A Conversation with Ms Pixie Dust

A conversation with an author, whose identity shall remain unknown, because I’m not a name dropper

I have been in conversation with an authority writer on women’s issues – who is a woman, just to be clear – and a soon to be featured presenter on the subject at a major TED Talk.

Let’s call her Ms Pixie Dust – for the sake of this conversation.

Introducing Pixie

Ms Dust and I connected about six months ago, and she has been a wonderful, supportive encouraging force & voice for, and of, my films ever since.

She looks at each film with a quite unique lens – being a progressive rationale feminist, who is a author on the subject of femininity, love, sex and the challenges of monogamy in modern society

What I like about Ms Dust – let’s call her Pixie, because Ms Dust sounds,,,,well, dusty – and I would never describe Pixie’s inputs or personality as ‘dusty’ – is that she challenges me with the simplest of comments or questions.

Somehow, she has developed an innate sense being able to ask me questions I haven’t asked myself, about myself – or my reasoning for being, or doing.

KUNT

After the film KUNT was released, Pixie wrote something very simple. But it confounded me for weeks.

“I have noticed that a theme is developing in some of your films, that could be described as ‘self hate verging on zealotry’

I have done a lot of thinking about that, because Pixie is right, but maybe not for the reason that seems obvious.

However, I’ll swing back around to that.

Because today she wrote to me and asked me four questions

And these questions, even though simple, made me dig into myself and run around inside there and see if I knew the answers.

Some I did.

Some I didn’t.

Some, I do now, because I was forced to think about the most basic premises of my films as a conceptualization of myself, and my first primal instinctive motivations for taking on such a project.

It’s not every day that someone gets out of bed and thinks ‘you know, today I’m going to start making 250 films about how fucked up I am, and that is going to consume me for the next – oh, I don’t know – 10 to 15 years’

You would think that there would have to be some pretty good reasons for:

1. thinking it
2. considering doing it
3. actually doing it
4. continuing to do it
5. versus going back to bed until such a ridiculous thought past

Four Questions and a Wedding (Love)

Today, Pixie wrote, and asked these four most basic of questions:

1. Why have you called your project the Future Sex Love Art Projekt?
2. More specifically, why have you used the word Love?  
3. What does love mean to you
4. What role do you see love playing in this project?

Hmmm, I thought. I really should know the answer to these.

But guesswork, supposition and reverse engineered thought processing played a significant role in my ability to answer – what would seem to be the questions you could pose to a four year old – e.g:

Question: why are you playing with those lego blocks?

Answer: Because. I’m bored. I wanted to keep my hands busy. You’re baking. And I’m planning to build a Lego castle when I leave home, so I’m finetuning to the perimeter design to incorporate a lap pool outside my bedroom.

You know. Stuff like that. Stuff that makes sense.

Why have you called your project the Future Sex Love Art Projekt?

I really can’t remember (good lord, I can’t even remember the basic premise for my global branding strategy)

I must have been stoned. I just started using it and it stuck.

I’ve tried to move away from it to The Future Sex Projekt (which has a nice Robocop kind of feel to it) but people complained, and said they liked it how it was.

So, whatever.

I didn’t have a strong opinion, so go with the original

Quite honestly, I look at it in every film and think – is that even a grammatically correct phrase?

More specifically, why have you used the word Love?  

Oh God, I hope these questions get easier.

I really don’t know.

I’m not sure if I was thinking in phrases – eg Future sex + I love art – or whether I decided those five words were important to me.

Or was it about a future project about my sex, my art and my love.

At this point, I realized I was being very Jean Michel Basquiat about this whole interrogation

Interviewer: How did you come up with the concepts for your paintings?

Basquiat: I don’t remember

What does love mean to you?

Nope, they’re not getting any easier

Ok, here’s my best guess at what I think

I think love of another human is transient.

And I think I trust in love as much as I do weather presenters

But some people are lucky.

Love to me is a permanent state – so the divorce rate kinda nullifies the concept for me.

But self love can be a permanent state of mind.

What role do you see love playing in this series?

Now I’m sweating.

I’ll should have thought about this at film 1, not film 189

Either I am directionless, or a drone headed towards a target – being controlled and directed by unseen minds – and/or mind – singular.

Well, let’s just go with stream of consciousness, and make a best guess.

If Love to me is a permanent state – then I am seeking a permanent state through the films

My love of making films is a permanent state.

My love of being creative is a permanent state.

My love of using words in unique and unusual ways to achieve a picture in the mind of the reader is a permanent state.

I’m hoping my self love can reach a permanent state of being

Now my memory is coming back to me

That was it’s original purpose – and still is.

I think this projekt is a train on a long journey, and it purpose is about arriving at the station of self-love, while having thrown out all the baggage, wrapped up as films, along the way.

It was at this point, I started asking myself questions

Why the K in projekt?

Good question, I thought to myself

Is there a good answer I asked myself?

No, nothing that I’ve written down, or committed to memory I answered myself.

Something like that should really be in the “About” section of your website I suggested to myself

You would think so – I answered

Then, playing the role of psychologist in my own therapy session of myself, I gently prompted myself to speculate on it’s significance

So why the K?

Don’t ask me why Projekt has a K in it.

Are we really going to do this. This denial is not good for your ju-ju. Just relax. Breathe. Free your mind. And……..

What?

The K?

Oh, that.

Ummm

And then a thought appeared in my vacant brain.

I like K’s

Ok, it’s a start I guess. Why do you like K’s?

I don’t know. I didn’t even know I liked K’s until 10 seconds ago. But I’ve just realised that I use them a lot in film titles.

Like?

Like what?

What film titles?

You’re not easily distracted are you.

No. Stop stalling. What titles?

Ummm, Like KUNT

And?

NihilistiKa

KK Remix

The K Word

Koob

StlKr

I could go on, but – you get the drift. There is a theme.

Do those films have something in common?

Yes

Jesus, stop with the one word answers

I thought psychologists were supposed to be caring. Isn’t that part of your training?

Shut the fuck up with your ‘shiny thing over there routine’ K’s. What do K’s mean to you?

Ok, well, if I was pushed to answer that, which I obviously am being – I would say that – I like K’s because the stroke of the K represents the 180 straighty lifestyle.

Interesting. Go on.

Well, here’s the thing. I don’t like the 180 straighty lifestyle

So you don’t like K’s?

I don’t think it’s like or dislike. I think it’s conceptual and representational

Continue Mr Basquiat

Well, if life is like a K, the stroke represents a straight normal acceptable lifestyle. But if you don’t choose that, the other two bits of the K – and I’m not sure what they are officially called – but you know, the up and the down bits – represent the fork in the road you are faced with.

The down stroke is the highway to zealous self-hate

And the up stroke is the path to permanent self love

Interesting. So the K in projekt is actually the most significant part of The Future Sex Love Art Projekt – because it represents the choices in life relating to sex, love and art.

It seems so. And I wish I had have said that. But I’ve never thought about that before. I must remember that. Maybe I’ll write a one page kids book ‘Your life is a K. Fuck the rest of the alphabet’ The title might need some work

A little wordsmithing needed perhaps, but it’s conceptual at this stage

So now is time for the callback

The callback?

‘Some of your films verge on zealous self-hate’

I actually thought a lot about this, and I can see how that statement could be made

But….what you see as zealous self-hate is me throwing baggage out the window of a moving train, and that baggage lands in a barren landscape of film, and it is let loose to roam eternally in the badlands looking for non-conforming and unsuspecting K people to inhabit. And they live forever immortalized as films. Which means they are more hardy and resistant to hunting and extinction than buffalo, bison and dinosaurs.

And when I get off the train, I won’t have any baggage to collect, and I’ll be able to get ahead of all the other passengers who have to wait for their baggage to be unloaded – so I’ll be first in line at the taxi rank

What does the taxi rank represent?

That’s where you catch taxi’s

Oh, I thought I would be deeper than that

No, just taxi’s.

So in essence – this 250 film project is about trains, baggage and bison

More or less. Maybe not always in that order. But conceptually yes.

I’m glad we’ve sorted that out

You know, there was a point there that I thought this $250 therapy session was going to be a waste of time.