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Title: Godfrey Reggio Interview
Author: Godfrey Reggio
Date: Spring 2003
Language: en
Topics: technology, anti-technology, green anarchism, green anarchy, anti-civ, civilization, industrial civilisation, critique of leftism, leftism, the left, film, interview
Source: Retrieved on 02/04/2015 from http://sfbay-anarchists.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/godfrey-reggio-interview-from-unciv.pdf

Godfrey Reggio

Godfrey Reggio Interview

Godfrey Reggio could be described, simply, as a documentarian. However,

his experimental, non-narrated films go far beyond the simplistic mode

of information-based moving pictures. Instead of numbers, charts and

equations we are presented with inscrutable human faces, immersed in the

technological world through which they travel. Stunning natural oases of

water and land barricade the ominous enormity of industrialism, which

crashes and storms with the surges of Phillip Glass’ minimalist

orchestral score. Challenging, but never high-minded, encompassing but

never elitist, Reggio has finally concluded the Qatsi trilogy

(Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi) with the theatrical release

of Naqoyqatsi. Each film deals with, respectively, the perspectives as

regards technology within the first world, the third world and the

digital world, to be very brief.

Reggio has worked in a “non-ideological, mutual aid collective”, founded

33 years ago, that operated without wage labor and focused on living

life creatively. Its members have managed to retain creative control

over their films despite substantial contracts with MGM, which has

released the Qatsi DVDs. He and his teams’ creative approach to

cataloguing and debunking the industrial division of labor is

unprecedented in the documentary tradition. Reggio’s work, in particular

Koyaanisqatsi, is notable to Green Anarchists as one of the first films

to question technology as a totality. In his own words, “The idea was to

mainline in the vascular structure of the beast this form, which was

created by technology, to question technology. In other words, these are

not environmental films, these are films more about the presence of

technology as a new and comprehensive host of life and three different

points of view about it.” The current film, Naqoyqatsi, will finish its

theatrical run on January 24 and arrive in a three-DVD set with the rest

of the films in 2004. Reggio has no current plans to create films after

the end of the Qatsi trilogy.

Sk!: Could you give us some brief background on your life in the context

of what brought you to critiquing technological processes through film?

What experiences, thoughts or words influenced your path?

Godfrey Reggio: Well, I think for all of us there’s a line, even though

it’s quite crooked, that gives, as it were, some testament to who we are

and what we do. In my case, I grew up in a very stratified society of

New Orleans. At the age of 13/14, I decided to throw in the towel, that

it was all too crazy, not so interesting. I was getting burnt out. At a

young age, living in the fat as it were, I decided to go away and become

a monk. So I left home. My parents were not too excited about that, and

I stayed out for 14 years, having taken final vows as a Christian

brother. In effect, got to live in the middle ages during the 1950s and

learned crazy things, like the meaning of life is to give, not to

receive, that we should be in the world but not of it. All these things

I think, certainly influenced me. I’m very grateful for that highly

disciplined, very rugged way of life, that would make the marine corp

look like the boy scouts. So I think that had a big influence on me.

During the course of that time, I saw a film called Los Olvidados (The

Forgotten One) by Luis Bunuel, so The Young and the Damned, the first

film he made in Mexico after being kicked out of Franco Spain. It was so

moving to me that it was the equivalent of a spiritual experience. I was

at that time working with street gangs. This film was about the street

gangs in Mexico City, I was working with street gangs in Northern New

Mexico. It moved me to the quick: it wasn’t entertainment, it was

something that was an event that touched me and hundreds and hundreds of

gang members that saw it. We bought a 16mm copy and I guess I’ve seen

the film a couple hundred times. So that motivated me to look towards

film as a medium of direct action. Now, film is usually not seen as

that. I don’t see it as entertainment in my case, I hope it can be a

vehicle for direct action. That’s how I became involved, it was also

during that time that I had the good fortune to meet Ivan Illich, Illich

was a priest at that time, I don’t know if you know who Illich is.

Sk!: I do.

GR: Ok, he’s just passed away by the way, December the 2nd. So I had the

good fortune to become a confidant of his, at a young age I used to do

my religious retreats in Mexico at his think tank. Got a great

appreciation for, I guess, being sensitive to different points of view

about what could be done for social change. His point of view was much

more radical than, say, the radical left of the country, which was

anti-war, pro-social justice, and included a good dose of socialism or

communism. His radicalism was way beyond that; it was much more

fundamental. It had to do with the very nature of society and

institutions (not just who controls them, which is kind of the communist

mantra). So I had the opportunity to be in the presence of a great

teacher who was also a great activist. So I think those things impelled

me to the position I’m in now.

Sk!: One of the influences you’ve noted at the end of Naqoyqatsi is

Jacques Ellul, whose critique of technology is closely intertwined with

a Christian theology. You, yourself, were once a Christian monk. Do you

feel that a critique of the dominant technological order is effective in

a religious context?

GR: Yes I do, now let’s talk a little bit about his critique. This was a

man who was not accepted by either the organized religions of his day or

the Left of France. He was persona non grata from the Left and the

Right, much like Wilhelm Reich was persona non grata of the Left and

Right of Germany. Here was a man who, more than any single individual,

has contributed to our understanding of the nature of technology not as

something we use but as something we live. For Jacques Ellul, technology

is the new and comprehensive host of life, the new environment of life.

The problem with that statement is that our language hasn’t caught up to

the profundity of the thought, our language has become assumptive and no

longer, in my opinion, describes the world in which we live. Ellul bore

great criticism, if not persecution, for his ideas, from the Left as

well as the Right, because like Ivan Illich, who made statements like

“Freedom is the ability to say ‘no’ to technological necessity”, Jacques

Ellul described our greatest act of freedom as to know that which

controls our behavior. So both of these men were on very similar tracts,

both of them were way outside the sphere of organized Right and Left,

both of them were way to the Left of the Left. His ideas on the

environment, you could call them Christian, but I wouldn’t. Certainly he

was a theologian and he wrote many books on the word of god from his own

point of view, but his stuff can certainly stand. His book for example,

The Technological Society, his first book, 1949 I think it was really

written and released here sometime in the mid 50s, that book is a solid

philosophical, sociological text about the nature of technique. It’s

light years beyond anything being written now. I think, if I’m not

mistaken, the University of California at Berkeley has acquired the

rights to his full library, all of his notes, his books, and they have

in there a great gem.

Sk!: What was the impetus to initiate the Qatsi trilogy? What

motivations brought you, a person not associated with film into the

director’s chair?

GR: Street gangs for many years, as a brother. I became convinced that,

while there are a few loonies that probably would hurt anybody under any

condition, most people are good. I believe that; it’s my experience that

most people are good, it’s not something I believe, it’s something I

know. If you tell somebody they’re a shit, they’ll probably behave like

a shit. If you tell somebody they’re great, they might achieve

greatness. I think that’s the fragility of who we are. We live in a

world not of this or that but this and that. So after working with

street gangs for quite a long time, I realized that the context in which

people of poverty have to try to work out how to live in this society is

very cruel. I didn’t start this project to set up an institution that

would live forever. It was a response to an immediate situation, and I

left to pursue film as a form of direct action. Now by that I mean the

following; since people are at the public trough of cinema, either

through television or in the theater itself, I felt, what better place

to put another idea out? Not in the form of language, but in the form of

image and music. Let me explain that it’s not for lack of love for the

language that my films have no words. It’s because of my, I guess,

tragic thought that our language no longer describes the world in which

we live. Through Ivan Illich, I had the good fortune to meet Paulo

Freire, in Brazil, in São Paulo, before he passed on. I had a good time

talking with him about this enormous book that he wrote, The Pedagogy of

the Oppressed. In that, he says that the single most important thing a

person can do is to begin to rename the world in which they live. This

was his form of literacy, not teaching one how to read a book in the

traditional sense, but to rename the world, because when you name

something, you in effect create it. My own thought is that our language

is bound with antique ideas, old formulas that no longer describe the

moment in which we are. Therefore, that statement, A picture is worth a

thousand words, I tried to take it and turn it on its head, and tried to

give you a thousand pictures that can offer the power of one word. In

the case of each of the three films, Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi,

Naqoyqatsi, words that come from an illiterate source, a primal source,

a wisdom that is beyond our ability to describe the world. A wisdom that

says that all things we call normal are abnormal, all things that we

call sane are insane. Now I realize that this is a pretty intense point

of view, but that’s the point of view I ended up with from my own

experience, not from academia but from being on the line in the ‘60s,

trying to see the world from another point of view.

Sk!: The films were independently funded, avoiding governmental grant

processes and industrialist handouts. You seem conscious of that old

Marxist adage that the ideology closest to the means of production

becomes the dominant ideology. Do you feel that you were able to avoid

the constraints of capital influence in the Qatsi trilogy?

GR: Well, you know, it’s hard to say that. I wouldn’t want to exempt

myself from anything, all of money is dirty money. Whether I got my

money from an angel, and I don’t know how you get your money but it’s as

dirty as the money I got. The events that I’m talking about are way

beyond capitalism and communism (which is its flipside). Both of those

‘isms are much closer together than most people believe. They both share

the same point of view about the instrumentality of life, the mass

society, the industrialization of society, their only difference is who

controls it. In the case of capitalists, it’s individuals who have

accumulated wealth on the backs and the injustice of millions of people,

literally. In the case of the soviets, it’s a new class of

administrators, bureaucrats, who created a class, in my opinion, just as

ironclad and unjust as the capitalist class. Both really want the same

thing; they are just concerned about who controls the means of

production. My question is not who controls the means of production, but

the nature of production, as such. The question is not whether or not

workers have an equitable pay and a healthy work environment, which is

the interest of organized labor, or the Left that works with organized

labor. The question, more profoundly, is, what is the effect of the

automobile on society and should we have that in the first place? So,

we’re dealing more with fundamental questions. It has become my

experience, sadly, that human beings become their environment. We become

what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we touch. Anything that

we do without question, in an altered state, we become that environment.

If the environment that we live in today, as Ellul says, is a

technological milieu or environment, if we no longer live with nature,

and I’m not parenthetically talking about going back to teepees and

caves etc, if our environment itself is technological, if we don’t use

technology, if we live it, breathe it like the air that is ubiquitous

around us, then we become that environment. In that sense, whether

you’re communist, capitalist, socialist, primitive, an outsider, an

artist, a revolutionary, if you live in this world, all of us doing

that, we become this world. In that sense, all of us now are cyborged.

Cyborg is not something for the future, it is already here. We live now

in both worlds. The old world, the world that “nature” replaced, old

nature, held its unity through the mystery of diversity. So there are

many languages, many different environments to live in, there’s

tropical, there’s semi-tropical, there’s mountain, there’s desert,

there’s savannah, there’s salva, etc There’s not one flower, there’s

uncountable flowers. Not one animal, a zillion of them, not one human

being, many. The mantra of the old world was, Divided we stand. The new

world, the technological order, holds its unity through a technological

imperative. It creates unity through technological homogenization. Its

mantra is United we stand. To me, this is the moment we’re in. We’re at

that crossroads and the world is becoming homogenized; what we’re seeing

is the Los Angelization of the planet through technology. My work has

been, in effect, to try to shield my eyes from the blinding light of the

new sun, technology, seeking the darkness, walking towards the positive

value of negation. Trying to question the very structures, the very

contexts in which we live, not who controls them.

We become what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we smell, it’s

so easily said but it’s a profound concept beyond the simplicity of the

words that bear it. We live in an environment, as Ellul said, that is,

in terms of a social event, the most enormous event of the last 5,000

years has gone unnoticed, the transitioning of old nature to new nature.

Environmentalists don’t get it, most of environmentalism is how to make

this madness safe. How to make cars safe, how to make industry safe, how

to make electricity and war safe for the environment. We live in a time

where we are like blind people, we don’t see the moment in which we are.

We no longer use metaphor as our means of communion or communication (ie

language). Metamorphosis is the form now, where the transformation,

where the substance of something is changed, the transubstantiation of

something is a metamorphic approach to communion rather than the

metaphoric, which is the power of language. But language is

disappearing. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were over

30,000 languages and principal dialects in the world. Today, with many

more people, over double the number of people that were present then,

we’re approaching 4,000 languages and principal dialects. In other

words, as the earth is being eaten up by the voracious appetite of

technology, everything that is local is disappearing. In that

disappearance, language disappears and when language disappears, we are

left with a more homogenized language to describe the world which,

again, does not give us access to understanding. It produces more

conformity.

Sk!: With Koyaanisqatsi you examined the first world in great detail,

starting off from stunning wild lakes, through constricting cities, the

faces of people, culminating in the destruction of the space shuttle

Challenger. Throughout this film, technology is portrayed as an

acceleratory, agglomerating, isolating and destructive force. Many

critics would charge that it is merely the arrangement of technology or

the puppeteer behind the scenes controlling technology that must be

changed. Do you see hierarchy as endemic to these systems of control?

Can we separate technology from domination?

GR: I don’t believe, I think it’s a pure myth, right, left, upsidedown,

backward, to think that we control technology. I think that’s a joke.

Technology is in the driver’s seat. I would go to the very radical

writing of Mary Shelley, not the Hollywood version, but her original

book Frankenstein, where we’ve empowered something that’s not in the

organic realm, we’ve organized and allowed it to exist, and now it has

its own life form. Now, that’s very hard for us to get our mind around,

because we give ourselves more credit than we’re due. We think that our

greatest attribute is our mind, actually our greatest attribute is what

is our action, our act, what we do everyday. It’s what we’ve become.

Marx has this great adage, I think Marx says, “Is it the behavior we

have that determines our consciousness or is it the consciousness that

we have that determines our behavior?” And of course the answer for 8

out of 7 people is that it’s the behavior that we involve ourselves in

that determines our consciousness. The only way to avoid that is to do

what Joseph Brodsky did, to become an outsider to society, all of us

have to live in this world but we don’t have to be of it. Brodsky

decided not to be of it. He became, for me, a revolutionary poet, though

he’s not seen that way in the communist world. Stood outside, answered

Marx’s questions. He said consciousness, or removing oneself, being in

the world but not of it, would be a way of having your mind determine

your behavior. So, the thing that I’m railing against, technology, is

something I use. Some would say this is hypocritical or contradictory,

let me agree with them, that it is contradictory. In the sense I’m

trying to communicate, and wishing to do so in the contradiction of a

mass culture, then I have to consciously adopt the tools of that culture

or the language of that culture in order to communicate. So it’s the

equivalent of fighting fire with fire. In that sense, I see the work

that I do as direct action. Though I certainly use a very high-tech

base, using that in order to make it available to raise questions about

the very thing I’m using.

Sk!: The camerawork in city scenes throughout the trilogy often creates

an industrial claustrophobia, giant buildings crowd the viewer into a

confrontation with urban space as alienation. Living in the desert as

long as you have, what are your impressions of urban civilization?

GR: Well I grew up in urban civilization, in New Orleans, then I came

out to New Mexico which is one of the highest deserts in the world.

Here, the sky... you don’t look at, you breathe it. I’ve lived here now

44 years, I consider myself fortunate to be out here, it’s like the

Siberia of America. In this magnificent beauty is this enormous enigma,

and the evil demon of nuclear technology that sits, as the crow flies,

about fourteen miles from my window. So it’s a place of inscrutable

beauty and unbelievable demonic energy. I’m sure that’s had an influence

on me, being here, breathing the sky and having the presence of this

monster. It allows me to have another point of view of the world in

which I lived. When I shot Koyaanisqatsi with my collaborators, the way

we did this film was eliminate all the foreground of what is a normal

theatrical film, the plot, the characterization, the acting etc When you

don’t have the foreground, what’s left is the second unit or background

to the story. Stripping the film of all that foreground material, we

take the background or second unit, and make that the foreground. So, in

this case, the building becomes like an entity, the traffic becomes like

an entity, something that has a life of itself. The whole purpose of

this film was to try to see the ordinary, that which, let’s say, we are

basted in. Being marinated in the environment that we live in, it all

seems very familiar. And I was trying to show that that very thing that

we call familiar is itself a techno-fascistic way of living. So I tried

to see it from another point of view, I tried to see it as a life-form,

albeit a non-organic life-form, that has a life absolutely independent

of our own. Right now, the cities are made for the automobile, not for

the people. When the automobile was brought in as a technology, they

said it would just be a “faster horse,” it wouldn’t have any more effect

than that. But we all know that’s ridiculous, we all know that we pay a

hidden price for our pursuit of technological happiness and we call it,

instead of war, we call it accident. But more people die in vehicular

crashes than they do in war, if that’s even believable. So, it’s just

the price we’re willing to pay for the pursuit of our technological

happiness, and these films are about questioning that point of view.

Sk!: Powaqqatsi is defined at the end of the second film as “a way of

life that consumes the life forces of other beings in order to further

its own life.” Later you are quoted as saying that between the third

world and the first world, Powaqqatsi captures “our unanimity as a

global culture.” Now, the film portrays the third world from agriculture

to commodity trading, bartering to industry—a narrative is constructed

that seems to point the third world in the direction of increasingly

intensified civilization. To what extent are the narratives of

“development” (in the case of the WTO and IMF) and “history” (in the

case of Marxism) negative factors in the lives of people in the third

world? Since the definition of Powaqqatsi refers to a parasitic

sorcerer, is it reasonable to characterize the first world as a

parasite?

GR: My answer would be simply, yes. The whole point of view of

Powaqqatsi is that through the dogma/religion of progress and

development, which again, parenthetically, is not only a capitalist

agenda but also a Marxist agenda that very paradigm consumes, and eats,

and pulls out of the sockets people who live a handmade life. I was

criticized when I made that film by Leftists in Germany, for

romanticizing poverty, for trying to eliminate industrialization and,

therefore, a better way of living. Well that’s in a point of view, if

that’s how they see it, so be it, but that’s certainly not my intention.

My intention was to say that standards of living are ephemeral. The

standard of living of the world is based on first world norms, of

consumption, of the institutionalization of life, of giving up your own

control to the control of others. The very opposite is true in the

so-called third world or Southern hemisphere, where really, the heritage

of the earth exists not only in nature but in human development. Small,

convivial, decentralized societies of handmade living, where things can

be uniquely different, valley to valley, plain to plain. The world that

we’re trying to force, through the IMF, etc, on the southern hemisphere,

is a world of homogenized value. A world where Los Angeles, Jakarta,

Hong Kong, the Philippines, etc, all look the same. This is in diametric

opposition to the nature of the development of the South, which is

disappearing right now because of the norms of development. The very

founding, for example, of the United Nations, was on the dogma, on the

theology, on the philosophy of promoting progress and development around

the world as our guarantee for world peace. Now what crazier thought

could you have? All of us buy in, in some way. Many people buy into the

United Nations, but their very purpose is to produce this homogenizing

event all over the world. For me this is the essence of techno-fascism,

and it’s another example of how the Northern hemisphere is consuming,

without question, the Southern hemisphere. The Northern hemisphere has

consumed most of its own resources already, the Southern hemisphere is

where the nature bank of our world still exists. If the north has its

way, that will be consumed to create and further develop the

technological order, which for me, is a fascistic venture.

Sk!: The latest film, Naqoyqatsi, has shifted the focus directly to

digital technology and its violent consequences. What societal changes,

observed in the bridge between Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, did you want

to integrate into the new film?

GR: Here’s the thing, these films, early on, were conceived. It took

years to realize them, but the idea was that Koyaanisqatsi would deal

with the northern hemisphere (or in your terms, the first world). The

hyper-industrial grids that we call societies. The second film deals

with the southern hemisphere or what you might call the third world.

Societies of simplicity, where unity is held through the mystery of

diversity and how those societies are being consumed by the myth of

progress and development. The third film, conceived early on as well,

dealt with the globalized moment in which we live. How the world is

being homogenized, how unity is being held together by the new divine,

the computer. The new divine is the manufactured image, which is the

subject of Naqoyqatsi and hence, the necessity of using digital

technology to create it. In the case of Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi, we

went to real locations to film them. In the case of Naqoyqatsi, we went

to virtual locations to film them. We took stock and archival images

that venerated familiar those things we have all grown up with through

the myth of history, and we’ve taken and revivified them, or tortured

them with a computer to create a manufactured image which is, as

Baudrillard would call it, the evil demon of image. The purpose of image

is to produce this monstrous, demonic conformity. Right now, image is

more important than truth or reality. Look at the political spectrum,

it’s all about the image of something. So this third film deals squarely

with the image as its principal subject matter, the manufactured image

in the globalization of the world. We spoke a bit about the computer,

because it plays a central role as an entity in Naqoyqatsi. From my

point of view, the computer is the new divine. When I say that, it

portends supernatural powers. The computer is not just something we use

again, it’s the very vehicle that’s remaking the world to its own image

or likeness. If one were a Christian theologian or a Catholic

theologian, the highest form of magic in the Catholic universe is the

sacrament. The sacrament is different from a sign in that it produces

what it signifies. Unlike a sign, like if one is married and wears a

ring, that ring is a sign of your fidelity, of your union with your

spouse. But it doesn’t produce it, it only reminds you or others that

you’re married. In the case of a sacrament, the sacrament produces what

it signifies. So if there was a sacrament of unity, it produces that

unity, it’s the very highest form of magic. So I’m saying that the

computer is the new sacramental magic, it produces what it signifies, it

remakes the world to its own image and likeness. In that sense it is the

very driving force of what I would call the techno-fascistic world. As

the swastika was the image of fascism in the 20th century, and there

were many other images as well but that one prevailed, the new image of

techno-fascism is the blue planet. Not the reality of the earth, but the

image of the blue planet. That, to me, is the ubiquitous image of

techno-fascism.

Sk!: Notably, Naqoyqatsi’s framing definition is “civilized violence.”

Never before in the series has the polemic been so searingly presented.

Yet, throughout Naqoyqatsi, while high technology and digital life are

critically examined, the film is ambiguous as to the fundamental

disjunct that enables civilized violence. From a primitivist

perspective, which views the rise of technology parallel to the rise of

the division of labor, agriculture and symbolic culture, it seems like

an incomplete critique. How do we undo technology, a force we breathe

like oxygen, if we have no constructive alternative? Is it enough to

present the case without suggesting a course of action?

GR: Well, first of all, let me say that if there’s a course of action

that someone would recommend that would be right for anyone, that very

rightness for everyone would make it fascistic. So anything universal

for me is fascistic. I don’t pretend to have the answers, but I know

that the question is the mother of the answer. Rather than presenting

answers to people which I think is a fascist modus operandi, it’s much

more important to present questions. The question becomes the mother of

the answer. That which can change things more fundamentally than

anything is the power of a community example. The power of a community

in direct action or living an alternative. I’m not talking about

utopias, I’m talking about a community in struggle, that wishes to

present an alternative to the slavery to which we’ve all subjected

ourselves through mass society. That would be a way out. If you look at

it from a more comprehensive point of view, perhaps there is no exit

from technology. This is, itself, a tragedy. On the other hand, I

believe that there is no destiny that human beings cannot overcome. How

that is done is up to the individual, it’s not up for any of us to give

answers to others as to how to remake their world.

Sk!: Many civilized radicals find themselves weighed by guilt and

alienated from cultures that civilization has domesticated. How did you,

as a person born into American civilization, guide your participation in

the lives of the Hopi? Why did you frame the discourse of all three

movies in the context of Hopi prophecy?

GR: Well first of all let me say that I’m not a Hopi devotee, I don’t

spend time over there. All of my contacts have died there. This film is

not about Hopi, I am not trying to go back to a Hopi way of life, nor am

I espousing that. We can’t go back to the teepee, we can’t go back to

the cave. What I tried to do is simply take their point of view, because

I found it laden with wisdom, I found that they understood our world

better than we did. That doesn’t have to be the result of guilt, it has

to be the result of coming in contact with someone that blows your mind

with their perspicacity of thought. That’s what happened to me. It was

music to my ears to hear David Menongue, an elder who was in his late

90s when I met him, say that everything that white people call normal we

look at as abnormal. Everything white people call sane we look at as

insane. Well that was music to my ears because that was exactly how I

felt, they didn’t give me this idea, it was like confirmation. If you

have a way-out idea and it’s so way-out that you think you might be

nuts, which I thought for years, if you find some other people that

actually have that same idea in another form, it confirms you. So I used

it as a confirming. I also felt that their language has no cultural

baggage, when you say Koyaanisqatsi, no one knows what that means, it

sounds like, perhaps, a Japanese word. I’m taking that language, that

doesn’t come from a literate form, it actually comes from an illiterate

form, it’s a culture of morality. I’m taking the wisdom of that point of

view to describe our world. Much like academics do in universities, they

take their own subjective categories of intellectual pursuit and apply

them to Indians through ethnographic studies, anthropology, etc. This is

turning the tables, it’s taking the subjective content, or ideas, of

Hopi, and applying it to white civilization. And that’s something that

makes some people uncomfortable. That’s an easy way of getting out of

seeing the value of other people’s cultures and contributions beyond

your own.

Sk!: One thing that I noticed, after viewing all three movies, was the

persistent image of the atom bomb mushroom cloud. Culturally we’ve seen

that everywhere, you could almost say that’s a burnt-out image for a lot

of people. And yet, in Naqoyqatsi, which just came out, you put it in

again. Is that something you see as an endpoint?

GR: No, if it’s burnt out, it’s only because it’s been used so often. My

whole thing in Naqoyqatsi was to take all of these burnt out images,

images that we’re surrounded with, like the wallpaper of life which we

call history, that great lie as it were, and re-examine those, put them

in another context. So this film was a little more difficult than the

other two, it’s taking our familiar, that which we’ve seen ad nauseam,

and trying to put it in another context. Nuclear is something that,

while we think we know something about, we have no idea of what it’s

done to us. Much like television, something as ubiquitous as television,

we have no idea of what it’s doing to us. Because we keep looking at it

from the point of view of the subject matter that’s on the tube, rather

than the technology, which is a cathode ray gun aimed directly at the

viewer that probably changes our genetic structure and certainly puts us

into a deep comatose state. I made a film called Evidence of Children

Watching Television (and they were watching Dumbo actually, or they

could have been watching anything, it didn’t really matter). Their eyes

become fixated, their breathing slows down, automaticities take place on

the face, slobbering comes out of the mouth; these kids are on drugs

heavier than Prozac just by having the television on. It’s the same

thing with nuclear technology, we think it’s just something that we

control, that if we had a “Nuclear Test-ban” treaty, everything would be

fine. The nuclear war has already occurred, all during the 50s. We

doubled the background radiation of the planet, it’s affected all of our

genetic structures. So, while these things have the familiarity of the

surface image, the profundity of their depth is something that we know

very little about. I think it’s Einstein that said that the fish would

be the last to know water, I would say, taking off on that context, that

human beings will be the last to know technology, because it’s the very

water we live in.

Sk!: What advice would you give to young people all around the world

gradually awaking to the nightmare of a world out of control with the

proliferation of mass techniques?

GR: I don’t like to give advice, but I’ll say what I think as to what we

can do. I think our greatest opportunity is to live a creative life.

Often that means to reject schooling, rejecting organized education. For

many of us, our diploma from college becomes our death certificate,

because it ingratiates us into a way of life that’s unquestioned where

the principal modus operandi is finance, or money. The real meaning of

life, I think for all of us, in our different ways, is the opportunity

to live a creative life, to create things, to name things. I would say

for all of us, the most radical thing we can do, and the most practical

thing we can do, is to be idealistic, to rename the world in which we

live. I think we do that best through example, not just through using

words, but using words that we can stand on, the acts that we do. Living

in the world but not being of the world, being an outsider, yet knowing

that all of us are insiders. Living with the conundrum that life is not

this or that, life is this and that. It’s not black or white, it’s black

and white. So I’ll add to that whole recipe humor, and one has the

possibility of living a meaningful life.