Mike and Claire : Un-Seriously Serious

Obsessed with fairy tales, moving images and availableism, creative duo Mike and Claire open up about their latest story Grimms and their role in redefining the modern day classics. 

Image from the story Characters - courtesy of Mike and Claire 

Inspiration - Grimms 

Claire: Over Thanksgiving break Mike found this beautiful calendar for the 2014 year of Grimm's illustrations. We really liked them and kind of wanted to make a project that was our interpretations of these illustrations. It started out us wanting to stay in the realm of those illustrations that we found but by the time we got around to actually shooting them we realized that we were kind of essentially just really inspired by the illustrations in making up our own stories. Instead of like Cinderella or Little Mermaid or anything like that it became more like we wanted to address like gender and politics through this idea of a fairytale and it sort of feels like the project isn't finished yet, feels like just the beginning and we were really inspired by primary colors and keeping it sort of in this realm.

Mike: A lot of our work is always talking about issues that are really important to us but doing it in a playful way because we feel like if you’re too aggressive about something or if you approach it in a way that is really serious people don't want to be involved in it, or they like get too wrapped up in it to so that they don't really cause a change.

C: Its just like seriously, un-serious or maybe un-seriously serious

Don't Touch Me by Mike and Claire

Don't Touch Me by Mike and Claire

Don't Touch Me by Mike and Claire

Reinventing the Classics 

M: I feel like these fairy tales or these morals need to be reinvented for a new generation because everything seems like its a little too far behind, you know? The idea of needing a prince charming is something that is becoming obsolete to people now, which feels really good. Then there is just the perspective of us making work as two queer people and wanting to have stuff like that available to other people. Basically were just trying to make work that starts new conversations.

C: I think with the idea of the fairy tale its been so watered down and saturated by things like Disney for example, like the Little Mermaid. The Disney movie has a happy ending, and I mean the real tale is fucked up and she gets her tongue cut off and she dies and like that is fucked up and there are numerous tales like that. Its basically like you are sugar coating a really scary thought to put in a child's mind to teach them a lesson and that has been really interesting to us because I feel like through our own work were still like growing as people too and in some ways its like lessons to ourselves that we learn that we try and put back into the work, maybe.

"The fairy tale its been so watered down and saturated by things like Disney..."

Don't Touch Me - Image courtesy of Mike and Claire 

Modern Day Fairy Tale 

M: We heard this story today about this person who's lover forgot their suitcase and they were like, “can you bring my suitcase on the plane” and they were like, “sure” so they flew over and then the police went into their suitcase and found a bunch of heroin.

C: He had never met the girl before, so he brought over this suitcase that had a bunch of heroin in it and they spent the rest of their life in jail together. It sounds like a modern day Grimm's fairytale. Its just that brutal and its kind of exciting. Its kind of a Pandora's box situation, not really, but its like you don't open the suitcase what the hell?

M: Its the same thing its just modern fairy tale.

C: Yeah, its just like we are making things to fit what we want to see. It is funny because I feel like one of my all time favorite movies is Edward Scissor Hands and i love that movie so much because its taking Beauty and the Beast and redoing it in a really like beautiful modern way. I don’t know, for some reason that movie just like always sticks with me and I really, really love how he did that film. It is just that idea of taking such a basic idea and placing it in the modern world. It always feels like new or something.

M: The idea of like a cellphone being something magic is kind of disregarded as something trivial or kind of stupid or like things that take place in modern day world aren't magical anymore and thats kind of a strange thing to me because basically all fairy tales take place in like ancient times but its cool reinventing stories or just reinventing things that have elements of today in it.

Creating As a Duo

 M: We’re definitely not exactly the same but we are the same in the way that we recognize each other's differences when we are working and my style of work really compliments Claire's style of work and Claire's style of work really compliments my style of work.

C: It is funny because we had a guest critique in our class a while ago and he kind of told us like you guys are from the same pole, but Mike was like were from the opposite poles and we meet in the middle. I feel like Mike is like really slick and I’m like kind of a country bumpkin and I don’t know how to explain that more but thats for me kind of where it like meets in the middle. I guess if you look at what we used to do separately Mike is really slick and I used to do a lot of like digital mash up shit and I think we have sort of found a way to mash that together which is cool, but idea wise I feel like were very much on the same page do you feel like that?

M: yeah definitely

"Mike is like really slick and I’m like kind of a country bumpkin."

Availableism 

M: We have always been really interested in the idea of availableism, which is making work with what you have available and it even applies to making food or it can be anything just using what you have available around you. So, if you have you know 500 slinkies that we found on the street then were going to make a project that uses slinkies.

M: Everything DIY

Interview by - Karin Bar 

The Infinity Pool

The Infinity Pool is a digital exhibition space that features a different artist each month. The digital platform was created by artists David Alexander Flinn and Adam Patrick Ianniello. The Unlimited sat down with the two to talk about how this digital curated space functions, and Adam's currently running series.

What is The Infinity Pool?

David: The infinity pool is an entity. It is like an alien brain hovering in space. That is how I think of it.

A word to describe it?

David: Vacation.

Adam:
It is like an alien thing, but it is also a bit like a labyrinth in the way that we want it to be complex and we want you to feel like you are lost in it.

David:
The evolution of it and its natural design, the growth is not linear, so it is constantly going to be zig-zagging and bouncing between universes and dimensions because it is dealing with totally different subject matter from totally different people. Some alive, some dead.

It is already everything, so it will never need to expand. I think that is the benefit of having it be something digital and kind of ephemeral. It is unbound by weight, by rent, it has no limitations, which to me makes it everything. If the infinity pool became a gallery format, physical manifestation, it would just be a gallery. You loose the freedom to be entirely open to any type of project.

I think watching the artists grow, and watching the capability of the infinity pool grow, that growth in enough.

We have a really big sense of humor, and something we are really into is challenging institutions and challenging standard notions of right or wrong, so I think that is the beauty of having it as an abstract entity.

Adam:
We take people that are not comfortable being in a gallery, or showing art in a gallery. Then pushing then to do something that would be the equivalent of exhibiting work. We are getting them outside their box and we are learning more about ourselves and what we sort of like to see from them. It is a push and a pull when we finally get to meet, and finally get to talk about something. They do not know themselves going into it what they want to do. It is always cool to guide them along their path and figure out who they are for the website.

"The main thing is we are interested in the work, thats all. There is no money, no sponsors, there is just us wanting to see people make good work, and trying to give them the opportunity with what we have, which is this."

That is what the website is, we want it to be a sort of rite of passage. In the sense that people feel comfortable doing it but they have to step up and do something more than they have normally been doing.

Adam:
We do not want mid-career people, we don’t want people everyone knows. We either want people that are emerging in a way, or people that we idolize and respect greatly. We wanted to have new people where we can have a fresh look at things.

If the infinity pool had to exist in a world without internet what would it be?

David:
I think the infinity pool would have been more like a monthly book.

Adam:
An AA meeting.

David:
Either like an AA meeting or a monthly...its already kind of like an AA meeting. I think probably a monthly or quarterly book. I am thinking if we met in the 1700s what we would have done and it probably would have been like a manifesto. Yeah a manifesto.

Flags-  Adam Ianniello exhibit on The Infinity Pool 

What inspired you to produce for this month? as a founder and participant

Smoke-  Adam Ianniello exhibit on The Infinity Pool 

Adam:
In the past year I have been going upstate to work, to photograph. Every time I go up there it will clear my mind and I figure out new projects to do, especially in the form that I do them, which is dark room photography. The first time I went up there I went to a place which is a Tibetan monastery. Its all deep up in the hills of Woodstock, and there is an area up there that is basically a path where monks walk everyday and its covered with these Tibetan prayer flags. So that really inspired me and I really got into wanting to do something with Tibetan prayer flags and I sort of dove deep into Buddhism and meditation. When this month came around I decided to go back up in August and I brought a video camera with me, and I started filming things. I spent the whole week filming nature basically. Just whatever I felt like doing, I wanted to film. When I came back I realized I could use that footage and sort of transcode them into the flags themselves. All the flags have a good luck meaning, and they are broken down into five elements: sky, wind, earth, fire, and water. When that hit me I realized I am going to do five videos and each of them is going to contain just that element, and try to portray it in the most pure way possible.

I think when we talk about the infinity pool we always talk about taking whatever practice we do and trying to transform it into a digital format. Approaching it as this is what I am, this is what I do, this is what I like to do, but I have to make it in a way that people on the internet will understand. Which is different than the way that “the gallery” would fit into the picture.

I basically took what I did photographically, and turned that into a video format. So people could visualize what it is like to stand in front of one of my pieces.

http://www.theinfinitypool.com