On September 18, 2024, NOW Art Founder Carmen Zella sat down with artist Nao Bustamante for a live conversation about public art and LUMINEX 3.0 on Instagram (@nowart_la). RSVP here for future LUMINEX Artist Talks.
Below is a transcript of the video:
Carmen Zella (CZ): Hi, welcome. I’m here with Nao Bustamante. This is going to be a very exciting – Let’s just frame this. We’ll let a couple of people come into the room. We’re super excited to have everybody here. Nao, thank you so much for making the time. I’m very thrilled to be able to have this conversation. We are in a studio in South Park, where we’re going to be hosting Luminex very soon.
We’ve got dog friends. We have friends friends. We have water. We have wine.
Nao Bustamante (NB): Dogs might make an appearance. We’ll see.
CZ: Yeah, they might make an acoustic appearance.
NB: It’s a beautiful space.
CZ: Yeah, this is Heidi Chang’s space. She’s the chair of NXT Art.
NB: Oh, great. And so you’re going to be hosting an event here at the same time or different event?
CZ: No, we’re not hosting any events here. We’re going to do the after party somewhere else, but yeah, no.
NB: We won’t talk about the after party now.
CZ: No, not now. Not now.
NB: Hush hush QT.
CZ: Exactly.
NB: On the QT, on the DL, the after party. We’re not talking about that.
CZ: No. What after party? What are you talking about?
NB: No after party.
CZ: No, never. So let’s have a a conversation. I think that the segue that I really want to start off with is just having a conversation about in this last year, talk about like the sort of body of work that you’ve been creating and because a lot of people know you as a performance artist.
A lot of people know you as a –
NB: Do they?
CZ: Yes!
NB: How exciting!
CZ: And also as a video artist as well. And so the piece that you’re positioning for Luminex is like performative in some kind of way. So I wanted it to talk about like the work that you’ve been developing for this past year.
And because you’ve been doing residencies and everything and all of that, I think it’s, yeah.
NB: I think sometimes I feel like the visual artwork I’m doing is almost like sets for performance. And I feel similarly about Brown Disco. There is a live mic in the space. There’s no planned performance.
But there is a kind of performance element. We’re still not sure how the ball is going to be spinning. So there might be some live movement on it. Me literally spinning it, which would be a cool aspect. I love that idea because there’s something about that, but that feels very dirgy, like duh duh duh, moving the disco ball, grinding the wheat or something.
Yeah. So I love that. But I think that my work has been taking a shift. I would say since it’s been a long shift. I would say maybe since 2001 or so.
In the late 90s, I went to school at the San Francisco Art Institute after I had been a practicing performer for about 15 years. And I just thought, well, maybe it’s time that I go to school for art. It seems like I’m going to be an artist. So I went. I focused more on new media while I was there. And so at that point I began to make videos, and a lot of the videos incorporate my performance work. But then I started really moving towards research-based work. So I do a combination of research based work.
One of the projects that will be opening about the same time as Luminex is a work called Bloom. And it’s looking at the history of the pelvic examination. And so the work is spinning off of that. And then, oh, hey, all the dogs are coming in. But then with Luminex for Brown Disco, it was more of a spontaneous concept, where I walked into OCD Chinatown space in New York, where it was originally conceived. And it’s a very very small space. And it was very close to the Club Q shooting in Colorado at a queer nightclub and of course, following the Pulse Nightclub shooting and I had been, I had kept in the back of my mind wanting to do something that would be like a soft memorial or just an acknowledgement or recognition of the kind of queer space and the safety there and how much has been lost through gun violence, to this idea of having a place to go where we could just be ourselves, be our best fantasy selves, tap into this enjoyment, this like cosmic disco energy. So when I walked into the space, I just saw this really giant disco ball in there, a brown disco ball. And I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it because it was near impossible, just to get something inside that large.
So we ended up going with an inflatable ball. And so the energy behind the piece was still dirgy, meditative, but also the fantasy of the light sparkling in and out of your eyes. I think that’s one of the beautiful things about going to a nightclub or something like that, is this color-light play that happens on your eyes and in the space and it fills you up so that you feel like magical like a beautiful being right and so with this iteration with Luminex, I’m so privileged because of course you all are offering me this incredible opportunity to rebuild the ball into something that was maybe more the original intention because we’re not having to deal with small doorways, we have, I’m working with a dedicated builder and so we’re building something with bronze colored mirrors and and now I’ll be able to project video onto it as opposed to just multiple lights.
So now we’re going to be able to get into found footage of dancing and these kind of beautiful party scenes but still with that dirgy music and a kind of the color scape is going to be a little bit psychedelic. So I think it will still give people a magical space to step into.
CZ: And in terms of a departure from this, like other reality. So then talk a little bit about what the association in the video footage is, like how you’re editing the video footage to create more like meaning in the content.
NB: I’m working with a really great editor, Chelsea Knight, who’s somebody I’ve worked with quite a bit. She’s on the East Coast and we have a really great shorthand around communication. And so we’re essentially just, I’m searching old nightclub footage of places that I knew, growing up in San Francisco in the 90s, places like the EndUp or Club Uranus, and we’re pooling found footage, archival footage. We’re getting footage from friends, and we’re creating a pastiche of joy, really, that’s present. And even though this is a kind of soft memorial to the victims of the clubs, I really wanted to make it a space of joy and contemplation, blending the two. So I’m working with a soundtrack which at the base of it is 40 percent slowed down Donna Summer’s karaoke soundtrack of I Want Love, or I Feel Love.
And we’ve pumped up the bass. And we’ve added some more drone sounds. And so there’s this kind of, there’s this kind of beat that’s really doom doom doom doom doom doom. It’s really doom doom doom doom doom doom. And it has this really, so it’s like much more slowed down from disco, but then the footage is regular speed, it’s all different sorts of speeds.
And it’s wild, and so there’s this kind of great, I think, tension between the visual and the sound, and hopefully, people will just join me for slow motion dance party. I encourage people to wear white, you’ll look great in the projections, in all the projections at Luminex, so come and play with us.
CZ: Yeah, I think it’s very immersive if you wear white when you come to Luminex, because then you get to be a part of the actual video. So Nao’s site is Site 2 at Luminex and it’s inside of this kind of blown out warehouse space. And so if you haven’t followed so far, it’s going to really, the video projection is going to be cast off from a disco ball.
So it’s also going to have these images that are being refracted into space. And the video itself is, it’s really stunning because it has like these sort of captured moments in time of this party scene, but in all these elements, there’s this level of joy and real freedom that you feel with the way that it’s been edited, which I think is, it says it all, the fact that in our most vulnerable locations of safety, that there is this sort of insertion of violence that can be disruptive in that space.
When you’re talking about like this other exhibition, Bloom, like how is like your work with Brown Disco related to the way that you’re creating your work right now, like in a larger context.
NB: I think that with Bloom, I have a series of works that are called Curtain. There’s an actual curtain, there’s a curtain painting. And it’s hearkening to this idea of the gynecological examination being very much like a theatrical event, so the drape is placed across the knees and the woman is backstage and the doctor comes in, or the gynecologist, and he lifts the curtain and he puts his spotlight on the star of the show.
And it’s a little bit tongue in cheek, also referring to ideas around meat curtain. But I think, for me, this idea of portal, or transport, is the main link between the two works. Because with Bloom, the idea of Bloom is, Bloom refers to a type of speculum that I’m designing, which is a multi pedals that open more softly as opposed to like the duck billed speculum that’s currently in use.
So that’s what the title refers to, but there’s a lot of ideas around the vaginal imaginary and softness and openings with the body. And, everybody comes in and goes out through this kind of portal, right? Of this opening of the human body. And I think in some ways that the disco ball is also a kind of transport, but maybe more akin to a spaceship or an object that, one could ride, right? Into another space. So I think in that way, they’re related in this, if you could just think more about, I hate to use the word existentialism, but it is that, of this idea of being able to move in and out of this life, right? And I think in that sort of very, very base way that they’re related.
And also I’ve been seeing, like when I was in Rome, I was at the American Academy in Rome and when I visited the Vatican, there was this like piece of art that was like a giant golden globe. And it was very, it’s very nice, beautiful work, out in the open square. And I was thinking, wow, that looks like Brown Disco, it looks like the piece.
And I think there are these kind of universal or iconic images that cross thresholds. And I think one of them is a sphere, for obvious reasons. But I think also the sphere and the whole are distinctly related. And time and space. If we think about dimensionality, like a point on a wall could go, like visually it could represent the fifth dimension because we don’t know where that point is going.
It’s going off into never never land, right? And so I think that in the way that the sphere is trying to encompass space is the same way in that, the vaginal imaginary or the cavity of the body is also like a completely procreal creative space of unknown depths and psyche. And I think, in some ways…
CZ: Cosmic portal!
NB: Cosmic portal! Yes! We’re going on the cosmic portal journey. Yeah.
CZ: Wow. I don’t think we really need to say much more than that. Vaginal, imaginary, cosmic portal.
NB: And dogs!
CZ: And dogs! This was amazing. We’re really excited for everybody. Please come to Luminex. Nao is going to be at her installation.
NB: I will be.
CZ: And please participate and wear white. And we can’t wait to see you there. If there’s any questions, please share your questions in the chat. We will make sure that we connect them with the artist. And, yeah. Fantastic. Thank you so much.
NB: Thank you.
CZ: You’re the best. Bye!