Blueprint Residency Interviews

Eric Von Haynes (resident no. 8)

is an artist, designer, and curator whose work synthesizes old and new printing methods and aesthetics. While design and printmaking are his passions, he is energized by col- laborations and the ideas and chal- lenges that come from working with a community.

http://flatlandspress.com

Leor Galil (resident no. 4)

is a Chicago Reader staff writer and a freelance culture journalist. His work has appeared in The Washing- ton Post, Pitchfork, RollingStone. com, Spin, The Washington City Pa- per, The A.V. Club, and one too many newspapers and websites that have shuttered. He was voted the third best pizza in the city for the Reader’s 2017 Best of Chicago poll.

twitter: @imleor [email protected]

$5.00 (Editorial intrusions by Jordan Knecht will occasionally appear throughout this book and will look something like this.) Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

Leor Galil: So yeah, what made you want to do the Blueprint Residency?

Eric Von Haynes: Well, let me see. Generically, I enjoy collaboration. It’s part of my practice overall. So I’m al- ways looking for opportunities to do collaborative work and I love in situ. I love that aspect of doing in situ work. Jordan’s project offered me some in situ work, as well. Something on site - sorry. Something site-specific. I used it as an opportunity to do it as an ex- ercise for myself. So I went. I just built a toolbox of things that I might want to use, and I made sure to not actually go there with any definitive ideas. (Eric literally showed up with a toolbox of tools. Once the contents were emptied from the box, he neatly disassembled the box and folded it flat upon itself.)

Because I didn’t want it to just be a graphic design exercise. So, I creat- ed. I just basically brought a giant toolbox and then some safety things in case for some reason I was having a creative block. So I had all these cy- anotypes that I did from paper. Like laying paper out in the sun with cau- tion tape and things on them. These also have that blue. That blue hue that’s very similar to the blueprint machine itself. But I ended up going there with... I’ll stop there. That’s what made me want to do it. And I en- joy the performative aspect of doing stuff on site and the way his project was designed, it seemed like it could have a performative aspect to it, as well since he was documenting the whole thing and his interactions with the art- ists while they were doing the work. Blueprint Residency Interviews

LG: Have you ever had an experience that is performative in that way?

EVH: Yes. I like to do happenings when I do events for my press. So I’ll cre- ate opportunities for that. I’ve done it with other artists. I have a friend, Josue Pellot, who is an Art and Theory artist. 1 He works in all kinds of medi- ums: sculpture, murals, performance video. I did a project with him last summer. No, no, no. It was two years ago. It was a project he’s been working on for a while called “Game Night” 2 I think that’s just the tentative [word lost in recording] for creating the work. But he brings together people. He curates groups and then he has games that you’ve never heard of be- fore. Like board games. These wild-ass board games. Some of them from the past. Some of them that are very mod- ern. Not the kitschy shit that you find at the mall. Very weird... The one we did was in Hyde Park at Connect Gal- lery. 3 It was four of us sitting around a table. The game was “Life as a Black Man”. 4 It has all of these set ups. It was a Life-type set up. There were all of these pitfalls and all of these cards. It’s like, “you lost your job and your mortgage is up or you got a traffic ticket and you had to pay bail.” These trip-falls and complications of being

1 http://www.josuepellot.com 2 https:// mcachicago.org/Calendar/2018/09/ Common-Use-Street-Level-Anime-Club 3 https:// www.connectgallery.org 4 https:// www.blackmangame.com/about/ Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

considered an under-class citizen in a game structure. He’s done a ton of others. Within that, you can’t help but talk about what the game is breaking down into these simple components as you’re playing, which is part of the process for him, you know? It brings people to these things. It’s a really beautiful project. I don’t know if I’m doing it justice. That’s one case of in situ. (The notion of “in situ” was integral to the process of both Eric and Leor. One of the first things Eric and I did togeth- er after breakfast was take a walk around the neighborhood to get a feel for things. He keenly observed and appreciated often-overlooked nuances on the block, taking photos, seeing what jumped out at him. During Leor’s residency, Leor and I took a much longer walk through the neighborhood following and documenting the garage repair fliers fluttering through- out the alleyways on the way to and from the secondhand art supply store. At one point, we got sidetracked by a music store we had never noticed, despite it being there for decades. )

I’ve done a lot of performative work, too within the group that I work with, called “The Institute of Sociometry”, which is cross between intervention- ist work and Prankster Fluxist-in- fluence work.5 So I’ve done projects where we went to Union Square in New York in October of 2017, I believe. Wait, no, that’s way too... Ella was two, so... subtract... Maybe 2012? Geeze... So we made these boxes. It was a proj- ect called “Art in Odd Places” which

5 http:// www.sociometry.com/wpsb/ Blueprint Residency Interviews

is a festival they have once a year in New York. 6 We created boxes. This particular year they were focusing on numbers. You were given these gener- al themes and you could do what you wanted. So we created boxes and the performance piece was called, “Op- portunity for Reflection”. 7 We created these boxes set on poles, like picket signs, but they were galvanized poles with these telephone-type boxes on them that you could put your head in and when you put your face in it, it projected your head onto the shoul- ders of an archetype that we created. It could be a businessman, a 7-11 work- er, a generic woman, a nun, on and on and on and on. But there’s a cor- relating number on the outside of the box, which may or may not have any- thing to do really with what’s going on in the box, but there’s some kind of, you know for 9-11, we had different things on the inside of the box ver- sus the outside of the box. The angle was that we would just randomly ask people who were coming through this place in Union Square if they wanted a moment of reflection. They put their face within the box and then conver- sations would ensue. I’ve done a few others too. On top of being a fun ex- ercise, it’s fun to create controls and then do work within those.

LG: Yeah

6 http:// www.artinoddplaces.org 7 http:// www.sociometry.com/wpsb/?p=1446 Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

EVH: I mean, I do that in a lot of ways, but when you actually have to negotiate those controls on site, it keeps you within that rule set.

LG: All this in mind - when you went to Jordan’s for the Blueprint Residency. How did the controls there shape the work you that were doing? Because you talk about going in and not hav- ing a distinct idea of what you wanted to design. How did going into that affect what you were doing?

EVH: I went there and was thinking I would use elements from around the environment and then create some- thing with that using a visual vocab- ulary, but what ended up happening was I started setting up my gear and I brought 16x20” LED light table. So I set that up in his main blueprint stu- dio area and I plugged it in. When I plugged it in - and I had already set up most of my equipment that I was going to use to draw or whatever - and when I went to plug it in, I noticed that I was getting feedback from his tuner. So I started moving my finger up and down the button for my light table that increases the density of the LEDs. As I did that, the pitch on the tuner would change. That’s when I decided what I was gonna do, because I also had a program that I brought that would record audio waves and create a visual representation in space that worked on X, Y, and Z coordinates. 8 So I literally just recorded the sound

8 This is a program called sndpeek. I introduced Eric to it a few months prior to his residency. It was a treat to see him utilizing its capabilities https:// soundlab.cs.princeton.edu/software/sndpeek/ Blueprint Residency Interviews

of that within the space, recorded the rain that was goin on outside, and a few other elements - and of course the human elements of what I liked and I didn’t like. I would record those. Re- cord them at angles. Then I screen- grabbed it, did it at intervals live, so as I was doing it with one finger, with the other hand, I would screen grab off the app. Then I took all those screen grabs into Photoshop, removed everything that wasn’t necessary - like all the col- or spectrums and stuff that weren’t going to be necessary for what we were doing. Basically created greyscales. Then, I layered those. I would take a single moment and stack the images on top of themselves so you get these frequency bands, oscillating, right? Almost creating these visual vases or spaces. Then, I would take those into columns and create a triptych of sorts out of those. Just for shits and grins, I printed all those out on his printer and then, because I didn’t want it to be too cute and too clean, I had Jor- dan and I both curl them up in the palm of our hands and then I would flatten them all back out and then re- scan it. Then from there, I set it up on film and that film went through the blueprint machine, which ended up taking all day. [laughing]

LG: How many hours were you working on it?

EVH: I did the whole day. [laughing] I used the whole day. I literally used the whole day and maybe a fraction of what I caught there. But that’s how Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

I work. I usually take tons of assets and then I edit and I edit and I edit and I edit, you know. And I also used Sumi ink and a Sumi brush I brought to bring it all together and have some human gestural element in it, as well, because I didn’t want it to feel too mechanical or too prescrip- tive. I didn’t want it to feel like a blue print, I wanted it to be a blueprint of a moment, but I didn’t want it to feel like something you might find in design school to be honest with you [laughing]. I didn’t want it to feel like something that was too enamored with its individual parts. But yeah, it took all day. Also, I’m a loving father and a homemaker, so my daughter is normally with me. She grew up in my studio. So she was with me for the first half of it, which makes my timing a lit- tle [word lost in recording]. So there’s two chapters - there was like when Ella was there. She left at like three o’clock that afternoon when my wife got off work that Saturday (It was a great pleasure having Ella around. During the moments when Eric was rapt in pure concentration, I’d say hey to Ella, who was working on her own projects in the living room. We shared a bunch of the fun foods I bought in case she got to come along. At the beginning of the day, she believed she didn’t like pomegranates. By the end of the day, she was hooked. So far, Ella is the only kid to be present for any part of the residency. I love having that energy around.)

and then from three on, I was unadul- terated with Jordan. We took a dinner break and the like, but it took pretty much all day. But I don’t rush work, Blueprint Residency Interviews

either. I like to sit with it. I wouldn’t say we wasted time, but I wasn’t rush- ing to complete something either.

LG: How did the work change after your daughter left?

EVH: I think the speed at which I worked changed. By then I had sat with all the elements and was build- ing. I had time to like, “Oh yeah I for- got I wanted to do this!” You get in the moment and you’re focusing on one thing. I write any of it down. I didn’t make an outline like, “Make sure you record the rain.” Having my daugh- ter there made me move slower than I might have, because there was also an event a Public Works that evening that I wanted to go to with Jordan. 9 (Eric and I are both geeks about Sonnenzimmer. It was a difficult decision not to go to the event, but it turns out we had both already pre-ordered the record that was being

released at the event. haha.) I thought it would be fun to take a break and go there, but we ended up not going for multiple reasons, but I think my daughter being with me for the first half was good, because it made me not try to race the clock to fulfill multiple things. Like me try to make it to the show while I’m doing this art in residency, blah blah. But that’s one of the privileges of having my daughter for me. Other than having a reason to do things other than just being a good citizen, it’s helped me to just slow down

9 https://publicworksgallery.com/post/187190532974/im-not-try ing-to-change-anything-im-just Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

and not feel the need to rush things.

LG: That’s really nice. With that in mind, what did being in the space with Jordan in his work environment do to your creative process?

EVH: I usually use all my skills to make other people’s work better.

LG: [laughing]

EVH: So it was an opportunity just to release. To have a brainsqueeze. I fin- ished a bunch of pretty large projects. Collaborative book projects and the like. So it was just nice to be able to go somewhere and just make for the sake of making with no parameters, no expectations, and no ask. For me, it was good. I love what I do. I love to build. As one of my oldest partners says, “I’m a doer.” I’m always making things anyway, but it just allowed me to do it outside of my comfort space and to hang out with a colleague, which is rare. I don’t really hang out much. It allowed me to do that. I’m not good with small talk. I’m not good with large social engagements. I don’t do the beer gaze. I probably wouldn’t get to hang out with Jordan in a so- cial setting, because I don’t do a lot of that. Other than the book fair 10 or a random encounter after a book fair, it allowed us to just be around each other and to break bread, which is

10 Eric is referring to one of my absolute favorite events of each year - the Detroit Art Book Fair. https:// detroitartbookfair.com Blueprint Residency Interviews

also one of my favorite things to do. Every time I’ve actually hung out with Jordan, it’s been either making some- thing, finishing something, or begin- ning something, which is my person- ality type. I don’t allow myself a whole lot of empty leisure time with other folks. When I’m doing it, I’m doing it by myself [laughing]. At this point, to be honest, I enjoy being alone a lot [laughing].

LG: I get that.

EVH: It allowed me to do all those things and just have fun. To me, mak- ing things is fun. While I’m talking about this in a very “professional art- ist” manner, at the end of the day, I just think this stuff is why I’m here - to make and to share is actually the only reason why I’m here.

LG: The final blueprint. What does that say about you as an artist?

EVH: I don’t know. I guess maybe that I’m fluid. You could put that work in the room and a lot of people wouldn’t know it was mine, unless you actual- ly know me, because I don’t have any tropes. I didn’t use any aesthetics that would be “signature” to other medi- ums I work in. A couple of my friends said, “Man, that’s some super heady shit you did there.”

LG: [laughing]

EVH: It doesn’t rely on line weights or familiar shapes or formalities or even boilerplate composition layout. It’s Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

telling a story graphically, which you have to peel back and know a little bit about to even get. But there’s this way of looking at this blueprint when it’s done. It’s evident that there’s landscapes there. You may not know what they’re of, but when you look at the images, it’s obvious there’s an intent at mapping something even though I didn’t use any of your nor- mal infographic tropes. There’s no arrows. There’s no legend. There’s no numbers. Nothing’s listed. But it still works within a columned broadside, regardless. You can still feel that the way columns and gutters are set even though the things within are quite different. I think it’s also the mono- chromatic nature of blueprint that flattens it all out and gives it some kind of homogenization.

LG: That’s it for my questions for now.

EVH: Should I flip?

[both laughing]

LG: Yeah, let’s do the flip. See what happens.

EVH: Okay. Cuz this is a lot already, right?

[both laughing]

EVH: I don’t know what he’s doing with this other than maybe... I mean I might end up printing this for him.

[both laughing] Blueprint Residency Interviews

LG: I think he’s going to include... I’m curious if he’s going to include the whole interview...

EVH: Mhhm.

LG: ... or just edited down versions from each of the interviews. Or are we the only ones doing this?

[both laughing]

EVH: We’ll see, right? Okay, so my question would be, and for me to, I guess I’ll ask this - He said he found it was really interesting that I was one of the only people who actually curated their playlist. I was like, “but you’re giving me a playlist, so it’s gotta be curated. What’s the point in having a playlist around a project if it’s just rando?” [laughing] He just thought it was interesting that at that point no one had been like, “no no no, don’t put that song on there, I just put that one on so you could hear it.” (There were other folks who have arrived at the residency with pre-determined playlists, but so far, Eric is the only person who curated what was included on his playlist in real-time. I probably should have secretly made a playlist of all the amazing stuff we listened to that he didn’t want included on his list. Oh well.)

[both laughing]

EVH: “That’s not actually going on the playlist. I just thought we were talking about something and it was referen- tial.” Making art with food and music Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

just seems like that’s the way things are supposed to be. At least that’s the way they are in my life. Those three things are paramount to good work in my world. I liked the idea of you leav- ing this echo behind. It’s not just the blueprint, but if you follow the artists within this system, you see the kind of music that they listen to when they work. I used to run a studio and some people listen to anything. I can’t lis- ten to any old thing when I’m work- ing. [laughing]. I’m pretty elitist on that end [laughing]. I can’t just have some random pandora on in my stu- dio when I’m trying to fucking work.

[both laughing]

EVH: I thought him including that was a real integral part. Not only on site, but in the zine, making sure that those songs were listed, as well, as part of the project. I know that your background is in music, so for you... I don’t want to presume, but I feel like you’re a music person, no?

LG: Yeah, yeah.

EVH: So on top of what made you in- terested in doing this project, I’m interested in how the music - or hav- ing the ability to dictate what you lis- tened to - might have informed the work you did.

LG: So, I did mine in the first week- end of August, which I might not have been able to initially because of Lol- lapalooza weekend and there’s al- Blueprint Residency Interviews

ways this question mark in my job of, “Am I going to have to cover Lollapa- looza?” Some years I don’t. Those are the good years. Fortunately I did not have to this year.

EVH: God bless you. [laughing]

LG: Lollapalooza always comes around as I am really starting to fray from the task of reporting on what’s hap- pening in festival season in Chicago. Festival season technically starts in May/ April now. Right now, the date is February 21 and there is an outdoor music event tomorrow, like a day-long music festival outside the Empty Bot- tle. It feels endless here. This provid- ed me with a day to not think about that - to not think about music as a grind - as a thing I had to respond to in a professional way as a critic and as a journalist. I didn’t have to think about a deadline. I didn’t have to plan out my weekend around thinking of music as a job or as work. It’s so emo- tionally taxing, because that’s not why I love music. That’s not why I wanted to do this professionally, but it’s part of the job.

(When Leor’s not covering massive festivals, he is focusing in the exact opposite direction, striving to highlight and pre- serve work from musicians that mainstream music over- looked. Leor is an incredible archivist, writer, and listener.)

So it was like, “Cool. I get an entire day to work on an art project and have a friend who I’m really like, but who I have only hung out with in spare mo- ments and we get a day to hang out Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil and work on a project and he gets to show me the ropes of an art project in a medium that I have no familiari- ty with and be this encouraging force for a fun creative project that I would never do otherwise. That was so inter- esting to me. And also, being able to be in a space where I was encouraged to bring records and to listen to them with somebody else who also loves mu- sic and to share that and to just put a record on that has nothing to do with what I have to write about.

EVH: [laughing]

LG: This happened at a point in the year where I normally have to tailor my listening to what I need to write about for work. It can be such a strain to try to find music on my own that has no relevance to my job. That is some- thing that I still struggle with from time to time. This gave me the oppor- tunity to just throw on a record - throw on several records and it was cool to see how Jordan responded to them.

(At one point, Leor put on an album by Midwife. He had no clue that Maddie is a longtime friend and collaborator of mine. He just dug the album and happened to bring it with him.)

Remember what I liked about “X, Y, Z” album in the first place and re- ally have a moment to just be there and experience that as I worked on something myself, which something I’d never done. I grew up really loving visual art as a kid that drew. I was, in my friend group, the kid that drew. I eventually stopped doing that for Blueprint Residency Interviews

a variety of reasons including that I had been taught a certain way in academics that bothered me, so I stopped drawing ,which is really sad. But to be able to have the encourage- ment of Jordan to work on a project and figure out ideas together and see what could gel was really. And yeah, it took the entire day. [laughing]. I think we were done at like 9:30...? Or 10, maybe? I remember we went to Kinkos to print the master to run through the blueprint machine and it was like 9:30 and we were driving through Lollapa- looza crowds. People coming out of the fest going to Subterranean for the after show, and I was just like, “Thank fuck I’m not participating in this.”

[both laughing]

EVH: Yeah. You’d have to pay me to do that stuff, man.

[both laughing]

LG: I mean I do get paid to do that stuff, and I still don’t necessarily think it’s worth it, but you know it’s part of the job and it makes me thank- ful for the parts of the job that I really love and the parts of job that are not [covering festivals].

EVH: Yeah, you know, my daughter plays me the ukulele and she plays piano. She’s been in choir since she was six. I’m an audiophile, so she had grown up listening to all types of mu- sic. But having a child now and see- ing what they prescribe as “music” is quite frightening, but that’s a side- Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

note. Some of this stuff is like, “these are jingles at best.” People are more concerned with getting paid than making good stuff. But I also know a lot of composers and stuff, so I get this [word lost in recording] from them as well. The idea that people are music that fits within two to three minute brackets is in itself a crime.

[both laughing]

EVH: It’s just very limiting in a lot of ways. Now we got the generation of people who make tracks that are 1:50. Yikes. Just long enough for Tik Tok, though. See, I start rambling. I digress.

LG: Nah, man. I like it.

EVH: To me, music is communal, just like food should be. There’s a shared experience with. I’m old school. I grew up with an audiophile. For me, I don’t watch TV with people. I’ll listen to music with ya. I’ll share music with ya. Some of my best experiences have been through sharing music. When I first moved to Chicago almost 20 years ago now, I moved here to go to school and to be closer to my family, because I was living in Athens, Geor- gia at the time. My wife had graduated from UGA with a degree in sculpture. I just wanted to be closer to some family and some friends and pursue some creative endeavors. So when we moved herem one of the first good friends I made was at some random event to see a really god-awful movie Blueprint Residency Interviews

called “X-Men” 11 The best part about it was I met this guy in the lobby af- ter film and he’s a very soft-spoken. He had these big coke-bottle glasses on and a thin bomber jacket in the summer with some wallabees. I could tell he wasn’t a Chicago guy. He looked like he was from New York. His accent was like he was from New York. I think that’s kinda why we vibed, because we both knew were from somewhere else. There was a little bit of like, “What’s up witchoo?” “What’s up witchoo?”

[both laughing]

E: But we ended up talking after the movie and walking around for hours after the movie downtown, talking about music and art and things like that. Then he came to my apartment at the time. I was staying in Rogers Park in the Art in Residency off there. He came to visit and surprised me. He didn’t mention in our first rando en- counter that he’s a music producer, that he owned a record label called “Chocolate Industries.” 12 So he came over and he had all these minidiscs. I still have probably 400 minidiscs in my collection, by the way. I’m an avid minidisc player, too. We just traded a bunch of music. He was playing me masters from albums that hadn’t been released from him yet. Music is art to me. With that sharing, there’s not a difference for me, other than the way

11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_(film) 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_Industries Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

it’s delivered. So the idea that Jor- dan’s stacking art on top of art isn’t foreign to me. It makes sense. That’s kinda why I had to get out of advertis- ing. I find it disgusting how they boil- erplate music onto crappy images to sell crappy projects.

LG: [laughing]

EVH: We’re two degrees removed from them taking “the new fine art” and doing that.

LG: Yeah.

EVH: It’s kind why what they call street art has become prolific with capital- ism now, because they recognize it as highly derivative and easily for any- thing, because a lot of it lacks real substance at this point. People are like, “Oh you want to put my bird on a soda can? Okay. You want to put my bird on a shoe? Okay. It’s just a bird. It’s just a thing. I don’t care. Just put it something and give me my money.”

LG: Or, “You want me to make this mural for your beer ad and make it look similar?”

EVH: Exactly. I know too many people who are making a living offa craft beer bullshit. If it’s not that, it’s Red Bull sponsored crap. I don’t even know if these guys realize they’re kin- da just written off. It’s not art any- more. It’s advertising once you give them that. You can no longer put it in the same bracket. You can’t sell your Blueprint Residency Interviews

shit to Sprite and then go to a gallery wit it. [laughing] So you basically pigeon-holed yourself.

LG: I personally had a Red Bull radio show for fourteen months. It’s like, “Oh, you’re just paying me to go inter- view musicians that I might not have otherwise been able to interview for my other work, but would also afford me the opportunity to learn more about them and therefore use it out- side of the context of this thirty-min- ute episode?” It’s complicated. There are very few opportunities for artists to...

EVH: Oh yeah. I mean I know ath- letes and stuff that are sponsored by Red Bull. That’s the problem, though right? I’ll be honest to you. We live in a system where abstract labor rules. It would be one thing if they had to pay you right. If you worked for Sprite and made enough money properly, you should be able to do a project for Sprite and be able to live off that.

LG: Right.

EVH: That’s not what’s happening, though. These people made waaaay more than you get back. If you already have a skill set. If you’re already work- ing within the genre and you pick up some from them to add to your CV and stuffm, that’s totally different than being thirsty and getting that offer. Because you’re already working the angles. Being a designer and work- ing for multiple firms after a while - they’re all garbage, but you go in Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

there knowing that you’re going to increase your links. But you already have to have that footing, otherwise it’s not as easy as it sounds. I know lots of people where they get those op- portunities, but they don’t necessari- ly help them. With your art, specifical- ly, you have a year contract normally and it’s a conflict. ’I ve had to talk to a bunch of homies about, “Make sure you’re getting paid right, because the money you think is a lot isn’t a lot.”

LG: It’s gotta last for “X, Y, Z” amount of time.

EVH: You gotta pay the taxes on it and you gotta understand they own that collateral. Also, that means that if you try to do any other work, people are gonna know you did work with them, so it has a trail. It could be good or it could be bad. Things where you’re putting your visual aesthetic on it, it gets really dangerous. Just ask Maya Hayuk from her work with Starbucks.13 Do you know that project?

LG: No, I don’t.

EVH: Do you know who Maya Hayuk is?

LG: No.

EVH: She’s a pretty cool artist. She’s outta New York right now. Starbucks hired here, this had to be about 4-5 years ago, to help them with their IEP.

13 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/maya-hayuk-sues-starbucks- for-stealing-her-art-312059 Blueprint Residency Interviews

She signed the contract with them, but somewhere along the lines there were some creative differences so they broke. When they broke, they took her ideas and had someone else basically ape them.

LG: Oh geez.

EVH: So that season there was Star- bucks stuff that had the Maya Hayuk look and she sued them for quite a bit of money, which doesn’t really matter, because they make so much fucking money.

LG: Yeah, it’s a drop in the bucket.

EVH: You’re never going to damage them. They already got what they needed out of it. On top of that, you got firmlife. You got hundreds of dick- heads who got paid off of your art. You don’t get that back. She’s at least pro- lific enough where it didn’t kill her, but this classic example is all through history. Like Coca-Cola’s classic case where they let their trademarks fall out and the gentleman who had been doing the art design for them basically grandfathered their IEP, because they let their stuff linger. Instead of doing him right, there’s a huge case that took like 15+ years to settle. I mean they bought his lawyers out from un- derneath him. All kindsa crazy shit. They just make way too much money. I’ve been in the sausage factory too long. I know how much they make. It’s just disgusting. That and then with museums. They make waaaayyy Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

too much money, as well off of what they’re actually contributing back. It’s really creepy to me. I just think artist’s need to own their shit.

[both laughing]

EVH: I just think they need to own their shit. Once you turn art into a commodity, you have to understand that most people don’t care about art. So if you actually love art for art’s sake, you need to know that not many people you’re going to associate with do, because you’ll screw yourself if you do. [laughing] You’ll screw yourself if you think they have the same love for the actual craft and not the out- come. I think that’s because we don’t give grants properly. We make people jump through all kinds of hurdles. Most of the artists I know hang out in academia. It helps pad their careers in a lot of ways.

LG: Right.

EVH: There’s a lot of artificial limbs. I learned a lot of this myself. I don’t at- tach myself to universities. I also pay for all my own shit. I worked in adver- tising to save money so I could tell ‘em to eat a dick and start my own shop.

LG: [laughing]

EVH: Everyone thought I was crazy. They were like, “Whuuuttt”. I’m like, “Dude, I’m not working in this gar- bage the rest of my life. I did not go to school to work for PNG, RJR, Apple, Nike, none of these mutherfuckers. Blueprint Residency Interviews

I know where this money comes from. I’m going to take it and put it some- where else.” The older I get, I realize that’s rarer and rarer. People grow up with these devices and everything being decentralized. They don’t real- ly see the hand, so power comes from their larger oligarchy agencies and not individuals. So why wouldn’t you just sign up with the bigwigs, right? Good example - I got a bunch of friends this year that are getting saluted by Nike during African American Histo- ry Month and I’m just like, “Why?” I would never let them put my face on anything to anything, much less Black History Month. It’s 2020. They need you more than you need them. You lit- erally are giving them agency, which they don’t deserve, just because they give you some shoes and a photogra- pher. What do tennis shoes have to do with being a black citizen? Absolutely nothing. But you’re giving them sooo much collateral by associating your- self with them. At the end of the day, dude. I’m a punk.

[both laughing]

EVH: This shit is garbage. Electoral college doesn’t need to exist. Prison- ers should be able to vote. The system we live in, to me, is a joke. People talk about, “You should be able to do A, B, C, and D.” But as soon as you can, they take the power away. People bitchin’ about Bloomberg and I’m like, “None of you were ready to blow anything up when Citizen’s United was on the table, so fuck you.” I’m done. We had an opportunity. You can’t wait till Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil

Net Neutrality is gone. You can’t wait till Citizens United is fermented. You can’t wait till [word lost in recording] 2 is fermented and go, “what’s go- ing on?” The shit was told to you. If I tell you I’m gonna stab you and you don’t do anything about it, maybe you wanted to get stabbed.

LG: [laughing]

EVH: Good example I remind myself of daily - my mom owns property in a neighborhood she couldn’t eat in when she was my daughter’s age. She’s not ancient. So this idea that I can rest on the work that others did - joke. And the idea that I’m going to relinquish any agency to giant cor- porations who basically have more rights than I do as a minority and as an individual and they got rights on the idea that I was being emancipated - literally - factually. I’m doing a dis- service to the future by giving my best to them. They will be okay without it. They don’t need it.

LG: And you will be too.

[...time...] Blueprint Residency Interviews

EVH: Yeah, man. It was nice to meet you at the book fair. 14

LG: I really enjoy the work that you do.

E: I appreciate you too.

L: I’ll talk to you soon.

E: Cheers, mate.

L: Later.

14 Eric is referring to the 2019 Chicago Art Book Fair. Leor and I went together that year. We also got to see another previous resident, Adriana from Homie House Books http:// cabf.no-coast.org

Blueprint Residency Playlists Eric Von Haynes + Leor Galil Leor Galil D.D. Ranged - The Fold Lewis Baloue - L’Amour Gia Margaret - There’s Always Glimmer Stephen Steinbrink - ArrangedWwaves Friendship - Shock Out of Season Ratking - So It Goes Extra Life - Secular Works Voice Coils - In Sixths/ Field and Border Steven Julien, Funkineven - Bloodline Midwife - Like Author, Like Daughter spotify: Blueprint Residency - Leor Galil https:// open.spotify.com/playlist/0j6r- 3R3qbrEue68gzajqLh?si=XaEHPQr6QxiG0B- 2wQSux5w Eric Von Haynes

Igor DyacHenko - “Access Keys” El-P - “Time Won’t Tell” Teebs - “SOTM” The Stone Roses - “I Wanna Be Adored” Porches - “Underwater” Freddie Gibbs - “Crime Pays” The Alchemist - “E. Coli” (feat. Earl Sweatshirt) Mulatu Astatke - Radcliffe” Fugazi - Arpeggiator Demo” CAN - Future Days Sonic Youth - “The Diamond Sea” Aphex Twin - “#3” Shabazz Palaces - Shine a Light” Shintaro Sakamoto - Extremely Bad Man” Mulatu Astatke - “Phantom Panther” Sister Nancy - “Bam Bam” Frank Ocean - “Nikes” Teebs - “Arthur’s Birds Miles Davis - “Solea”

spotify: Blueprint Residency - Eric Von Haynes

https:// open.spotify.com/playlist/6pLaau- JenRTQ30jdrZQ5Ui?si=lo4sgv19QBOX- kV-PCSvK9Q” Blueprint Residency Interviews

Blueprint Residency

is an artist residency that takes place in the home of Jordan Knecht in Chicago, Illinois over the course of a single day. The residency is far more about letting a process unfold through communing, collaboration, and conversation than it is about producing a final product, although each residency concludes with residents printing an edition of twenty-five 18x24”print using an architectural blueprinting machine.

jordanknecht.com/blueprint-residency

Blueprint Residency Interviews

is a publishing practice in which two previous Blueprint Resident Artists are paired together to meet and interview each other. This book is a result of one of those interviews.

This interview between Eric Von Haynes and Leor Galil took place over the phone on February 21, 2020. The interview was transcribed and edited by Jordan Knecht with input from Eric Von Haynes and Leor Galil. The book was designed by Jordan Knecht with input from Kirsten Southwell. It was printed by Jordan Knecht on the same blueprint paper that residents use to make their prints, using a Diazit Dart XL 80 blueprinting machine. It was bound by Jordan Knecht using blue staples.

The purchase of this book helps provide this residency to artists free of charge. Thank you for the support.