JS: Jim Shaw | TO: Tony Oursler

TO: I’ve always felt you’ve been really prescient in relation to all things pop, I see in your work a seeping of corporate culture into the subconscious but also in the other direction your project suggests a lot these avant-garde strategies are adapted as corporate sales in ways we didn’t expect, like you see Carnival cruise ad have the narcotic Pop/Bowie tune “Lust for Life”.

JS: yeah the first time I saw an ad with Lou Reed in it, it was kinda cool, but William Burroughs, I was like “Oh God!” well the first time I saw it was kinda cool, by the third time I understood all the ramifications…

TO: What do you think about that Jim?

JS: I’ve seen things from Marnie’s last show end up on a TV commercial. I could swear something from my last show, showed up in a TV commercial: a little moment in some big special effects extravagance. I know that you’re just looking for something to steal when your in advertising because you only have a week of development time and you don’t want to come up with some entirely avant-garde idea because no one will be able to understand it in that blink of an eye that they’ve got to watch the commercial or that billboard, so you want something that’s pre-understood or sub-consciously understood. The whole revolutionary aspect of Surrealism doesn’t pan out in that process, it’s a horrible thing the all absorbing consumer culture. But on the other hand, speaking as someone who lived a poor Bohemian lifestyle, through the entire 70’s and much of the 80’s it gets kinda tired after a while, the moment you buy a house or have a kid, you almost have to join that endless gravy train of credit cards and credit card payments

whole interview…