Chief Magazine:  Tell me about your upcoming show in L.A… What are you going to do with that and how did it come about?

Jennifer Sullivan:  I was recommended for the show by my friend, Julie Lequin, who lives out there and is a video and performance artist. It’s my first solo show and it’s going to be called 'WJEN Radio Station Live! From Los Angeles, CA.'  It's curated by this artist Matt Wardell, and will be at RAID Projects, which is a non-profit space out there.  I’m trying to make it the biggest embodiment of this ongoing project that I've been working on called WJEN Radio Station, which is, in a nutshell, a self-portrait as a radio station.  The only program on the station is called 'It’s A Process,' which kinda encapsulates the whole idea in some way.  It’s really been growing and expanding over the past 2 and a half years.

It’s mostly podcasts as the series?

No, that’s only one part of it.  It started as one part of another installation.  I was gonna make this brick tent thing and I just wanted it to have music.  So I was like “well, if it’s gonna have music, it’s kinda cheesy to have a mix tape. I should make the music. Maybe it should be a whole radio station.”  That took over as being a better idea than the initial thing I was going to make.  So, when it first started, I made a 30-minute chunk of the radio.  I was the DJ…the songs and the commercials.  It lived within this life-size boom box sculpture.  I see the sculpture part as equally important.

You performed the whole thing inside the sculpture?

No, before that there was a sculpture that I wasn’t inside of…about the size of a real boom box.  It played from inside of it.  Then, the next growth of that was the huge one that I could actually fit inside of.  I like the idea of a sculpture that has some type of life in it…or the art is a way of transmitting myself, or something, and literally doing that through the radio thing.

Did you have an audience in the gallery that was watching it as you were doing it?

The big one?

Yeah.

I’ve still never shown that one in a gallery but I’ve shown the small one in a gallery.  I still have not had the opportunity to show the really big one, but I might [at the L.A. show].

Then, I started doing live performances without the boom box because I just wanted to see… I like the idea of project because it allows to me do lots of different things within something that’s kinda cohesive.  Well, maybe not cohesive, but one idea that can keep expanding but it’s not limiting.  I did live performances without the boom box that were like Vegas almost…or when a DJ goes to a club.  The idea of the big boom box was to have a private thing happen in public because it’s like being anonymous within the boom box but it allows you to still kinda be there closed off.  You can pretend.  It really does work.  I’ve performed in the boom box when I’ve had people over and I do feel kinda freed in some way…to express myself fully.  I feel like that really changes the sculpture.  If you saw the sculpture without my singing inside of it, it’s different. 

I like the idea of having you bring your friends home and instead of putting on your favorite Hall & Oates record; you jump in your own stereo and perform for them.

Well, I love to sing karaoke, anyway.

That kinda relates to the Midi.  I’m curious about how you discovered the Midi process.

So I had this karaoke machine… it was a Christmas gift several years ago.  It was really one of the best gifts that I’ve ever gotten.  Karaoke discs are really expensive.  They’re like $30 a shot and usually it’s just one artist or sometimes they have a mix that’s topical, like 2007 hip hop hits, or something like that.

The Midi was partially a way to get songs cheaper or free but then it became a way to make them my own.  I could produce the background music also.

I didn’t realize that you could manipulate the midis that way in Garage Band, and take the different chunks and mess with the actual song.  It’s better than regular karaoke and better than midi karaoke, because that’s basically Muzak.  Once you start manipulating the midi sections, you’re really basically composing something.

[Laughs] I guess.

I feel like it’s taught me more about music, too.  I change the instruments a lot, change the beat, take things out.  The first time I did it, it was an accident.  I just collapsed everything into church bells and that was kinda funny.  I usually add a hip-hop beat.  I end up liking how it sounds in the end.  I like that it’s changed a lot.  It’s been filtered through all these things: there’s the original person, the midi and then me.  All of these different influences along the way.

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I like how a lot of jokes start out with a basic concept but then if you keep going with them, really far, and you come up with a crazy idea that you keep altering and messing with.  Then, it becomes a serious project but it went through that evolution of not so serious to serious project.  I’ve always thought that fine art, a lot of the times, is a really good joke that no one gets.  I’ve seen so many shows, like in Chelsea, that to me are hilarious, but clearly no one else is laughing.

I like humor in art, but at the same time, I do take myself seriously. There was a period of time when I would be upset if people would laugh at my work. Even though I know there’s humor in it, its very personal to me and one of the most important things in my life. I feel more comfortable about the humor now, but I also feel like humor isn't as important as it used to be. I like to play with the line between sincerity and humor.

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It’s a thought balance, because you don’t want people to react in a way that you’re not, you know, hoping for, obviously. It’s hard to avoid sometimes, but you just do it anyway, you keep tweaking it.

Are there stops, or just one big stop? I think we’ll find out… I guess the party’s on Staten Island.