[Discussed: Singing and dancing, vaporwave, divergent strains, Takashi Miike, Ted Kazyncski, Oswald Spengler Suicide, Laibach, KLF, ambiguity, “positive misanthrophy,” etc.]
Like a country or a boxing match, art is separated from ‘real life’ by a border or a frame. Within it, ordinary norms may be discarded or repurposed, forbidden sins explored or celebrated. The frame is where we place renderings, versions of things we fear, detest, or do not understand. It is here that we learn from our shadows.
Cultural guards, rightfully, police the perimeters of this frame in the name of decency and taste.
Evan and Evan, as Meinschaft, reside there, too, in the shade of these fences. Reluctant to speak the obligatory safe words, they champion ambiguity instead. This reluctance separates the artists from pundits and propagandists. Moral reassurance is not the Evans’ purpose.
The guards and the Evans may appear, at first, to be enemies, but their relationship is symbiotic. The two sides are mutually interlocked--necessarily and inevitably.
(“The psyche, like any other energetic system, is dependent on the tension of opposites.” -C.G. Jung, On The Psychology of the Trickster-Figure)
Meinschaft play with words and symbols: religious, political, personal, other, regurgitating and rearranging them, holding them up to the light. They present us with warped reflections of ugly culture and toxic politics. They parrot our words and rearrange our musical tropes.
The resulting combination contains many dualities and contradictions:
playful, clowning / sinister, brooding
slick, precise / silly, flawed, hyper(post?)modern, eclectic / archetypal, classic uncanny
etc
Their presentations remind us of our nearsightedness, the way a jester might. The way an adult’s words sound when repeated out loud, verbatim, by a child, in their stupid, naked, and frivolous true form.
Humans like to pretend we have no shadows, that there is nothing to be learned from the distorted shapes we cast. Meinschaft insist otherwise, just by being around. Listening, repeating. Poking and prodding, curiously, at the edges of acceptability, in close proximity of the guards. Smirking, or sometimes just standing their ground.
Follow them, de-platform them, slash their tires, de- fame them, gob upon them, or ignore them altogether. Speak your selection into the mirror.
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[Meinschaft (German for “community”) is a music and performance duo based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, comprised of two Evans:
“Evan Michael Hubbard (b. 1993) is a journeyman producer from Tennessee.
Evan Philip Lipson (b. 1981) is a freewheeling cultural appropriationist living at the base of a mountain in the Southeastern United States which was once home to the world’s first miniature golf course.”
He co-hosts the podcast The Exile Hour.]
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One thing I wanted to figure out in the beginning is how to address both Evans so that we don’t get confused along the way:
Evan Lipson: We could go military style.
Evan Hubbard: ‘Hubs’ and ‘Lips.’ One syllable.
Sounds good. I’ve been struggling with introductory questions. The best I could come up with was, ‘If you’re sending out a cold email to a stranger trying to book a Meinschaft gig, what does it say?’
Lips: I haven’t prefaced anything giving any caveat or trigger warning.
Hubs: I think the only warning we gave was, we played this kind of corny therapy gig, and we had a really epileptic light show. And I think we had to say, ‘If you have epilepsy, please leave the room.’
When you say therapy gig...?
Hubs: It’s this open mic night, but it’s really more
like group therapy. Sort of corny. Some of the things were actually interesting. There was this burlesque group, but that’s another story....
Was this in Chattanooga?
Hubs: Yeah, Chattanooga. This was perhaps the only genuinely antagonistic show we ever booked. But it also ended up being really great and constructive for a lot of people.
Lips: It really split the crowd.
Hubs: Yeah, a lot of people ended up really liking it.
Lips: The burlesque group in particular.
Hubs: Booking it was definitely kind of a joke. It was sort of a funny thing to do, because it was such a bad match. It was this really slam poetry-type stuff.
Lips: And they’re all regulars. It’s a group of people that go to this all the time, and they don’t really perform elsewhere. So it provides some validation for them to play for each other.
So, had you guys attended this at all before you signed up to play?
Both: No.
Can you set the scene a little bit? What did the Meinschaft performance entail at this time?