Cool people like cool things, which is why we asked Amalia Ulman to share a taste of her taste on Perfectly Imperfect.

Amalia Ulman is an “airport-based”, Argentina-born, multidisciplinary artist that often works out of her New York City office. Last year her debut feature film El Planeta, an absurdist-comedy set in her hometown that stars her and her real life mother, premiered at Sundance and received critical acclaim. In addition to her video work, Amalia utilizes social media, fashion magazines, net-art, and installations as vessels for fictional narratives, often blurring the line into reality. For her most well known performance, Excellences & Perfections, she conducted a four month long scripted online performance on her Instagram. Next year she tells me that she’ll be doing some solo shows and shooting her sophomore film Magic Farm. Lucky for us, Amalia is here to tell us what she’s been into.

Without further ado

Amalia Ulman (instagram, twitter)

📻 Radio Clásica Panamá City

I don’t listen to podcasts but it relaxes me to listen to the radio when I clean. At a very dark moment in my life, I downloaded the app Simple Radio so I could listen to Mexican stations. You know, I lived in LA and I’m familiar with the aggressively positive cocaine-infused voices of stations like La Raza, so I thought that’d be an energetic way to start my dreadfully slow mornings. But after a few days of narco corridos, I ended up finding this mysterious station from Panama that is simply called Clásica which seems to be a playlist in a loop: no shows, just tunes. A strange melange of 70’s lounge music, sexy saxophones, 1950’s classics, theremin, cheap sounding covers of 1980’s hits. All with a clumsy quality that makes it incredibly special. Listening to it makes me feel like I’m in an airport business lounge in the 90’s, and that’s a feeling I love. Also, since there’s absolutely no information about this Panameña station anywhere, I worry about it disappearing and leaving no trace, which makes it seem a bit more like a precious gem. 

💦 776 Sariza Mineral Spring Water

My favorite waters are Evian (for casual occasions) and Kaiserwasser (for special occasions) but I recently discovered Sariza water and I was very pleasantly surprised, especially since I got it at the bodega downstairs. 776 Sariza is mineral spring water from the Greek springs of Sariza. According to the company: The water has healing properties, it was suggested that it cures kidney ailments and many other diseases. There is a sign next to the spring saying: “Hi stranger, remember, whenever you return to your homeland, you owe your life to me.” Can’t vouch for any of this but I sure like the taste. There’s nothing more precise I can say about mineral water as of now… but I will be going to water sommelier school next year and I’m looking forward to describing why I like some waters over others in a more convincing manner very soon.

🎥 Feltham Sings (2002)

Lord knows I love watching men doing their little silly manly things. As a big fan of If… the 1968 film by Lindsay Anderson, you can imagine how I felt the first time I watched Feltham Sings, a Channel4 documentary/musical about a prison for male juveniles. This experiment in reality tv has the magic any format has in its early days and because of this, doesn’t feel as exploitative as your typical contemporary cookie cutter reality shows. Feltham Sings is as fresh and heartfelt as it sounds: Feltham’s young offenders narrate the tragic stories that led them to prison and then sing a song about it in the style of their choice, from rap to jungle. Even the guards participate in some of the “music videos”. That’s it. It’s sad and heartbreaking while subtly comical: the inevitable tenderness of these teens trying to sing, brings in a touch of amateurism that is reminiscent of another favorite of mine: Konkurs, a film by Milos Forman where a series of village girls compete in a singing contest filled with screeching voices, eccentric performances and really interesting 1960’s Czech hairstyles.  

🎥 Interspecies Communication / SLOWMAXXXXXXXING / Extrasensory Perception

And this will be where I sound batshit crazy, but here I go. There’s a silly documentary on Youtube that really affected me, it’s about Anna Breytenbach and her ability to communicate with animals. I know it sounds like bullshit but there’s something about her that makes me believe that she can. I’ve looked at other animal psychics and a lot of them feel like verbose scammers but I don’t have that feeling with Anna. Either way, it isn’t even about actually communicating (with words) but more about becoming quietly attuned to animals, which I do believe is possible and I try to do in my day to day. It’s my favorite little luxury, to be able to spend hours in silence chilling with my cats and understanding all their meows and subtle movements. To contemplate. This is connected to my religious practice of slowmaxxxxxxing, which is a very stupid new word for something I’ve done all my life and my mother would call “parsimonia”, which is to transform regular tasks into delicate, precious rituals, doing everything very slowly and paying attention to detail, to silence. There’s something very humbling about learning to do things the way animals want and not the way it feels good to me. I enjoy experiencing different planes of perception and this is a very good way to do it.  

🕉 Chogyam Trungpa

Ah…. Trungpa Trungpa. I don’t follow any gurus, nor am I satisfied with any religion in particular, but for many years, I’ve been walking the tightrope between Catholic mysticism and Buddhism. I’m somewhat attracted to Chogyam Trungpa because he’s intentionally bad and everyone in religious circles is always trying so hard to be seem good. He’s a bit of a charlatan but some of his ideas resonate with me, particularly for art making. He coined the term Crazy Wisdom which refers to unconventional, outrageous behavior linked to religious or spiritual pursuits. He was a womanizer who drank, took drugs, and often acted inappropriately to test everyone else around him. He also mocked his western followers’ superficiality by making fun of the sari-wearing hippies that attended his lectures, to which he showed up dressing like a conservative british man (a bit of a Gilbert and George move) instead of the expected traditional Tibetan costume. The play on identities appeals to me. But that being said, I wouldn’t be able to tolerate his contrarianism without Ram Dass by his side providing me with comfort and soft spoken guidance. Great good cop/bad cop combination.

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