Interview

Michel Auder in The Feature.

If you had shot homemade footage obsessively for the last 40 years, perhaps your movie would be as exciting or as beautiful as that of artist and filmmaker Michel Auder's. Then again, maybe not.  Auder is the former husband of both "superstar" actress Viva of the Factory and photographer Cindy Sherman, which itself promises some memorable footage. With co-director Andrew Neel, he's selected choice moments from the 5,000 hours of archival footage in order to create The Feature, a three-hour homage to his life—some of it fact, some of it fiction. Auder probably doesn't know the difference. Narrating his life with his heavily French-accented English, Auder guides us through frolicking beach scenes, orgiastic sexual pursuits, and drug-fueled nights. Interview sits down with Auder to discuss how he made the film, his life in New York, and making movies without actors.


ADAM KLAPPHOLZ: You moved to New York more than thirty years ago?

MICHEL AUDER: 1970, so thirty-eight years. I don't even remember; it was too long ago. I started to make films in France, and I was always obsessed with America, but I came here by accident. I made a film in France with Viva, who became my wife, who was an Andy Warhol superstar. I met her in Paris, and I had a little money to make a film called Keeping Busy. She was starring in it with another Warhol star that she introduced me to, who was Louis Waldon, who is also in my film now, forty years later. I came to New York and then I got some money to make another film called Cleopatra. Suddenly, we were married, and then suddenly we had a baby. We were living in the Chelsea Hotel, and then things happened, and I'm still here.

AK: Did you got to the Factory a lot?

MA: I was on the outside observing, and visiting the Factory every once in a while, but I never worked with Andy or was in his films. He was around a lot because he was the confidant—he and my ex-wife Viva talked to each other every day. Until 1971/72, we were going out, dinners, stuff like this. People have a tendency to think I was part of Warhol's Factory—I never was.  I've always been independent.

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Vladamir Collage, by Jeremy Kost

Photographer Jeremy Kost, best known for his candid Polaroids of young men with killer abs—not to mention celebrities, post-op transsexuals, and club kids—premiered his latest show "After the Party" at the Dactyl Foundation last week. "After the Party" curated by P.S. 1's Tim Goossens. The show delves into a world of desire and sexual attraction, with Kost shooting quintessentially beautiful young men in various stages of undress. These photos, unaltered by makeup or special effects, are exhibited in a grid or in a collage of various photographs, to create narrative, and themes of the loss of innocence. Kost has upcoming shows this Fall with Conner Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C., and with Nuke Gallery in Paris. He sat down with Interview to discuss what motivates his art, his life as an Internet account manager, and how a 250-lb. kid from Texas met Michael Stipe.


ADAM KLAPPHOLZ: I read that you fell into photography. What were your career plans before that?

JEREMY KOST: I was a global account manager for an Internet company. When I lived in DC, I used to wear shorts and flip-flops and had a big huge mohawk. Those were also the Internet days, circa '99, when you could do that. And then I moved to New York, when I transferred with that job, but once I got to New York, I had to wear a suit and tie.

AK: People know a little bit about you from your nightlife personality.

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Every week in New York City carries a different theme. Hot off the heels of Fashion Week, New Yorkers slid back into their pumps for the Armory, which now offers double the promenade—two full piers of artwork, Pier 94 and the new Pier 92, or Armory Show–Modern. It also comes with its own onslaught of parties, after-parties and corresponding extravaganzas. Last night was MoMa's $100 benefit for the museum and P.S.1. The evening's main show was Downtown cult band Gang Gang Dance, who never get onstage before 4 AM—that is, unless the art historical canon comes a-knocking. So it was a rare opportunity for Art Basel's Marc Spiegler and MoMA's Klaus Biesenbach, older board members, European bankers in leather boots, and young girls in fur to see Brian DeGraw, Lizzie Bougatsos, Tim Dewit, and Josh Diamond at a Marc Jacobs-punctual 11 PM. In spite of the free absinthe, the impressive light show on the ceiling, a menacing Midtown on the horizon, and Bougatsos' virtuosic drumming, it was the occasional drag queen, and the members of the band's tour rider who entered gratuit, who got the most out of this early bird special.

For more coverage of the MoMA Armory event and Gang Gang Dance, see Art in America's The Scene. (Photo above, Gang Gang Dance and bottom-left, DJ Justin Miller. Photos by Scott Rudd, courtesy MoMA. Bottom Right, David Sherry and Erin Krause, photo by Alex Gartenfeld.)

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