Feb. 26--So you think you're an artist?
You have a vision, a singular voice. Challenging ideas await behind the work you deliver to the world. You even keep a lousy job that allows you a bit of freedom to pursue the job you really want to do -- make art.
But you lack something: Validation, the slow nod of yes that can only come from a true, established artist.
The Los Angeles-based (via Portland, Ore.) experimental rock duo YACHT have concocted an ingenious, if ultimately frustrating, solution: Kanye.am, a website that allows you, in classic Magic 8 Ball style, to "ask" Kanye West, arguably Chicago's greatest contribution to the 21st century, if you are, in fact, a legitimate, real artist.
I just asked and got a picture of Kanye at the Grammy Awards, hands on hips, and this: "No, but we'll still go play basketball and stuff." So I asked again. Kanye replied: "The voices in my head told me no."
I guess that's it.
Still, there's a touch of cultural criticism, and whiff of self doubt, in this simple website: Every time you refresh, you get a Kanye quote supposedly passing judgment on whether you are taking art seriously, whether you are treating the gift of creativity with proper attention. Each of the lines were culled by Claire Evans and Jona Bechtolt of YACHT from West's post-Grammy rant about Beck winning Album of the Year instead of Beyonce -- about the Grammys not appreciating "real artistry" and so on. As a time waster, it's OK. As an arbitrary way to break up a mental logjam, it's oddly wise. So I sent Evans and Bechtolt an email, asked a few questions, and they responded as a true creative unit, not identifying who was answering what.
Q: Explain the reason you created this.
A: Our interest in making this site was not the result of any particular interest in the Kanye-Beck pop culture moment. It emerged because we're really interested in the new diversity of top-level domains (the site's .am domain name is the Internet code for websites from Armenia and part of Azerbaijan). We frequently buy URLs to quickly execute throw-away projects and jokes. Sometimes we make websites and don't bother to tell people about them. This was one of those, until we posted it on Tumblr, not expecting many of our 160K+ followers to care or notice, since it wasn't a very flashy post.
Q: I detect a genuine admiration in this, for what an artist can be ...
A: We're not sure if that's something you can really infer from the site, which is snarkier than pretty much anything we ever make. But yes, the question of creative work is something we think about a great deal. The site partially emerged as a result of us joking about invisible Kanyes watching over us, vetting our work: Is it art? If not, why doesn't it qualify? It's a way of checking yourself. Kanye is mostly symbolic. Most of Kanye's answers are quotes taken or interpolated from his rant, others are results of literally one Google.
Q: Is it satire or sincere or both?
A: Not sure that satire and sincerity need to be mutually exclusive. In this or any case. We feel the site is knowing, funny and stupid, and we didn't anticipate this being as zeitgeisty as it appears.
cborrelli@tribune.com
