Art-Core: Brandon Stosuy on Co-Curating Broad’s Summer Happenings With Terry Riley, Faust, Matmos, Google Docs

(Photo: Courtesy of Summer Happenings –
Art-Core: Brandon Stosuy, former Pitchfork editor and current EIC of The Creative Independent, co-curated this year’s Broad Museum Summer Happenings series..

With the Broad Museum’s Summer Happenings series kicking off this weekend in Los Angeles, with an impressive and varied slate of non-mainstream artists including Terry Riley, faUSt, Matmos, Kim Gordan, YoshimiO, EYE, Stretch Armstrong, Pharmakon, Jean Grae and others, Pollstar caught up with the event’s co-curator Brandon Stosuy. The Editor in Chief and Founder of The Creative Independent (and former Pitchfork’s director of editorial operations), Stosuy is as well-versed in black metal as he is contemporary art and here explains his creative process in co-curating for a museum, co-managing artists like Diamanda Galas, Zola Jesus and Wax Idols and, of course, the importance of Google Docs.

Pollstar: This year’s Broad Summer Happenings looks better than ever.
Brandon Stosuy: That’s what Ryu [Ryu Takahashi, co-curator] and I were talking about. Through shifting different curators and finding different people to collaborate, this year [the third] felt like the most collaborative we’ve been. For each event, a bunch of people chipped in. In the past, one person would tend to drive an event.

You have some interesting curators this year, including James Spooner, Afropunk Festival co-founder and Ryu manages Arto Lindsay, how are they chosen?
I’m not entirely sure. I think Ed [Ed Patuto, The Broad’s director of audience engagement] chose them and has a good sense for putting people together. When we first were doing it, Ed paired me up with Brad Nordeen and those went really well and was really interesting. He was coming from a queer film world and experimental cinema, and I was coming from my zone.

What’s important in collaborating with other curators?

A large part of curation, if it’s multiple people collaborating, is finding people who aren’t egotistical, crazy people who can take no and not think that it’s a terrible thing that’s going to mean that they’re a horrible person or is going to destroy the process.

What were some of your no’s?

Often, we just move on. When I was first at PS1’s Warm Up [MOMA’s Queens outpost] none of us quite understood that Warm Up was essentially a dance party. So we were like, “Oh, man, we can have some black metal bands.” We’d come up with crazy ideas and things that could be interesting. But suddenly we realized it’s really not what the people who go to Warm Up want. They want music clicked on that’s dancing, so they can dance half out of their minds. They don’t really want us being super conceptual like, “Alright, we’re going to have this band emerge from a prison.”  Often it’s just having the ambition and figuring out what’s actually scalable. It’s more “Oh, these things all seem kind of slow. We shouldn’t have that thing, too;” or “Wow, this line-up is starting to seem really too dude-ish and too indie rock,” that kind of thing

(Photo by Mindy Tucker/Courtesy Summer Happenings) –
Jean Grae

A lot to the music you book tends to be outro or very underground, do you ever feel like, let’s break it up a bit and just get the Backstreet Boys? 

We always talk about that. Not the Backstreet Boys necessarily, but I remember last year, we were doing the one that was a lot of Japanese experimental music. At one point, Ryu and I were like, “Man, we should try to get some massive pop band,” some sort of pop project or something. I feel like you can do those things in ways that can be fun too. I think having kids grounds me as well, where it’s a lot of, “Daddy, we want to listen to Kidz Bop.”

We went really deep on that actually and had the curator of the show on call. We sat there and listened to her for an hour. Then we asked questions like, “I know you’re saying this has to deal with time and slowing time down, did you organize the exhibition to slow people down?” Then we basically traded a Google Doc with a list for artists, lists for themes, how it would tie into A Journey That Wasn’t, where we imagined it in the space, why we wanted to have it part of it. That way we could see it all in one spot. They’re like, “Alright, I want to have Gang Gang Dance, and they’re going to make sense outside in the plaza. We also want to have something that’s not a full band experience in the plaza, that deals with time and duration. How about Stretch Armstrong?” We would go through it that way, but we’d have millions of ideas that would come and go. Some would make sense and some wouldn’t. Then as in any situation, sometimes you reach out to someone and they’re not available.

It’s almost like a reverse Jenga where you have to piece it together so it creates a hole if that makes sense.  If you book one wrong person, it feels like it doesn’t fit and suddenly it becomes an eyesore. You’re like, alright, we shouldn’t have booked that one thing. That’s a funny thing I learned when I was a teenager booking shows. I would get overexcited and just book a bunch of stuff. Then suddenly you’re like, “Oh my god, I have too many things and half this stuff doesn’t make sense.”

(Photo by Charles Felver/Courtesy of Summer Happenings) –
Terry Riley

Each one of these nights is like a mini festival unto itself with nearly ten artists. For A Journey That Wasn’t, you have Terry Riley, a minimalist composer who plays Carnegie Hall, Gang Gang Dance, and art-damaged band, Stretch Armstrong from the old school, Jean Grae a rapper, Tara Jane O’Neil underground indie and Zap Mama is global — all great but seemingly disparate.
Well, For instance, with Jean Grae and the Church of the Infinite You, she is going to give a sermon on time. A lot of this stuff deals with time and duration, memory, and repetition. Carolyn Pennypacker is also playing and is going to do a storytelling which ties back into Greek myths and which show up in the exhibition. Terry Riley is performing Aleph. All of this stuff is super conceptual, Ideally, people can also enjoy it on the level of showing up and being like, “Oh, this is interesting. These things tie together sonically.”

Have you seen the exhibition?

Yes. It involves video, art and sculptural elements and it’s a group show. It’s one of those things  where if you went into this exhibition, you wouldn’t necessarily be like, “Oh, wow, this show is somehow reflecting the exhibition,” but I think if you take a moment and read a little bit and see the themes that are popping up, then it makes sense. Again, it can totally be enjoyed on the level of, “I’m going to go see Gang Gang Dance perform outside and just stay out there the whole time.” But we curate them with the hope that people do go through it all and get that it all ties together and ties back to the art collection.

What makes it unique is people are actually playing within the art and have the art as a backdrop. So you can see Tiny Vipers play with a Murakami piece behind her. That’s the most interesting part, people are traveling throughout the space. There are so many events and festivals that really are just standing in front of a stage the whole time.

How did the Social Shaman show come together?
The first ones I remember getting were Matmos and faUSt. Then we’re like, “All right, how do we build this out so that it feels interesting and complete?” You just start adding people. You’re like, “Oh, let’s have Eye from the Boredoms do this weird experimental DJ thing,” and it just goes from there. Then I was at the 24 Hour Drone event at Basilica that I helped organize and was talking to Margaret [Chardiet] from Pharmakon and she mentioned being into Joseph Beuys. I was like, “oh, wow, this makes sense.” We started thinking about different ways to mix it up and make it feel like a robust and complete line-up, so I thought of FlucT doing a dance performance and then Pharmakon. We just keep adding to it and that’s how they come together.

Joseph Beuys is at the heart of he Social Shaman show and was all over the place, right? “Fluxus, performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist, and of course a pedagogue.” Do you look at his art and think, okay, this sounds like faUSt? Let’s get some Krautrock or  abstract electronic music?

For faUSt we liked the idea of repositioning instruments, non-musical things, as musical. When we first got their tech rider it involved chainsaws and oil drums and stuff. I think this idea too of Beuys taking everyday objects and shifting them in that way.  And then there’s a political side to Beuys, so it was like, we should get a punk band of some sort, and then we realized that Pharmakon really has that element of being confrontational. She has a real purity of vision and of politics and ethics. She makes sense with Beuys.

Is part of the process just absorbing the art?

With Beuys, Ryu would come to the office and he and I would sit together and go through images. We looked at a bunch of his work and read things and there’s a Beuys documentary.  We would immerse ourselves in it as much as we could and then meet up and start saying, “What about this person? This person doesn’t seem quite right. What about…” We definitely would think about it. It wouldn’t be one of those things where we would just randomly choose something and say, “Oh, we can say this is kind of like Beuysian?” or something. We really did sit and think about it.

(Photo by Shawn Brackbill/Courtesy of Summer Happenings) –
Eye, also known as Yamataka Eye, from the Boredoms

So basically you take someone else’s creative output and deconstruct it, and then see how it makes you feel and then think creatively about how sound and installations and other art forms relate to it, right?
It’s a passive collaboration between the curators and the art and then us figuring our way into that work, finding a way that we feel connected to it and how we interpret it and see it. It’s always interesting when talking to the curator. She would have her thoughts, “Well, I chose this for the exhibition because of this.” She was explaining how she saw the work fitting into the group exhibition, and then we’re curating as well but we’re curating on a different side.  It all becomes this long web of collaboration. You have to find a way in, an entry point. In any curatorial project, you’re going to find the things that stand out. It’s not like we can represent every single piece in that exhibition.

As editor of Pitchfork you were listening, absorbing and critiquing loads of music, putting it into context and writing deep analysis. Then launching the Creative Independent two years ago you’ve been drilling down super deep into the process of creation, how has that changed or informed your curatorial process? 

This has always been the way I’ve curated. When I was at Pitchfork, I was curating events like Basilica Soundscape, which is now in its seventh year. The Basilica stuff was born out of events that Matthew Barney and I did out at his studio. In a way, my job became more in line with what I was doing on the side, thinking about process and thinking about how can we match up people in a way that’s surprising or unexpected. That’s why in the past when we did an event, we we’re like, “Hey, let’s have a Wold but let’s also have an art historian reading from the dude from Wold’s dissertation about Nietzsche and let’s also have a wrestling match choreographed by Collier Schorr and soundtracked by Carlos Sclafani.” Just coming up with all these things that made sense to us.  It never felt like, yeah, let’s book five death metal bands or four indie rock bands and put it on at the Music Hall of Williamsburg or something, which has never been that interesting.

How does that manifest itself with venues?
When I was at Pitchfork, I remember Ryan Schreiber [Pitchfork founder] and I were talking, about how we didn’t really want to do shows at typical venues in Brooklyn anymore. We were like, “Let’s try to do things at unexpected places.” So we had this event at the New Museum back in the day with Trash Talk  in the basement and Grimes upstairs. It was one of Diiv’s first shows. We collaborated with, Ken Farmer, who did all these different projections in the room. It was always trying to find ways to do events that didn’t feel so turnkey and didn’t feel super basic. Certain venues just need to fill their stage every night. The idea was to not have shows that felt like that.

Do you ever deal with agents? Are there ones whose tastes align with yours? Or do you go directly to artists, when you get a Terry Riley or Matmos?
Because I’m an old person and I’ve been doing this stuff for so long there’s just people you build relationships with over time. There’s people who you’re like, this person will get it and this person will be easy to work with.  But sometimes I’ll go directly to the artist. I booked Grouper for Basilica, and it was one of these things where I’ve reached out to her and her agent every year for Basilica and the timing just never worked. It was something that was on both of their radars, and then this year it worked. Her agent Jim [Romeo at Ground Control Touring] and she were both into it, and the timing was there and it made sense.

I also just booked Prurient for Basilica, and that happened because we’d announced the line-up. We had one spot left, and he just happened to text me and then he talked to his agent Miro [Miroslav Wiesner] from Surefire who I really like and work with a lot. Then by the time we wrote Miro, he was like, “Yep, Dom already reached out. It looks confirmed.” I think sometimes it’s a little mixture of both, but yeah, Miro is someone I feel like I come back to.

There’s also Forest Juziuk at ASRA Agency. He books Noveller, who I booked at the Broad last year, we did this series of smaller shows, and she played three nights in a row at the Broad. He books her and he also books Pharmakon.  He books Wolf Eyes too. He also books that weird opera that’s based on the stage banter from Fugazi. He’s one of these guys that’s doing a lot of weird stuff. That’s up my alley.

Sometimes, you try to book a larger artist or someone who used to be a smaller artist and you used to be able to go direct with. Then they get too busy. You try to talk to their group or their team, and you just know as you’re on the phone, this is not going to work. This is just ridiculous.

(Photo by David Black/Courtesy Summer Happenings) –
Kim Gordon

How often does that happen
?
Ed and I had one of those calls this year even. I won’t disclose who it was, but we’re on this call and I was like, “oh my god, this is too many cooks.” These people just don’t get what’s going on. I think that is always a danger with these kind of things where it gets too removed from the artist. I wonder, “Wow, is this person even going to know that we’ve reached out about this?” I moonlight as a manager. My friend Caleb [Braaten] and I, he runs that label Sacred Bones.

Who are you working with?

He and I manage Diamanda Galas, Zola Jesus and Wax Idols and we’ve been working with an artist named Jlin. We’re a small enough thing that we can always report to them like, “Hey, this place reached out. Are you interested?” It’s not 7,000 of us. There’s two of us, and then we collaborate with these other people. All said, there’s six of us. I feel like some of these organizations are just these massive things, and you never know if the agent or the manager had the best interests in mind.. Sometimes I think that’s the risk of when you start feeling too big.

Do your artists have agents?

Yeah, they have agents thankfully. Zola Jesus has Sam Hunt from Paradigm. And Jlin goes through Brad Owen, at Paradigm. They all have somebody.

What percentage of the artists you book have agents?  Terry Riley has an agent, I would think,
We mostly dealt with his manager Tom.  Some of them, we go through the manager. Some, it’s through the agent. Some, like Tara Jane O’Neil, we went through Tara Jane O’Neil. Whenever I’ve done stuff with Ian MacKaye, it’s always been directly with him. 
He’s never had an agent. With Gang Gang Dance, we went through both the manager and the booking agent. Yeah, so it depends on the person. Gang Gang Dance’s manager too, Rich Zerbo, he’s someone who’s been around forever. Does that label at Social Registry.

So booking this market runs the gamut from those who have agents, those whose managers handle bookings and then artists who do it themselves.
With Dedekind Cut, I’ve reached out to him directly because he and I had been in contact. Then he looped me with the manager, who then looped me with an agent. It just depends on the person. In some of these cases, we would reach out directly. We reached out directly to Laraaji and he confirmed himself. There was no manager involved because we were about to do 24 Hour Drone at Basilica. Sometimes that works out.

What’s the budget for Summer Happenings?

I don’t know if I’m allowed to disclose that, but the budget is solid. It’s not Coachella, but people are getting paid probably close to what they would normally get paid.  I know with a lot of festivals in this day and age, things are so jacked up. 

(Photo by Josh Sisk/Courtesy Summer Happenings) –
Matmos

Who have you’ve interviewed at the Creative Independent who has inspired you the most?

There’s been a bunch of people. I interviewed Bon Iver the other day, Justin Vernon. He recounted talking to Ian MacKaye, who’s always been a hero of mine from my teen years and a hero of Justin Vernon’s as well. He was saying one time he talked to him and asked him, “Why won’t Fugazi reunite?” Ian MacKaye said, “Oh, yeah, I’m not an expansionist. I don’t need to just endlessly expand.” He can kind of be happy just stopping. Then Justin kind of spun that into this thing when he was talking to me where he’s like, “Yeah, not all of us have to be Walmart. We don’t need to expand. You don’t need to step on people to get ahead. You can walk next to people and have a satisfying life.” I liked that idea, of walking together with someone versus stepping on them.

This woman, Taja Cheek, who’s in that band L’Rain who were playing Basilica and who I think were really amazing. She’s also a curator at PS1. I remember interviewing her about having a day job and how she found having a day job very useful. A lot of people are always more of the mindset of, ‘I’ve got to dump the day job so I can focus on my creative outlet full time.” I appreciated her outlook that some people will think if you have a day job, it means you’re not a real artist or haven’t made it. She’s like, that’s not true at all. For a lot of people, it’s useful having a day job. It creates parameters. Some people work better with that kind of structure in their lives. That was an interesting one.

There’s been a lot of them where people have said stuff that has really stuck to me. I can’t remember who it was now but someone was like, “Yeah, when you first wake up in the morning, before you look at your phone, just sit there for 15 minutes and think about something,” just those little things that stand out. At this point, we’ve done 455 interviews.

In two years? That’s basically every day.

Yeah, it is. We have a new thing on the homepage. It used to say This Week, and it had the things we have this week. Now it just says resources.  You can discover the archives, but we’ve removed the idea of, “This is what’s happening this week.” This is just an ongoing thing. You can check in at any time. It’s not a typical publication. It’s supposed to be a resource. Because we’ve done so many people, I can’t always remember who said what basically is what I’m trying to say.

It’s a blur of creativity and inspiration.