I Went to Vancouver and Shot the Jellyfish In the Aquarium in Stanley Park

Gary Indiana: I’m often interested in seeing how much I can remove from a story and still be able to tell it.

Roberta Smith: Oy. Possibly. Others are hobbled by it.

Indiana: That’s not always such a bad feeling, when everything just stops.

Smith: I impress and surprise some people, and I disappoint others.

Indiana: If they happen to be dead, however you depict them is going to make somebody who knew them unhappy.

•••

Smith: I often compare the shift from art magazines to a weekly newspaper with going from doing nothing but recording in a studio to doing nothing but performing live.

Indiana: Believe me, you do not want a whole generation of Knausgaards.

Smith: Not really. (Laughter) Now I guess they’re all just out of or still in graduate school.

Indiana: Maybe Rousseau or Chateaubriand or Saint Augustine can be considered exceptions, but I doubt even that.

Smith: At that time applicants to the Whitney program proposed a subject and a tutor.

•••

Indiana: I floated up to the ceiling. I looked down, and I could see it happening, but it didn’t feel like it was happening to me. Business as usual.

Smith: Openness is the key, along with a certain disinterest in your own responses.

Indiana: Court transcripts make pretty dull reading. It sounded like everyone was having a stroke.

Smith: Theory might explain the context and the context is interesting, but only up to a point.

Indiana: Afterwards I went to Vancouver and shot the jellyfish in the aquarium in Stanley Park.