Legal Tender

Babel Khan

Interview by L. Valena

October 29, 2022

Can you describe the prompt that you responded to?

I received a photograph of some very colorful threads of wool or yarn, which seemed to form a spiral loop. It made me think of the number eight or the symbol of infinity.

Where did you go from there?

I took the photograph and printed out the image, and wrote down notes of my immediate thoughts. One thing that I noted was the fact that I was already dealing with abstraction. The artwork was a three-dimensional object, and I was responding to a photograph, which was a flat image which only depicted a small portion of the artwork. So I wrote down 'abstract', 'hair', 'medusa', 'dreadlocks'. These were all things that occurred to me when I looked at the image. So that's what I did when I first received the prompt, without any idea of where I would go from there. 

What happened next?

I pretty much set the prompt aside after looking at it and writing down those notes. I think I may have looked at it maybe three times over the two weeks. And then only briefly, to get a sense of the colors that were included in the yarn, because I wanted to reflect some of those colors in the artwork. I just started to think about what artwork I wanted to make, and set about that process.

How did you decide what you wanted to make?

I basically just tapped into what was occurring in my mind at that time, outside of the prompt. I guess looking back at it now, since lots of things have occurred since then, I was thinking about banking. I was thinking about money. The inflationary economy that we're in. Those ideas were circulating in my brain, so I just decided to make an artwork that would incorporate some of those ideas. But there was no plan. I just started to make, and what I make is a result of whatever is flowing through my mind at the moment. It's very improvisational.

Cool! Yeah, I know that if you have an improvisational style of making things, talking about the process afterwards can be kind of weird. So I appreciate you going along with me as we tease some of this stuff out.

I never really think about it as a process, even. I try to incorporate it into my life, and just do it. That's what I've trained myself to do. Not think, just try to flow. I don't know if that works or not...

Well, of course it's working! So maybe we can talk more about what was flowing through your mind at the time. Does that make sense?

Sure. Looking back, I think I was also reacting to another artwork that I had recently completed. In that artwork, I wrote down three phrases: 'Cash rules everything around me.' 'Follow the money.' 'All wars are bankers’ wars.' Looking back, those three concepts were still in my mind. So when I started on this artwork, in response to the prompt, there was a synthesis of what I was already thinking about, and the prompt, and this is a result of that.

So banking and war, money and violence?

Not violence so much, but the linkage of banking, war and money was on my mind. I think what I tried to do, unconsciously, was synthesize the work that I received, which for me evoked infinity, color and energy flow, into a collage that also referenced money, war and banking.

Can we talk more about how you physically made this work? It looks like you're using rubber stamps to get this lettering. Tell me more about how you work.

I started out with vintage paper. I like the history, and the fact that it has its own wear and usage. I like working with vintage paper. From there, I wanted to incorporate a figurative element. That female figure was the first element. And from there, the structure of color, and patterns from the yarn came into play. I began to build up a field of circles that incorporated color and random movement. With that as a foundation, I started to add what occurred to me in my mind. Words that identify banking corporations and that refer to forms of money (€, ¥ etc.). And yes, I put them down using rubber stamps.

It looks like you also have artifacts that reference particular places. Are these places that you have a connection with, or how do they fit?

Wordplay. It's all part of free association. I don't have a particular attachment or relationship with any of these places -- I'm not even sure they exist today. They're from vintage matchbooks from the fifties and sixties. Most of them are probably out of business. It was primarily based on wordplay, and association with place to some extent. El Cerrito, California is a place I know about because I lived in Oakland. San Pablo Avenue is a very prominent street in the East Bay, so I'm very familiar with that location. New York City, Third Avenue - I'm sure I've wandered over there before. I have a loose attachment to the places, but not to the businesses.

What haven't I asked you about?

I don't know. I really just like to improvise. I like jazz music and hip hop. I like the notion of sampling. In art history, the whole idea from Surrealism, Dada, and Fluxus of free association. Allowing the unexpected to happen. Allowing things to collide and interact with each other in ways that you don't expect. I try to do that in the work, but also try to maintain a central idea or topic that is present. Not have it be totally abstract so you can't find any meaning at all. I want you to infer whatever you wish, but I think there is a subject matter.

That's such a difficult balance sometimes, isn't it? That Death of the Author sort of thing, that whatever we put out there into the world, it almost doesn't matter because the viewer will get what they get. It's such an interesting balance between that, and having a specific thesis that you're trying to communicate.

I like the idea, and I think it's inevitable that what you start with in your mind gets transformed when you create an object. And then when a third party looks at it, they're going to bring their history and their ideas to it, and it becomes something more and something different. I think that's kind of the nature of the universe. Cause and effect. Action and reaction. Synthesis. Constant change. That's why I don't really feel the need to explain the work, because people will get what they get from it. From my perspective, the important thing for the artist is just to do it, and to do it sincerely from your point of view. Let the world deal with it once it's done.

Right! Because we can't control how they're going to react anyway.

Yeah, you can't control it. You can try to give people what you think they want, but I think it's much more interesting to see someone do something personal, that maybe you don't really understand fully.

And that's more honest right? Because we can't ever truly understand each other. We can throw darts and do our best, but we each have our own brain, and we're each operating from our own unique little system.

To some extent. I read once that human beings genetically are something like 99.75% identical to each other. It's that .25% of genetic material that makes the individual separate and unique, along with their experiences in life. So I think we're all pretty much the same, but we're definitely different. We have a common basis to understand each other as humans, but there's enough difference that we don't reach exactly the same conclusions from any stimulus. We're all going to have a different response.

You're so right. As human beings, we are so similar to each other, but it's almost like we're obsessed with the differences. That's all we can look at. It's funny to think about it in the context of another animal, like ants. From our perspective they all look identical, but it might be different for them.

There may be some individuality there, and it doesn't really occur to us. Same with human beings. When you look at us, we're pretty much identical. But the life experiences, language, culture, and (in our current age) media, all the things that are thrown at us inspire the belief that we're all so separate and unique.

It's a very American way of looking at things too. The cult of the individual is such a part of this culture, which is something I forget.

It's hard for us to step outside of it. I have to remind myself all the time that these things are cultural.

We're so immersed in our own water, it's hard to remember that it's wet.

Exactly.

Is there anything else you want to talk about?

I tend not to abstract too much in what I do. I try to keep it about bringing ideas to life, and making them concrete in some way. So over time I can look back and see where my head was at, and what I was thinking about. That's my philosophy. It's not too deep, it's more just another way of keeping a diary. The artwork is a visual diary or "photo" of the ideas flowing through my mind.

Do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

My approach was to look at the prompt, and then just go about my life. Take it as another stimulus that I happened to stumble across. So maybe that's a good approach for others. Also, I didn't look much at the Bait/Switch website until after I had finished the project. So I would say don't think about it as anything other than a passing element in your life. Treat it that way and see what happens.

Call Number: Y90VA | Y92VA.khaLe

Babel Khan makes "art" about Babylon Canton. It is his Homeland. His State of Mind.