I would’ve liked to spend more time with her last week when I was in Kansas City, but we’re both so busy that the best we could do was a couple cheerful hugs at Succotash, a cozy indie brunch house over which an enormous, larger-than-life sized painting of Jaimie dribbling tomato soup down her chin presides, as if to say “All Hail Queen Jaimie. Queen of Kansas City. Queen of the World!” So I conducted this interview over email, but have every intention of following up with more behind-the-scenes content (if there is such a thing as “behind the scenes with Jaimie Warren”) the next time we cross paths, fingers crossed!

Whoop Dee Doo. Photo © Megan Mantia, 2010.

Angeline: Why Kansas City? What is your relationship to the city, and to the Midwest?
Jaimie: Born and raised in Wisconsin, daughter to the owners of a biker bar in the Milwaukee suburbs, I came to Kansas City for my first day of college, and I had never been prior. I have come to absolutely love it here, mostly because I think my friends are so incredibly talented and helpful. Also, living in a smaller city makes you form this very DIY, “make your own fun” sort of lifestyle and aesthetic. Everyone here helps one another with their projects, because we are all trying to see the city succeed and be seen as an emerging arts center. So it’s an awesome way to work! We all want each other to be successful, and we have tons of fun doing it!! I am always collaborating with bands like the Ssion and Carnal Torpor or fashion designers like Peggy Noland and Ari Fish.

Video by Cody Critcheloe

A: How did Whoop Dee Doo get its start?
J: Whoop Dee Doo started as a gallery exhibition of Kansas City artists that we exhibited at Rocket Projects in Miami. By the night of the opening, 14 Kansas-Citians had flown themselves out to do random, amazing performances for the event. It made me realize how much awesome performance stuff was going on, and how I really wanted to highlight that somehow. At the same time, I was insanely inspired by Chic-a-go-go, a public access tv show in Chicago, and I had traveled to Chicago to be on it several times. Plus, since KC has such a small arts community, we often branch out to other mini-communities. So you’ll go to a party and there will be punk kids, drag queens, Mexican bikers, moms, etc. Super weird and awesome. It’s a mix of all of these elements that made the show what it is today.

Now we have about 22 volunteers. Matt Roche and I are the Co-Directors, and other big bosses are Leone Anne Reeves, Natalie Myers, Megan Mantia, Flannery Cashill, Chris Beer, Roger Link, Peggy Noland, Stuart Smith, Lee Heinemann, and others. Our crew is totally amazing.

Whoop Dee Doo. Photo © Megan Mantia, 2010.

Whoop Dee Doo. Photo © Megan Mantia, 2010.

A: How has your experience curating and producing Whoop Dee Doo informed your work as a photographer, and vice-versa?
J: It’s weird, I know they totally inform each other, because both bodies of works revolve around how unique my community is, and finding a strange way to express it, but to this day I wont allow myself to photograph the show in my own style. It’s like I force myself to keep them separate for some reason. But anyway, I’ve always been a performer myself, only in a super-awful-and-awkward sort of way, so everything meshes really well.

Just like I was saying, in the same way our community is so random and mish-mash and amazing and awkward: so is the show. So you’ll have Celtic Bagpipers and Dads and kids and drag queens and drill teams and Swedish Dancers and scientists all dancing in one room together. So amazing!

A: Who/what are your influences?
J: Roseanne Barr is my #1 inspiration, and yes, mostly because of who she was on the show “Roseanne,” AND HER INFAMOUS SINGING OF THE NATIONAL ANTHEM at the San Diego Padres game in 1990!! And my dream would be to be famous enough one day so that people followed my weight loss and gain like they do with Roseanne and Oprah Winfrey.

But also—John Waters (DUH!), Diet Dr. Pepper, Halloween pranks, all the VH1 reality shows (in particular- Rock of Love and Rock of Love Bus, Flavor of Love, and I Love New York), Stevie Wonder, Dolly Parton’s book: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, Roseanne Barr’s book: My Life as a Woman, and the Nightmare on Elm Street movies (I have the 8 disc series WITH the original 3D glasses).

“Still Punk” video featuring Jaimie Warren by Cody Critcheloe

A: What is your training, how has formal arts education impacted your career?
J: I have a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. I think my education came mostly from my peers. I was totally blessed to have an amazing crew around me that worked all night, every night; we were good at constructive criticism and we all pushed each other very hard. Also, I had a radical teacher, Adrian Herman. She was the bomb. I still work with a lot of the same people I did in school, even those who have moved away.

Jaimie Warren as Madonna in Ssion’s BULLSHIT video, by Cody Critcheloe

A: Can you talk about the title of your book, Don’t You Feel Better?
J: Weeeeeellllll, that’s sort of a weird and awkward story, as the title of the book (and my website) used to be the title of a totally different project that got put on the backburner many years ago, but who cares! I think it’s funny because when someone says that phrase, I picture someone taking a big dump and feeling better after it happened. Don’t you? Heehee but seriously: I think it plays well with the self portraits. It reminds me of playing dress-up as a little kid, which I’m still able to get away with as an adult. Which is funny and kind of pathetic at the same time.

A: When you take self-portraits, do you usually have someone else to give the camera to while you pose, or do you take them yourself?
J: I always hand it off to a friend. I tell them what I’m generally looking for, and it almost always works out pretty good.

Photo © Jaimie Warren, 2010.

Photo © Jaimie Warren, 2010.

Photo © Jaimie Warren, 2010.

A: You’ve managed to create images and events that are highly theatrical yet feel very candid and personal. How do you balance improvisation with pre-production? When does the work demand precariousness and when does it need to be precious and purposefully composed?
J: Well, if you are seeing anything precious it’s just an illusion. Everything is usually planned somewhere between 30 seconds and 5 minutes before the shot is taken. It’s pretty improvisational. I think that’s why some people like it, because it has that very “I could do that” or “I’ve done that” look to it. Everything is done on an extremely low budget, and when I am emulating someone, it might almost seem like an insult because it’s so half-assed it seems comical or ridiculous, or even awful.

Photo © Jaimie Warren, 2010.

A: How has the Internet influenced your idea of documentation?
J: The Internet is so amazing for someone who lives in the Midwest. Especially for Whoop Dee Doo, when we are researching acts to have on our show when we travel to other cities or countries. I don’t know if there is a term for it, but you know when you hit link after link after link, and you’ve suddenly been on this totally weird downward spiral on the Internet? That is when we find our best stuff, like when we got the Christian Mimes who paint white face and have floor length silver sparkly outfits, or the Civil War re-enactors who amputated a foot on stage for us. As for my photography, I cant tell if it’s influenced my personal work, but I know it makes it easier to research other peoples’ photos.

A: What are you currently working on, what should we be on the lookout for in the next couple months?
J: Peggy Noland and I are working on a project in Brazil next year! Also, we plan to have a live animal birth (cow or pig?) on Whoop Dee Doo when we travel to a small farm town to do a new show in November. Also, Whoop Dee Doo will be in featured in a new book through Deitch Projects called “WILD FILE” which will have a USB stick with videos by radical artists like Cory Arcangel, Ryan Trecartin, Takeshi Murata and more. I’m also in a recent Rizolli book called SHOOT: Photography of the Moment, with 26 photographers including Wolfgang Tillmans and Juergen Teller (OMG!!). The book was released at the New Museum and is traveling internationally with an accompanying photo show of works from the book – it’s going to Ireland next. The project is curated by Ken Miller, who used to be an editor for Tokion for many years, and he is super cool and smart.

What else? I have a fake goth band called “Y-Not” where I scream the word “Why” at the top of my lungs until everyone leaves the room, which usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour. And me and my best girlfriends have a rad DJ performance night called “Booby Trap” that we’ve been touring, so you should bring that to your town, too; it’s really weird. And when I was in India in January I was working on a potential Whoop Dee Doo BOLLYWOOD edition! (Oh please dear God I hope it happens.) Lastly, I am currently working on a new book with Higher Pictures so keep your peepers peeled!

Jaimie Warren is a photographer, performance artist, and Creator/Co-Director of the faux public access television show “Whoop Dee Doo.” She is represented by Higher Pictures (New York, NY), she has had her first solo artist monograph published by Aperture (New York, NY) in 2008, recently closed her first solo museum exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Warren has exhibited at White Flag Projects, St. Louis; Smith-Stewart, New York; David Castillo, Miami; Max Wigram, London; Getsumin, Osaka; Beida University, Beijing; Rocket Projects, Miami; Colette, Paris, among other venues. Her photography has been published in dozens of national and international publications. Warren is a recipient of the Lighton International Artist Exchange Program grant, and a 2009 Charlotte Street Fund grant.

Warren’s non-profit community arts program and faux public access television show “Whoop Dee Doo” has exhibited at various galleries and museums including the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, Deitch Projects (New York), The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE), and LOYAL gallery (Malmo, Sweden).

dontyoufeelbetter.com

As a young, but highly accomplished and recognized artist and writer, as well as an alumnae and active member of The University of Chicago community, Emma Bee Bernstein developed a successful body of photographic works up until her death in December 2008. This exhibition of 30 photographs is accompanied by a slide presentation curated by Antonia Pocock and a catalogue with critical statements by Kate Bussard, Assistant Curator of Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago, Hamza, Walker, the Director of Education at The Renaissance Society, and Professor Matthew Jesse Jackson, of the Department of Art History and Visual Arts, University of Chicago. The exhibition will highlight the signature aspects of Bernstein’s work – the inflection of social, political and historical awareness that marks her projects and her interdisciplinary approach to photography, which combined fashion, documentary, (self)-portraiture, feminism, and a unique blend of dark humor mixed with heady optimism.

You might be familiar with Emma’s work in Girldrive: Criss-crossing America, Redefining Feminism, which she co-authored with Nona Willis Aronowitz, or from our production of ANGELUS NOVUS, which she photographed in October, 2008. Emma and I also collaborated on some publicity stills during that year, which were published variously online as promotion for my work as a performing artist. We also presented many of the photographs from her Masquerade and At Night collections alongside the work of Shanti Evans (with whom we made Wild Traits in Tame Species–it was Emma who first introduced us) at AUGUST GROTESQUE, an exhibition and masquerade held at our studio space in August, 2008.

A photo from ANGELUS NOVUS, which Emma exquisitely photographed for us in October, 2008.

Some photos Emma took of me in and outside her apartment in July, 2008.

Although we were in the same graduating class at the University of Chicago and frequently crossed social (her longterm ex-high school boyfriend was my longterm college boyfriend), curricular, and extracurricular paths (we were both awarded Metcalf Fellowships in summer 2006…she at the Art Institute and I at the MCA), we weren’t really friends so much as acquaintances until after graduation. I barely knew her, but I knew of her, and what I did know was that she was talented, ambitious, precocious, and lived a very glamorous and dangerous lifestyle. At 22, Emma practically oozed sex, drugs, and [punk] rock ‘n’ roll.

Emma in a self-portrait from her Masquerade series (2007).

And so it was with great fascination and caution that I pursued a the beginnings of what I had hoped would be a longer and more robust friendship than what became of those last few months leading up to her death in December, 2008. We met for beers, shot photos, talked about our futures, the Internet, Chicago… We made plans to curate exhibits together, to host events, to network, to “make it.” She told me that she and her best friend had a secret band that had been practicing for months; that she desperately wanted to perform in front of an audience, and could I help coax her out of her stage fright and into the limelight? I began to realize that she also had the same trepidations about her new and quickly developing career as I did mine. Trepidation which, up until that point, had seemed utterly unfathomable considering her breeding and brains. And so when she called me, in tears, to tell me she had gotten in a car accident, that she needed to see my mom (who is a neurologist), I sent her to the doctor and thought nothing of it. The trauma was more psychological than physical, and so I assumed she just needed some R&R and would be back to her usual self in no time.

What happened next, I can’t pretend to know. What I do know is that I wished I had paid more attention to my new friend and not been so quick to assume that she could take care of herself, that she need not be bothered by me and my decidedly more wholesome (read: boring) approach to life. Like, what was I going to do, bake cookies with her? Surely she had more important and exciting things to do (get tattoos, fly to Venice), and surely someone else would be the one to assure her emotional and physical health after the accident, which, in retrospect, must’ve made her very aware of her own mortality, maybe for the first time ever. But she knew practically everyone in Chicago, and she knew literally everyone in New York. Who was I to put my nose all up in her business, when we’d only just begun?

Emma in a self-portrait from her Masquerade series (2007).

Well. All I can say now is that I wished I had thought otherwise. I wished I’d had the gumption to ask if she was OK, if she was REALLY OK. I thought all the colorful tumult that surrounded her somehow contributed to her creativity: maybe it inspired her, maybe it energized her, maybe it wasn’t destructive nor distracting for someone who was used to experiencing that kind of thing every day, growing up in NYC. On the one hand, she was someone who never slept; on the other hand, she was from the city that never sleeps! She lived fast; she died young. She is survived by her work, and by the memories of those of us who were lucky enough to know her. All we can do now is look, but not touch. We are left with photos, with a representation of self, with the question of whether or not the representation is the self? This question was at the very center of her artistic investigations. It informs how and why I look at her photos, the puzzle she’s left us all to decipher, for she was so many different things to so many different people. This is the essence of what it meant to be Emma Bee Bernstein, at least for me. Look, but don’t touch.