacy came on, who didn’t impress him either, and then I went upstairs, where a woman from San Francisco asked me where all the lesbians are around here.

“I’m only visiting,” I said.

The Boss: “I will only help you with the Fulbright scholarship if you help me write a theater-nerd sounding cover letter to intern at Wooster Group.”

Cortez: “If you say you work for IV I will give you ALL of my letters of rec! But don’t forget who you work for gurl!”

The Boss: “I won’t forget. But wouldn’t you like to learn the names of people who give them money????”

Cortez: “Basically you are on a The Departed type mission.”

The Boss: “Oh I thought maybe this could be a chick flick lipstick and heels version.”

Cortez: “Where you kill Willem Defoe in real life.

Should this whole correspondence go on the blog?”

A little musical ditty from The Dorothy K at New isLand Festival in September.

From TheaterMaker magazine, a Dutch publication:
Translation:

One of the most intriguing - and disturbing - entries from [America] comes from the Seattle-based collective Implied Violence. Their piece, The Dorothy K, unfolds both inside and in front of one of Governors Island’s gorgeous federalist homes on what’s known as ‘Colonel’s Row.’ When the performance piece is not taking place, visitors to the New isLand Festival can tour the house which has been transformed into a macabre testament to death and violence. An eerie soundscape plays throughout the house which has been arrayed with a brutally conceived array of items, including pig fetuses and pig entrails. This installation - which includes a performance which the writer was unable to experience - simultaneously chills and rivets and, even without witnessing the group’s production, this American company’s ability to fuse its vision with venue genuinely impresses.

The Sound Dress Room; Photo by Tod Seelie

More Photos by Tod Seelie.