Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

I just read the interview/article with Casey Spooner and Warren Fischer [“2 Cool 2 Graduate,” F News, May 2003]. I’m not sure if the author of this article knew this, but Fischerspooner was also founded by Kent William Albin, another SAIC alum (’93) and a contributor to Fischerspooner from its inception until mid-2001, as their Chief Information Officer. I’m sure Casey and Warren did not mention this to your reporter, as they have tended to erase him from their history/myth, but since this article appeared in a publication of Albin’s alma mater in his hometown of Chicago, I thought it was information of which your readers should be aware. Additionally, he was the only one of the three to actually graduate.

I wrote my art history senior thesis (at Barnard College, in NYC) about the use of myth in contemporary art, with a focus on Fischerspooner. While Warren focused on music, and Casey focused on performance and generally being charismatic and fashionable, Albin focused on developing the underlying concepts central to the meaning of Fischerspooner, and generating the myth that led to Fischerspooner’s relatively quick rise to fame (an activity entwined in their philosophical basis) — seizing the art world’s love of the new and the exclusive, particularly at a time when the art world in New York was quite stagnant. He used the fact that the media would eat them up because they provided content — i.e. amazing visuals, photographs, and a story about a performance that had to be “seen to be believed.”

Albin also “courted” key players from various influential art, fashion, and media circles within New York, and, most significantly, in Germany, i.e. DJ Hell and Klaus Biesenbach of Kunstwerke and P.S. 1. The “fandom,” so to speak, of both these giant international figures in their respective worlds lent Fischerspooner immense credibility in the art and music communities abroad. Fischerspooner owes much of their current success to the influence of both Hell and Biesenbach.

Also unknown to most (by design, of course), the lyrics to “Emerge” were penned by Albin as well, as a kind of artist’s statement reflecting on the idea that artists didn’t need to “emerge” as “emerging artists” — toil away, unknown, for years, relying on grants and day jobs to produce their work. Instead, why not generate myth instead, Albin reasoned, to inspire contemporary patrons in the form of Levi’s to sponsor your elaborate work, and enable you to create the life you want to lead from art. This is just one of the many ideas that he contributed to Fischerspooner, and, I believe, they are at the very foundation and core of understanding the significance of what Fischerspooner is, or at least what they were in those days. Yes, they also emphasize visceral pleasure and spectacle and celebrity, but in pop, those are of course the elements that drive the myth.

Beyond Kent William Albin, there were many, many people involved with Fischer-spooner early on who are generally omitted from the story that Casey and Warren (and their publicists) spin for the press. As someone who is interested in how myth and stories are told, I felt I had to comment!

Sincerely,
Renata Espinosa

Correction

The photograph that appeared on page 12 [“Arts Administration Students Explore Prisoner Inventions”] of the May 2003 edition of F News was incorrectly credited. It should have been credited to Jeffrey McMillian.

F News also neglected to credit Melysha Sargis as the editor of the Spring 2003 edition of Ink, F News’ literary arts supplement.

F News regrets these errors.