Anne Ishii x Che Chen

Che Chen: Can you start by describing how this project got started? 

Anne Ishii: So when I got there, I was fairly certain I just wanted to talk about the ritual of collecting trash and turn that into a story and maybe make a series of offerings and just sort of riff off of the Asian home altar where my thesis was, the virtue of the altar is that it stays replenished, not that the altar is resplendent.

But it's the same with trash, right? We have our rituals around trash, but it's more important that you're regularly taking it out. So that was my point of whatever, but I ended up being obsessed with the place itself, and then, I wanted to use it as a setting for this imaginary religious cult. The place itself became my temple, and then I created this whole doctrine of Relentlessness, which is the name of the project. 

CC: How did it feel to look at all that garbage?

AI: Oh my God, just seeing the sheer volume of trash is just mind-blowing. And it's not just the volume but the quality too, because there would be a total evacuation of a full business. So dozens of perfect condition computer chairs, and then, sometimes, it's clear out of a whole store, so there's just like – actually, there's a kind of bliss after you watch it for a while, I can't emphasize enough, it's like tens of thousands of tons of trash every day, and it's just one city, and it's just recycling. I can't even imagine what isn't actually getting sorted.

CC: I was wondering why you decided to use the idea of a cult as the metaphor for this project.

AI: So it actually started with me thinking about addiction or, well, really, the word I went in with was relentless behavior. So whether it's ritualized or devotional or manic or anxiety driven. What are the things that are relentless and beyond our control? There's so many things we try to create habits for and so many other things that we don't have to create habits for, we just can't stop doing it. 

What I was saying as I kept working out my thesis was, is there a way we could honor our anxieties and these bad habits like trash, like creating too much waste, without it becoming damaging to society or damaging communities? So Alcoholics Anonymous came up a few times, so I spoke to some people about that. The  founder of Alcoholics Anonymous is actually a great example of somebody who really understood the virtue of relentlessness or compulsive behavior, and kept honoring it while still curtailing it, right? And then, that naturally just turned into, oh my God, I actually am just trying to create a cult. Everything I said just sounded like I was trying to start a religion. It was like, I want to start a program. I want people to start this ritual. And the more I talked about it, the more dogmatic I got. And then, finally, my question changed to, who is an ethical cult leader? You know what I mean? 

CC: Right. The word relentless has kind of a negative connotation, but I also understand that some people might think it's a positive trait in the same way that we use really violent words to describe things that are positive like, “oh, you're killing it”, or “crushing it”, or whatever. Like why are we always destroying things when we think we're doing a good job? But it's also a word that I think a lot of people might relate to in that it’s hard not to feel like the world is absolutely relentless right now,  in terms of the pace of life in this country, the kind of demands of living in this late capitalist society that generates all this waste, or the bad news cycle, the volume of information and how it comes at us, all of it is so relentless. Thinking about it from a garbage angle, the idea of compost or transforming waste into new possibilities is a redemptive idea that is always nearby. So I thought that was an interesting thing about the tenets of this cult, where things that you might consider negative qualities of relentlessness are transformed into positive things.

Can you describe the ceremony you did at the end of your residency? 

AI: Yeah. There is this barn that is pretty big. It's their mechanical barn where they fix all the garbage trucks. Most of the time, it's pretty much empty. Billy and I talked about that being the ideal place to stage a revival if this was an actual religion. So I was sort of reading up on all these different kinds of ceremonial events and just kind of thinking of Balinese fire festivals or barn raisings. And I wanted to make sure everybody coming to the ceremony participated in it, like there was no audience, only participants. And then, I wanted everybody to use the instruments I'd spent the month making and also play instruments we found in the trash because that's another funny thing is a lot of people throw away instruments. 

Another really important aspect of this is to make sure we all got to eat together afterward. So I had a friend's catering company bring Indonesian liwetan, which is just all of the food on leaves. You can eat with your hands and leave no waste. And it's also designed in the format of an offering. I invoked the ceremony by starting with this little recitation. I started by talking about the dogma and then, occasionally, I would come in on the mic and just start reciting more tenets and kind of give people invitations to try new things. What it ended up being, honestly, was two hours of everybody just rocking out on the instruments. And it's this giant paved barn, a concrete floor with aluminum siding, plastic sliding. A totally resonant space. I mean, if we did nothing, it would've sounded cool too.

And then, earlier that day, there just happened to be just like a once-in-a-lifetime storm, so the whole place flooded. So the RAIR team and I actually spent that whole morning just sweeping as much water out of there as possible before everybody showed up. And then, it was 20 people, they made noise, and then ate, and then left. And then, most of the instruments went back into the waste stream. 

CC: A lot of musicians are scavengers in terms of gear and what they use. I've always had the tendency, maybe from growing up in an immigrant family that always had to be resourceful. 

AI: I think you're particularly adept at scavenging. I think that's one of the reasons why I wanted you to have this conversation with me because that was a really important aspect of this. I mean, the tools are already there, and it's a metaphor for the creative potential of all humans. It's already there. Personally when I find something, it feels like a message from God if I discover something.

CC: Yeah. For me, I feel like if you find something it makes a decision for you in a way. If you are someone with an active imagination, it can feel like there are so many possibilities that where do you even start? Finding things or waiting for things is another way. I don't feel super comfortable using the word God, but I feel like letting the natural system choose things for you sometimes is useful to me.

AI: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I mean, you're describing karma, and I think it's similar. It just makes me feel like I'm part of the universe. Whereas, just to be naming the elephant or whatever, there's the other culture, which is sort of Pokemon culture, catch all the monsters, get everything, have a completist collection, know everything about all. 

CC: The other thing is when you find things they often need work. And I think in doing that work, you develop a relationship with it. I'm sure through building instruments from this place, you have a different feeling for an instrument that you put together than you do for an instrument that you bought new. 

AI: Totally. Well, let me ask you this, because actually, I had this thought recently, I didn't really get comfortable drumming until I owned my own set and then sort of made my own instruments in that set because I felt more at liberty to damage those things. If somebody lends me a thing, I'm going to be very gentle with it. So on the one hand, we take better care of it, maybe, but also, you know how far you can take it?  Victoria [Shen, who not long before this interview had performed and participated in a seminar at Asian Arts Initiative, where Anne was director], over the weekend, was saying how with her instruments, because she destroys a lot of her stuff, she's like, "As the mother of the instrument, I also know exactly what it took to make it, which makes it much easier for me to destroy it." And Mindy [Seu], her writer/interlocutor and I just  guffawed because to call that motherhood is really hilarious. "I can destroy this because I know what it took to make it," it's like a wild thing to say.

CC: She doesn't have kids, I take it?

AI: Yeah, right. Not human ones.

CC: I think there's something else there about what she said though, that is maybe that instrument is just one iteration of a certain spirit or idea that gets embodied in different forms that gets made and destroyed over time. But the idea of it, or the spirit of it is always something that's in you and you can re-manifest it materially when you feel like it, because you know how to build/repair it.

CC: And you made outfits too, right? Did you find a lot of clothes in the dump?

AI: Fabric. Bolts and bolts and bolts of upholstery fabric, industrial fabrics, and a lot of plastic, not fabric, but just things that could be textiles. I was thinking about how much regalia figures into a mythology. I don't think I would take any cult seriously that didn't have regalia. Revolution Recovery, is a massive hard hat zone, so I went through a safety training. You have to get certified to just even be there. Everybody comes in, puts on their OSHA gear, and it's the only way you can be on premises. And it's like, that's exactly like a temple, you can't actually go in, you can't engage with the gods without wearing or covering yourself in the right places. So when that epiphany hit me, I started taking apart OSHA vests and then recreating them with these other fabrics. And then, I would just add things like head pieces or whatever.

AI: This is related somehow, but did you grow up going to church or anything like that?

CC: I should’ve thought to ask you that. No, my dad's a scientist. He's very averse to organized religion. Taiwan is also a very superstitious place, and I think my parents were happy to leave that behind. My mom has always been into Tai Chi and meditation but it was more a private thing, just a part of how she operated, not a social thing or an identity. But it was where a sense of spirituality came from in our family. Did you? 

AI: Yeah, my mother is a hardcore Korean Baptist. Like Japanese Korean church, like the biggest, probably, organizing entity politically and culturally in Japan for Koreans. And her father was a very highly regarded elder at this church. Her family gave butt-loads of money to this church. I mean, she's deep, deep in it, but she really believes it. She's not just a political Christian, she's like a mystical Christian, just believes all of it. And she was really ill when I was little, and she swears she saw the other side. So she's seen God, I guess she understands and she believes there's an afterlife because she thinks she saw it. I mean, she probably saw it.

My dad grew up in a hyper conservative Buddhist sect, and it wasn't Soka Gakkai, but it was really intense. They actually would pray before eating, which is highly unusual. And he was raised vegetarian until he left home. He left home because of this. His older brother became a monk and then left and became an administrator for a Temple.

My dad's mother, whenever we visited, we had to go to religious functions with her. So they both had really strong upbringings in two different religious systems. And then, neither of them strong-armed us into it, but church in California as an Asian American was just the place where you did all your weekend activities. It was more like a community center. And then, I spent every summer in Japan as a kid. So when I was in Japan, my dad's mom would take us to Buddhist summer camps. And so, we learned all the mantras and I did all our genuflection and all that stuff. So my familiarity with that is all from practice, like home practice, but I think there's this, not traditional, but a stereotypical narrative of what dogmatic religious upbringing looks like. Anyway, all of that to say I had a conservative religious background growing up, but I didn't get any of that political nonsense, so it doesn't feel harmful in any way. It was never like, "Life begins at inception," or any of that mumbo jumbo.

CC: Another thing that occurs to me thinking about Relentlessness being at the center of all this, is that you're a person that does a lot of different things all the time.

AI: No, it's true. I think I've probably said this before, but it's probably a coping mechanism, doing too much. It's a highly lucrative coping mechanism. And it is unfortunately also impossible to stop once you're in the machinery of doing a lot. I mean, if I stop doing a lot, I'm going to die or something like that. But then, actually, I did stop because I was having panic attacks every week, and then, I was like, I think that's my body now officially saying, "You need to stop." So yeah, I guess this is also my way of saying Relentlessness has to end.