What’s going on at Show Cave?
We got a write-up in L.A. Weekly boasting that we are on the “fringes of the underground!” Ahahaaha! LAZY IDENTITY—screening December 11, 2010features new videos that discuss what can obscure, preserve and even annihilate our identities.

Who’s participating?
L AZY ID E N TIT Y will have new videos by Rich Bott
 (Animal Charm), Daniel Hipólito and Mario Zoots, Peter Burr (Hooliganship)
 Oliver Terry,
 Anthony Anzalone (Mikki and the Mauses),
Extreme Animals (Paper Rad), Drone Dungeon,
Dev01ded,
Tommyboy, Mark Brown, Actually Huizenga and myself. Our previous video shows have had titles like Summer Sizzlers, Quartz Qube and Spread Eagle. I thought that this show should focus on things that you could easily crawl out of bed for; less energy and more leisure!

How could one annihilate an ID E N TIT Y? Have you ever attempted to obscure or annihilate your own?
Annihilating an identity is easy to do…don’t do anything and you can fuck things up pretty badly. On the other hand, you can do too much and get the same result! Ha! So, yes, I’ve annihilated myself plenty of times!

How does this show fit into the Show Cave canon?
I would call the curatorial aesthetic a web of chaos from spun goat silk* (*Scientists have actually been successful at breeding goats that can produce large quantities of valuable spider silk)…totally unexpected; I think even for us. The events and people involved with Show Cave are organically connected through friends and like-minded souls.

Is it difficult for you to be constantly curating and managing shows while at the same time producing your own work?
I think that there’s a network of inspiring artists around me that engage and support my work as much as I support theirs. I just happen to put it together in a space or an event. My curatorial and personal practice live as the same beast with at least fourteen different heads. It is hectic to orchestrate events but I don’t know how to make it stop sometimes.

What are you working on right now?
I just finished my video, Zoned, for L AZY ID E N TIT Y. It’s about The Trust for Public Land and Kaiser Permanente have teaming up to give LA some fitness face-time. In 2010, $900,00 has been invested as part of a park revitalization project to be spent over three years for fitness “zones.” Low-income communities can now benefit from extremely low impact routines. Muscle beach has nothing to worry about!

How far back does the Show Cave crew go? Could you give me a brief history of the Show Cave clan?
Eric Nordhauser conceived Show Cave in a store front located in the 
alleys of San Francisco’s Chinatown in 2002. His initial inspiration was 
Andy Warhol, George Kuchar, NYC’s Fun Gallery, RE/Search publications and (most importantly) a small but productive community of young 
artists enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute.

In 2006 Eric moved the Show cave to Los Angeles where we met. Our first space in L.A. was on Temple Street near the M Bar. We had a lot of gang problems there so we moved to a new space on Echo Park Blvd. We still had problems with the locals! We actually had a drive-by happen right in front of our new space the first day we moved in. A rival gang gentleman was in the wrong neighborhood and was shot. He died 20 days later in LA county hospital. Despite the mess, Show Cave has found it’s true spiritual home in L.A.

What’s next for Show Cave?
Another project is SLIDERS: The Digestible Video Retrospective from the Show Cave Archives. SLIDERS is a 2-hour program, a selection from past video shows I curate.

We began this video series in 2008 asking artists to make new work that approached the titles of each show. Participating artists include Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Eric Wareheim, Animal Charm, Aids 3-D, Kathleen Daniel, Tommyboy, Jules Marquis, Bobbi Woods, Eric Nordhauser, Actually Huizenga, Drone Dungeon, Santi Vernetti, Nathan Maxwell Caan and Douglas J. McCarthy.

SLIDERS will screen at Invisible Exports in New York on October 22 and Yautepec in Mexico City on Feb 8.

I must ask about your previous venture abroad – the Sonic Horticulture tour that started in the Netherlands during my group Reclamation’s installation of a human Terrarium in a Medieval chapel. How did you come up with the concept for Sonic Horticulture?
When you asked me to be a part of the Ritual/Music event series during Reclamation’s Terrarium installation, I started to think about plants growing bigger and stronger through sound. Since your installation featured an alter with plants in a 500 year old church, it was only fitting to consider what sonic influences we could create to commune with the installation itself…so, Sonic Horticulture was born!

What about this group of artists made you want to coral them all together and herd them around Europe?
I really believed that the events would be for the artists themselves more than the audience. Everyone leapt at the idea of traveling to amazing places to test them selves creatively.

There was definitely an element of gypsy travel – As a group, we travelled by planes, trains and automobiles… and a boat! Some of us traveled by coach for over 12 hours to get to some of the cities, and two of our artists took a bus and train carrying a beehive and an illegal transmitter! I felt such confidence in the curiosity that I recognized in everyone involved… I think everyone could feel it.

What was the bexxxt moment of the tour?
I’d have to say when a local artist in Hoorn happened upon our performance. He stumbled in without any shoes looking a bit manic, like he had just broken out of some small village crazy haus! He kept his eyes shut tight and bobbed back and forth to the sound. Everyone noticed him at first…I think with apprehension, being strangers in a strange land. But we all seemed to forget that he was there…Everyone was just so into the moment that night and really experiencing what each other brought to the event. I think that crazy man was our inner beast…Our spiritual mascot of the night materialized as a bald, barefoot middle-aged man!

Has this experience inspired you to curate other gothic gypsy art tours?
Aaaaahhh…I’ve been asked back to Mediamatic in Amsterdam, actually! This time it’s going to be a girl-on-girl art fest called LICK ‘ER LICENSE. The multi-media event will focus on the grotesque and sensual mash-up of the female form by challenging the issues of identity in a continually male saturated field of technology in art. LICK ‘ER LICENSE proposes to redefine a woman’s role in art through sound and video.

What about Douglas J McCarthy? What’s your relationship to that guy?
Douglas is from the EBM band Nitzer Ebb and is fortunate enough to be my husband. We got married last April Fool’s day in his parent’s village in Suffolk (UK) where the last witch was dunked in the village pond. The witch was actually a warlock. It was a beautiful black wedding with close friends and family.

RSVP for L AZY ID E N TIT Y

Check out Hazel Hill McCarthy’s site

Show Cave is a place in the real world…whoa