Episode 045 Tourmaline

Show Notes

This week on the show we are in the artist’s studio visiting with the one and only Tourmaline. Tourmaline’s work extends across various media and is a magical blend of a very research-oriented practice that brings history to life, and crafting visions of repose, luxury, relaxation, magic and joy – whether it is in the form of video installations, photography, or fashion. To say that her work is interdisciplinary would be an understatement – not only is Tourmaline an accomplished and award winning contemporary artist, whose work can be found at this year’s Venice Bienalle and Art Basel, among countless other exhibitions, but she also works within the context of cinema – for instance the film “Happy Birthday, Marsha!” Which she co-directed, and focuses on the life of legendary trans artist and activist Masha P. Johnson – Tourmaline is also an accomplished writer, her latest being a book coming in 2024 from Penguin Random Houses’ Tiny Reprations imprint, on the life of Marsha P Johnson. In our chat delve deeply into Tourmaline’s process, influences, and also discuss her background as an organizer for abolition and trans and queer rights, and how this background factors into her work. Tune in to hear Tourmaline’s story!

Links from the conversation with Tourmaline
> https://www.instagram.com/tourmaliiine/
> http://www.happybirthdaymarsha.com/
> Tourmaline Wins Art Basel's Biggest Prize: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/art-basel-tourmaline-helena-uambembe-baloise-prize-1234631825/amp/
> Chromat x Tourmaline SS22: https://chromat.co/blogs/news/ss22

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Transcript 

Note: this transcript is pending review, and there may be a few people’s names that are spelled incorrectly.

[00:00:00] Ben: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host, Ben Fino-Radin and on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past present and future of art and technology. This week on the show, we are in the artist's studio. 

[00:00:16] Tourmaline: Hi, I'm Tourmaline and I am an artist. I'm a filmmaker a writer and I am hanging out with my cat Jean.

[00:00:24] Ben: Tourmaline is unquestionably the most multifaceted and interdisciplinary artist we've had on the show. Not only is she an accomplished contemporary artists working across various media. Her work these days is a magical blend of very research oriented practice that brings history to life and crafts, visions of repose, luxury, relaxation, magic, and joy. Whether it's in the form of video installations, photography, or fashion, Tourmaline's work is quite literally award-winning including an award at this year's edition of Art Basel. She showed in this year's Venice Biennale, and that's just two of the countless exhibitions her work can be found in this summer alone. But folks that is only one facet of Tourmaline's life's work. Her filmmaking can be found not only in contemporary art contexts, but in cinema, for instance, the film Happy Birthday Marsha, which she co-directed. That film focuses on the life of legendary trans artists and activist, Marsha P Johnson. Tourmaline is also an accomplished writer in 2017 co-editing Trap Door, Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility published by MIT press and has a book forthcoming in 2024 from Penguin Random Houses, Tiny Reparations imprint on the life of Marsha P Johnson. And it does not stop there before all of this Tourmaline led a dedicated life as an organizer in abolitionist work, as well as trans and queer rights, there was just so much to dig into with Tourmaline in this conversation, I just enjoyed our chat so much, and I am thrilled to share it with you all this week. 

 Before we dive in just a reminder that we are only able to have artists like Tourmaline on the show, thanks to the generous support from all of you. If this show has become something that you look forward to each week and you have a couple of extra bucks, I hope you'll consider. I hope you'll consider joining the ranks of the lovely folks that have supported the podcast. There are two ways to do so, including our Patreon as well as tax deductible, giving through our fiscal sponsor, the New York Foundation For The Arts, you can find both options at artandobsolescence.com/donate. Now without further delay, let's dive into this. Week's chat with Tourmaline. 

[00:02:41] Tourmaline: Growing up I was like the youngest child in my family. And when my siblings, Che and Coline were going to first grade, I was like, not in school yet, I was going head start which is like a really important and necessary vital program for a lot of low income families in the us. I was also going at the same time to art school because my mom was in a certificate program at the School of Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I remember waking up and going to school with her, and that was just such a powerful way of setting me on my art journey. One of the things that feels so familiar is just the smell of oil paints in a room. Whenever I walk into a space, I have this kind of nostalgia for that smell. Me and my siblings, we went to the Boys and Girls Club, which is after school programs, weekend programs and I started doing black and white photography there. I was about nine. This was in the early nineties. I really had such a, powerful affinity with photography. And I remember in 1992 or 1993, like winning this big prize, like a national prize for photography for one of my photos of my siblings. And that I think to me was like wow, I was getting external validation on a large scale for the first time for something that I really cared about. And that feeling was like really important to me in a moment in my life when other things, you know, were maybe a bit more of a bumpy ride and to me now, you know, it's like I'm in a very different place, but I always think about every bit of life experience I needed in order to get to where I am. Both my parents were organizers. My dad came up in the Black freedom movement also known as the civil rights movement and was in The Invaders, which was kind of a analogous organizing group in Memphis to the Black Panther party. And my grandparents were organizers also in Memphis in the civil rights movement. And my mom was a union organizer kind of my whole life. She did this beautiful double Dutch between art making and union organizing. And so those were really kind of formative calls to my life politics, the organizing, and art making, which to me is like a really different valance around what could be and what we are dreaming into being. I moved to New York in 2002 and immediately started being involved in abolitionist work cuz my dad at that time was in prison. And so I was really doing a lot of organizing around police and prisons and jails and detention centers and deportation. And I came to New York with an idea that I wanted to be an artist. For a few years I took a break from art making kind of all together other than the art of like molding the clay of my life. As like hard as I am going with art right now. I went probably even harder with organizing, cuz I didn't quite find an understanding of the importance of ease and rest and replenishment and joy. I was probably just like a really intense person to be around doing really hardcore organizing work with Queers for Economic Justice and Critical Resistance and at my college around, gentrification of West Harlem and kinda all these things that it's really powerful to see the further expansion of them now.

[00:06:35] Ben: You spoke to those early experiences with photography. Thinking about that, but also your, ongoing work in video and filmmaking and media. What is it that drew you to working with media in particular versus those oil paints?

[00:06:54] Tourmaline: That's such a great question. I think to me, painting feels so incredible in my body. The level of excitement when I like returned to art making after organizing was visceral and it was in my body and, and it was accompanied by that smell. I had much more of maybe an immediate sense of, I am really good at what I do with photography I think that I could achieve more quickly an immediate sense of, I'm creating how I want to be creating with photography and there was more of a gap with other mediums, you know, I remember a while ago when I first started filmmaking, I was listening to someone talk about it. And they were talking about the gap between, you know, your desire for creating and your current capacity to hit that desire. So, I'm still in process with that around painting, and that might be like just much more of a longer, run for me because I do enjoy like switching mediums. I went really hard with photography, now I'm having a more creative flow with fashion and to me it feels just really important to keep the valve open. And video, like filmmaking. Like I grew up you know, in in like poverty and I'm a child of the early eighties. And so it was in 2000 and six or something when I had my first camera that could record video. You know, so it's a relatively new medium for me is all I'm trying to say. And so, you know, I'm still like figuring it out and building my capacity to create on the level of my, taste. 

[00:08:39] Ben: I, I love having artists describe their own work. Your piece, Mary of Ill Fame is currently on view in Aspen in the show Mountain Time, and that was my first time getting to see your work in person. But, I thought it would be a nice place maybe to start with your work to familiarize listeners. So I guess for those who haven't seen that piece, could you tell us a bit about it? You know, what would people see?

[00:09:03] Tourmaline: Mary of Ill Fame is a film about Mary Jones, who was a person born in New York in 1803, one of several notorious trans people in this period of time. She lived on Greene street, which is a street in New York, in a Soho brothel and was arrested for stealing this person's wallet and then sentenced to seven years in prison in Sing Sing which is a prison in New York state. And during this whole, court process, she became infamous because several newspapers made lithographs about her, painting her in her image and calling her a man monster. And so they took this image of her, you know, showing up and showing out to court looking just like so fabulous. And they put it in the newspapers in my sibling Che found her actual court transcript in the New York city municipal court archives. And so I incorporated a lot of that interview into the film and it's set in New York in this moment in time in the late 1830s when Seneca Village, which was a free Black community in New York city was alive and thriving. It was the only place in New York City where Black people owned land. And because of it, some members of Seneca Village could vote. So there was this like incredible political power and it was land based and it was a place of refuge and sanctuary when slavery in New York was still legal and people who weren't enslaved people were being kidnapped and sold south. And so in lower Manhattan, there were also these anti-Black riots. There's the anti abolitionist riot and then there was the draft riot. And so there was an increased awareness in lower Manhattan around a greater sense of freedom and ease and power that led people to move to at the time was like pretty Northern Manhattan. And now it's like Midtown Manhattan, and so the story has a thread of kind of Black magical realism, you know, in the vein of the people could fly, which were like Gullah Geechee stories that now the MET museum has like a big show around that my work is in and it's about, uh, using magic as a way to transform conditions. And so that is a long answer to say, Mary of Ill Fame, people will come to that film, they'll see Mary Jones being unruly and wayward and having fun and using magic to flee the police and be, with other people hanging out catching a vibe, seeing the future, understanding that conditions are changing and they wanna do something about them and coming together in the midst of a messy thing to be with one another and, and find moments of rest and joy and power.

[00:12:13] Ben: I gather that your film, Salacia also revolves around Mary and Seneca village. 

[00:12:19] Tourmaline: Yeah. So Salacia Mary of Ill Fame, and myself portraits that are at the MET in the Afrofuturist period room and also at LACMA and the Getty. Those are all in the same suite of work around the same ideas of dispossession and waywardness and flight and ease and pleasure and joy Salacia is on view at the MoMA and in their collection. And is a non-narrative kind of like imprint of the vibe of Maryville fame that also incorporates footage of Sylvia Rivera on the pier in like 1995, talking about, why the Hudson river is so important to her, to Marsha, to other dispossessed people in this encampment that she created off of Christopher street, for people who were living with aids and didn't have any money and didn't have other places to go. And it is a similar embodied being together as Seneca village. Part of my artistic practice so far has been about finding and tuning to and having a keen awareness of the traces and imprints of people who came before. People like Marsha P. Johnson, Mary Jones, Sylvia Rivera. The list is so long and those imprints in traces exist in my friend's living rooms. And they also exist in the New York City municipal court archives. That's where my sibling Che located Mary Jones' interview with the court officer. They exist in the New York Public Library archives in the archives up at Cornell. I remember taking a trip with my friend Cyrus Dunham to university of Indiana and their Institute around gender and, and transness and reading, you know, letters from the 1930s and forties. Museum of the City of New York, there's just, a lot of institutions that I've come to find that when I kind of tune my tuner to that frequency, they often reveal themselves. And yeah, it's like sometimes it's someone's basement. Sometimes it's my friend, Randy's personal home video collection and other times it's a more formal archive. So like at the New York Public Library Marsha doesn't have her own collection, but Arthur Bell who was a journalist had done some interviews with Marsha and Sylvia for the Village Voice, and when I went in to look at Arthur Bell's collection, there was the statement of Sylvia and Marsha about, coming together and forming a group for low income street trans people you know, and that felt so incredible and amazing at that time. And so, yeah, it's like just being hot on the heels of a particular kind of vibe. And now it's a, it's a little different how I work. I just handed in a draft of my book about Marsha that I'm, writing. And, uh, my sibling Che was like the director of my research and we just did a whole series of interviews for that and many different you know, archive collections like formal ones. And you know, it was a really powerful process to like reengage in this level of research, but maybe from a different point of view. The questions that I'm asking now for this book are maybe on a different kind of like spiritual plane than I was asking before.

[00:16:05] Ben: Wow. Oh my gosh. I didn't realize you were writing a book on Marsha. That's awesome.

[00:16:08] Tourmaline: Oh yeah. So I'm writing a book about Marsha for Penguin Random House's, imprint, Tiny Reparations and yeah, I'm very excited for the world to come to an even deeper understanding of Marsha. 

[00:16:21] Ben: When does that come out? 

[00:16:22] Tourmaline: Right now it's early 2024.

[00:16:25] Ben: Awesome. So you just recently of course, showed in Art Basel and won a prestigious prize. Congratulations. 

[00:16:32] Tourmaline: Thank you. 

[00:16:34] Ben: I was hoping you could tell us a bit about the work Pollinator that you showed there.

[00:16:39] Tourmaline: The work that I presented at Basel with my gallery Chapter NY has the underpinning idea of ease, replenishment, rest, luxury as good things. You know, in the afterlife of anti-vagrancy laws, in the afterlife of slavery, so often, many of us have incorporated the notion that the harder we, we work, the better that we are. The more important that we are, the more we produce. And this is about how in our moments of rest and ease and pleasure. I can create at an even more powerful scale. And so it's a, film that is kind of like self portraiture and incorporates footage of. I took a zero gravity flight, which is like a parabolic flight that like NASA astronauts would train on they would call it like the vomit commet, me and Matt Harvey, who's like my frequent cinematography collaborator took it. Yeah, so it's footage of, that footage that I filmed of my dad footage of me in the Brooklyn Botanic gardens and also the Brooklyn museum their Edwardian period room. And then footage of Marsha's funeral procession. The score was composed by my friend, Danny, who is just this brilliant composer and incorporated the Hertz frequency of the planet Venus using these tuning forks that were made for NASA. And so, it's just about tuning to, even in the midst of a mess of a thing, our awareness of, uh, what it is we do want, like using the clarity from facing what we don't want to have a keener understanding or sharper desire of okay, well, what do we want? And it's, my attempt at transmuting really intense things. And it's also about the pleasure of the upward spiral, when you're in engaging in that kind of process. You know, the Basel presentation, it was this film, but it was also like five self portraits, photographs. It's an interesting interplay between a moving image and a so-called still one. They offer different things. And to me my moving image work is maybe a little more immediate in the like emotional resonance where I just have a broader set of tools. You have the image and you also have the score and the way that I production design something and you also have movement and you have the edit. I frequently like collaborate with my friend Omega, who was the editor for this film. I work with a close friend, Claire Sullivan who's a fashion designer and Claire makes each and every one of my looks, in the photographs and in the film. And so there's that continuous movement element of the materials. it's also like really fun for me to not know. It's like every time I'm in an edit session, I'm like, what did I do? Like, I can't believe what, like, what even is this? I cannot believe that this was an idea that I had like, what was I thinking? With the pollinator film, you know, I'm combining a lot. It felt like really ambitious and it's so personal, you know? There wasn't the same kind of distance as you know, Mary of Ill Fame. So Mary of Ill Fame was really fun. It's playing in the Venice Biennale and it's standing alone in this tower, in the garden, and the tower kind of mimics where it was shot in Governor's Island, in New York and the prison on Governor's Island. And they, there's this really beautiful relationship between where it's installed and Venice and , what the audience experience is watching it. Um, And also with the installation that my friend Christine McCarran collaborated on with me, Christine was the production designer for the install. So, you know, to me with Mary of Ill Fame, that required so many people. It was a huge production. I frequently am like doing just like really large scale productions. And that's part of, you know, the practice is like bringing a lot of people together and working on a different kind of scale. And with the Pollinator film, it was a lot smaller. Uh, Sometimes it was like just me and Matt or you know, me and my dad, you know? And I was sitting with the idea of this film for a much longer period of time. Also with film there's a way that I bring in more people into it. Even when it's like a smaller scale and, and more intimate.

[00:21:36] Ben: So, I guess this is kind of a continuation of that, you know, you spoke a bit to film productions and how those can vary, but I guess in general do you work with a team? Do you like to work alone? Does that fluctuate? 

[00:21:49] Tourmaline: I think it really fluctuates depending on kind of like what I'm doing, but everything is always a collaboration. Collaboration sometimes between me and me, you know, like getting up to speed with actually what I want is a good thing, and these ideas that I'm having are actually quite profound, even if I'm in a downward spiral around them and then it can further extend, you know, it's I have a piece that is in a show that's gonna open on Wednesday it's like a show of all disabled artists and it's a portrait of my cat gene. I'm like frequently in collaboration, I find with non-humans and entities that aren't embodied, you know? And so to me, like that's another kind of collaboration. It's like collaboration that has a spiritual valance or collaboration that pushes or expands beyond a kind of like enlightenment project of what is a person, you know, that seeks to destabilize, the notion of like personhood or move beyond it. When I was writing, what feels like, the portrait of Marsha, that's another kind of collaboration like me and Che working together really closely to interview like so many people or receiving their knowings of Marsha and their insights and their truths and time. And then also like deep channel practice and uh, raising my awareness to a broader one. And like feeling a place, like really specifically like what is the feeling of Christopher street that used to be a river? Christopher Street's one of the longest streets in New York City and pre colonization. It was an estuary. It was like a moving body of water. And so much of Manhattan was all throughout Seneca Village. That's like a frequent kind of collaboration. And then there's like the literal ones with a huge team. So it'll be like a big film or a photo based project. And the work that supports my work into being, whether that's from Jean or whether that's like Michelle, my studio manager or Lissy who's like other forms of collaboration and support. I have not found that I have ever made anything singularly by myself.

[00:24:08] Ben: Yeah. You know, the mode of filmmaking that you sometimes engage with is. On such a professional level that, I think is not often the norm within the art world. So I'm curious, where did you pick that up? Where did you learn these very kind of, film industry practices? 

[00:24:29] Tourmaline: My first time ever on a set was when I was directing Happy Birthday Marsha, I kind of just learned by doing, you know? And now looking back, I'm like, that's wild. I had literally never been on a film set until I decided to direct. But also, you know, like I think that many people who are like doing a thing that like they don't feel represented in, or aren't aware of like other people who are like them or have some kind of affinity with them. Like that's a frequent experience that so many people have. But yeah, like I learned it through doing it and you know, I had like teachers on set too like Arthur Jafa was the cinematographer for Happy Birthday Marsha, and was like a friend and, uh, and a mentor of mine and Sasha Wortzel, who was the co-director of happy Martha Marsha, you know, had more filmmaking experience than me and was really instrumental in my understanding of it. I picked things up like really fast as something that I've learned about myself. Because I'll like go so hard with it, it'll be the only thing I can think about for, X period of time is like making myself a better filmmaker. I'll spend, the hours on set, but I'll also spend the hours like reading the books or watching the YouTubes, or, you know, I also work for this filmmaker Dee Rees on this film Mudbound which we shot in Louisiana. And that was really like a powerful experience, you know? And so, yeah, I think all of it has been learning and watching how other people are doing it. Going to set when other people are directing things that maybe look nothing like what I'm doing, like I went to like John Wick set, and that was like so incredible, and like just watched Keanu Reeves do this like beautiful action sequence. It's also like the smaller, you can make something, when it's not this big, huge thing over in one place, but it's something that you're kind of continuously moving to and learning from and being engaged with until it gets to be like the next logical step of your process. That to me has been really helpful. For instance, when I was doing Mudbound, those were like 15 hour on set and it was just like, that's what everyone was doing. That was my film school, you know, just like these long ass days in the summer on a former plantation in Louisiana. And so you really quickly learn the language of it, you know, it's no longer this whole other thing over there, it's just your life. So that really helped me with the second big shoot for happy birthday Marsha. Like we did a whole nother like shoot after I came back for the film and then it also really helped me for you know, like Atlantic is a Sea of Bones and then Mary of Ill Fame. And I was also doing a few commercials in between and all of it, just had a major imprint on me and sometimes I'm really aware of being quote unquote, self-taught like not going to film school cuz there's some things where I, I just don't know the thing and I can learn it. And then there's other moments where I don't know that I shouldn't aspire to something cuz it hasn't been like drilled out of me. Like I desire to do X thing, you know, that sometimes schooling can do. And so yeah, it's been a really interesting path. 

[00:27:53] Ben: That's awesome. So I gather that your studio is in the financial district, so I'm curious what that's like, what is a day in the life of Tormaline in the Fi Di like?

[00:28:08] Tourmaline: So I have um, in different ways had studios in that area of Manhattan since like . 2016. I did this beautiful residency program called LMCC Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. And at the time I was in the Chase Bank building, LMCC used to be in the old World Trade Center and then it moved to different kind of buildings. And for my year in 2016, it was the chase bank building. And then I had a year long residency on Governor's Island and the ferry leaves from like, the only way on and off the island is through ferry. And that ferry leaves from the financial district and then for the past two years, I've been in Four World Trade Center with this program called Civil Arts where I'm now like an artist mentor for the current cohort, it's been really powerful personally, like, you know, so much of Black, New York has moved through the financial district it's like Where the mutual aid society that started Seneca Village was, it was where, like a lot of Black sailors found places of refuge. I did a project last year with MoMA called Pleasure Gardening. It was a freedom dreaming walking tour. So I brought people from MoMA to different sites in lower Manhattan and in the Financial District that were central to like the Underground Railroad or the creation of Seneca Village, or you know, like sanctuary in the midst of larger upheavals. And so much of my work has been in kind of a long engagement with that physical geographic place. And it's like right now, Battery Park is in what used to be Little Syria, which was like New York shipping hub until the shipping container was invented, which standardized shipping and so, that required like a different place for that kind of equipment, which happened to be in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where Marsha P. Johnson is from, you know, and so, one of like the first big teach-ins I did about Marsha was like a block from where my studio was during Occupy Wall Street in 2011 and so I just have had like a long term art practice with the financial district. I've really enjoyed it. I think that there's like such a high key contrast. I have to be like incredibly deliberate about where I put my focus in and on, if I wanna maintain my creative flow in a place like the Financial District. To me, it's like, it's beautiful and powerful when I'm in a place where, if I look out and I'm not being deliberate, I can just observe many things and immediately find resonance and feel good about them. And also, I think it's been so important, my artistic practice to really know where am I putting my focus, because my focus is so powerful and it is so life creating all of our focuses are. And so to me, in a place where there's a lot of contrast and clarity around like how I would structure the world, you know, if I had an immediate access to different kinds of resources, like how I would structure safety, kind of all of these things. It invites me to be really deliberate. Right now, it's really important for me to like spend time knowing what I don't want and then moving in the direction of, from that clarity, what I do and Fi Di offers an abundance of things that I don't want. But if I stayed with my point of focus on that, I wouldn't necessarily get the bounce from that hit to then be creating in the ways that I want.

[00:31:49] Ben: Yeah. So, for fashion week 2021, you debuted a not only super hot, but very reasonably priced swimwear collaboration, with Chromat, are there more fashion projects in the future for you? 

[00:32:06] Tourmaline: I'm sure there are, this weekend Chromat and I had a popup in Soho for the line. And that was like really fun and amazing. And then like, so many people were like sharing photos from Riis Beach which is like a queer trans beach in, in New York City wearing the line over the weekend. And to just see something that exists at first in your mind's eye and then, little by little Becomes a physical material manifested thing that people are like wearing, you know, and taking photos of that is such a thrill. So yeah, the Chromat Tormaline collab has just been so fun. And then also there's been, a different kind of collaboration with Claire Sullivan where like Claire's just such a visionary and innovator. And I love being in collaboration where I'm like, objectify me, like put me in whatever comes up in your mind that I would look hot in, you know, and, you know, it's like, it's a little more nuanced than that, but that's really the vibe where I'm like, I'm the muse, I'll bring some ideas and then, Claire has just also has such a powerful understanding of fashion history and we'll like do a dance around that. And yeah, it's kind of what we were talking about before. It's like art that involves a lot of collaborators. So like similar with Chromat it's like I approached Becca McCharen-Tran a few years ago being like, I want to create a swimmer line for like girls who don't tuck or you know, trans people who wanna pack or, you know, just like anyone who wants like package support. Having my own experience with swimmer and hearing other people being like, oh, I would wear Chromat if like, there was, you know, more room for a bulge or whatever. And so I was like, this is so fun and also it hits this line where, some people have like a big response, you know, being like, oh, we've never seen that before. It's got, that Eckhart Tolle first flower energy, right, where like you exist in a landscape where you're kind of like preceding a moment of wider pollination of like wider dispersing of information that, you know, you get to show up and show out however you want. And whatever kind of rules that we learned or were conditioned to believe are ones to let dust to dusting, or like, enjoy their petering out. And so Becca has just been an incredible collaborator it's like Chromat has always been really on the leading edge and creating for, you know, just like so many different bodies and always with an idea of how do we bring more people to the party, like the beaches, the party, how do we ensure that all of us feel like we can access the party? And so that was just such a seamless fit. And then we did like a Instagram live over the weekend and it was so clear, I think like Meta promoted it and the audience wasn't the normal, like Tourmaline, Chromat audience, you know, it was like really widespread audience and people were having like such intense reactions to it, you know? As an artist, I'm not trying to, at this point in my career, like push against anything or be provocative, you know, I'm trying to like dance to the beat of my own drum, which frequently is about not reproducing what came before, but, it's about innovation, you know, like doing something in a landscape that didn't necessarily exist before. Not because of any other reason than I want to, it's fun, it feels good. And it was immediately clear that this was the first time people had ever seen, like this kind of swim line. And you know, like people were just saying like really intense things on the IG chat but what was really cool about that was, kind of goes back to a similar conversation about like early validation. When you are creating and it's met with not validation, right. It's met with near unanimous, disdain or disgust or anger even I, as a person have no other choice, if I wanna find a way to feel good, it's kind of like the Fi Di conversation, if I wanna find a way to feel my power to feel entitled to my own sense of pleasure. I have to tune out the awareness of what other people are saying and tune into the awareness of what do I think about it? I have to make my interior voice, the only voice that matters in that conversation and in moments when there's a high key contrast between what I think about what I'm doing and what other people think about it. If I am not deliberate, I can immediately get swept up in that sea. And that can be the difference between like a real intense downward spiral or being like, wow, I just created something that is, you know, just so unique and so uniquely beautiful that people are having a major response to it. And anyone who is feeling confident, powerful, sexy aware of their desires and knowing that the desires are a good thing, aren't saying anything other than that's great. But for people who are still in process with, releasing outdated messages about how you can show up and how you can be like there, those people it's really clear are gonna have a different kind of reaction that isn't any less about a desire to do something, but it is about a gap between seeing someone else do something that you have a deep feeling about and not knowing how to process your feeling. That's so much of what trans life, in this moment in time is about. And so to me, it was like, as much as winning Basel's biggest art prize was a highlight of my career or like being in the permanent collection of the MET and the MoMA and the LACMA and the Getty, and the list goes on. Those are so meaningful to me. This Instagram live was so much, not more, but it's like a parallel horizontal where I finally really, for that moment in time closed the gap between you know, my desire to create and my belief about how good it was. And because of what other people were saying, I really just had to thoroughly tune directly to myself. And I don't know I love getting prizes obviously. That's partly why I get so many of them I love getting external validation, right, but when other people are saying your work is great, I don't have to do as much the deliberate work of remembering my value. Right, of remembering how I am also important, cuz other people are doing that work. It's not a bad thing, relying on their opinions about me to feel how I wanna feel about me, but when there's a complete and total lack of that from an audience, I have to really do that work. And it's not the work of just feeling good you know, of like remembering that you matter that you're important, that you're valuable that you're beautiful that what you're doing is meaningful. But yeah, it's that was probably one of the biggest moments of my career where it couldn't have happened if I was winning a prize for it. Yeah.

[00:39:54] Ben: Right. Well, and it sounds like for, it was a real moment for you of showing how much you had developed that skill of tapping into that inner strength and inner love. Yeah, well, I guess kind of along those lines, you know, here we are at the end of hashtag pride month 

[00:40:14] Tourmaline: Totally. 

[00:40:16] Ben: But you know, I think that joy, especially in the moment that we are living in these days is such an act of queer and trans resistance. And I have gathered via Twitter and other interviews you've done. Something, that brings you joy is cars and Lambos in particular

[00:40:44] Tourmaline: Yes.

[00:40:45] Ben: I was just curious if you wanted to share anything about that?

[00:40:48] Tourmaline: I don't know. I like okay. So like cars, just feel sexy. It's like this visceral, I like the speed in the momentum. So with Becca McCharen-Tran and Christine they're married. So Christine and I collaborated on my installation in Venice and Becca and I have a collaboration on the Chromat line. So I went down to Miami last year for you know, Miami has their own kind of like fashion week and it's about swimwear. And, you know, it was really helpful to kind of observe what was to help us fuel our desires for what could be, it was like super clarifying. And I rented a Rolls-Royce Cullinan in which is like their SUV. And it was just so fun. It was just like, so fucking opulent, you know, and that's partly what we named our collection off of that the acronym is COCK and it's like, Collective Opulence Celebrating Kindred. And so, yeah, to me, it's just like that opulence and the luxury and the feel it's like my work in Basel too is about luxury, but it's like, Miss Major, who is a friend of mine she lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, she's a Black, trans elder. She was at Stonewall, speaking of pride month, she once talked about like, can you feel like basically luxury from a cold drink of water? You know? Like, can you luxuriate in a cold drink of water? Which to me is like so necessary. Like maybe the conditions don't allow you and the conditions of your bank account, don't allow you to rent a car or maybe the conditions outside don't allow you to maybe leave wherever you're living right now, or you're staying. But to me in these moments, like growing up, having a poster of a fun car on the wall, allowed me to focus a feeling of luxury and ease and enjoyment and pleasure. And I think to me like that focusing of a feeling also allowed me to create in a particular kind of way, you know, it's really interesting, like oil paints feel very luxurious to me. I think they probably do for a lot of people, you know, there, there can be quite expensive and the smell of them to me, it's like a luxurious smell. And even in a dark room, I felt so cool as a kid spending time in a dark room, it was like a distinct experience. The boys and girls club I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's it's for like neighborhood kids, you know, it's largely like poor working class kids, you know what I mean? At least that was my experience of it growing up as a kid. And so it felt really cool to have access to the space of creation that felt really luxurious. I don't know. It just, it felt magical and to me it carries over now to a feeling of cars where it's like, you know, I had a BMW M car and M is their performance variant. And just like having a car with like such incredible horsepower and just like feeling the pops of the engine and the movement and similar to why I enjoy like, the NASA vomit comment or wanting to go to space and can do like a space residency, you know, it's like that feeling of thrill of momentum of movement that can match like sometimes the really fast speed and thoughts, that move through my brain.

[00:44:00] Ben: So kind of as we wrap up, going back to the beginning and, uh, well at the very beginning , but your life in organizing, well, I guess first I'm curious, has that continued for you in ways beyond your work. but I'm also curious, how you think of your work maybe as an extension of that and how these two things enrich each other or have continued to, and how that's changed over the years for you?

[00:44:30] Tourmaline: To me organizing was about building a base collectively expressing a kind of like consensus voice around an issue frequently, that's done through campaigns. So for instance, you know, I was like a lead organizer in like several campaigns that I feel like, you know, were really big deals in my life. One was about stopping New York City from building a, a new jail in the South Bronx. I started doing that maybe in like 2005. That was one of the few kind of like successful campaigns quote unquote successful where the seemingly specified goal was accomplished. Right. So we like stopped the jail from being built. And then, another was around welfare. So in New York City, the agency that administers welfare is the Human Resources Administration HRA. And for many of us who were reliant on welfare benefits to survive. People would be met with a like extreme level of transphobia just going into the office. And so we had like a huge campaign around that and got the agency to shift. And then the third one was since from Pataki to Cuomo, those were two New York State governors. So from like the nineties up until 2014, New York state had a provision that specifically denied trans people access to healthcare coverage through Medicaid. So if you were like a cis person and you wanted estrogen, you could get it. But if you were a trans person wanting the same, like treatment or same medication, you'd be denied simply because you were trans. And so I was a lead organizer on getting New York State to stop doing that right. To like stop, administering transphobia through a healthcare policy. And so to me that was like a really meaningful, big deal. That, I think shifted so many of our experiences of healthcare, right? Because so many people, rely on Medicaid to access healthcare. That was what organizing was for me. Coming together in the midst of a thing and thinking about different kinds of goals, whether they were like a kind of existed on a cultural landscape or a policy one and activism to me is a different kind of valence where you're oxygenizing a situation. You are activating it around a particular kind of issue. And to me, I think like my artistic practice is really an extension about being aware of what is frequently an awareness that contrasts your desire for what is so like an awareness of the prison, industrial complex contrasts, my desire for all of us to have a greater sense of freedom and ease and life and then creating from that place of like clarity and desire, like what it is that I do wanna see in the world and spending more time in that place of I know what I don't want, now I know what I do want. Let me put my focus on what I do want and create from there. I think someone who really had a level of mastery around that was Fannie Lou Hamer, who was an organizer in the civil rights movement who did a lot of voter registration. She had a farm, she had a food justice program and she would say you know, like I can't see the face of God with hate in my heart, which to me just means I can't move in the direction of what I do want. Of like my desire for the world that I want, which is filled with love while staying so focused off the vibe. And I don't have a hierarchy between like joy and anger. Like, I don't think anger is a thing that people shouldn't have. I know that for me, like when I was feeling incredibly hopeless, anger was such a necessary key component to finding relief from feeling hopeless and powerless. So much of my organizing came from a place of being rightfully so, really angry about the conditions that many of us have to live through and with. So to me, that anger is such a powerful tool for relief from feeling powerless. It's like, you know, that and Abraham Hicks might call it, it like the moving up the emotional scale. Each step of the way provides a different kind of relief. And so where I'm at now, we're thinking about it through a framework of like what Fannie Lou Hamer was talking about is if I want to really create on the scale on the level that I have a strong desire to, I have found that really comes from being tapped into my joy, which is the same thing as being tapped into my love, which is the same thing as being tapped into my pleasure and my power. My most significant creations have come from that place. And every bit of life experience that I've lived has helped me to get there. And being off of that vibe is also totally fine. Like it's so great and wonderful because it fine tunes my desire to be back on. And so all of it is part of the mix. All of it is a necessary component to what I'm doing as an artist.

[00:49:45] Ben: Yeah. So I think bouncing off of that. I wonder, you know, for you these days, what is keeping you connected to joy? 

[00:49:56] Tourmaline: Kind of going back to the Fannie Lou Hamer, big problems create big solutions. I don't know if I was ever able to find a big solution without a big problem. For instance, like that Instagram live, those comments were a big problem. You know? Like there were just like, no other words to say it. They were not great comments. They were not nice. They were a problem. They were deeply problematic. And what they offered though, was an incredible solution, which is to line up with myself to line up with my opinion about me to make the only thing that mattered about what I'm doing, my opinion both immediate opinion and my broader perspective opinion. And in that I've found access to a level of power that I have not known. And so to me, I think it's like we are in the midst of a mess of a thing, undoubtedly, and for me, my solution to that is to get into a place where I can offer, you know, real solutions. And that is only for me comes from a place of like deep connection with myself, deep power. These big questions inspire the big answers and it's little by little I get over the wave to like the answer side, the solution side, and that's where my fun, my clarity, my knowing that like we can be and do and have whatever we want. We can create from these sets of conditions. Some really much greater improved ones. And I think that's what brings me join these moments. It's also really interesting because, you know, when I was coming up, like in, in New York literally 20 years ago, a lot of what I was and my immediate community was dealing with is now widely shared experiences. Right? Like many of my friends from that moment aren't alive anymore. And I think we're now seeing the shared kind of really bumpy messy conditions, harsh conditions in a wider view than many of us who were navigating earlier where we're talking about were saying like, hey, like we gotta pay attention to this and I'd bring that up. Not to say like we were right, or anything like that. But it's more like, I think that could inspire a deep level of cynicism on my part. You know, there was one way of talking about that, which is like, hey, you know, things have only deteriorated and gotten worse and have gotten worse for even more people. But there's also another way of saying that, which is like, if those of us who, who are living through that and continue to live through that have figured out, some real solutions some real practices, some real strategies we know what we're talking about, like we have real levels of insight into the solution side of the wave. And part of that comes from just like the Fannie Lou Hamer or the IG experience. It comes from like momentarily tuning out an awareness of what other people are saying or the conditions in order to line up with your clarity. And that is where I have always found my power.

[00:53:08] Ben: Is there any advice. That you would have for up and coming artists, listening to this show.

[00:53:15] Tourmaline: Yeah. I think advice that has been really helpful for me is be nicer to yourself, give yourself a break find ways to like, get more rest in those moments of like rest and kindness and paying attention to like how we're feeling and also how we're speaking to ourselves, that space opens up. It's not the reason to do it, but it opens up a level of creation that I don't personally have access to when I'm in a momentum going the opposite direction, you know, like when I'm like pinched off and being really unkind to myself, I don't have access to the same level of art making as when I'm like, so what, like, this isn't very good right now. So what, you know, like the film pollinator that won the Basel art prize, I really was for a moment like, this is the worst thing I've ever made. Like, what am I doing? And then I had to just be like two things, like, so what, like, who cares? The misses and the hits are all part of the process, like who cares if it's the worst thing. And in that moment of relief. I was like, oh, actually, I've been here before and I can figure this out. Like I can trust the process that it's always started in one place and ended up in another things have always come into clearer view simply by like, remembering that, this is work that happens little by little, you know, and until that watershed moment. And so I think it's like really catching how I'm talking to myself and remembering that that actually really matters. Like, are we talking to ourselves with the same level of compassion that we would talk to a friend? And if we're not, like we might want to clock that and pivot, you know, so yeah.

[00:54:56] Ben: Yeah. So Tourmaline I'm curious, you know, it's been, it's been a pretty massive year for you. What's coming next?

[00:55:07] Tourmaline: So what's coming next is some fun, some ease, hopefully lots of sexy times, hopefully lots of fast cars, beautiful flowers. Some fashion fits moments. Looking at my friend's amazing art um, reveling in that, having playtime with Jean Moline going to some parties, doing some daydreaming hanging out and yeah, that's kind of what comes next.

[00:55:38] Ben: I love it. That's a great, uh, summer itinerary. Well Tourmaline this has been just such a delight, I'm a huge fan of your work, so it's been really great to get to know you. 

[00:55:51] Tourmaline: Thank you. Thanks for having me. These were brilliant questions. I really had a really wonderful time. 

[00:55:55] Ben: And I hope you did too, dear listener. Thank you for joining us for this week's show. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, how about leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform? As always, if you want to help support our work and mission of equitably compensating artists, you can join us over at patreon.com/artobsolescence, or if you are interested in making a one-time tax deductible gift through our fiscal sponsor, the New York Foundation for the Arts you can do so at artandobsolescence.com/donate and there, you can also find the show notes and full transcripts for every single episode. Until next time have a great week my friends, my name is Ben Fino-Radin and this has been Art and Obsolescence.