#467: Dustin Yellin on Making Art, Weaving Madness, and Forging Your Own Path

Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers, interview people from all different disciplines to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, et cetera, that you can use. My guest today is a madman. Dustin. Yellin. And you may not have heard this name, but by the end of this conversation you'll definitely look him up. Dustin Yellen, Y-E-L-L-I-N, on Instagram at Dustin Yellen, is an artist who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is the founder and director of Pioneer Works, a multidisciplinary cultural center in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that builds community through the arts and sciences to create an open and inspired world.

It's a beautiful, beautiful facility. So If and when you can check it out, I highly recommend. He and his incredible work have been featured by media and organizations worldwide, including the New York Times. Art Forum, Vanity Fair, and TED. Okay, so here we go. The next paragraph will make a lot more sense if you first go to DustinYellen.com and look at psychogeography. Or Google Dustin Yellen psycho geography and look at the images.

That all having been said. Drawing on both modernism and the sacred tradition of hinter glass painting, Yellen primarily works through a unique form of three dimensional photo montage in which paint and images clipped from various print media are embedded within laminated glass sheets to form grand pictographic allegories, which Dustin calls frozen cinema. But wait, there's more. These totemic and kaleidoscopic works often plumb the history and fate of human consciousness within the Anthropocene. Again.

That might not sound Like it makes any sense. But it makes a whole lot of sense if you look for Dustin Yellen psychogeography. And we will do our best to also include a photograph.

Dustin's art has been exhibited at or with the Amore Pacific Museum. I'm gonna mispronounce a bunch of stuff here. Could be Amore Pacific, A M O R E Museum, Brooklyn Museum, City Museum, Collection, Collection Solo. Corning Museum of Glass, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes. Bayas Artes, I'm not sure. SCAD or SCAD Museum of Art, Tacoma Museum, and Creative Time, among many others. He holds an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design. You can find him again on Instagram at Dustin Yellen. or at dustinyellen.com, y-e-l-l-n. And also at pioneerworks.org.

Please enjoy. This incredible ride, this roller coaster. through the mind and psyche and life of Dustin Yatlin. This episode is brought to you by Zero.

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Now it is. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal mental skeleton. Yeah. Dustin, welcome to the show. Thank you. Very happy to be here.

You are one of my favorite madmen I've been following ever since we first met. That pioneer works. And was blown away by your art, blown away by your storytelling. I remember this family going with my crazy Bulgarian assistant slash director of editorial with you on a little tour of your studio.

And It seemed like your life story was Just the Most incredible eclectic mix of things and I thought we would start And we're gonna go down all sorts of roads, but let's start with

You dropping out of high school. And my understanding is that you end up hitchhiking around New Zealand. And I was curious how that came to be. Well uh I actually don't remember. I I was in Colorado, I dropped out of high school. I I I for some reason Couldn't connect.

To the system of education and and I I just want it out. So I tried to persevere and then I left. And uh I turned eighteen. And I had a out of bet with my ma Where uh if I didn't do any

drugs or alcohol or smoke cigarettes or anything until I was eighteen. I would win this bet and uh She was gonna give me a car, basically, but when I was sixteen I like hustled. swatch watches actually and I made some money on my own and bought my own car. So when I turned eighteen, I said, Look, I won the bet.

But I already have a car that I paid for with my own money, so you you know, you're gonna have to give me some cash. Which I then Spent on drugs, sex, and rock and roll and just went bananas. copious amount of hallucinogens at a very at eighteen, which is maybe good because a lot of these kids

You know. don't know what they're doing and and they're twelve. So so it was cool. And And then I just Decided to get out of Colorado. Kind of picked a map and went.

to New Zealand and just started hitchhiking and through Australia. uh hitchhiking as well. And I hadn't been very cultured. As a kid.

And so I was like a late bloomer and at eighteen Here I am on LSD. For the first time listening to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and having my own sort of woodstock in my my mind as I'm hitchhiking through these countries.

Um It was pretty crazy and and getting exposed to all this weird stuff through people I'd met on the road. And then I ended up in Thailand. On an island on lots of mushrooms. They Put them in your omelets.

And I was like, this is paradise. I'll never leave. Why would I ever go back to what I knew before? I'm just gonna live on this island. And then that kinda at some point scared me'cause I was I was like, Whoa, I'm so detached from what I once knew, and then I went back to Colorado. And met that crazy physicist and So we we're we're gonna get to the crazy physicist. I wanna leave that just as a cliffhanger for folks for a second.

Let's go back to the swatch watches for a minute. When doing homework. For this, it seems like you had the hustle from a very young age and I read that You used to busk

As a break dancer I don't know if it was on the Venice boardwalk or somewhere, but as a little kid you would take this boom box out. And flash forward and Your I mean honestly, your your bio is just hilariously.

fascinating and almost unbelievable to me. At some point later, thirty years later, you end up somehow breakdancing in Jay Z twenty thirteen Picasso Baby video. I I mean I it's hard for me to even connect these, but where does the hustle come from? The entrepreneurial hustle that I think has served you well. in a whole lot of different areas. You know, I I I don't know where it comes from. I think perhaps it was always there. I have no idea. I guess it's in my DNA. I don't know.

Do your parents or any siblings have similar Programming? That type of entrepreneurial make something from nothing. Both my parents. have a bit of that. And I've had it.

I guess I mean and and you know my Ma left my ph when I was five. And took me to Tellurad, Colorado. And she's a single mom at that point, always on the road working and hustling herself. So I kind of raised myself. Since I was five, it feels like

And so There was a lot of just having to figure it out. Whatever it may be, I think. Was your mom supportive of your various I don't want to call them schemes, but the various money making operations

From it seems like a really early age. Did she know about them? Yeah, m yeah, my ma was always very supportive. She was very not around, I think, in in my youth, but also very supportive of my Whatever it may be, you know?

I think everyone got a little bit more nervous when I Kind of dropped out of high school. And then when I turned eighteen and and got pretty Pretty wild in And and then may and then of course I think my father was completely horrified and my mother was just praying I would get through it.

So let's segue back to physicists. So How do you meet this physicist? And who is this person? You know

Very unusual circumstances. I returned from Thailand. To Colorado. And uh This woman That I was very fond of.

And dated. Uh Introduced me. To Well she started telling me about this physicist and that he was

Brilliant and that he was working on environmental sciences and the damage from the Gulf War and and was trying to make free energy like Nikola Tesla. And of course I didn't know who Nikola Tesla was at the time, so I'm now learning. who that is and and that he worked with Buckminster Fuller and I didn't know who that was and started learning about Bucky Fuller and so again, getting introduced to all this new stuff.

And I told her I wanted to meet him. And I met him. And You know, he was maybe the first adult. To

Turn me on to cultural lighthouses like Pablo Naruta or Dostoevsky or you know Tesla, all these different things and reading m and music and kind of just teaching me and I was obsessed. So I asked him if I could study with him and he kind of tried to discourage me not to.

Because he said that that would be dangerous because the government, you know, was watching him because he was trying to make free energy. So he was he was really, really out there. And also really, really brilliant, and that made me really, really interested to learn from him. He he finally accepted Me

to learn from him and we would have just conversations and and and do mushrooms and LSD together and just have these long Conversations. And then He

Basically he was like Putting me into a closet. on a saline solution bed. With a quartz crystal on my chest listening to wails. And he was like, Look, you're gonna think I killed you, you're gonna think you're dead, you're gonna think I'm a pathological murderer and that I've killed you, don't you worry it'll pass.

And he would inject me With ketamine. And I didn't know this is straight up altered states. Which was a great movie and kind of got messed up. The second half because it got sort of obsessed with primordial regression opposed to progression. But William Hurt did a great job in that picture.

Um, and that was I guess loosely based on John Lilly's life and and John. John, the scientist that I was working with. And and I'm having like So I'm having these crazy out of body experiences where I'm leaving my body Uh in this

Sort of. You know, pure consciousness state and I'm becoming one cell. in my arm and then I'm one star. And then I'm um you know fractalized into

billions of little pieces recombobulating and then the more I would do it, I could navigate Through What I guess I perceived to be consciousness. And I had all these crazy visions which I felt like

Kind of. Is what sent me. To New York. How so? How did those send you to New York? Well, you know, this like blew my mind because I'm making these crazy paintings.

I'm making art constantly at this point. When did that start? Sorry to interrupt, but when did the artwork start? Well I mean I always made weird shit. But I never really thought about it as anything. You know, I would make little drawings where I'd make things out of rocks and sticks and things I found in the in the forest, which I actually I've I I've been doing all week this week. So nothing's really changed in In a long time. Um

So I guess I was always doing that, but by the time I was seventeen or so, I was like, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make art. And I didn't really know about art history yet. I mean, I might have known who Andy Warhol is or Picasso or Matisse, but I really knew nothing. And but art felt like the greatest freedom because uh it felt like something you could It was completely free. You could invent whatever and you were never limited to the thing you invented because you could go and invent something else. And then after I met the physicist, I became obsessed with the sciences because I was like, Holy shit. This whole world is a hallucination. Everything's been invented. Therefore

We can just build some crazy utopic vision of what we think. it should look like on this planet. And so The art The art became almost like the voice.

And The science. became like the tactic or something. I don't know. Yeah, I think so. I mean I think that maybe are you saying the art was sort of the the inspiration or the muse and the science was the sort of means by which you expressed

Whatever had been kind of intuited or received by you? Is that what you mean? Yeah, and I think I was really obsessed with Clean energy in like the sixties, even though we were in the Nineties. I was, you know, getting obsessed with Nikola Tesla and I was getting obsessed with this idea of

Of that we can make clean and free energy and Therefore. I felt like the art was almost the bonfire. You know, which you could get people around and if you could get everybody around a fire Then you could start to build these more complex systems.

Which could be scaling clean energy or You know. Various new forms of uh political systems. Now you you said that some of the visions are experiences when you're in these saline baths, right? So people can imagine if you float in the Dead Sea because of the the high salt content, like half your body is kinda suspended. I wasn't actually in the baths like

Like John Lilly, I was I was on a sailing solution bed in a dark room. Oh, I see. All right, that's a lot safer. Okay. Similar feeling, but a lot safer, precisely. Yeah. Now during those experiences you said that some of what was imparted or experienced led you to New York. How is that? I think I was

Feeding, if you will. These enormous delusions of grandeur where I'm like Everything is possible. Do you know what I mean? Like I could do anything. And I'm in a small town in Colorado.

And I'm obsessed now with you know, I'm like, I'm going to make art. And I'm gonna that's what's gonna be my medium is making things out of nothing. And so I basically reduce the idea that the only way to do that was to go to New York City. That's where the artists were, it felt like. You know, that's where that's where people were. 'Cause I was in a small town and the kids were like drinking beer on the mountainside.

Talking about hockey. And I was like, I need to get the fuck out of here. Ha ha. And how did you then Find your way or fund your way both, I guess, at that time.

to New York, right? How are you making ends meet? I went there Without really knowing anyone or or anything and found a uh

You know, and my ma was very generous and she said, Look, I'll help you With Putting like a very cheap roof over your head. And then you need to figure it out. So

I went there and found like I basically rented through I think it was like Craigslist or or the Village Voice, I found a r a a room. It was more like a closet from some dude in Soho. And I lived in this little tiny room and he was very generous and gave me another room to make paintings in. And again, I was young and wild and uh I was just making these crazy Abex. I didn't even know what Abex abstract expressionism probably was at the time, but looking back, I was making these weird Abex paintings and

renting this little closet room from the sky and out. Every night. Like a wild man. And somehow Talk my way into these

bars and places. At the time it was a place called the Bowery Bar. And a place called SPY. And I I don't know, I was very lucky because I met all these amazing people. right off the boat, so to speak. That and a lot of'em are still in my life today. So Yeah, I don't know how that happened. I just m I met people

Right away. Yeah. Well I mean it sounds like you went to the action and then you sort of entered yourself as one of the lottery balls in that spinning container of a thousand other lottery balls and bumped into A lot. Which would be viewed as serendipity, but you kinda engineered it by going. to the center of of the action. What year roughly

Do you recall when you got to New York? Ninety Four, I think. Ninety four. All right. And when did you first

Feel like And maybe you felt this all along, but from the standpoint of keeping you afloat financially, when was the first inkling that you felt art could do that for you? Well, in my mind coming to New York, I thought, oh, of course it would be so easy. Once I got to New York, that wasn't the case. And talk about hustle. I mean, I'd be like, Buy this painting for me two thousand, two thousand dollars. No no no, buy the painting, thousand dollars, thousand dollars. Five hundred bucks, buy that painting, I get to eat some food. Come on, five you know I was crazy. And then and then I'd be like If the someone didn't want the painting, I'd be like, Just take it.

Like Just take it'cause I I thought to myself, Well, if they take it and they hang it on their wall And twenty people see it, and nineteen of them can't not stand it, but one person likes it. And asks about it, maybe then maybe, you know, it would become a plague.

Did you say a plague? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's like a plague. It's like a disease art, you know. If I could get you know, really one person If if if you put something in a room and fifty people don't like it, but the fifty first person loves it and wants one and they get it, and then they do the same thing and the next fifty people don't like it, but one person sees it and they get one. Over a lot of time that can really You know.

Get you going. And that's what I would do. I would just hustle. I was wild. I'd be doing fucking, what do you call them like cartwheels and somersaults through the bar, and I had like long hair and beards and beads. And like I w I you know what I mean? I was I was out there, I was meeting people. Who were also teaching me. Like that's where I got

My education really was from the people I was meeting. How many pieces of artwork would you guess you gave away for free or close to free. Dozens, hundreds a handful, what I don't know, d uh multiple dozens, yeah. I don't know, maybe fifty, a hundred, who knows? I mean

And some of that stuff will like appear now and days, or someone will call me out of the boom and be like, I have this painting from ninety five. And I'm like, can you fucking burn it? You know, like oh Ha. Good on them for holding on to it. Uh

So ninety-four, ninety-five. I've thought about actually this is from a conversation I had with a friend named Graham Duncan when he was on this podcast. And he talked about swimming in this metaphorical river. And on one hand you have kind of hyper rigid on one shore, one side you have this like hyper rigidity, O C D, et cetera. And on the other side, you have Chaos. And

Serendipity and psychosis, right? You have the these two extremes, and you can swim down the middle, you can swim to either side, and sometimes people get Like lodged on one of those shores. This is leading to the to a question about Zelda. I don't know if this question's gonna make any sense, but Who was Zelda?

And why did you have to rescue her? Does this question make any sense? If not, I can give it a So I was obsessed with F Scott Fitzgerald. And then and then of course Zelda Fitzgerald. And

Yeah, and and so for some reason I I was having What one could call our a mild psychotic break. And I had this moment where I thought

That Everyone knew each other. That everyone was almost playing a joke on each other that they didn't know each other, almost This idea of the seven daughters of Eve, where we all came from the same mother, but now there's billions of us. And I and then I thought everyone was pretending not to know. So I would walk by a restaurant and I would wave at everybody.

Thinking like hey everybody And they would all look at me weird. Um

It was really weird. And I was adding up things. So like if I saw you, Tim, I'd be like Tim, uh T equals twenty. Uh I I is whatever it is, M is 13, and I'd add up your name, and I'd thought there was this like numerical meaning. And And I w I was filming all this because I had traded a drawing for a little handy cam. I think that's what they were called, the camera. So I was filming everything by myself, just whatever I was doing. And I had this moment where

I was writing all over my paintings. I thought everybody knew each other. And I went on to a boat. There's a great have you seen the video, the crack up? No, I haven't seen the video. I just read about it.

There's this video where I accidentally filmed a psychotic break and I go onto the Forbes boat. And I'm like, this is my boat. And the guy's like, what are you talking about? Like this is my boat. And I kinda thought like this is my world. And he was like What are you talking about? Are you

Related to the Forbes family. And I was like Yes, directly. F B E S I mean kind of

He listened for a little while and he gave me a tour of the boat until he feels I'm I was bananas and then he kicked me off the boat. And then I This was it like on Chelsea Piers and then I walked over to the Chelsea Piers Where golf range where they hit the balls, you know?

And I literally just in the night time by myself. Filming. walked onto the field. And started kicking the golf balls. And walked up to the guy driving the

Vehicle used to pick up the balls. And I said to him and I used the wrong 'Cause I said I I need to reprimand your vehicle. Ha ha.

You were trying to say requisition, I guess. Totally. The guy was like, Are you crazy? I'm like, No, no, no, you don't understand. Uh I'm having a party on this field. And I need this vehicle. And so jump on the back. And so he literally

held the camera, jumped in the back onto the balls, and I started driving and I tried to drive the vehicle out. Into the outside of this area and of course he grabbed the keys and brought out the managers And I tried to convince them they weren't having it. And so I laughed.

And then the very next morning I went into Central Park. Under the same idea that everyone knew each other. And I'll I never forgot because I I was talking to everyone as if they were family, and I started talking to this guy and having a long conversation in the park. And then I My mem if my memory serves me right, he tried to kiss me and that freaked me out. And I ran.

So now I'm like running through the park and I go to Belvedere Castle. I don't even know if I knew what Belvedere Castle was, but I go to the castle in the park and I climbed it. And I scaled the castle. And the police came.

And uh Got me down from the castle. And they were so nice. They were like, What are you doing up there? And for fifteen minutes. the police were really nice. They were like

Trying to and I was like, I'm I've got to say I'm looking for love. And they were trying to understand what love was. I'm like, I I have you know, and I was demanding that they opened up this castle'cause there were classrooms in there. To let the kids use the frogs and the dinosaurs and the microscopes. And the The police and I had a very nice 15 minute conversation where they were really trying to understand my motivations. And finally, after 15 minutes,

They were like, You're under arrest. They threw me on the ground. I peed in my pants. They took my book, which was Uh F Scott Fitzgerald's Uh the crack up, which was like a A book from 1945 published on New Directions of essays that Edmund Wilson, his editor, put together. And they took my book.

They put me in Central Park prison. I'll never forget they took my shoelaces. Then the ambulance came. took me to a hospital, my my two best friends who are both no longer with us came to try to get us out. Get me out and I wouldn't leave the hospital.

'Cause I was in this weird narrative that this is where I was supposed to be. And my friends are like, Oh, we're going I'm like, No. And literally they're I'm arguing with my best friends and they were like get Oh, let's go. And then for some reason I wouldn't leave. Then another ambulance took me to a full lockdown. I'm writing all over the walls like my numeric codes.

And Finally in you know, it's like the whole thing in the movies with the glass and the little pill cups and finally I was like, Okay, I'm ready to leave. And they were like, you cannot leave. And I I was like, No, no, I'm ready to go.

Like no. And my parents who had not been on an airplane together. In I don't know how long. Got to g flew from the West Coast. And they got me out.

P It was amazing. So all right. So amazing is definitely one one word. There are many descriptors one could use it. Yeah.

I well, I'll check out the video. To those listening, I suppose a few at least would think to themselves, holy fucking God, that is terrifying. Two questions for you. Number one is Was that out of left field psychotic break, was it precipitated by something?

So that's number one. And number two is have you ever gone so far to the shore of chaos and psychosis that you've scared yourself? Hm. Good question. Uh I don't know what was the Cause of this, I think

I mean one could It was a long time ago, so one could point to A surplus of hallucinogens. One could just one could also just Saying like, Oh wow.

I was having such a fin like life was so good. It was a dream. And I got so enmeshed into the dream that the dream sort of interconnected us all. And even at the time, I don't think it Scared me because I was I thought it was real.

And since then. I mean Sure, I've probably scared myself a few times, but Not so bad. I think it's good to shake it up a little. So you've never been worried about losing your tether to this reality.

And really just ending up in a psych ward for Years or decades. You've never had that concern. No. Why is that?

No idea. I think I just I just never I was never there. You know how people are manic manic depressive is something that one can be? Why don't you say that I'm just manic. I see. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealth Front. Did you know if you missed 10 of the best performing days after the 2008 crisis, you would have missed out on fifty percent, five zero percent of your returns.

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And you can get started today at Wellfront.com slash Tim. You told another story I recall during this first tour of your studio where I was marveling at your work, which which people have to look up. Uh and certainly visit your Instagram account, um, which is just at Dustin Yellen. But

There's this family or a mom and dad and their son, and I remember you ended up we were all standing in a circle at one point. And you're telling this story that completely captivated and mesmerized I want to say this like twelve year old boy and the parents were just not sure what to make of it. And I thought the whole thing was hilarious because you're telling a story about I want to say LSD and swimming from one place to another, or I can't recall exactly, but does that ring any bell at all? Something involving swimming and hallucinogens. Oh let me think.

I mean if not, it's okay. It's probably one of a hundred stories. I just remember more the audience reaction and the facial expressions more than anything else. Well I I don't know. I mean I definitely I've come closest to death swimming. Once to a bird sanctuary. I was swimming to a bird sanctuary.

And then I also in the Bocas in Panama, I d I was spear fishing for hamlets. And we were on a beach with a few scientists and I got swept away. I I was told not to swim. I should have listened, but n I don't think I was on any hallucinogens either time. So I don't recall almost drowning because of hallucinogens, but I have definitely almost drowned. Okay. That's perfectly good as a way of

Getting to it the question, which is how did you develop your abilities as a storyteller or maybe a better question is, because that's always a tricky one, like what makes A good storyteller, right? I know you you seem to be a fan of uh Werner Herzog. There are certainly others, but like in you are a good storyteller. In your mind, what makes a good storyteller and are there any people who stick out as really good storytellers? Oh well there's so many I wouldn't even know where to start. Verner's an amazing storyteller.

I mean F Scott Fitzgerald. Murkami. I wouldn't even know where to start with storytellers. There's so many, but I think perhaps Being uh curious is a great place to start. And

Trying to be fearless is another place where you just want to Inject. The entire Civilization Into your

Neural networks as fast as possible all of the time. So whenever your Conscious There's more than you could possibly Input.

I mean, even right now while I'm speaking to you, I'm looking at a mountain, I'm looking at hundreds, probably thousands of trees. I know that there's a river uh about a hundred yards in front of me in a valley, even though I can't see it. I've been on that river every day looking for rocks. There's just so you know, the infinite detail in our existence is so vast. That if you can

Be aware of it. and process it, then somehow you might be able to describe it and then that could become A captivating story. And if you put yourself In Those

Places Often. it becomes a great medium, I guess. So I'm constantly throwing myself into the depths of the Amazon or Papua New Guinea or Africa or all kinds of weird places always. Like I'm I'm kind of a bit of an explorer. And then

The things you see and the things you experience. you describe. And I think that people are like planets as well. So you could say the same thing for a person, right? And all of their experiences that you you could Yeah. You know, any anybody, a musician, a writer, a data scientist.

I don't know if that answers the question. Yeah, it's kind of secondary, if what you say answers the question, I think. If it's important, I'll I'll I'll come back to it. It's more Of a prompt, what I say. I'm d I'm just kind of like a you know, buzz light, your pole doll that's trying to keep things moving in certain directions or any direction. But the observation that you made about sort of the detail of reality makes me think of Aldus Huxley.

in Doors of Perception talking about the mind as a reducing valve, right? In so much as we're optimized to fight, fornicate, flee basically. And that On some level you could imagine hallucinogens allowing dropping or widening the aperture of your reducing valve so that you're you're seeing a lot of what is that's amazing literally just said what I always say

I even said it to to someone in this yesterday. I say it almost every seventy two hours, which is if I'm speaking about hallucinogens, I say exactly that. It's literally imagine your aperture is opening up. And therefore More light. More color, more sound, more

Is coming in. Have you found anything outside of hallucinogens to help you to widen the aperture so that you can absolutely I mean uh when I'm drawing you know, people have been trying to get me to meditate. And I think I've done it.

But not in a traditional sense and and a a a a lot of folks would say meditation. We'll take you very much to the same place. Nature, I mean just You know, I've been out here Hiking every day. In the river.

I think being conscious for take the hallucinogens out of it completely, but somehow just being conscious of Of where you are in the world. And what you are in the world and the Complete in

Comprehensible Misticism That is inherent in the very Fact. That you can

experience or be conscious of any experience. Is The same as Potentially. You know.

in taking in a hallucin. For those folks listening, and and I w I wonder this too, who were saying to themselves, this guy's fascinating. His story is Are incredible. And I've no idea whatsoever how he is not self destructed, like how he has managed his life or had it managed in such a way that he's become

A super successful artist, what would you say to them? Is it a just a miracle that you've had like you've kind of Rolled snake eyes a thousand times, or is there More to it. Well

I think. I don't know is what I would say. I would say yes, I've been extraordinarily lucky. Lucky, lucky. Every day I'm like, just don't die. This shit is so good. Don't die. Don't die, motherfucker. Get one more day in there. Um So Ha ha ha. I've been very lucky and I'm very grateful for that.

I think I'm also very cautious, you know. I'm not doing lots of hard drugs, I'm not. You know, as I've gotten older, I'm slower to jump in a crazy wild ocean. If I don't know that I could actually swim in it. or into a river if I think that it's gonna take me down. Um

So I've been very lucky, but I also think I yeah, I think you can Dive into the infinite. Complexity of our Existence.

And and not And do that by not just rolling snake eyes every time, but by just being Open and curious. Which is I think ha the great way for how people learn. Is by just being curious.

I totally agree. And uh I'm I'm gonna dig a little bit more Well, I'm gonna dig a lot more just because part of what I try to do in these conversations is to Tease out the Some people don't like this term, but like the superpowers are idiosyncrasies that allow people to break the normal moulds of society and achieve

Unusual things, right? Which you have done. demonstrably, objectively, you have done that. One thing that came up as I was reading were quotes describing you as anti competitive. And I'm wondering if if maybe that's a gingerbread trail. worth following and and thinking about.

And uh you know I'm looking at this quote from a Vanity Fair piece from two thousand fifteen. And'cause comes up a few times uh elsewhere also. But it d it mentions a friend of yours, is it Tom Rice? I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but a Punch Prize winning. Amazing. Yeah. You gotta meet Tom. I'd love to meet him. And he and his quote is Dustin loves everyone else's creative egos. He's learned the magic formula, which is that if you're competing with other creative people, you're just depleting your energy and destroying yourself. That's really interesting.

Can you comment on that? I don't know if it's accurate, if you consider it accurate, but can you speak to that? Well Sure. I mean I I'm obs I think that that that the species is pretty

Incredible. And I Just the way I'm uh inspired by nature constantly. I'm inspired by people, and people are part of nature. And so

When I fall in love with Well, like Tom's books is a a great example and Tom is is a great example, but You know, you could go just down the list and the line of incredible souls making amazing Drawings and paintings and movies and Records and math problems and all of it.

All of that stuff to me is is Fucking amazing Incredible Uh Magnetic

Material that can help propel you through the world. So I just wanna get turned on more and more and more to all the cool potential that can be Unleashed by Uh certain

Combinations of I don't know if it's neural activity or if it's, you know, meta fucking Cloud. Stimulation. Yeah. Yeah. What form, if it's the right term, does anti competitiveness take? Like what does that look like to be anti-competitive in the art world?

Well we can still embrace And love your community. And to help Your community Realize their dreams, not just your dreams.

And if you could make your dreams Part of Dreaming that How do we help Realize everybody's dreams together in some collective orgy of dreams.

Now is that driven by Optimism and idealism, is it driven in part by Just finding that a better way to increase your energy as opposed to deplete it. What what led you to that? I don't know if there's anything great.

specific f uh schism that that led me there. You know, except that sort of Corny, silly idea that there's like love and fear. Like we can all love each other, we can all fear each other. And it seems so simple. Like we can all come together and say, look, we're gonna Figure out how

To Бі створс то з плане токеде. And create great clean technologies and great responsible ways for eight or ten billion people to live together. Or we could

you know, create conflict and I guess competition and Territorialism and I and I feel like the idea of a country which is kind of arbitrary and new, and religions and sort of different ways in which we draw lines around thought.

And can maybe create ceilings for us. So But for me it's a very much a I I would have guessed a natural, natural state that we should just all love each other and build The world that we want to inhabit because the entire thing is just malleable and

sculptable and you know. I have another quote. that I'd love to uh fact check, see if it's accurate, first of all, but second, just to hear you explain it if it makes any sense. Uh'cause it stuck out. For me, and that is from a New York Times. Peace.

And the quote is I don't worry about inspiration as much as system overload. I don't know if you remember saying that if you did, but what does that mean? I feel that every day, Tim. Oh, what does that mean? I feel it every fucking day. I feel it right now. Uh I'll give you an example. I'm making sculptures right now out of rocks, and I love rocks.

And I go up the valley and I go onto a river where there's I guess probably millions of little rocks. And as I'm looking for the rocks. In the hot sun. With my head.

Sort of gaze down at the ground. I say to myself Holy fuck. There are so many rocks. How could I possibly See them all. At the same time.

And Then distinguish which ones will fit together. In order to make something out of them. And I could say the same thing about people

or places We're pretty much anything that There's just so much if I said to you I'm just gonna read poetry. Shit, I'm just gonna read Japanese poets for the rest of my life.

That in itself would I could spend a hundred years doing just that, or just watching French films, or just You know. Learning about specific plants.

Uh There's so much To learn and to be exposed. to and to remember if which which I have

very hard time doing that constantly I'm in system overload. And So when someone I you know, I always get that question, Well, what inspires you? You know, like Oh, what painter, what that I'm like, fuck man, I'm inspired by By everything. I'm inspired by being conscious right now of the fact that we can have this conversation. That's a fucking miracle. And Really, it is. And

Then So but if you play that out. And you like are kind of trying to till the soil to be aware, or as we said earlier, open our apertures. And the more and more you open your apertures, the more and more you possibly maybe perceive And you know, Huxley's a great example and amazing, amazing brain. Um

Then How do you mitigate system overload? And so where my challenges have been, I think, is that I'm always trying to widen that aperture. And then at the same time, I'm like, oh, but I should have some kids. And wouldn't it be nice to like Do things that happen in the world.

that maybe require a little closing of the aperture or something or something to focus. Because it feels like Just this. Endless. Infinite.

Awesome. C of possibility that is always Where you are. What have you found to help, if anything, with system overload because for you as someone who feels the world deeply.

and who willingly wants to widen and maintain the w the width of your aperture. This is just an ongoing, in a sense, like an onslaught of input. So What do you do? What are what are some of the things that you found to be helpful for preventing complete overwhelm? I like to draw and I like to be in the middle of nowhere.

And I like to smoke marijuana. Uh I like uh I like to uh Those three things I like a lot. Love to make love.

Uh, there's a lot of things I think that could help one. to uh Yeah, like m somebody got me to meditate on a lake this week. That was pretty cool. Um swimming can be good, I guess. Oh yeah.

Watching You know. Things. Like I can watch a movie and it puts me in a world Which then makes it so that I'm kind of living that world while watching it and therefore I'm not thinking about the ten zillion other

possible. Things I could be watching. You seem to have Watched A lot of film. Do you have any favorite films or for people who don't know anything about film, if they're like Dustin, please guide me through the light or the darkness or however you want to do it, please can you make some recommendations? Do you have any any films that come to mind that are films you've recommended a lot or watched over and over again?

Yeah, I often recommend a movie called Fitz Caraldo. By Verna Herzog. Um I highly recommend That and many of Verner's movies.

Um There's a great movie that's really funny. I don't know if you've seen this movie, Tim, called Bad Boy Bubby. No, I have not. I like the title though. Australian movie nineteen ninety three, I believe, Bad Boy Bubby. That's a cool movie. Another movie Called The Color of Pomegranates.

Yeah. I can never say his name. Par Hajanov, it's a he's an Armenian director. Um You know, I love how Lashby's Being there.

He also made Harold and Maud. Um I mean Jesus. Movies. There's you know, Claude Chabol's a great French director. Um Yeah.

you know, obviously Kubrick. uh watch all of Kubrick's movies and Tarkovsky's movies. Um and Tarkovsky wrote a great Book about film making called Sculpting in time.

Yeah, sculpting at time. Let's grab one of them. So you mentioned Fitz Caraldo first. Why do you recommend that movie to people? What is it about it? And not only that movie, but

The there's a great documentary about the making of the movie called Burden of Dreams. Uh. Yeah, by Les Blank. But but Fitz Caraldo, I mean, it's just this ultimate metaphor. Of this human who wants to bring The opera.

Into the depths of the Amazon. And the sort of trials and tribulations of what that means. And in the course of the film They to get out of the Jungle.

They have to carry a boat. Over A mountain. Which I think is just a great metaphor for what it's like. Be alive.

Well it sounds also a lot like Building pioneer works. And can you can you just describe how did Pioneer Works for people who don't have any idea. no visual in their mind of what Pioneer Works is. Maybe you could just tell

Describe what it is and then describe what it was because I I've visited in person And it's spectacular, but That is not how things began. Can you describe it for people?

What it is now or Yeah, what it is now and then rewind and talk about what well you can do in either or what what it was and what it is now or what it is now and what it was. However you want to approach it. Well, I mean I think it was just a hallucination and a dream. And it's Genesis, I think, is no It's no I don't I don't think it was like this great idea that I think every kid in every art school probably had similar sentiments of like why isn't there a place where I can go

Where there's writers and scientists and artists and musicians and filmmakers all together in a building. sharing ideas, thinking together and and dreaming together. Like why wasn't and I uh again didn't go to high school, I didn't go to college.

And So maybe subliminally or sublimely or somehow this was a way for me to incarnate what I wished To be or wish to experience at some point. But I but I didn't I never understood why isn't there a place where just everybody's that together trying to think about

How we build this world together. So it started very much as is a is just an obvious question, I guess. Like why why doesn't this exist? And When I was younger

You know, I started having you know roommates and I'd have a loft with lots of people playing music and reading poetry and kind of together. And I sort of had these primitive versions of this naturally But I guess so so w what is Pioneer Works now? It's it's an institute. With a mission. And I don't know if Institutes the right w word, but its mission is to

Build community thro the arts and sciences. To create an open and inspired world. So what does that mean? I mean, it means it's basically like how do we use Arts and sciences to bring people together. To build the world they want to live in. And uh

Now it's you know, somewhere between a school and a learning center and a museum and a community center and uh And I I don't know what it's it's uh It's a social experiment that I think could end up being a great model. as a learning center. And I don't like to use the word school because it feels like it puts you in something that

is old and not necessarily functioning. in its current state. So so I'd say it's a learning center, a cultural center. When I say culture, I have to circle sciences because a lot of folks don't think about science as part of culture. How large is it? My subjective experience was feeling that it was vast when I walked through and walked through again and then had two glasses of wine and walked through again. How big is this space? It's so funny because when I got the building, it was a uh

An ironworks built at the end of the civil war. And I had to beg everybody around me. I couldn't afford the building and I was begging everyone and collectors were like look, here's a half a million dollars You know Get the building and we'll take the art later. Just I was begging everybody and I almost

It almost didn't happen. And when I first went in the building, I was like, this thing is giant, like you're saying. And and it's about 27,000 square feet inside and about 20,000 square feet outside of its current. footprint we're we're we're we're gonna be adding some things and it felt massive. Now it feels absolutely tiny. Now I walk in and I'm like fuck. We have no Room.

We need five more classrooms. We need to triple the size of the tech department. The science area needs to be twice the size. You know, we we need to build recording studios. We have a tiny recording studio, but but it's not big enough. We need, you know We need a place for a democracy and equality. a program which is gonna require ten people and narrative arts program, which you know, so every right now it's

It's uh Yes, it's it doesn't you know, we we do about seventy five residencies a year where we're giving space for free to scientists and artists and writers, et cetera. Uh so we need more more place for the residents. So I don't know if that it it feels tiny. Let let's go back to

As I've read you describe it. uh the original shithole. No windows, no floors, no stairs, no utilities. Uh And you're trying to gather millions of dollars. That's a hard pitch. It would seem. And

So what worked? What got the money? What w what was the pitch What what perseverance was I know, but you can you can persevere and bang your head against the wall with a with a shitty pitch and it will not work, but it did work. So what happened and why did it work? Well, I I would say a c a a few different things. You know, in the beginning I was

Or for a very long time, even in the beginning, uh, I was I was just giving away all my money. So if I sold a sculpture Like and I would beg you, I'll be like you wanna buy a piece of art, you disgusting capitalist pig, I'm not selling you any art. Help do this thing. People don't need objects. People need ideas How close how close to

Verbatim was that I mean, would you actually was that the sentiment or would you actually say that and just endear yourself because you gave zero fucking No, I'd say it but sweetly and and somewhat iconically. Um And I believed it. I was like, look, if you could buy a piece of art from me for a couple hundred thousand dollars, well, then you could help us with this bigger dream, which is not about me or my art, but about a lot of people. And And so for years I did that. I if someone wanted

To buy my art. I'd be like, look, I'm glad you like this art, but look at this crazy project we're building. And and I gave away everything. I mean I almost bankrupted my art studio every few months because I was just

Keeping it going barely and then You know. Water heaters, stairs. Floors, roof repair, whatever it took to get the building inhabitable. So that was like the first stage was just like, can we get this building safe? And I thought that would take a decade. Let me pause for one second. So you said giving stuff away. So the the you have on one hand the well funded

Capitalist pigs as you put it, right? I guess uh you know They're good people. I'm just fucking around. I'm fucking around. I'm fucking around. like merchant class, right? Or like merchant aristocracy. Then you have Everybody else. Who are you giving your art away to? During that period of time and why are you giving it away?

No no no I'm not I'm selling the art to people. But like let's say a collector comes in the studio and this happened and like Oh you're giving you mean the proceeds of that back to Pioneer. Yeah. Mike, please buy this sculpture because we will get water heaters. Yep, I see. I see. Please buy this piece of art and we might get some windows.

Oh god and so I would say in the beginning that helped jump start The project And then you know, somebody was like, You need to start a nonprofit. I didn't know what that was, and a board of director, you know, and and I would say At its very best. What Pioneer Works is now and maybe always

was and will be is an amalgam of souls. It's a group of people. It's like You know, Gabriel Florenz, the artistic director, who's who's you know, like my brother and Jana Levin who who I know you know who's like my sister and

You know, family and like All these incredible people who you know, you know what I used to say and I used to think of it, and I still do is is pioneer works is just a table. It's just a table and it's like whoever's at the fucking table. Is is making it work. I like that. That's really uh a beautiful

Metaphor and visual. How do you uh And and maybe the answer is somebody else does it. I have no idea, but you strike well, you don't strike me, you are a manic Artist.

And you love making art. How do you balance that with The managerial responsibilities. Does it drive you fucking nuts to do that kind of stuff? Or

Is there some way you think about it? How do you integrate that if you do? Well, I would say that A couple of different ways. One I'm lucky. I mean, the last decade has been really challenging to do both, but I try not to think of it as both. So

I think of Pioneer Works as a social sculpture. I just think of it as another artwork. And I think And the way I try to measure some of the success of that artwork is that my obsolescence Is my success. So the sooner that I can be obsolete and the thing works really, really well, then

I know I've done my job. And here we are a decade later, and I think there's some some truth. Where I can kick it and this thing is gonna flourish. Thirty six months ago that would not have happened. So I would say that me not being there and it working really well is success. And I think of it as an artwork.

That's helped me. To do it for so long. I will say it's I'm at a new place with it because we're PW's really working well now and there's incredible brain trust and group involved.

that it's working. And and I'd say that I I I mean it wasn't tenable. By by the seventh year in or eighth year in, I mean, I was giving tours Five, six, seven tours. A day. And you know, people will come to see my art in my studio and I'd be like, let me show you this other thing. And by the time I'd done my fifth tour on a Friday, I'd be like crying. I'd be like, this is where the music studio is, and we're gonna build the observatory. You know, I was like so worn out.

By like being the showman of like, and this is what we're gonna do here and what we're gonna do a a gap year a post high school and a post college gap year and then we're gonna raise funds to do do more like kids programs and then we're gonna fucking we're gonna get another you know I was like driving my and I it was it worked. But it it got to the point where it was like I'm gonna fucking die. This is not tenable. So what were I mean, if so you're having this dark night of the soul where you're crying about the new art spaces as you're giving a tour, were there any changes that really moved the needle in the right direction for you? Did you or did you just take a break from it all for a period of time to like get your head screwed on? What did you do?

The k people. And so our incredible board of directors. and advisors and Staff.

It's all on them. Do you know what I mean? I'm just a l another little cop in the wheel or whatever. So You know. I again I have to take my hat off to Gabriel and to Jana and to to Tommy and who's our director of technology and to just so Tiffany and like there's just so many people. Over the years, some that are still there, some that aren't there. Daniel Kentar, who's our incredible director of design, who's so talented. I I it's really just the people.

And That's the whole thing. The idea's great too. But it's the people. And maybe those things combobulate because you know, if you bring a musician and I've this happened

So many times when friends of mine who play music, they they would come there for the first time where I'd be meeting a musician and showing them around and they'd be like, Holy fuck, this is This is like I've dreamed my whole life. of a place like this. I cannot believe it exists. How can I be part of this? How can I help?

I want a seat at the table. And so You know, the way they say like minded people attract each other. The fact that all of these crazy disciplines are in one building and all of these crazy souls are are in one building, that's what creates The gravity.

You know, and all you know, Maria Popova and all the fucking amazing Talented magical Souls. That are coming and going inside of this like vessel. The building is nothing. It's a fucking bunch of bricks. It's bullshit without those people.

We're gonna come back to Maria because there's a question I wanna ask you that that she actually suggested. I don't think she would mind me saying that. But first We're gonna get to that. But first I wanna try to connect some dots and to flesh out some of your journey. So you mentioned early in this conversation.

You're hustling, you're giving away art for free. You're like a thousand, forget a thousand, five hundred, no No to five hundred. Okay, take it for free. You know, you get from that point. And in passing you mentioned something that I think is worth noting, and that is Collectors or

Not sure what you would call them patrons. customers buying artwork in many cases for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece. What were some of the the decisions or the influences that helped you to go from where you were to where you are in terms of commercial viability, right? Because it it's

It seems like you know, y you've used the word untenable a few times in this conversation, but you got to a point where it was very tenable. Like if you wanted to make really good art and sell it for what for a lot of artists would just be a tremendous unthinkable What were some of the things that happened or that you did to

get from where you were to where you are. I I think it's a cumulative. I think it's It's It's so many, many little things. Because You know, I remember when I first sold a picture or whatever for, you know, a thousand or five thousand or ten thousand, or maybe even twenty five thousand, and I was like, holy f

Fuck, I just got$25,000. We're going to Sizzla, motherfucker. This shit is crazy. Like I can't believe how waky I am. I just made some shit. And people paid me for it. Um That being said You know.

That It's like relative. Now I sell something for twenty five thousand dollars. And it doesn't even move the needle because I have a big, big studio in operation and crazy s projects I'm working on. But I would say it happened.

Over you know twenty five years a little bit at a time. And at the end of the day, I think it's the work, you know, I try to ask myself three questions like, can I live with it? Will I go to sleep next to it each night? You're talking about a piece of work, a project. A work, yeah. Like can I just live with it. Can my kids live with it? No, I don't have any yet, but if I did. And how will I feel about it in a hundred years?

Like will it still make sense to me in a system of objects or in a system of ideas? And so I honestly think that the work just the the work is the work. Like if you tear away all the writing about the work and all the bullshit. Or all of it, and you just literally are left with the thing. Will that tell a story and will that move someone?

Change their aperture. Or the way they see the world. It happens over just a very, very, very long time. You learn From each thing you do.

It's like it's the way like what is it called, LIDAR works, right? With cars. Right? Like it's learning. It's like or an AI is learning your that's how art really works, right? You just keep learning. Now for a lot of people, the majority of artists, so they never get to

Maybe these uh phase shifts. where even in twenty years, thirty years, they're able to Command. Attention that I guess then translates into, and I'm not going to obsess on these prices. I'm just using it as a proxy for. the work that you've done and decisions. So I I do wanna ask and I am gonna ask about the

psychogeographies or psychogeographic sketches in a second because I want you to describe Them for People. Actually, let's just let's just start there and then then I'll go to the next question. But could you describe because they are unlike anything I have ever seen. Anywhere. I mean they are there's nothing that I can think of that is remotely similar. And you might have some type of reference, but I don't. Can you describe what These as one example.

of the type of work that you do. What do these look like? If somebody were to walk into your studio and behold these things, what do they look like? Yeah. Well

We're talking specifically about the psychogeographies? Yeah. They are They're meant to be This installation that's taking me I don't know how long until I finish it, ten or fifteen years of about a hundred and twenty Humans.

That are kinda like If you think about the Terracotta Warriors, they're they're meant to be this group of Together. And they're kinda like a I kinda think of him as consciousness or something or of of uh Yeah, if you're taking if I took your brain and smashed it together.

And made a map. Of everything inside of it. That you could read through images. That's what they are. So

You know, often within a psychogeography you'll have Tens of thousands of of images that I'm finding from A hundred years worth of books and magazines mixed in with paintings and drawings on the layers of glass. So describe the glass for a second, just so people can paint.

A mental picture. Based on my recollection, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just gonna use uh an analogy here. For anyone who's a Star Wars nerd or at least saw Return of the Jedi as an example. Han Solo, Frozen. If you were to take something like that.

Stand it up. So that Han solo is standing on his feet per se, but suspended in the amber. And then Slice that

into and convert it into multiple layers of glass. and take like the culture and consciousness of Han Solo and sort of use it to replace the imprint of his body with the constituent parts of that. I know this might sound strange, but that's kind of the visual in my mind as I recall it. But could you maybe just describe the form factor and how much it weighs, what the size is like. Sure. I mean one.

One way I try to describe it, like if I'm trying to describe it to a young person, is I just make window sandwiches. I just take a piece of glass. Mm. Right? I just take like a window. Piece of glass.

And I draw on it. And I cut up my homework, let's say, or I cut up an encyclopedia. And I glue little pieces uh a little human with the head of an elephant. You know, next uh

An amethyst. crystal next to like a piece of uh Architecture. you know, from Ballhouse or whatever. I'm just like rambling. But my point is I'm cutting up little pieces of paper and drawings and I'm putting them on the layer of glass. And then I add another piece of glass on top and I do that again. But with in relationship to what I did before. And then again and again and again. And the next thing you know, you have 30 windows.

on top of each other and all the drawings mark making and all of the pieces of paper and collage. On every single layer. In concert together. make up. A psycho geography or tell a story.

And then I glue them together with a glue that has the same refractive index and and the psychogeographies that you're discussing or we're discussing are about three thousand pounds. Uh each. So And and I've made works that are up to like

modulated in twenty four thousand pounds or whatnot. And it's as you would expect coming out of your brain and hands. And work. It's trippy. When you look at these because The experience changes.

depending on where you are situated. And looking at Yeah. The piece of art, right? I mean, if you're standing on the sides is quite a different experience. I mean, it's almost a vanishing act.

Compared to looking at it from other perspectives. And then there is the looking at it from twenty feet away where you think it's quite one thing or resembles. a melting person or any number of different the uh the forest or stair steps within a human body. And then you get really close and you have the micro versus the macro experience, which is yet again something completely different.

At least to the beholder. How did that start? How did the psychogeography start? Well, I mean I I guess I should just go backwards a little bit with the work. I don't know. You mean like how did I start making work in layers or just the psych? Uh whichever one you would like to tackle. I don't mean to fixate on this as the exclusive representation of your work. I know you've done a huge wide spectrum of work. I just think it's helpful since we're having a conversation with an artist for the listeners who are just

Hearing this. to kinda paint a picture of Of one example. So it could be layered art. Uh if that precedes the psychogeographies, then let's go with which whichever you like. Oh yeah, why yeah. And then we should uh I mean my the newest one that you haven't seen. I don't know if you saw The Politics of Eternity finished. That's a cool one. But I mean really all this was experimentation and accident.

and and and you know, I was making Collages. I always loved collage. I always loved again kind of what we were talking about. How do you not have system overload? Maybe one of the ways I deal with the system overload. is I love uh amalgamations and I love bringing things together. And Pioneer Works is that with people, right?

But with artwork You know, I used to or still love to make paintings and collages and drawings and things out of rocks. I'm constantly putting disparate things together and very much interested the relationships between those pieces. And I was making a collage many years ago. uh out of pages of a dictionary that I was ripping up and Agnes Martin

Like It was an artist grid. And I started pouring resin on the thing and I saw an optical quality and Uh B got stuck and

And then I decided to make these sort of boxes of resin, Joseph Cornell. inspired. I love Joseph Cornell like boxes with objects. And I started drawing in layers of resin. And then I took the I I saw something that looked almost biological, and I took the objects out and I started just making these like dendrite. drawings, almost invented specimens, and I got obsessed and

I did that for some time and created Uh lots of botanical looking drawings and layers of resin and eventually I tried drawing a human in the layers of resin and I was starting to get shows. And I couldn't

The resin was gonna kill me. So I switched over to glass. The resin was gonna kill you just because it's is it toxic? I don't know anything about resin. Yeah, it's toxic and I was scaling the work and I was in masks all the time and it wasn't a fun way to work. But I was actually developing a language that I was really connecting to. And so I switched over to the layers of glass. And that

Allowed me to change my mind and edit and go back and forth because with the resin I could only go backwards. I can never Change my mind. So it was really a series of accidents. And um

And the psychogeography is really You know, I'm not even one I don't think that really connects so much to figurative art. So it's weird that I've Spent a decade on a project. Like that. Um But at the end of the day, I'm just trying.

I feel like I'm trying to make maps of consciousness. I'm trying to make things that like A fucking meteor. Hits the earth and you know, maybe one of the things that's left And you know, you

Dig it out of the dirt. three thousand pound glass block and it could really almost like a microscope slide. like the DNA of our species can be told through images and through media that's been found and trapped and preserved. And so like Frozen movies.

They tell stories. Through collections. Of ideas. Dig it. And I dig it.

Uh you must have because i you are a very good teacher and explainer of things, and you mentioned earlier the window sandwiches and speaking to younger people. What do you think are some of the common mistakes that aspiring artists make? Let's just assume they have some talent of some type. And they have some passion.

Let's let's assume those two things, just to try to constrain it. What are some of the mistakes that that you see? aspiring artists or up and coming artists making. Well, I don't know. Maybe too much Looking at what the people around them are doing.

Opposed to Finding their voice. Through there. experience and through their lens of life. And I think that might happen in art schools and or

Getting too obsessed with one Period in art history. That moves them and then sort of trying to emulate or build off of it too much opposed to again finding out what is in the bottom of their brains.

Um That might be one thing. Um I mean something also I mean and also just Knowing that. It's not a job. It's like if if you think you can stop doing it to do something else, maybe stop.

Like It there's nothing else you can do. Never fucking giving up, basically. Just like and always pushing and pushing and trying and not giving a fuck about what comes out at the other end, really, but more about Learning from the process of Making the thing.

How much of that is dependent on being willing or even embracing of living A very Simple life. Right, because I would imagine there there are some people out there who would say, I'd love to do that, but at the end of the day I gotta pay my rent. I gotta

Have X, Y, and Z shoes. I can you know I can't live on ramen every day, et cetera. Is that a piece of it or am I just No, yeah, yeah, of course. Gotta be able to die for it. Hm. Quite literally, in a way. You gotta just be like this is the thing.

You know, and I've done that with the works. I mean the last work I finished The politics of eternity. Which is only the third large work. Narrative work. You know, it took me

a couple of years and I almost bankrupted my studio to make it. And I do that constantly. I'm like, I don't give a fuck. About anything but making the thing. What would happen if it bankrupted your studio? What would you how would you feel and what would you do? Would it just be destiny and then you'd

Figure become a short order cook or what would what would happen? I'd probably go like I don't know, become like yeah, go live in a fucking tropic somewhere and live off of coconuts. Seriously. I'm always like You know, if it were anyone else, I'd be like ha ha ha I mean I am laughing, but I'm laughing in part because I can totally fucking imagine it. Yeah, I would be so concerned, in fact. That that life calls me.

Constantly. But I try to do these really qu like the mood piece, The Politics of Faternity was really cool. It's got like a whole Narrative where I'm trying to depict The past.

And the future Simultaneously. And in the future. There is uh Astronauts inhabiting the world.

If you will. In the past. Where there would be astronauts There's animal headed humans. If that makes sense to you.

And Everything is mirrored. So In the future. They're building

A rocket. On the top of a mountain. And in the same place in the past. They're building a totemic antenna. To the gods.

So Everything is mirrored. You know The tunnels in the future are straight and modern and in the past organic. And in the future

There's the same tree that's growing in the future is growing in the same place in the past, or where there's a particle accelerator in the future, there's a cave of minerals. In the past. Or where there's like a group syphice moment in the past. Underneath the ocean. Where the animal headed humans are pushing a boulder.

to capture a sea monster in a cave. That same moment's happening in the same place underneath the ocean in the future. But it's astronauts pushing a machine. to capture data. That's coming out of the sea.

And where the moon is In the future there's the sun in the past, and you've got Mars. right in the middle, splitting the worlds. And the future and the past are also depicted by waterfalls falling in. To the present simultaneously. Where there's uh

you know, these weird um narratives on on the sea, and there's a super tanker sinking. Which is connected to another project and there's there's uh animals. Coming out of the super tanker as an al allegory to the ark. So I just want to pause for a second and tell people. Go to Dustin Yellen dot com or

At Dustin Yellen on Instagram and this will make a lot more sense. Not that it doesn't make sense, but they might think to themselves, holy shit, this guy's done a lot of acid, which is also true. But It's a lot easier to absorb visually in a sense, although I like the description. I want to

Harken back to Something you said. which was you have to be willing to die for it. And you talked about death for a moment. And that actually relates to the question that uh Maria Popova, for people who don't know who that is, she's the most prolific Writer.

imaginable, very talented brainpickings.org. She suggested that I perhaps explore the death of your mentor or one of your mentors. I don't have context for this question, so I please tell me if I'm barking up The wrong tree, but Does that question?

Bring anything. to the surface for you. It seemed like this was something worth plumbing. The depths of a bit. Yeah, well I mean I mean, I'm an old man now. I've lost a lot of people, but when I was young Gir young uh twenty five, I lost my best friend and who was like my mentor and teacher was a teacher.

And uh I think that Completely affected me. for the rest of my life. Um and and since then I've lost a lot of people, including one of my mentors who's who was older than me.

And I think when I was young I was always obsessed with death, and I think I probably still am Because I think of You know, I don't know how time works. I think it may be Is that the past and the Present and the future.

exist simultaneously and somehow you can access it. And I'm not sure that when The body dies. Or or we st we die. here that

It's all gone. I'm very much an optimist and think that maybe there's some semblance of it that we can still tap into because energy cannot be destroyed. I don't know how it works. I definitely have been obsessed with it always and and still am. And and again back to that idea of over system overload. Well, if I think about Right now.

How many summers left? Do I have? You know, call it fifty for the sake of the conversation. You too. You you and I have let's say fifty summers left. Right. Well fuck, fifty summers is like lunch.

For sure. Yeah. It's so fast. It's so Quick and finite. And And so I don't know if that

affects my relationship to death. Even though I think it might be infinite and that somehow I I don't know how it really works, but but yeah. Death has really informed maybe losing, you know, someone the closest person to me at such a young age, I think really

And uh Change the way I see the world. Completely. Does that Obsessing over death, and I'm asking as someone who really in the last few months has has been thinking about death almost constantly.

I'm curious to know what form that obsession has taken. In other words, is it heavy and foreboding? Does it lead to A depressive feeling? Is it Just a kind of snap of the fingers and kicking the ass like hey.

Homie, let's get moving. You don't have that much time, so let's use this As best we can. What is the sort of emotional Tenor of that obsessing over death. I think it's probably the latter is is like look. The rest of your life is fucking almost over.

So you better get into it now. You know what I mean? Like this is it. There is nothing else. But To this fucking minute, this hour, and I have a hard time, I think.

Thinking about Forever or the like for the rest of my life. And and I think there's it's posited some of Some challenges probably in like Maybe why I haven't started a family yet or Maybe I need to start a family right away or making decisions.

in interpersonal relationships, I think it's challenged me. Because I'm like this is it. Like Right now. I could literally be gone in twelve hours. It's completely plausible, and therefore

I want to open up the aperture. And maybe that's through meditation or maybe that's just through listening and being quiet, but I want to open up the aperture. As much as possible all of the time and feel. as much as possible all of the time because The way that I feel right now may

could be gone or completely changed. So If we're looking at living your best life to sort of drop this in the beginning. This is gonna seem like a very strange segue. But from the

Sort of sublime to the maybe ridiculous. How did you end up dancing in a Jay Z video? Is that even a real thing? I literally know I mean I did it's true that I used to break dance. Unvenice boardwalk.

Like when we were living there for a heartbeat and I would Fucking Yeah, I remember like moving up, starting on cardboard, and then like people would give me like fifteen bucks over the few hours, and then like I moved up to linoleum. Which I thought was cool. I do not know how the Day Z video happened. I mean, he's cool. I'd like to actually have a coffee with him at some point. Well, hold on. So do you literally just not have a recollection of how you got filmed or were you Like how does that happen?

I actually don't know. Yeah. I got a phone call they're like show up at this place. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. Yeah. Oh God, I feel like there's so many, so many directions we could take that. Let me ask you this. This is um A question that is sometimes a dead end. It's not always a great question, but I'll try it and and it is

If you could put anything on a gigantic billboard. metaphorically speaking, right? To get a a message, an image, a question, a word, whatever. out to Billions of people. What might it be?

You mean an image or a word or something? It could be anything that you want to convey to billions of people. Anything at all. Non commercial, hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I would just want to try to get everybody to love each other. Like get everyone to be a a little bit more tolerant. a little bit more open, a little you know, F. Scott Fitzgerald said that a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind simultaneously and still retain the ability to function. So that if we could just

somehow accept our differences as The the great Glue. That creates the complexity and Miracle

of what we experience. So I mean that would be the thing I would try to somehow portray is to say that look All of us Every single one of us is experiencing the same thing differently, and we're all made of the same stuff. And we're all

sharing the same stuff. So why on earth? Are we, you know, deploying capital at such a scale to defense opposed to education or healthcare? Why are why you know, why is our why is the world look the way it does when really it could be so, so incredibly dreamy if we all just decided together to do that. You mentioned earlier.

The tanker. And you said that connects to another project. And I remember You sharing a couple of slides. I think it was on a laptop. Related to this. But can you describe this other tanker?

project and just tell people what the vision and or the status is of this project, lest they think it's all about window sandwiches, although that I love Love, love, love those uh that work. What is the other tanker project? A super tanker moves fossil fuels around and I've been obsessed with this thing for years and now it's got a little bit of movement, but just this idea of how do you How how do you bring awareness?

Uh getting away from fossil fuels. And I'm working on a project called The Bridge, because it's a bridge from the past to the future of how we use and think about energy where I'm taking a super tanker, which is a boat that moves oil around And it started to be at like twelve hundred feet. It's not as big anymore, but it'll still be the largest lift it. I think in history, where we're taking a super tanker and literally in one

Moment we're Pulling it up. And putting it on its nose. Basically like almost like a like a a monument to the end of fossil fuels. And we're coding it so that safely, let's say, a million or a million and a half visitors can go take elevators through the boat up to the top of it and then

get to an observation deck which is made of the bridge, which was where you used to control the ship from, hence the name the bridge also. double name, and uh through the experience of visiting This monument you'll learn about Ah, the history of energy. And potentially the future of how we can responsibly shepherd in

Uh a cleaner Safer way to power the earth. So yeah, so that's the bridge. I'm basically just putting a super tanker on his nose. Um again. Love that's what probably won't you know, I love Fitzgeralda pooling boat over a mountain. I'm I'm now trying to take a boat.

The size of a building and put it on its nose. So it's like a statue of liberty with the liberty being freedom from fossil fuels, or at least that's the it's twice the size of the Statue of Liberty. And yes, it's uh It's a monument to the end of fossil fuels. It's like a monument to say, look, we can power the earth with water and with Son and with

Yeah, various. Other technologies if we can if we can Scale them. Where might the bridge be? I can't say I can't say All right, we'll keep it under wraps for now. I'm using the royal we since I have no fucking idea. But TBD.

That's incredible. Just a few more things. And uh this has been so much fun. So I'm looking at A quote from The creative independent dot com And the paragraph is attributed to you, I believe. And here's how it reads. But I try to wake up every day with this mantra or idea that I've done nothing.

You know, I've accomplished nothing, I've done nothing, and the page is white. Therefore, um the therefore is my words, what's possible, what can be invented now. Is that something that you constantly remind yourself of? Is that still The case or is is that intermittent? How do you think about the I've done nothing.

Blank slate. Is that accurate? Absolutely. I feel that every day. Because it's true. I mean

Until we've Come to a place where There's more harmony and more equality. Mm.

And more justice and more thoughtness. Uh On our planet that we share. I certainly feel like I've done nothing. Mm.

I mean I mean because if anything is possible. Then Think about how much we can do. Together. Then

What I've done It's In the past. And the and if the past is no longer Now. Then therefore

I've done nothing. So I I I kinda feel that way all the time. Do you find that Intimidating, overwhelming. Or invigorating or something else. Right. Cause I can imagine some people will be so crushed under the formidable nature of that type of

what they might view as a burden or obligation that they just would Be paralyzed. No, I I I I mean, I guess I probably have s semblances of all of those feelings, but it if anything I feel the wonder

And possibility. Of what we can make as a species together or as an individual that it's all possible, right? That it's like if I look at a white piece of paper and then four hours later there's a drawing there. There was nothing and now there's something. And this idea between

Nothing and something is really interesting because If you look at cities and and technologies and All of it. There was nothing, And then there was something.

And so We really do have that. Capacity. To create absolutely anything all of the time.

Dustin I think that is a great place for me to stop my inquisition of questions. Uh so fun to reconnect. People can find you on Instagram at Dustin Yellen. Last name Y E L L I N, Dustin Yellen dot com, Pioneerworks.org. I highly recommend people check out all of those. And of course, we'll link to everything we've talked about, the movies, the books, everything else in the show notes for people. So anything else that you'd like to say before we

close up shop on this first conversation on the podcast. Well, I wouldn't even know where to I mean, read some poetry. Think of this whole thing as a poem. You know. Realize that that all of our

You know, I guess if if people could just fucking come together and the injustices And the incomprehensible Horrors. That this species

Uh has created with some of also the great things on the planet. In the past. Like let the past Let us learn from it.

But know that going forward We really If we choose to Can build the world that everyone wants to live in together. Uh you know, in a way that is equal and just.

And we can all sort of Support. and love each other to keep fucking Inventing The dream.

I like that. It's inventing the dream, it's not finding the dream. Right. Because you can each day, like you said, choose to create Something from nothing. And uh It certainly helps when you have the right people at the table, as you put it, uh, which I think is a beautiful metaphor. And to do that, you have to sometimes go out and invite those people, find those people, which is I think a common thread throughout a lot of the adventures that you've had.

Oh, I'm the weird guy who in New York City even going down the street, I'm saying hello to everybody and they're like looking at me like what's wrong with him? Well, Dustin, thank you so much for taking the time. This has been a lot of fun. for me and I've learned a lot. So I really do appreciate it. And for people listening. As always, I will link to all the resources and there'll be a transcript and all sorts of things, which you can find at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. Just search for Dustin or Dustin Yellen or Yellen Y-E-L I N. And until next time. Be safe.

Thanks for tuning in. And uh see what you can do at this empty table of life and Good luck. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up.

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