Untitled, image by Bas de Gids
Transdimensionalism: An interview with the brothers De
Gids
Jonathan
Mulcahy-King Interviews Aad de Gids & Bas de Gids
JMK. What was the first piece of experimental writing that
influenced your current trajectory and how can it be seen in your work today?
BdG. Perhaps that would be Gertrude Stein’s “the Making of
Americans” and the de Sades’ books which led all to look at (the loss of)
narrative, radicality of topic and totally outrageousness of unconventionalism
to be embraced by as well Bas’s imaginist skills (he liked Bacon the painter and
Hieronymus Bosch and Céline and Malcolm Lowry the writers plus early on we
embraced radical performance artists like Ulay and Abramovic and Gilbert &
George and all sorts of anti-music like Eno, Fripp, Ono, Kraftwerk, John Cage,
CBGBs punk outings and Laurie Anderson).
JMK. If your collective work were a music festival, what
would the line-up be and why?
AdG. Involuntarily I already summed up the answer in the
previous one. we searched always for the weird, dadaist, postneodadaist,
situationist ad hoc performances for alienation never for enlargment of
understanding, camp (Bas is straight I am gay we’re twins and we love shock and
awe) but each weirdification is enhancement of the domain of references (or
rather referencelessness)… genesis
p. orridge and lady jay.
BdG. Painters:
Malcolm Morley, die Neue Wilde, photographing without lens, exhibiting
photos in darkness, utter darkness. Music: Nick Cave, John Lee Hooker, Dr. John
the Nighttripper, Buttholesurfers. Me also and: especially Yoko Ono, Robert
Wyatt, Soft Machine and no to Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, Nina Simone, Roberta
Flack, Dionne Warwick. Fashion: trashionista fashion Versace, but also haute
couture by Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld. I always loved Geoffrey Beenes confections
and lately becoming more and more of a parfumista.
JMK. How would you describe the relationship between your
respective works of writing and photography, is it, for example, reflexive,
ekphrastic, asemic, totally isolated etc.?
BdG. It is Bas who coined the notion of “transdimensionalism”
which expresses pretty much the overall scope of our works. consistency one would
to have hard to search for. We like to switch styles every 5 minutes and
corrupt our own esthetics also so there is rather a “relax it is only a crap
Reena Spartings show” NY-Dutch-global anti-estheticism in the works.
JMK. Aad, your work evokes a kind of hyper-eroticism. Do
you feel there are unexplored aspects of transgression in poetry, and how much stock
do you as a writer put in “Bataille’s holy trinity;” excess, taboo, death, and
how does this come through in your work?
AdG. I studied philosophy at university and always found
the more radical versions, persons of post-Bataillism more interesting as
Foucault, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Derrida, Deleuze-Guattari, Virilio, Luce
Irigaray, Claire Parnet, Hélène Cixous. So this implies rather a more
unsystemic rest of totally transgressive, transportational, domainless
non-place where all takes place in constant dynamics against itself. This is
also the case in Bas’s imaginist ‘works’ which he keeps corrumpating,
developing, undeveloping, furthering, darkening and undefining.
JMK. How would you describe the current state of
experimental poetry? Could you name some writers/ publishers that excite you/
trends you find turgid?
AdG. I am interested
in some of my Facebook friend’s poetry and do not follow established writers
(anymore). Carolyn Srygly-Moore, Jacques Andervilliers, Thamyris Jones, Ryan
Ralston, Michael McAloran, David McLean, Lisa Gordon, Tara Birch to name a few.
JMK. Would you agree that
the propensity to extrapolate meaning and map discourse in experimental poetry
is an extension of Wittgensteinian language games, or the rule- governed
character of analysis and our auto-effective desire for meaning, and how might
this relate to your work? How might we better discuss “meaninglessness” in
poetry?
AdG. In the ’discourse’ of meaning in philosophy I rather
followed (as also but not predominantly Wittgenstein) the Frankfurt Schule and
poststructuralists as named above and as writers Marguerite Duras, Gertrude
Stein, Kapielski, Cioran, Céline, Celan, Musil, Thomas Bernhard, Georges Pérec,
Kathy Acker, Germaine Greer, all the philosophers I mentioned plus those of the
Frankfurt Schule Adorno-Horkheimer-Benjamin-Marcuse-Habermas-Apel. For each time I
search for the radicalest of escaping the narrativity and consistency in
meaning. I love all distortionism and hybridizations in art as we see in Beuys,
the photography of Helmut Newton-Guy Bourdin-Chris von Wangenheim and Cindy
Sherman-Nan Goldin-Diane Arbus- Tracey Moffatt-Tracey Ermin-Stacey Kranitz we
see in Andy Warhol-Madonna-Dash Snow-Gary Winogrand-Michele
Sibilonis-Bertiglio. There is also the [non-movement] of 'oh this shoppinglist
found under a shoppingcart at the parkinglot is poetry also’ esthetics to blow
up the self-aggrandizing schools of whatever art.
JMK. My next question is in poetry form;
tails are diaries
reeking
encrusted in the shit we
feed ourselves and to
flourish at a cost is
to tarry in mux and
abject-un
AdG.
mux=ground=humus=plantrests=tar=shit=hubris=debris.
it is as well abject as unabject bc just is as is. people shy away from it and
think themselves couture, wallstreet, raja and ISIS bombbelter with her his
death expecting virgins in the heaven. “I wanna be your dog” says the same:
dogs, hyenas, cats and bears do not shy away from ground, shit, the pit, their
tail speaks in voluminous and swaying iconology. I hope the toddler with
vulvaic hair KimJongUn soon dies a horrific death.
