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… while artists such as Keith Haring, Bill Barker
(The Schwa Corporation) or William Latham (the
chap who does the beautiful organic screensavers)
bypass it entirely.
Agreed. Schwa is majorly cool and we’ve all been
mesmerised by Latham’s screensavers. And Keith’s
well … dead. I’ve actually been a keen fosterer of
the idea that galleries are no longer the casinos of the
shocking and the new. It’s finally sinking in. So many
people have their whole lives invested in the perpetuation
of that system, so expect much backlash accordingly.
But it appears museums are getting the point, and
if anything, a new Renaissance is looming.
Do you think your books have an impact?
This is something I really don’t think about, Chris. I
do them and people read them and hopefully they see
the world differently at the end. In whatever way.
Do you have a sense of distance from your own
work?
Good question, and nobody’s ever asked that one, so
you score ten points (ding ding ding ding.)
The only way I obtain distance is to not read something
and then slam into it with new eyes. With booksin-progress,
it’s hard to give myself much distancing
time. As for older books, I read bits every so often and
wonder at the stuff that was going through my mind
at that point. As for interviews or articles on myself, I
can’t read them. I’m simply biologically unable to read
them. I go berzerk (ask my friends) I ask people to read
articles and reviews and give a synopsis, but it’s like
having my skin peeled off to read them, good or bad.
Microserfs, far more than Generation X, connected
with a lot of my friends here, in the sense
that Microserfs wasn’t American at all – it was the
West’s machine in full swing and we were living it,
loving it and loathing it simultaneously. A sort of
triple ironic self-bluff.
Good description.
Do you think we’re moving towards a major
paradigm shift?
No. It’s business as usual.
The way in which the subject of fame reoccurs
through Polaroids, from Kurt to OJ, makes me ask
an obvious question – is your own fame influencing
your life? Or do you consider yourself unfamous?
Personally, I tend to gauge real hardcore fame by
whether my parents have heard of someone or not.
It influences life only to a small degree, both for good
and bad. Your theory about somebody being famous
only if one’s parents have heard of them is an excellent
description. And even then, there are 5.5 billion people
out there and who knows who knows who?
The eulogy to Kurt in Polaroids – it felt like you were
unsure as to what to say about him. Caught between
needing to say something and unable to fully say it…
I was actually more affected by the overdose and the
BUY Douglas Coupland books online from and
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