The Wire | Jeff Wood
Author of The Glacier and star of The Removals—Jeff Wood—recently participated in a conversation with Selina Scheumann at The Rumpus, where they talk about inspiration for his book, the Macarena, spectacle, authenticity, and oh so much more.
Wood is originally from Ohio, but is currently living in Berlin. He is a founding member of the experimental film/art group Rufus Corporation, and an editor of the Berlin Quarterly (which will be in stock at Two Dollar Radio Headquarters;)
In his conversation at The Rumpus, he comments on Culture in a way I find rather profound (among many other things):
"Meanwhile, in some intervening years between school and The Glacier I’d had a handful of experiences on the other side of the fence, so to speak: an experience on a remote Ojibwe reservation, an experience with a Mazatec Shaman in Mexico, and an experience in Tibet with Tibetan culture. They were each potent and remarkable, in addition to my experiences with my own community of artists in Central Ohio. I was magnetized to these extreme and oppositional sides of cultural inflection with regard to geography, mythology, and social psychology. I began to appreciate that the two sides of the coin aren’t always oppositional. There’s an architecture of theatre and ceremony at work whether you’re an indigenous tribesperson or a sales manager for Bath & Body Works (founded in Central Ohio in 1990). That’s what I was drawn toward, and what I felt was humming along at a really high frequency. It seemed that the culture was really coming up on some sea change that was expressing itself theatrically as a reality myth—something like the sum total of reality TV expressed as the world, even when the TV is turned off. And here we are. Mr. Stevens was not quite as fictional as I’d imagined."
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