We were lucky to catch up with Rust / L Maccarthy / Faunt recently and have shared our conversation below.
Rust / L, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.
L: As a gender-nonconforming person and offspring of immigrants, imposter syndrome is easy to have in the arts world at first. The factors contributing included cis men just waiting to ‘splain about things I’m perfectly competent at; someone waiting in the wings to exploit or drain my talent if when spotted its potential; the fact that life in an incredibly competitive area means that many others come off as both more talented and experienced at what I do; and a particular brand of immigrant-parent-excellence that pressures me with high expectations on the one hand, and is reserved with praise on the other.
I found that the antidote to all of these factors was simply to just do it. Do the art, performance, craft, whatever, as much as possible. In the comedy world we call it “getting in the reps” like you’d do a workout at a gym. Simple repetition helps the gears move smoothly and also gets you giving your pitch or presentation to people over and over.
Rust: For me, the most difficult thing about imposter syndrome is recognizing that plenty of people who are more successful still aren’t very good or don’t really know what they’re doing. My brain dislikes accepting that, because I want everyone to do things well. The fact that other people are considered professionals without having the excellence that I personally prefer is a sort of cognitive dissonance. But I’m slowly pulling my head out of my backside on that.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Each of us (Rust + L) attended performing arts schools growing up and continued to follow and explore our respective disciplines in the decades since–Rust going to college for Music Composition and L continuing education in a variety of dance forms and later pursuing comedy and immersive performance. Together as MMIX, we create photography/video-based work that presents the tension between natural themes and digital technology. We draw inspiration from the heyday of alternative music videos of the 80s and 90s, as well as glitch art innovators like Rob Sheridan. Our collaborative work (which began in earnest early in the Covid-19 lockdown) has its pillars in the misrepresentation of reality, malfunctioning technology, the vulnerable oddness of existence, and allowing a respectful space for the darker aspects of the self. Despite the digital nature of our finished work, we avoid A.I. or Photoshop in our creation process, preferring to use our phones as a tactile method for distortion and controlled chaos.
We are currently expanding the scope of our work into three different avenues–vending our art at pop-up events; applying to both in-person and virtual gallery spaces; and private clientele work that involves either static images or glitch/video work. We recently completed our glitch video reel and are looking to be hired out by event producers, bands, dj’s, and the like to create unique video experiences. We post on our shop regularly and often feature new designs and image collections on our social media as well. We are currently conceptualizing a 2024-2025 image collection that pays tribute to Los Angeles landmarks in our signature glitch art style. We also have a gallery opening tentatively set for the tail end of March/early April 2025 at Highways Performance Space & Gallery in Santa Monica, which we are extremely excited about.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Organization, attention to detail, and work ethic/consistency. We are fortunate in that our individual strengths help balance each other out and all three bases get covered by at least one of us. That also helps when one of us is having an off-day or even an off-week. Part of our partnership is instinctually knowing when to step up and maybe carry a little bit more. Being successful is impossible to do on your own–in most cases, it takes a village. With us, the village is each other.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
We’ve been a creative entity for five years now and the economy for art has been especially rough in Los Angeles, especially after the strikes. Given that, we only recently (Fall 2024) had the ability to pay ourselves out at all. We arrived at this place from a non-traditional business plan that has involved creative fundraising, engaging with social capital such as event participation (often at cost to us), and pursuing a more traditional retail avenue to what we do. Additionally, we had to find an alternative to taking out a larger business loan, and were fortunate enough to be able to take out a low-interest credit card that has helped us fund some business expenses as we enter our second year as retailers. Were it not for these funding methods, our business would be growing at a much more glacial pace.
All of that said, we do not necessarily believe the goal of every single business needs to be unlimited expansion. And we don’t need our artwork on, like, shower curtains or anything like that. We often curate our offerings in updated collections, hold closeout sales to get rid of older prints, and generally try to avoid giving our customers too much decision fatigue. So overall, it has not only been non-traditional funding for our business, but an out-of-the-box/post-capitalist mindset that has guided our way forward. The hard part is doing that in a way that consistently meets all our needs. We’ve just had to keep an open mind, pivot when we have to, and trust our intuition.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://mmix-art.com
- Instagram: @mmix_art
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MMIXart
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mmix_art
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
