It’s 12:30 p.m. You wake up, and at 1:30 p.m. you roll out of bed and turn on the radio, then open your local newspaper to check the HELP WANTED adverts. During breakfast, you turn on the television to catch a few minutes of the 24-hour news shows. School shootings. Higher taxes. Immigrants being treated badly. The price of milk has risen considerably. You turn it off quickly, filled with a sense of dread after seeing the latest disappointments the human race has to offer you. Shortly thereafter, you take the bus to roam aimlessly around the megalopolis, collect your UBI check, and contemplate on how to find meaning in your sad excuse of a life. While riding, you decide to escape the routine by listening to THE EXILE HOUR on your iPhone 19.
As you look out of the window at the sea of LCD billboards on the highways that you pass by, the voices of Caleb Jackson Dills and Evan Philip Lipson act as a safety blanket, lulling you into a TRUE sense of security. You hardly notice the dilapidated high-rises and superstructures you are zooming past as you are whisked away into the nightscape that is THE EXILE HOUR. Tonight’s guest has done something his mother probably is not too proud of, and you are finding yourself relating just a little too easily. In fact, you have more in common with this guy than every co-worker you have had over the span of your insignificant life. You excitedly nod along, enthralled at the places you are able to travel while remaining stationary. In fact, you are so captivated you miss your stop. Another hour added to your commute, but you do not mind in the slightest. Next stop: THE EXILE HOUR.
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It’s 12:30 p.m. You wake up, and at 1:30 p.m. you roll out of bed and turn on the radio, then open your local newspaper to check the HELP WANTED adverts. During breakfast, you turn on the television to catch a few minutes of the 24-hour news shows. School shootings. Higher taxes. Immigrants being treated badly. The price of milk has risen considerably. You turn it off quickly, filled with a sense of dread after seeing the latest disappointments the human race has to offer you. Shortly thereafter, you take the bus to roam aimlessly around the megalopolis, collect your UBI check, and contemplate on how to find meaning in your sad excuse of a life. While riding, you decide to escape the routine by listening to THE EXILE HOUR on your iPhone 19.
As you look out of the window at the sea of LCD billboards on the highways that you pass by, the voices of Caleb Jackson Dills and Evan Philip Lipson act as a safety blanket, lulling you into a TRUE sense of security. You hardly notice the dilapidated high-rises and superstructures you are zooming past as you are whisked away into the nightscape that is THE EXILE HOUR. Tonight’s guest has done something his mother probably is not too proud of, and you are finding yourself relating just a little too easily. In fact, you have more in common with this guy than every co-worker you have had over the span of your insignificant life. You excitedly nod along, enthralled at the places you are able to travel while remaining stationary. In fact, you are so captivated you miss your stop. Another hour added to your commute, but you do not mind in the slightest. Next stop: THE EXILE HOUR.
Bryan Lewis Saunders (c. 1969) is in some ways easier to describe by saying what he isn’t rather than what he is. He is anything but ordinary, boring, or predictable. In 1995 he began drawing and painting self-portraits, vowing to create at least one self-portrait every day until he dies. He has more than kept his word. By his estimation, at present he has actualized somewhere around 12,000 daily-self-portraits using his hands, feet, mouth, penis, and/or even his own asshole. These nakedly honest pictures, in which he filters the world through himself (rather than vice versa), are perhaps most striking or notable for their extreme variety of stylistic approaches, as well as their utilization of drastically different expressive mediums (it’s sometimes difficult to believe that they were all created by the same person). The video artist David Larcher dubbed this work "The Endlessly Reconstructing Auto-Autopsy."
In his ceaseless search for experiences that possess the ability to profoundly alter or affect his perception of self, Bryan began a series of self-portraits in 2001 entitled “Under the Influence”, in which he began experimenting with making self-portraits while under the influence of different drugs. The series eventually went viral and brought attention to his myriad of other projects and experiments as an endurance artist (often involving prolonged sensory deprivation), videographer, poet, raconteur, stream of unconsciousness writer, recording artist, exterior decorator (See: “Extreme Makeover ‘Fuck Mattress’ Edition”), museum director (his Johnson City, Tennessee home doubles as the world’s only Steven "Jesse" Bernstein museum), found photography collector, and stand-up tragedy performer (a type of cathartic/traumatic performance he created following a failed attempt to become a famous stand-up comedian in China).
On this episode of THE EXILE HOUR we talk with Bryan about a wide range of topics including his time in prison, resisting the entrepreneurial goal and effort to market artistic meaning, how to develop echolocation, Louis Wain, the difference between shock and disgust, processing psychological trauma, irrational fears, and mental disorders through ritualized artistic practice, sociopathy, thought transference, being publicly shamed for a cultural misunderstanding by a mob in the streets of China, his encounters with Chinese secret police, remembering late Industrial music pioneer Z’EV, and what it’s like to experience the process of “breathing sound.”
NOTE: Bryan is currently raising funds to have copies of his “Interviews Vol. 1” book sent to currently incarcerated criminals through the Books for Prisoners program. He asked us to include the following link which describes more about the undertaking and how people can support it: https://www.facebook.com/donate/2535660146501033/
The Exile Hour
It’s 12:30 p.m. You wake up, and at 1:30 p.m. you roll out of bed and turn on the radio, then open your local newspaper to check the HELP WANTED adverts. During breakfast, you turn on the television to catch a few minutes of the 24-hour news shows. School shootings. Higher taxes. Immigrants being treated badly. The price of milk has risen considerably. You turn it off quickly, filled with a sense of dread after seeing the latest disappointments the human race has to offer you. Shortly thereafter, you take the bus to roam aimlessly around the megalopolis, collect your UBI check, and contemplate on how to find meaning in your sad excuse of a life. While riding, you decide to escape the routine by listening to THE EXILE HOUR on your iPhone 19.
As you look out of the window at the sea of LCD billboards on the highways that you pass by, the voices of Caleb Jackson Dills and Evan Philip Lipson act as a safety blanket, lulling you into a TRUE sense of security. You hardly notice the dilapidated high-rises and superstructures you are zooming past as you are whisked away into the nightscape that is THE EXILE HOUR. Tonight’s guest has done something his mother probably is not too proud of, and you are finding yourself relating just a little too easily. In fact, you have more in common with this guy than every co-worker you have had over the span of your insignificant life. You excitedly nod along, enthralled at the places you are able to travel while remaining stationary. In fact, you are so captivated you miss your stop. Another hour added to your commute, but you do not mind in the slightest. Next stop: THE EXILE HOUR.