Interview: David Cronenberg on Andy Warhol

A “Warholized” still from the video I shot of Cronenberg’s interview.

On Saturday, Wendy and I had the privilege of being invited to a special bloggers-only interview session with David Cronenberg, who is the guest curator for a new exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario titled Andy Warhol – Supernova: Stars, Deaths and Disasters, 1962 – 1964. As the title implies, the exhibit focuses on his works from 1962 through 1964, a period during which he was obsessed with celebrity, tragedy and the way they seem to inevitably overlap. It’s essentially the classic combination of Eros and Thanatos — sex and death — dressed up for the age of the newly-ascendant mass media. For such an exhibit, it seems only fitting to have Cronenberg, the creator of many films that cover the intersection of sex, death and machinery (Videodrome, Dead Ringers, Crash, eXistenZ, to name a few) and member-in-good-standing in the Accordion City Art Scene to guest-curate the show.

Among the bloggers were our friends Rannie “Photojunkie” Turingan, Jay Schneider, Robert Ouelette and from Rocketboom, Drew Baron and Elspeth. They gathered us in a room with a couple of couches and several chairs, where we had Cronenberg to ourselves for about 45 minutes. Drew got to ask the first two questions for an interview for Rocketboom (which will probably be aired on Wednesday), after which questions were opened to the rest of us. I got one in — I asked Cronenberg how he first came into contact with Warhol’s work.

I shot video segments of the entire interview session on my digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 7600. I’ve posted them on YouTube, and you can see them by clicking on the links below:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Click here to see all the videos in sequence

I’d like to extend my deepest gratitude to Eli Singer and the rest of the people at the Art Gallery of Ontario for putting this event together and inviting us, and to David Cronenberg for putting up with my silliness (“Dude! I saw eXistenZ on a date!“). I salute you all with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!

I’ve got some thoughts on the exhibit that I’ll post later. In the meantime, enjoy the videos.