Transcript of Interview with Kotama Bouabane for The Cable Project, November 19 2004

Conducted by Louis Marrone for The Cable Project

All right, I think that's gonna be good. Just, uh, what'd you have for lunch just now?

Uh, leftovers from last night's dinner. I made a chicken with pineapple dish type thing.

Yeah, if you can sort of talk like that, just...

Okay , is it really loud?

No, breathy.

Okay. What about now? Is that okay?

Oh, yeah, it's perfect.Can you start with just your name and your status as an artist?

Okay, my name is Kotama Bouabane. I graduated from OCAD last year. I went to grad school briefly to do my MFA in Chicago. I was there for a couple months and decided that I didn't want to be in school anymore. So I took the year off to travel. I went to visit a friend in California for a couple months. Came back to Toronto, didn't know what to do with myself. So I went traveling again to Southeast Asia for a couple months and moved back to Toronto and I'm here just working on stuff in terms of financially being able to support myself for month to month and then just working on my own stuff on the side.

So how would you describe your art?

How would I describe my art? I guess I would. I started off as a photographer. I went to school for photography. And it sort of evolved into doing more photo-based work. So photography integrated with installation. I took some installation classes and some painting classes. But I guess right now I'm sort of venturing off into doing more video and sound installation work.

Can you describe for me then your last sort of multimedia video installation or piece?

Yeah, the piece that I actually submitted to Timothy's cable project was my first sound piece that I was doing. when I moved back into the city I was living in a place where they had cable and I hadn't had cable in a couple years just because of the places where I was living but I kind of got sucked into watching too much television but I got addicted to those Trading Spaces and While You Were Out shows so what I was doing was I was recording the last two minutes of each episode where the contestants sort of reacting to their new rooms. So it was sort of, and then I added them all together. So it was maybe like a half an hour to an hour piece of all the reactions of the contestants. And basically it was just sort of like this mismatch of sounds, people yelling, people screaming, people crying. And you sort of didn't didn't know what was going on. So, and I guess a lot of my my photographic work before that had to do a lot with absence and presence so the way that I sort of imagined showing this piece would be in a blank gallery and just having the sound and people sort of visualizing where certain objects would would be placed because they sort of tell you with a sound like the armor in the corner or the lamp for there or the mirror over there which which I kind thought was funny because the person was able to visually sort of project where things would be. Yeah, sorry, I lost train of thought. But yeah, so the idea of absence and presence, people visually able to connect and put things together in their heads. But I also think that it's the same when you sort of go to an art gallery, people sort of fun over these inanimate objects in a different type of way not as kitschy or annoying as the ones in television, but Yeah

How long before you got cable from Timothy did you have cable? How long did it then?

Half a year? Five or four months?

And what were your TV watching habits like in that six months?

Um, sporadic, wherever, if it was at a friend's place, it was at a bar, I'd sort of be able to glimpse, like, was unable to really go in depth or watch it at all. So...

You didn't see any favorite shows or...?

Um, no, no, maybe. Um, I can't... Like the whole reality trend thing is sort of... It can get addictive, but it can also get really annoying too. So I think it lost its stigma really fast.

So how much TV do you watch now?

I find that I get really annoyed with watching television. I can maybe watch like a show and then and then turn it off. It's the flipping aspect of it too many channels too Many choices not being able to commit to anything

So you're not watching TV at all right now?

No, no not really Yeah, I can't really Get into it right now at this moment.

How much would you say you actually watch?

A day? A day? Maybe an hour tops maybe?

Do you see that changing?

I find that it's getting more and more, yeah, that I'm watching it more maybe because of the weather, maybe because it's getting colder and I don't want to go out and I'm habitating a lot more. So, and yeah, I don't like how the television is so large and that's the central focus on the room too, so I find that everybody's sort of drawn into it, or the room sort of modeled around the television, which sort of bothers me a lot. It's not my television. I had a smaller television that a friend lent me and then my roommate got a larger one and I'm still not very happy with that.

What was your reaction to Timothy's offer of cable to you? What was your whole project and what were your first thoughts?

Well, I was on the akimbo site and I saw the free cable project. I was like free cable because I was moving and I was like financially I couldn't afford cable. cable and I felt like I needed cable as an outlet to escape because I think a lot of people are able to turn on cable just sort of you know drift off and go into another space but I wanted it in the beginning totally for that fact just to be able to zone out but and also just sort of trying to be in touch with pop culture because I don't like to be out of the loop of pop culture because I think that's funny too. But yeah, I know I thought it was a great idea and I knew that ideas and other things could flow from images that I've been seeing on TV.

So do you have any plans specifically with regard to the cable project, with regard to a possible art piece?

Yeah, yeah, I sort of, I sort of, the sound piece was the first piece that I actually done where I was using television as a means of creating art. But I sort of was thinking about going back to the way that I photograph things or sort of making these sort of images that are very ambiguous. So there was this project where I wanted to document sitcom houses. But yeah, no, it sort of wasn't sure if I was going to shoot them directly off the television or go on websites and get the actual photographs but I think it's funny to like go into a room and have pictures of these houses on the walls but not knowing quite where you know that house from but it's sort of in the collective conscious of a lot of people who sort of grew up watching television sort of like the Full House or like the Bauer house but but sort of not giving it all away sort of having it in the title like the Tanner family or like not not referring to the actual sitcom name but the house or the people that actually live there so that was sort of an idea that I've been playing around with and then I was thinking like if I could get a grant then I'd actually go to like where the houses are and then shoot them because I know that when I was on a couple websites they sort of remodeled houses after specific houses that actually existed so I thought that was really interesting as well so yeah.

Like fans would do that?

No, no like that's where that I guess the the show producers would sort of get their ideas from okay we want this house is the house for the show so they'd give one address where it actually is and the other address where they sort of built it or she did from or whatever.

Okay I think that's good.