Visual Culture: Exclusive Nicola Vassell Interview, Part 2

Words by Eddie STATS Houghton ::: Photo by Martei Korley

As promised, Part few in our exclusive and wide-ranging conversation with Pace gallery director Nicola Vassell, exploring the various threads that connect the realms of dancehall culture, haute couture, visual art and the written word…enjoy:

LU: So Introduce me to a few of the other worlds of Nikki Vassell…

NV: Oh god, there are so many, so many! They all dialogue and form one overarching reality which is about curiosity and I suppose in a weird way a certain humility? I mean in New York the distance between the most extreme of those (different) chambers really keeps you humble because you always have to be prepared for unknown territory–whether in a psychological dimension or a physical dimension.  A situation you’re not familiar or comfortable with, how are you gonna react to it? You have to keep yourself open enough to receive whatever gifts are in that space, but at the same time protect yourself so that you don’t get hurt or overwhelmed by it.

Q: Talking specifically about style and beauty, though–as somebody who can appreciate the beauty in Jamaican dance, and is also immersed in the European fashion world, the New York art world–does one idea of beauty translate across all those?

A: Yeah, they’re all connected. You realize how small the world is and how connected and together, it is even though we originate from geographically or culturally dissimilar places. It all comes back around, they all connect. The kind of tendency one might find perhaps in a tribal African dance ceremony then zips to Jamaica somehow and finds its way to some super-avant garde fashion designer’s runway–all in 2010. You know what I mean? Great creators are always referring to histories (and find) similarities even in things that are diametrically opposed. So by that measure everything connects, must connect!

A: One question I really want to ask, because you’re one of the few people I know who I think grasps both sides equally…there is definitely something about dancehall culture specifically, as opposed to the whole realm of Jamaican culture, that is very avant-garde…

A: So avant-garde it hurts!

Q: There’s something about it that’s so raw that it becomes high art or something even though its street culture…

A: Some of the most prolific pioneers of culture—culture period, I’m not even going by geography or location—have been liberated by dancehall culture, born of dancehall culture or somehow, you know, realized as a result of dancehall culture. No doubt about it. You continue to see references even now that you can trace back to the origin of dancehall at the end of the 70s, early 80s and I always want to slap myself because I just think, This is tremendous! You realize that there’s a certain sort of intrinsic magic or power that Jamaican people possess and dancehall is just a facet of it. The spirit of innovation that exists there—through certain channels–is just so remarkable–and not easy to replicate!

Q: One thing I struggle with in covering Jamaican culture is that if you take dancehall and try to elevate it, transform grassroots or ghetto culture into mass culture, it kind of destroys that quality, whatever it is…

A: It does.

Q: But then on the other side if you fight against that ‘gentrification’ of dancehall it can be exploitative, it’s like you want to keep it in the ghetto or exotify it…

A: Well most of the people who are actually doing it, leveraging it, they won’t ever be thinking like American music executives think. They don’t even think to exploit it…it’s very organic. And how are you on one level being completely avant-garde,  completely reconstructing the notion of how it feels to receive this artistic thing –and on the other side so basic about your consideration of certain realities like what it means to be middle class, what are the signifiers of a social mobility? One is completely absurd and one is completely profound. I think dancehall has been completely devolving frankly, it’s gone too—now people accept anything, now anything can get through the filter. You know, at a certain point the classifications were very distinct and you would have the right kind of opposition to the things that are just too macabre or too intense. Now it’s just like everything is fair game. Especially with the young generation who don’t have the fortune of hindsight…and I have massive problems with that because this is such a tool of education. It’s one of the few tools that can universally educate the Jamaican people, it is history and it’s just degrading into something else that I can’t wrap my head around.

Q: Do you find that it’s still a source of inspiration or is it going one way and you’re going another?

A: It is, but it just feels like the numbers are going against the initial motivation of the music, to energize and to make people feel good about themselves. You know there’s something really sexy about it in its rawest form. But then when the dollar started devaluing, it seems like everything just devolved along with it and nothing ever recovered.

Q: So, as immersed as you are now in the gallery world, do you still feel connected to fashion?

A: I am, but now I can determine my own distance, I don’t feel beholden. Perhaps it’s unspoken, but to people who are on the inside, there’s a general sense of being massively beholden to something or the other in fashion business. Whether to the designers or the agents, a lot of people in the business feel that way, it’s almost like a…fiefdom, I suppose. You have all these different levels and you are expected to be loyal to the grand king. and there are only a few of them…

Q: So was it frustration with all that that inspired you to get out of the fashion world?

A: Yes, because how often do you find a fashion historian? And even then It’s not circulated very effectively in the fashion biz. The reality is, art occupies just a more intellectually interesting space and  you are required by default to engage that intellectual space as best you can. In a way fashion depends very heavily on art. Fashion—especially as a model—its not like I was some great stylist working for some amazing magazine or something—as a model, its just not there. No intellectual stimulation whatsoever. Certain girls have the chance to maybe challenge their business acumen, they start their own businesses which is something altogether different. I really was always interested –I mean I come from a family of intellectuals so it was always like branded on me, the notion of never letting that go. So that always gnawed at me and at a certain point I had to give it up…

Q: So is there some medium of expression that brings all those worlds together for you, the music, fashion, art?

A: Yeah I don’t know, I just try to love all those things, just to live it. Sometimes documentation gets in the way of experiencing. I try to experience it. The fast life, Eddie!

Q: But it does all seem to come together in your writing…

A: Eddie, you’ve touched a very raw, deep nerve! Well, yeah because I’ve always fancied myself a writer. I always thought I could tell some great stories through writing but it’s a very excruciating medium for me…

Q: Excruciating in the sense that you are too perfectionist? Lets talk about how painful it is…

A: Of course! Cause you know already the sense of pain. So lets talk about just the tempo of something, what you get across in how much time, how much economy–of words, sentiment, whatever. Because I think less is more, always, and I think it’s excruciating to find, to convey, feeling. Feeling is so grey, neither black nor white but a little bit of both–and then you start to mix in all the other colors. Its like how do you extract a very particular tempo that has a .0000 fixed recording on the Richter scale? And then if you do there’s the sentence before that and the sentence before that and the sentence before that…

You can see Nikki’s idea of beauty in motion at the Pace gallery’s 25^th street space and if we’re lucky maybe we can convince her to share her excruciating sensitivity to tempo in future writings for Largeup.