FIGHT ISSUE VOL. B – AUS TAYLOR

War Baby is the title of Aus Taylor’s upcoming first book and exhibition visual piece symbolizing a crucial changing point in the life of the Balti-more-born filmmaker and visual artist. After having collaborated with Ye for more than four years, creative directing his latest Vultures tour amongst many other projects, and working with artists such as Paris Texas and Steve Lacy, Taylor now wants to fully dive into his storytelling passion, while working on a movie, too. His last video artwork, which he directed in collaboration with Ye, sheds a light on societal issues and the reality of sex workers and gang members in Los Angeles, where Taylor mainly lives with his daughter. The work of the 30-year-old Amer-ican is honest, pure and surrenders to the beauty found in pain. For Numéro Berlin, Taylor sat down with his two close friends, Swedish art-ist and creative director Ellen Nielsen and Baltimore-born director Alon-zo Hellerbacht. Would we know who we are if we were the only person on earth? Why is real power to be found in refusing attachment and embracing non-judgmental observation? A beautiful, reflective moment about life, creation and the beauty of scarification.

ELLEN NIELSEN Do you romanticize pain?

AUS TAYLOR
Someone really close to me asked me this, a few times. It’s not that I romanticize pain, but I feel like I’m more comfortable in pain, probably, because I’ve seen a lot of it. But my mom gave me a lot of love as a child, you know. I’m not gonna be one of those guys that’s like: “I came from nothing!” I do think that if I submerge myself in the pain, you can’t hurt me. It’s like a defense mechanism – like, I’m already swimming in the water, you can’t pour water on me, I’m already wet. But I do think pain is beautiful, though. I think scars are beautiful. Me and Alonzo are also super into scarification. It’s not that I’m romanticizing what hap-pened to cause the scar, it’s more like opening a floor to speak about it openly because I do think, especially in the Instagram era, everything is a highlight reel of people’s best moments. No one is really talking about their scars.

EN Apparently, a year ago, I told my friend Carl in India that I break my own heart, because then I feel close to God. Sometimes, I even feel like I thrive in crisis. There is something you said, Aus – that it’s a privilege to feel depressed. When you wake up in the hood, you can’t even think about how you feel. You just gotta go and do the thing you gotta do. I remember telling my psychic that I’d rather be in pain than be depressed. I think that being in pain is healthy because you feel something, which is a response to your experience. I think when we should be truly con-cerned is when we’re desensitized or numbed. Being able to have gone through so many things, which we both have, and still being able to feel the pain, actually means that you are not running from it. Sometimes, it can be very painful to embrace the unknown because it’s scary, be-cause you don’t have any control. But then you realize you never have any control anyway. You might think you do, but you really don’t.

AT
The control you have is more like a pacifier to help you feel better.

ALONZO HELLERBACH We live in a rewarding society. Whether you want to or not, you always get a response, if you romanticize pain or just post a selfie or clothes. I think the question really is whether you identify with your pain body or not, referencing Eckart Tolle. My question to both of you: Do you feel like at war with yourself or with society

AT
I think the biggest war is within yourself. Always. There’s obviously re-al world wars happening outside, actual tragedies, but I do still think the biggest battlefield is the mind and the soul, which I feel is always under attack for a lot of reasons. Without trying to romanticize it, but with the actual war, there is an enemy that you can identify and fight physically. The war within yourself is one you first have to even know about. A lot of people don’t even know that there’s a war to be fought there. And it’s not something that you could just put a Band-Aid on. I feel like I’m always at war with myself. I’m at war with my past. I’m at war with how I’m perceived. I’m at war with identifying with certain things, like my pain. And sometimes, just because I’m speaking about my pain candidly, it doesn’t mean that it’s a cry for help. It doesn’t mean
that I want you to come and save me or anything. I’m just speaking about it candidly. We talk about everything else that doesn’t even mat-ter, but I think it’s also important to talk about the war you’ve been through, which looks different for a lot of people.

AH I remember I had people in Baltimore asking me: Is Aus, like, rich now?

AT
I’m reaping what I’ve sown.

AH I’ve seen the journey. People in Baltimore knew Aus because he had a big bag that he would carry everywhere with him – because he was going between houses and would bring his clothes, he had nowhere to go. Aus, you’ve been on a long journey, you’ve worked hard. At the end of the day, you just want to enjoy life

AT
Yeah, sometimes you just want to enjoy life. Man, it’s not even that deep.

AH And also provide. I think that the thing with wars, in certain ways, is providing for who or what. You know that as you grow, you have more that you’re responsible for, and that responsibility carries. It can carry a lot, and then you become a provider, like the idea of when you go out into the world as a hunter, you know? I think there’s a balance, though, you have to deal in a vicious world and try to be an artist and a provider. And it’s like you take all of these weights, and then you struggle with trying to appreciate it.

AT
It’s been a long road. I remember when you and me did the show in Korea,
we were walking out to the middle of the stadium. It was just me
and you and you were snapping some photos of me. I had just achieved
a childhood milestone. But I was like, to be honest, the thing that is the
craziest about this moment is that my best friend of 20 years is here
with me. It’s having people along the journey. I asked myself if it is the
journey or the destination or the company that I love the most. First, I
was gonna say the journey, but no, it’s the company. Because even
when you think about the journey, you only remember it with the company
you were with. The only reason the whole tour was really bearable
is because we had somebody to laugh with. I think that’s what makes
even this conversation so special. It’s three people that understand
each other, deeper than just the surface. I always say: If you were the
only person on earth, I don’t even think you would know who you are.
We need other people to experience ourselves. People confirm reality
for you.

AH What are the things you both have to do to be able to purely create?

EN
I think in order to be a good artist, you need to know yourself and what
you need. Because if you don’t, you can’t create the environment that
you thrive in to be able to create. It’s your responsibility.

AT
Yeah. For me, I have to almost brainwash or gaslight myself into thinking
that everything I do is a passion project because I’m putting soul
into it. I love to create from a place of a child, and when you’re creating
from that place, you’re not thinking about compensation or judgment.
Ellen and I, since we met, have probably sent each other 200,000 images,
could even be a million, I feel we both speak visually. Sometimes
I might send something over that I’m working on, but I might tell Ellen
that I don’t want her opinion on it. Even though I value her opinion probably
more than most people on the whole earth, creatively speaking,
but a part of my process is that judgment is secondary to creation.
Separating the judgment aspect from a project is obviously a hard thing
to do. As an artist, you’re gonna want to judge it. But I honestly think
this is just our professionalism and our skill talking to us because we’re
trying to be so good at what we do.

EN Maybe the judgment is the moment the creation is finished. You are no longer in this trance of creating, so then you look at it for what it is.

AT
I think there’s two different kinds of judgment: One that reflects our insecurity,
thinking we are not good enough, and then there’s the professional
judgment, when the perfectionist is speaking.

AH When you’re creating, it’s about the balance, you’re competitive with yourself, wanting to improve, and that’s why friendships with great artists are so important. The environment you need in order to create and improve is so crucial.

EN
I often think about how musicians spend so much time with one another
in a studio, whereas visual artists work less collectively. The process
is more isolated. Aus is one of, if not the only person that I can lean on
artistically because of our life experiences, but also, the things he has
done bring a lot of experiences that not a lot of people around me
share. Something you taught me, Aus, is to really ask yourself if something
looks like an accident or like something a person really intended
to create.

AT One thing Ye used to tell me is that he respected that I was responsible with my opinion. When someone is showing me something to hear about my opinion, the first thing I always say is: What were you trying to do? I think it’s basic to just say you like it or you don’t like it. Maybe even irresponsible. It’s not supposed to be liked or not liked. That’s not what the goal is here – to me, at least. The question is: What was the intended goal? If someone achieved that, to be honest, then that is a success. There are times where a lot of people celebrate your work, but that doesn’t matter if you’re not satisfied with it. When you create, you’re in service to the creation, you know the intention of it.

EN
You made me be aware of being responsible with my opinion, but perhaps
even more so looking at the intention. You and I had this conversation
when we were in Italy with Ye working together: My subjective
opinion on someone else’s art really doesn’t matter. It’s about what the
person intended to do and about the values. I think opinions actually
distort the ability to see something for what it is.

AT Of course, because you’re putting your own ego on it.

EN
It’s like a projection of yourself. I think this world is actually propelling
us towards being opinionated. That’s how polarization happens…

AT Everyone is trying to have an opinion on everything. Something I spoke about with Daido Moriyama in Tokyo is: Being able to observe art and just observe it is a skill that you can learn. Sometimes, I’ll be looking at something and I’ll feel my ego being in the way, so I look at it again, just for what it actually is. It requires taking myself completely out of it. This is something that a guru would teach you. It takes time to move your own ego out the way, for all of us. In these days, with things like social media, we all have a very strong sense of self that we carry, especially being American, being from the West. I see it as a practice to observe without ego.

EN
No, for sure – which really honestly brings us back to the idea about
being detached to be connected, because that’s really what observing
is. One of the teachers of this Yogi school that I’m in, in India, she wrote
to me today that if your mind, mood, emotions, or perceptions are shifting
because of what’s happening outside, “Understand this clearly: you
are being swept away. You’ve lost your center. Remember none of it is
yours, none of it defines you in that moment. Be nothing, own nothing.
When you witness from that space of absolute emptiness, real power
begins.”

AH I’m curious, Aus, about how you want to experience life these days?

AT
I think right now I’m really annoyingly, unapologetically passionate about
doing solo work. One of my main trades is, I’m a filmmaker first, before
a spatial designer or a stage designer or creative director. My bread
and butter is storytelling and filmmaking. And in order for me to pull
this off, I have to be a bit selfish with my time, being an artist but also
a single father, which a lot of people don’t understand. I think the reason
I was feeling like that is because my cup had run dry, I was in service
of artists for basically 12 to 15 years, which I always, obviously,
loved doing. But when an artist has ideas in his or her head that are
not created or explored, I think the artist dies inside. It’s really just about
getting the ideas out. And as creators, we already have so much fucking
accumulation, it feels good to get things off the list.

AH You talked about true love versus attached love and being able to learn. I think you have to learn to come into a situation with that love of yourself. You have to teach people how to respect you, because they might not know. I feel like I learned a lot about that from both of you, how to demand that sort of respect for yourself.

AT
I think it’s like when you see a beautiful, confident girl walking down the
street, she’s gonna emit a certain aura that’s gonna put a field of protection
around her, in a way, you’re not just gonna come up to her and
say some dumb shit. It’s like that being an artist, too, I feel like you need
to have such a strong identity in your own work that when people come
to you, they’re already gonna come with a certain respect.

AH How has being a father impacted your journey?

AT
I think when you become a parent, I guess everyone’s always focused
on their
mortality. When you have a kid, you hyper focus on time and your age,
it’s a very reflective thing every single day. And also, you get to relearn
the world all over again.
It is beautiful to see the confidence that kids have, and the lack of insecurity,
which proves that insecurity is taught through what you go
through in life. Every single day that I look into my daughter’s eyes, I’m
taught something. I’m changed. She reminds me how simple life could
be, too. You really have to enjoy small things. It’s also preserving my
inner child too, and teaches me to be gentle – she reminds me that the
five-year-old I’m looking at, I also have that five-year-old inside me, and
I gotta be gentle to him, too. Being a dad is the best shit in the world,
to be honest. You also experience that the internet is an interesting
concept. It’s like this window that you can look into, but you can’t really
see all the way through. You get just a peek of people’s lives, and it
makes us feel like we know each other but we actually don’t. I think
that’s why it feels like we’re in Babylon right now. There’s so much miscommunication
and everyone’s just looking into everyone’s house, but
the sheer curtain is up. You can only see the bokeh of what’s going on
in people’s lives and then we judge off of that.