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November 15, 2005
The mysterious 'Tapeman'
Spent last week in Wellington and met quite a few new people... kind of through The National Grid project. I wanted to talk about this guy here in particular, as I'm going to be interviewing him for The Grid, but also because I think his practice relates through to this research topic. I also want to talk about Kaleb Bennet in this respect, but first Tapeman...
I first saw Dylan Herkes fronting the band Pro Drag when they played in Lyttelton a couple of years ago. I was really impressed, and when I heard that The Chandaliers were playing at the Wunderbar, and that Dylan was in this I had to go along. The Chandaliers were very cool and I got the CD. Sometime after that Anna ended up interviewing Dylan about a new thing he was doing called Tapeman and The Tapemen. Then quite recently when Anna curated the Cortina show I saw a whole lot of posters Dylan had done for various gigs that Cortina had been involved in. It was about then that I thought I'd like to maybe try and write about Dylan's posters for The Grid . . . so was keen to hook up with Dylan in Wellington last week.
Having now actually met and talked to Dylan I'm even more intrigued. I realised that the Pro Drag gig was not the first time I saw him. When I'd moved to Wellington about 5 years ago now, I'd seen a really great b-grade horror at the Fringe festival that was on. The film was Weekend Werewolf, and Dylan, as Director, had actually talked to the audience! Dylan is being awarded a certificate of some kind at the Film Archive this thursday night for having made NZ's first werewolf movie.
So... I'm going to interview Dylan, but I'm going to interview him in his persona as 'Tapeman', and I too will take on my alter ego 'The Rev. Holden Gunn'. Through this email conversation I'm wanting to communicate something about Dylan's practice to the audience of The National Grid, but also, and more importantly here, I'm wanting to explore the obvious cross-overs between his practice and mine... his interest in monsters, surf guitar, vintage gear, reverb and echo, etc... but also the multiple characters he inhabits; Voodoo Savage, Night Fever, Segue Lugosi, and Tapeman (that I know of!?). I'm thinking about this in relation to my on-stage persona and his recent appearances in my design practice...
Posted by Luke Wood at 11:20 AM
November 08, 2005
The National Grid, blogging, and New York!
While I haven't been actively concerned with my research topic for a couple of weeks (hence the silence here) ó I've been packing up and getting my shit together to go to New York next week ó I have been dealing with the national grid project a bit. We've received funding to print the first issue, and Jonty and I will be working on this over the next couple of months, pulling together contributions, content, and designing it (printing February, and distributing in March 06).
And while this blog's been a little quiet, I have been investing myself in the blog on the national grid site. Following our initial frustration with the fact that other people (who?) would only take part in blogging if something was being bagged (bitchy!), we almost took it offline. Discussing this though we kind of got back to what we'd originally planned the site/blog to be... initially a conversation space for Jonty and I to work out what this publication project might be, how it could work, what we might talk about, etc. We decided to set ourselves the task of systematically (once a week) posting a new topic, and (taking turns) replacing the national grid logo. Personally I'm quite enjoying ó a 'designed' conversation between 2 people in 2 different cities who share some of the same concerns/interests, but who have quite different ways of expressing these ó the weekly juxtaposition of mine and Jonty's alternating logos on the home page, and the way we write about whatever appears on the blog. This seems to suit our desire that the grid should grow/spread organically... as we develop our conversation, perhaps more people will want to take part? Who knows? I think the important thing is that it's giving us a chance to try and contextually locate ourselves and the project.
Anyway, I go to NYC on the 20th of this month and I will be jumping headfirst into this research topic as soon as I get set up there. I will attempt to respond to the GRC feedback below either later this week or early next week.
Posted by Luke Wood at 12:30 PM