Luka Fisher is like an unofficial mayor of the Los Angeles underground. He’s usually working on an innumerable list of projects and collaborations with the city’s edgiest and most forward-thinking musicians and artists, and often acts as the connective glue between artists and just about anyone in LA’s creative realm. His emphasis on community building, mentoring, and championing other artists and individuals, and his compulsiveness to create his own artwork in all of its forms – music, paint, print-making, writing, illustration, zines, production, filmmaking, collage – come as no surprise from a person that started his artistic hustle at age thirteen following an interaction with Brian Pulido, the president and founder of Chaos! Comics.
Pulido, who spearheaded one of the largest and most successful indie comic book publishers in the world at that time, had no idea of Fisher’s pre-pubescent age when he offered him an internship at the company. Fisher rushed home, Googled Arizona’s child labor laws, found a loophole that would allow him to begin working 40 hours a week at age fourteen, talked his parents into signing a letter of consent allowing him to work, and pitched the crazy scheme to Pulido, who took Fisher up on his offer. Fisher worked off and on at Chaos! for two years, and eventually jumped onto Brian’s numerous other projects for ten years.
Those years undoubtedly stood as the catalyst for Fisher’s current formidable art presence, introducing and cultivating his now inventive DIY ethos that helps shape every aspect of his creative process and the way he collaborates with others. From working in comics, having a background in political strategy, and his extensive experiences in the art world, Fisher works ardently to help create a world where people feel freer to be themselves and have the ability to pursue their visions. Fisher leads by example, never subjecting himself to stringent guidelines for creation and obsessively operates to push himself and others to make artwork that challenges the homogeneity and generic state of current culture.
amadeus took some time to talk with our good friend Luka Fisher about working in a range of media, eradicating double standards in art, and the premiere of his debut EP Sleep Gallery, that was released on Silber Records today. Stream the new album below.
You work across a range of mediums – everything from film, paint, illustration, collage, print-making, zines, writing and music – how does your process differ when working in each media or is it more that your work is what is because everything is integral?
I believe all art is interrelated, so it doesn’t seem that crazy to jump between mediums. My process is basically the same. I work in my studio everyday, regardless of whatever else is going on in my life. I switch mediums to keep from being fatigued. When I get too tired to paint, I play music. When I get too tired to play music, or write, or whatever else, I manage and produce other projects.
With regard to my creative process, I have essentially two approaches: intuitive and conceptual. When I am just pursuing my own work, it is mostly done intuitively. I don’t inherently have to push some larger idea. I can just work by myself ,or with a close group of friends, to produce things that excite us.
But when I am developing work that supports a larger idea, my approach is more conceptual. So with things like the illustration/ conceptual art film that I did with Matthew Kaundart (for Christopher Zeischegg’s latest essay), or building out a universe for The HOLY AUTOMATIC, or my work with Terminal A, I spend a lot of time daydreaming and conducting research. I look for a creative idea that best serves the strategic interests of the project. And I hope it’s bat-shit crazy enough to be a pleasure to produce.
In what ways does music and audio influence your visual work? And vice versa? I feel like your work with music – directing music videos, making album art, producing music – and your visual artwork are completely embedded in each other.
I paint to music, and I think of images when I make music. I paint most frequently to “Plants and Rags” by PJ Harvey, “Kimberly” by Patti Smith, “Street Hassle” by Lou Reed, and “After Murder Park” by Luka Haines.
When I design for a band, I only listen to their music. Like, when I did artwork for GRYPT, Feral Kizzy or the music video for NO MORE PANIC!, I listened to those bands’ albums for hours and hours in order to immerse myself in their universe. Then I would translate my impressions into a visual language.. But it’s bigger than that… Technological advances transform societies. I think it’s the job of creatives to make sense of these changes and to humanize these tools. The development of photography freed painters from the shackles of realism and allowed them to pursue new frontiers. The development of film allowed artists to create motion pictures which, in time, came to encompass virtually all known artistic disciplines — at least, until things like video games came about.
A couple of years ago, I was reading Man Ray’s autobiography Self Portrait. He talked about how expensive cameras were when he first began making his surrealist films. I realized that just about anyone could make the kind of movies he made if they had access to an iPhone. That led me try and test the limits of smartphones through a series of experimental films and musical compositions that I did in collaboration with other artists that I called “Every Man, A Man Ray.” You can watch some of them here. In fact, I recorded the bulk of my EP, Sleep Gallery, for Silber Records on an iPhone and arranged it in garageband.
Also, art is a funhouse mirror to mainstream society. So I like to make work that is multidisciplinary and unreasonably overproduced, and then roll it out with all the fanfare that an ad agency might do for a client. You can see that approach in how I launch zines like BETEP and the THE HOLY AUTOMATIC, or my recent project with Christopher Zesichegg — where something as simple as an illustration for an essay has a flashy launch video.
Why the fuck should anyone care about your work if you don’t go all out? With all the technology that we have at our hands, we should strive to make art that is immersive, interdisciplinary and interactive.
A lot of your work centers on homoerotic notion and imagery; what draws you as an individual to this imagery?
I play with men for a variety of reasons. When I first started making art, I would do a lot of nude studies to learn how to convey the male and female forms. I found that I could get as raunchy as I wanted with the ladies and go without scrutiny. But the second that I started doing the same thing with men, many of my friends lost their minds and started teasing me about being gay.
On the one hand, it’s “whatever.” I mean, I am bisexual and I won’t be shamed into submission. When I was a teenager, my first boyfriend and I were afraid to hook up at the mall by my house because he felt that we would get the shit beat out of us. Nothing that bad ever happened, but the fact that it was a possibility is bullshit.
When people started poking fun at my art, it made me want to push things that much further. Because theres nothing shameful about the male form or art that objectifies men.
The fact that there are these double standards about body image, gender, etc… upsets me. It makes me want to make the kind of art that I want to see in the world, and to hopefully bum a bunch of people out in the process.
Do you feel like, as an artist, you have a certain obligation to take on socio-political issues and subjects – that others like to dance around and stray away from talking about – in your work?
Everything is political. As an artist, I feel an obligation to be true to myself, to pursue what interests and excites me, and to present that to the world. If it ends up being “political,” in the sense that it upsets other people, then I am just exposing the limits of free thought and self expression that is inherent in our culture.
My goal is to help create a world where people feel freer to be themselves and have the ability to pursue their visions. I am trying to do this by both pushing myself, and my work, to the limits, and by placing a strong emphasis on community building, mentoring, and championing other artists and individuals that I believe in.
How does your day to day in Los Angeles inform your creativity? What’s currently inspiring you?
In my day to day, I work a lot of odd jobs. I do anything from Russian translation, to coordinating film productions, to consulting. Some folks that want to hate on LA say that its a city of broken dreams. And I might even agree. But that’s why I like LA. Because the folks that live here are willing to break themselves to pursue their dreams. I’ve been in so many places where people are just so complacent and never even dare to be who they want to be in this world. So, I draw a lot of my inspiration from my chance encounters with Angelenos who let their guard down and tell me about their dreams, and from everything else that I experience around me. I did a lot of field recordings for my EP Sleep Gallery while I was doing my day to day. And I integrate a lot of everyday life into my work — like, parking tickets.
Because I’ve spent most of this year working on film sets, I currently draw a lot of inspiration from the cast of filmmakers that I work with and their ability to do a lot with nothing.
Why the fuck should anyone care about your work if you don’t go all out? With all the technology that we have at our hands, we should strive to make art that is immersive, interdisciplinary and interactive.
We love that in your interview with DNA you describe yourself as, “I am an artist who plays the role of sleazy 70s era, personality-driven rock’n’roll manager,” care to elaborate a little? Do you find your collaborators more like muses to your creative process?
I feel like we are living in an era that is extremely generic and conservative; at least culturally. And it seems like a lot of the “gatekeepers” have failed to champion interesting or controversial work. I don’t know if it’s because they are afraid to actually stand for something, or if its because they are just endlessly chasing social media trends and their perception of what sells (and are afraid to try something new). Whatever the case may be, we are surrounded by a lot of bad art.
After years of seeing my friend’s bands turned down by record labels because they didn’t have a “Top 40 sound” or write mean spirited, half ironic songs about Pizza or whatever on a Casio, and having watched them fail to get press write-ups because they didn’t have enough “likes” and lacked the requisite “fuck you money” to afford a publicist, I decided to do something about it — as an artist and producer.
So, I took what I knew from working in comics, my background in political strategy, and my experiences in the art world, and applied those lessons as the “producer”/ “manager” for bands that spoke to me (i.e. The Sixth Son, Terminal A). Later, I joined forces with Manuel V and Rio Warner, at Records Ad Nauseam, as their in-house A&R Rep.
I was immediately attracted to Records Ad Nauseam, because they put out what they liked regardless of the consequences. They are more interested in what’s possible than what has already happened. Since we don’t have the resources of more connected labels, we have to swing big and act with intention. We have total dedication, which in practice often means wearing silly outfits and engaging in shenanigans. And yes, my collaborators are definitely my muses. They allow me to play in all the universes that they’ve built for themselves. It’s a really interesting experience to kind of enter someone else’s subjective space.
What do you love most about collaboration – you’re constantly working with someone or something.
It’s really easy to end up doing the same thing over and over with your art. It’s like being stuck on a creative hamster wheel. I find that working with other folks interjects an element of chance. It allows me to step outside of my paradigm and try something new. And I love that, when I work with others, I end up creating something larger than either of us. That never would have existed without our brief encounters.
All photography thanks to Gina Canavan.
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- Photo thanks to High Creative..
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- Photo by Gina Canavan.
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- Photo by Gina Canavan.
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- Photo by Gina Canavan.
