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Gimp Mask: The obligatory question: what brought you to DAC on the fourteenth day of May in the year 2002, ten years before the Mayans went extinct.
atoga: I originally lurked on the Vault 13 forums, one of my first internet experiences. Pretty sure they closed down around that time so I had to find a new place to go, and DAC was the hot up-and-comer.
GM: Who do you think are/were the most underrated DACers?
a: A few off the top of my head: Naked Lunch, Nicolai, Thor Kaufman, SuperH, Bridgeburner, johnnygothisgun, bforp, Jim the Dinosaur. There was a fairly deep roster of good posters considering how small DAC was. I feel like a lot of people were content to do their own thing rather than strictly emulating the head honchos, so the forums were a good breeding ground for weird enjoyable nonsense.
GM: As mentioned I've been going through lots and lots and lots of old DAC threads, pretty much living in the past on my spare time, but I'm a bit sad that I don't really remember anything about #fallout and #mamma'splace. Do you have any non-Rex IRC memories you'd care to share? I'm not even 100% sure if you were on IRC that's how terrible my memory is. But I'm about 90% sure so my memory is pretty great actually.
a: The only specific IRC memories I have are Rex-related and have been immortalized elsewhere. I'm trying to remember what #fallout was like; my feeling is that it was antagonistic a lot of the time. I know forum drama would crop up, and there would be additional dumb shit from NMA and Codex posters. Of course Rex was online constantly too, but I think he was mostly talking to himself about phrenology or Hitler or whatever, just pointlessly fishing for attention. #mammasplace was the VIP room, top dogs only, a chilled out black lodge.
GM: You recently (everything after 2007 is "recently" here I think) posted something about "getting art world monies". Are you Banksy? Or how are you making art world monies? I'm very artistic as you know but I have no monies.
a: Without digging, I think I was doing a residency when I posted that. Most of my money comes from design really, but I was doing work at galleries and art festivals for a while; think video projections and interactive installations. Currently what I'm doing is mostly just graphic design and video editing, which is a bit more stable.
Art money has to be one of the hardest types of money to get, if you don't want to deal with the vagaries of the market you have to be good at playing the grant lottery; maybe find an unpaid intern to handle this for you. Also fuck Bansky, but I still go back and forth between thinking he's incredibly corny vs. thinking his existence is a pretty funny bit, so I guess he's won.
GM: Are you a cool cat or a snob, in your personal opinion?
a: Would like to say I'm a pretty cool cat. I've known the high highs of being a snob but got that out of my system when I was a teenager. It's fun to hate once in a while, and I will always appreciate a good roast, but going through life cool as a cucumber is the only way.
GM: Can you briefly tell us about the evolution of your musical tastes? Also what is your favourite dubstep album of all time? I thought mine would have been Burial's Untrue (yeah yeah NOT DUBSTEP I get it sheesh. I understand, but I don't listen okay?) but I gave it a bit of a listen again and thought it was pretty shit. I listened to a lot of dubstep and DNB (:kreegle:) when I was younger but everything became a dancefloor anthem so why bother with some shitty subgenres at that point, just go straight to the source, Wet Ass Pussy am I right?
a: My main musical interests have always been hip-hop or vaguely electronic, skewed towards UK stuff. Dub, grime, dubstep, jungle, dancehall, ambient, etc., either you get the idea or endlessly listing genres isn't going to fill you in. I've mostly been listening to drill and Japanese ambient music during lockdown.
Not sure about a favourite dubstep album, don't think it was much of an album genre (have to listen to these things on the radio or in a poorly lit basement club) but I still think Burial is good. I'm a huge fan of the writer Mark Fisher, and his thoughts on hauntology/lost futures perfectly describe what Burial was trying to get at; maybe listen to it on a lonely Helsinki night and it'll work better. The Silkie and Guido albums were pretty good too. It's too bad that genre turned into car commercial music but that's the way these things often go, the same thing happened with jungle/dnb to a lesser extent; you just have to accept they're transient.
GM: As I've been conducting these interviews, I've been going through lots of old posts because I am a serious journalist. My dream is to win the Pooper prize for investigative reporting one day. Anyway it seems like circa 2007 was some sort of a watershed moment after which the once magnificent cogs of DAC slowly ground to a halt. Why 2007?
a: 2007 was the last year I regularly posted. I was pretty fucking depressed then, which paired nicely with being extremely online. I was still depressed after that, but so much so I couldn't really do anything, including fulfilling my prodigious duties as a DAC poster and Mamma's Gang member. Maybe this was a shared experience? The forum was never that popping, so it would only take a few regulars dropping out for the energy to shift.
Also, I sort of believe some years just have good or bad energy which causes them to be rupture points. 2020 solidified this concept in a lot of people's minds but I've always thought that way about 2007 as well. Is this just schizophrenia? What was special about that year? Not sure exactly, maybe it was just social contagion or something. How Kubrick.
GM: I'm not gonna ask you why you don't post here anymore because I know the answer already because it's the same answer every time: you're busy with other shit and/or this place is dead. So here's a question: do you have any ideas on how to turn this into a place where busy bois approaching middle age could be bothered to stop by every now and then and shoot the shit, short stocks, share their favourite snap chats or whatever it is that busy bois do these days?
a: I don't think much is salvageable to be honest. I do love that this site is still going on semi-broken forum software and looks like the year 2005; a sleek DAC does not feel right to me. Perhaps it's just better to age gracefully and embrace being a relic, with people showing up here and there and conversations happening over the course of months or years. Maybe it's your calling to diligently interview the old heads every so often, checking in and marking the passage of time in the style of the guy who did the Seven Up documentary series.
GM: Yeah I'm done with these interviews. Who's the president of Latvia?
a:
GM: Which artist / artwork of the olden days do you think represents DAC the best? I think this place is pretty :hieronymusbosch: but what do I know.
a: You gave a good answer already, imagine The Garden of Earthly Delights with somehow more sucking and fucking and you've got the spirit of the wasteland. Some other classics that came to mind: Jan van Eyck's paintings of hell, David Teniers the Younger's paintings of monkeys living their best lives (Monkeys Smoking and Drinking is a good one), any Tom of Finland drawing.
GM: You are white but your avatar is black. Why is that? I, on the other hand, look exactly like my avatar. Why is that?
a: I just love doing digital blackface. The interplay between a user's avatar and their posts creates a gestalt that is often incredibly compelling or funny to me; John Matrix (RIP) was a master of this form. I guess I was watching The Wire and the idea of one of the political advisors from it appearing alongside my dumb posts made me laugh. And might I add that you look delightful, your time in The Zone has been very kind to you.
GM: Thanks! You're an avid reader. Have you read the Bible? It's about a sorcerer and the sequel is about his apprentice, very dramatic, very Kubrick.
a: Never heard of it, sounds tight though.
GM: Blargh or 4too?
a: 4too was the originator of that posting style (half Markov chain, half man) so you gotta give it to him. I think I once made a thread titled something like "Blargh vs. 4too" asking this question, so either your investigative skills are second to none, or it's a classic case of great minds thinking alike.
GM: Did you like Toxic Waste Boy? I've been able to gather bits and pieces (they're long gone for the most part) and I think it was pretty terrible, no idea why people liked it.
a: From what I can remember Toxic Waste Boy was pretty funny. It was no Pals though, that's for sure.
GM: Would you rather be sippin' on lean or gin & juice?
a: Lean. Gotta be laid back to the max, and at all times.
GM: Did your life turn out the way you had hoped? Personally I would say your life didn't turn out the way I had hoped since you've all but stopped posting at DAC, whereas I've managed to stay active all this time.
a: It's pretty alright. I'm very low ambition in many ways and don't need that much to be happy. I love learning and getting good at making things, but that's the only real driving force I detect in myself. I could use more capital since the cost of living where I am is dumb and will probably continue to get worse, but most of the things I do are satisfying on some level and none of the people I regularly deal with are assholes, so can't complain too much.
I do often question whether anything I'm doing could be called a worthwhile human endeavour. A lot of art and design feels grift-y and pointless after a while, so maybe my energy would be better put elsewhere; the (extremely rare) times in my life when I've tangibly helped people have felt pretty tight actually, so maybe I should try that more. I've had way too much time on my hands since corona started, and have been ruminating on this a lot as you might imagine, but as things have dragged on and I've become more disconnected from the world, I've just gotten less certain on how to max out fulfillment. Not a very satisfying answer.
GM: Anything important/unimportant/non-important you'd like to add?
a: Thank you for your service in going through old threads and doing these interviews like a modern day Studs Terkel, I've enjoyed reading them. A few years ago I went through a lot of old shit on here as well, trying to learn the secrets of the past. While I hated reading most of my own posts, it was weirdly compelling to look back at an internet culture that is almost unrecognizable now. It actually feels pretty innocent in hindsight; I think an effect of the internet being more monocultural now is that so many people have solidified around one of a few online personality types (with well-defined writing styles, joke formats, and so on), and are incentivized to be much more calculated in how they act. In DAC's heyday, these things were much less settled.
My favourite DAC memory will always be the fake STALKER site. It still pops into my mind every once in a while, and it will never not be funny to me. But is it preserved anywhere?
