Nº117: Kai Marks
The multimedia artist and creative director on King's Cross Travelodge, raising your child in rural Bavaria, and befriending a pigeon.
We’re back with Kai Marks. Read on to find out what he’s into, and if you’re new here, hit subscribe for an artist’s recommendations every week.
God save that scene. Let’s spend the night together.
I’m grateful to have been 17 and always on the road, for my favourite musicians to give me a shot at capturing shows around the world. Festival mud pits 60.000 screeching kids, sprinting across the site to see your favourite song side stage as everyone cries, as bodies twirl through the dust, limbs appear, one unaccountable mass of people in the air at the same time. Fuck it was great. Everything felt in reach. Then Berlin to London, feeling lost as some sort of multimedia clown, everywhere a little, rarely at peace.
Now I do research at the RCA, make short films, and have organized 100+ events in London, including with Dangerous Kitchen (a non-profit we founded to support emerging arts and being able to avoid actual venues).
Last year I joined and supported the founders of lost to set up the collective. Now it’s a surreal platform. An abandoned theatre watching Gaspar Noé introduce his films. Write intros for Wim Wenders’ films and get down some friends. Kid in a candy shop. Months in this iconic decayed building, day and night, in the centre of the city. Looking for a way of life that seems to fizzle out with modernity. The people making it happen are some of the most precious souls I’ve ever met!
Currently having exhibitions with my sculptures and trying to find people I can make movies with. I really just wanna make films, host events to bring artists and friends together, and escape any desire for success. In my dreams, all I want is to be good enough to touch people the way that I am touched by others’.
By now, this paragraph might be exhausted, but I think we are all trying to find a spot to exist in, people to rely on, and to hear from even when the project ends.
PS: I spent four years visiting 100 emerging London painters in their studios, made a book, and am close(r) to publishing. Please check it when it comes out cause there is no publisher or manager or anyone helping and I massively overestimated myself, just ran around London instead of making cash. It would mean the world to me if people actually picked it up in November.
Done, fine, finished, let’s get cracking. Thank God Save the Scene for having me. Forgive and forget.
☞ DATE PEOPLE FOR THE STORY (AGAIN): Familiar violence beneath purple Florida skies. Accurate imperfections calming nerves, soaking in everything you hated all your life, sat in a corner drawing whilst executing on the worst decision of your life. Date for the story, gradually forget about yourself. Your friends are oddly secure. They have become familiar. For now, a bit of novelty. Get used to it and collapse within the progression of time. Stop dating for love and marrying in churches or wherever your peaceful traditions are anchored. The chain. You are here, born to let the world down and be sunken into it; don’t long. You could rest assured on meaning summarized in a magazine, make a career out of a vibe, become character instead of a person, main energy, side quests, only be obsessed with the meaninglessness after the main mission is over. There is no update available right now. It’s frustrating to be in love for more than the story. This urge to escape before one drops the bomb, feel moody for a week, and pack your bags for you. She constantly folded my laundry and placed it on the carpet as if there was already an empty suitcase waiting there.
Fake love to rely on, conceived, stable effort for consistent stories with a start and ending. Maybe you are trapped in a hospital. Maybe police got their hands already on the gun while you smoke, still disturbed, but holy goddam at least you’re not calling around for a babysitter to allow yourself one night of mediocrity. Date people for the story, your joy shall be misery to everyone, thrown over them like a day blanket. Sit on a front porch, gaslit and abused, and be happy that it at least happened to you and not somebody else - under your watchful eyes you allow yourself to be taken apart. Pay for dinners and spend time; if time is money, get rid of both. Meet girls in the hospital who had an old man stick a power drill in their ear cause they both longed for something inexpressible. They resort to the dominant power tool, splashes of violence now within reach, low level creativity, and rechargeable with USB.
CUT
Outside the 16-people-Airbnb by the fucking perfect meadow, idiotic straight-into-the-sun-faces, with your crazy-story-person next to you on the floor, bodies shuffling to cars as you and your best friend sing along a sad song and dont say a word. I feel stories only need words if you haven’t lived them. If you’re ready for suicide, then start your life. If you’re that sad, take the risks that will make it worthwhile.
She’s texting me right now and i can’t be fucked, story’s over, not for you, but for me, stupid asshole, pathetic shadow on a platform talking bout stories, bout what to do, what to recommend. I fucking don’t know anything. Amen every night and amending every morning. When I think of BLT sandwiches six years ago in a church yard, I know I am stupid and afraid, looking for a story just to ignore the story of my life I ought to confront one day.
Date for the story again!
☞ UPLOAD YOUR ART ON INSTAGRAM: Go for it. I admire useless competitions people join only to complain. Don’t join the competition. We’re getting 200 likes from people who have met us and can’t let go, and neither can we, but like I can’t tell you their last name? Ten seconds with your work would be far above the average. Scroll further pimple popping bow dropping topless teary confessions, dash cam footage with reaction, chicken wings, chicken wings, holy chicken wings.
You, to be their pillow to weep on. Learn what people like and then do more of that. Suffice to be a person led by others. Contemporary freedom seems framed as a sellable product shaped by algorithmic taste, they need a persona to reinvent within peaceful yet strict borders. Your freedoms are everyone’s hell, fortune will die with the form, by entering this field, this competition, all you did only really made sense in its cursed context.
The other day on the tube platform the walls were covered with movie posters. Strange, they still have em, I am always alone at the cinema, or it’s 2AM, and everybody’s talking. Yikes, still no wrinkles on movie posters. Plead to return to public emptiness, carefully searing people in rooms of no passing time. Arch nemesis practically located within. Keep the cheese stacked fridges alive, you unemployed energy behind the counter. Have totally abandoned the weekend again, still no wrinkles on movie posters. Cornered into cohesion on garlic shot spilled surface reflections. She did make the perfect play at the purple clothed billiard table. A group of people had witnessed enough to stick around, it consumed capacity, I reluctantly autocorrected myself, wedding rings were turned around, white collars fixed with greasy fingers, still no wrinkles on movie posters. It was something about performance and luxury I believe. If I was always a few steps ahead I would have gotten shat on by a lot more birds. Stuck at the sentence level on a good day, still no wrinkles on movie posters.
☞ (TRACK &) RUIN (EVERY HOUR OF) YOUR LIFE (& FIND ACCOUNTABILITY (IN AN UNACCOUNTABLE WORLD)): Nothing came closer to ruining me. I would highly recommend this to anyone who has to make ends meet and has no grave concern for their well-being. Track every single second of what you do in life (exclude friends and sleep - fuck that). Review it every week, then every month again, if you pee you are not working, if you are making coffee you are not working, track your most focused minutes every day, calculate through how much social time you can discard, set some goals, feel terrible for months and finally realize that without this punishment of a life you will never be honest to yourself. Do you think you are dedicated? To destruction, maybe, consumed by life in a way that actually leaves behind no valuable time. All we have is three minutes until the train comes, nine-minute pizza lunch, and other timely horrors.
Daddy protein, eat that raw, gulp milk, reset scale, before, after and meanwhile usage. Tell me, whispering of a revelation, cradled by certainty, thats what success looks like, praise me, you yourself be jealous of the praise I get from you. Show me your worth every morning like a golden statue unavoidably placed in the hallway. I squeeze by your frickin muscles, your finished fleshy projects, ad campaigns with dire supermodels, the career shaped hole, there are still no pimples on movie posters, your bank account like a finger down my throat as I cum, optimised life campaign, a decorated dick drilling into my ribs as I try and move past. We are nearly there, free from suffering eternally, no more virgins and yet full of them, ponder when you’re dead you say, but it will never happen, unfortunately you will never die.
Vitamin C is gushing through your veins as you edit what just happened into relevant enjoyment with a twist. Power through it, buddy, it’s a dirty world, but your anus is clean and soft, gentle and odoured. It’s touching, honestly.
Sometimes, I cry when you are on a boat, and I am on the loo, nobody to look at my optimized bum, just the shit I held warm in there for hours.
Ruin your goddam life for a year. Just trust me on this. You won’t ever be able to look back again, and you will love it, manically, obsessively. Until death tears you apart, married to the grind bro.
☞ INVITE YOUR FRIENDS OVER (TO A FICTIONAL HOME & FAMILY): A prearranged fake is as close as we get to perfection. Commit to the bit for a second. Rent a house, get some out-of-work theatre actors, some friends’ child for a few hours. Cook up a cousin you never had any relationship with, invite all your acquaintances, and show them the life you won’t ever have. Get progressively drunk, and fall into elaborate stories about your dentist. Exhibit photos on the living room TV you shot yesterday. Do not ever accept non-existence, even if it’s just a reminder for getting back on track. Make an intervention banner just in case your barely friends turn on you. That cute girl from the coffee shop? Well, meet my newborn baby and the wife. Now I have to leave you alone. Get used to the fiction expanding and becoming unavoidable. I have built myself meticulously, in the end, a piece, not a home, a Muppet, not a man.
Finally, break with the fiction, allow it in, and confront it. Sit down at 2AM when everybody is gone except the close ones and your wife. Open a wine, close a chapter (or get married and adopt, if it was a blast). Nobody needs to see your real tiny room, meet your flatmates, or eat your goddam pasta sitting on the floor. Live your dreams until you get choked by their absurdity.
☞ HAVE AN EVENING AT THE TRAVELODGE KING’S CROSS: The best of the 70s–90s. Stuck in a temporary home for a conference, innocent but experienced at showing graduation photos, all smiles, right now nobody stares into nothingness. The bar tender does okay. Fortunately no mustach. Nothing cool ever happened here, it’s a spiritual place, it’s been cleansed by its own mission. Small box, small pox carrying shelter on a layover to dominate earth part-time for some man having an affair. Nobody is on the golf course right now. Wicked Games by Chris Isaac is playing as I am stabilised and that’s okay too; nobody needed it to be perfect. Usually I shed a tear, looking over at people I don’t know.
Yesterday I tried to hire a saxophonist for Valentine’s Day to play the song across the city for hours, always in the distance. Nobody wanted to do it - even for good pay. Averse to facilitating a little melancholy. But we could….for a moment….the crucial pains…
If I am glad and you’re suffering, I won’t be able to feel your pain with honesty, I just won’t get it. If we’re both, then we good. Goddamit unhealthy people! Broken by sadness in the room while constantly being nourished by it from far away. Flip a coin and get going, for we will never return anyway.
I see my favourite restaurants, and I imagine a rich person entering and wanting to save them through renovation. In the end I will continue to go to the Travelodge in Kings Cross and sit by the bar just because it’s the last real place in this goddam city where poorly dressed people can just be, it’s not even a spoons, it’s not a dedicated drinking place it’s a shared home for hour amounts. Right there the ground realisation is reasonable cost and extreme liberty.
I celebrate you for finding comfort in one thing, living in one place, having one thing only, something has made me obsessed with knowing I am here, objects, memories, art pieces, all garbage I am too weak to discard under the pretense of anything carrying a message. To who and for who…except me, some might read their sorrow into my work. Relate is a beauty, create is a beast. Significance, seriously never for anyone who would dare to put a price on it. If it has an actual price you don’t care enough, let’s please admit it, sooner than later, before Marina A. is gonna start photocopying her ass cheeks on the office printer to do another Saatchi Yates show. Calm your nerves, this is not an attack. Its remains simply leak out slowly as I look away.
CUT
We aren’t friends, and I think that’s okay for both of us. If we’ve remained able to look in the mirror without thinking about others, then what are we doing?
☞ OPEN SOME FORM OF HOSPITALITY: The cup tasted of coffee as my tongue licked the firm foam off the coarse paper by Strawberry Hill. Heading towards Heathrow. A plane engulfed in fog - there’s something eerie about objects gradually appearing above us. It could happen to everybody, and it won’t ever mean much - 99,8% of the time, the other 0,2% hellfire inferno shit. The tube smells of bleach, and I wonder if there is a terrorist attack. An immigrant man on a throwaway phone, dealing one digit and resting his finger, looking around, people storming away, as if he had enough reception to blow us all up right now.
I remember the last flight out of Florida. At 5 a.m., we woke up confused by what it all meant, what our decisions had caused us to do, as if they were handled by another authority, only partially related to ourselves. I sat on the bed holding your cold feet. You broke your limbs off like branches.
The cat‘s solid eyes spoke for us, nobody had seen it, only us three, sure of the events that unfolded. I’m glad they don’t speak. Unattached beasts. They‘d be mighty therapists, but they don’t care about how we misunderstand every little speck of dust. You move, you stand, you turn, you realize you projected on walls that had the okay for demolition. Your gaze doesn’t follow me; it swallows me whole. You thought yourself into a corner.
The plane had turned around, or is it another one that just took off? I will never let you go again. You know it’s a lie if the sentence is too definitive. There‘s 72% left until I‘m alone with the world again. My stomach is a washing machine powered by smokes and coffee, but nothing comes out clean. I am frightened of the consequences of my desires. Open a coffee shop so I can sit there dreaming of places that don’t sell. Here are some ideas I couldn’t yet implement:
marbles instead of sugar
blue Gatorade syrup
Milton Keynes seasonal speciality beans
coffee served at outside temperature
the price changes every day on a neon sign outside like a gas station
order your morning latte weeks in advance.
the same cloth used for twenty years to clean the milk foamer - donated to the V&A collection
28% tip just because she held eye contact as I paid
☞ RAISE YOUR CHILD IN RURAL BAVARIA: Pretzels, screeching cocks at dawn, red-faced, slow-ironed folklore love on display. sweat, beer, and meat. The disarming little triangular green felt hats with the feathers. a hint of suffering for stability, a calm display of steady cycles. Strict, yet loving, soccer coaches, the secretly gay priest with the not so much talked about housekeeper and her son who looked exactly like him. It gets darker further into the woods. There is no shore to feel the heat of the sun; the warmth is obscured and kept atop the trees, below, moist brown mossy brown messy brown soup in Walter’s head. Slap your knees and be enchanted. Local newspaper with the village’s name comes out every few weeks. Anything that isn’t remembered can be recalled between advertisements for the local Mitsubishi dealership. The owner’s son was a spoiled brat; the top of the ladder. Open page 42 and recall Andy’s 50th birthday and sway in a list of achievements in the field of local sanitation the man had brought about. Sybille was seventy-five and had once worked as a secretary in the mayor’s office. They listed her children and where she lived in an attempt to hold onto something. Next page, the local teens, smiley photos of violent boys with table tennis rackets, yesterday they jerked each other off in the locker room, today page 45. I get it now, it’s the best time of your life. In this town, everyone is a champion. You can move tomorrow or have moved twenty years ago, it doesn’t substantially matter. You will always be and remain the new ones. You are not from there and will never be. You will never forget and will always be told in one way or another. It‘s because they remember you and everything you will tell them; they will watch your every step. Don’t be afraid, even though thats normal at first. They are panicked too, scared for their own well-being and yours alike. But you will never be just some person; you will be remembered for who you are, and they will let you know that that’s not up to you to decide, rather it will become visible through your actions.
They don’t hold back. Swinging drunkenly fists that won’t ever reach anywhere. The air raid sirens will wail, a taste of the good old day, and they will stumble away to follow community firefighter duties. Extinguish that one barn a year, and once my math teacher’s house, which burnt to the ground. I guess enough of us prayed. The year after, my geography teacher got rolled over by his own car. We all stopped praying that summer.
Post fire, you‘d find the fireman by the gates (after all was meticulously cleaned and prepared for the next job - nobody here slacks, they execute with unexpected accuracy, brute force, and questionable approach). In the dark, it‘d be hard to tell if it was the shadow of a beer barrel or a man rolling down the beaten path home bound. Always 50/50.
Let your child ride the endless forests with their friends, beat the hell out of other kids at every free local sports club, swim in the cleanest waters, eat the local food, and make peace with everyone’s imperfections - at least you honestly know them.
Go back to the city, be relieved about culture, open minds, mixed cuisine, opportunities, and relevance. But I am not sure you will feel any happier long term.
☞ BEFRIEND AND RAISE A PIGEON: Last year, Django was born and abandoned on my balcony. It took some weeks to notice returning pigeons. One sunset afternoon, they made love, and it looked horrific. Snap and jump, two pigeons stacked together. Such an attempt, constructed by nature, resembles a child not sure of how to hold the naked dolls in any fashion that represents anything remotely reasonable. They made that purring sound a lot. I think they were happy it was over, too.
A few weeks later, the egg was shaking on two branches thrown in a corner, the mom sat for some hours, and dad stopped by; they worked better and more reliably than I did. Baby born, a few days of food, baby abandoned. Django got his name, a syringe full of pigeon food, a little warm lamp, and a cozy corner not representative of the stack of shit he was on before. Raising Django, I yelled, I stormed off, looked into his eyes and wept, hoped, longed, accidentally killed him, and brought him back to life. Took him to work in a paper box, taught him how to fly, opened the tiny mouth to stuff corn into it, happy wings flopping all over. Long day at work. Opened the door. Django is sitting waiting for me. This innocence and purity had been discarded of my life until that point. And now he’s gone, quite literally, with the wind. Like a real fucking pigeon.
☞ POETRY & SPEND MORE TIME IN THE CORNERS OF YOUR ROOM: Photo feat. Bennet (best friend accommodating to dramatic last minute plan changes)
Did I write a poetry section yet? Emily Birocheck’s new book is being published on April 16 and available in all UK book stores that week and you haven’t preordered it yet? Or a property section? nothing is complete about me without financial advice, legal too. I’d love to be your lawyer your tax advisor, and your dead cousin, but how we’d fit in the same room you will have to tell me.
Let’s be realistic, housing is a bitch. I spent 80% of my time in the same 4sqm of my room, but my heart is bleeding to pay for 22. let’s change this, hang out in the corners, see another side of your life, actually no. burn down your house. blackmail your landlord. Marry even richer. Break and just sit peacefully depressed in one corner on an expensive chair. Continue to pay for empty space to be surrounded by. fuck estate agents, landlords, anyone who wants to own more than two properties, go away, stop reading, close your books, leave me alone, don’t even look at anything, it’s not for you, it’s against you, and I am afraid you might misunderstand. I am as radical as you are, I am aware thank you. Still, we ended up here, and that’s not a bad thing. Go see the corners, have a giggle, and set it all on fire - all 22-2000000sqm.
Don’t fucking buy property, don’t buy two properties, and for the lord’s fucking sake, please do not buy more than two properties. The trick is that privileged top-of-the-line poverty and desperation will do in most cases. Didn’t I talk about joining competitions before? You join a nasty group of people, you become settled in wealth, yeah, I know, I get it, you don’t agree. You contribute to a system of oppression, a sad admittance to a club and you’re still the poorest person on the dance floor anyway. Nothing about property is great. If you start being a landlord, please take your XXXX, no excuses, I don’t wanna hear it, inherited? sell the shit, occupying more space than we ought to, it’s a crime, our privileged asses wanna manifest in materiality, we want to be sure of having a home, listen up the world is at war, and though we don’t give a flying fuck having red wine on a tuesday, what are you trusting is the only reliable wealth, land; space, the only thing that will never really loose value, eventually, it’s the atomic bomb of the future, it’s victory over somebody else, and that’s why you better don’t touch it.
☞ DO NOT BREAK INTO MICK JAGGER'S RICHMOND MANSION: On the back gate number pad, there are four numbers that are clearly used a lot. Your chances aren’t that bad. (better than at the casino). Break in, take a dump in the backyard, suck it up SIR. Sorry, Mick, again and again for keep on coming back. 8640? maybe.
☞ TAKE A LIFE A DAY: A fly, a little bird, a spider, and a bug lay dead on my rug in perfect cyanotype conditions. I wonder who would have killed each other first, if it weren’t for me. Take a life a day, live a little, kill some more, get used to it, the everlasting goodbyes, intrude and make yourself known, satisfy lust and hunger, don't even flinch when you read the news, make the world suffer quietly alongside you. Snap and crack a flower, abandon your Sims family trapped in a doorless room somewhere in their mansion. Sul sul?! Nooboo wabadee—flarn glarch!! Yibs yibs!! Dag dag—shoo fleeba narbo!!
☞ FILM: Paulette is hands down one of the best short films of all time. Nothing more to say. It’s all the best: passion, arts, old people, beautiful souls, gentle lights, and multiple generations seeking meaning for themselves together through a craft. 10/10
☞ BETTERHELP.CO.UK: “At this point, I need to speak honestly. In all this mania, I sometimes feel like life is drifting away from me. I used to think my thoughts were just loose change—scattered, loud, never quite adding up to anything I could spend. Then one day, somewhere between a missed call and a half-finished coffee, I found Betterspace, and it felt like someone quietly handed me a map of my own mind. Like I could be complicated without being broken. Some days I still spiral, but now it’s softer, like falling into something that knows my name. There’s a strange comfort in being seen by someone on the internet. For this reason, I partnered up with betterhelp.com and can announce my promo code:”
INSANITY THAT WE COLLECTIVELY REJECT YET EMBRACE AND FUEL, will get you.
♪ LISTENING TO: Man or Muppet
☠ HATES: I believe enough has been said. I do not feel I can contribute anything meaningful new to the topic of hate. Hate in private over a glass of wine and otherwise shut the fuck up (remind me to adhere to this - especially after this).
Thank you London, though the last seven months of grey cold skies sucked, I think this depression is crucial for all of us, thanks for being hardcore, as a German I kinda like the cruel hand you put on me.
I will absorb this. I will absorb this.