Ira Isaacs, "poo porn" producer about to go on trial for obscenity, interviewed
Susannah Breslin interviews the 57-year-old scat video producer who is at the center of what may be the "most extreme obscenity trial in U.S. history." Of note: he compares himself to Picasso, Mozart, and Kafka, and does not consider his work to be pornography.
Snip from her intro:
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post entitled "The 2 Girls 1 Cup Defense," focusing on the case of Ira Isaacs, a Los Angeles based director of coprophagy and distributor of bestiality films who was indicted last summer by the Department of Justice's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force for various obscenity-related offenses. Not long after that post went up, I got an email from Mr. Isaacs himself. He said if I wanted to interview him, I could. So I did. That interview is now online at Radar Online: "But Is It Obscene?"And snip from her Radar interview:
RADAR: How did you get started making these movies?Link to Radar piece, and here's the post on Susannah's blog with more out-takes and background. (Photo, via Radar: Getty Images). [Ed. note to Susannah: you win at internet dumpster-diving, dude. Seriously.]
IRA ISAACS: When the Internet was happening, I wanted to enter it in some way, and I wanted to do something different. In the past, you needed a lot of money and people to make a movie. Until video cameras were invented. Then the Internet was a big breakthrough for distribution. So, I started making a lot of money with these fetish shock videos. I was distributing shock art films from Europe.What do you mean by "shock art films"?
You talk about art? What is art? Art is what artists do. If it shocks you, it's art. One of the things art should do is make you think and question things. Shock art has always been something that has been a very popular thing through the 20th century and the 21st century. People used feces as shock art. There was a guy who shit in a can and sold it for the price of gold. [In 1961, Italian conceptual artist Piero Manzoni canned his feces in 90 tins and sold them for the price of their weight in gold.] So, the Internet allowed me to be an artist, to reach a lot of people. It allowed me to be on the edge, to do what I would never do as a fine artist. If you're going to paint, you've got to compete with Picasso. If you want to write a great classical music piece, you're competing with Mozart. I would never write anything like Kafka's The Trial. If I was going to make a mark, I was going to do it in some extreme shock way.
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Good Riddance to bad "art"!
I for one am tired of so called "shock artists" clamoring to make a buck as artists and free speech advocates. What they do is too easy and only requires bad taste and no class. Real cultural contributions require talent and hard work.
So if I had my 86 year-old Aunt fellate my poodle and post it on the web, am I too a genius? Do I also get interviews and high profile blog coverage?
Issacs is a sleazy idiot and deserves jail time.
Am I alone here?
We send people to jail for bad taste and a lack of class now?
#1
Step 1: Google "Jackson Pollock"
Step 2: Facepalm
You are quite definitely alone here. Anything that the artist puts meaning into is art, and arguably anything the viewer brings meaning to is also art. This was generally agreed upon in the early 20th century, with the urinal installation, etc.
The difference between pornography and art is nonexistant.
I certainly hope you're alone, loopfiend. I loathe scat porn, but I loathe obscenity trials a lot more. People shouldn't be thrown in prison for making things that you think are gross, when you don't have to look.
Though, if they want to indict him for animal cruelty (the bestiality films), I'm okay with that.
And then there is this:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24513
On an abstract level, that is to say, from a safe distance, I'm pretty open minded about what constitutes art. I can't quite put myself in the salt-of-the-earth-guy objecting to these artsy farts. I doubt you're alone Loopfiend, still, I'm not standing with you.
But I'm not a fan of the gross stuff.
As an art student in the days when conceptual art was all the rage, I remember being compelled to watch Chris Burden's Starry Night video in which he slithers, bare chested, across a section of asphalt on which broken glass has been thickly spread. I was revolted. In the discussion that followed, after my fellow sophomores had fallen all over themselves going on about how brilliant the piece was, I said something to the effect that It struck me that Burden was getting off the piece and he was like a carnival geek who'd found an upscale audience, and good for him, but YUCK.
Later that term I met a grad student who claimed to have been a classmate of Burden's. The story this fellow told me was that Burden's first shock piece had merely been a publicity stunt to draw attention to his paintings. He'd had a friend shoot him in the hand. And when the critics practically wet themselves over the artistic significance of the shooting (Kind of their Rorschach reading of the blood splatters, don't you think?)and had ignored Burden's paintings, he took the hint and dropped the painting, but went on to have himself crucified on a Volkwagon and all kinds of other yucky stuff.
Does that make it all less valid as art? I don't know. I don't like it, but I don't think that is relevant. I think art is largely about the intention, and I don't know that Burden's intent was as pure as I'd like. But if he'd gone on to paint like Diebencorn, I wouldn't be questioning his motives, because in that sort of situation, the work stands on its own.
On the flip side, when you have guys like Rudy Guiliani telling us what is and isn't art, you just have to say, OH FUCK OFF RUDY.
"If you're going to paint, you've got to compete with Picasso. If you want to write a great classical music piece, you're competing with Mozart."
And if you're going to make a video, you've got to compete with... Why I Eyes Ya Cat?
So if I had my 86 year-old Aunt fellate my poodle and post it on the web, am I too a genius?
Hell, yeah!
Am I alone here?
Hell, yeah!
Whether it's art or not is irrelevant.
Whether it's revolting or not is irrelevant.
Whether it's obscene or not is irrelevant.
The legality of something should have nothing to do with these things. IF there is no harm to others leave it be.
@#1: if you could convince your 86-year old aunt to fellate your poodle, that alone would be mark of genius.
and how does Duchamp fit into this?
Philosophy of Art is a very interesting subject. I took a course about ten years ago and we read and discussed various people's (e.g. Kant, Santayana, Nietzsche) views on aesthetics. Kant wasn't very interesting in terms of what art actually is, but he did have some interesting things to say on how to look at it. Basically, he suggests being impartial. This school of thought, I think, would suggest distancing one's self from the socially taboo nature of the work, but since that is the intention of the "artist", it would probably also say that it isn't art. For myself I don't really care if it is art, or if some group thinks it should be called art; it's more a matter of whether I think it's good or not. I don't.
I must be odd because I think the impulse to shock is not an artistic impulse, it's political. I am certainly aware that there are art theorists who feel that shocking the bourgeoisie is what art should strive to do.
I don't buy it. I think that what happened is that people who wished to advance a political agenda saw that successful practicing artists produced works that at times shocked. They then convinced young artists that the route to greatness was the easy path of canning your own shit, putting it out on the gallery floor and selling it.
I think that what an artist produces is art. Even if it is shit on a stick. At the same time if some hack comes along and creates shit on a stick, it isn't art. I kind of think this fellow falls into the latter rather than the former category but I'll never know. I'm sure as hell not going to be seeing it.
My entire life is an underappreciated piece of performance art.
Sound implausible? Perhaps that's because calling something "art" should not be sufficient for making it art. The art world seems to have been given over entirely to the subjective, so that the vast majority of people consequently view most so-called artists (especially of this sort) with disdain.
To say, as Noen does, that "what an artist produces is art" simply begs the question: who counts as an artist? Am I an artist if I say I am? If that's the case, people should be throwing money at me whenever I interact with them because they've got a front row seat for a fantastic piece of avant garde performance art.
Another possibility: is being an artist merely a matter of convention, i.e., of what other people think (and are willing to pay for)? In that case, any conman who can convince pretentious elites to spend millions on the shit he produces (in some cases, quite literally) becomes an artist.
Many criteria of art could be offered, but it seems to me that the problem with art today is that there are no agreed-upon standards (except, perhaps, that whatever can be found in a museum counts as art, although this leaves out a lot too).
I'm a philosopher, but I almost entirely avoid aesthetics/philosophy of art largely because it seems to take on one of two forms: a relativistic, postmodern free-for-all; or an unapologetically political endeavor, concerned more about changing society (usually by implementing some questionable leftist program) than about beauty and taste.
Nevertheless, while I would not call what Isaacs does art, I agree with those commentators who say this is not relevant to the issue of legality. I'm not necessarily entirely opposed to obscenity regulations (for instance, it seems reasonable to forbid certain potentially offensive displays in public areas that people can't avoid), but I would prefer they be extremely limited in scope.
Isaacs certainly does not deserve jail time, despite how much of a tasteless hack he may be.
I know that this opinion will be unpopular but not everything an artist produces is art even if the artist says it is. Most artists are hacks that just have the ability to sting together BS that sounds like it means something.
You can make everything seem like art. We as humans have the fantastic ability to think abstractly and artists use that to communicate ideas in different and new ways that stretch the bounds of normal perception. However, art for the sake of shock usually (in my opinion) is not art.
For most practitioners of shock art there is often the explanation that they're doing it to promote "discussion" of some sort as a euphemism for inciting anger or disgust. They also often say that they do something "without judgement" or other terms that make it seem as if they are impartial or uninvolved in the specifics of the action/art while still receiving the attention for it.
How far are we supposed to allow artists to go? Is a serial killer an artist because he/she kills people in specific ways with an artistic intent and with a specific message? How about a suicide? Or a group suicide? What about the anorexic/bulimic girl sculpting her body into her ideal of beauty? How about the people that mutilate girls genitalia for social or religious purposes? There is a meaning and something to discuss in all these things, but does that make it art? Does that mean we should support such artists?
Specifically this applies to the girl from yale that someone linked an article above about. What she did was potentially harmful to herself as well as creating life with the specific intent to destroy it. It wasn't an accidental impregnation nor was it impregnation by rape or other traumatic means. AND her purpose "was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body." I can't help but think that the link between that idea and what she did was tenuous at best. Certainly it applies to her body, but she's not the only one affected.
She could have chosen to get a full body tattoo or under skin implants or mutilate herself in some way that would address her topic. In the way she did it it seems more attention getting for the controversy around the subject than for the human body as art.
scatologically speaking, many of you are full of shit :-) certainly the germans and dutch have done much better scat, the brazilians are new to the game. this will go away with bush. what i want to know, has anyone been harmed by this?
As an addendum to my original post, the comments and a Washington Post article suggest that the girl from Yale was doing performance art, and that it was faked.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/17/AR2008041702519.html
Which means she's either lying to reduce the backlash or an attention whore.
The Yale thing was almost immediately outed as a hoax. So, attention whore.
I hope he goes to jail and gets shocked.
Although the Yale administration said it was a hoax immediately, Shvarts wrote an article for YDN after that saying that it is not a hoax and that the administration is wrong. The article came out the same day as the WaPo article, so they're operating off of older information there.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24559
The rest of the piece after the initial assertion of veracity is the worst kind of postpostmodern baloney. It could have been written by a simple computer given a small vocabulary of buzzwords.
The administration was definitely lying when they said it was a hoax. That doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't, of course, but the artist still says she actually did it.
Guys, seriously. Everything is art, art is undefinable.
"Does this mean I should pay everyone!? For everything!?"
No, it just means that what you pay for and what you don't have the same relevance. It's subjective, which is pretty much the whole point.
Anyway, I agree with the "It shouldn't matter" sentiment. No one's being harmed, they should leave Isaacs alone.
Yeah, I was sort of half following the Yale thing, it's a hoax, no it isn't. OMIZOG, HTF is this going to affect alumni donations? Does not do to piss off the old blues. Even if I found the original piece grotesque (real or no, it's a glurtfest), watching Yale scramble has been vastly amusing. And if THAT was the intent of the artist, well...
And of course, an awful lot of artist of all sorts are in it for the attention.
I haven't any academic background in philosophy. (I do know that the more philosophers you have on any committee, the less likely it is that the committee will actually accomplish anything in a timely fashion. And for some reason, they seem to get into sparring matches with the mathematicians. Which is entertaining, but not productive.) So my philosophical approach to art is pretty loose.
Obviously, once photography and similar technologies appeared, the role of the artist in society changed. The name of the game was no longer primarily about having the skills to use a series of conventions to make visual representations. First artists started playing with the visual images, then they started messing with your head, with concepts and ideas. Hurrah sez I, all to the good.
In no time at all, we've jumped from signed urinals to silkscreens of canned soup to giant curtains dividing valleys.
If getting the public to discuss art, to consider the role of art is the point, then you've really got to give Christo the nod. Who has done a better job of getting the most people to have real conversations about what art is? The thing about poop art, about the shocking things, is, yes they get a reaction. But also they'll have people putting up walls and then they're running so hot emotionally, that they don't think. They have a kneejerk response. And sometimes that's a fine thing for a piece of art to do, but when it has been done and done and done, it doesn't get you anywhere.
Christo could get cabbies and their fares, folks in the diner, folks on line at the post office arguing and debating and discussing what art was and wasn't and thinking about the relevance art had in their lives. I think that's a good thing. Pieces like Valley Curtain were inclusive without being dumbed down. What's better than that?
The poop art, the mutilation art, the infect yourself with parasites performance art aren't invalid, but they aren't as effective. For one thing, it starts becoming pretty derivative. Yeah, here we go with more bodily fluids. After a point it becomes like dirty words scribbled on a restroom stall. We aren't provoked in a way that produces thought, we're just annoyed.
A conversation about what art is, is good. Art is not simply oil paintings on canvas of landscapes and portraits and still lifes. Art is a whole lot of things. Art is pretty damn open-ended.
The biggest problem with poop art is that it inspires the tedious anti-intellect response in people who are uncomfortable with things that aren't immediately easily pigeonholed. These are the guys who aren't comfortable with paintings that aren't by Rockwell, by food that isn't meat and potatoes, by music that isn't pop, by travel outside of theme parks.
And their responses, the old "My two year old could do that." are so predictable, so boring and possible the only thing more derivative and pointless than the poop art itself.
The most revealing part of the interview was his acknowledgment of the greatness of Mozart, Kafka, and Picasso... and the fact that he couldn't compete with them.
Unable to match their artistic skill, he expresses himself with shit.
There are craftsman who built cathedrals more than 800 years ago that still inspire awe.
But how will our generation be remembered? Will our feces be proudly displayed alongside classical Greek statuary?
Many have asked, whether anyone was hurt by this... but when considering art, the question should rather be what does it say about our culture? No culture can be saved by putting "artists" on trial. But there can be no doubt that such art deeply impoverishes us as a society. It enervates our creativity, and creates a world without beauty or virtue. But sadly, some of you are already too jaded by these works to see this.
the guy does scat vids?
jail time for obcenity for 2 girls 1 cup?
In Australia we call people like you WOWSERS
Proffessionally OUTRAGED, and you love it.
But there can be no doubt that such art deeply impoverishes us as a society. It enervates our creativity, and creates a world without beauty or virtue.
Right, because a few people making scat porn means no one else is making beautiful art or exercising their creativity at all.
...wait, what?
One of the modern, established conventions of art is the ethic that art can and should be used to challenge the conventions of the time. We may not like poop-pop-art, but perhaps that's the point. If you can become interested enough in a piece of art to comment about it, then it might very well be "good" art.
I think Isaacs is pretty clever. Facing possible jail time for breaking the law he was smart enough to con boingboing into a conversation about his 'art'. His lawyer is most likely hitting the printscreen button right now.
Brian: While boingboing may be one of the more popular blogs out there that aren't exclusively about videogames, I think you may be getting ahead of yourself by saying artists will use it as a stepping stone to success. ;)
Pretty much everything Pipenta said I agree with.
I once got into an argument with a woman on Craig's list about Thomas Kinkade. She was going on and on about what a great artist he is and how we shouldn't criticize him because he is "the painter of light!!!". What really disgusted me was her constant complaint that we were persecuting her because she was a Christian (as if we were not) and that she was such a poor victim. Such a poor little white Christian persecuted minority. Not an exaggeration, she literally believed that.
"there can be no doubt that such art deeply impoverishes us as a society."
Perhaps, at least in America, society deserves to be impoverished. A shit culture deserves shit art. Very few things disgusted me more than the media's reaction to the murder of Jon Bennet. It really laid bare at least for me how sick our culture is. The media got off on her murder and pimped her better than any pedo could.
America loves shit. It's media and politicians serve up great steaming plates of shit to the American public and they just love it. They get out their spoons and gobble it up. They look up and they smile, shit oozes from their teeth and they lick those plates clean and beg for more shit. Well then give 'em what they want.
I do know that the more philosophers you have on any committee, the less likely it is that the committee will actually accomplish anything in a timely fashion. And for some reason, they seem to get into sparring matches with the mathematicians. Which is entertaining, but not productive.
I've never heard of a committee of philosophers, other than some academic faculty group deciding on what the department is going to spend its money on or what poor schlep is going to be admitted to its graduate program.
As far as getting into scraps with mathematicians, the only thing I can remember is a math student claiming that all logic is really just Boolean algebra, and since Boole was a mathematician, logic is a part of math and not philosophy.
Noen, one of the nice things about our American culture is that it allows for poop art and everything else too. What we allow ourselves to see and question (is it art?) is just as important, if not more so, than what our government allows will us to see and question.
What is the deal with the Jews and their "shock art"? Exactly who are they trying to shock? "Mainstream America"? Through movies and television, Jews have created mainstream America! Ha! They aren't the fringe group they imagine themselves to be.
I recommend Michael Alexander's book "Jazz Age Jews".
From the Amazon editorial review:
Alexander argues that Jewish outsider status was a theological phenomenon. Jews who migrated from Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought with them the belief that "humiliation and alienation were signs of being God's chosen people."
Their stories, as told by Alexander, are "are about making it but thinking you haven't. They are about being there but believing you are held back." They offer succor to all Americans who "despite evidence of their own success, understand themselves best by identifying with those who have least."
A few posters have said that whether or not this poop stuff is art is irrelevant. Actually, it's all that's relevant because the dude is being tried for obscenity and the just about the only way out for him is to declare the stuff is art. Part of the definition of obscene is that the work "taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
Whether or not it's obscene is also relevant, because that's the reality of the law. That doesn't mean it's a good law -- but it's still the reality.
Another poster said intent was crucial in determining whether or not it's art. I happen to agree with that personally, but I don't know that I'm ready to declare that a universal truth. I think it's safe to say based on his many interviews that Isaac's intention was to make a boatload of money, and if a better, quicker avenue involved a website of cute pictures of kittens, he'd've taken that route and to hell with the poop eaters and goat f*ckers who no longer feel alone thanks to the social service his videos perform in ending the marginalization of these fetishists.
Isaacs distributed a bunch of poop eating and bestiality videos so that he could make a boatload of money from guys who jerk off to this stuff. They are not jerking off to it because they think it's art. They are jerking off because poop eating gives them a woody. Art never entered the picture until the Feds raided the joint.
At the point when we declare everything to be art, there ceases to be art. I'd love to see these obscenity laws overturned just so we could go back to calling poop eating poop eating and not have to justify it with a bunch of idiotic comparisons to Duchamp...but to call this stuff art...well, if I was on the jury I'd give it a big thumbs down.
Back to the obscenity law: why oh why can't they claim the work has scientific or political value instead of being art? Surely making tons of money forcing people to eat sh*t or getting f*cked by dogs works better as a metaphor for politics than it succeeds as art.
Man! I just got through with a comment session about all this over on the Coop painting post; Institutional theory of art (so "Fountain" by Duchamp is a weird synchronicity), high vs. low, the whole nine yards, and here this thread pops up! But I'm too tired to contribute!
I will add that the Chris Burden piece where he crawls across the glass is excellent. You know he bought air time on commercial TV and inserted the footage into 1970's prime time? How awesome is that? Youtube has the clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyQ8en-la-g&feature=related
Keep in mind this flashed on between Sears ads and commercials for "Dallas" or whatever.
Performance artists are pretty ripe for comparison on these threads, I know.
And Pipenta @21, well put
I don't considered myself to be an artist and I am not aware of any guidelines commonly accepted for judging whether something is art or not. But if I had to choose on the basis of my sense of beauty alone between, say, watching a flick about some "assassin" or "psycho" running around murdering people by surprise and watching a very beautiful woman take a shit, I believe I would have to go with the latter. Are bodily functions Obscene? I really don't think obscenity is the issue here. Was Hannibal Lecter obscene when he sauteed a piece of Krendler's brain in butter and herbs and fed him a piece of his own body (and later some kid ate some too)? And what about cutting off your face and feeding it to your dogs? Art? Perhaps the department of justice needs to raid Hollywood and Dino De Laurentiis Company for producing such "filth". Maybe art and beauty are both within the eyes and ears of the beholders. I say to each his own, leave scat porn alone.