We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Daniel Watkins a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Daniel, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
It started while I was working as a wealth management intern in New York City for Merril Lynch. I was fresh out of college and my buddy, Steve Rannazzisi and I landed temp jobs on the 54th floor of the World Trade Center. Our first day? Monday, September 10, 2001. One day later my life, as well as the entire country would change forever. I don’t need to go into detail about what I went through that day. Steve and I were two of the lucky ones. We evacuated and walked north. I was in central park when our tower fell. We both decided then and there that life was too short to waste in finance. I left New York City a month later and moved to the West Coast. Steve and I eventually lost touch, but what we went through makes every other challenge seem easy.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Artists are liars. Art that tries to speak truth usually feels insincere and almost always fails at either approximating the truth or being art. I try to come closer to that Picasso quote, the thing about “art being a lie that exposes the truth.” Or to quote Robbie Williams, “You don’t want the truth. The truth is boring.”
I make work about criminality, metadata, casual cruelty, stupid machines, missing persons, and ghosts. I work in a lot of different mediums, predominantly film, sound, and sculpture.
The “exciting or special” question becomes harder to answer the more I’m asked. I think that the work is special because it’s mine, which is also an acknowledgment that it’s possible it may only be special to me. I like it because I’m considering every piece as an intersection of histories. I’m considering the history of the medium, the history of the materials, the intertextuality of elements that the work references. So, it’s special to me because it rewards the well researched, and research maybe the only real hobby I have.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Learn a craft. Be an artist, but learn a craft. The craft will make you employable, and in an ideal world it will be something that you can route directly back into your practice.
2. Don’t wait for anyone to give you permission to make something. If you want to make a film, and no one will give you money to make one, then make a cheaper film. Making cheap work is better than making nothing.
3. If you are not having fun in your practice then it’s okay to quit. No one cares if you quit.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
Not necessarily in my development, but I just finished reading Maila Nurmi’s biography written by her niece. Wholeheartedly recommend it if you are interested in 1950s Hollywood, or her life post-Vampira. A big takeaway for me is that there is no money in being the first to do something. She was THE first horror host, and her format was co-opted by all the Elviras and Svengoolies who have in turn made decent livings off of their work. Maila however lived and died in poverty, and no copies of her show still exist.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://noiseandart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/epcot_fitzgerald/
Image Credits
Daniel Watkins
