Ian Vanek: Japanther in 3-D (Dinosaur Death Dance) (with video)

How did your band, Japanther, end up participating in a performance-art biennial?
IV: We don’t put much stock in the world of bands and music, and that’s the world we supposedly exist in. We look at life and we laugh with life, and I think a lot of people look at life and take it maybe a little too seriously. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of when you think of performance art. Performance art is just a label, and a bland and dreary one at that.

There aren’t many music groups included in Performa07.
Japanther isn’t really a band—it’s more like a friendship. There’s just two of us, Matt Reily and I. Since I’ve been a little boy, I’ve been the kind of person who’d get the whole neighborhood to put on a play, and I’d be building up the set. This is an extension of that, and Japanther is an extension of that friendship. We find ourselves with people like [artist] Dan Graham and it’s open-ended: We’re willing to work with them and talk to them about their lives.

How do you think performance fits in the digital revolution?
The merit and the quality will still be there, and how much time you spend on something. There will always be artists, the same way there will always be people who want to be artists but aren’t of the caliber that excites people. There will always be an underground, and things like YouTube just created a wider underground. That scares the shit out of some people, but it excites me. We’re building a tool kit for the future, for our sons’ sons. The tool kit involves songs that they can sing, dances they can watch and mimic, very short videos that we intend to publish on our YouTube page. A lot of people make the mistake of being Luddite, but even if you’re a day behind, you’re fucked. But at the same time we talk to our elders—people like Dan Rimbaud, Penny Rimbaud, RoseLee Goldberg.

Can you tell us a bit about what you’re planning for your Performa piece?
IV: It’s a lot like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. That definitely influenced us: their friendship, their prediction that two men could save the world. We were saddened by all the shit happening in the world but instead of saying “Oh, Katrina…oh, Iraq,” we thought, What do we know that works? We put together a tool kit where we could talk about rites and rituals, becoming a man, becoming a woman, the food that you eat when you get on your own and you start paying your own bills. It’s a magic space, a multimedia tool kit. It’s basically a playground you can dance and sing in.

Japanther in 3-D (Dinosaur Death Dance) is at P.S. 122 (150 First Ave at 9th St, 212-477-5288) Nov 15–19.

Japanther: "Satie"

Also see: Japanther: live a the Whitney (part 1, part 2)