Conversation with Brandon Sward
What interests you in collaborative work?
Neoliberalism encourages us to center ourselves and our desires before all else. There’s a sense in which the trope of the “solitary artist” resonates with these ideals, but also not, in the sense that it’s entirely unclear what art is good for and how one might make a career as an artist (despite the infiltration of professionalization into art, in which I participate even as I critique it). In this way, collaboration is a nice counterbalance to the idea of the singular author.
How would you describe your process of collaboration?
I try to approach collaboration as pretty distinct from my personal practice. Enlisting someone in a preexisting project of my own doesn’t feel like true collaboration if that means just plugging a body into an already finished piece. Instead, I prefer to go into the collaborative process without preconceptions as much as I can, which is ultimately more interesting since where I end up is often someplace that I wouldn’t have gotten to on my own.
How would you describe your work? / What led you to work 2D/3D?
My work is weird! Many artists probably say that about their work, and while we might all be right, I suspect mine is weird in a rather particular way. One of the most exciting things to me about art is how 99% of the time you know what to do; you eat breakfast, check your phone, go to work, see friends. But then art sits in that 1% of experiences that you don’t immediately know how to handle. It’s unclear how you’re supposed to interact with it, what it does or doesn’t ask of you. I want to stretch that feeling of uncertainty as long as possible. I suspect this is one of the reasons I gravitate towards performance and video, mediums capable of exploring change over time. I love to set up situations wherein the viewer doesn’t know how to respond, can’t tell whether a moment is meant to be funny or serious, etc. Many of my aesthetic choices are motivated by a desire to create an atmosphere or mood, which often calls for “soft focus” rather than strenuous attention.
Whose work are you looking at/are you informed by?
Too many too list! You didn’t ask for a favorite, but if you had, it’s difficult to single anyone out other than Marcel Duchamp, the first to see how stupid art could be. Among living artists, I think about Tino Sehgal, Andrea Fraser, Pope.L, Regina José Galindo, Fred Wilson, Zoe Leonard, Rachel Harrison, Vaginal Davis, Rabih Mroué, Lola Arias, Ligia Lewis, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Sophie Calle, the list goes on and on… In the more strictly theatrical world, I’ve recently seen or read great plays by Jeremy Harris, Will Eno, and Nassim Soleimanpour. The revival of Oklahoma was incredible; they didn’t change any of the text or music but were able to make it entirely new. On a more “theoretical” level, I’m informed by Jerzy Grotowski, Bertolt Brecht, and above all Sigmund Freud. Outside art, I listen to minimalist music, dub reggae, deep house—anything that can erase my brain. And I love clothes, especially the Japanese “anti-fashion” designers like Rei Kawakubo, Junya Watanabe, Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, etc.
Any new projects in the works? / How has COVID-19 affected you?
Always! I’ve started studying clown lately and we’ve been working with objects, which has for me developed into these puppet shows with household items. My practice has previously been pretty autobiographical, so it’s been a welcome break. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by how much you can do in a small space with no money, and there’s a really productive tension for me in the pairing of a form so lo-fi it makes the “willing suspension of disbelief” impossible with a narrative that invites affective identification. The childishness of the form just exacerbates this, and circles back to Freud, and more broadly my interests in childhood and adolescence, obedience and rebellion. I recently bought the travel journals of Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés, which I want to reenact Guatemalan “worry dolls.” I simultaneously love and am horrified by the absurdity of expressing the horrors of genocide and colonization in a totally inappropriate format, which only raises the question if any format could accommodate such cultural devastation. Adorno once said writing poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric…
BIO: Brandon Sward is an artist, performer, writer, organizer, and doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago. He was a quarterfinalist for Ruminate Magazine's 2018 VanderMey Nonfiction Prize, an honorable mention for the 47th New Millennium Writing Awards, a finalist for the 48th New Millennium Writing Awards, and was shortlisted for Disquiet International’s 2020 Literary Prize. He has been awarded residencies by Alternative Worksite, the Hambidge Center, the Institute for LGBTQ+ Studies at the University of Arizona, Main Street Arts, NAVE, SloMoCo, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Wassaic Project, Western Montana Creative Initiatives, and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. His first solo exhibition, How the West was lost, opens at Stone House Art Gallery in Charlotte, NC during October 2021. Group exhibitions include: The Long Dream at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (as part of Quarantine Times); a series of small gestures at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago; Experimental Film and Video 2021 at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art; ...And That Is Where The Bobcat Is Right Now curated by Tiger Strikes Asteroid; Angelespuma at NAVE in Guayllabamba, EC; Seasons Change at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY; Utopian Living at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts in Woodstock, NY; Two Silences Leaning Together at In/Passing in New York, NY; and No Borders On Stolen Land. He has participated in the film festival Release Me through Single Channel VT and one of his prints appeared in Under the Bridge (Winter 2021). His criticism can be read in Flash Art, BOMB Magazine, The Point, Full Bleed, aqnb, Hyperallergic, the Chicago Reader, the Chicago Review, Contemporary And, Newcity, Sixty Inches From Center, The Seen, ASAP/J, Post45: Contemporaries, Tesserae, Tripwire, Power Clash Art, and Flatpack Publications. He has served as a visiting critic in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, and given talks at the College Art Association annual conference, the Smart Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Southeastern College Art Conference, the Universities Art Association of Canada annual conference, the Royal Anthropological Institute, and the Universities of Montreal and Santa Barbara.