Charles Atlas and Mika Tajima Posted on May 16, 2009 by Kevin Killian
I must have met Charles Atlas fifteen years ago or so now, but odd to say that this is the first time I’ve ever seen him outside his apartment. I met him through the writer Joe Westmoreland, a novelist and the author of one of my favorite books, Tramps Like Us, and whenever I would visit Joe at their apartment just south of Chelsea, Charlie would be there, totally preoccupied with video work that looked so ambitious I could barely make out what I was seeing. One time he showed us the music video he had just finished for Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) and Boy George—a duet version of Antony’s song, “You are my Sister.” I don’t know if this video ever made it to MTV, for it seemed like each of the two divas looked totally preoccupied with, “Do I look as fat as him?”
Novelist Joe Westmoreland, return to San Francisco
Anyhow, when SF MOMA said they were having a show of New Humans and that Charlie Atlas was going to come in person I knew this was one event I couldn’t miss. What is the psychic equivalent of killing two birds with one stone? I called Joe and we met for dinner at the Samovar Tea House at Yerba Buena Center. Dodie who couldn’t go, warned me that the menu was so delicious that there would be nothing I’d like on it. This was true but we had a great time catching up, as Joe had not been back to SF since before the Museum was built—a good ten or twelve years ago. Other friends joined us, Hugh and Sandra, and I practiced my interview technique. “I’m going to ask Charlie some hard-hitting journalistic questions, “ bragged I. “Well, actually one. What did you want to be when you were a little boy?” Joe didn’t know what Charlie wanted to be when he was a little boy, but, he added, “I wanted to train seeing eye dogs.” “That’s weird,” I said. “I used to collect the labels off dog food cans and mail them into the seeing eye people, because if you sent in ten, they would send a dollar to the dog school.” Sandra said she wanted to be a song and dance girl, but that ambition was quashed. Hugh had many dreams. He wanted to be a girl; he wanted to be a junkie; he wanted to be a suicide; he wanted to come back as someone else.
When we got to the Museum, my eyes popped! The New Humans (Mika Tajima and Howie Chen) had transformed the Schwab Room into a giant installation. Tajima’s shed-like abstract sculptures stood like unfinished business, while a gleaming track wove around the floor like a question mark seen from above. (more…)
