Oral history interview with Daniel Joseph Martinez, 2019 November 23-2020 October 4

Transcript

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Daniel Joseph Martinez on 2019 November 23–2020 October 4 by Chon Noriega for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The November 2019–February 2020 interview sessions took place in-person at Martinez's studio in Los Angeles, CA. The August–October 2020 interview sessions were conducted remotely over Zoom.

Chon Noriega reviewed the transcript with input from Daniel J. Martinez. His corrections and emendations appear below in brackets with initials. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

Interview

[00:00:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, here we go. Okay, okay, we're ready to start.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They should edit it, though.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. This is Chon Noriega interviewing Daniel Joseph Martinez at the artist's studio in Los Angeles, California, on November 23, 2019, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. And this is card number one. So, we're ready to start.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] Now that our official—

CHON NORIEGA:  Now that we've given the official start, I'm gonna—I threatened to start with a softball question. I wonder if we can just start—if you could tell me when you knew that you were, or were going to be, an artist.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's a softball question?

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Competitive softball, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I would say that—I think there's many types of consciousness, and I think there's many types of—there are many different moments of being self-aware, and that consciousness and self-awareness and degrees of introspection make that question kind of difficult, right? Because, there's one, I mean, in the climate we have now, people trained to be artists, I wonder if there's such a thing as, that you’re born to do something—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and then, not even with the label of artist, not even with a label, but that there's a trajectory in one's life that could be so overwhelming, in its desire; unmarked, unlabeled, unquantified desire, and maybe it's not too much to be a thing, but it's to not be something, right? To not be what you see around you, right? Maybe—I mean, I'm not sure if it’s—I mean, I don't know, Chon. I mean, as we have talked about my father a little bit, I mean, I think that I didn't know the difference between art and science when I was very, very young because I grew up in a science environment, and so then it was only later when I—as I grew up in my dad's lab watching him work, I didn't realize until much later that that was my first impression of an artist's studio. My first impression of an artist's studio did not come from looking at artists, my first impression came from looking at my dad do experiments, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  And where was his lab?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was his unofficial lab, it was just his own little lab that he made in the basement of that house—

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the first house we were in had a basement, and so he—that's the only time that I remember my dad ever doing that. And I was very young then, but—you know, so, for example, on my eighth birthday—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right, when most people would wish that you go to Disneyland, which is what, with my family that's, you know, one of the highlights, big birthday or something, you go to Disneyland, you know. Our version of Disneyland, not Florida's versions of Disneyland.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I always claimed, for, you know, this is the OG Disneyland.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is the original Disneyland, right? With the original Matterhorn and the Pirates of Caribbean, which is very, you know, very influential for me at many junctures in my life, and so my dad said to me, he said—he says, I'm gonna read a book to you for the next year, and he says, you’re not gonna understand anything that I'm going to read you, he said, but I want you to listen to it anyway, and what the one book my dad read to me, the only book he ever read to me in my life, was Descartes, Discourse on Method—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and, I didn't—it took me a long time, Chon, again, to realize what he had done. It was a kind of unconscious suggestion, right, like a push in a direction that I didn't fully realize until much, much later.

CHON NORIEGA:  And he read this to you when you were eight?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Took the entire year to read to me, and he read the entire book to me—

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and—so, but I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  And what did you think of it then?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I don't think I thought anything of it. [Laughs.]

[00:05:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  Just, your dad was just reading.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Just my dad reading, it was just my dad reading and reading it, and he would say, he would make comments as he read about the text, and I would listen because that was enjoyable, to listen to him read me something. But he's right, I mean, I don't think I had any register for it, I had no context to put it into, I mean, and this is the kind of—the reason I tell you this story is because this story has something to do with your question—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —because—I think I was always an artist. I never trained to be an artist, in my opinion, and that, while it is on one hand very advantageous, on the other hand it also put me behind, because—I mean, I had gone, you know, I had gone to New York when I was very young and I had seen the Met and, I’d seen—in 1969, my dad took me to see the Art and Technology show at LACMA, right? I mean, it wasn't as if there was no—there was only science in the house, like, the only reason my dad took me to see the Art and Technology show was because it had technology, not because it had art.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  But you didn't know the difference between—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I had no idea, I had no way to understand the difference, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  —I mean, you would have been about 12 years old at the time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, and—but again, I think, which I don't have a—I don't have a clarity to, right? I don't have an—this is all really in retrospect, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Somewhere between science and photography, or technology and philosophy, with the very clear understanding of the social economic, the sort of race identity politics, not only at the time, but that was deeply complicated within our family itself—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —not just my family, with my mom and dad, but with the rest of the family. So, some parts of the family consider themselves Hispanics, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which was always confusing to me, because it's like, you’re Mexicans, like, why are you, why are you erring on the side of the Spanish in a colonial time, right? All the land grants, you know, there's tons of land grants in Colorado, and that whole area is all land grants, right, but—and then, in 1972, just serendipitously, I had been working for—I had known this photographer, a friend of my father's a photographer, and he needed an assistant, and he was shooting in Munich. And so, I ended up going to Munich in '72 when—

CHON NORIEGA:  That was quite a year to go.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —exactly. So, so, I saw—I was there, I bore witness to that crisis, but I also saw the response on the photographer's part, which—he was, you know, I learned a lot about being in a field, making sort of pictures of a crisis that was going on.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, was he there for the Olympics?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. He was a friend of my dad's, he was a professional photographer, I just don’t remember his name now. For whatever reason, I never have an image of it, I don’t, it's just somebody my father knew that was really, really good at this, I guess, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow. And what do you remember from going to Munich?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, Munich, I mean, it was—the Olympics were extraordinary, I mean, and to be in Germany at that time, and I remember that—again, I find myself that, I find this a lot in my life, that I find—that I'm confronted by situations that I find myself uniquely in and I'm, I always feel like I'm out of phase—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —with what's going on around me, as if I'm in a different dimension, and it's all kind of moving by me. Like, I thought the Olympics, sports, and then all of a sudden we have, like, terrorism and shootings and kidnappings and, you know, we have this—which opens, cracks open this sort of—the conflict with the Israelis and then, you know— so, you know, Black September, no one ever wants to look at in terms of that particular moment is, no one wanted to look at what the Israelis, what Black September was, and what precipitated that event, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it was an action of the Israelis against the Palestinians, right? And so, I mean, you know, that entire conflict is one pushing back against the other, claiming, you know, not innocence entirely—and I certainly would not claim to be any expert in that, but I'm saying the Munich Olympics didn't come out of thin air, it was a response to other events that—and again, I'm not siding with anybody in this, but it was, you know, a response to another event they felt equally as sort of—I don't know what the word would be — I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm at a loss with the word, just, you know, simply the loss of life and the political, you know, contest of legalities and rights of land, and—

[00:10:23]

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you—retrospectively, you understand that as not being an originating moment—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right. Thank you.

CHON NORIEGA:  —but something—an action that happens in the midst of an ongoing conflict.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, yeah, because you have the—coming from the United States, coming from Los Angeles, coming from, you know, this one particular arena of thinking, and then as I'm just thrust into something outside, I mean, this is outside of any possible experience.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, how did—but, what did you understand of all of that in 1972, I mean?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, I mean, in '72, you’re just in shock, because there's—I mean, I'm just too young to make more sense of it than what I could see.

CHON NORIEGA:  But did you have a sense that something unusual is happening?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, no, absolutely. No, no, this is now completely out of place, completely, like, bizarre, like, yeah, this is not the norm. I didn’t expect—I expected sporting events.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I didn't expect anything else. I mean, it's just to help somebody make pictures, sport pictures, photographs, you know? I'm not even sure my parents would have even let me gone, if anybody would have anticipated an event at that level.

CHON NORIEGA:  But you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was a catastrophe!

CHON NORIEGA:  —so, you went there and, you know, going to Europe was new, seeing the Olympics was new, but everything else, this, you were aware this is unusual, this is—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely! Meaning—no, no, no, no. I'm perfectly clear that the crisis is unfolding in front of me, I don't have the tools yet to make sense of the crisis.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  All you hear is what everybody says.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, you hear, takeover of the, you know, of the dorms, you know, and then people being held hostage again—athletes, okay, what could be worse? Athletes, who are ostensibly apolitical—they just want to do the best performance, it's a performance, right—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —of skill. So, who wants to kidnap athletes? I mean, it's not even like—if you're gonna have a war, just go have a war, and let people fight, but, you know, so—the instant analysis appears—describes it as a cowardly, you know, outrageous thing to intervene into this non-political environment, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  And, were you feeling, as I imagine, 1972, there's no easy way to get in touch with your parents.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, no.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you feel cut off and afraid and isolated?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, actually.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not at all. No, it was actually—I was more—I was consumed by the event at the moment.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Completely. I actually—I had no desire to come back home.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I wanted this—this was, this wasn't this—and the reason I'm telling you like I am—this is an introduction to something, Chon. This is an introduction to something within me that I saw play out later, right? I mean, this was—I was introduced into crisis—global politics, right, thousand-year-old, thousands-of-years-old conflict playing out in front of me—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right? And watching that sort of, you know, that drama take place in front of me, and watching the sort of the hysteria that was like unbounded hysteria that went on with this. I mean, people were just flipping out, right? But it—there was something, there was something very attractive about the crisis to me, and I don't know what it was, but I knew, I remember then it was just like, I was just awestruck with watching this happen in real time.

CHON NORIEGA:  And did you have a sense that, because you're with a photographer and a journalist, somehow, you’re, you're safe as somebody who's there to observe?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think that that's, that's, that's wise of you. I mean, yeah, I mean, he had full press passes, so we would go everywhere, so, I didn't, I never felt threatened, because in—because even if—you know, at that point, nobody was shooting press photographers yet.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  They were doing flight attendants and athletes, yes, that was, that was definitely happening, but yeah, the journalists—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were working up to journalists.

CHON NORIEGA:  —they seem neutral.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They seemed neutral, and they also seemed protected. They could—I remember, we went anywhere. We went—we just—we moved everywhere, everybody else was kept behind bars, we moved—I mean, I just stuck to him like a—you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  So, in a way you were there with somebody that made you feel as safe, or safer, than if your parents had been there.

[00:15:01]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   Absolutely.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But also, though—

CHON NORIEGA:  —but connected to the world.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —but connected to the world, but we, and he—we moved incredibly close to the conflict.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, he was there, you know, a photojournalist, what do you think he's gonna do, you think he's gonna hide behind there? This guy was like, you know, on top of this thing and I was right behind him loading film in camera, you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  I was going to ask you; so what were you doing, actually?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, that was my job, my job was to—lenses, film, marked—you know, take notes for the canisters, put everything, you know, keep everything in order, like whatever, you know, filter, this—I mean, I did tech. I just did tech support.

CHON NORIEGA:  You were helping him to shoot.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, you know. And then I had my own camera, but my own bag I carry, I'm the grunt. I carried gear and, you know, he wants this, you know, just something, you want that body, you want this lens, you want this kind of film, give me another body with a different film, that kind of thing. And think of the time, right, Chon, you know this very well.

CHON NORIEGA:  Big cameras, too.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The big cameras, big Nikons, you know, big lenses.

CHON NORIEGA:  This is before single-reflex lenses too, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What's that? No, no, no, they had single-lenses.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did they?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, I can't remember when they came in.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   Yeah, no, no, yeah, I mean, it's still not, yeah, because by 1975 you already had the Nikon F2, Nikon—they were in the 2 phase—no, but yeah, no, yeah, they had—

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, so—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they were just more primitive than we know, even know from the '70s or '80s, later '70—you know, think of all the war photographers in Vietnam—

CHON NORIEGA:   Yeah

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —all carrying Nikons, all single-lens reflexes, even if you think about Apocalypse Now, okay, I mean, look at the cameras he was wearing which are—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the proper cameras were all, like, single-lens reflex Nikons.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay. So, did you take photographs then?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, absolutely.

CHON NORIEGA:  Do you still have those?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, got—I wish I had them, you know, it would have been—no, but it was—okay, so then—so, then after that—

CHON NORIEGA:  Did he give you, like, tips on—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, he was—no, he was—yeah, he was super—I learned more probably in that one trip about making photographs of that kind then I would ever learn the rest of my life.

CHON NORIEGA:  And how long were you there?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We were there maybe two months.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We were there a long time.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you went there ahead of the Olympics?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, we went ahead, we were there, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Scouted it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Scouting, doing, you know, he was a seasoned photographer, I wish I could remember his name, I can’t remember it. I’ll ask my dad, maybe he’ll remember.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, imagine that then, okay, and then imagine—

CHON NORIEGA:  You're like 15, you’re a sophomore in high school at the time.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, so—but imagine, then—so, in 1970, that’s '72, '73, '74, '75—two years later, because I entered CalArts in 1974. Okay, so I went from that, to then stumbling into CalArts.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, I'm going to, want to go back a little bit—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anyway, so I'm not sure that answers exactly your question of, like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —knowing, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  No, actually I'm going to go back a little bit, but first, I wonder if you can address that you—earlier you said you never trained to become an artist. How does that square with going to CalArts, which is very much a training ground for artists.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, because, because—okay, so, my parents were very, very Catholic. Like Catholic with a capital C, Chon, kind of Catholic, not a small c Catholics. So, you know, I went through all the—you know, I was baptized, and I was confirmed, I mean, you know, I think I did everything up to, you know, becoming a priest, I guess.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, I had a really difficult time in—with Catholic education.

CHON NORIEGA:  I think it's—you're supposed to.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Is that what it’s meant to be?

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it was really fucked up. It was, you know, and but—you know, there's some good moments in there and some severe—I mean, I think, I mean, this is just a slight digress but I, I'm not, I'm not sure I ever recovered from the damage.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think the severity of their—indoctrination and brainwashing is really at that, at that age, it's so powerful, it sets, it—it’s a forming of your mind before it should be formed like that—there's something—

[00:20:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, and you’re old school, this is before Vatican II.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, no, this is—

CHON NORIEGA:  You were fasting.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Fuck yes! And it was like the nuns with the full-on thing, with their face like this, you know, the full black garments, and like, I mean, you know, physical torture—[laughs]—you know. Anyway, I mean, so I went in and out of from parochial school to public schools, because I just kept getting bounced around, but—

So here's where the race problem comes in, it's like, so I didn't really have—there was no training at that point, but all that I ever was interested in doing was making things, I mean, that was so clear, right? That my strengths lied in some kind of visual language, that was very clear to me, but, you know, I sort of was faced with people who were supposed to be the—teachers are supposed to help you, instead of helping you, what they do is because of my, you know, my ethnicity, or however they're viewing it at this time in LA in particular, you know, I'm being geared towards manual jobs of manual labor, not training me or allowing me to aspire to, you know, intellectual cerebral activity, right? I mean, why can't I be a scientist? Why can't I be an artist? Why can't I be these things, right? But, so, I had gotten help from some of the counselors to—apply to go to art school, because it seemed like a logical thing to do.

CHON NORIEGA:   So, what high school were you in?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   Which one wasn't I in, would be more—I was in Inglewood High, Morningside High—Saint Bernard, Saint Christopher, Saint—I don’t—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you're moving several times within a year, or?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, oh, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now your family wasn't moving.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, my family wasn’t moving, no, they kept moving me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yes.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We got bussed, too. There was—busing was fully in—

CHON NORIEGA:  Full-on then.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —full-on then, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  I remember, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There was Lennox High too, yeah. Anyway, so the—

CHON NORIEGA:  And this was at the request of the school, or—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, this is me. This was me.

CHON NORIEGA:  You want out of here.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I want out. I wanted out because it was—the consequence was just unbearable.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was unbearable. Again, so I'm back—I'm actually going to cycle back with you like this that— it was another moment like Munich, in a sense. I always saw myself that—that the same feeling, I've had this feeling many, many times in my life, where I feel like I'm standing still and everything is moving by me, but I'm not, like, I'm connected to it because I'm there, but it literally seems like it's another dimension. I'm watching from a different dimension, or a different time-space relationship to the events going by me. I am—literally feel that I have some kind of objective distance on what I’m looking at.

CHON NORIEGA:  Is it objective, or is it affective?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I think it's, I think it's, maybe it's both, but—the reason, the reason I think it's important is because I think it's what has always allowed me to have a kind of clarity, like things that other people—we’ve talked about this before, I mean, I look at situations ongoingly—now it's very easy to do, of course, but—I hear people discussing things that they think are complex, or require all this energy in order to try to come to some resolution to whatever the situation is, and I say to myself, well, this is—it would take about five seconds to figure out. This is like, this—this takes zero effort to do, but everyone in the room has spent decades and hundreds of years trying to figure this out, it's like, well, why are we spending time on this, because there are actually really complicated things we should be thinking about, and this is not one of them. Because we can solve this, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, then the question was always, why we can’t solve it, when it seems so obvious and apparent a direction to move to begin to sort of negotiate whatever this is.

[00:25:00]

So, I’ve felt this my entire life, I've always felt that—and it's not a claim of being smarter, it's simply, this is just obvious. This is an obviousness to the predicament that we face, and I always felt myself at that distance.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, did you have a sense of the nature of that problem solving, and—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  —relative to how other people were addressing?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, it was, I felt, you know, and I think I've done fairly good in negotiating this in my life which is that, you know, I don’t, I’m fairly—I'm very sensitive, so I don't, I've never really wanted to cause anyone else harm, so yeah, I don't say to somebody that they are either smart or dumb or that I'm smarter than they are, you know—I'm trying to think how to say this to you, right, because I don't—

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, is this a residual of Catholic upbringing?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if it is, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Because it seems there—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the thing is—trying to say, it's not an arrogance, okay, so I—I don't know how exactly to say this to you, so I’m sort of gonna blurt it out, right? It's not an arrogance but I, but I think, I don't think people are smart. I don't think people are fast. I don't think people consume information—I don't think, they have, I don't think, I—it’s not so much a claim that I'm smarter than most people, it's just simply I'm confused by their lack of intelligence. I'm confused by their lack of ability to sort of solve anything that is going on in their world, right? 

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, so—and this, this is actually, this cycles back to why this is important, because I think in Munich I was confronted by a global crisis, and while not having the—having the full picture of what was going on, something happened that took me out of the local and put me into the global, and it stuck with me, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  And on several levels.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  Because it was an international, you know, event, like the Olympics—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In Munich, Germany—

CHON NORIEGA:  —photojournalism as an international enterprise, it's connecting the world, and then terrorism—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —so.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, I mean this was profound because it was like—it was exciting, Chon. It was really, really exciting. It was like somebody had, you know, plugged into my, you know, neural net in my head, and I'm just like downloading massive amounts of information in my head. Experiential information, factual information, you know, real-time performative information, I mean, everything was just like someone just did a data dump into my brain, and it was just like, it was, it was like heroin, it was just like, it was so exciting—

CHON NORIEGA:  Said, let’s do it again. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, absolutely, are you kidding me! I was like—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, when you came back, back home after that, were you kind of let down?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, yeah, because everything—I mean, there was some banality to everyday life, you know, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, we’ll come back through, I think—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so, so I, but, I mean, you know, but in there, I guess somewhere, I knew, and I knew enough from what my father had told me, what their experiences of being Mexican in LA, their question—their analysis of race politics, their analysis of class, we were not a rich family, you know.

It was clear to me that I had to work 10 times harder to educate myself, and then I could not be dependent upon—because at that point, even at that point, it was very clear to me people had failed me in education. And I can't, I'm not, I'm not gonna say I don't know why that is specific, I'm sure it's for all the obvious reasons, but it was clear to me that my education was my responsibility and it didn't matter where I went to school, they were still going to treat me that way. So even when I get into CalArts and they gave me a full scholarship to get in, too, I mean, they, you know, I mean, I went through their program like water. I mean—but I was treated the same way, I mean, my muscle memory of grade school, you know, high schools, was exactly the same at CalArts, I was treated exactly the same way.

[00:30:07]

I was treated like the idiot in the—I mean, they had never seen a kid like me that, you know, I was one of like three people that were minorities at the school at the time, you know, we hung out together.

CHON NORIEGA:  Were you brought in under Affirmative Action?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know that. I don't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I always thought it was strange they gave me a full scholarship, but, you know, I was able to put together a portfolio—

CHON NORIEGA:   And the way they looked at you didn't change from how your high school—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It didn't change, I was treated the exact same way, Chon. It was always with that condescending, hate—not fully. Condescending, patronizing tone, you know, like—always you don't know really enough, you don't really have enough experience, you don't—I was always deficient somehow, like you never had enough of anything, it's like, well, how can—I mean, that's why I'm here, you know, like, you’re supposed to help me so I can have more, right, not tell me what I don't have now, you know?

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_1of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  That is the paradox of higher education.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, right? I mean, you know, and for—you know, for better or for worse, CalArts was very difficult for me, it was very difficult, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  We're going to come back to that—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and we're going to keep coming back throughout, I think, to this question of problem solving, but I'm wondering if you could describe a little bit about how your parents actually convey to you their sense of racial and class politics.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is going to take a bit of a memory. Well—I think it's indirect. I think—so my mother was a writer, my mother wrote poetry and—but she never published a thing, I mean, but my mother always talked about poetry.

CHON NORIEGA:  She did this in English or Spanish?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, that's a really good question. I don't know. I don't know, because you, I mean, you have to remember, I'm of that generation where Spanish was a second language in the home, not the first language, and everybody, everyone, everybody in my family—when I say my family, of course, I'm always referring to the extended family. I'm the only one in the extended—entire family that didn't speak Spanish as a first language, because my mom and dad—and I think this is, I think this is the answer to your question, this is one of the answers to your questions, my mother and father purposely did not teach me Spanish first because I was born here in LA. The racism at that time was profound, Spanish was practically illegal in to a certain degree, and my parents made a decision, they told me, they said, we're doing this to help you survive. Said, we're not going to teach you Spanish, you know, my parents, my father and mother discussed with me changing my name—to Martin.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, your last name.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To my last name. So they, they were trying to strip away—my parents worked hard trying to strip away my Mexican-ness, right? And, you know, my father was darker than me. My dad, if you saw pictures of him when he was young, I mean, he looked, he looked fully Mexican, as opposed to me, where I don't, no matter how I grow my facial hair, no matter how—if my hair is long or my hair is short, I never, people never, and—actually, if I grow my beard like this longer, in certain context people will think I’m Latino, but—you know. I think you and I are probably similar like that, nobody reads me as that, and I think my father knew that, and I think they thought it was an opportunity so that I could have success, again, where they felt that they could not have success, so I think it's like stripping the language away, I think it's, it's, you know, we didn't, you know, my family had—everything was American in the home, Chon, everything. There was very little Mexican-ness in my family.

CHON NORIEGA:  So they engaged in a very conscious assimilation project—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Very, very conscious.

CHON NORIEGA:  —which a lot of—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My generation, it's very common, there's a lot of, there's a lot of us, and you know that, Chon. And you equally know that it—that becomes a huge point of conflict later, with later generations of Latinos and later generations of immigrants and the questions on authenticity and allegiance and the project of, you know, identity and nationalism, and, I mean, you know, I mean, you, you're more than aware of how that has developed over the past five or six decades.

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, well, the immigration never stopped.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, of course, of course.

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, we're part of a generation born from the early '50s to the early '60s where the parents were really saying, let's—let's assimilate, let's make them—make it as easy as possible so that our generation doesn't have to relive what they went through—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That’s exactly right.

CHON NORIEGA:  —in school.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then remember that my—

CHON NORIEGA:  But it didn't quite work in the way they intended.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, of course not, but think of my parents' project. My parents' project was, they moved from their small rural town—

CHON NORIEGA:  In Colorado.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in Colorado, to come to have their children, or child, born in Los Angeles. They wanted more education, they wanted better jobs, I mean, the classic—I mean, even though my parents were not immigrants, I mean, their desire to move out of a rural, essentially uneducated environment that—where the job, where one's life was essentially already written before you had been born.

[00:05:08]

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, where were they coming from in Colorado?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What do you mean? Or what city?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, city or area of Colorado?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, they came from the southwest corner, which is—they were born in a city, little town called Durango—

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —which is outside of a very, very famous, it’s all Ute Reservation there, which is where Mesa Verde is. One of the most famous cliff dwellings there are in that part of the country.

CHON NORIEGA:  And how long had your family been there?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My—well, I’m fourth generation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Fourth generation Coloradian, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, well, I mean, I'm fourth generation by definition, so my parents, my grandparents and my great-great-grandparents were all born there, so that means their parents were the ones who immigrated—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, your great-great-great-grandparents.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —if that's an immigration point, I mean, I'm not sure that that's an immigration point precisely because, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  It may have been Mexico at that time.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —well, my grandfather used to say that he had been told by his father that we had never immigrated—

CHON NORIEGA:  It’s just the border moved.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the border moved. So, again, I don't—since I'm not big on family history, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, it sounds like they came from a region of Colorado that culturally has usually been grouped together with New Mexico.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, exactly; no, because it's really close to Four Corners, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, I can’t tell you the amount of family in New Mexico and Albuquerque and, like, you know, in Gallup, I mean, all the little towns throughout the Southwest from Texas this way, Texas west and then the border north, in that part of the country there are just cousins and aunts and uncles and, I mean, there are endless lists of Martinezes and Garcias, and they, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, when did your parents come here then, to LA?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know, exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, was it because you were going to be born or something?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, no. The one thing that my mom and dad did tell me, they were very clear about was that, yeah, the only reason to move—my mom and dad didn't want to move here. It was only to do precisely the project and again, I think they were acting like immigrant parents, even though they didn't probably, didn't have any consciousness of that, they just simply didn't want—Chon, this is like small rural town stuff, we’re talking like 1,000 people living in a town—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   —you know what I mean? And, you know, my—one of my—my dad had a bunch of brothers and sisters, they have big families on both sides, one of my father's older brothers, he died of cancer quite a long time ago, but he was a, you know, like, my understanding of cowboys—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —did not come from the white man's Western view, it came from watching my uncles, who were all ranchers, they were all ranchers. They had the, you know, they did animals and they were farmers and, you know, that kind of thing. I mean, but my dad's uncle, the older one that I remember, Ignacio was his name. Ignacio, again, these names are like classic, you know, he was like, I mean, he was a full-on cowboy.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, were they ranch hands, or they owned ranches?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, they were not ranch hands, they were ranchers.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, they owned land and worked it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why my, that's why when my—my mom and dad, you know, they have 100 acres of land, what they live on now, I mean.

CHON NORIEGA:  They went back to it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They went back, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, they came to LA —

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They had to come to LA in—you asked me this, I think, before, too—well, I'm trying to remember — do you remember when the years of the Korean War were?

CHON NORIEGA:  '52 to '54.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  '52 to 54.

CHON NORIEGA:  Or '50 to '52, now. Don't quote me.  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  '52 to '54. '54.

CHON NORIEGA:  It's two years, I think it might have been '50 to '52. Was your dad in—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My dad fought in the Korean War.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, he was in the military.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. Oh, no, no, he’s a veteran.

CHON NORIEGA:  Was he drafted, or enlisted, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He drafted. He was drafted.

CHON NORIEGA:  And then did a tour of duty in Korea?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, which I'm sure you're aware was a monstrous war.

[00:10:03]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The brutality. I mean, it was slaughter. I mean, you look back in the history books at that time, which I did a little bit, and it's like the stories and the way that it's characterized, I mean, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did he ever talk to you about serving in the war?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, not a word.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, just—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My dad was a very stoic, you know, he was a—he was really like a Mexican male, you know. I mean, like, he wasn't, my dad wasn't macho, but he never complained, he never said he was in pain, he never showed any emotion.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you ever ask him about the war?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, oh, yeah, I used to ask him about his job, I used to ask about the war, I asked about [inaudible], my dad was like—

CHON NORIEGA:  He didn't share much.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He didn’t share nothing. My dad didn't share anything. My dad was, in that way—I had a few moments, like the story of the book, and a few things that I learned from my father, but he was not helpful in general. He wouldn’t—he was very closed in terms of—maybe he didn't know what to do or how to do it—or, but, so I'm thinking then, I'm when—I'm willing to bet you, I bet you, I bet they moved after the war.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, was he married when he went into the war?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom and dad, they have been married, like, 70 years.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow. So, he went off, did a tour—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He went off to war, did his tour, probably came back and then they came to LA after that. I'm willing to bet you, because, you know, one of the first things— you're gonna laugh, so, I remember, when I was born, we lived in a trailer. Trailer park. And, I remember, when I was very, very little—I have very few memories of this time, but, you know what, the one thing I remember was I would look up, and I saw a giant doughnut. There was a trailer park right outside of—the big doughnut off of the 405, it was right there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow, that's where you were born, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's—I was born at the Centinela Hospital, which is over in Inglewood, and that's one of—

CHON NORIEGA:  And that's one of your first memories?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —like, one of my very, very first memories of seeing that giant doughnut-like thing, and that was like, what is that?

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's called Randy's now, it used to be Winchell’s Donuts.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Back in the day, it was originally Winchell’s.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, did your mom ever share more about your dad's experiences?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nope, my mom and dad never talk about nothing.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, they're both pretty—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were closed mouth.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And that's up to this day, up to now with the crisis—as you know, my father's dying of cancer, and my mother is 93, and they still don't—they don't—and in the end too, you know, they were never supportive of me, they never said a kind word about making art, they were never supportive of the idea. But I got, I got more resistance from them later on than anybody else, actually.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did they ever acknowledge the fact that in—that you had become a successful artist?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, never. Not even to now, now it's—it's a footnote to my professorship. That's legitimate in their eyes.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, they accept it and they support the fact that you became a professor?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, the fact that as I got into the, you know, when I first got hired and all that project, oh, they were, they were beaming.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were like, you know, I think they felt that I had wasted my life up to that point.

CHON NORIEGA:  They had plans for you, and they came here to realize those plans, but they never really spoke very much beyond that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, that leads me back to how exactly did they convey to you a sense of their understanding of the race and class dynamics?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, I don't think, as I suggested before, I think it's in there. So, one answer is, is that they never said anything directly to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They—what I'm trying to get at is that I think that that imparted to me in more subtle ways, through their behavior in relation to me. So, you know, the kind of school that I went to, and the kind of programs they put me in, and the, you know, this idea of not speaking Spanish, and changing your name and, you know, putting, you know—they purposely did not live in East LA. My mom and dad told me they did not want to live in East LA.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because, they did not want to be around other Mexicans. That's what they told me.

CHON NORIEGA:  And it wasn't part of their goals for you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, it wasn't. It was not—they did not want to put me back into a context, even if it's an urban one, to what they had just taken me out of—

[00:15:00]

—because in Durango, it's, it's a very, like, it's half white, half Mexican. I mean, it's a very Mexican place, you know what I mean? You know, and so I'm thinking, I think that my education to race and class politics comes from their action, and less from them teaching me something.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you discern from their actions a sense that they have an analysis of what's going on, and they are trying to avoid certain things.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. I think that they’re—I think they made decisions based on what they perceived as major obstacles.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I think one of the ones for them was stripping me of my Mexican-ness, which, you know, probably in your mind—I mean, maybe you knew this before or not, I mean, but, I mean, it starts to make sense then how I end up being the person I am, you know what I mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, you're, you’re, as an artist and as a person, you seem to be very much about articulating your analysis—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  —of the dynamics, bringing it to the surface, in fact.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, that's a lot. So much of your public art is really about making people see something that's structured but invisible, right, so—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean—I mean, in most of machinations of things, come from what's in—not seen. Power does not—power that is visible is not power. That kind of power is only there for, as a way to sort of, you know—it's optics, it's a way to sort of seduce people one way or another, or to overtly, you know, repress them.

CHON NORIEGA:  It’s authoritarian, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, but it's like, power functions in the shadows. Power is silent, it doesn't need to announce itself, Chon, you know it doesn't.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, with your dad, did you ever see him reading other things besides Descartes?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, they have, they had—not full of books, but there were, yeah, they were mostly, like, books, that were way—I mean, like, Descartes, I mean, it was like technical manuals, books in his field.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, related to his work?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were all related to his work.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, what was his educational background?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My dad, I don't—I think my dad had a high school diploma, that was it.

CHON NORIEGA:  And, when he came here, what was it that he was doing? I mean—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  When he first came here?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know. I don't know, I don't know, how the transition—I don't quite know the transition from him arriving here, and how he ends up at Hughes Aircraft and NASA and JPL and all that. I don't, I don't know quite exactly. I imagine my dad was, as I told you before, sort of what I—wouldn't assign a kind of organic engineer, right, so, like an organic intellectual. I think my dad was probably innately very, very smart, and that he had a knack for thinking in a very particular kind of way, and so I'm willing to bet, if I had to guess, I would probably guess that my dad basically just applied for a job there as an engineer. He probably just showed up and said, like, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, he’s not formally trained, but he had—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My dad was—yeah, he was—

CHON NORIEGA:  —an understanding of, he had—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —oh, he had a very, very complex understanding of engineering, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, what particular kind of engineering was he doing?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was all space engineering. All aerospace—

CHON NORIEGA:  Everything related to—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Everything related—

CHON NORIEGA:  —space travel and research?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —specifically, only to traveling to the moon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  His entire expertise was that endeavor of the Apollo missions. Well, first the Surveyors, then the Apollo missions. My dad worked on all the Apollo missions, up to whatever number, I don’t remember what number it was.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not to the end, but, like, 1 through 9, or something.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did he have a specialization or something?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He did, which—I don't know what it was.

CHON NORIEGA:  He wouldn't tell you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He didn't tell me. It was top secret.

CHON NORIEGA:  But you have a sense that he worked in terms of imaging or photography?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, that much I knew, I knew that from later, but, I mean, you know, yeah, he was, his—imaging devices, optics, you know, ways of making images in hostile environments—trying to help us see what we had never seen before, and figure out ways to do that. I mean, he worked every Apollo mission, one thing I remember is he would, they would fly him to wherever, whenever the thing was—is it working?

[00:20:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, good. They would, you know, they would fly my dad to Cape Canaveral, and they would ship those things off.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, did you get—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, he did something technical that required his—him to be onsite, for the liftoff. He was always gone. He was always—whenever there was a flight to the moon—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —my dad was gone.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  You never suspected that he was going to the moon, though?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, I never suspected my dad was going to the moon. I suspected my dad just had—he had an aptitude for engineering and math. He, like an artist, I think, took what he knew and then amplified that by putting himself in the context where he would learn very fast, and be put in an opportunity to problem solve. My dad was a problem solver. That I'm sure of—and he happened to be focused on this particular issue, which I never could get out of him why. I asked him, why make, why do we want to make pictures on the moon? He would never tell me. He never would just—not just not answer, he’d make, like, grunt, like that typical father thing, grunt. Yeah, so he would make some kind of sound and, like, avoid the subject. I don't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, the reading of the Descartes, Discourse on Method, that becomes this one little crack and opening of the window—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That’s it. That’s all it is.

CHON NORIEGA:  —to try to make sense of it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, which makes, which makes sense because, I mean, it's both as, you know, I mean, Descartes was highly—was very religious, but also ushered in that particular moment of,  you know, analytics, of moving away from any kind of mysticism—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right, into rational thought. I think that's precisely where my father was at. I think my dad was at that crossroads, right? And, you know, they were both—just so you always remember, I mean, they were very religious. They went to church.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative], and they took you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They took me, absolutely they did. You know, we were—there were crucifixes in the home and my mother prayed and, you know, it was, like, it was a very religious environment, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you—did you ever see examples of his problem solving at home, or in your interactions?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Just in his lab, but they wouldn't make sense to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  At the lab in the basement.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you ever meet any of the people he worked with?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  So.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This was all hidden from me. That’s the oddity of this, because it's clear they're making an effort for me, and again, I'm not sure that they thought it was me, right, but there's something—so there's some things happened, Chon. There’s a missing piece of the puzzle which is all this effort to do this, but yet there's a disconnect here, and I always wondered if, what that was part of—was that because of the time living here? You know, my mother, also, she's not dark particularly, but she has very Mexican features. My mother and father, you know, they hated it here, Chon, they hated LA.

CHON NORIEGA:  So how long do—how long were they here, then?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Uh, I don't know, maybe they were here, I'm guessing 18, 20 years maybe?

CHON NORIEGA:  Remember what year they returned to Colorado?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, it was—well, it has to be—has to be, like '70—right before I went to college, so it has to be, like, '73, '74 or something like that. They weren't here that long, but I just knew the timing was wrong, Chon. My dad, you know, he did complain about being treated badly at work, you know, which made perfect sense, you know. I mean, he was—he's not a degreed scientist, but yet he's working on—with the teams of, you know, he’s making major contributions—because I only knew that later when I saw my dad's papers and saw, you know, original documents and things—it was, you know, his participation was not minor, you know.

You know, I don't know, my dad—it's hard to say, I think there's a—now—there's some kind of analogy here, though, with the predicament that we find ourselves in, in the production of art, in our, in with—with Mexican Americans, Chicanos, Latinos.

[00:25:04]

Because I think it's, I think my, I think that the circumstance I'm describing to you, while it might not be typical, it somehow represents this desire in the art community, which is: We can't—we seem to be locked in this loop where we want to embrace our identity, we want to remain intact as a community, we are not quite willing to go forward so we can sort of integrate ourselves fully into American culture, so we can be fully represented in every field, at every level of success. There's always something holding us back, and I felt that that struggle was in my family. My father, I think, in the end, was very conservative, and I think he was very rural, but yet his constant inclination was—he ended up, you know, who knows how, exactly, but he ends up making a contribution to some of the what, what are probably one of the most kind of extraordinary moments in the 20th century, period. Of a nonpolitical nature, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's, it's a, it's a—you know, it's not about war or protest or, you know, it's not about being Mexican, it's not about—it's about something unachievable, trying to get to the moon. Not trying to just get there and collect data, but actually, like, what does it look like? How do we know what it looks like? I mean, that's, that's like, you know, that’s—it's pure discovery, Chon, you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. Did you have a sense that he understood and appreciated the scope of what he was doing?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I can't answer that completely, but I think yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think that he understood—I think he knew that he was making pictures in a place that had never—pictures had never been made before, and that's why I think that my dad knew photographers. Like the guy I went to, you know, to Munich with. I think—I didn't—you know, when I was younger I never made, I never had put that together, but I think that part of my introduction to image making was my dad knew people who were very much invested in making photographs.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, he may have reached out to them to learn more?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes. I think that's very possible.

CHON NORIEGA:  You don't recall if that photographer that you went to Munich with ever described his relationship with your dad?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, they just said—my dad just said they were friends, but this was somebody that he had come to the house and would have dinners, this is a friend of my father's. And I assumed was a friend of my father's, I didn’t know if it was through work or, I'm not sure how. I mean, my mom and dad, you know, think—I mean, they didn’t know anybody here, they had no family here, they just invented it. They invented everything, Chon. My mom and dad didn't have any money, you know, when they moved from Colorado, I know—I mean, poverty was, I mean, you don't grow up in a trailer park, Chon, like, you know, like, that's not exactly like luxury living, you know what I mean? I think my dad would—I think, again, I think my dad pushed aside the—which again, I mean, I wonder if we all become our parents, you know. I think he pushed aside certain questions around the social political sort of milieu that we would normally be caught up in discussing.

And I think he said, there is something more important, and what was more important was getting to the moon. I think that's what he did. I think everything he did was about getting to the moon, and I think once he achieved that, and once he had sort of finished what he was doing, I think that was, I mean, he was just—in the end, I mean, there was a kind of, like, you know them, I mean, just, I mean, I'll just say this because—they abandoned me, and I think in that abandonment my parents were incredibly selfish in doing that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But true to form, right, he was unwilling—I don't know how much my mom, you know, went along with this or not. My mom is actually a very, very strong woman, but he was not gonna let anything intimidate his independence. Whether his independence to come out here, or his independence to get part of a program that would normally—nobody would have ever, I mean, I don't think there's any other Mexican that has ever been involved in the space program, that I know of, you know, and if there are, it's only been in the latter years, right?

[00:30:03]

And then, when the time, when I think that time was up, it's like, adios, you know? We're going back to something comfortable, something that we really wanted, we gave you what we could give you, and then, you know, like, good luck.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you were a senior in high school at this time, or—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I think so, more or less.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and how did you get by, they left—you were living in their home?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, no, then I was—and then I had no home.

CHON NORIEGA:  What did you make of that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Make of it? Like, you know, fuck you.

CHON NORIEGA:  You didn't go back with them.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They asked me to go back.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They did ask me to go back. My mom and dad said, you need to come, would you like to come back with us? You should come back with us.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I just laughed, I laughed.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, what did you do?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, I just, I went—I couch surfed, I lived, you know, on people's couches and with friends until I figured out, like, I have to start figuring out how to make money, and I gotta, I gotta go to school and I gotta—you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you finished high school and—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, and then—

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_2of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —just—you know, it’s not that hard to live then, if you think of the decade, the '70s, things were cheap, it was easy to live, I'm young, you know. I'm not stupid, I might be inexperienced, clearly I'm like inexperienced, and I'm—had to say that, you know, maybe I've stumbled my way through the world, sometimes I think I'm just—there's a kind of like incredible sophistication, and then simultaneously within, with a profound naïveté of things, like I think I've always felt both those things at the same time.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Always.

CHON NORIEGA:  Still?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Still. Still in—so no, I just—I just survived, like, you know, I was—I had long hair, I was a little hippie, you know, like, you know, rock and roll. I mean, you know, I mean, you know, jazz and—I mean, everything was cool, it’s LA, man, it’s California!

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So, what were your parents’ names?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I have my father's name, is the inverse of my name, my father's name is Joseph Daniel Martinez and my mother's name is Ruby Nelly Garcia.

CHON NORIEGA:  Ruby Nelly Garcia.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think it's Nelly, I think that's right, I'm almost positive. It's Ruby N. Garcia, so I thought, I would think it's Nelly, which is an odd name.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, we're sitting in your studio and behind you, on the wall, are printouts of two photographs, that, as I understand, these were in your home growing up.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. These were on the wall of our dining room.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, can you explain what these photographs are?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Um, the first photograph is, well, one of the—one of the photographs is a picture of the shadow of the Surveyor that was on the moon, the lunar surface, and because of—you have to imagine, cameras were—and the whole idea of getting there was primitive, to say the very least about this, so I had to imagine from the photograph, all of them looked the same, they're all fixed, the camera did not have the ability to be moved, there was no remote or access that the camera sat on to like take pictures from more than one direction, right, so this picture, to prove that it was there, had to take a picture of its own shadow. So, it's this shadow of the object, that is light coming from the sun, so the only way that it proves that its own existence through it's negation of itself, it’s a—it's the negative, right? It’s used to show that it exists, and the other image is a kind of awkward picture of the horizon, with, yeah, exactly—

CHON NORIEGA:  Like a 45 degrees angle.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —with it, like, tilted, and again it sort of displays that awkwardness of the mechanics of the time. It's shooting pictures in weird—you know, they probably had more than one camera, I assume, that was attached to the device, and they were all fixed and they could only take pictures from the angle that that camera was mounted at, right? But—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, this is something at once extraordinary, it's never been done before, and it's awkward.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, completely, but remarkable in that, to make something that was inconceivable—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to picture, in the human mind. We had no idea what the lunar surface looked like prior to this. There was no intimate pictures because we had never landed something there that sent a picture back.

CHON NORIEGA:  So how are these hung in your home, were they photographic prints?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were little prints, yeah. Photographic prints, similar size like 8x10s, just like this on the wall.

CHON NORIEGA:  Not framed or anything?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Framed, yeah, yeah. 

CHON NORIEGA:  They were framed.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were framed, simple, like very simple, almost mod— very modest, not like framed like art, not frame, just in a frame, on the wall.

CHON NORIEGA:  And were these in the dining room?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Dining room.

CHON NORIEGA:  And how, how was it explained that they were there?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My dad said this was part of his work.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, so, but you knew that that was the moon?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I knew that was the moon because he said it was the moon. He told me it was the moon.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  The conspiracy is exposed!

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I didn't see him doing it in the backyard.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  That kind of looks like the basement, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, you take him for his word, right? I mean—

[00:05:02]

CHON NORIEGA:  So, can you describe kind of what the rest of the house looked like?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This house was—at this house was a classic small single-family home, a Spanish-style roof with the terracotta shingles on it, you know, simple, had a backyard, had a basement, you know. I mean—very modest, I mean, very modest, we didn't, we didn't have much. I always remember there was never much there, we never had, we always had food and we always had a home, and that was just something, right, a living room that they never used—like a living room, so, you know, like—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so, here it is, they have a living room, where people are supposed to come over, which I don't remember that a lot of entertaining, but then there was the, like, the TV room, right, where you really would go.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You would never go—I could never figure that out. Why can't we just be in the living room if that's what it is? But no, no, you have to be in this room, because you don't want to, like—my mom said, we don't want to wear anything out. There was always this, like, thing of, like—so, you know they were also, like, they had plastic plants, right, you know, like, because something about real plants, and then they also had plastic on the furniture.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yes.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, like, everything was always covered, everything was, like, protected, it was, like—and I asked my mom, what's the plastic for? Well, it’s what makes sure it stays nice. And so, we don't want to sit on the plastic, and she said, when people come, we remove the plastic and they sit down, and then we put the plastic back. I said, why? I thought it was—I was so confused by this, and then, I realized later, everyone's home had plastic covers on it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, this was a thing. 

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What is it with Mexicans and plastic covers on the couches? And, like, you know —

CHON NORIEGA:  In the room you never use.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In the room you never use and, like, what is it with that shit? And I realized that it was a cultural phenomenon, it wasn't just my house.

CHON NORIEGA:  It was a class phenomenon, too.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was, it was. The plastic plants always baffled me. I was, like, why don't we just get a real plant? No, no, no, we can't do that, you know? It's also, like, the fake Christmas tree, you know? Like when in the early days it was those aluminum ones, right? Well, my dad said, you know, then we don’t have to buy a new tree every year, we just put this one together. Then it got more advanced, you got the green ones that looked like Christmas trees, but were still plastic, you know? My job was to put them together, right? So, it's like, so we save it, everything was saved, everything was preserved, because we're going to keep— And this is the class issue, right? I mean, we're gonna keep what we have because we can't replace it, right, so we keep it in as good condition as possible, right, everything is, everything is separate and isolated and articulated, right? In terms of display, right? The vase is treated a certain way, and everything, cookie jars treated a certain way, and like I said, is this how people live? Is this, like—it just seemed so completely crazy to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  And yet—and yet, it was the norm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Clearly. And then, when I realized every other house I ever went in, it was exactly the same way, and every time it was Mexicans, you know? I don't know that, I don't know if that branched out to white people or not, but every Mexican house I had ever been in the rest of my life, it was like that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, you know, so the question is, what made you think it was not normal?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know. It just seemed weird, I think it just seemed weird to me, like, it didn't seem normal to put plastic on the couch.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. It didn’t feel good.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't—I don’t understand.

CHON NORIEGA:  Was there anything else about the house that kind of stuck out to you in terms of being different, or being something you remember?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The only thing I remember was, it—I was very young, I was probably not even 10 yet, my parents bought me the largest set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Like, they had a guy come to the—I remember this very distinctly—a guy came to the house, right, pulled out his thing, with like his kit, right? Sat down, explained to my parents, you know, like, how important this is, right, because it has the knowledge of the world in it, right? And so then the guy talked to me and, you know, my dad, you know, my dad says, I want the most complete set, the most deluxe set of this, right?

[00:10:04]

And my parents, I remember they spent a lot of money on getting this for me, to read. Then anyway, I mean, it was like an item of dignity in the house, right, like we have the full—and it had the atlas, so that I can study the world, right? I mean, it was, you know, it was a big deal.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, they were loading you up?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you read it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, I did. I loved it, I loved it. I loved the atlas the most.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you keep it when they went back?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I did. I kept it as long as I could, and then it just got to be like a brick.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It became a brick, you know, it's gotta get, get—cut ties with that thing, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, this is very —

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's so classic, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  It is. My parents were a little more frugal—you would get the first one free.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So we had about four or five different types of encyclopedias, but it was only the letter A, or A through B.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, so you cobbled it together.

CHON NORIEGA:  Really good at Astronomy and Anatomy.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's what I'm saying, it was a big—when the guy came to the house and my parents, and my dad, you know, when they talked to him, you know, it was clear that this was a big decision.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That, you know, to have—to take the time, and that it was clear that they were spending a lot of money on this. My dad was adamant about having—it was—I think it was considered the best one at the time, you know, I mean, because the guy—I remember that they talked about other ones, but they settled on this one for whatever reason, like, I assumed it was the best at the time. I don't know exactly, but there was something about this, and I never really understood this idea, but I guess its pre-pre-internet, right, way of amassing knowledge, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  It was either that or the public library right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you go to the public library?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I did go to the public library, but this was about having it in the house, though.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, the library was always, the library was always—I mean, that was normal. I mean, my parents, they didn’t appear, again—like, so I never could quite understand, Chon, and I think it has to do just with my own edification, right, like, I don't know how I became kind of a book nerd. I don't know how that happened, exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  When did it happen?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know, I don’t know exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  You don't remember when you first were just reading?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was never discouraged from reading. Never, never, never, and I remember going to libraries from when I was very young, I remember flipping through card catalogs and sitting there, and I was never bored in the library. I was never bored in the library, I remember that in all the schools I had, they were very all, the, you know, there was always, like, they always taught you reading. They always taught you writing, you know. I never did good at writing. I've never been able to overcome my dyslexia—I have compound dyslexia, so that means that I, um, move the words in the sentence and the letters in the word, both.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which technically means I shouldn't be able to read, but—so I was up in—

CHON NORIEGA:  When were you diagnosed with that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was never diagnosed, I was actually gonna tell you this, how I got diagnosed.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, I was doing a show up at a, in the '80s, up at Cola [CoCA] in Seattle, right, and so had a big installation—I mean, this is for another part of the conversation, but, I mean, you know, in the '80s I was already doing identity politics as far as I'm concerned; I was already, like, being an activist in art, you know, and it wasn't—this was a whole installation on racism in America, right? Anyway, so I did a, like—I've always done, which is something that I have been skillful with, is being able to get up on stage and speak, and I don't know why, but I—always have been very simple for me. Anyway, so I just did like a talk thing, whatever, you know, for this big non-profit, because, you know, non-profits, that was how we made art in the '80s, right? And so this guy comes up to me after and says, oh, like, I enjoyed your talk, and whatever. He says, I'm, I'm, I'm curious on how you, how you're able to do that. Like, what do you, do what? He says, how are you able to speak like you do? I’m very confused by his, you know, his query, and I said, I don't want to be rude or anything, I have no idea what you’re talking about, and he says, well, he said, normally people that have dyslexia, you can't speak like that.

[00:15:04]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I said, I don't have dyslexia. He says, yes you do. I said, no I don’t. I said, I said, I read fine. And he says, how’s your writing? Well, I said, my writing is not so good. And he said—so anyway, I said, I don't, I don't have dyslexia, and he says, you do, and the reason I know you do is, I'm the director of The National Institute on Dyslexia, which was housed in Seattle, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Boom! So, he says, he says why don't you, why don't you come up to the Institute and let us run a bunch of tests on you, he says, because I'm confused by some things, because I can identify the dyslexia, by the way that you speak, but what I'm curious about is how you overcome the things you should not normally have been able to overcome. So they ran all these tests on me up there, and I became like the poster child for, like, surviving dyslexia.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, what they concluded was that my brain, while it is being impaired from the moving of the letters and the words, there is something else in my brain, that doesn’t, that’s retranslating it back. In other words, so, it's being, it's being encoded—

CHON NORIEGA:  And then decoded.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —then decoded. Exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And in the translation, I invent something new, right? So, if I, like— [shows book.] This is a friend of mine, he’s a poet, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  It’s The Real Horse, Farid Matuk.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ: Farid Matuk. I thought you knew him, he’s a really good writer. Anyway, I can read this, I can get sixty percent of what is intended, and the rest of it, is literally, I invent. So, in other words, I’m not getting every word. So, my view on texts, is not—is in a way an invention, because it's not really exactly what people intended for me to interpret from what they wrote, it's me having to fill in the blanks, and by filling in the blanks on my own, I take whatever has been written in, and something new occurs, right? This is—I think this is directly linked to the artmaking, and so they were just so excited to meet me—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —because they had never met anybody like me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm like, I'm very—apparently, very, in the dyslexia world, I'm very, very rare for people to be able to put it back together, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, how long did they study you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, they, I, I was there, I stayed, because I was, again, maybe I was there for a month? And then they used to have me come back and do talks for them. They would invite a whole bunch of people, you know, in the dyslexia world, and people would, like, take notes and film me and, like, you know, they would ask all kinds of crazy questions, about, like, you know, would you read this for us, and would you write this for us, and you know, like, you know, what’s your interpretation of this paragraph, and can you do this backward, I mean, it was, like, I mean, it was really interesting, I mean, I learned a lot from this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Interesting.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, so, in the end it made me think too, that—isn't that strange that I don't read the world the way everyone else does. I can take the exact same book— it's not a question of interpretation, it's just simply, I read it differently. I also read faster, because I don't read every word.

CHON NORIEGA:  What do you do?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think I read every third word, when I read, because my brain doesn't consume it all.

CHON NORIEGA:  And you're just filling in.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I fill in the blanks as it goes. How strange is that, right? How strange is that, Chon? Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, like, I'm the kid that shouldn't be able to do any of the things that I'm doing, yet somehow, there's like, there's like these oddities of my brain and my mind, which is consistent, then, if I—we get through it, I mean, there's many, many junctures like this of what is normally perceived as me having severe obstacles, mentally or physically.

CHON NORIEGA:  But you didn't know this until you were close to 30, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah, I didn't know this until I was in my—yeah, I had no idea, none.

CHON NORIEGA:  Say what, I'm Mexican? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Exactly, exactly! I'm Mexican, and I’m dyslexic? Does that go together, is that like a twofer, you know?    

CHON NORIEGA:  How come no one ever told me?

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's exactly right, as a matter of fact, that's—that is not far from the truth.

[00:20:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  Kind of the way it played out, huh?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That is not far from the truth, you know? I mean, no, I knew I was Mexican, but not Mexican with a capital M.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We were Mexican with a small m. Because we had—I mean, all the food in the house was normal, you know what I mean? My mom made Mexican food all the time, I mean, it was—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, she did do that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh yeah, absolutely; no, no, no, no, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  And what did your parents call themselves?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What do you mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  Were they Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano, Hispanic?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My parents—I don’t know.

CHON NORIEGA:  They avoided labeling themselves?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had never heard them label themselves, now that you ask that—

CHON NORIEGA:  Interesting.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it’s funny you ask that, it never occurred to me—I never heard them label themselves.

CHON NORIEGA:  Interesting.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't remember them ever identifying.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, they really—they had an approach that they applied both in private—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In the home.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and in public. Because my dad was defiantly Mexican, but then he would say, you don't push that in the public. Yeah, it's not going to go over well.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's a beautiful description, like—know what, now that you asked that question, do you suppose—I wonder if it was a calculated, political move on their part, or there was embarrassment, or the desire to not be Mexican and be white?

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, they are from a region where there was more identifying as Spanish or Hispanic, you know.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, the area was colonized by the Spanish, I mean, that's why I told you, you know, that in some parts of the—like, particularly, in the New Mexico area, a lot of people identify as being Spanish, Hispanic, which—I always found that very confusing. It's like, really, you want to be the conquistador? [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] A little late.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But no, I didn't, I didn't have those kinds of—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, they weren't hiding the fact that they were Mexican—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —oh, no, no, no, no, no, because—they never—

CHON NORIEGA:  —but in terms of how they publicly and privately identify themselves, it was more at an individual level?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, there was no Spanish spoken in my home, none.

CHON NORIEGA:  Not even between your parents, separate from you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ: Nope, nope, not that I ever heard, but—so, but we would go—especially when I was very young, we would drive—oh, this is useful, I mean, my parents from the very first minute I was born, every year they would go back and visit their parents, and they would drive, okay?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And they had those, like, I remember—you know, this is pre-air conditioning, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So they would have those water bags on the front of the car, that—to keep the radiator cool, or they would have these, like, crazy devices on the window that you would pour water into and, like—you know, I mean, like, really primitive, the water bag on the front of the car, is like—really? You have to put water on front of the car so it doesn't, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  Heat up.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —blow up, you know. But my dad took the longest routes possible to get to Colorado, and what we did is we visited every national park in the country. I saw every national park in the country. Every trip we would just go—you know, he would go north, or he’d go south, or he’d go, you know, go north and east, I mean, just— [makes driving sounds.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Did he have the Rand McNally maps?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, he had—he had all the maps. 

CHON NORIEGA:  So, they had prepared.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, my dad had it all planned out, they knew what places they would stop and everything, and that's how I got to see the country.

CHON NORIEGA:  Would you camp, or would you stay in motels?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, we would stay in motels, but, you know, like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —basic, basic, basic, basic, places, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, they basically they—they set out to really take you to these places.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, the project was to see the country. And then, so—when we would arrive—and this is what I was gonna tell you, that was just something I thought of. When they were with their parents and all their brothers and sisters, they only spoke Spanish.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, so you were left out.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—this is the rub. Here’s the rub—that’s right. They would only—everybody spoke Spanish but me. I was always the butt of the jokes, I was always the one that didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about when they would have, like, meals and all this stuff. And, like, everybody, even the kids—I got, Chon, I was brutalized by the other parents' kids, Chon. I mean, they endlessly made fun of me, you know. I’m the poor kid from the city, I’m the stupid kid from the city, can't speak Spanish, like, I'm like, oh my God, the ridicule. I mean, it was just unbearable. I mean, it was worse than being in—fucking with white kids, you know? I mean, I hated it. I hated it, I hated it, I hated it, I hate it more than I can even tell you. It would—it made me despise rural America.

[00:25:12]

CHON NORIEGA:  So, national parks good—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and ending up where the family's from, bad.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Bad! No, but I mean—so, my grandma, my dad, you know, my grandmas were—of course, they were kind, you know what I mean, as grandmas always are.

CHON NORIEGA:  But did they speak English?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They would—oh, yeah, everybody spoke English.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But they, you know, they only spoke English to me, because they could, they always knew that I was—you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  This is a chance for them to re-immerse themselves in, where they came from.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely. 100, I mean, my—both my mom's dad, their moms, you know, the houses were Mexican. I mean, everything about the house was Mexican, and they were, you know, canning and cooking and chilés hanging, and, you know. I mean, every cliché you could ever think of, of a classic home, that's what it was.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, did you notice anything in terms of when your parents were suddenly speaking Spanish—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, they were so comfortable.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and did it sound different than the way they spoke English?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yes, their English with me was always strained. It was always strained, it was always awkward. Not in—not in the speaking, like, I mean, they spoke perfect English, but just, there was a—there was a relief that—I remember especially dinner time, or even just in casual sitting on the porch or whatever it was, right, like there was a casualness to the conversation and intimacy to the conversation that you could feel in the air—

CHON NORIEGA:  In Spanish.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in Spanish. So, it was—I never heard my dad laugh at home. When my dad would be—when we would be back, my mom, and both of them would be laughing, my mom, you know, they would be, they would be joyous—they were never happy here.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, there was a kind of this—this kind of internal struggle, I imagine, but they loved, you know—even when my dad—just for funny, so, my dad, I had him in this, in this recovery home, right? In the past few months when he was first diagnosed with cancer, and so my dad said to me one day—because when I was there for a couple of months on end, I would see my dad every day, and he says, "I’ve got a gringo nurse here, I’m teaching her how to speak Spanish."

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I thought that was, like, my 90-year-old dad is cracking jokes!  [Laughs.] And I thought, what are you talking about now, where is your, where did that come from?

CHON NORIEGA:  He dropped character, huh?

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I guess that happens when you start dying, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, wow. Were you ever aware as a kid, growing up with your parents, that they had accents?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, they had really clean English.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did they?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, very clean English. You couldn't, you—no, no accent, no, no, no, no, no. Even to this day, their English is extremely clear, very crisp English. There's no—there's none of that sliding with the accent at all, you know, we didn't have that. My grandparents, yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  They would—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, you could—yeah, broken English, and you can hear their accents in—if I showed you a picture of, like, my grandfathers, they look—they're like dark old Mexican men, you know. In that way that, you know, they look like that classic kind of Indian face.

CHON NORIEGA:  Do you have photographs?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I have some somewhere, I have to find them, but they had— they always—I think my father's side more than my mother's, it was a toss-up. My grandparents had that—all had that very Indian Mexican look: the shape of the face, the features, even me, my eyes are pretty almond you know. I mean—yeah, I remember my grandmother was—she looked—they looked like Indians, they looked Native.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did they ever claim any Indigeneity?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That conversation never came up, but I'm sure that if I—if it did, I would bet they would. I'm sure of it. I mean, that's another conversation, isn't it the pre-colonial Indigenous Mexico, and the colonial Mexico, and then the modern Mexican, right? I mean, these transitions, these points—I mean, pre-colonial, I mean, everybody's Native, right? Mexico's Native, right? We are linked, Chon. I mean, even though you couldn't make that argument in America. I mean, our roots go back to being Native, there's no—I don't think anyone can actually deny that.

[00:30:12]

CHON NORIEGA:  About one third of the Mexican population is just Indigenous.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, that’s what I mean.

CHON NORIEGA:  And the rest is mixed or European.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, here it's only five—it's one percent.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  One percent what?

CHON NORIEGA:  Of the national population is Indigenous.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, you mean left alive. Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, let's speak—well, that's—as you well know, though—I mean, the U.S. government paid people—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, it’s a genocidal project.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that’s what I’m saying. They paid people to shoot Natives.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, I was asking—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, that in, in, in those homes it was very Mexican. I remember, every summer trip we would stay a long time, too. We were there six weeks. Long vacation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, and that's when I was—

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_3of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —exposed to my Mexican side.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, did they—were they also very Catholic?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  And when you went to church, was it in Spanish?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yep, absolutely, absolutely. I remember it very well. I'm trying to remember the name of the little church in that town—I know it, I just can't—not Saint Mary's? I see the church, it's a little Indigenous church. Just a little one, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, I've been in them.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  With the little wood benches, you know, the priest at the door when you come for Mass, right? I remember, you know, my mother was always big on Lent and the palm things and the cross thing and Ash Wednesday and, like, you know, Midnight Mass for, like, Christmas time. And, I mean, they followed the religious holidays to the letter, you know. I mean, you went, you went, you kept confession, you—I mean, no, my grandparents were very, very religious. I mean, they were a classic, I mean, it was a classical, by any definition Mexican home, with the grandparents. I remember both my grandmothers made mole. I mean, they just, they made the best Mexican food you’d ever find, right? I mean, they had cellars, you know, where they canned and put everything in jars, and they made jam, I mean, everything was made by hand because, I mean, this is Depression era right? They had come out of the Depression.

CHON NORIEGA:  How did you get by for six weeks if you were the only one that—if they wouldn't speak English to you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, they would speak English to me, they just had—the predominant tone of the—no, no, everybody spoke English, of course, you know, but they just—

CHON NORIEGA:  But when they became most intimate—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  When it was around the table and whenever, it—when everybody would talk to each other, no, it's, it'—so when I would come, they would know they had to speak English.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But imagine, just, since everybody spoke Spanish as their first language, they just spoke in Spanish, so they would change when I would come to the room—

CHON NORIEGA:  I see.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You see what I mean, which always was awkward for me. I was like, wow, I like, when—so, I'm really the odd guy out here, I mean, so you have to change —which is the reverse of, like, living now, right? I mean, you know, I mean—it just, it was very difficult, Chon. I enjoyed the—I enjoy—because it taught me about something my parents never taught me. My parents eliminated all that, they sanitized it. It was gone, but then when we would go back for the summertime, it was like, you know, this is—this is who I am. And again, a lot of this is probably making more sense to you, but I mean, that—that, I mean, isn't the schism so clear, in me, how I'm both of these things, but neither one of these things? And again, it's probably part of my—you know, like, my lack of identity comes from this situation, because I never was one or the other. I was never Mexican enough to be Mexican, and I was never white enough to be white, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  So you’re in between somewhere.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm—I'm in between where that—but there's no designation on the in-between, I mean, it's a complete—it's like being in a void, and I, you know, it took me a long time to come to terms with that and to realize that—how much of that informed both my support of identity, and my resistance to identity. Like, as I matured, and I grew up, in my sort of—I have, I think I have the same quality of wanting us to improve generationally. Like, I had this—I think I've always had this— like, I always felt that I could begin a project that could crack the code to let a new generation be better artists than I was. And in the end, I mean now, like, if you ask me, I'll just tell you I think the project's been a failure, because the timing was wrong. I was in the wrong generation, but if I had been alive just, either earlier or later, I could have reworked this entire problem, and I—

CHON NORIEGA:  You think?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.

[00:05:00]

Because I got, I got, I got my—I was deprived, therefore I was famished. By the time I became of age and really thinking, I was so desperate, as I have told you before, to find people that were like me, because I was only in environments where people were not like me. So, all—I'm like, I always felt that my entire life was one of explaining myself. All I’ve done, my life with art, is explain myself to people who were not interested in what I was saying. Really didn't care about what I was saying, and then tried to put me within a category that they did understand which was antithetical to what I was actually talking about. So my inability to integrate myself into the art world in a more successful level has been that I'm speaking one language and they're speaking another.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Part of my language problem from my very beginning.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I am literally in a room full of people in the art world, they're all speaking one language and I am speaking another language and we are not communicating, on any level; not intellectually, not visually, not philosophically. And, and so, it's again I'm out, I find myself again having this feeling of deja vu, where I am, I feel, I'm out of sync with everything going on around me. I’ve had this feeling my whole life, Chon. I am always out of sync and I find very few allies to commiserate with, to make a plan with, to, like, let's build this project because two of us are—two heads are better than one, and five heads are better than one, and ten heads are better than—I mean, 50 people, 100 people.

You could, you could—even with five people, you could change the entire trajectory of this field, but you have to have five people that are willing to do that. And I’ve—I'm always by myself, you know, and I—and I'm always in the point of it—and that's why I'm done, that I don't do it anymore. I don't explain myself anymore to people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Do you feel that you understand the language they're speaking?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely, completely, 100 percent. It’s easy. The language of the art world is easy, I know art history backwards and forward, as you well know. I understand philosophy, backwards and forward. There's nothing that they know that I don't know. There's nothing—they don't know—they don't—there is not an aspect in art history they can tell me that I don't know something about, because I do. I have studied art history from A to Z and I have constantly been told that I don't understand. You know, that's, that's—you know, that's, that's been the criticism of me, is that I do not understand art history. That I don't understand the modernist project. I was not part of, even on the tail end of that, I was not part of—included in that project, because the language I was speaking was not consistent with the project of that time. So—well, no, actually that's not true. I am working on a different project, I'm still within that project, but I'm working on one that is—you just don't recognize because you don't speak the language. So, if you don't speak the language, that means I'm the idiot. You know, just because I don't speak Spanish, doesn't mean I don't, you know, I mean, you know, like, the thing with language—people that speak English only think if you speak another language you're not as smart as they are, because they think somehow the language prevents you from being intelligent, right? It's like, are you out of your bloody mind, I mean, really? So, people that are bi- and trilingual, you really think they’re dumber than you? They have command of three languages, two languages at the very least.

CHON NORIEGA:  That's a very American position.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, totally, that’s why I’m bringing it up. It's very American, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  And your parents bought into that framework?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

CHON NORIEGA:  But not in, but not from a pejorative—right? Not—they weren't trying to do harm to me—

CHON NORIEGA:  No, they were trying to help you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were trying to help me, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  But the problem was that you don't want to speak that language in terms of the language of the art world.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right.

CHON NORIEGA:  You understand it, but you, you don't want to participate in that, and you don't want to participate in the highly, kind of, tribal dimension of ethnic identity.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, right.

CHON NORIEGA:  You can—you're aware of them, I think, but—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, I'm perfectly aware of them, Chon. 

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  You come from them, you’re from both sides, so—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But the thing—but, I thought, wrongly, wrongly—I thought that an artist was a lived experience, I thought it was a life, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Being an artist.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes. And, I thought that that lived experience of being an artist was more important than anything else, and in that lived experience was a life of experimentation.

[00:10:08]

I privileged experimentation over the single investigation of an idea over a lifetime. I thought it would be much more interesting to learn, to—I'm more modeled after the Renaissance way of thinking. I'm interested in science and technology, in anatomy and painting and sculpture and flight and, I mean, I'm interested in everything. I want to know about science, I want to know about, you know, traveling to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. I want to know—I mean,

there's nothing that I’m not curious about. I'm curious about everything. I want to know about everything, I want to know every—the more difficult it is, the more that I—I don't know it, why shouldn't I be able to try it and take a look? My entire position on the idea of what an artist is, is opposite of the art world that I'm in. Because if it's just about having a idea, Chon, one idea, and you just paint your lovely way through it the rest of your life, working on that one idea, Ellsworth Kelly for example, I mean, really, that's it? That's the sum total of the project? Frightfully boring, in my opinion, frightfully boring.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, but the problem is, the fundamental, absolutely fundamental problem is, I can't be Mexican, and be experimental and act the way that I act, and have that be seen as being a contribution to this field. Because you, you, there's only one or two Latinos that are in this field, you're one of them, who even has an inkling of the fact that I can be Latino and I can be experimental and I can be contemporary all at the same time.

Everyone else, and everyone else that is Latino, they're still trying to put me in some kind of rudimentary box because they have no idea what my project is, none. They have zero—they have no ambition in their own mind, therefore cannot recognize the ambition of my project. The totality of the project, Chon, not like a work, but the totality of the ambition, in my life, is monumental. It is not small, I've tackled things are outside of my skill set and my knowledge set and I've done it with a force, and most of the time I tackled them, then why do it again, why do that, why do I have to climb Mount Everest twice? If I tackle something once, I—and I am able to accomplish it, I move on to the next higher peak. I never thought about going down, I only thought of going up. More complex, more rigorous, more dense, not less. And I get—I get boxed, and shut down, and I get categorized, and I get trivialized, and I get reduced to, I mean, to nothing, and nothing, because they don't, they can't see it, they want to see a rectangle on the wall, they want to see a painting, you know, they want to see a portrait. I mean, it's like, Christ, already, are you kidding me? 2020, Chon, and we are—we have engaged in the most reduced version, the most banal version of identification, as the economy of exchange.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, is this for artists, or is this for just Latino artists?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is for minority artists.

CHON NORIEGA:  Minority artists.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Minority artists, Black and Brown. 

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, Ellsworth Kelly, he's created a niche—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and there's that certain dimension of the art world and of the art market that, you know, you have to maintain consistency and to become a brand, there is that element of it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I know, but I—so, my error—

CHON NORIEGA:  But then with Latinos, what happens, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, with Latinos, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's a category defined by your ethnicity, and certain cultural precepts—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I know, but Chon, and hence, my confusion with that is, that—I mean, you know this. You know, Chon, I am one hundred and fifty percent supportive and behind all the questions around identity. I have, I have trained two generations of Latino artists, okay? I’ve trained two generations of Black artists, I mean, I’ve trained more minority artists than I can—than most people probably have, okay? These people have actually been incredibly successful in their careers, okay? I am not trying to tell people that they should not embrace whatever version of identity and representation that they choose to embrace in their work.

[00:15:00]

What I am—want, is, I want a full spectrum of representation, so I want us to be able to be researchers, and I want us to be able to be intellectuals, and I want us to be philosophers as artists, I want—I have all these artist categories. I want us to be experimental as artists, I don't want us to have to—I mean, we should be able to be Ellsworth Kelly, and we should be able to be, you know, Basquiat, and we should be able to be all these things at the same time. Instead, we are only reduced down to this version that you just described, which leaves us in a backwards position in relation to the rest of the field on a global scale. We are not competitive, we are not even included, Chon, as you well know, and nobody—and people are running around worried about Xs? You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  You mean Latinx?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, Latinx. I mean, it’s like, that's what you think, that's where you think we should put our energy? When there’s a plethora of issues that we should be tackling, with all of our—with every bit of our knowledge and experience, every resource we can muster to try and dislodge this. You know, I mean, you and I have talked about the Studio Museum before. I mean, my position has always been, for decades, now, why do we not build the Studio Museum for Latinos here in Los Angeles, a Mexican version of that. We do that, take me and you and two other people, start the institution, we could change this entire field for the next generation of Latino artists, hands down. With the two different skill sets that we have, not even a question in my mind, could it be done, it's just a question of how long it would take to do. We cannot—for whatever fucked-up reason, we're still talking about Self Help Graphics, and fucking priests and nuns, you know? It like, I mean, like, there's no desire to get out of being a field worker, there’s none, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you're saying, full spectrum of representation, and that's basically, say that the level of access should be one that is equally available to all artists, even the Latino artists—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely.

CHON NORIEGA:  —rather than, let's create a space within which we can be included and recognized.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, I want, I want full access—at every level. I mean, on a global scale.

CHON NORIEGA:  But what I'm hearing you say is, fine, let's have community-based and ethnic—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely.

CHON NORIEGA:  —institutions, but we need the other thing too, which is—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely.

CHON NORIEGA:  —full and equal access to the mainstream institutions.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right—and what I—and my position is, and more precisely is, let's forego for a decade, or one generation. Let's just, instead of prioritizing our rural ethnic position, right, let's spend an entire generation and work on this other project to balance this out. So that we then can actually actively be participants in international discourse on aesthetics. So that we're seen as, recognized as being active contributors to the field—I mean, like the, like the show that, you know, that's up at the Whitney for the Mexican muralists [Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945]. I mean, you and I both know, that we know—for the past 50 years, or more than that, of course, American artists have been influenced by the muralists, of course they have, right? For the past 100 years—

CHON NORIEGA:  They all came here.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —exactly. And they all went there—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, I mean, so that—so for that kind of revelation, to all of a sudden, oh look, we just figured that out, it's like, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's an intellectual research discourse problem—

CHON NORIEGA: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —we don't have translation devices, right? There's a—the access is low, that we have not trained enough curators, that we don't have enough writers, we don't have enough collectors, we don't have enough of anything, and people still want to make mud bricks and call it art, you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you know, you're mentioning—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, but that's why people think, though, because I'm, I'm very strong with that opinion, and so then people think I'm completely against all this other kind of work, and that's not true. I would be more than happy to support it, but I will call it out. I know the difference—how about this. I know the difference between ideas that are successfully manifested in art and ones that are not, and I also know that there's a desperation on the part of, you know, Chicanos and Latinos and Latinx-ers, to take anything that remotely looks like art, regardless if it's a categorical failure, and raise it to a level of being successful, right?

[00:20:10]

So, there's a misnomer there, right? We're going to take any artist that we can find and try to turn them into superstars because we're desperate to have any artists at all, instead of retooling the entire project, right? I mean, that's, you know, there's a lot of bad art coming out of the Latino community, I mean, it's like genuinely, like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, I think by its nature, there's a lot of bad art produced—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Agreed.

CHON NORIEGA:  —around the world.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Agreed, but there's a kind of naivete—

CHON NORIEGA:  But there's also a bit of arbitrariness, in terms of those things get elevated to the top—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, but, I mean, you know, I have—

CHON NORIEGA:  —some degree of arbitrariness, right.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, but Chon, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  We're drifting into a kind of a critique.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that’s okay, but, well—

CHON NORIEGA:  That's a framework, I think we will keep coming back to it as well.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So what's important there—I remember, I remember my first semester at CalArts, I immediately, even though I—my education was very abnormal. Even though I was admitted as undergraduate, I like, I rejected that, and I immediately petitioned to be in graduate courses, so I took graduate courses right away. Fuck it, who needs it—this pedestrian education for undergraduates, but I remember the first time being in a critique class in my classroom, and it—the clarity was like, you know, a bullet, just hitting me in the head, because I understood, right then, right there, that it was about the analysis of art, it was about the critique, it was about the position, our subject position in relation to trying to interpret the world that we were in.

And in the ability to do that, was to have an incredibly sharp intellect—by which, to make analysis, to make the analysis, form an actual opinion about what it is that you're looking at, based on what you’ve experienced and what you have known, and then turning that into a—into more art, because it is actually then doubling down intellectually, right? The very first class, the very first critique—

CHON NORIEGA:  Who was teaching?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Michael] Asher.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was in Asher's critique class, and it was like that would, just like—the world opened up like this for me, Chon. It was just, it was, it was, it was, it was like being in Munich. In Munich, the world changed—first day in Asher’s class, when I heard him talk and I saw what they did, it’s like, I get it, this is where I'm supposed to be.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, how would you describe the elements of critique that he was mobilizing?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Asher, Asher was, Asher believed that there was no level of exhaustion in the critique, and so in other words—

CHON NORIEGA:  There was no endpoint to it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, none, but imagine, though, that most people were used to having short classes. Asher’s classes were very, very long—

CHON NORIEGA:  Like how long?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What was that? Like eight hours long.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay. So, what would happen is people would be awake, and then sleep, and leave, and they would come and go, and all this kind of thing. Asher didn't ever break form, he never broke from.

CHON NORIEGA:  And you stuck with him the whole time.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I stuck with him the whole time, because I saw, I saw, you know, it was the first real model of a way of being, for me. Because he was smart, he was precise, he was extremely eclectic in his knowledge, right? And he had a project. And the project was an anti-object, pro-critique institutional place. He was, he was always about looking at art to mobilize itself beyond the object. This is really, really important. To mobilize a set of active ideas beyond the object itself, right? The object is only a trigger, the object is a, is a, is a, is an access point to get to a discourse that is much larger. So, it’s again, rendering that which is invisible to be made visible. So, it's, it's the iceberg approach.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, did formal analysis play any part of that process?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Very little.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, he wouldn't engage with the form—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He could care less.

CHON NORIEGA:  —the technique—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Cared less.

CHON NORIEGA:  —the materiality?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nothing.

CHON NORIEGA: Okay. So, how is it that he then engaged that object? Because it's still there.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, the object is still there, but then he enters—

[00:25:00]

I mean, he would—he would very quickly—he'll start at that point. He'll start at the obvious, right, and then as soon as he's got—that conversation takes about a minute—the formal conversation is, is, is—at this point in time, you know, the post-studio sort of demystification of the object, the anti-object, right? The question of repositioning the artist through critique, through institutional critique, through social critique, because even though Asher was not political, Asher was social. He understood there was a necessity to make commentaries on the structures and the systems that we lived in every day, by—and use that as a tool by which to just—to tear them down. So, he would, he would start with what you're looking at, but then he would—he was always like an archaeologist. Asher was like an archaeologist. He would dig past it, so he would look for meaning in the subtlest of gestures, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And there is the beauty of it. That's why the—his work had this kind of subtlety to it that it did and the kind of singularity in its positioning, right? Small gestures with very powerful results. And I had never heard of that before, I had never seen someone willing to take a structural approach to an analysis of the world that we had looked at—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that we live in. That was—I realize, had I known that when I had been in Munich, I would have seen it differently, and that was only a couple of years before that. So—but, it was close enough in time, that, I mean, they were like epiphanies, Chon. They were, like, I understood what my father had done.

CHON NORIEGA:  In what sense?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In the sense that you get the idea—the project of trying to photograph something that's impossible to photograph. It's, it’s, it’s, there’s a politics to that Chon, there's, there's, there's a—

CHON NORIEGA:  Explain the politics. I understand the conceptual—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, conceptually, no, but I mean, the—it's the same argument, it's the same argument that was leveled against the space program, leveled, but has been leveled against art historically, right, especially art when people had a difficult time. Why would you spend money, out of a federal budget, to support art when we have other things—we have homeless, and we need health care, and we need all these other—so they, the practicality, the utility of spending money on things that we need for social, our social need, our social, not a socialism, but, you know, fix the roads, and make better schools—

CHON NORIEGA:  Infrastructure.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —all the infrastructure of making human beings lives better, why do we support art, because art has no utility. There is no—you and I both know that's not true, but, for the most people, they don't believe the idea of making art is useful, therefore the project of art by its very nature is political. So, to suggest that you should spend all your time and money on training and producing and exhibiting and historifying artists, pre- the capitalist position we're in now, right? I mean, that project is an honorable project, that's a project of beyond necessity, and in fact more important than all these other things.

I think the project of my father was similar, I mean, the project to take pictures on the moon, which nobody really supported. That's why the space program buckled under, because people didn't see the value of spending all the money they were on the space program when there was all these practical—  what are we going to do on the moon, right? What is the advantage to, to doing—spending all this money to go doing space travel, you know? There's no more—we are the most intelligent life in the galaxy, right? There's nothing, we can't gain anything, there's nothing, you can't enslave anybody, there's no minerals that they find yet that they can exploit, I mean, what are you going to do, put a motel up there? I mean, I think that's the politics of it. There's a politics in the, in the endeavor of doing something that no one sees there's any value in.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you came to appreciate your father, engaging in this very quixotic—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  —thing, purely for the sake of practicality, the impossibility and the conceptual elegance of it, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That, plus it is a contribution to human knowledge.

[00:30:01]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Pure and simple.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Pure and simple. I mean, what could be more elegant than our lives, to dedicate your life to a project, to move that chip forward, Chon. What a—it's—there's such a beautiful poetry in that, there is such a, it's—to reshape the human project, right? Because, quite honestly, it’s a failure otherwise, because if they didn't have us as writers and artists and poets they would be fucked, because, I mean, really, what are the other projects on the planet? War, nonstop war since the beginning of time, that's the project? Slaving, in—you know, entire continents of people, that, that's a good project, that's another good one. You know, the complete repression, you know, the—I mean, we can just keep going on and on here, Chon. What really is there—where is the shining example of—

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_4of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —humans, humans' intelligence? Humans are a disappointment.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, is Asher, he’s anti-object, pro-critique, post-studio—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You see how I got fucked, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  —if he’s starting with a—starting with the object, and he's going to be taking it into the world, how does he bring it back to you becoming a better artist?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He—

CHON NORIEGA:  What is it that comes back into the work itself?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's philosophy.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He assigns it through philosophy. There’s a responsibility of the philosopher to make the analysis that regular individuals cannot make—

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —he assigns that responsibility to us as artists.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, it’s a refinement of your thinking as you engage in the project of making.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right. So, you have—you have knowledge, experience, consequence. It’s like that. So you get taught something, that that knowledge that you have that gets put into action, through a set of experiences, that set of experiences then makes art that creates a consequence.

CHON NORIEGA:  And that becomes a loop.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It’s a loop.

CHON NORIEGA:  It feeds back into—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's always a feedback loop. And all's you do is you get better and better and more precise as to where you want to level the critique.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, I'm wondering, because this is your first class, or your first critique class, right, coming—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, I'm also combining the whole time I’m there in this conversation, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  But, is this your first semester at CalArts?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is the revelation, though. What I'm telling you is that, you know, what—I mean, it looked like someone just opened up the heavens, right? I mean, they just, like—again, I'm being downloaded data that I've never seen anywhere before.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, there's a period between the class with Asher and your parents leaving, it could be six months, nine months—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, they left before I went to CalArts.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, so you're—you were in high school—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah, I'm like, I'm in the no-man zone.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, how do you get from that moment to this? I mean, what led you to think, I'm going to apply to an art school—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, because I, I—

CHON NORIEGA:  —to begin with—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What?

CHON NORIEGA:  —to begin with?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh—no, yeah, because I, the—that's all I ever talked about at school. I remember, consistently, that's all I ever talked about, that's all I ever wanted to do.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you take art classes in high school?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I took every art class there was, I took every photography class there was, I took every history class. I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  And were you're making?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So what were you doing? Painting?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Then it was painting, yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you had a sense then—this is where I want to go, but what did it mean to you in high school?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, the only reason I got to an art school was because the counselors. They said, you're never going to survive in a university. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  I see.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They said, send him to art school!

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  They were right, huh?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were right, but I actually said to them, what is an art school?

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, really?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had no idea what an art school was.

CHON NORIEGA:  What did they tell you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They said, well, it's a place where you—where people like you go! [Laughs.] Yeah, right, sure. Doesn’t that sound awfully familiar, like going to the asylum?

CHON NORIEGA:  That was the entire vision? Yeah, I was going to say.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We send the—you know, you—

CHON NORIEGA:  Was that answer sufficient for you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What’s that?

CHON NORIEGA:  When they said it's a place where people like you go, it's like, okay, or did you ask—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, it was literally like, okay.

CHON NORIEGA:  You said, okay, I’ll do that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, well, no, it’s like they, they—I said, I said, my counter was like, okay, then help me do that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Help me do that. And then the counselors helped me make and organize my portfolio and helped me with the application.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you had a portfolio for work you had done.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, absolutely, and what they did—so, I sent my application in, and what they did, which was really great—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   —they got me an interview.

CHON NORIEGA:   Now, what high school is this?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What’s that?

CHON NORIEGA:  What high school?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This was—in the end it was Saint John Chrysostom, I think. These fucking Catholics. What can I tell you, Chon?

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  And so, they got you an interview.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  At CalArts, and I sold them on the interview—I'm sure it was the interview that I got in with.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because, I mean, I imagine that—maybe, I don't think I got the full scholarship on the work.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think I probably got the full scholarship on talking my way through, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  And CalArts is a very distinct place at this time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, CalArts is the most powerful school in the country, period. I mean, you have, I mean, it's where in the—'69, '70, '71, is when the Feminist Art project began—

[00:05:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I mean, it was born there, literally, right? You have—we— all the West Coast, I mean, which—in this day and age, I mean, most people hate all those guys, like the white guys, right? Especially from the East, all my artist friends in the East, I mean, they always, like, people were always down on that period, and on those artists. And I said, well, that's all true, I said, that's fine, but I said, you know, especially coming from an East Coast perspective on West Coast thinking, but these were my teachers. I said, you know—I mean, I had, I had Asher, I had Huebler, Douglas Huebler, who was, you know, one—I mean, between Asher and Huebler, you know, and then you, you know, mix in [John] Baldessari, who was a teacher of mine.

You mix in, you know, people like—there was a theorist in there named John Brumfield, who was a photo-theorist; there was Robert Cummings, who was one of the, like, genius conceptual photographers at the time. You know, I had the best minds, the forefathers of West Coast conceptualism as my teachers, Chon. I mean, it's a, it's a complete anomaly, it's a complete fluke of, it’s just coincidence, it's luck that I ended up there, it's serendipitous, it's, it's like I fell out of the sky.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, like, yeah, here I am, and I'm, like, 16 years old, or 17, whatever it is at that moment, and it's like, what the fuck is going on, you know? I mean, and I'm just—but I'm like, you know, I'm like, it's like I wanted to mainline that shit.

CHON NORIEGA:  It's interesting, because a lot of times, like, art schools are at a time lag, so in the '60s they’re teaching Abstract Expressionism, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, but not this.

CHON NORIEGA:  But you are, like, right—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m at the cusp of the most radical period of West Coast—

CHON NORIEGA:  —and, at that moment where the West Coast is being recognized, or it's beginning to become part of the art world.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely, but then also—but think of the political upheaval in California—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and think of the, think of the, everything that is, you know, think of Cesar Chavez, and think of, like, all the radical, political, social movements going on in California at this time, Chon. Coming off the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, and off the Vietnam War. I mean, oh my God, you're talking about, like—you know, technologically everything is changing, the rise of video, the rise of, I mean, just performance, and—I mean, the alternative means of getting out of painting, getting out of the studio, right? I mean, it's—I mean, incredible, it's incredible, Chon, you know? Older than me, you know, I mean, you had, like, people that were there—I mean, Mike Kelley was, I mean, people that were there when I was there, that were older than me, but, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  He was a student there?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. I mean, you know, that whole crowd. So, you have, you know, Tony Oursler, and Mike Kelley, and Stephen Prina, and Chris Williams and, I mean, you know. Anybody that went to CalArts in the '70s, I mean, what’s-his-name that made those photos, he’s at UCLA, he’s—out-of-focus color photos, I can’t think of it—everyone but— everyone that graduated from CalArts in the '70s, they essentially were groundbreaking in their, in their, in their specific area.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, were there other Latinos there—students?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Me.

CHON NORIEGA:  It was you. African American?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  One Black kid. One Chinese girl. Three of us.

CHON NORIEGA:  What about women?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  One Chinese girl—oh, how many women in general?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was—the women were not—I mean, not great, certainly not fifty-fifty, but maybe one third. There were a lot of women.

CHON NORIEGA:  And on the faculty?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  On the faculty, there were maybe one.

CHON NORIEGA:  Who was it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Judy Pfaff.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Judy Pfaff, sculptor, you know this work?

CHON NORIEGA:  Unh-uh [negative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, she's really, very famous sculptor, Judy Pfaff, P-A-F-T or P-H-A-F, something like that, very famous.

CHON NORIEGA:  You took classes with her as well?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah—yeah, I mean, there was no one, Chon, that I know. Imagine, Chon, that I—there was no one to talk to about being Latino. They didn’t have the slightest idea what that meant, I mean, you know,

CHON NORIEGA:  Now—and you, when we first met, you were telling me a little bit about going to CalArts, and that in fact they were telling you what it was like to be a Chicano.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, because they—

[00:10:02]

—because they have a stereotype view of what that meant, right? So therefore, there, they offer me a cliché to reflect back my own identity. I mean, I didn't know that. I wasn't smart enough to counter that.

CHON NORIEGA:  But they were telling you this is who you are.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, of course, of course, they tried to do that because—I mean, everyone's hedging their bet, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, it’s Asher and Huebler?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, more like Huebler. Huebler hated me. I mean, he, I mean, he really, really hated me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Really?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Because I—because you’re supposed to—you know, because their view of Mexicans, Chon. Don't speak back, do as you’re told, sit in the corner, right? It's very docile, you know, very submissive. I mean, you know, you don't have that many—contemporarily, it's different, but, you know, back in the day, you know, Mexicans, like, you know, I'm going to have you arrested if you—don't even look, look down, you know what I mean? Like, very Jim Crow-esque for Mexicans, right, I mean, that's how I was treated. So, it was—I was just a novelty, Chon, I was just a novelty and I'm already confused enough as it is about identity, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  You had that sense very strongly from Huebler that—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, no, he, he—I mean, because—you know my personality. I’m like, I mean, I'm, I'm—I'm tame now, compared to when I was young. You should have seen me when I was young, Chon, I was like a fucking Tasmanian Devil. So, you put me in a classroom, and someone says something to me, like, well, I'm the kid, you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Like, raise your hand, huh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m the one in the class that's like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Excuse me.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, like, really, are you sure about what you just said? What? I mean, you know I, pushed back, I pushed back as hard as I could push back, which is not—which was limited at that time. But I’m not, I mean, I've never been controllable so, and I, I used to think that was an advantage but I, maybe now in retrospect I think, my pushing back has maybe not been the best of solutions.

CHON NORIEGA:  I think that's part of getting older.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. You know, Chon, I think, I think, I think, I—in another time, I was like a warrior philosopher, is what I think. I think that I know—I somehow, for whatever reason, you know, I'm just—I'm unwilling to allow the times to go on by unremarked, because we don't remark. We don't push back, we don't want to recalculate, we don't want to reform, we don't want to initiate, we don't want to propose, we don't want to previsualize, we don't want to move towards a goal, we’re always passive, we're always submissive, right, and that submission then tends to create a portrait of who we are. I object, you know that in me, I object. I just simply—I just don't understand, I don’t—I'm simply not willing to sit by, so I have been in battle my entire life.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Up to, up to recently now, with the Smithsonian. I mean, it is like I am always in battle with somebody over something, there's no calmness. It’s like, I mean, I feel like, I feel like, I'm—I feel like I was—I've been in more campaigns, Chon, in my life, more wars over more things than I can even, I can even remember. I've been on every frontline of every social-cultural movement since I've been awake, and I have given everything I have to these things, and in the end, I'm always ostracized from them. I'm always, I'm, I'm always left out, you know what I mean, I'm like I wasn't even there.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm just battle tired.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, at this time, where you're in CalArts, you have a sense of what you object to, and you come into this, and I think you, you come into it with an understanding of arts as it's been presented to you in high school, and the first thing you're told is it's very different than that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  How did you develop the sense of not just what you were objecting to, but where you wanted to take it? Did you just agree one hundred percent with Asher and said that's the direction we're going, or did something else develop?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don’t—that's harder to pin down. I think, I think that my, in my parents removing my identity, I think my entire life has been about trying to find that identity—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to be honest. I think, I think all the work inevitably is about, is more about identity than people that make work about identity.

CHON NORIEGA:  In a different way.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, no, it’s trying to look at the problem, though, from more complex perspective.

[00:15:00]

So it’s not like I'm this, because this is the way I look, but what is the internal mechanisms of how that is identified, what is the machinations of this as how they represent them as you move through the world? This is a more complex problem.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, this is, how do you basically understand—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm trying to understand the world.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, how you understand your own positioning between two cultures, and between a dysfunctional way of reading, and the functional way of reading—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, a dysfunctional way of living.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and to understand that as a practice.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right.

CHON NORIEGA:  Right.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, it's something, it's trying to define what's indefinable, which is my state of existing in a kind of limbo, a kind of, kind of ether, or a kind of space of white noise, right? Like in, like in computers, they have a space called the construct, right? It's before the programming, it's after the result. It exists in a place where you can do anything that you want.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's the space I think I've lived in.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, now, other folks, mostly folks a little bit ahead of you in the Chicano movement—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They’re making murals.

CHON NORIEGA:  —they didn't grow up with Mexican culture, or—for the most part, except that the—at a family level, so they go to Mexico, and there's an attempt to retrieve that thing that has not been part of your day-to-day life, but you're not doing that, but you're acknowledging the absence of it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, but, but also, but I don't have a—I don't have a traditional view of it. I have a modern view, Chon, I'm a modern Chicano in 1970. I'm not, I'm not tethered to the—I mean, I was always mystified by the idea of Aztlan. I was always mystified about the identification to Mexico itself. I was always—I was shocked that the border was, in terms of the visual iconography, was a central point in the developing in a set of aesthetics, right? It didn't make any sense, because in all the trips to Mexico City it didn't tell me that. Mexico City didn't tell me that, Mexico City told me that I was right.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, it’s a very cosmopolitan city. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's my point! And I have been going to Mexico City my entire life, and I remember I—I thought that Mexico confirmed my position in the U.S., Mexico City, not the border. and so why would I aspire to being a farmer, in a rural town, when I can aspire to being a cosmopolitan international individual making art and talking about philosophy, that's what I wanted to do.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, also, in a perverse way, what your parents wanted you to do.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Exactly, exactly. I mean, cactuses and sombreros and like that, the indigenous nature of this stuff, which was not even Mexican. It was—it's, it's something else, it’s another phenomenon, it's, it's part of what I think helps sink our cultural position, was the adopting of this kind of, like, language, you know? I mean, it was always confusing to me, Chon, and, you know, once—so, if I got ridiculed when I was a kid going back to visit my grandparents, when I finally emerged back after school and met Harry and all the people in—that, you know, was a point of relief, but, you know, equally so, in that—in those communities, they made as much fun of me, too, because they were essentialized in their view of identity, and they were essentialized in their view of their interactions with white people, right?

And it was confusing to me, because they—their position was never about progress, it was about staying the same, it was about maintaining the status quo, and that was very confusing to me. I’m not talking about that, like, Chicano Moratorium, or like, Chicano politics and the radical side, because that's something else, but I'm talking about your everyday Mexican, right? In the context of people who went to, you know, went to Garfield, or they went to Roosevelt, or, you know, they have these sort—their reality is defined by their opposition to whiteness, right? And I'm all—and I have taken up that position as—as well, but their position was not that that advanced them, their position was just to oppose whiteness, it wasn't to take the analysis of whiteness and re-modulate that as a tool to move. People just stayed in East LA, they stayed with the same schools, and they stayed with the same logic, and they stayed in the same family structure. They didn't mobilize themselves beyond the LA River, it’s like, why would you want to do that? So then I was—I mean, I was constantly ridiculed.

[00:20:10]

CHON NORIEGA:  Of course, they had a different experience of having been there for generations.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Understandably. Understandably, but there was no—that, but there was never about escaping, it was never about escaping, Chon, it was just about maintaining. And to reduce the violent oppression, you know, that, that—I mean, that's the goal, right? And that's understandable, the resistance is necessary, but resistance is only—you need to resist and move forward, you push back and move forward, you push back and you move forward, I mean, this is a military campaign, we want to win this campaign. They missed—I mean, you know, there was so many times, I was in situations, you know, Chon, where they, people—they could have used me, I could have helped and they never wanted my help, they didn’t want my help.

CHON NORIEGA:  Is this on the art front, or the political front?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, the political front. I mean, I knew all those kids, I knew—I mean, I knew everybody that was part of all, of the different movements and all the things they were doing and like, they never wanted my help.

CHON NORIEGA:  This is while you're in high school and then in college?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, they, they—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, because you—you're in high school at around the time all that's still, it's, it's, it's beginning to kind of wind down.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It’s winding down, but—I have a very clear mind, Chon. I'm on—in terms of, like, if, you know—it was, it was very painful for me that, because I didn't speak Spanish, and because I didn't grow up in East LA, and because I didn't like—they didn't recognize, but it's like I'm—I can't be more Mexican than I am, you know.

[Telephone rings.]

Christ already, I'm sorry, I'll put this on airplane mode. I had a tremendous amount to offer. My—you know, after I got out of CalArts, I studied with [Herbert] Marcuse down at UCSD, so I got my Marxism directly from Marcuse. I was a student of—just serendipitously, he—

CHON NORIEGA:  So you went into a graduate program there?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I just went down, I just audited classes, just because I knew he was teaching down there, and I missed him at CalArts, and—so I went down there and I was doing that. Then when Klaus Rinke was here, who was the protégé of [Joseph] Beuys, he was in LA for two years working on a show, I just, out of luck, I ended up—he needed an assistant, so I said, okay I'll trade you. I said, you teach me about Beuys and I'll be your assistant. And so I was, I was his—I literally was his protégé, so I didn't learn about Beuys from a book, I learned about Beuys from his number one student, right? So I heard it verbally, I never studied Beuys in the book. I studied it later, of course, but I got Beuys from—

CHON NORIEGA:  Testimony.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —absolutely. Firsthand accounts of how he spoke, what he did, right? So I have my conceptualism coming out of CalArts, I have my Marxism coming from Marcuse, I have my very political notions of what art can be coming from Beuys. This is a completely unique formation, Chon, given—and then given that if you add my father's science into it, you add—I mean, you start to look at this, the cosmic, the cosmology that is being formed here, it is completely and totally unique. There's nobody, there's never been a person like me in coming out of this subject position that I come out of, there's no such thing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Unless Angela Davis became an artist.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, yeah, okay, fine, but she didn’t become an artist.

CHON NORIEGA:  You're lucky, man.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it—it was never enough.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, yeah.

[Telephone rings.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Wow, this thing doesn't—I'm sorry, Chon—it's making me crazy.

CHON NORIEGA:  Your phone is taking over. So, anyway, let’s circle back briefly, and just if we can pick up a little bit about your engagements with particular faculty and what you took away or what you butted heads on, but you mentioned Asher, and did you take other classes with him? Did you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, he only taught one.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, so this is it—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is it, yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —he kind of opened up your whole way of thinking, huh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, and then, Baldessari was teaching Post Studio, so, you know, Baldessari was really about the gesture, the performative gesture, right? So, what—I mean, Baldessari was a different kind of teacher. Baldessari was more affable, more—he was super supportive, I mean, just in, just his general way of being—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —he loved young artists, he loved young artists, I mean, you could go, and Baldessari—I mean, I remained friends with him, I mean, I know him still—I mean, he's very ill now, but—

[00:25:01]

I mean, when he used to be out and about around town, I mean, of everybody, I mean, Baldessari always, when I was out of—back in LA, Baldessari was always really, really warm with me. He—Baldessari was not about conflict, Baldessari was just, like, how do you upset the inheritance? In other words, how do you dump it on its head, right? Baldessari was about his—which also was very appealing to me, this was really, I mean, he was about basically taking it, you know, I'm turning the bag inside out, that's really what Baldessari did. And when I—again, when I first realized that's what he was doing, right, like, a painting only fits in the wheel between the wheel wells, the—you know, I'm going to stop painting because painting is stopping me from thinking, right? These gestures were, again, were hugely influential. You know, and, yeah, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  How would you characterize the more affective or intentional dimension of the gestures? Was it more playful than—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He's very playful, yeah. Baldessari is extremely—always been playful.

CHON NORIEGA:  Humor.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, humor, about being funny, about being playful. He once told me, he said, he was—we were in Europe, and first he told to me, I think it was Madrid for the Art Fair, and so—we were staying at the same hotel, which was great, because he's just, he's just funny. I mean, he says the funniest things, all the time, I mean, they're dry humor, though, really, really, really dry. He said—there was actually a panel discussion and they asked him—I don’t remember exactly what they asked him, but he says, so his response was, well, I think what I'd like to do is paint the corners of the room blue, just like that, and that's a typical Baldessari, that time gesture, like, it's, it's, it's an extended practice, he's expanding the opportunity for the manifestation of ideas. He rejected the rectangle; this was really important. Asher hated the object, but Baldessari came from the object, where Asher did not. Like, these are very different kinds of people, right? Baldessari came from the object, he rejected the object, he said there's other strategies. Boom. Asher only offered critique, which is useful, but he didn’t offer strategies beyond that. On the other hand, Baldessari did—he says it's about problem solving. You’re presented with a context, an institution, a gallery, a place, a thing, boom, you just start working the problem. Which is directly what I learned about science. Scientists—that was the phrase that scientists use, "work the problem," you know, you're in space in your little capsule, something breaks, you know, you got three, you got three brains, you better start working the problem until we're going to lose air, we’re not gonna have enough air in this thing, right? You work the problem, every scientist I've ever known in my life says the exact same thing. They get a team of really great people together, Chon, they take whatever they had, they look at the situation, they take whatever is available to them and they just start working the problem until they come up with solutions.

CHON NORIEGA:  Here we're talking about applied science.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right.

CHON NORIEGA:  Not basic science.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, we're talking about applied science, that's right. That's a fantastic—that was very important, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  And so, Baldessari is kind of taking that element of—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  —science, which is really the making part of science.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right, it's production. It's pure production, Chon, but it was—took it outside of the studio.

CHON NORIEGA:  But he brings that back into the object.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, of course. Inevitably.

CHON NORIEGA:  Whereas with Asher, you can—in some ways you can just keep going off into the critique.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, it's infinity, it's a point of infinity, right.

CHON NORIEGA:  Which is, to my mind, that's only a half-step away from the belles-lettres critic, you know, I can stand in front of a painting, I can take you out into interpretation—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right.

CHON NORIEGA:  —without ever ending.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, endlessly.

CHON NORIEGA:  So that's why I was asking you, how did he bring that back to the practice?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  And for you, you said it's the refinement of your philosophical orientation toward the practice.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ: Right. But imagine this—

CHON NORIEGA:  And you're saying, but with Baldessari, he's actually showing you, and—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  How to make things.

CHON NORIEGA:  —here's how you put it back into a canvas—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That’s right. That's right.

CHON NORIEGA:  —or this is how you put it back into a photograph.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, think, think, think of the—think of the information I'm getting, Chon, at the time, I mean, it's like—

CHON NORIEGA:  And you didn't pay.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I didn’t pay! Yeah. I always forget about the paying part. But yeah, I didn't, I didn't—didn't even have to pay, but, I mean, it was remarkable space to be in. It was lonely, it was desperate, I always, always, I always felt that I was having to protect my right flank, you know?

[00:30:03]

Because you just—you know, the racism was palpable, I mean, people, it was a school full of white people, and it wasn't so much that I'm identified by my skin, its, it's that they identified my, my thinking was not consistent with their thinking, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  You were different.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, you know, and that wasn't acceptable, you know, it just wasn't acceptable, and I hung out with the other two kids that were identifiable as minorities, I mean, the three of us hung out.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, who were the—do you remember the other two?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Precisely, one kid named Nolan Curtis, was a Black kid, he was in the graphic design program, and the other one, a woman, was Shirley, Shirley Yee, I think it's Y-E-E, and she was a photographer.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Did you ever keep in touch with them?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not, no, I never kept in touch with anybody, but—well, actually, Nolan, when we got out of school, we got a place together with this—

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_5of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —bassoonist that I used to be a roommate with.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Ah, a trio.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, so that's the other thing, was, you know, like, also, so people—so, Jack Lemmon’s son was a good friend of mine because he went to CalArts, and Shirley Temple's daughter was a very good friend of mine because she was in CalArts at the same time as me. I mean, it was a school for the sons and daughters of the rich and famous, is what it was. I mean, that's what it was, Chon, so again, here is this, like—

CHON NORIEGA:  There you are.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —this poor kid, from the street, ends up here, right? And it's like—I mean, I mean, Lori, and her name was Lori Black, Shirley Temple's daughter, and oh, my God, we had so much fun. I mean, but—and she would tell me, and I remember Lori was very cool, she was like a punk rocker and she talked about her mom, she talked about what went on in their house and everything, I mean, it was extraordinary. Jack Lemmon’s son, I don’t remember his name, he was in the music department, but I had never been this close to fame. I had never been this close to this kind of wealth, it was extraordinary, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  And did you have—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I saw that they saw the world very differently than I did. This was really important, Chon. It was so clear, you could see they had, they had a kind of aura about them, not better or worse, simply distinguished and different from mine. But having proximity, Chon, you have to understand, the proximity was important. I was at a school for the rich, I was at an elite—I was at the Harvard of art schools, period, that's it, there's no other way to describe it. That is significant, Chon, it is extremely significant, that my presence there, and as they do there, in that show that they just had in Hannover [Where Art Might Happen: The Early Years of CalArts, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany, 2019], you know, was marking the 1970-to-1980—which I am, again, the only Latino in, right? That's traveling, you know, they're doing this thing, they're doing 50 years of CalArts, I'm the only Latino, out of the 50 years of art that’s being celebrated. Again, so, this, this one point that I actually might have broken ground here has been completely missed by our community, by the intellectuals, you know, by the people that are writing our history. This is, this is, this is, this—the fact that I was able to be in a place that no one else was ever at before, I mean, if I had been Black, it would have been groundbreaking. They see me as a pioneer, Chon, and you know it. And instead I'm criticized for it, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, with CalArts, I mean, part of it at that time is the nature of the arts at the institution.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What do you mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  The conceptual, the post-object folks that are there teaching—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —but that's part of your intellectual and artistic grounding.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, without a—with no, with no question. But it doesn't mean that—it doesn't mean, though, that I didn't, you know, I didn't have all the—I mean, my classical understanding of art was very profound, I mean, I understood all the different movements in art from the 20th century, the 19th century. I mean, I understood art history, but I didn't, I didn't lack seeing—going to the Met, or going to MOMA, or going to museums here in Los Angeles—I mean, the trips to New York were more important, because the Met—the Getty was nothing then, right? We didn't have a museum, an encyclopedic museum of that nature—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —on the West Coast, so I remember going to the Met, and I remember going to MOMA, right? I remember going to the Guggenheim, I mean, there's no—but, but this was, this was exciting at the level of discovery, because it seemed to me very much like, if New York was the old world—was the new old world from Europe, it meant, what I believe, that California was the frontier, the new frontier. That California was where everything exciting was going to happen, was going to happen here, and I ended up exactly on time, the only time in my life ever, Chon, too, the only moment I arrived when I was supposed to arrive, was being at CalArts at this time.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, I want to ask, what the other dimension of it—besides the curriculum, which is, what you were talking about, which is, it's a place where the wealthy and powerful send their children to network with each other, to build lifelong foundation of like-minded people that will help advance their ability to move in the world—

[00:05:13]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which it did.

CHON NORIEGA:  —did you have a sense of that's what it was, or—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, I knew that is what it was, but I was kept out of it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  One hundred percent, absolutely. No, I knew that very well.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you had some social interactions, but not the network itself.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, yeah, that was clearly off limits to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, because, I mean, you had, you know, you had Morton Subotnick there doing, you know, crazy radical experiments, and Philip Glass was—all I remember—remember just, you know, Philip Glass would just be practicing something in the main gallery, which is acoustically beautiful, right? I mean, they had gamelan there, you know. I mean, Mike Kelley, the reason Mike Kelley was funded and supported in graduate school, and that's how—you know, he didn't pop up out of nowhere, you know, he was already being funded and supported then, which is like all the people that got successful, that's how they were funded and supported then. Now that wasn't, that didn’t trickle down.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you got close to it—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I got—I was close enough to understand it, but I did not—they—I did not get to taste the apple.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I did not get a taste of that fruit, Chon. That was completely left outside of my existence, one hundred percent.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I knew it was happening. We should—

CHON NORIEGA:  —wind down.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We should wind down, now, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  And, any final thoughts about some of the other teachers you had?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, everybody was—I mean, Cummings, Robert Cummings, I thought was his—his conceptualism in terms of them—like using photography, not as a document but as something else, was very important to me. Cummings was really—actually, he, oddly enough, I mean, not because of him, but—he was shooting 8x10, he shot in 8x10 all the time, that's all he shot with, right? We made these weird, weird, weird photographs and—now that I think about it, I was just thinking in my own head why—there was some influence in the back of my head there, about me comfort—like, wanting to investigate 8x10 all of a sudden, you know. I mean, and then, and then—I'm trying to think. I mean, I took, I took classes all over, but I took, took classes in the dance department, took classes in the music department, I took gamelan, I took, I mean, I took classes all over, some animation, I mean, I took advantage of the school, which was—you had, they had brilliant people in every media, every genre, right? And there was a place, it was very free and open, you took classes wherever you wanted, they didn't care, it wasn't like there was some strict curriculum that you had to follow, it wasn’t a strict curriculum, it was—

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you graduate from a particular program, or—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  From the art department. No, no, no.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But even within the art department, they—

CHON NORIEGA:   It was very broad—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they were very broad, which was—again, I get—you, I would argue, it's probably instrumental in my approach to both life and to thinking about Art, and—I mean, I'm very open-ended, I'm—I, I don't see why we don't access everything.

CHON NORIEGA: So, the school at that time was encouraging, really, working across media—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and genres, and—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, I would say that's fair, you know. It was also, you know, opened. It was—it was sexually open, it was open socially, in terms of like, you know, taking drugs, and there was no inhibition. I mean, the CalArts pool was famous, people were always just naked, I mean, it's like, just any day you go out there would be, you know, 20 naked people there. I mean, it was like all the inhibitions of—the dropping of inhibitions of the '70s manifested there. I mean, it was, it wasn't just radical in terms of aesthetics, but it was radical in terms of the social political manifestation. I mean, again, what—you can't forget that the, which I didn't get any of it, but there was a heavy presence of feminism through the establishing of the, you know, the Woman's Building and all that beginning stuff. I mean, I know those women, I know them all, they all know me, I mean—when—with The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago, you know, she was there then. She's always—I mean, when I saw her at the Hammer thing, I mean, I've always, like—particularly feminism in the early, the early days when the Woman's Building was downtown, and—I mean, I knew all these women, they all know me. I was very young, Chon, all these environments that I've been in, I always was very, very young, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  And how are you influenced by that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I can't say exactly, but I know that my position has always been open and progressive.

[00:10:02]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't have any hang-ups about, I don't know, I mean, more often the opposite point is, I don't understand the confinement we exist in. Where I don't see, I don't see the need of it, right? I don't see why you care what other people do, it’s not your business, to be quite honest, you know, but I understood why, the necessity. You know, Judy, when she had her thing, I mean, she was super warm, and still remembered me, you know, what, 50 years later, Chon, you know? I mean, it's—it's important because I think—so that's white women's feminism, okay, and again, I—you could probably pick the top six women who were part of that, they all know me, they all will remember me if you ask them. So I can't directly say what their influence is on me, but I know that I was influenced because they welcomed me in their world—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and I was there in their world as a man, and it, it’s like, Suzanne Lacy, Suzanne Lacy was, I mean, who I have known forever, okay, we used to, she used to be my landlady. I used to rent a studio from her downtown, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  So, she'll give you a reference.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, exactly!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, when I saw her recently at some little soiree or something, and I hadn't seen her for a long time and—you know, she—because she's not much older than I am, right? She always referred to me in the political minority context, right? I mean, these women saw me—I think maybe this is your answer; I think my understanding of my minority status was not yet conscious, but they acknowledged my minority status, hence, what they must have believed as me having good or progressive politics, social and political milieu, because I was always welcomed— they always were friendly to me, they always were supportive of me, everybody, right? Dorothy Healey, who was the head of the Democratic Socialist Party, was—they—I don't remember what year this was, it has to be like '81 or '82, I knew a lot of people that were involved in the Democratic Socialist movement, and they recruited me to work with her because they recognized my strategic mind—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and I thought, look at that, white people, this wasn't—white people have always understood, recognized, acknowledged me as a strategist, where in my own community has never done that. Ever. That was—that's huge, hugely painful for me.

CHON NORIEGA:  That's kind of like your dad.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Very much like my dad, you know, it's like having a general that you don't want to have on the field.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Why is that, why you don’t want, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —anyway.

CHON NORIEGA:  You were in CalArts from '75 to '79?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  '74 to '79, or—

CHON NORIEGA:  Seventy—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, right in there, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I finished both their—both programs, but I didn't, they didn't ever give me credit for the graduate.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you were doing it concurrently, because you were taking—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I took grad classes when I should have been taking undergraduate classes, yeah, and when the time I was done, I immediately was studying with Marcuse, and then I was immediately studying with Rinke, so my post-, my what would have been classically graduate education, was done in real life.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I formed it. I guess, again, point taken, right, like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I went after my education, I didn't wait for it to come to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Or to show up on the course offerings.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Exactly. Anyway, that’s a day. 

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, we’ll stop here.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Is that really three hours of talking?

[00:14:17] [END OF TRACK martin19_6of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00] [

CHON NORIEGA:  Let’s see—and we’re recording. This is Chon Noriega, interviewing Daniel Joseph Martinez at his artist's studio in Los Angeles, California, on November 30th 2019, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Card number one. So, last week—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Card one, day two, day three—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, I know—

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Ah, so—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So do you want to start where we were, or you want us to go somewhere else?

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, we kind of—we talked about your BFA at CalArts, and from—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which is really an MFA, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  —yeah, from—from the curriculum side and everything, but we didn’t really talk much about what you were doing outside of that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What do you mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  What kind of activities you had in—generally, in the arts outside of school, basically, right? Were you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What do you mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  —were you pursuing exhibitions, were you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no! No, no, no—

CHON NORIEGA:  —interacting with other artists?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, I mean—No, this is like—this is the '70s, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I mean, like, in—I would—like anybody else looking at shows, but, I mean, I didn’t know anyone in LA. I mean, I didn’t know any other artists in LA.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I knew the artists that I grew up with. I knew—I knew the—my first introduction to knowing other artists, like, not dead ones, or people in museums, which always seemed far away, right? You would go, you—I mean—everybody knew, I mean, you're getting over it, like—one, for galleries, you know, in those days too, in particular—you had to get over the air that they had about them where, where it was basically, you walked into a gallery in those years—it was like—it was the most alienating space possible. Especially if you didn’t understand the language of going to galleries, right? You have to learn that. You have to figure out that the—because the desk is up to their eyes, and they peer over the top of the desk, basically, looking at you like you’re gonna steal something. [Laughs.] You know, which it means—is basically saying, this is very exclusive, you shouldn’t be here.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So you had to get past that language and realize, well, then, fuck you, I can be here if I want. It's just a place to look at shit. [Laughs.] You just happen to be selling it, right? So—but no, I think all—my first introduction to knowing people who were making things—that I felt, regardless of the—even if they were the same sets of ideas, or trajectories, in terms of investigations of aesthetics, or—whatever it happened to be, I was—I think, was at school. I think that was the first time I ran into a cohort of people whom—and for this, I would draw a great distinction between university life, and art school life.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because—Chon, I mean, you know, wasn’t just—you put—if you put aside—you know, racism and alienation and [laughs], you know, and all the trauma of existing. Or the—or maybe the—what seemed to be like a pitched battle for everyday existing. But if you put that aside, from just—for a moment, because that's one kind of conversation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Another kind of conversation is—CalArts was extraordinary. Because you had—because they had exceptional people teaching in every field. And then what—and you had students then—even if with a class distinction, with the fame and the sort of, like, abundance of wealth, it was just abound there. I mean, just like everywhere, right? It’s still this really wild cutting-edge place. Where there are ideas, where there's electronic music, or its improvisational dance, or, you know it's, I—you know, the theater stuff, the modular theater was radical at the time. I mean, the—everything about the place was people thinking in new ways. So that was just, like—so unbeknownst to me. I thought that was normal. [Laughs.] I thought—I—fuck, you know, it's like—I thought I found—I thought—again, difficulties withstanding—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I thought I found my place.

CHON NORIEGA:  So it seemed like a self-contained world, almost?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, it’s completely hermetic.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because its fucking out in Valencia, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In those days there was nothing out there. There was no Magic Mountain, there was no housing, there was no nothing, it was just a fucking desert.

[00:05:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You had Saugus, and you had the Nazis, you know, burning—and the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses, and swastikas, out in the middle of the desert out there. Which was common, by the way. It was like a huge community of Ku Klux Klan out there.

CHON NORIEGA:  You were, like, in this utopian environment—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, which is on a hill.

CHON NORIEGA:  —on a hill at the edge of the city.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which is on a hill, and the edge of the desert.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, and next to the Grapevine, and it was just like—I just, I was convinced this was the art world I was gonna go into.

CHON NORIEGA:  And did you live out there, or were you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —so, you lived near the campus?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I lived—yeah, I lived—first in the dorms, and then I lived in the little places there. And towards the end I just lived in LA and commuted.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I had all three versions of being in that environment, but, it's just like—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —experiment—I mean, there was no—the school was so—it had untethered itself from what I think they had inherited, by the people that were all teaching there. Nothing was coming out of the stable canon—the ideas that were being taught, no matter where you were, were people who were trying to re-invent the field.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it doesn’t matter what genre they were in, everybody was trying to do that. And so, the first time I didn’t feel alien; and not alien, like in immigration, or alien-like—but, like—there, the languages seemed—made the most sense to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because they were people trying to push boundaries, and weren’t afraid of literal—and everybody uses this as—you know, especially these days, you know, to succeed, you need to fail, but there was a time when, actually, the idea of failure, was, you know, not a cliché, right? You actually—you learned by trying things, right? So you try a subset of ideas, and the ideas don’t work, but you learn something from that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it's—maybe that's not the—everyone thinks if you have an experiment and that experiment fails, that somehow you failed, but that's not true. Because—they don’t anticipate there's a larger goal. There’s a bigger project that you’re working towards, and these small little experiments are just to learn things along the way.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then you take—if you can develop a practice like that, then you add the intellect to that, you add an ideology to that, you add a trajectory to that, in terms of—what the ambition is, in terms of actually wanting to make art. And—from that point of view it was about to upend—I saw myself then—that I could be an interventionist into a certain set of histories, that could be—that those histories could be manipulated and changed. If you—if you can—you're gonna draw a line in the sand, you’re gonna change the direction of this. Because it's an insistence on the—whatever had pre-existed was not the trappings that I chose to be, you know, to where I was looking for a new—new ideas.

CHON NORIEGA:  So when you say interventionist in histories, what do you mean by histories?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, in the—now then, we go back to the difficulties—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —into being, you know, the—the histories I saw my parents suffer through, the histories that I saw in LA, and curfews—I mean, all the racism, and all the poverty, and all the lack of—I mean, everything that we seemed to be lacking, there had to be a way to change that. There had to be a way to change it, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  So these are histories of experience—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  U.S history, experiential histories or the ones observed. I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  —because there’s also the histories that you think about, you know, CalArts, and then kind of Magic Mountain, and all of that, but there are the stories we tell about ourselves that may be completely distanced from the actual experiences.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, sure, but, I mean—I was perfectly—

CHON NORIEGA:  Those are like public histories and it—because it just struck me that you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, but that’s it—Civil Rights histories, and the war—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —there were—I mean that—in those—in the '70s. Chon, think about it, we’re talking Civil Rights, we’re talking the Vietnam war. We’re talking about, you know, the peace movement, we’re talking about militant movements, we’re talking about social changes. We’re talking about the—looking at class war, we’re looking at, you know, aspiring to a kind of intellectualism, that was new, I think. You know, in a community that surrounded itself—or identified itself through Cesar Chavez, right? Or identified itself through the notion of a working-class movement, Chon. A working-class movement.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And that working-class movement, while there’s no doubt that was something that should have happened, but it also trapped everybody. It was like fly-paper. So all the discourse, then, is only around one subject; about getting better wages, and getting better conditions to work in the fields. It’s not about getting out of the fields.

[00:10:03]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m not a field worker.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, but—so, but if—and in those days, too, there was much more allegiance and solidarity, in my opinion, with the Black community. I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Between the Chicano community and the Black community?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah—and a sense of common goals, right? Even if the histories are not seen as being the same—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I felt, here in the West, as opposed to being in New York or Chicago, or a lot of other places in the country where I didn’t feel that. I felt a unique bond between the Chicanos and Black community here, because there was a kind of a social economic solidarity. And in that social economic solidarity, it produced an aesthetic solidarity. Which would—I always was attracted to, because you could strategize with people to think about things that, you know, would have a consequence, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean—I recognize that—my idea of being an artist is an expanded view, right? That it’s not—I know that I know just from history now, right? Like, having been alive as long as I have, and interacted with thousands of artists in my life.

CHON NORIEGA:   Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, most people just want to make something—that’s fine. It’s a completely normal, completely predictable trajectory, and, you know, I want to have a studio. I want to make some things. I want to sell a few things. You know, I want a career, and now, of course, you can be hyper-famous and super rich and whatever, but that's, I mean—my ambition lies somewhere else, it always has lied somewhere else. That’s much more complex, much more multi-dimensional. Much more, like—activist role, not in—as an activist in the way that we define it, like marching in the street, but activism in terms of this remaking of—who we are contemporarily, by understanding our path, and then setting forward a new future based on where we want it to go. So, it's a strategy. It's a strategist point of view. It's also, you know, you look at the—if you look at the different things over the different decades —I mean, why start a gallery? Well, you start a gallery because it's—you have authority. People never understood that. Deep River was a marker of authority. Like all the other—I just borrowed what other people had done, Chon. If galleries are the validators of aesthetics.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Regardless, in the respect to—particularly, you know—so, fuck, why couldn't I do that? Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I start to build galleries like everybody else?

CHON NORIEGA:  So, when was Deep River?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Deep River was, well, Deep River was—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So after '93, after the [Whitney] Biennial, I was so blacklisted after the Biennial. I mean, I couldn’t get, I—before the Biennial, everything was, like, rosy. [Laughs.] You know? And I was just about to move—transition from—operating from the '80s milieu of, kind of nonprofits and larger group shows, like the one that we did in ninety—'93, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But—into a—into a commercial gallery situation like in New York, in particular, because I had a lot of galleries that were interested in me before the Biennial, and after the Biennial, I couldn’t get a call returned to me. I couldn’t get a show in New York. The only—first time I got another—anyone interested in me, was when The Project gallery in New York started in Harlem.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which was the first Black curator—not the first, but certainly the only contemporary Black curator gallery owner, period. With a Chinese partner, right? And she did them—you know, she kept the gallery financially, like a CFO, basically, but anyway, Deep River, so Deep River was a response to the conservative backlash where I was basically ousted from the field, not able to actually get shows anymore. So I pivoted again, it’s like—so we’re back to something I said earlier, it was like, so, you just work the problem, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   So if nobody wants to give me shows, that's—if—oh, well, so I just do something else. You just pivot.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Every time you hit an obstacle, the solution is always the same. Or the structure of the solution is always the same. You hit an obstacle this way and you find that it's impenetrable.

[00:15:00]

For whatever set of reasons, impenetrable. You don’t keep bashing your head and being sad and then go, oh oh oh, I cannot succeed. You just reinvent the terms. You don’t have to—the idea that we have to operate on the terms that are handed to us, and that’s the end all of this? Is—I’ve never understood it. I recognize the terms of the operation. I understand the operation. I understand how the structure of it functions. So what? The rules don’t want to—if they don’t want to include me, you just reinvent the rules. So it made perfect sense to invent Deep River.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, where was it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   Deep River was downtown on Traction Avenue, and it was in the same building as Al’s Bar, and the American Hotel, which was—you know, we were the corner of the building. And it was—you know, like, Al’s Bar was like the famous super punk bar, American Hotel was a super, like—it was the West Coast equivalent of the Chelsea Hotel in New York.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   Right? So bands, and writers, and poets, and everybody was on heroin, and everybody was fucking drugged-out and, like, because the punk—you know, it's like, post-punk, and like—you know, it was fabulous, fabulous. And then—you know, in those days, Downtown was the best. It was the best, because it was, like, you know, homeless people everywhere, gangs everywhere, hookers everywhere, I mean, it was, like, the kind of the underbelly, of LA right? I mean, really openly there, right?

CHON NORIEGA:   Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was raw, nobody wanted to be down there, everybody was afraid to go downtown at night in those days. Right? I mean, now, where Hauser & Wirth is, people were afraid to go there, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was great! It was great. And then, who—and the only people around in the lofts, in the studios, were artists. Living in the buildings. That was the first—I mean, you didn’t have so much of that, little bit in the '80s, but it was mostly in the '90s, you know? It was—I don’t know, it was just fabulous.

CHON NORIEGA:  How long did it run?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Deep River was designed to only run exactly five years. It was—I learned a lot from the nonprofit times. You know, it’s not, I’m not an institution. It was designed as an artist project, as an intervention into the discourse of display, and museology. And—thinking through a certain set of problems which was, how do you present, how do you curate and organize a space with a new set of principles, right? And so—want me to explain a little bit?

CHON NORIEGA:   Sure.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, okay, so after I had been in nonprofits, throughout the whole '80s—I mean, everywhere, every city in the United States had a nonprofit, a major nonprofit institution. So—it—that was a circuit, like any other circuit. So once you got on that circuit, you would show, you could show, you know, from here to Washington, D.C.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Same crowd, it's the same way of every structure, it's the same way that museums work now, it's the same way galleries run now, I mean, same system, right? It just was a nonprofit system, and it was also—outside of capital. Because there was a fledgling—I mean, the art market began more or less in the '80s, but it was still East Coast-based. It was very little out here.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—but I was—I was doing a show, in the late '80s, maybe the late '80s. Has to be the '80s, because I didn’t come to the idea of Deep River till later. But anyway, I was in Amsterdam—no, not Amsterdam, no, I was in—umm—starts with an R.

CHON NORIEGA:  Rotterdam?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Rotterdam!

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Doing a show there. And I remember it was late at night—

CHON NORIEGA:  This is in the late '80s?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, and I was doing a show—I was walking out late at night, and the streets were all done in some sort of cobble street, it was like a shopping street or something, it looked like, right? And all the stores had pulled down the shutters, right?

CHON NORIEGA:   Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Of one kind or another, they would close up, but there was nothing—there were streets, and there were lights in the street, but nothing else. Walking around, I'm sure I was either high or drunk with some people.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ: I’m sure of it, because this is a bit of a dream memory, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But there, there walking down the street—something really amazing. One storefront, lit up like daylight, okay? Chon, no bars, no guards, no nothing, it was a clothing store. But like a gem. It was like a diamond on the street because, its position, architecturally, was in contrast to everything else on the street.

[00:20:04]

It had its lights on at night; this was probably really late at night, it has no bars on the windows. Right? And the way, it was, like, a high-end store which looked like art, right? Like, three things in the window, right? Which is, the store, right, three things in the store, you look in, you stand there, you look in.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   I thought this was, it just was, like, perfectly clear to me. The language, the semiotics of what was being done. This said, I’m gonna give you something to look at at night. Coming out of these bars, coming out of these restaurants, because it was a lot of people walking down the street, but the only thing that was available. The language, they changed the language. Maybe they got broken into, maybe they didn’t, but maybe they didn’t care. And maybe it was more important to put these products lit at night. Their sense of display was extremely sophisticated. Their sense of openness and discourse to engage with people late at night was completely different than walking in the daytime. Everything about it seemed foreign and alien to everything else it was surrounded by.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Bam! That was like, pewww. I mean, it was like—I was just, I fell in love with it, because it was like—it was the kind of thinking that I’m attracted to. It's the kind of thinking that I had always believed that I—always was trying to initiate, and try to engage with, right? So I brought that idea home.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, Deep River, we—the Deep River was three hundred and twenty-five square feet.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, we’re talking big here, Chon!

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah!

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  You don’t start small, do you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no! Not at all. [Laughs.] Three hundred twenty-five feet of perfect exhibition space. Everything that I had ever learned, or ever known from every gallery I’d ever shown in in my life, every problem I had ever run into, I fixed. I took it from—I took bits and pieces from every museum and every gallery, every place. So the walls were wood-backed, the ceiling was wood-backed, right? I had—there was no door, no desk inside the space, it was completely devoid. I had a push door that was invisible on the back wall. All the storage, and everything else was hidden. I had a perfect reveal on the bottom; concrete floors, I mean, perfect lighting, so that each light and track lighting in certain kinds of ways. I put solid glass on the front, I put, like, old-style, you know, Art Deco tiles in the front. Aluminum, beautiful aluminum door with—and I had my friend Norm Laich, who was this text guy for the stars, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had him hand letter the logo on the window and on the door for me, with a little bit of gold leaf, which was part of the design, so Deep River was one word. So it was—completely minimal. And I would roll a desk out, during—it was only open the weekends, that's all that we could do. I put a desk on the street, not in the space. So—it was perfect exhibition space. It was a perfect container to be manipulated by artists.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In any way that they saw fit, right? And—the only time [Michael] Asher ever gave me a compliment, ever—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —was one day, he came by, and he came by, and he—he was always, he was good like that, he would come and see stuff. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He came and he—when he looked around, looked at the show, he sat down and we chatted a while and when he left he says, you know, Daniel, this is perfect. Wow!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because, for him—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no signs of commerce.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had a—I had taken, because we weren’t for—we weren’t not-for-profit, and we weren’t for-profit. We existed in a kind of interstitial space, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We—certainly, if I could sell something, I would, but we didn’t advocate for that, we didn’t send—we didn’t send out press releases. We’d send out—

CHON NORIEGA:  You just opened.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We opened, we sent out invitations, and that was it. We did it by word of mouth. And—you know, we—I was all, you know, I would rent spotlights, for the openings.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The ones that move like this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, I created this sort of spectacle, right? And we—so, five years—more or less eight exhibitions per year. And, Chon, I never had so much fun in my life. It was—

CHON NORIEGA:  So something would be up for six, eight, ten weeks maybe, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, more like five weeks.

CHON NORIEGA:  Five weeks?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  With installation, and deinstallation time. Within there, but—what, so, as my friend—

CHON NORIEGA:  And were these, like, single art shows, solo shows?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Solo shows, with one group show a year. And with—the thing was, Chon, it was extraordinary, was—you had to—so, in '97, which is when we started, okay. You’re—the entire effect of the—opening the crack that got opened by the Whitney Biennial is not completely realized yet, right?

[00:25:08]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You have to think '97 here for a minute, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   You have to think of the political environment, you have to think of—still think of how museums were functioning, how galleries were—the market has

not yet creeped up, yet. I mean, we’re still, the—ground is soft, but it's not clear as to where it's safe to step, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Everything is kind of still, it’s very—it’s like earthquake, it's—everything’s still moving, it’s kind of, like, well, maybe with earthquake and lava or something or quicksand, I mean, it’s something really interesting, because everything is tenuous, everything is speculative, everything is provisional. Which is great, Chon! Everything was provisional and speculative, right? That means thinking is provisional and speculative.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which means it's fast, it means it's, like, active, it means it's—it's not calcified, or stuck onto—it's like, it's just like choo choo, and—we have five, six hundred people at openings.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And what we, we start the opening at—I would serve, I served, we, we designed, we designed a very—I designed a very strict budget. But I would buy, I would get Trader Joe's, you know, and I would get, I would serve, we would always serve wine—didn’t serve beer. We served wine and water. I bought enough for people for all night long, So people would come and party. We’d have a—my—the idea of being in Rotterdam, where the thing is lit up.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I would leave the lights on all night long.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So that anybody coming out of Al’s Bar, stumbling out of Al’s Bar in the middle of the night, three in the morning, whatever, or going to the American Hotel, back and forth, or people just driving, whatever population is inhabiting Downtown at that time, it was exact—I replicated my experience in Rotterdam, but I put art in the window.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, you look in the gallery, the gallery was a gem. It was like this perfect display of looking at art. But looking at sophisticated art. Contemporary artists  making beautiful work, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was—but the thing, Chon, in those days, everybody came! The Black community came, the Latino community came, the Asian community came, everybody came.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it was—never had been anything like it. Deep River was the—Chinatown had not happened yet—Chinatown didn’t exist. There was no one before me. A few small spaces that people tried in the, in the '80s, but nothing like this. Nothing that capitalized on this particular moment, that post-'93—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So what was your first show? You remember?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   Yeah! I think that my first show was the—I think—was an artist named Cirilo [Domine]; he was Filipino.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And did these large, long, if I remember right. He made this, like—took some kind of tradition of carving your own utensils and made them into these, like, kind of like Martin Puryear, with these long floating sculptures.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Beautiful.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Stunningly beautiful, right? Was Filipino, I’m sure, almost positive.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So, you did about forty shows altogether.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Do you remember some of the other—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, I—I mean, I gave Mark Bradford his first show.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, really?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Mark Bradford was a student of mine, and he—his very first show, I mean, he didn’t know anything about anything.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I gave him his—I set him up for his very first lectures, I gave him—so I gave Mark Bradford, I gave Kori Newkirk his very first show. Juan [Capistran] showed their—Juan Capistran  and Mario [Ybarra, Jr.] showed there, Ybarra.

CHON NORIEGA:  They must have been babies.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, they were babies.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They're just out of grad school.

CHON NORIEGA:  So these are a mixture of folks coming out of—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Grad school.

CHON NORIEGA:  —grad school at UCI?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  UCI, and people that I would meet, looking around in the city, you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it was—you remember we had the—this was run on like a shoestring budget.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, and how did, how did you pay for it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We, we pay—we just paid for it. We paid for it out of pocket—there were—I had two other collaborators.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you’re teaching at this time.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m teaching at this time, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  You got a job.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I have a job.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I have a job, and I cut a deal that was incredibly good, for—rent-wise.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, we spent a lot of money up front on—it was a completely dilapidated space. I mean, completely.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you fixed it up.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had—I poured a ton of money on the front end.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To get it to look—see, okay, that actually, that’s really important. What was the failure—one of the failures of nonprofit spaces was their inability to attend to the aesthetics of display. In other words, people started using fucking clamp lights and shit. [Laughs.] Right? I mean, there was a kind of rag-tag, DIY kind of, we're not gonna spend money on infrastructure because we don’t think it’s important, because why not just put art in there?

[00:30:22]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the failure of that is that the work doesn’t get presented in the context—the language that is being used everywhere else in the world, right? So, what I did was, I literally adopted the exact language of display.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you’re creating the white cube.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That’s—I’ve taken advantage of the fact that the white cube exists.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m exploiting the fact that the white cube exists, Chon. To the—I mean, like, it's not, I’m not gonna resist the white cube.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which was the model in the '80s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To resist the white cube.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's like, okay, well, we’re already—I go, I’m excluded, everyone else I know is excluded, Why do I want to exclude ourselves further by doing something that looks like, it doesn’t—is not a master of the language. Right? Like, it’s not a—it's not just about recognizing languages, but—I’m also trilingual.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I understand the language of aesthetics, I understand the language of display, I understand the language of architecture. This is really important, because—the money that was spent, Chon, then, was to transform a completely beat-to-shit space, that looked—that was perfect, architecturally.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And perfect in terms of display. So, any artist that would come, no matter what they did, it didn’t matter what they did, it adopted all the language of all the decades that had preceded it. As long as the white cube had been invented.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—you’re talking about—you know, there was an art movement to get away from the market, and to bring art into the context of everyday life, right? What’s the value then, looking at it from another point of view, of, kind of, creating a space for aesthetic autonomy like that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What’s the value?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. So what does that do?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It’s complete independence. It's—it's back to my—what I believed was my role as an interventionist. Or how I saw myself, in that—so, okay, so, I found my career had been completely blocked.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, '93, I didn’t think I could have done better in my life than I did in '93. You and I did the show that caused a riot and a takeover, at the university at Cornell.

CHON NORIEGA:  Good start.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Good start.

CHON NORIEGA:   [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I caused another kind of riot at the '93 Biennial, with the—

CHON NORIEGA:  That spring, earlier, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —with Tags [Museum Tags, 1993]. I was in the Venice Biennial. In the Aperto ['93]. The first Chicano ever to be in that exhibition, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I made paintings in an installation that had to do with the Red Brigades, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. You were doing portraits of—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —of Red Brigade—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —figures.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then I did Culture in Action with Mary Jane Jacob in Chicago.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which was completely groundbreaking. So: Chicago, Ithaca, Cornell, major—Ivy League university, the Whitney Biennial, and the Venice Biennial in the same year, Chon. You have to imagine that—I thought that this was a language. I—and these are not small things, these are all on, these are—I mean, Cornell’s the scale of, I mean, it's a monstrous scale.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Chicago was a monstrous scale. These are not, like, intimate little objects being put into a gallery. Cor—I mean, the Whitney, the unknown—completely just whatever that is that, I mean, that little, that, like, inclusive—whatever went on there, I guarantee you they did not think that I was going to be the heavy hitter coming out of that. I mean, that I’m just—I’m sure I was just a footnote. But out of that, out of one opportunity, look what happens. It turns out the other way around, right? No one remembers the '93—the only thing they remember about the '93 Biennial are the tags, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then Venice was just like—so, I’m on an international-level scale of major museums, major Ivy League universities, and reshaping cities in Chicago. I was in heaven. The language was the language that I had believed that I—that—what I had told you that I saw myself, in the '70s, it took me that long to get there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And when I was there it was just like, okay, we’re ready to go. And then, when it dropped off, like, fucking like a lemming off a cliff. When the dust settled after '93, I was just like—I was so confused, Chon.

[00:34:58]

I was completely confused, because not only did I look around and there was no one who wanted to attach themselves to me anymore; I mean, it was a fucking desert. A desert, I couldn’t—nobody wanted to be around me, you know? I—I didn’t, I just was—I just was, like, shocked.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And even to now, it's like—had I been anything, I'm just the wrong time, Chon. If I had been—twenty years later, ten years later, ten years earlier, right? The entire sort of manifestation of a body of knowledge, and a body of assertion of ways of thinking around the possibility of aesthetics—not through the canonical white art history, but through what I believe was inventing another language, based on, not in any small way, the unconscious confusion of my identity. And lack of identification. And the lack of the allies necessary by which to build the political project that I thought that I wanted—was going to embark on. It manifested itself here. So, my experiments with ideas, I was—nobody held me back. Nobody told me no. You didn’t tell me no, Mary Jane didn’t tell me no, Thelma [Golden] didn’t tell me no, and the fucking, you know, I forget who curated that—

CHON NORIEGA:  What, the Biennial?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Venice Biennial.

CHON NORIEGA:  It was a committee. Elisabeth Sussman was the lead.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Who, Venice? Not for Venice.

CHON NORIEGA:  No, no, for the Whitney.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, for Venice.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m trying to think who the curator—[Achille Bonito Oliva]

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I know who did Whitney, I’m trying to think of who did—it was—it's funny, I can’t remember, Chon. It’s somebody we know—I can’t think of it. I can’t think of, but it was—I guess, you know, Chon, is—I guess, you know, even in hindsight—I honestly believed that was going to be the rest of my life.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I thought that—I had proved myself—I could—it’s not, I proved, I thought that I had—I worked the proof, that—like an equation, right? That—my ambition of my ideas, right? Not ambitions of success, but ambition of ideas was larger than putting an object on a wall.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That the vernacular that I was occupying, the territory that I occupied, the intellectual space that I occupied, the—the sheer scope of those four projects. What could I have done better, Chon? What could I have done that—to assert a highly intellectualized, highly conceptualized, highly intellectual aesthetic space to be in, to sort of suggest that I can compete with global art history.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, at the time, you were dumbfounded, seems like.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, I mean, I was dumbfounded after the fact. And I was in my—it was in my groove, during those years—I mean, leading up to those years.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, but, after the fact, I—I was shocked Chon, I was shocked.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you create Deep River as a way—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  As a counter—so—

CHON NORIEGA:  —yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so one—so, the bifurcation there, is important—is that—what I’m speaking about in terms of before Deep River, was a clear concentration on developing an individual aesthetic, an individual trajectory, in the field itself. And when they—when I got stopped from cultivating that any further—at the height of it!

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  At the height of my powers, and being able to move forward—had I gotten—had I had been supported then—like, supported supported, Chon, it, then, it would have been, who knows what could have happened. But, okay, so that's blocked, and so instead of focusing on my individuality then, I pivoted twice. The first pivot is to, then, make this gallery. And the second pivot is to support everybody else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In the community. So it might—Deep River is authored by me, It is strategized by me, it is conceptualized by me, it is directed by me, but it's a gift. It’s potlatch. It's an act of, it's—it's, it was my—inevitably, it's an act of generosity, Chon. It's a giving to—it's giving back to a community that I never got anything from. How’s that for some kind of, like, peculiarity.

[00:40:11]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—because I can’t actually tell you that the community ever gave me anything. And when I say community, that's with a small c, not a big C.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, but it seemed in—politically and socially and aesthetically, even strategically—I thought, okay—what—I mean, it's—it made perfect sense, the logic seemed undeniable.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To move from the, in—from the sense of individuality, and the success of the individual, to moving—so, moving from the I to the we. From the I to the collective. From the I to the social activation, of a space, and an aesthetic at a time in a place in its proximity to the LA River, and its proximity to East LA and Boyle Heights, its proximity to a kind of, you know, what—a beaten-down old Los Angeles at that particular moment.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In that particular—warehouses, and, you know, the detritus of the city, and crime, and, I mean, it made perfect sense. I mean, like logic, like, there’s something poetic in—and it also was a—it required me to completely give up my ego.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had to completely give up the sense of my individual achievement—any longer was, I just—I dropped it.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, did you ever have a show? Within that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, it was everybody but you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Everybody but me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Everybody but me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I was never happier.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you were creating this space, kind of a small—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Tiny.

CHON NORIEGA:  —version of a space that you had been—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Denied.

CHON NORIEGA:  —exiled from.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That’s right. But I gave it—instead of making it for myself, I gave it to everyone else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Making sure their work looked—so, you know—basically, I didn’t just curate, but I helped people hang their work. Most people don’t know how to hang their work.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m very good at it, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know what I mean? Like, so, I would help people, and then it was a—creating languages and discourses between groups of people as they would come, and people wanting to hang. So, imagine the kind of—we had a what I called a street-level discourse.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So it was a combination—a kind of a hybridity between—a highly intellectualized academic understanding of art history, one as a practice understanding of that history, but also embracing the kind of like—what would be the right word—the unpredictability—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —of being on the street. Like, with the desk. Sitting outside all day long. So, anyone would come by, talk to—anyone would sit down talk about art, want to talk about whatever that's—

CHON NORIEGA:  So this would be open, throughout—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —the day on the weekends?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  On the weekends, like normal hours, twelve to six, Saturdays and Sundays. Very fixed.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you basically were giving up your weekends.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes. Yes, so, well, you know, I mean—we traded off doing it, but so—

CHON NORIEGA:  Who else was involved?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Rolo Castillo, did you ever know? That's probably outside of your—so Rolo—Rolo was super funny, Rolo didn’t know anything about art, right? He—but he was a master—he was a master printer, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Ah, okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Master silk-screen printer.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like master printer, right? He had a little studio, I knew him forever. You know? And he was downtown, like a lot of—Downtown artists, everybody knew each other in all different levels. No one—the divisions that we see now, were much less then.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was much more amenable, and people, like—you went to school, you didn’t go to school, you were successful, you weren’t successful, everyone was just trying to—everyone had a hustle. Everyone’s trying to survive. In a world that was still—again, you know, after the big bang, right? Its all, the big bang being '93, everything's moving, and reshaping, and—before it solidifies—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —into something which we didn’t quite know what it was going to become in the 21st century, but—anyway, Rolo was great, Rolo printed—I mean, so Richard, I guess—everything that Richard—Rolo was better than Richard Duardo was.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, just to put a sense of understanding. They were best friends.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And—

CHON NORIEGA:  Richard had his studio, just around—on the other side of the river, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, he, well—were very close to Rolo’s, and then Rolo—and then Richard moved his studio across from Deep River.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Oh, really?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. [Laughs.] So, so this is—

CHON NORIEGA:  And you had your own studio on Fourth?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My—I had—every street—I moved downtown in 1980, I think. '80 or '81. My first studio downtown was, Chon, was twenty thousand square feet—twenty thousand square feet, and I think I paid fifty dollars for it.

[00:45:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Oooh! And where was that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was on—it's on First and—one block over from Alameda. But I had a dozen. I would move from studio to studio to studio, I was in every building you can imagine over the years.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, but no, I was always close by, so I was always at Deep River, and I was always there on off-hours.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it was—the—I don’t know where this saying comes from, but if you build it, they will come.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Isn’t that from that Kevin Costner film?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Is it?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Is it? Is it from a—I don’t know, but, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  The baseball film.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —is it that where it's from? I don’t remember, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Field of Dreams.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Field of Dreams. And—but the thing is, Chon, you know—you know why it was success—you know why Deep River was successful?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because we had these incredible openings.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  People came, and they hung out, all night long. All over, Chon. They were the most wildly diverse crowd you had ever seen, from hipsters, to you name it. But you know who wasn’t there?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The white art world.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] And did this ever get written up in the LA Times?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They never, they—they never even noticed me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They never noticed me, and what they—to my, I—it, something, Chon, you know, that makes me literally cry is, in all the books, and all the people that have made histories about artist-run spaces—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —about, in LA, and all over, all the different decades, they go through all the decades, you know, say from the sixties to now, never once is Deep River ever included. Never.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Never. They literally made us invisible.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Completely—I just—it just it—it was, I mean, about all the, I mean, I know tons of people that have written books on all the spaces, on all, you know, empowerment in artist-run spaces outside of the institutional discourse. Blah blah blah blah blah, right? I mean, all this stuff about independence and autonomy and this like—and they never ever ever include Deep River. Ever! Chon. It’s just fucking shocking to me! You know? Invent this thing—I didn’t ask for anything. I just built something, people loved it, people loved the shows, people came, people had great—we had—people talked about everything, we debated everything!

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it just, it was, it was literally erased.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It wasn’t until I worked with Lauri [Firstenberg] to make LAXART did people then, at that juncture, start to realize that—because Lauri came to me, and she—she had seen—she came from New York, and saw, she saw Deep River, and she was just, like, she was flabbergasted. Because she said she didn’t even see stuff like that in New York, okay? And so, she wanted to work, collaborate with me, to open up another version of it, but a slightly more professionalized version of it, in a way, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To open up LAXART, and that’s, so I—all of a sudden people started to pay a little more attention to Deep River, because LAXART was literally a more developed model of what Deep River was.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   More resources, a board, all these kinds of accoutrements, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  More space.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  More space, everything, right? But I—everything that I had learned by doing Deep River, and everything that she had learned from running Artists Space,  and all the other spaces, she didn’t—you know, she worked with Okwui [Enwezor] and all this other stuff that she had done, the collaboration of knowledge was incredibly unique.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because she was a very well-known curator, she was, right? Very popular, she was—smart as—I mean, Lauri’s smart. Strong, smart, intelligent, she’s got an eye for work. I mean, I thought this is perfect, I said, look, I can take Deep River—I can take this—this small nuggets of ideas of Deep River, and it's like, put them all on steroids, basically.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, it was like, super-charge that shit, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  She had the same politics. She had great politics, she understands the movement, she understood the subject of race and class, she understood gender and sexuality, I mean, all the discourses that I had been build—working on, were just the—I found somebody that was equal.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That—that wanted, that—that believed that it was important to establish such discourses in contemporary art, in a city like Los Angeles.

[00:50:03]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was, it was amazing but yeah, but it was, and now, you know, Chon, it was, like, I mention Deep River to people that should know about Deep River in LA, that—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, nothing. It—the only memory of Deep River, Chon, is when I tell somebody a story about it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I can’t tell you how many people modeled their spaces after my space.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So, where’d you get the name from?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Deep River?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Deep River came off of—do you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Uh-uh [negative]. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well one, was [laughs] I had—I was dying for something, I wanted something, because I wanted to include the LA River.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the LA River, also, was a kind of subtle jab at the Rio Grande, right? Like, just border, right? So, the river was always the border between East LA and Downtown, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, and that, as you know, very well know, say, in the beginning of the early 20th century, through the Chicano movement, right? Had various degrees of enforcement and different degrees of meaning what that meant. The bridges, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The Fourth Street Bridge, the Sixth Street Bridge, right? These were different things at different times, and they were very powerful.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? The marches, and the protests, and the—I mean, everything that has gone on, all the films that were made in the river, and these—the artificial border, and then, you know, it just, it doesn’t—it's a—it's one degree of separation, metaphorically, from the border that exists in the country.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And I don’t have to say it out loud, it seemed obvious to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  If I’m gonna deal with the LA River, it's obviously dealing with something else, it's not—I’m also always surprised at people’s flat-footedness, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   Like, when it comes to me, I have, like, everything is always, has three or four or five different meanings, embedded inside of each other, right? They’re not obvious. I don’t explicate these things, because it’s not important that every aspect of something be described to somebody.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's—the power of it is, there's a kind of mystery to its ideology.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That it asserts a certain—it presses here, and recedes here. It expands here and it's doing something. It's an active engagement with a set of ideas. But people always take it that, like, face value, like, you know, it's like, I’m just, it's like, really? Because  you read a—people look at other artwork and they read the fucking shit out of it, right? Oh, they go into town, this has that, and this has a thing, it's like, like, I don’t—anyway. So, there's a David Lynch film. Blue Velvet.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  On the wall, in one of the scenes, is a plaque, and it said, "Deep River."

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it's where one of the murders or something occurred. [Laughs.] So I borrowed it out of the Lynch film.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, we’re sitting here in your studio, and behind you are the two photographs that your dad helped—that are taken from the moon—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and then there's your neon sign for Deep River.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My Deep River sign, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Was that on the front—storefront?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, oh, no, I use that for—it was—they had a little show for something I was included in, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  So it's like a spin-off piece.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I put a spin-off version, yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay. [Laughs.] So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And art form.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah! There you go. You got your ever-wanting—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Isn’t it perfect?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah!

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] That’s—that’s my life, Chon, ever wanting.

CHON NORIEGA:  And then the—The Death of Marat.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So did you ever, did you show white artists as well?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, sure. Sure. I showed everybody.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, women artists?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Everybody. Gay, straight, white, Black, brown. Everybody. It was the most multicultural platform—

CHON NORIEGA:  Do you have the ephemera for the—no?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Sore point here, okay.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, this is—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay. I did something really dumb.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] I did something really dumb. I did something really dumb, dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. So anyway, I have—I took extensive photographs. I have extensive documentation.  On purpose.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  For—to make a book. You know, because, I mean, it was on, it was, we—there was one other little thing that was kind of lovely and beautiful, I can send you a picture of it if you want, because I have that on my computer, but on the—as a way to dislodge the authoritarian, single white male critic from dumping an avalanche onto my head for this.

[00:55:04]

Because I saw that the authority carried by critics at that time, different than now, I saw as being openly hostile to any question around a minority discourse. So, here, really, what I was attempting to build was a minority discourse that really bridged the gap between aesthetics and intellectualism.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was trying to foster a new kind of conceptualism based on a minority discourse, not on a dominant discourse. Clearly, the minority discourse that I was trying to evolve clearly understood and recognized the dominant discourse, but saw itself as developing independent of that. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is different than not knowing it. Or rejecting it. I didn’t reject it, hence why I’m stealing from it; I’m stealing every idea I can from it to retool it, but so, in a way, it's a kind of a mutation of the original discourse into something where I could empower new discourses, both as a space that is a representative of a set of ideas, but also individually. People could really have a solo show when no one had ever given them a solo show before, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I also understood that I would get hammered to death in the press.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Because no one was going to support this. Nobody was going to support this idea, Chon. Nobody. Okay. So—on the door—really small little letters, like this, it said, "No Art Critics Allowed."

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The space got very famous for this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it had—because people were, people, Chon, you—young—and, and, you knowing me, it's just, it's a perfect—so—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the gesture—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —not only do I have the, sort of balls, to do this, which people were, like, who the fuck are you? Right? You built the space, you—it doesn’t look like some shabby thing in East LA, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It looks legitimate, it acts real, it uses the language—because I knew them inside and out, I’m more than trilingual here—its like, I borrowed all the languages, I built something, and then I put a thing on the door that says, "No Art Critics Allowed." People fucking—they blew their top, they were fucking out of their minds with insanity on this!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, it made people—critics here, beyond angry. And the thing was, you have to understand the shallowness of their thinking then.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It didn’t say you couldn’t come in and review something, what it was doing was, it was an external gesture that said, if you’re gonna come in here and be an asshole, basically, don’t come.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Didn’t say don’t write about this work, don’t do this, so—you know, I had sign-in books, which were very famous.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—it would go one for each year, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ: It would have comments, mountains of comments in the books. Someone, so—some—someone, one person says, okay then, I’m not gonna write about your gallery and your artists in Artforum, or Art in America, made this list. I’d have tons of people writing shit like that in the book, because—it's a disruption of the power structure. I just put a small little rock in the road that said, ah! Maybe I’m not gonna use—I’m not gonna, I don’t need you to validate me in the languages that you did. And I have lots of people that wrote about our shows. We had tons of reviews from people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—and the people that wrote about stuff, obviously didn’t care about the thing on the door, because they understood the absurdity. The—the, kind of, almost Dadaist, gesture, right? Very Fluxus gesture, embodied in such a statement on a door of a gallery, Chon? Think about it, it's absolutely fucking brilliant, in my opinion.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, but I mean, to start this space, to have this sort of mechanism through minority discourse doing intellectualization of a new posturing—of aesthetics, right? But then, to push, not to do what everyone expected, which was please please please come to my space, please please please come and write about these artists, please please please, begging these people, to try to then have to re-educate them, or educate them in this case, to what it is that is going on, that they had completely excluded historically, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I didn’t do that, I didn’t beg them to come, Chon. I told them that—they shouldn’t come at all.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That offended people. Don’t know why!

CHON NORIEGA:  But nobody picked up on the racial dimensions of that? "No Colored People Allowed?"

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No. No.

CHON NORIEGA:   Or that it connected to, "I can’t imagine ever wanting to be white."

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I mean, that—it—the—one of the first things that I would have thought was that, you know, that either Jim Crow, or "No Mexicans Allowed."

CHON NORIEGA:  "No Mexicans Allowed."

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know what I mean, it can—we can run an entire discourse on this. Right, Chon? You and I. But no one, no one—but they, they were only, they only saw again—as an interruption of their power.

[01:00:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which was my intention, though.

CHON NORIEGA:  And it’s funny how language is what takes the heat. So, the language is never considered to be within the realm of discussing the art object. Like—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, yes, right.

CHON NORIEGA:  —so, the museum tags, it’s seen as somehow just being language.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ: And not an artwork.

CHON NORIEGA:  Not—the use of languages within our—or putting that on a gallery. It's like anything on a gallery wall is going to somehow bear the weight of art, right? So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, well, this is on the glass door on the front.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it's the same difference to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it was done—I had Norm do it, it was done, like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Done by an artist. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —done by an—but hand-painted too, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, we’re old-fashioned—like, when they would do storefront windows back in the days. Like, '30s and '20s, '30s, '40s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was—everything's hand-painted, I had—I had Norm do it—exactly, I had Norm do exactly—he was, really, he’s a master, but no one—this is a—kind of this gesture—I’m making it public now, Chon—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It’s not just a museum, like an artwork in a museum, but this is, like, the taking into account what I suggested to you before—my desire to intervene historically.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And my desire to—to not only intervene historically, but to capitalize—oh, no.

CHON NORIEGA:  Card full?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, shit, I’m glad this is on.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, boy. I’m gonna stop this—

[Audio break.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay—this is Chon Noriega.

CHON NORIEGA:  Not quite.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] I can be Chon, you can be me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. This is a continuation of the—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  —previous card. This is Chon Noriega interviewing Daniel J. Martinez, at the artist's studio in Los Angeles California, on November 30th, 2019, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, card two, continuation of earlier interview. So, where did we leave off here? We were—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Talking about a—this little phrase.

CHON NORIEGA:  The door.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The little door phrase. But it—but I think your assertion is right, I mean, I think that—

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh!

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The—people were only offended—critics were only offended—like Christopher Knight, and all the people writing at the time, right? I mean—and then, you know, the gossip that I would hear, of course, right? People trash-talking me, you know. You have a space, but you don’t want critics in, because you’re a—I’m afraid of what people are gonna say, and this and that. They didn’t understand it as a political gesture, they didn’t understand it as any kind of—like, what you said, so—it's so obvious to think of Jim Crow, or to think of all the times that there's been a sign that says this kind of person is not allowed in here, right? Because it—some kind of preventative measure—

CHON NORIEGA:  They didn’t like that language turned back at them.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  And so they—but rather than engage with that as an expression, they took it as literal.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Exactly. And so, people were hostile.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The white art world in LA was very hostile to Deep River. I got—I got little to no support from people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean—it, and you know I—it wasn’t like I didn’t—it wasn’t open, you know, to showing white artists, because I did, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So who are some of the white artists that showed?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh! There's a painter named Jim Morphesis, who’s a really interesting painter, been here for a long time. Eileen Cowan—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —her video, you know, I showed a bunch—I showed major artists, Chon, not just, like, young people. You know, which is, part and parcel to that, is my—you know, like you, we’ve dedicated our lives to education, right? Training people. People need opportunities, so I certainly showed a lot of young people, but I showed—I mean, Eileen Cowan’s no small fish. She’s a major artist in the United States, period.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, you know, but the—I think that—you know, this is way in hindsight, but I think that people interpreted me with a kind of a—what I thought was bold, I probably thought was, you know, some kind of audacity on my part. You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That they were—that they kind of—you know, I’m not the—you know, we’ve talked about this before, you know. I don’t cut lawns, you know, I don’t pick fruits and vegetables, I don’t wash your car, I’m not the quiet Mexican in the corner. And I think that my constant role in Los Angeles, I think my whole life, Chon—one of the difficulties that I’ve always had is that I’m not the quiet Mexican.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m not, you—I—you—and you know me, it's like, you know, I’m not just gonna go sit in the corner and shut up because people think that that's what I’m supposed to do.

[01:05:00]

You know, I’m the loud one, I’m the one that's gonna—I take the risk. I—and it's not that I don’t—you know, I’ve taken a lot of risks in my life, Chon. Like, over and over and over and over and over again, and I've been hammered over and over and over again, and, you know what, I still—it has not, you know, dampened my spirits that much. I mean, maybe now with accumulation, I’m not quite the person that I would like to be, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  But you’re doing this through your art.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, so, just—is—some of the other artists maybe that you showed, if you can remember their names—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Umm—I’m not gonna remember; lets see, Kori Newkirk—

CHON NORIEGA:  Some of the other younger artists?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m not gonna remember, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m not gonna remember. It's too many names, and too many people, over too many—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know? Because, it’s just that—because it's long ago, and then, retooling again for LAXART, and there's a whole slew of new artists thinking about there, and collaboration—you know, I mean, I mean it was a—Deep River was an art project. Which is another thing people missed.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, they think, if you open a gallery, that it's a gallery. Well, it's like, duh.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Why—well, it can be many things. Its—its—yes, its utility is an art gallery to show art in, but its ambition is something—I guess that—I think a lot of times with me, people either don’t see it, or in denial of the ambition of the projects.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They always see them as a sort of really narrowly defined—or people tend to narrowly define things, and I don’t define anything narrowly. I see the—I prefer to see kind of a much more imaginative space for things to exist in, a much more, you know—exciting space for things to exist in, Chon. Like, exciting! Like, why do we want, why do we not want to engage in sets of ideas that—reinvent what we know—and even if you can’t do it, even if I can’t fly to Mars, Chon, its the idea of getting to Mars that's a great idea.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Just the attempt at doing it, or, you know, people try to, we talked about it before, people trying to, you know, map the human brain, or map consciousness, I mean, this is fabulous, or, you know, new AI and it's predict—its ability to compute as fast as the human brain, or, I mean, it's just, like, this stuff is really exciting, it's not that they—anyone does it right yet, but it's—you have to get there, right? You have to work towards it. And I’m always, I’m always surprised by people's lack of enthusiasm.

CHON NORIEGA:  In general?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In general, yeah. And in particular, in the art world, it's a very blasé—you don’t sign up, you know, to be a card-carrying member of the modernist aesthetic, you know, you—people, it's like, you can’t—I guess, I mean, you know, I think this is designed, Chon, so tightly—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it's so tightly designed. The structures that we inherited that—people just, you know, any attempt to retool it, even in a small way, is so forcefully resisted—I don’t know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So did you—did you set up Deep River as a 501(C)(3)?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nope.

CHON NORIEGA:  It was just what it was.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Just what it was.

CHON NORIEGA:  Just a project, and—and then it started—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We paid for everything ourselves, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  —yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We didn’t—

CHON NORIEGA:  And Rolo Castillo was a partner throughout the whole time with you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, we—Rolo, yeah, for the for X amount of years; not the whole, whole time, because Rolo had, you know, lots of kids, and many wives. He was very busy!

CHON NORIEGA:  He had other projects.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He had other projects. And then Glenn Kaino worked with us.

CHON NORIEGA:  Glenn?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Glenn Kaino, you know, he was a student that I taught at UCI. He was at that time—what was he doing then, was he working for Oprah yet? I don’t remember exactly. Anyway, yeah—it wasn’t a—it—I circumvented all that. I didn’t—applying for a 501(C)(3) was way too—bureaucratic—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —for the gesture that I wanted. I wanted a much faster, looser—I wanted to be able to move—without being held accountable to a set of standards, or rules that would inhibit my thinking for the project. I mean, get that—this is—not unlike my thinking in general, so—

[01:10:00]

I can think through the bureaucracy if I have to. But if I can free myself of it, first off, and then act and invent, without that as being as something that's really, like, gonna slow me down, I would much rather do that. And plus, it's also closer to the kind of—it's closer to the kind of ethic that I would—that I believe in. You know, and I don’t want to be—I think the problem with the thing that—at the end of the analysis of the nonprofit days, the problem was that they became institutionalized.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And that they—and instead of acting as renegade, they actually acted as just smaller museums. Right? That had then—then they were starting to edit and to adopt certain kinds of aesthetics based on the—same as museums, and museums don’t pick people because they’re going to be experimental, people don’t pick museums because they’re going to take risks—pick people because they know they’re a sure thing, and they know it's safe. And the nonprofit world was great while they were not safe. But then, they became extremely safe, because they had to fund-raise every year, and they had to have this much money every year, they had to have this much programming, the directors and the curators and everybody cost money. And then you had to have installers and—became institutions.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you’re doing this for five years, you’re acting like a gallerist-slash-curator. You’re not working within a nonprofit framework, you’re not working within a museum—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Or gallery—for-profit gallery—

CHON NORIEGA:  —or gallery.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, what are your criteria then? You say this is a project, but at a local level, week to week, you’re selecting folks, and what were your—what were the criteria you used to do that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think it's—that—was that on?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, it's going.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m trying to think of how to say this. I was in San Antonio, and I did the Artpace thing—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that residency they have. Which I—you know, at a certain time, that was really famous, and then it became so ordinary and no one cared, but, anyway, so I was there in the—might have been the '90s, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—there was a, there was a Chicano guy there who would, who had, like, kind of—doing kind of interviews or something, right? You know, this was from my point of view.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] You know, this is like a country Chicano. [Laughs.] You know? Like, in Texas, and in San Antonio, which is not exactly the major city there, it's a big city but not, you know, it's a fringe. I mean, their art scene there is, like, not in existence. I mean, there's people doing—but it's, you know, I'm trying to think of—he just died—there was a Chicano photographer there that did these kind of set-up things, I can’t think of his name, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, I know, he—a few years ago, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, he just died a few years ago, I cannot think of his name.

CHON NORIEGA:  You can see the bowls—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You can see the bowl, exactly!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We know exactly what we’re talking about, and then there was—

CHON NORIEGA:  Like George—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, not George.

CHON NORIEGA:  Nah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anyway there was another—in my group, there were three. They had one artist from Germany, the international artist and myself, and then this other young Chicano guy, and I can’t think of his name either—anyway, the aesthetic there—more or less, is the sort of Cheech aesthetic.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So it's, it kind of, it's the Virgen de Guadelupe, it's—you know, bright colors, it's, you know, altars and, you know, Day of the Dead, and, you know, this kind of cultural manifestation of celebration, and this kind of stuff, right? I mean, it's—it's fine, you know? Anyways, so this guy was interviewing me, and I said, I was—you know, I was describing LA, and I said, LA's harsh. It's a harsh city, it's a very racist city, and I said—wait, so, you know, I go, I said, I go to all the openings, especially in those days, right? I would go to everything. Because—there was a couple reasons for that, one is, I’m—I’m really super curious.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I actually learned that from Baldessari. I remember when I was really young, like, in the '80s, everywhere I went, Baldessari was there. Baldessari just made it a point. It was fantastic, actually.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Every opening, every place, I didn’t care how—I would sometimes—in a fucking little tiny gallery in the middle of nowhere, goddamn Baldessari's there! It’s like—what the fuck?

[01:15:01]

Like, how are you, like—and I asked him, he says, oh, I just like to go to these things, I just I want to see what everybody’s doing. I want to see what young artists are doing. I want to see what unknown artists are doing. I thought, bam! I thought, bam! That's it! That's so amazing, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, I adopted the same policy. I wanted to see what everybody was doing, so—and particularly in that time, Chon, you have to remember, in the '80s and '90s, it was so a white art world.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Completely white art world. And I wanted to make my presence known. I would go, I would just go everywhere, every—all the time.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I’m telling this guy this similar kind of story, and I said, well, you know, I would go, and I would—I would make sure I knew how many, you know, minorities were in the room, and I could count them on less than one hand. And he says, you count? I said, absolutely, I count. I said, if I’m gonna go to an opening and I only see myself as the only minority in the room, I said, I—I notice it. You know, there's no other Latinos in the room, there's no Black people in the room, there's no, no, I mean, there's no women in the room, it's like, you know? Its white people. White art, white galleries, white people at this. I said, yes, I count, absolutely, I count. He was shocked—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that I took notice of the demographics, of who was participating in what is supposed to be culture for us all. This is for us all. Not for one group of people. And I was very adamant about this, about constantly inserting myself into this kind of discourse. So when you ask me about a criteria, about Deep River, I’m not sure I would use the word criteria, but I would say an organizational principle.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which, I guess, is the semantics of criteria. I was interested, Chon, and I had to—I’ll be honest about this, I was interested in putting people in Deep River that I didn’t see anywhere else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Just that simple. People that I thought were good artists, who could not get shows.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And even some of the artists that I showed that were white, they were not—popular, yes, maybe had some success, but were also not getting shown as much, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so, I was interested in maybe trying to have Deep River reflect the invisibility that I saw—so, if I’m the only one of three minorities at CalArts, that was reflective of my entire experience with the art world.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was always alone. But ironically—which I’ve never understood, actually, to be perfectly honest, I never understood why—why I was not—why I was undaunted by that fact. I have pushed myself into every aspect of this field since I was a teenager. Like, I never—it never stopped me, even if I was unwanted, I still pushed myself into the field.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Even if I was rejected, I still showed up. I don’t—I don’t know where that came from, to be honest, Chon. I don’t know. But anyways, so, Deep River was a reflection of what wasn’t everywhere else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So, in 2002, you bring it to an end.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Deep River, done. Party’s over. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Do you remember the last show you had?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No. We had a big blowout bash, but I don’t remember what it was.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don’t remember what the closing show was—yeah, it was—it was time. It was time to end, because it was at that point my career started moving, was—you know, after being with—The Project was amazing. The Project was—Christian [Haye] was brilliant, as the owner and the director of the gallery.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He—so, Christian, Christian was really young, young black guy, right? He grew up on Long Island, so, middle class at least, you know? Education, very—very well-educated, very well-read. He—actually was, when Deep River was—he opened his gallery right after Deep River, right? So, he came when one of the—the first year, came this young guy, came in, cruising up in this convertible, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He says, you know, "Are you Daniel Martinez?" [Laughs.] And I’m always—whenever somebody—I always want to look around, like, I don’t know, maybe not! [Laughs.] You know, because you figure somebody always wants something.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So he says, you know, I’ve been looking for you, kind of thing; that second sentence I don’t want to hear, you know, are you this person? And then, I’ve been looking for you. I was like, okay, you know, this—what do you—did I leave something somewhere?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Or did I, like, walk away with something? You know, anyway, he said he saw the Biennial and he was confused why I wasn’t, like a—basically said, why aren’t you a star?

[01:20:00]

You know, and—so he sits down and says, look, I’m gonna start a gallery in Harlem. And at this point, Chon, you have to imagine, you know, artist studios are like train stations.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Everybody comes through. Everybody says something, everybody promises something. Everyone's like, oh, you know, I’m gonna give you the world. Oh, I’m gonna do this. Oh, I’m gonna do that. And after a while, after a few decades of this passes by, you realize its all bullshit.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  People—maybe they mean something, but maybe they don’t mean something, right? So anyway, he says, he says, I’m gonna build a gallery based on you. He says, I’m gonna start this—I’m gonna put, I’m gonna make a gallery—this is important.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He—he says, I’m gonna do what you did with Deep River, except I’m gonna make it a commercial success. He says, I’m gonna make a gallery that is—mostly minorities.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I’m gonna do it in New York. I’m gonna do it in Manhattan. He says, we’re gonna be as big as a gallery’s ever been. And I was like, yeah, sure. [Laughs.] You get back to me on that, right? I mean, I didn’t believe him, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was—I mean, he was young.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And he’s like a—like a baby to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Flat—you know, in LA, with his thing, and—so he went away, and he came back, and—had a studio visit, right? That was just talking on the street, right? Comes back and does a studio visit, and I don’t remember how long for—fairly quickly. And so, we chat, and he says, oh, yeah, I’m a—I’m ready to start this thing. I said, okay, well, when you get a space, why don’t you let me know? I said, you don’t have a space yet, right? And he says, no, not yet. [Laughs.] And he says, then he says, well, you know, can you just drop me off at the subway, because I’m gonna do a lecture at CalArts. I said, drop you off at the subway? I said, what subway?! [Laughs.] And I was, like, anyway he was—he always completely confused me, so sure enough, so, 1998 he starts a project called The Project—a commercial gallery in Harlem. The very first one of its kind, Chon. Outside of any—any kind of traditionally black galleries that had either been in Harlem, or the Studio Museum. He—he wasn’t kidding.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is literally—not only run by a black and Chinese woman, man and woman; not coupled, just, that's the composition—he formed a gallery, the first group show we had, which was the model for the next ten years, was—ninety percent people of color, and women.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And he not only did this, but he did it with, you know, he—like, for me, and—directly, I would say, I want to make this, he’d find the money for it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He found—he did, what is—what we all knew was the model for all of—our—for white artists.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Big galleries would have investment in—fund the money, fund the project, whatever it is. You want to make Spiral Jetty, you want to do, you know, go to Marfa, Texas, you want to—you know, whatever it is, right, you have DIA behind you, you have this, you know, whatever, right? He did that for us.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I would propose these wild, sculptural ideas and projects, and he would find the investment money for it, he’d make sold work, he made us famous.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He made us famous. I mean, Julie Mehretu was in the gallery, Kimsooja from Korea was in the gallery—I mean, there were, like—Paul Pfeiffer was in the gallery, I mean, it—the gallery was amazing, Chon!

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I—and I—and, again—I mean, this place where—he clearly took the cues of what Deep River was.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So this is before LAXART, right? A number of years before LAXART, but what's important is that—and this is consistent throughout my entire career. I mean, always. I think that—I generate something that other people see as can be successful. And then, what they do is, they grab bits of it. And then they make new projects. Not the same project. It—they—iteration of that project, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I mean, I can name, I can make you a list of artists who have cribbed parts of ideas of mine, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I can—I mean, institutions, curators, I mean, there's all kinds of people throughout all—my entire life that—I mean. And then, you know, I realized, I had to stop talking.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I—I mean—I remember when I was first thinking about the animatronics.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Amelia Jones was in London at the time.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And she had just barely caught wind of them. And she was writing that stuff about the body and—all this stuff, and—I didn’t know—I didn’t know better at the time, right?

[01:25:00]

I thought sharing ideas with writers and intellectuals and curators and such, which is normal, until I read the book afterwards. And realized that she had just drained me for information.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like completely, you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  That wasn't about your work?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It—no, she did write about the work.

CHON NORIEGA:  Ah, okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But, it was, I—but, you know, but I also realized it was completely repositioned.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Based on an entire principle that I had developed, right? That she had not—would have never seen, right? And I just use that in one example, but it's—it's an obvious one. But, yeah, so, I mean, it—it was—there was validity in the idea, is what—I guess I’m trying to say, there's some, there's a kind of, there are—I’ve never been in—quite in a position to sort of extrapolate—propositions, and have the success of the propositions be my own success—but what I have been able to do—see, is that—I have been an initiator of sets of principles and ideas, that are forceful enough, and dense enough, that they can—you can just grab a piece of its DNA—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and they’re able to spawn entirely other—new projects. Steve McQueen, The Steve Mc—not the Steve McQueen—the white boy Steve McQueen—

CHON NORIEGA:  Not the actor.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —not the actor.

CHON NORIEGA:  The director. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But—but before being a director, he was an artist.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And he was in The Project—okay? And he—he was very close with Christian. And, when I first met him, we—we were pretty good friends in those years, but when I first met him, when Christian introduced us, he goes, "You!"

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He goes—and this was—countless people have said this to me in my life, Chon. He said that—Steve McQueen, right? He was already making—doing stuff, like off of Charlie Chaplin, and the videos and stuff he was doing—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —he says, what I saw in 1993, when I saw what you did, with your Whitney tags, he says, it completely changed my view of what was possible in making art. He said, a hundred percent, he credited me, right then and there. Junot Diaz the same thing. Junot Diaz from—because he was at Cornell.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, he was a student when we were there.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That’s right.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, he, Junot, later—said the same thing. I can make a list for you, Chon, of names like this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. He does that in an interview I read.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, no, I mean, people—countless artists have told me—that—that they’ll grab onto some project, you know, "I saw that, and I realized that anything was po[ssible]." That's with Steve McQueen—anything was possible for him, as a Black artist.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? The ability to liberate people, based on—what, inevitably, are modest gestures on my part. They’re not as grandiose as I would like to believe that they are. They’re in fact very modest. But, the modesty of them doesn’t mean that they are not dense—the DNA is not densely, densely, densely packed. So, instead of a double helix, Chon—okay, instead of just two strands, what if you had, like, twenty-four strands, or thirty-six strands, wrapped into that—that the DNA is so tight, right? That there's an infinite amount of possibilities of the genetic formation, and reformation, right? Down at the structural level that—the molecular level right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What a fabulous point of origin by which to imagine the possibility of how things drift and move in the world. Like a virus.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? It’s like, and—so it's, so—yeah, I—so the project is to try to—my project was to try to make visible something—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that—I mean, it was that simple, and my criteria, as you well know, is not folkloric.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, so that—you have to understand, too, then, my—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —as you well know, my insistence on being contemporary, not as a sole gesture but as a new gesture, right? Was important. So I—so, and to imagine, I would, you know, in those days I would have never said this, but—sometimes—maybe more often than not, when we’re in a—in a, in a, in a situation where we have been deprived of nourishment, where we’ve been deprived of oxygen, where we’re deprived of what is necessary to take care of the social body on-going-ly—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it's particularly within the minority community, right? We are, we are emaciated, we are, we are, you know, like, prisoners, in our own cities, in our own country, right? Where we are, you know, we’re starving, Chon, right?

[01:30:00]

So sometimes, in that context, you not only had to give people opportunity, but you also have to teach them without you ever telling them that you’re teaching them. Right? So if you can, if Deep River was an opportunity not only—to what people would only see as exhibitions, but I’m essentially—I’m establishing a model of behavior.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I’m suggesting completely unconsciously to people. They don’t—they would never know it, that I would do this, I’m designing a model of what minorities should be doing—a kind of aesthetics that will be shown through the—through the lens, my curatorial lens—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —this is—this is incredibly powerful, Chon. This is in the '90s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is, like, you know, it's like—and then, when Christian came with The Project, it's like—you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then, you know—but then the 21st century came, and pewww, it's all been downhill!

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, so, we’re gonna hit the pause button here.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Hit the pause button, yeah—just push it once.

[01:31:12] [END OF TRACK martin19_9of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  That went on and on, and then we start here.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Alright, we’re rolling. This is Chon Noriega interviewing Daniel Joseph Martinez at the artist’s studio in Los Angeles, California.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  South Los Angeles.

CHON NORIEGA:  South Los Angeles.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  On Crenshaw and Fifty-fourth.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That’s right.

CHON NORIEGA:  On December 17, 2019, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, card number two. So, today we're gonna try to tackle the 1980s.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Sort of, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  And I'm wondering if leading into that, if we say a little bit about at least two of the works that you were doing at the end of your—degree at CalArts. In 1978, you had a piece called I Used to Eat Lemon Meringue Pie till I Overloaded My Pancreas With Sugar and Passed Out; It Seemed to be a Natural Response to a Society of Abundance.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I love my titles.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, well, you feel like you're still writing it.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So say—say a little bit about this piece.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, it's—I was probably caught at—you know, CalArts was—I mean, it was pro—I'm not—I'm trying here, let me see. In retrospect, I find that I'm always confused.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it's—I'm confused because I—I was always very excited. So, like, at this particular moment, whether I didn't—whether I knew it or not, right? I'm being—instead of being taught the modernist project, like I probably would have been taught at any other art school in the country, I'm being taught by people whom have disavowed the object, right? We—the dematerialization of the object, anti-object, anti-commercialization, right? It's a kind of—post-studio, highly critical, highly theoretical environment, right? So, part of how I end up as, you know, now in 2020, is in fact a lot to do with that sort of origin story. I've wondered, you know, if I had been taught in a more classical way, if I would have adopted a more classical approach to the practice rather than one that—unbeknownst to me at the time, like, I had no way to juxtapose it against anything else, because I hadn't been taught anything else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I only knew what I had seen, but I didn't understand enough about the practice of art yet, to see the divergence, tactically. Like, you have this kind of studio-based modernist practice of making art; you find something you're good at, and you just work at it, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You paint, paint, paint, or sculpt, sculpt, sculpt, or whatever it is you happen to be doing. That's what you do for the rest of your life. You stay very confined intellectually and materially, right? And I'm being taught something that has rejected that model. And so, while I was aware of that enough—part of the project for me, particularly at the moment of leaving school, was—how do you subvert the subversion of modernism? So in other words, if I'm being taught something that is opposed to the modernist project, which is a—which is acting against it, essentially, right? To say—to go from you don't need a studio, you don't need an object.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So previous to that, everybody—you need a studio, you need an object.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So then, how do I—the question then was, for me, how do I build a project that subverts both projects?

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This was really important, and it—it wasn't—clearly thought out. But, this is where the—it began, this is just—I'm doing the '80s before I answer your question. I mean, this is what was happening the minute I was leaving, or at the transition from the late '70s into the early '80s, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So—

CHON NORIEGA:  So describe the piece.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, there’s a couple—I was doing mostly photography and painting.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I didn't do any sculpture that I can remember at all—these happen, these projects happened to be—there's a few—actually there's a number of works that survived this particular time, that are still useful today, but, so, one was a project—both—there were two. There were—but, like classical at the time, documentary photography. Right? Both trying to—and I don't know, I don't know how I ever got on—I don't honestly know how it occurred to me then, to think about the question of whiteness, right? But what I—what—one of the projects was, that I started going to beauty pageants.

[00:05:26]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And looking at the sort of—trying to find a way to sort of explode the classical notion of what we thought—saw was beauty. The way that beauty was paraded around as a sort of device, right? Used as a—a kind of, it—it not only defined beauty both visually, but it was a form of a cultural hierarchy. So that meant that all the people that were Black, and Brown, and any other shade of color, or coming from any other world was somehow excluded from this discourse. Right, so, some part of these photographs were the—were documentary, but they were also, when you look at the pictures, they—there's something, there's another kind of intellect in them that's looking not only at what was going on, but it's sort of deconstructing it. So—

CHON NORIEGA:  So you're documenting beauty pageants—black and white?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Available light?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  All available light.

CHON NORIEGA:  And, what kind of approach were you taking to the documentations? Snapshot—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I mean, no, no, not—not shooting from the hip.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, this is highly composed.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, shooting—

CHON NORIEGA:  So what was the strategy going in, doing this documentation?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know if there was one.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I mean I—

CHON NORIEGA:  Or was it in the selection of the works?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, again I'm gonna remind you—remember then that I—I'm way younger than I should be.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Not anymore!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, okay, thank you for reminding me that.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We just start out promising.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then just fall into ruin.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you're saying 41 years ago, you were, you were very young, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, yeah, but I mean—when I was in school I was very young, and so the—the getting permission to go do these things was also a task.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And sort of make it an argument that I'm doing a kind of art project, not photographing it from a classical point of view of photo—like, I never have seen myself as a photographer.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Even though I made photographs—and I think there's a difference. Like, making paintings, is to me, is equivalent of making photographs.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They are articulations of something. They're not photography in the popular sense, the way that we've seen photography.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But, it doesn't, it certainly—wouldn't say that—I was not—and you remember the '70s? So, the '70s, photography was really popular.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Documentary photography was really popular then.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it was a—it had the ability to be used as a tool of—a form of really precise social examination, right? So, you look at Robert Frank—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you look at Diane Arbus, I mean, these are the people that I grew up on, you know. Look at Weegee, you look at all these people that—

CHON NORIEGA:  That's earlier, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that were earlier, yeah, but they were the people—whom—or even [Richard] Avedon for that matter, right? Looking at—people who really changed the trope of image-making to become something more than just a photograph. There's something else happened with it—you can't look at Arbus and not look at who she photographed and realize it's all social commentary. Right? I mean, it's scathing social commentary, right? The same with Frank, Frank—I mean, these people were doing extraordinary image-making, I think that was very influential for me at the time.

CHON NORIEGA:  And so the camera was a tool for a larger, artistic project.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's—it's—it's to look, it's to look at something, I mean, again, I'm sort of—this is all in hindsight, right, I mean, but it was—it was trying to examine—examine these, sort of these social mores that existed around me, and trying to bring the same kind of critique to them that I saw in the—like, the works that I'm describing to you of these other people, right? So—so—so one project was looking at women, and the other project was looking at men.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so it was—so it was—so, in the '70s—I had—I mean, I wish, like, my memory was better now—god, really, really famous, '70s famous female bodybuilder, and I can not think of her name.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, for the life of me—anyways, bodybuilding events in those days, which were really popular here in LA.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

[00:10:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, really popular here in LA.

CHON NORIEGA:  This is the time Arnold Schwarzenegger becomes a celebrity.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right, this is—this is—Pumping Iron—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —time, okay—there—gay men were not out in the '70s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was a completely different social vernacular, and sort of—people were in the closet, people were—I mean, there wasn't—it—you know, I mean, radically different than the environment that we see in the 21st century, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Basically—there was an aspect of gay men's magazines that were directly connected to this idea of bodybuilding.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So, again, I intervene into a—so I found myself in the world of bodybuilding. That's why I wish I could remember this person's name for you, I'll think of it.

CHON NORIEGA:  So this is the—the series that was I Always Wanted the Ears of Buddha—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:   —the Will of Nietzsche—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and the Body of Mishima, 1979.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So these are two—did you understand these as two series, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They're—they're two series.

CHON NORIEGA:  —or did they evolve, kind of happenstance?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, I mean, no, they were—they were—

CHON NORIEGA:  They were projects.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they were projects, I mean, I've always worked on the same—again, unbeknownst to me, you know, sometimes you fall into things, right? Like, again, I—the reason I gave you that example about—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —strategies and tactics, right, so I—I'm still in formation, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm still really young, trying to figure out—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —what is it, I don't even know what's going on yet. I mean, I'm not, I—I'm still kind of ultimately incredibly naive, both about the art world itself, the practice of art, the outer world that I'm existing in, having come with all the backstory that we've talked about previously, right? So this—it's, it's, it's, fabulously exciting, but yes, it ends up in projects which I didn't—which I've always done now. Which is probably a detriment to me inevitably, but yes. So this is a pro—I'm looking at—I'm trying to look at gender.

CHON NORIEGA:  Uh-huh [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I'm trying to look at characterizations of gender, and what is underlying those projects. How gender plays itself out, in—basically, in the late '70s, what did—how did these things—what did they look like? They didn't look like me, they didn't look like anybody I knew, but yet these representations seemed to be very powerful social markers, that there was some attempt to make this kind of examination.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And happening at the same time—was a series of photographs—a series of paintings I had been making, and only one survives, this—so I was making these very small, 12-by-12-inch paintings, and each one of them said "I hate a color" on them. And the only one that survived, ironically, is the one that said, "I hate white." [Laughs.] And—and again, it was these sort of done with press type, when we had press type, you remember what that is?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, so you know. There were—there were these—this highly conceptualized framing of color, right? On these white backgrounds. And then the third project, fourth project that's connected to this at the same time, is looking at—I was making these portraits of the faculty.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the most famous one I have is the one I did of Huebler.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Whom, was the dean at CalArts at the time, right? So, these sort of—making these sort of, kind of, commentaries about these people through letting them—literally exhibit their own kind of gestures, which are—most of the time were non-gestures, right? And then adding in my own, sort of, commentary on their identity in the works themselves. So I have—so somewhere in this amalgamation of these gestures, it seems the same question arises every time. They're all investigations into some form of identity.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  One way or another. Whether that's gender identity, whether that's identity that happened to be, in looking at color—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I mean, looking at color was directly connected to looking at race.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? But it was done obliquely. It wasn't—even though it appears to be direct, it's indirect, right? And then this examination of people who were supposed to be teaching me who were all white, right, was also part of the project, because I'm wondering—even the—I mean, I had a very hard time at CalArts. I—I mean, to be honest, I think people hated me. You know? And—they did not make it easy for me to learn there. Because I was, I was always the Mexican kid, I was always the poor kid, I was always like—why are you here, kid?

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, it's like, you know—and so, it made perfect sense then to pivot the critique back on the people who were teaching me critique, right? I just couldn't get the—I mean, I wish I—Asher would never let me photograph him, a lot of them would never let me photograph them. Some did, some survived, you know? But—so all these projects are either, I mean, they're mostly photographic projects, but then the painting stuff, trying to figure out conceptual ways—and that's probably a huge influence from Baldessari.

[00:15:06]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Always looking at different strategies to come up with ways of painting without painting, essentially.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, say a little bit about the titles and how you came to them.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, the titles—

CHON NORIEGA:  Because they seem at odds with the underlying—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, because—

CHON NORIEGA:  —description of the project.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, I mean, I thought—I always thought that titles—were another aspect of the work. In other words, it's not a footnote to the work. But they are kind of adjacent, literary forms that have the ability to conjure up other arenas of thought, simultaneous to the work itself. So, in other words—the titles—is there—was there—is there a way to think of a work of art not just at its face value? In other words, what if it's enabled—the work has enabled itself to be able to gesture to more than one mode of thinking at a time. So in other words, if you look into the set of works on the wall, but the title itself gestures in a different direction. Right? What happens then? It's a proposition. This is a proposition. It's—a literary title goes one direction, and the work itself goes another direction, and then the explanation, or the content of the work, is somewhere else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is a triangulation of thinking, in the work. This is—for me, this is something I'm not gonna claim, by any means, because there's lots of people been using titles throughout all of art history, but—I had felt, even back then, that I was onto something very different in the titling of work in the way that they, literally, were symbiotic with the work itself, but did not mirror the work. It was about not—a non-mirroring event.

CHON NORIEGA:  Was there a provocation against the kind of conceptual and non-object-based framework you're coming out of, where often times Untitled was the title?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah—I mean, no, I—I was thought that—I thought that Untitled, because I heard that my entire, through my whole education, I—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, because that's—Untitled really references back to the object, or to the strategy or concepts that remove the object.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right. But—so, in a pushback to that, why doesn't, why doesn’t something that—that if Untitled does what you just suggested, which is—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —inevitably referential back to the object itself, even if the object doesn’t exist there—Sol LeWitt, for example.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay. I took up the opposite position, knowing the same thing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  If I can—if something Untitled can make that referential pivot intellectually, why can't I make the same pivot, but in effect tamper with the way it's read? Instead of stripping it down to Untitled, which is a completely open-ended gesture of a word. Untitled then, it suggests a whole plethora of things. I said, so, what if I stack the intellectual framework on my side, why not push the artwork—instead of, I mean, working through really complicated—so, like, the one with Mishima, I mean, I admittedly referenced Japanese literature.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm referencing what Mishima was in this. You know, the—the—you know, the reference to eating lemon meringue pie was a—a—does it say lemon meringue, or is it—was—I don't remember.

CHON NORIEGA:  Lemon meringue.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   Yeah, so I had a good friend of mine, so the—all these things come out—so, my titles are always referenced out of everyday life. And they’re composites of things that I actually know.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, I had a good friend of mine, he had—lived in New York, he got a little bit of money from an inheritance, right? Very fucking smart. I mean, smart, smart, smart, but he was a completely lazy motherfucker. [Laughs.] But an intellectual, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Classically trained degrees, blah, blah, blah, blah. He was a writer. So what he would do, was that he—he didn't really wanna do anything except read. So he would go live by libraries, different branch libraries, and then what he did—he'd have stacks of books, and he'd go to his apartment, go to his flat, and he would eat lemon meringue pies while he read books to get a buzz on while he was reading. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then he would literally eat lemon meringue pies until he passed out. He—and so it's—it's—it's a reference to excess, in the name of reading.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And it's also a move to an extreme position. It's a—it's an act, right? And he's a writer that takes the idea of writing—not only is he writing, but he's taking his own—the physical nature of his experience to an extreme. Mishima took his physical—they still say Mishima was the greatest writer in Japanese history in 500 years of Japanese writing, right? He took his writing, at 40 years old, he says, that's it, I'm done. I've done everything that I can do, it's time to go, you know. So these are—

[00:20:26]

CHON NORIEGA:  And did you have a sense of the dynamic you were setting up then, with the works?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes. But—but not as clear as I'm saying to you right now.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, so you—you had a sense that these things should be put into relation to each other.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well—the—no, absolutely, because, as you know from the— because you've seen so many titles over all the years, right? I mean, I'm always using them—I'm still using the same operation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Trying to find ways to dislodge the static—artwork became very static, in that, like, okay, we don't—we use Untitled because we want to not push the reference point, except to—Untitled was just a way to circle back to the object. So, what if you could circle back to the object but contaminate it, right? Whatever the object happens to be. But you contaminate it though with these, sort of, what were essentially anecdotes, or things that had been very important to me, or things that I was beginning to become really attached to ideologically.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? How does that—how do you, again, propositionally, I was looking for a way out of the art historical cul-de-sac that I thought that I was getting put into. It was—I was looking—I was looking for a new model, Chon. And since a model—I had, I think this, I think historically—if my position has always been that I don't fit anywhere; I don't, I'm not white enough to be white and American, I'm not Mexican enough to be Mexican, I—I—I'm in between age groups, I'm in between movements, I'm in between, you know, I'm in the wrong school at the wrong time, you know, I mean, in the right school at the right time, but the wrong—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Historically, it probably would have done better to be—I'm always off. There's a—I'm never, I don't fit anywhere, I'm—I don't—I'm not comfortable anywhere, I'm not accepted anywhere, I'm most of the time rejected, ideologically and aesthetically, intellectually, I think then is the beginning of me unconsciously understanding that. And I'm looking to build new propositions and new models that I did not see in front of me. There was no example. As we have talked about before, Chon, think about this: the late '70s, who am I going to look at for a role model in Chicano art making? Fucking muralists? You know? I mean, that's what I got.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I got muralists to look at. Okay, this is before meeting Asco and Harry [Gamboa Jr.] and those people, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's like, that was not inspiring. I just—I mean, so in a sense, for me—I had to invent a model, Chon. And inventing the model even if—even if the model was not successful, the model was ambitious.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, how did people respond to these works and the titles at that time? Were these shown at CalArts?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  School, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Were they part of your thesis show?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, I mean—yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Didn't go over well, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, you know, you know—having you and I spent our life—half our lives, as educators, right? You know, stupid me, I thought part of our jobs was actually to help people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   [Laughs.] Right? I mean, I've had a ton of students, like—you, I'm sure, who are just like, you know, like, ehh.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They're not, you know, they're not just gonna—not gonna reinvent the wheel.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And where there's some, you know, that like, they're on fire.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And—we're always attracted to help the ones that are like really just pushing, working and pushing, and working and pushing. But you have to help the others too. That's—that's the way this works, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You don't get to reject the ones that are—you think are just gonna be duds. Right? I think my experience at CalArts was that nobody wanted to help me. And I think—the education I got CalArts was because I was just a fucking bastard. And I, like, stuck myself in every position possible to force myself to get—to get my own education. They didn't actually teach me, I got an education by default, if that makes sense to you. So—

CHON NORIEGA:  And then you kinda threw it back at them, in terms of making portraits—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  —of them, and going against—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —what I was being taught.

CHON NORIEGA:  —a kind of, as you say, the—the anti-modernist tendency.

[00:25:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, well, we, well, the deconstructive model of—you know, post-studio, and the dematerialization of the object, the kind of critical Asher-esque gesture, it was—I mean, I had to recoup both of them, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But, so, my feedback basically was something like this. They—I—because I remember very clearly, I don't know why I remember this, probably because I was—I was so confused. They said, well, this is perfect! Great.

CHON NORIEGA:  Bye. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. That that's what I got.

CHON NORIEGA:  You can graduate now.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, that's what I got, Chon. They basically they said we have no feedback for you, because this is so tight. Tight. I—they said it was so conceptually tightened down, they said there's nothing we can offer you, because we think you're successful at doing this. I said, well, that doesn't help me. And I got—I got nothing, I got no feedback from people.

CHON NORIEGA:  So whereas, the primary strategy or pedagogy at that time is—is the critique.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  It's the breaking things apart, challenging—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yup, yup, yup, and I—I was not afforded that. 

CHON NORIEGA:  —and then as you said in an earlier interview, bring that back to the practice.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  So they just—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They just—they just stonewalled me.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, in terms of the titled—what did you understand the word I to mean in both of these titles?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was never me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was always—

CHON NORIEGA:  So in—in I Used to Eat Lemon Meringue Pie, that's a friend of yours, it's a reference to a certain class and type of person.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right.

CHON NORIEGA:  And the meaning of that reference remains hidden. Its—its—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, it doesn't need to be explicated, because it's not important. I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's there, kind of, but the details of it are—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, it's encrypted, because it's a title, and, you figure, how many people actually pay attention to the title, and then make reference to the work itself. But—

CHON NORIEGA:  But as a poetic strategy that's very modernist. That's very Ezra Pound, you know?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, sure.

CHON NORIEGA:  Slipping in references to his childhood friends, and how they smile and stuff like that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  But never explaining it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But never explain it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it—but it's—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you're kind of—are you—are you, were you thinking in that, in—along those lines?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, it was, again—

CHON NORIEGA:  Or looking back, did you see, oh, this is kind of what I've done.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, because I don't—I—I don't think back that much.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm only thinking back because of you, and we're doing this thing, but if it were up to me I wouldn't think back at all. Because it's incredibly traumatic and painful. Fine.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, you put it in—you put it in one of your books, so—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know what I mean. But I—

[Telephone rings.]

No, that was me, sorry, let me put it on mode—airplane mode.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. So, and then, who—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, but it—it's, but again—I have no, I have no cultural reference point.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm—imagine this for a second, Chon. I'm sort of full of this information. Both from my father, growing up the way that I—that I—basically been on my own already for several years now. Right? I'm—get plopped into this, kind of, environment—high-end, highly, like—CalArts at the time is considered the most intellectual art school in the world. There was no place—everybody wanted to be going to school there. I mean, it—it's—it's the pinnacle of a new kind of art education. I—and, you know, later of course, everybody pushes back on that, because everybody's anti-CalArts, about this time.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But, I—again, I'm—I'm trying, I don't see anyone that looks like me, I have no cultural references to make sense of who I am and what world that I'm supposed to exist in.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I find myself to be like a floating signifier of some kind. Or I'm like, I—I'm like, everything is both confusing and exciting, and I'm trying desperately to make sense, but I have nothing—this is very important, particularly like in the '80s, right? Like, in coming out of school I have nothing to look at, I have no—it's—it's—it's like, I—it's like I'm, I felt many, many times, that I'm just by myself.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm inventing the wheel by myself, because there's no one to help me build the wheel. And there's no one even thinking like me, there's—no one has a background like me, there—nothing, Chon. I—I don't have, I—I mean, that's, that's simply not true normally.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Normally, you get—you grow up in a certain context, you recognize the context you've grown up with, whether that's class, whether that's ethnicity, whether that—whatever—I mean, there's markers for this. I got this—with my parents leaving at such a young age, I got stripped of that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I got stripped of growing up in a neighborhood. I got stripped of any kind of parental organization, of your education, I got, I mean, there's nothing, Chon. I have nowhere—I'm—I just—I'm just like a nomad. And I'm having to put the puzzle together on my own, realizing that I'm making—that my ambition in my mind, and what I believe was a direction to move in, you know, it's—it's like—it's like going out into space.

[00:30:26]

CHON NORIEGA:  So you're taking these social documentary-style photographs, and then you're putting it with this poetic, kind of more modernist language, that's centered in a subjectivity or person.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, in the, in the Buddha piece, who's the I there? Is that a particular person? Or is it a position, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, some of them are reflections on my own thinking.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And some of them are combined then with stories of things that were important to me, either personal—friends, or anecdotes, or—

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_11of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so, the Buddha particular reference was when I spent a—early on, after, living in this part of town, we lived downtown.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? But on the west side of the river. Right? Not far from Little Tokyo.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, I grew up—

CHON NORIEGA:  Your parents—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —my parents moved there. So I grew up, in part, next to a Buddhist temple.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, when I was very young, I, for example, took Kendo lessons.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I took—was the only non-Japanese kid in my Kendo class. Okay? I took Japanese calligraphy.

CHON NORIEGA:  How old were you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What's that? Very young. Like, under 10.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the—

CHON NORIEGA:  Your parents wanted you out of the house, or was this something you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I—I don't remember exactly. I think it was more my curiosity.

CHON NORIEGA:  You were interested.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was interested in this, and—and this is where I became completely seduced by Japanese aesthetic culture.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Buddhism, and the five disciplines of aesthetics, and philosophy, and it was—because it was something that was non-western. So, this is my first exposure to a non-western idea. Right? It had a really powerful impact on me. That's why I later—I'm sure we've talked—I mean, you know, I spent probably fifteen years or more doing Bonsai trees, until they all got stolen from me, unfortunately, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Actual Bonsai trees?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, I used to be, like—so I—I studied, I took lessons for fifteen years, studying Bonsai from three of the greatest Japanese sensei masters ever outside of Japan itself, living here in Los Angeles, over in Culver City at the Japanese American Cultural Center.

CHON NORIEGA:  How old were you then?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was in the early 2000s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Huh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—these—these guys—were all like old, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, like, we're talking, like, in their eighties and nineties, right? Still teaching people how to train Bonsai trees, right? And then I took my Kendo classes there again, to redo that. And—but all these forms, I first touched upon them, was when I was young, and then they came back to me later in life. But the—the Japanese approach to aesthetics, here's an important one, Chon, is the discipline.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And this is something that was very, very impactful to me. I've been—and I—I'm sure, I mean, I've been very disciplined in my life. I mean, if I set my mind to a project, doesn't mean it would be successful, but if I set my mind to do it, you know me enough—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I will do it. And I've done that in I—I think the reason the project got made the way they got made, was because I didn't see a limit. I didn't, and this is—this is actually extremely important to what you're asking.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm—I didn't grow up in a context where I saw myself being limited. So, so if in fact I'm like, you know, a spaceship without fuel, and I'm out there spacewalking or something with a little rope, just floating around, if that's my culture, my cultural position that I don't have the baggage of being Mexican American, I don't—in terms of culturally, right? I don't have the baggage of the religion, even though I sort of escaped that, right? I don't have the parental baggage, I don't—I don't have any of the baggage. It taught me to be either a victim, or that I was confined.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My position was radically different than that, Chon. My position was that anything was possible. Literally. I actually believed, before I knew better.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Before that anvil hit my head in the cartoon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? That—I'm perfectly capable, I'm perfectly imaginative, and I have very ambitious ideas that I would like to try to manifest. Why not?

CHON NORIEGA:  If you're disciplined.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  If you're disciplined.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, define discipline.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Discipline, discipline is—

CHON NORIEGA:  You say it emerges out of your encounter with Japanese culture, but what does it mean to you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I think—I'm trying to think then, as opposed to how I would define it now. I think discipline meant, then, that it was about working very hard and being very focused. On a goal. Like, specific goals. That's why I think that the inevitable emergence of a continually project-based practice came about. So, as opposed to setting the practice, ambition, into an ongoing discourse in making rectangles in the studio, i.e., painting, right?

[00:05:11]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So—which takes another kind of discipline.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, you kind of work on something ongoing-ly, right? That seemed perfectly fine, but it didn't as much of a challenge, as working on things that required a new level of orchestration, and a new level of, kind of—I'm trying to think of a word for it, hmm. I don't have—I don't have a good word for it. But that—but I think that—I looked at history from the point of view of looking at people making extraordinary contributions, through exemplary ambition in the projects that they've tried to achieve.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? That seemed a way of working that was really exciting to me. And it—and in that it required a tremendous ability to utilize multiple skill sets at the same time. So it's, I mean, I mean, I guess discipline just means, I think, at the time was—I had to work—well, I mean, so let me add in something of a side note to that, is—everyone that I ever knew, and I'm sure it's the same with you, anyone I ever knew that was a minority of any kind, we all knew we all had to work ten times harder than anybody white.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Period. That was—like, period. Like, just to get to square one.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Just to get to square one, white people do nothing. [Laughs.] And they're at square ten.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I have to work ten times harder to get to square one. And even at that point it's like, people, like, look at you like, well, you—well, you still shouldn't be here.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you saw that with your parents.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I saw that with everybody. I saw that with my parents, I saw that with everybody, I mean, the kids I went to school with, I saw that—I mean, you know, and and so, it's translated into—and also I think that maybe there's a work ethic from my parents.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Both my parents worked. My parents—both my parents worked, Chon. They worked and worked and worked and worked and worked and worked, and they had nothing in the end.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, what did Japanese culture bring to that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was—organization.

CHON NORIEGA:  The style of?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The clear style of organization. And—and a—

CHON NORIEGA:  Was there—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And a meticulous—like, so, Kendo is the art of Samurai swords.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it's done with bamboo sticks tied together. So, essentially you're learning how to use a samurai sword, but you're using—like fencing. It's the equivalent of Japanese fencing, right? So it's a mind-body connection, right? Learning to do it is like dancing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's choreography, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's about thinking quickly. But it's an elegance to it. Like, you don't just hit somebody. There's a—you know, the body moves, and the feet move, and the arms and the way your head moves, and the understanding of the opponent, and it's beautiful, right? Bonsai is—there are two basic styles of Bonsai. One style of Bonsai is to take what exists in nature and to replicate it in miniature.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Tree’s limbs, when the snow—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in the high mountains—like on a pine tree, branches start like this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But when the snow comes—

CHON NORIEGA:  They droop down.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they droop down. And then what happens is that the branches then take on the shape.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, in order to replicate that, you have to train the branches, you have to very carefully wire every branch and every little arm, and you have to shape it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You have to have a vision to shape, and the other's what they call freestyle Bonsai, which is essentially taking the traditional style—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —but allowing it to do something in—you basically improv with the tree. Taking it to new, abstract, directions.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, now following natural forms.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right, but still taking the same tree, but taking it to the extreme. So what happens when lightning hits something. Right? How does it then adapt itself? Right? I mean—there—there—it—or, you know, calligraphy, it's the—it's the brush, it's the right amount of ink on the brush—the ink has to be exactly the right viscosity, right? It's—paper and the moment, it's—it's, so, you practice on sand first, do you know this?

CHON NORIEGA:  Is this something that is at odds with both the modernists—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and the anti-modernists?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Form meets function.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

[00:10:01]

CHON NORIEGA:  Idea meets function.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you're bringing style back into this. Now—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's so—that—like, the reason this is important, and you're onto something here is, you—you—I want you to take note as you go, right, like, how many different sets of idea or ideas are in my head at the same time, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't have one—I do not have one idea of one project of what the world's supposed to be. I have multiple ideas of multiple strategies of the possibility of utilizing all of them when it was necessary. So, the thing that I learned about Conceptualism was this. The object didn't matter. What mattered was the delivery of system.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You have an idea, and you find the right delivery system for the idea, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Perfect. Perfect Conceptualism.

CHON NORIEGA:  But where does style fit into that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know! I don't know, but I was heavily influenced by it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I'm influenced by the—as you know—as you can see, through the titles on the—all—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —my constant—my attachment to literature.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? I'm a non-literary literary person. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Is the phrase "the will of Nietzsche," is that itself a gesture to this idea of being disciplined toward an outcome?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  And does that discipline, yes—Nietzsche—Nietzsche is not dead.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Dead.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My t-shirt today. [Laughs.] Just for Chon, actually.

CHON NORIEGA:  There we go.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] Chon doesn't have a t-shirt on today.

CHON NORIEGA:  I just wore flannel.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, because it's—I'm looking for structural models, Chon. I'm a structuralist.

CHON NORIEGA:  But are—is that a will outside of a morality? Is that the sense of it, or is it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's both a recognition that there is a morality, and then it's a will to be outside of it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Or to be free of it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right. And—and again, I didn't, I only had to escape the traditional categories of confinement.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then—in order to then try to build new ones. So, but the—to recognize where I was frees me to think about something new.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The project has always been to invent a new vocabulary. To invent a new way of thinking about the possibility of how the manifestation of ideas ventured forth. It seemed that, in my case, early Japanese attachment to—or exposure to certain tropes there, early exposure to western philosophy, or their early exposure to poetry, then this kind of western, this kind of West Coast Conceptualism, you know, the, there's something—I mean, I didn't know this consciously then. I mean, now I do, but I didn't know then, but there's something—there's something happening here, it's like a priorital, primordial ooze—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that I am coming out of. I don't see anyone around like me, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't see anyone around me that preceded me, and I don't see anyone around me when I'm going to school that's like me, I don't see when I get out of school I don't see anyone around me—like me, again, right? That in terms of—not in terms of ethnicity at this point, just seeming—I don't see anybody thinking like me. So I have two options; I have one option is, is that I am wrong.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I need to, like, toe the party line. Like, get back in line, get back in step.

CHON NORIEGA:  If only you could do that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  If only I could do that, which I've never been very good at doing. Or just continue to invent—a new aesthetic. A new genre, if you will, of something. Without actually knowing what the something is yet.

CHON NORIEGA:  So what did the phrase "the body of Mishima" mean to you in the context of what we've been talking about?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What the body—because Mishima was an extremist with his body towards the end of his life, he was, he—Mishima was gay, Mishima perfected in—in his book Patriotism, in particular, he talks about the discipline of his body, and he basically builds his body the same exact way that the bodybuilders here in Los Angeles are doing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  His physique was perfect. You know, he would have a small loincloth on, and his body would be oiled up. I mean, he was just completely ripped. I mean, it was a perfectly physical body. A perfect, non-western specimen of masculinity, right? And the masculinity that Mishima had was a gay masculinity. Which is even more important, right? Because it's not a traditional hetero representation of male, white male masculinity, because it's something else. It's coming from something else. Again, I—I'll be honest, I can't say that these codes are all—I'm consciously deconstructing these codes at this point. But my intuition is right.

[00:15:15]

CHON NORIEGA:  There's something happening.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My intuition is right, in moving, in trying to look at what is around me, and I'm trying to reorganize who I am in the midst of this environment that I'm existing in. Meaning the—LA. At this point, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, meaning—making it through CalArts, and the struggle that is, I mean, it—there's something—I—it was very exciting, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was very exciting, because I felt limitless, I never felt I had limits. Only till—it's only been in the 21st century that I feel that I've been straightjacketed.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Really?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, seriously, it's only been in the 21st century. I've never felt that before. My entire life, Chon, I felt completely free—and something we never ask ourselves, Chon, how come we never ask ourselves, you know, what does it mean to be an artist? What does it mean to be an artist, Chon? You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  And you—what were you thinking at that time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  At that time, it was freedom, it's always been the same thing. I—I—you've heard me say this a thousand times, Chon, freedom and autonomy. And in this case, it seemed to me, all the examples of art in the 20th century that I had seen before me, right? All the examples, if you wanna look—go back to the Renaissance, right? Were people who operated, or appeared to operate in freedom, that they had—they were—you know, if you're gonna look at Leonardo and Michelangelo and you wanna look at the men of the Renaissance— obviously there were women, we don't know who they are, I don't know who they are, but—what were they doing? They—they did everything, Chon. They didn't—they didn't limit themselves to a model of—the operation was not singular. So, I've never acted that—that's why the I is never singular. The I is always a we.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  For me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Intellectually, it's a we, I always have been a we.

CHON NORIEGA:  That's not a universal we, is it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, it's not a universal we.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you're patching together various perspectives.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  At the same time, you know, it's like, so I—you know. So, also, for example, I'm—I was perfectly—I knew very young that—there were many voices in my head. Many. I think at one point I counted 10. And I'm not sure if they actually had completely—some had very distinct personalities, and others were very vague.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But what it—but what I—before I understood psychoanalysis, right? I—I knew then that meant that you didn't have to be a single way in the world. That in fact, the opportunity to be many different ways, still coming out of the one body.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Why is consistently—consistency privileged over the multiplicity? Why is singularity privileged over the opportunity of the many?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? It—it didn't make any sense to me. It—it—it's like, well, okay, today I'm like this, tomorrow is—not like the same person, and they go, like, who are you? [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's like, wow, you know, it's like, wow, somebody else. You know, I mean, you know. So I guess they call that schizophrenia, or I have multiple, you know, personality syndrome, or they—it's always been a—it's seen now as a deficit. It's seen as something that is not stable, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You're—mentally stable individual. It's like, well, okay I'm not sure that William Burroughs, who was very influential to me, I'm not sure that he was a mentally stable individual. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Not sure many people are.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, but I mean, that might be true—

CHON NORIEGA:  But we have a myth.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —but we—we have a myth, but also—but, what I'm advocating for here, is something else. I'm advocating for taking advantage of that, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  How do you actually encourage instability? What if you actually took the instability and use it as a methodology.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So in other words, you know, the only sane person is the insane person. I mean, sane people are not—who would trust a sane person? Who would trust somebody that's stable?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it means that the—they—it's not only a regiment, but it's repetition. So the regiment and the repetition are what I—it was like the plague for me. I did everything in my entire life to avoid repetition. This is another thing that fueled my curiosity for experimentation, was that, why repeat the same experiment once I've experimented on something, why do I—why am I gonna repeat that? I'm gonna move on to another experiment.

[00:20:13]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And another mode. So, modalities. Ways of interacting, ways of creating, ways of invention. I mean, everything was about invention. Especially then, it was just like, pewwhh, it's like—it's like, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you were splitting this notion of discipline—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, discipline—

CHON NORIEGA:  —as a—as an approach from that notion of discipline that we have in the academy.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah, no, I could care less about the academic disciplines.

CHON NORIEGA:  As an arena within which we propose certain—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, yeah—

CHON NORIEGA:  —kinds of investigations using certain methodologies.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah. I mean—I think from a—

CHON NORIEGA:  So you're —

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so, I learned scientific method from my father, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so, you know—one thing that I—I mean, that I learned very early on was, you know, you—you come against—you come across obstacles or challenges that you cannot figure out. My dad said, what we do is we work the problem. Because that's what we do in the lab, he says. You get—you get the people together, you find out what the obstacle is, you find out what didn't work, and you work the problem.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And as you work the problem until you come up with the best solution possible, it's not the only solution, it's not the best solution, but the solution that will solve the problem right then and there, you just keep working it and everything, that—nothing is left unturned, Chon. You—you just, you keep looking at it, you would look at it upside down, you look at it from the inside out, you—you add—you—you—you come up with theorems to attach to it that should never be attached to it, right? You just—it is completely open-ended. This was like—when I learned that, I was like, oh! I get that, I—I—inside of myself, I understood this.

CHON NORIEGA:  That's a very different approach than what was coming together at that time—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I didn't fit—

CHON NORIEGA:  —which is you approach things with a discipline and a paradigm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, no, but Chon, I didn't—they didn't let me fit in.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Chon, you—you have to realize, I'm in a school that didn't want me there.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I didn't fit in—I—they didn't let me participate in the way I should have been able to participate. Because I was treated like the stupid kid. Literally, they, you know, that's—I—you know the cliché right? The stupid Mexican, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  1970s, this is how I got treated, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  —so, 1979, you have your thesis show, they say, great, we have nothing to say, and you're done. You're graduating—you're what, 22 years old?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not even 22 years old.

CHON NORIEGA:  21?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Maybe 20, or 21. I don't remember.

CHON NORIEGA:  What's that like? What's that moment like? Just your—you—you finish school, your parents aren't there, what are you thinking is the next step?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, I mean—I don't think I ever thought like that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I thought, like—I looked for opportunity. So, I look—I looked for things, this has been the same my whole life. I don't—again, I—the 21st century has been such a clusterfuck. I don't, but—so I—I knew I needed politics, because I didn't have politics the way that everybody else seemed to have it. So I sought out who was the—the best person to study with, which happened to be [Herbert] Marcuse. So I—I audited his class at San Diego. Right? So then—then in 1980, so I'm doing that, and I sort of accidentally get to be, you know, I got a job working for Klaus Rinke, so he's then teaching me Beuys, so then I'm taking this sort of—all these things that we're talking about, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  And that's from—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —'80 to '82.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, and where is he?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He's over in Venice.

CHON NORIEGA:  In Venice.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. So imagine, I have this education, I have this confusion about my identity, I have this confusion about my place in the world, I have—basically everything's a confusion for me. Right? But I have some—all of a sudden I have, but I have—get taught by very solid people, right? But now I'm getting taught by Europeans. Not Americans. And I'm also getting politics from them. So Marcuse is, I mean, that—he's teaching me Marxism. Nobody ever taught me Marxism yet, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's my first introduction to this idea. Comes from him.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is like—someone took, you know, the dark glasses off of you. I mean, it was illuminating, it was exciting. It was exciting, Chon. Because it was the possibility of re-thinking the world that I was in here in Los Angeles, right? And then Rinke, Rinke taught me Beuys, directly—

[00:25:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —not from a book.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And Beuys, you couldn't get any more political than Beuys, you can't get any more—sense of—I think, art-making, the objects of Beuys were secondary to the performances of Beuys and the politics of Beuys.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In the end, you know—I mean, I mean, Beuys said, the end, you know, the teaching was his greatest project. He didn't disavow his work, but he, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  He didn't fetishize it either.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —he didn't—exactly! And, I mean, if he's gonna say that teaching, the passing of knowledge and the experience of knowledge, with others, with young people, is what he thinks is the most—where he really excelled, that's something to take note of because, we're talking about—I mean, Beuys is not popular in America but, you know, you're talking about—Beuys was so prolific it was unbelievable. I mean, he—he made—it's a mind-boggling amount of production.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This guy was able to create, and his impact, certainly within Europe, and other places in the world, this is profound. You know? In terms of thinking about social sculpture, it's not the way you—you can't even—you can't interpret Beuys from a 21st century point of view, because it's wrong. You'll miss it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? You can't attach any of the fashionable politics of our time—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to Beuys. Beuys was—Beuys saw himself as a shaman.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, Beuys was a healer. I think Beuys was, if Rinke taught me correctly, I think Beuys was trying to reconcile what had happened in the war.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And—you know, Rinke was the first generation of a postwar artist.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Rinke wasn't in the war. He was a child of the war.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And so this kind of guilt that was—that he talked about, I understood growing up as Catholic. As a different kind of guilt. But I understood—it was the first time I ever started to really re-imagine how Catholicism had affected me so much when I was very, very little, I mean, the—you know, how much it fucks with your mind, you know? Anyway, the—

CHON NORIEGA:  So your understanding of Beuys is from someone's direct experience—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Direct.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and memory.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was—he—I mean, directly, I mean, he told me anecdotal stories of Beuys teaching him. So he interpreted Beuys' teachings to me. This is—this—between these two things, and this is when I go full-on German, right?

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  This is where it started.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is where it began, Chon. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, it wasn't Munich.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I mean that's—that's another—

CHON NORIEGA:  That's another story—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —but I don't—you know, I don't understand Munich, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't—it—it's the spectacle of the—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's a global spectacle.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it's a global spectacle that is useful for me, actually, Chon. If we think about the projects in the '90s, this—the—you know, just to jump a little bit. Something that I didn't realize till much later—the scale of Munich taught me something that I use as a vehicle later, it's that you can—you don't have to operate—see, again, what if you can operate at another scale? What if you can—what if this, like, making postage stamps in your studio is not enough? What if you could operate the size of a city? What if you could impact a nation? What if you could move, scale-wise, to propositions that challenge the reading of aesthetics, right? This is something else, Chon. There was nobody in front of me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nobody, I mean—Duchamp maybe, Warhol, maybe Smithson.

CHON NORIEGA:  This is in terms of the public—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, think—well—see, I would take the public away, I'll just say art that is operating at another scale. Right? That it's not—like, why is it Smithson can go from making gravel and mirror pieces in the gallery, and then, next thing he's doing is he's doing Spiral Jetty?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That is—that is incredibly attractive. Because it oscillates between two poles, two scales, that are completely disassociated with each other. It's not just going from big to small, it's going from macro to micro. It's looking at the proposition of art completely differently. It rejects the confinement of the rectangle in the studio, and this sort of prolonged examination of color and form, and all this stuff.

[00:30:02]

I mean, and also it—it cancels out the possibility of linguistics. The idea of language in art. Which was very important to me. It's always, as you know, has always been important to me. How does language insert itself into the aesthetic form, right? And while there's—there's a number of good examples of that, the question was how to move—again, how to look at this terrain and how to re—to appropriate what had sort of been previously done, but then to re-imagine—I mean, it was all—so—I think one avenue of the project has always been to take what I can learn, to see what models exist, and then completely re-imagine a new project that has its tenets that lie structurally inside of these other projects. Does that make sense?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. So, this is something you can date back to Munich.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  And then, in the early '80s, and you're working with Marcuse and Rinke.

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_12of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  Where is your work? Where is your art practice at this point? What's beginning to happen?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, okay, so we have to add in here—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I have absolutely—I don't just have no money, I have a negative amount of money. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, New York was going bankrupt then, too.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But we're talking about—you know, we're—you know—you know, poverty level, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, the one skill set I had—I had sort of one thing I could sell. [Laughs.] Which was making photographs.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So—I mean, and again, this is tied to another conversation we'll have later when we get to the '90s, but, you know, Chon, I've said this to you before, and I, I'll say it again, you and I both have jobs.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I—and while it's—I think, probably for me, it was a mistake. Because I think that I traded the paycheck—for a paycheck, I gave away the thing that I desire the very most, which was to have freedom and autonomy just to make work. And I—I should have taken another path.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I didn't do it. But in the early '80s, if you're asking—so we're doing this—I was just completely broke. So I made photographs. So I shot for every newspaper—I shot for newspapers, I shot for magazines, and then I shot for performance artists.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I have an archive. Like, the best performance art in the United States was happening in the late '70s and the '80s in Los Angeles. Period.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Every—I knew everybody. Everybody from—everybody hired me. I went to everything. I have early pictures of [Paul] McCarthy, I have, you know, early pictures of the Kipper Kids and, I mean, you name—you name anyone that did performance art or punk in the late '70s and the '80s, and I have photographs of it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? And, I mean, everybody. You can't—there's not a performance artist that came out of Los Angeles that didn't know me.

CHON NORIEGA:  And you would do this to sell to the papers?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, no, I did that to—they wanted documentation.

CHON NORIEGA:  So they would pay you to document.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They would pay me to do that, and then I did other work where I—I would get hired by the LA Times, I would get hired by the newspaper—literally, newspapers would do photographs for them. They would say, go shoot this person, it's a piece for the Calendar section, or in those days it was Los Angeles magazine and all the—I mean, all I—I—I worked for all the magazines and newspapers shooting photographs for them. So, it's like for—I was, you know, freelance.

CHON NORIEGA:  So what's the time period in which you were doing this?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Through the '80s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Throughout the '80s?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Throughout the '80s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I never had a job.

CHON NORIEGA:  Huh?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I never had a job.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was my job.

CHON NORIEGA:  That was it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—and—I—my response to getting a job? Oh, my god, Chon!  I mean—no, think about it, I had no money, I had no parents, I had no nothing. I—I guess I have an education.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, but I know, I know I gotta have a place and I gotta like, you know, and—pff, who's gonna fucking hire me? I mean, nobody's gonna hire me for anything. And I'm not gonna do some stupid—I mean, I knew enough not to take some stupid-ass job somewhere. Didn't do it. Fuck it. I just hired out—I just hired out my—the one—one quantifiable skill set I had.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you did freelance photography.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm doing freelance photography all over the United States. I—people hired me—I shot for the New York Times, I shot—I mean, everybody.

CHON NORIEGA:  Really?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. I was very good at this. I was very good, Chon. No, I mean, like—this—untrained, and—I—I was never trained.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No one over taught me how to do this, I just figured it out.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the reason—this is important. For everything else, it's the same approach I used my entire life, Chon. If I didn't know how to do it, I just figured it out.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You get a book.

CHON NORIEGA:  You work the problem.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You work the problem. You get a book, you—you look at it, you—you just start researching, you go to the library. Go, okay, how did other people do this kind of shit?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So I—it was, that was my approach to art-making in the—when my—and again, a serious mistake.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I made so many mistakes, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  Why was photography a mistake?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   For—because—the problem with photography, the problem, Chon, the problem, the problem, the problem. See, okay, so, as you will remember, video, photography, installation, and performance as a scene, as new genre—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right? In the '80s—was the tools that were being used by minorities—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —because we didn't have access to the regular art world. Right? I mean, that's a—that's a very generalized statement, but I think you understand my sentiment here right?

[00:05:03]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were modes—I know that we've talked about this before, and you were right in your assertion that the simplest way to make art would be to get a piece of canvas and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Put some paint on it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —put some paint on it and you have something, but there's also the notion of, what are you gonna do with it?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Because you had artists in the '80s, were—become—start, from the beginning, the first wave of artists becoming very successful in New York. It's the first time you saw work being collected, and you saw the rise of galleries in New York, right? Contemporary art, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Re-thinking of things, Metro Pictures, and the Pictures Generation, and, I mean, there was a lot going on, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—you—you also have, you know—you know, what I believe was our nemesis, was October magazine.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So, the sort of a quantification of what was being demarcated as being really smart, intellectual conceptual work. And then, and those the ones that we crown as being the gods of this, and the ones that we reject, right? I think in the entire history of October they had one non-white person they wrote about.

CHON NORIEGA:  In the '80s?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Yeah. You know, and—but this is supposed to be the pinnacle of intellectualization, right? I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —this is—this—they're the fucking gatekeepers.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And, so it—if those, if those media are the tools that allow for a kind of subversion, or a kind of a radical intervention into the field, I ruined it for myself, because you can't do both, Chon. You can't do both.

CHON NORIEGA:  What? Commercial photography and fine art?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You can't—you can't do commercial photography and do fine art photography at the same time.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—

CHON NORIEGA:  At that time.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —at the time, no, at the time, but the '80s, you couldn't do it. And then I realized another thing that was—was a detrimental to me, was that—I had—well, two things, one is I realized that no one ever respected me as an artist, because they saw me as a person that makes photographs.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I realized that nobody was interested in the aesthetic of things that I was interested in, because they didn't fit in anywhere.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So again, I'm faced—if I was faced with a non-categorical way of thinking in a non-categorizable mode of producing art, that I—what I didn't realize was that that would be categorically rejected, because you need to have a category.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And so—

CHON NORIEGA:  You're categorized if you do, and you're categorized if you don't!

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and you're categorized if you don't!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, it's all like—you know—but I—but what was open to me was Europe, right? Europe was very open. So, this is a long question—so, coming out in '80, there was a call for projects—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —for—they were interested in projects reflecting Los Angeles for the Olympics, were coming in '84. And it was just—it was like someone had handed me the fucking keys to the city, Chon. I was like, I—typical of me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I said, okay, I wrote this proposal for something I had absolutely never had done, and no experience in. And I had no idea why I thought of it, I don't even know how I thought of it. I said, I'm gonna make holographic films, I'm gonna invent holographic films for you. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Was this even a thing?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This was not a thing.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This was not a thing.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And could you be—

CHON NORIEGA:  Your dad help you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, no—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I wish my—no. But how they—I have no idea why they told me yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  So who was it that was running this—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm trying to remember who.

CHON NORIEGA:  Was it the Cultural Affairs Department, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, there was an official Olympic Committee—

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —Arts, Olympic Arts Committee for the Olympics. I do not remember who, excuse me, was—I don't remember who.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you applied.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I applied with this project, saying that I would do filmic portraits of the diverse nature of people in Los Angeles using—making holographic films.

CHON NORIEGA:  And where would these be shown?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were gonna be shown at USC.

CHON NORIEGA:  At the—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  At the gallery.

CHON NORIEGA:  —I'm forgetting the name of it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't remember the name of it either. Anyway, so, the problem here, Chon, was—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, this is gonna be a gallery-based exhibition—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —of holographic films, right. But, you know, I think I— probably, you know, wrote this thing, not even in a million years thinking they would take it. [Laughs.]

[00:10:03]

CHON NORIEGA:  The Fisher Art Gallery.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—they did. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  How much did they give you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, they gave me a lot of money.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't remember how much money, but they gave me a lot of money. I mean, at the time—I don't know, three hundred thousand dollars?

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Something like that? I got a lot of money, Chon. You know, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  That's a trip!

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so, you know, I'm like a baby.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. 

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I hadn't even had an art show yet.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I haven't even had a show yet.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because that proposal was in '80. So, I'm listening to Marcuse, I'm listening to Rinke, I just come off of like making some photographs and whatever, and boom! I thought this was the way it was gonna be. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, it was, then!

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I thought that was the way it was gonna be, forever!

CHON NORIEGA:  No, just—just once.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So you had four years to invent a new technology.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, basically.

CHON NORIEGA:  So what did you do?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, for—first—I was already interested in three-dimensional things anyway, three-dimensional imagery, so I did some research, figured out what was going on a little bit, like, so I found out that leading this technology happened to be a guy named Lloyd Cross.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Lloyd Cross was one of the three physicists at Michigan State who invented the laser.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Cross was eventually blacklisted, because he—on ethical grounds would not work on government contracts applying his technology, the laser, right? And so they—in order—since they couldn't get him to come on board, they blacklisted him and rejected him, right? So, he was a renegade physicist living up between Santa Cruz and somewhere.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, he left this faculty life?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He left the faculty—no, he forced out.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because he wouldn't cooperate on the DOD projects, right? And, he was just like, you know, like a hippie physicist living in California, right?

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  I'm sure there were lots of those back then, right?

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, but not that had invented the laser.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This guy's—this is—he's the real deal, Chon, I mean, you—you can look this—

CHON NORIEGA:  So somehow you came across him?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I—I researched and I—so I—the original project started up, I started looking for physicists.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I knew that I needed a physicist. Why I knew—how I concluded that I needed a physicist—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I can't actually tell you. But I knew I needed one. I mean, I was adamant about that I needed a physicist.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—the one thing I remember, perfectly clear, I had to have a physicist. I was just obsessed with one.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you found one.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I found one. So, I—I—I—

CHON NORIEGA:  Hired him?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Huh?

CHON NORIEGA:  You hired him?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no well, I—I said, to him—first I had to find him, he was like a recluse living—he was—basically—I forget where, on the coast, north of Santa Cruz, I don't remember where, though.

CHON NORIEGA:  He's in Monterey Bay?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Maybe. Maybe Monterey Bay. Anyway, he was in a cove. He lived—he had his whole complex, where he was basically—so, when I first—it took a lot of correspondence to get him to see me, first of all. And then—then he says yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you're writing letters.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm writing letters, because they—nobody would answer me, phone calls, and I got rejected by every other physicist working in the university context, they laughed at me. Right? When I said I wanted to do holographic films. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  When I finally got to him—so, this is gonna be useful. That—and saw his lab, his basically ad hoc lab. His lab—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and the—just inventions, just inventing shit, that's all he was doing, inventing—amazing stuff. Looked exactly like my father's lab. I had a complete deja vu.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you photograph them?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I didn't photograph it, I wish I had. Or, I might have and lost—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so I went up there, and I basically pitched it. I said, oh, you know—is it possible to do free-floating imagery? Is there any way that we can do this, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That hasn't been, really done, and—and we started thinking, right? And we needed to build—excuse me, all the technology had to be invented. So it was essentially lenticular—holograms. Right? But we didn't—we had to build a printer, we had to build the lenses, we had to build—everything had to be built. There was no technology that existed that could come off the shelf.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So I—I basically commissioned him to work with me. Because I had money. And then I commissioned more people, I started going down the line of what I needed, so I—every time I needed another skill set that I didn't have, I would go find somebody who was like Lloyd, and like what I thought was like me. Basically, nobody got much money.

[00:15:12]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were interested in the idea of possibly pioneering something, right? And it—and it—and the other lure was the Olympics.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's very high-profile.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  So who else were you involving?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm trying to—I don't—he's the only person I remember—Emily Hicks, she—

CHON NORIEGA:  She wasn't a scientist.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, but she was a theorist.

CHON NORIEGA:  Uh-huh [affirmative]. Down in San Diego.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That one, yeah, but she worked directly with me on the project by bringing in a new kind of theory that I had not been exposed to yet. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  So, this isn't just about the science, it's also about the critical framework that it's sitting in, okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely, sure. Because it was an opportunity to expose this sort of collection of people, and they—all the people that were—that I picked to make the holograms of, were all people that I knew.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were all people, like, you know, basically minorities—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in one context or another.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, I don't—you know, that—were just outside of the frame—again, you know—I don't know why I ended up thinking so much about race and identity in the '80s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I did. And it came out in this—in these odd and peculiar ways. There was a whole—I mean, I can't remember everybody now that was—there was a whole team of people that I assembled to do this.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, do you have the paper trail for this?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Somewhere, maybe.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Not easily accessible, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, I'm sure it exists somewhere. There was a guy in San Francisco, if I could remember his name for you, he was a Latino guy, scholar, historian—he wrote a book on this.

CHON NORIEGA:  On?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  On my holograms.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, really?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not specifically about the hologram, but he was looking at California, and I cannot remember his name. Very well-known Chicano scholar. He should be dead now.

CHON NORIEGA:  Should be, or is? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know. He seemed old when I met him. And I think I met him in the '90s.

CHON NORIEGA:  So he wrote about this?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He—well, he—

CHON NORIEGA:  In the context of a larger book?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In a large—he wrote a chapter in the context of a larger book. And interviewed me extensively about it. I probably remembered better then. But any—but anyway, the—

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, interesting. Was he at Berkeley?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was at Berkeley. I'm almost positive he was at Berkeley.

CHON NORIEGA:  Alex Saragoza?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, no—

CHON NORIEGA:  Like, what, was he in Chicano studies? Or was he in a—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  History?

CHON NORIEGA:  Is this, is Richard—he's got a Spanish name.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  And he did this—I know—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Val—not Valverde, um—

CHON NORIEGA:  No, no, I know who you're talking about—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Uhhh, come on, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  I remember—I see the book, it's got this, like, very flowery work on the cover, it was about California.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  Cándida. [Richard Cándida Smith]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Cándida, yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  Is that it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes. That's it.

CHON NORIEGA:  He's still alive, I think.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Is he?

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, I was on a committee with him a few years ago. [Laughs.] But—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Isn't he really old?

CHON NORIEGA:  Um, we all are.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, isn't he really old?

CHON NORIEGA:  I don't know.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He's a lot older than you and me.

CHON NORIEGA:  He's got another book that came out fairly recently.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anyway, he, I don't remember—

CHON NORIEGA:  So he wrote about this piece, okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah. I—he was—

CHON NORIEGA:  Somehow I missed that, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He—yeah, I don't—I don't remember—he just came out of nowhere, you know? Like, and said, oh! I heard about this project, and like—you know, I was much better—I had more memory in the '90s than I do now. But—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But anyway, so, to answer your question—in terms of work, I get out of school, and so I'm—one, I'm still being educated, so my post-graduate education is my falling into place, sort of, with Rinke and Marcuse, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I simultaneously am trying to figure out how to make a living taking photographs for people, which is—threw me into an interesting world, freelancing—

CHON NORIEGA:   Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —for newspapers and magazines is interesting, actually. It's not a life that I wanted, but it's a way to make—I made, I made more money in the '80s, Chon, than I make now probably, you know. I mean, it was easy. I mean, I was very good at it, and I made a lot of money. You know? And, you know, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  But it didn't require discipline? Did it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What's that?

CHON NORIEGA:  Being the photographer. You just worked from assignment to assignment.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, but, I mean, freelance—what do you mean it doesn’t require discipline?

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Just throwing it out there.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Of course it requires discipline!

CHON NORIEGA:  See how you respond!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, because I'm—so, I'm in school still, I'm, one of my, one of my teachers, I had to work for him, that's my trade-off, right? I traded to be his—Rinke's studio assistant, to help him with his work, right? So he was—you know, Rinke made giant sculpture and giant drawings, and so I helped him in the studio doing that, which was great actually, because—

[00:20:16]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —he taught me a lot about being in the studio, while he taught—and the trade was no money, but—Beuys, I'm, I get this opportunity to put in a proposal, I—they accept it, unbeknownst to me. So I'm trying to figure out how to logistically make this project out of thin air, which had never—again, no model for. Holographic films and holographic sound, right? And I got a lot of corporations to jump on board, which I—all the gear we got, state-of-the-art equipment, all came from corporations. Because they wanted to be part of it. So we got everything we needed to make—

CHON NORIEGA:  So who helped manage that part? Lining up the—you did it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Every—I did—I did—

CHON NORIEGA:  You just call them up.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I just start, I just call people. In those days, I just called people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is who I am, this is what I'm doing, I'm working on a project for the Olympics, we need X. So Tascam, for example, provided us with 24-track studio recording machines.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Four of them. Four. What would normally never leave a high-end studio, with 48 studio level monitors, for me to create what I created, was essentially, I made a model, 48 speakers, four 24-track recorders, to invent something called holographic sound. And I got—

CHON NORIEGA:  So they went along with the—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —went along with the—it was the immersion environment that the holographic films were in, and I got—composer I worked with then was a guy named VinZula Kara.

CHON NORIEGA:  So that's when you started working with him?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yup. VinZula. And then I also got another—he was a composer, and then I got a secondary composer who I—a guy I met up at CalArts. Who was the boyfriend of Shirley Temple's daughter. [Laughs.] He—and I got to know—that's how I got to know them really well. Lori Black, and I just can't remember his name right now. They were doing audio, both of them—two different composers doing audio, I mean, I had—

CHON NORIEGA:  And what was the audio of?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The audio was—that's a good question.

CHON NORIEGA:  Because these are each portraits of—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The—the—the—each film had its own audio.

CHON NORIEGA:  And each film was a portrait of a—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Person.

CHON NORIEGA:  Of a athlete?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, people—just regular people in LA.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Completely normal, everyday, regular people in LA. No, they weren't athletes. Like, completely nondescript people. Like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —like nobodies. In a sense. That—don't mean they're nobody, but there's no—

CHON NORIEGA:  They're not known.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they're not known, they're just people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Everyday people.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like totally, like, pedestrian everyday people. And them telling stories—

CHON NORIEGA:  So you're hear—hearing them—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —hear stories, when you watch the film and then in the room, it was—it was an abstract—it was a composition like a—like a—electronic music composition that tried to take advantage of the moving sound three-dimensionally in the space. So, an abstract composition.

CHON NORIEGA:  And that's VinZula's—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  VinZula and this other guy both were working on—

CHON NORIEGA:  They did musique concrète?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, basically.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you have that, and the audio.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I have that and the audio, I have the installation, I have the— Cross, and the people—I had several of them doing that.

CHON NORIEGA:  And is there a sound design, in terms of the space?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, no, it's all done, all done on computer. Everything was—no, in order to figure out, we recorded everything on these machines and then played them back, on the same machines.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So we're using 24-track studio recorders as playback devices.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? In—in the—in this space, I mean, it was fabulous.

CHON NORIEGA:  How big were the images?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The images were like this big.

CHON NORIEGA:  So they're about a foot-and-a-half tall.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Yeah, I had to make—

CHON NORIEGA:  Were they on pedestals?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, they were on—I had to make a device so they could rotate. So that had to be invented. Like a way to show them.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, everything—I mean, it was—Chon. [Laughs.] Nothing existed.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Before we did this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Was this inspired by Star Wars—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't, I don't know, I—only—

CHON NORIEGA:  —in terms of the holographic images, or—? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, you know, actually—oh! [Snaps fingers.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, good, good. Okay, so—when I was a little boy, like, with birthdays or Christmas—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —what was the best thing you could ever, ever get? In Los Angeles?

CHON NORIEGA:  In Los Angeles?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. What was, what would be the, like the pinnacle of a present to get? To go somewhere.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, to go somewhere, Disneyland? Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Disneyland.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know—you know my Disneyland story?

CHON NORIEGA:  No, I don't think so.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, you know—oh, okay.

[00:25:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  Your parents left you there for a week?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, it's—oh, okay. You might, this will make perfect sense to you, then.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Now you'll understand everything about me now.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I this—my—my Disneyland story is famous, I'm surprised I haven't told you. John Valadez loves it. I mean, he's—he's one of my—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Do you have to tell it to him every time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Every time I see—he goes, Daniel, can you tell me just part of the Disneyland story?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, so, the same year—I was eight years old, the same year my father was reading Descartes to me, I get to go to Disneyland for my birthday.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So we went—in those days they had, you know, it was more primitive than it is now, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, I went to the one in Florida around that time.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, but this is the OG Disneyland.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not Florida shit.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But so—but then—then it was very, very impactful on me in many—it manifested in many stages of my life. Particularly for the animatronics, but speaking of where the holograms come from, this is where they come from.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I remember going to Disneyland, I—I went there my whole childhood. Many, many times, right? But so, seeing Abraham Lincoln stand up and do the Gettysburg Address was just, like, wow! That's just amazing. I don't know what they—or the Pirates of the Caribbean, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But in the haunted house, here.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In the haunted house, Chon. They had fucking holographic images floating all over the fucking place. And I was like, how the fuck do they do that?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And some—some of them were really clever projections, they had a lot of different kinds of technology they were using to produce the ghostly effects of the Haunted Mansion, right? But that's the source. The source is there. Disneyland became, ironically, this—their use of technology, to reimagine things that present as entertainment, became incredibly fascinating to me, to sort of like re-tool them right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anyway, so when I'm eight, we go, it's the daytime, doing—doing Disneyland things and rides and whatever, and, in those days, they had the electric light parade, traveled around, you know, and they used to have—when the parade would come at night, it would march around, Tinker Bell would be at the top of the Matterhorn. And then she would fly down—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and end at the parade, and fireworks would go off at the top of the Matterhorn. You know, it was a big—all that kind of stuff. So this particular night, that Tinker Bell is up there, and she's like an acrobatic artist. Right? So she comes on, they have a cable, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So she flies down on the cable and does a thing, right? So this night, she's coming down, and you hear a boom, and you hear ahhh! And pshhh. Tinker Bell—cable broke, she fell and splattered on the concrete in front of me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Ugh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, literally, right in front of me. Tinker Bell died.

CHON NORIEGA:  She died?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  She died. Like, oh, you kidding me? She just came straight down, Chon. It was like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —like egg on the pavement. But it—but she, but, no joke, she landed like from me to there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, wow. It's like within five, six feet.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah, it was just like, peww, like that! Right? I mean, and—[laughs]—I'm not laughing because she died, I'm laughing because, you have to imagine—it—[laughs]—it's impossible that a Disney character dies. I mean, you know, they don't die. They live forever—

CHON NORIEGA:  But the actor sure did.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and ever, right? I mean, but, this, I think, Chon, I think that event is the key sort of traumatic event in my life. It's not the things that we would normally assign it to, it's not like getting beaten or sexually assaulted or, you know, racism; all those other traumas are all there, and they're all present, because they all happened to me, but they seem minor in comparison to this event. Right? And, so that is something that has never left my psyche. Never.

CHON NORIEGA:  No?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I—I think it actually radical—

CHON NORIEGA:  And were you there with your parents?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  They were standing there beside you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Standing there right next to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think—I think this completely altered my trajectory, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  In what way?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I don't know, exactly. I—I don't think I ever recovered from it. I don't—it's not that it wasn't a personal thing, it's something about—like, personal in the way that I didn't know this person, there's no person—there's no relationship here, like a family member, or a friend of a family member, or something, but—something about the image, dying, something that is presented as immortal, the immortal nature of the configuration, or the present—the presentation of this space that Disneyland has occupied. What, for the past, safely say, 100 years, maybe?

[00:30:08]

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I don't know, but it was, it—it changed everything, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It—it—I didn't see, late—this is much much later, this is like, you know, now—

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, did you freak out at that time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No. No, I was just in complete, like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Shock?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —just shock.

CHON NORIEGA:  No crying?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No crying, no nothing. It was like—looking—I mean, looking at the body, and looking at the blood, and looking—just like, you know. I had never seen a body like that. Never seen blood—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —like that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? And I think my—I think— I think since—I think describing all the things, especially when we go back this far, Chon, you know, I'm like, it's—it's been school in the '80s—'70s and '80s, as the '80s are maturing—I think what was—I think what's different—

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_13of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —about me, is that I don't see the world the way everyone else sees the world, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I'm not talking about some ideological difference, or some difference in—cultural difference, I'm talking about like—I generally do not see the world the way everyone else sees it. I see it very differently.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I think if we—if I wanted to describe that to you, I would tell you something like this, is that, I don't see the world the way it is, I see the way the world the way it should be. And I—and the discrepancy between those things. Now, mind you, the way the world should be is predicated on a world view of mine, which is obviously flawed, of ethics—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and principles, and morality. Which is definitely coming from my education with the Jesuits. At—so the, so the—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, this is a critique?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think so.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think so, Chon. Because I think—but it's not just a critique, it's a—it's the—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, the 'should be' is a direction away from a state of things.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I'm—I'm—I—I—I struggle with the Catholicism, I mean, I rejected Catholicism categorically. But it doesn't mean that I didn't learn things from them.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The Jesuits are fabulous. I mean, they were fucked up. Talk about a group of fucked-up people, right? I mean, they—they, what? They invented the Inquisition?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They went around evangelizing everyone on the goddamn planet, you know? They were monsters. But they were also the intellectuals of the Catholic Church. They were also the revolutionaries of the Catholic Church, because when they were here after, you know, the colonizers were really fucked up and colonizing, the Jesuits were the ones who would revolt against, with small tribes, particularly in South America, right? Against the Portuguese, and against the Spanish, right? Which is a contradiction of faith. You know, they're supposed to be their—I mean, it—it—I mean, they're schizophrenic, I think. It—but—and I think that schizophrenia, that—the sense of good and evil, the binary of that, it left some kind of moral imprint. That is—that I have not been able to escape. And I—and my rejection of it, is partly—no, no, not partly, is an almost an entirety attached to what—as you, I'm sure, will agree with this, but, I mean, most of my life people have told me that I was the angriest person they had ever met. Just like outright angry, all the time. Like, people always, you know, I was certainly the angriest Chicano that has ever lived.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Nah, not even close.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  You laugh the most.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I—yeah, I know. [Laughs.] But—

CHON NORIEGA:  Of all the angry people, you laugh the most.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I know, because laughing is the antidote, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But, I mean, there's something, there's—I—there's a psychological profile here I'm trying to describe to you that I don't actually have a handle on.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it has—this complexity has something to do with what questions you're asking me, right? And it—so, in '82, just to add—just to make this even weirder, in 1982—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —or actually 1981, I don't remember exactly, it's—has to be '81, I got a job for the Times, there was a direct—film director, making this new science fiction. You want to go—you need to go photograph him for the cover story that we're doing on him. Who does it happen to be?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Take—just one wild guess, 1981, who's the—what's the greatest science fiction film—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, George Lucas?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no—

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, '81?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Sighs.] That they're making then?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were making it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Was this Ridley Scott?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So in 1981, I met Ridley Scott making Blade Runner.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, the Times sends me to do a photograph of him, portrait of him. And I'm—in those days, you know, I was like—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you did the photo that was in that story?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Shit, man!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   Yup.

CHON NORIEGA:  See, you made me swear on the interview tape.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Fuck!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Put that on the Smithsonian!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, so, I meet him, and because I'm looking—like, I'm very good at looking for opportunity. I said, look, let me work for you.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I said, let me shoot pictures, let me have access to the set.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Let me shoot for you, pictures that other people would not be able to shoot. He loved me—he loved the picture that I did of him, he called me, I said, he said, let's do it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I worked for Ridley Scott, during the production of—of Blade Runner. How fucking cool—

CHON NORIEGA:  So you met—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —is that?

CHON NORIEGA:  —you met Eddie [Edward James Olmos]?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I met everybody!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I met everybody, man.

[00:05:01]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. So, what happens—what happened to those photos?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, they're like every—all of my photos, they're somewhere.

CHON NORIEGA:  But he—he got a set?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, I made prints, I—yeah. I made prints for him and everything—everything—anything he wanted, I gave to him. But—pewwwghh.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   My brain.

CHON NORIEGA:  So that's happening while you're developing the holograph—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  All while I'm working here on the holograms, while I'm listening to Marxism, you know, while I'm listening to the, you know, I mean, while coming out of the tunnel of Conceptual—you know, post-studio Conceptualism. You know? And then, so, '81 or '82, I meet Asco.

CHON NORIEGA:  So that's—you met them pretty early in the '80s.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Yup. Yup. So—[laughs]—it's like—

CHON NORIEGA:  And they were getting attention in the LA Times and La Opinión at that—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —we—yes—

CHON NORIEGA:  —right? At that time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, yeah, I mean, and I—I met them, I mean, I met them, I went to something of theirs, and, you know, again, and I—I think we can make—the list will be how many errors have I made in my life by the time we're done here, but—so, this was the first time ever, so I feel like I'm a nomad, in the world. I'm just moving through the culture, inventing shit. Right? I'm inventing a way of being, Chon, does that make sense?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, I don't, like, there was no—I rejected, I—I'm pretty clear about this. That I rejected any kind of normative model of what had been put in front of me of what an artist had been described as being.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I said, an artist can be as I define it. I am living an artist life. The definition of an artist will be what I define it as. And given what the pre-history to us had been, right? In—in the 19th and 20th century, or just to say the 20th century, for sake of argument, there was no reason, that I—that would make me believe I couldn't not do that. Because everyone that preceded me, in the 20th century, invented a way of being, and people then—then looked at that way of being, and it—whether they agreed with it or not, it is something that—these were people inventing things. I wanted to be like every other artist that I'd ever seen, and I wanted to invent a lifestyle of being an artist, and a way of being in the world that was about this experimentation. It was about projects, it was about propositions, and was—it was about this—another kind of sense to oneself. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I—I—so when I meet Asco people, was the first time I ever saw anybody that looked like me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  First time I ever saw anybody that looked like me. In a way of—and making work. Like, make—being in the arts, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So that was shocking, to say the least. Because I didn't have to explain myself anymore.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, we're gonna focus, I think we'll focus on them specifically—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, I just wanted to bring that up, because I think it's important, because—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —what I'm trying to describe to you here, is the—

CHON NORIEGA:  The moment.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the moment is important, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's—it's—look at the—look at—look at what I'm—I'm either finding opportunities or I'm inventing a way of being, Chon. At this juncture. I'm like a baby, and I do not feel inhibited in any way, shape, or form.

CHON NORIEGA:  So your photography, and the way that—'72 is taking you around the country.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  It's putting you in these different moments in, kind of, our cultural history.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  You're meeting Asco. But you also have this four-year project to get a holograph exhibition of—

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  —invent the technology and get it—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Get it running.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and get it set up for the Olympics.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  And it's during the whole—it's there during the whole—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  During the whole run of the Olympics. The three months of the Olympics, it's there.

CHON NORIEGA:  So how would you describe the exhibition once it was done?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well. Okay.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, so—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I—I—there's no dancing around this. We didn't make it.

CHON NORIEGA:  It didn't happen.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, it did happen.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But we—but I blew the opening.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, I see.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I completely blew the opening.

CHON NORIEGA:  The opening in terms of the public ceremony, the opening of the Olympics? You were late! [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I mean we—couldn't, I couldn't—it was too ambitious, Chon. It was too big, and I—I couldn't solve all—I was close, I was this close.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was an inch close, so we dragged one of the sculptures out—

CHON NORIEGA:  So this was supposed to be in the stadium as well?

[00:10:02]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, no, no, just a—

CHON NORIEGA:  Just at the gallery—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —just a gallery show. We dragged out—the rest of them, the whole exhibition didn't work.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  For the opening. I made it work after.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But, so in, but so—I just dragged one out to show them one sculpture that worked—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They didn't all work. I couldn't get them all to work.

CHON NORIEGA:  At the same time.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  At the same time.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was—if I told you it was humiliating, it would be an understatement. You have to imagine the bravado that—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I had then to get—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to get away with this shit, right? I mean—I, you know, one thing I really realized early on was that I could talk my way in and out of things.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I might not have been good at writing, but I'm good at talking.

CHON NORIEGA:  There we go.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So how—how long did it take to get the thing up and running?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, we—we solved it. We solved it in, like, a week later.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was very close. And then we had another opening that was fine. The reception was, it was, so—my first—the world became crystal clear when it opened, Chon. Because after it opened, this was—this was, yes, okay—so, my point of view, right? I'm gonna do my point of view, and then their point of view.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My point of view was, I had put together an amazing team of people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And we invented something that didn't ever exist before. It did—it did in some, like, very lazy ways, and—but this was very conceptually tight, intellectually tight, historically relevant work of new technology that I pulled out of a rabbit’s hat.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay? And, four years went into this project. Right? And, yeah, I mean, I—I—I'll just say it, I failed I mean, I didn't make it happen when it was supposed to happen. But it still was something, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  But it was functional.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, it was fine, the sound, everything worked, when it worked, it worked. It was beautiful, okay?

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  When it got reviewed—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is when the world came crashing down with perfect fucking clarity.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The—I—I—it got one little mention somewhere. It did—no one even bothered looking at it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It didn't even get—it got nothing, Chon. Nothing. They pan—it was just panned. You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, just ignored.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Is that because of the venue?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't think so—I don't think so. I think that they—I think there had never been a Mexican in the art world yet. What I think.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And there had never been any—somebody operating at this scale, yet.

CHON NORIEGA:  Were the people that were shown in it, were they mostly Mexican American?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, they—the—Asians, Mexicans, Black.

CHON NORIEGA:  So it was that racially diverse.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Minorities. Oh, no, the racial make-up was really—no one had ever done work like this before, Chon, no one was doing identity—representation through identity of everyday people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, the politics of the everyday, right? Which is really important here, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —we can go back to Paris and we can look at Berin [ph], we can look at, I mean—there's lots of avenues, I mean, you know, we look at Situationism, which is highly influential. I think the '80s, I think the '80s was my investigation of Situationism, you know? I mean, it was—Debord and Berin [ph] projects, and thinking, I could—fully embraced. You know? And that coupled—that coupled with my sort of Beuysian, heavy Beuysian influence. At this particular juncture too, right? You know, but, we—the world wasn't ready—the art world wasn't ready for minorities yet, Chon. There was no such thing.

CHON NORIEGA:  So it got ignored, like a lot of the other exhibitions that had happened before.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, but, I mean, this should have been on the front page of everything. It wasn't on the front page of anything.

CHON NORIEGA:  So what—what was the reception like at the opening, or when—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, you know, people—people liked it, I mean, they don't—I never, it was—everyone lied and said they liked it.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They did. It was a beautiful thing, but it was so far outside—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —of the register of what art should be. That was the problem, Chon. It was outside of the—any quantification, or historical precedent, to examine a genuine art and technology project.

[00:15:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  And this was funded as an art project.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Art and technology project.

CHON NORIEGA:  Art and technology project, okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, yes. No, this was full-on billed as art and technology.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know what I mean? And—you know, I was—you know, Chon, I was, I—what—what do you want me to say, I was too young, I was too ambitious, I wasn't—I wasn't smart enough, I—I—I bit off more than I could chew. I mean, I'm not making excuses, I—you know, why doesn't it count? It didn't fail, it just was made invisible.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay? This was the first time I realized that—why—why wasn't what I—why was my effort inconsequential?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And was a very, very, first time, and this brings us up to today, for a conversation you and I have, and go all the way back to 1984. It was the first, like, real stab in my side where I understood what I do, no matter what I do, is seen as less than my white counterpart.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was perfectly clear to me, Chon. Because people were getting accolades for doing things that I could have done in my sleep. Literally. Stuff that would take me not even—I wouldn’t have to be—I wouldn't have to be conscious for it. I could be unconscious, and do the things that people were being—claimed as being geniuses for. And here, I actually attempted to reconfigure an aesthetic social political matrix, with new technology, and I was just—I was just laughed off the block. I was—I was just laughed off the block, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  So was there explicit criticism, or was it just not paying attention?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I mean, maybe there was one little thing in the Times that I remember—they buried me, if it was.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I just remember—I just remember—just invisibility, and when—if something did come up, I would just hammer it to the ground. I mean, they didn't—there wasn't a—not a—not a thought to the invention of something.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There wasn't a thought, think—I mean, nothing, Chon! I mean, it was, it—it was, it was bad. It was—it was devastating for me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did everyone that you were connected to through Asco, did they show up at the opening?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no. No.

CHON NORIEGA:  No?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No. I kept my—I kept those lives very separate.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you didn't want them to cross over with you, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did they even know you were doing this?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't think so.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't think so.

CHON NORIEGA:  They—they didn't know that you were photographing Blade Runner?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No. No, I kept those worlds all very separate. I'm not sure why.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, why? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Why? I compartmentalized.

CHON NORIEGA:  But, you knew you were doing that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  You made a decision to do it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah—and then—and then, to my own deficit, I have lived a lot of my life compartmentalized, and it's—it's really been, it's really been damaging to me, Chon. I've not lived a whole—I've not lived a whole integrated life, I'm not—I'm saying that to you, like right now, 2020, I'm—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —my life has always been compartmentalized, and I think it was for survival, though.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, so obviously it was doing something for you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, I think it was survival. I don't—I think that—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, if you say there were 10 voices—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean you, know. But the thing is, Chon, that like—

CHON NORIEGA:  How do you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, but I think—I think I was a kind of mutation. I think—I think of my existence as a mutation. It's not an evolutionary process, it's—it's something that evolved—out of something else that was not planned. I think my entire practice, and my entire way of thinking, is a mutation. And hence I—my—my constant rejection, and my inability to be categorized, and my inability to be quantified, intellectually, is—there's—my—somehow I just, I just have always rejected the status quo. In every way and shape and form. And—and it was a mistake. I think. I do—I think it's a mistake in the end, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I think—

CHON NORIEGA:  In what way?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —because I think, when it's all said and done, I'm gonna—I'm gonna—I'm gonna die with an empty bag in my hand. Like, there's gonna be a hole in the bottom of the bag. And I, like, look in the bag, and it's, like—what did I do? What did I—what did I do? Because I—I don't know, Chon, I—I—I, you know, I'm like, there was no, there had been no reason—you know—I mean, no one said, no one said—I didn't get any honest feedback with the project.

[00:20:13]

CHON NORIEGA:  What was it called?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Peoples of Los Angeles.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] So short?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  For the Olympics.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, I see.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had a—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I knew—I knew my audience.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. You knew how to pitch it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, no, I mean, no, in terms of the project, the project was incredibly well attended. Oh, they had—I mean, the—the voice, the audio, the interviews, the little stories that were being told, they were—each story was interpreted into nine different languages.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So then I covered the nine—

CHON NORIEGA:  In audio?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, in audio. So anyone can punch a button and listen in to whatever language, because I took the nine structurally most diverse languages on the planet, that would encompass the maximum amount of people that would visit the Olympics.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, so.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So you could put on the headphones, and if you wanna hear it in Chinese, it was in Chinese.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You wanna hear it in Russian, it was in Russian. Spanish covers a lot, right? Certain languages I could cover, but I mean, nine different languages were interpreted, so then people—there were tons of people there.

CHON NORIEGA:  So this was really meant for a global audience?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This was designed—no, this was designed, The Peoples of Los Angeles was designed as a model of intellectual and social pushback, on the notion of representation, Chon. I—

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I invented—invented represent—ethnic identity politics here.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now did the committee that sponsored this, did they pull back from promoting it, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  And was that because it was late?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's because it was late.

CHON NORIEGA:  They had—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it was late.

CHON NORIEGA:  —scheduled everything for that moment, and, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There—I was supposed to be this big, supposed to be the big crowning jewel, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I fucked it up. Took a long time to recover from that, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  You're not gonna apply for the next one that's coming here? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think that's also why, you know, that—I think that's why I went to Europe.

CHON NORIEGA:  After that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Because after—after this was over, I really, you know— lots of opportunities started arising in Europe for me. And it was all performance—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —video, telecommunications, stuff like that. So I would—so the practice—and this is along—this is again getting back to your question, you know, what was the art like? So, the art in the '80s manifested in two ways, it manifested through art and technology and performance—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and it manifested through photography.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I eventually—I—essentially was inventing technology. So, after, after the sort of—just, it took a few years, Chon. So—

CHON NORIEGA:  So the—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—oh, go ahead.

CHON NORIEGA:  —the piece, though, do you have any—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:   —of the original objects or components?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I have a few.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  A very, very few. I have a couple of the—beautiful—our original models of everything I made out of wood.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So—

CHON NORIEGA:  So you have like the maquettes of them? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I have the maquettes of them. Right, and I have a couple bits, somewhere.

CHON NORIEGA:  You can't fire up and—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, I had to—I had—but I have some of the original film. You know how it's done, right? I mean—what you do is you film something—you have a subject, doesn't matter what the subject is doing, okay?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It can move and talk and jump, doesn't matter what it does. But—to shoot it, you have to shoot—

CHON NORIEGA:  Around it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —around it, because you have to get all the information. Okay? And then what happens is—it's made of a lenticular line, vertical lines.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Each vertical line, each line, has six sides—

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —on the optics.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So each piece of the plastic line, six sides, each one of the six sides is a different view.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And by going around the object, each one adds more information as you move perspectival-ly around.

CHON NORIEGA:  So as you move around it, you're seeing a moving—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Image.

CHON NORIEGA:  —figure.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, but remember, you're filming a moving figure, but you also want the image that you see to be moving.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, as the lenses move, your eye sees that the image is free-floating in space. So you have a cylinder like this—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —like, this big. The image is free-floating in the middle.

CHON NORIEGA:  Within the cylinder.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Within the cylinder.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it is completely free-floating. It's not a—I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's not pasted on the surfaces.

[00:25:02]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, no, it's completely—it's just like it was in Disneyland.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. It's floating.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's a completely free-floating image, Chon. Nobody had done this! It—it never had been invented before!

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so the image, so—the reason it was spectacular, was they were in color.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay. First of all, okay? And the other thing was that we had to invent the print—we invented everything! We had to make, we had to invent, so what we did is—the reason I needed Lloyd Cross was because I needed lasers.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The way you imprint the image on to the lenticulars was through lasers.

CHON NORIEGA:  I see.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We print the laser, the image is translated to a laser, the laser put the image back on to the plastic.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which is a lens.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's basically a lens.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And then as the lens moves, the image appears because there's a light source, so the vertical images are like this—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the light source is a very specific kind of bulb that produces horizontal light waves. So, as the horizontal light waves come up like this, and the vertical lenticular images go like this, as they pass each other in the center of the tube, poof.

CHON NORIEGA:  They create an image.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It creates an image. It's an interference pattern.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's—it was just fucking magical. It was magical, Chon. I mean, with these stories. Talk about—people wanna talk—today, you know, I hear we—we want to tell our story, like the—I mean, this is the catch-all phrase of the 21st century. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had people telling stories about their lives. Most of them were immigration stories.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  How they first came here, or how their parents came here or somebody came here, right? They were these beautiful literary stories. Small stories of people telling something about their lives. Simple, elegant, beautiful, right? With this fantastic sound, three-dimensional sound in the room, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Do you still have the audio?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't have anything, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow. Did you patent it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No! Of course not. Of course not.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, it was a one-off kind of a project, and then—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Yeah, but the thing was, Chon, is, had I'd been—had somebody had given me money, I could have made the first real free-floating—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I had the team—we could have done what—the next step we were actually planning, so the way you'd do—is that you remove the cylinder. And we had a—we had already built a prototype. And what we had done is, we made two, full-length, new lenses that were filled with oil.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And what we did was we shot the lasers through these lenticular oil lenses and made the image appear, not in a cylinder anymore, but in between two lenses, because these were multi-faceted lenses.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So the image was like a prism, it would go in here and come out over here.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And they actually—the first one we did actually floated in free-standing space. Nothing encasing the image.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  All I needed was some R&D money. I could have gone on to the next level and made a full, narrative film, utilizing this technology.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But they—you know, they—I was just, they just—I mean, they—they—nothing, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I got nothing from this. It was a—it was a categorical failure. You know? Not what it was—not what it was, it was a—so this, this—this, this was bad for me here in LA, Chon. Because it set a precedent.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, people didn't want—I mean—I tried—I tried to get regular shows here, nobody put me even in a regular show here. You know? It was—it—it was like—fucking Scarlet Letter. It was devastating for me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was fucked up. And, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So after that—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I started doing heroin.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Do we need light?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah a little, it is getting dark.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Right after that, huh?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  And you went to Ignacio, Colorado, and you did a series called My Father's Trees [1985]?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, no, my—that—[Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  That was like, right after? Like '85?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, no, but that's—my— [Laughs.] That's my ongoing, estranged relationship with my parents. Um, no, I was at my—so my—my mom and dad live in the middle of nowhere. They don't just live in a small town, Chon. They live an hour outside of the small town.

[00:30:02]

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay? I mean, they live—they—

CHON NORIEGA:  New Mexico and Colorado allow for that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So they—you know, my dad, they bought like a hundred acres of land, right? It—could—probably when they first moved out there, it's a long time ago, it was probably really cheap, right? And they, you know, I guess my dad, space wasn't enough, so when—I think—I think my father's rejection—and what he suffered in the program, damaged him.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I think he, I think part of his—my mother and father's immediate becoming recluses, and living in complete isolation. So my father was essentially a survivalist, you know? In other words, they live in this middle land in the middle of fucking nowhere, right? My dad installs solar panels. He—he puts a generator in the river, to generate electricity, and he's doing all this crazy shit, because he could do it.

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_14of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He could—he was smart.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He when he needed a piece of technology, he didn't have to buy it, he just built it. He built a lab there. He put up a big barn and put a lab in there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And whatever they needed my dad would build. You know? And fucking guns, and cowboy hats, and all that lifestyle. Right? They were—they were—they lived in isolation.

CHON NORIEGA:  They were Brown survivalists.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Basically, you know, and it took all—you know, I didn't see—I hadn't seen them for a long, long time, but anyway, the trees.

CHON NORIEGA:  You hadn't seen them since they left, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah and, my father—[laughs]—he—he—took trees that he liked from California.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  He left you behind.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   He left me behind, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Took the trees.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The trees that he—that he became accustomed to out here, and trees that he really liked—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —he thought he could plant those in the fucking Colorado winter. You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Out there!

CHON NORIEGA:  Like palm trees?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What's that? Not palm trees but like, you know, I'm trying to think of, just the common—like, evergreens that we would have here that don't live in that kind of—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —perennial weather, right? So he tried to—not directly from here, but he would buy plants, have them delivered. They would be trees that would be California-weather, not palm trees, but, you know, like the junipers and all those, all these kinds of trees that—they were from basically—this kind of climate condition. And he tried to grow them—[laughs]—in Colorado which is, you know, gets below zero in the winter, with mountains—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they live at the edge of the Rockies, so it's mountains, fucking mountains of snow there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And he insisted, insisted—eventually, I mean, now, I mean, there's—I think they have 300 trees, full-grown trees.

CHON NORIEGA:  They survived!

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not all—no, no, that's part of what the project was about. Now, I mean, there's—because he went and bought indigenous trees.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But my father was big on planting all these trees, and having them grow so that he's there—the place that they live, is surrounded by beautiful trees.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, and it's the only place for miles that all these trees exist. Because all the rest is farmland. So he grew these all—you know, to protect the house, from wind—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —dust, all these sort of logical things you—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's important, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —do out there, right? But the time I took those photographs, I took pictures of the trees—they were like failed attempts of these trees to live.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And they seemed identical, to me, to the project of the beauty pageants, and I—to the project of the bodybuilders, because they were attempts at producing a kind of ideology through an action. In other words, you believe in something hard enough, you try to manifest it through a series of behaviorals. Sort of movements, and things like—so bodybuilders are a code for being gay, right? But it's also this sort of extremity of the formation of the body. Right? Beauty pageants are the, sort of, the extremity of the representation of one kind of idealized beauty, right? The way I photographed them was the opposite of that. It laid bare—it was—it was a critique of beauty. Right? The bodybuilders are probably an endorsement—[laughs]—on the other hand of, right, opening—like an opening up of this kind of culture, and again, like you said, it's like—it's a time of, you know—thinking about Schwarzenegger and Pumping Iron, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, that had been a sub-culture since the '50s—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, these are—but these are—

CHON NORIEGA:  But it was suddenly becoming known.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's what I—that's, yeah. And I happen—

CHON NORIEGA:  And then all these codes of masculinity that the country had had for two decades were gay, they were queer.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Exactly, but—but again, I had a knack—I think I've always had, I think—if I look back, if I ask, if I said there was one thing that I—have been—that's been consistent, I think I have always been ahead of the cultural curve. I think that I ended up exposing bodybuilders and beauty pageants long before anybody thought about exposing them, in—and looking at a critique of what these sort of systems meant and how they functioned. Like cracking the code, right? The holograms was about cracking an art and technology code and the representation of the unrepresented. This was exactly what this was. The representation of the unrepresented. Minorities, Chon, I put minorities in the fucking—at the top of the Olympic discourse, right? The, you know, the trees seemed to me the same. My father, both failed and successful attempts at trying to grow trees where they shouldn't grow. He tried to grow trees that couldn't grow. But it was—it was my dad's belief in his independence.

[00:05:13]

CHON NORIEGA:  What was he trying to achieve?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was trying to bring something back that they loved from here.

CHON NORIEGA:  Was it you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  You wouldn't have survived there either, right? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no.

CHON NORIEGA:  But it's strange, you go back and you see them for the first time in, what, eight years?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  At least.

CHON NORIEGA:  And—all these relics of LA are dying.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, it's just, I don't know, I mean, I—it was spot on though. I mean, I knew I was making a portrait of something. A portrait of, maybe, my own psyche, maybe the failure in the trees was like kind of some sense of failure on my own part, already. Because I—

CHON NORIEGA:  So why did—why did you photograph them the way that you did?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because they seemed unreal.

CHON NORIEGA:  Because it was very, uh—dark?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean they're beau—they're very beautiful pictures.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  If you look at them in the big book, they're like on vellums—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and they're—I mean, they're—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's very low contrast.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —oh yeah, low contrast, and they're done like, you know, in a very kind of primitive—what we considered a kind of primitive style, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Is it black and white?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They're black and white, yeah, yeah, yeah, but they're—no, the register that they're put in, is very specific.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's a dream state, Chon. It's a—it's a—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it's a state of unconsciousness for me, it's—you know, I—I—I hated where my parents lived. I hate where they live now. I hate—I hate the country.

CHON NORIEGA:  They're not—are they in a different place than that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, same place.

CHON NORIEGA:  Same place. Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I hate the rural, I hate the farms, I hate the country.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I hate nature. I don't like any of it. And it's because of my parents. I remember when I was little—my dad always wanted to be outdoors with his parents and, and, I hated it.

CHON NORIEGA:  But he had left?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What's that?

CHON NORIEGA:  He had left, he had gone to LA.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I know, but that's why they, I mean, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  He was ambivalent.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —he, yeah, I mean, I hated the country, I hated farms, I hate cows—it's fucking working class bullshit—I just—

CHON NORIEGA:  You don't seem like a country guy.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, I just hated it, Chon. I hated it. My dad tried to shove it down my throat and I hated it.

CHON NORIEGA:  That you should like this, even though you've never been—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah!

CHON NORIEGA:  —exposed to it before.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He—he wanted me to be like him, you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I—just—I hated it, Chon, I hated it more than you could imagine I hated it. You know, I just—I had this idea of being a campesino. [Laughs.] There's nothing worse, could have—and this is the problem that, you know, that sort of schizophrenia coming from my father. My father was brilliant, but—and a scientist, and he taught me a lot, but he also wanted to be part of the land, and he wanted to be self-sufficient, and he—he —I hated horses and cows, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Is this actual schizophrenia? Or is it metaphorical?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, this is metaphorical, metaphorical.

CHON NORIEGA:  That he had these two unreconcilable—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But he had two unreconcilable ways of being in the world, one that I embraced, and one that I rejected.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, yeah. I don't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you ever show those—the photographs anywhere?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, one show—it was very hard to get shown in LA in the '80s, what did work well in the '80s were all the non-profit spaces.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I showed at every—every city had a—Seattle, LA, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, I mean, every major city had a non-profit space, a big one.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I showed at them all, over the course of time. That's the only place you could get a show. You couldn't get a show in a—

CHON NORIEGA:  Gallery.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —gallery.

CHON NORIEGA:  Or a museum.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Or a museum, that's a joke, but, I mean, I—it was because I had a good pedigree, right? I have a—I have a really unusual and spectacular pedigree, Char—uh, uh, Chon. And—you know, I—I parlayed that, I mean, I knew what all the hip galleries were, I knew what people, who people were being shown from CalArts, my peers were getting shown, and I went to places like, you know, I was, like, well, you know, look at this, I have this and I have this and I have this and nobody would show me. They would do nothing. You know, so a lot of the work and—again, to your question, a lot of the work in the '80s manifested as installation work.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, a lot of, like—the stuff in Europe was installations, you know, in technology, so, in '84, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, do you know who they are?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You do?

CHON NORIEGA:  I know Sherrie.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know Sherrie. Sherrie's dead.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So they're the—Kit and Sherrie did Hole-in-Space in 1980. Do you know this?

[00:10:01]

CHON NORIEGA:  Unh—uh. [negative]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, okay, you'll like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Hole-in-Space?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Called Hole-in-Space, it's one of the most—it's probably the seminal art and technology project ever done. What they do is, they figured out how to use a computer, and video cameras into live stream, a two-way portal. So in other words, they had a computer and a video camera in New York, and a computer and a video camera here in Santa Monica where their studio was, and they opened them up both at the same time.

CHON NORIEGA:  This is the video net? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right. But this had never been done before, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is brand new technology. No one had ever done it.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, how are they transmitting?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Called Hole-in-Space. What's that?

CHON NORIEGA:  How did they transmit?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't remember exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  It wasn't through telephones.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, no, no, it was something else. Some other—but it was—it it—was revolutionary.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because they—so the problem with Kit and Sherrie is they were technologists, and they were not artists.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay? Mind you, I say that because that I—they, Kit and Sherrie always saw themselves—I love them both, I knew them forever, right? They saw themselves as artists.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The failure, though, what was the major failure of all art and technology projects for the most part in the '80s, was they were always very heavy tech, low on the art. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, that's just the—always the way it's been, because it hadn't caught up with itself yet.

CHON NORIEGA:  I think I did read a piece on this one.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is famous, I mean, this is like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —like, seminal famous, I mean, like, of art and technology projects ever to exist. So people in New York would be like this, hi, hi hi, hi and the people in LA would be like hi, hi, hi and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —nothing ever happened. Still brilliant, still fantastic, okay? So, they had the Electronic Cafe in Santa Monica.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, in '84 they show me a new technology. It was—I wish I would have brought it to show you, this is—so, my project is going on, but I knew everybody else that was doing projects in the Olympics, right? Because it was a kind of—we were all operating under the notion of McLuhan's Global Village.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The McLuhan bible was the bible, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, this is very communications—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, yes—

CHON NORIEGA:  —oriented—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —their work.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But this was the bible, though.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, the Global Village was what, I mean, all of us in our own way, was attempting some aspect of the manifestation of this, right? Anyway, Panasonic—very first time it had ever been invented, invented a new object, it—something called Slow Scan video—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —device. And what it was, was a little box like this, Chon, not bigger than this book.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  With a screen half this size, okay? I have—I have still two of these.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, really?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And what you did was, you plug your phone into it.

CHON NORIEGA:   Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And what you do is you hit a button, you—you would have one and I would have one. So what we'd do, hit—one audio button and one image button. The audio button we could talk, because it's a phone line.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But what it did is it piggybacked a Slow Scan video image on top of the audio.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, so what you do, you push the image button and tik tik tik tik, really slowly like this, tik tik tik tik, it would provide—a video image. Slow, awkward, bad resolution, but it was the very first one.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, this was like binggggg, like, this was, like, made Hole-in-Space look like nothing, because it was, it—it was corporate. Panasonic was inventing this stuff, right? So anyways, so, like, with the Demon Angels show [Le Demon des Anges: 16 Artistes Chicanos Autour de Los Angeles, 1989] that was traveling around Europe, right? I was doing projects, I was doing different projects for every place it went, doing different installations and—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, Le Demon des Anges.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  And that was in late '80s.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was the late '80s. But prior to that, doing these sort of performances. Like, the performance scene in Europe was really, really strong, right? And I got invited to do—come and do—performances all the time, but a lot of the things I did was—doing these sort of technology performances. You okay?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I figured out a way to use—because, remember, cell phones then? Cell phones were the size of a brick.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. I do.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So what I did is, I made a kind of—I took—the idea the cue was taking from, how film people would be able to shoot. In those days, they would have giant battery belts. For the cinema cameras. Do you remember those?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They wear them and they would have power.

CHON NORIEGA:  And the cameras were big.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Big giant cameras, right? So what I did is, I took a lot of film technology and I adapted it to utilizing both video camera, Slow Scan video, battery belts, and what I did was use two separate phone lines, one to deliver the audio, one to deliver the video. And I would do these international telecommunications performances, where I would do performances live, technologically on one side, and they would have—at Kit's, they would have—they would do stuff on their side.

[00:15:25]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  These things were huge successes. They—they never—in the interview that Kit did, he said that before that, they never—no one paid attention to any of the art and technology stuff, he said, when—the very first project I did with him I was in Barcelona.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—

CHON NORIEGA:  So you were in Europe.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, and Kit says we realized that—that, when—because in those days, Chon, like, you know, we're talking—like, now, is '87, probably.

CHON NORIEGA:  Uh-huh [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? It was very easy, I mean, LA in the '80s, I could throw an event and a thousand people would come.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was not hard. And same was with Asco, I mean, all these things were giant, successful events, because there was a community of people that were not white—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —who wanted to do and participate in stuff and go see stuff and be—it was exciting, right? I took the crowd from Downtown, east side, south side, and brought them to Santa Monica. They all came to Santa Monica—I'm in Europe, doing these performances, sending images where they can do stuff, and they're sending stuff back to me, I'm doing stuff there, sending back to them, but they're, they're very thoughtful, orchestrated, I mean, they're real performances, they're not just—

CHON NORIEGA:  You're bringing—you're bringing art into this—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I'm bringing art into the technological realm, and this is—I did a lot of collaborations with European performance artists, particularly the Irish, but there was just—it was spectacular, it was spectacular, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But this, so this is the—so what I had invented was FaceTime.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I invented the first device in live—live, to see a video image and audio simultaneously set up, so I could either do it completely mobile—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —because I had everything hooked to adapted cinema battery belts, because I couldn't use a—I couldn't change the, I needed the, I kept everything on U.S. currency.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Curren—curren—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  U.S. current—currency.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not currency, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —current power. Right? 110 as opposed to 220. Right? So I use everything from here that allowed me to be completely mobile, I didn't have to use the 220 current.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It freed me up to do incredible—I mean, so again, situation is back here strong, because I'm doing, I'm detouring—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —places that I'm at, right, literally doing these sort of abstract walks, and the actual performances where I'm actually doing things in them, you know, I mean, that's what I should have fucking patented. If I had patented that we wouldn't be here today, we'd be at my mansion somewhere. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So, the nature of this is very Situationist—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, completely—

CHON NORIEGA:  —exploring space, what—what’s happening on this end? In the U.S.?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh—

CHON NORIEGA:  Are they just audience members?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, no, no, they're—they're just audience when I'm doing performances.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Other times we would do—I would throw—add a fax machine into it, right? And then we would do these sort of fax performances. Like—so I taught people  how to do—we would do scroll faxing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, you get a Xerox machine, you get a fax machine, and you get some, like, people to draw and do different things, and what you do is you keep—you—the fax machine is continuous.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Again, it was just about to subvert small devices that were used for business. So—

CHON NORIEGA:  These were all very new in businesses.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely, but so, if you take a fax machine, people will just put paper in like this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What we did is like the way you make a film loop, we made a fax loop.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And, so you would have—you—you have a—a thing here to hold the fax up.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   You make a loop, and you keep taping new pages off a Xerox machine—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —or the things that you're drawing and making, you keep attaching them as they go, and then it feeds through the fax machine this way—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and comes back around, and you take them off and then add new ones.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So you have this, this Mobius strip of fax information, continuously going, while that's only one phone line.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And another phone line is the Slow Scan video, and another phone line is audio. It's a sort of, like, complete technological mashup.

CHON NORIEGA:  And what was the content?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The content was based on—a lot of times taken directly from where I was.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Or, you know, a lot of them—I mean, again, a lot of the work in those days was always critiques of something. Right so, I, remember, I did one in Stockholm with the Chacheecho [ph]— [Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu]

[00:20:10]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The dictator in—um—help me. Chon, Ch—ch—cha—ch—cha—cha—ch—Chalt—oh, I can't even say that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Chechnya?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] No?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not Chechnya, but, he was a right-wing dictator—in Yugoslavia.

CHON NORIEGA:  Tito.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Who?

CHON NORIEGA:  Tito.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What was his last name?

CHON NORIEGA:  Got me there. This is when it was Yugoslavia?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Anyway—excuse me. Anyway, I don't know why—sorry, I just don't remember. Anyways, so, I would pick, like I do now—I would pick up on content that was either global content or content specific to particular places I was in, and make performances like this, right? So, it would be different wherever I was, and I was—since I was travel—I did a lot in Northern Ireland, so I made a lot of work about the Troubles. I did—I worked in Belfast, I worked in Derry, I worked in Dublin, I—that's a—or actually, one of the first times I was in a, like—I showed in the Irish Museum of Modern Art. [Laughs.] You know, I did in the Stockholm art museum, is when I made art there, I—in the Stedelijk when I was there, I made work there. I mean, I—they were all museum—these were all—

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, were you being invited there?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  For—these sites?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  For—to do these things.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, yes, yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  How?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  American curators.

CHON NORIEGA:  American curators would put your name forward, and say—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Yup.

CHON NORIEGA:  Where—or, they were curating?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Both, both. But it was—

CHON NORIEGA:  Now this is the late '80s? So is this—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Mid-ish—to late '80s, certainly.

CHON NORIEGA:  —is this around the time you did the portraits of the Irish Freedom Fighters on tortillas? Was that—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Mid-'80, yes. That was probably—but that was—the problem with Northern Ireland was that—

CHON NORIEGA:  I'm getting this right? You had a whole series of tortilla portraits.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Was that in the late '80s then?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't remember when it was, exactly. It had—it was after '85.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But the thing—the thing is, Chon, that—okay, so there's two problems here. [Laughs.] One is that the Irish—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —love Mexicans.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   That's not a problem, that's great.

CHON NORIEGA:  Catholic.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, Catholic also, but do you know the story of the Irish Brigade?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, so.

CHON NORIEGA:  There's a history.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. There's a—they were hired by the Americans, they looked—they looked at that they're fighting the Mexicans, right? Basically realize—the short story is they basically realized, like, why are we fighting these people when we're helping the colonizer, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So they switched sides. And they all get strung up on that. I don't remember, what was it, Guadalajara or Mexico City, you know, when the Americans killed them all, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is a very important story for the Irish—this was—this, actually, they find a connection to Mexico.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—but their image of Mexico is a mural. And a Mexican is a mural.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So there's a—there's a kind of odd, sort of, cliched interpretation of something, right? So, I don't know how those came about, I have no idea about that, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  The tortillas?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah. But they—they came, it seemed, it made sense for some reason, at the time. I don't know why. But it's—not a—it wasn't significant.

CHON NORIEGA:  And Martha and Charles Canales have that—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —piece.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Yeah, and I—I don't—I don't remember exactly, Chon, it's one of those, it—another thing that happened to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  But you—but you're being invited to Europe, across all of Europe—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and you're largely doing installations—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Installations and performance.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and also engaging with local—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  With local artists and local, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  —histories and—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes. Yes, yes, yes. So—so, another unreconcilable failure on my part, was—when I met Asco and introduced into East LA—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the—I was unaware—[laughs]—I was unaware of the—of the stereotypical cultural markers.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, it seemed to me—as we discussed previously to some degree.

[00:25:02]

And—and this I assume is a failure on my part, but—what I knew was not readily accepted. In other words, all the knowledge that I had, and all the things I had been exposed to, and all the things I had been working on, when I met these people, nobody cared. It was just like—it was like nothing. It did not register with them.

CHON NORIEGA:  Not part of their worldview.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not even close to part of their worldview. They introduced me to another worldview.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Fine, I—

CHON NORIEGA:  And it was new to you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and it was new to me, and it was fine, Chon. But, I—I made a mistake, and the mistake was that I—to fit in—I adopted the—to some degree, the markers that were familiar to them, so that I would be accepted.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is—

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, they had two sets of markers. One is a sense of the culture of origin and the way in which it's been kind of folklorized—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and the other is the kind of contemporary cultural scene that they were part of that was racially segmented, but was generation-based, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, but by and large still uses the vocabulary of the folkloric.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Even the gestures of, like, taping Patssi [Valdez] to a wall, a mural is still a mural. [Instant Mural, Asco, 1972]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Even with a heightened sense of conceptualization of that, and the sort of, you know, transfiguration of the image on a wall, to a human on a wall, and the absurdity, and all the things that get wrapped into that, which is all great, and I'm not trying to dissuade an argument from that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I fully understand and accept that, but it—it's still in—still in a register to me, for my point of view, at this time. It's still in a register that it's alien and foreign to me, right? And it—and on my part there's a desperation of wanting to fit in with a group of people, that, I mean—I wouldn't have known it as a desperation then, but certainly that—I made a lot of stupid shit. That I—that had I been—not been contaminated by this ideology, or this question of these kinds of representation, would I have never considered before, they were not in my head.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were not in my head, Chon, these images did not exist in me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—and they got—something—I gave up, because nobody recognized what I was doing, as being valuable, I thought, okay, I gotta be bilingual then. So I'm doing all these other things, thinking all these other things, being exposed to all these other things, internationally.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And nationally doing projects, huge projects, right? But then when I came to them, I—I—I adopted a—odd persona, which was I—I don't know why, it was—maybe it was dishonest of me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did that cross over, or you—you kept these worlds separate?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were very separate.

CHON NORIEGA:  But did it cross over in the art work? I mean, the tortillas sounds like it crossed over into one.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, the—

CHON NORIEGA:  But it also sounds like it's organic to—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was organic to—

CHON NORIEGA:  —the political history.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to the place, to the political place, because they wanted me to—they asked me to come—first time I went to Northern Ireland—I went to Ireland, Northern Ireland, many times in the—in the '80s.

CHON NORIEGA:  In the '80s?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Many times. In the height—I was there in the height of the Troubles.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  First thing they asked me to do, Chon, the very first thing they asked me to do was paint a mural.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay? Just, just—just check that out, okay?

CHON NORIEGA:  Is there one that I can find if I go there? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, there's not one, no, because I wouldn't do it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And they were confused.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were confused. You know, and so, you know. But the—but then, so you—so you see—like, I did some of these performances, it was, like, selling Mexican potatoes, and like all these weird kind of—selling guns to the Irish. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  But are—do you feel like the—the two sets of artworks you were doing were separate? You—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, I mean—the only time they crossed over was when—is, was in Ireland, because people recognized Mexico.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so I felt under—undue pressure to succumb to the question of Mexican identity. In that instance. It didn't occur anywhere else.

CHON NORIEGA:  So Ireland is thinking of itself as the Mexico of the United Kingdom.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right. That's right. That's exactly right. And they're looking—

CHON NORIEGA:  And England is America.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that's right. And—and—and, I understood the necessary, the necessity for solidarity at that level.

[00:30:02]

So another—so, I mean, while I'm doing some—some stuff like that, another project I did is, I got money from the—Northern English Arts Council [North | Arts Council of England or North Area Council Of England] to do some projects in Northern Ireland, and what I did was, we would do, I mean—talking about—here—here's another kind of thing, okay, Chon?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So the—the British basically set up a border. What they did is—you know, there was never a wall in Northern Ireland.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because the terrain, you didn't have to build a wall, right? But what there—what there were—they had lots of bridges, that the farmers used to use, right? To move livestock, to move things they were selling, all this kind of thing, and so what the British did is they blew up all the bridges.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  From—because—the—on the train from Dublin to Belfast, was a—was a, like a DMZ, I mean, it was fully militarized, I mean, militarized militarized, I mean, you know, giant guns, and the troops and everybody's checked like, you know, I mean, it's like probably going—

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_15of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, what—you know, like trying to be in Afghanistan or something. I mean, it was a war, I mean it was a war, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, I made a project where I took money that the English gave me, and I worked with the farmers. And what we would do is we would pick specific bridges, and we would rebuild the bridge. [Laughs.] Just long enough to—so they could do—have a little bit of commerce, and then the British would come along and blow it up, and then we'd build another bridge.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Until the money ran out, I just funded them to build bridges. That was the project.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know what I mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Political solidarity, right? I mean, it wasn't meant to keep the bridge, it was a—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —a gesture to push back against the blowing up of the bridges, right? I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know, I'm still confused, you know? I'm—I'm—I, you know, and—and for the most part, you know, Chon, I loved being around everybody, but it wasn't helpful. Wasn't helpful. I—I think in the end it was really a mistake, I think I would have been better off having sort of remained in my isolation.

CHON NORIEGA:  You mean, in terms of your—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Meeting Asco.

CHON NORIEGA:  —association with Asco.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   Yeah, I liked the community, I liked the—having friends, I liked how social and political everybody was, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, everybody, you know—again, it was a very difficult—I mean, you know, for a long time I was like family with—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —with Harry [Gamboa Jr.] and Diane [Gamboa] and the—mom—I knew their mom, I was always over there, I mean, I was like family, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, Diane sure did a lot of paintings of you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, we—we, I mean, you know, Diane and I were a couple for a long time, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I was fully integrated in their family, and I—you know, you know, I—I, for a long time, I saw Harry—I—I thought we were as close as brothers.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? And, I never had—I never had family, and I never had brothers and sisters. So these people gave me a family I never had.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So I somehow rationalized that as being—okay, to compartmentalize my family here, and I would behave a certain way with my family.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then I would—what I really wanted to do was somewhere else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was probably a big mistake on my part, Chon. That was—

CHON NORIEGA:  Had you tried in any way to bridge those two, or did you, from the very start, you said I'm gonna keep these separate?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, because, because no one—people made fun of me when I got out of CalArts. People—as soon as I found out about East LA, and—people just—I mean, people, I—people said I was a traitor, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I mean, I was ridiculed for going to the white man's school.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, and kind of just stupid cliched stuff at that time. The politics of solidarity, and, you know, community, and you have to be really from East LA. And you had to really speak Spanish. And it's like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Was that the time, just that moment, following the Chicano movement? I mean, it's ironic, because Harry Gamboa's been teaching there for about 20 years.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Where?

CHON NORIEGA:  CalArts.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I know. I know.

CHON NORIEGA:  But that—that's afterwards, though.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's way afterwards.

CHON NORIEGA:  That's after the '80s.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's—that's—he doesn't start there until the '90s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  If not—if not late '90s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, because 20 years, that means he started in the early—in the 21st century.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's—you know, that's 20 years plus, that's after I've been there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know. But—

CHON NORIEGA:  So in the—in the early '80s—I mean, throughout, well, from '81 when you meet them until '87 when they close shop, I mean, it's a very different stage in what's called Asco, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Like you said, there—there was an opportunity to do group performances, group installations.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, well—yeah, I mean, you know, we talked about this a little before. I mean, we didn't record it, we should have, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, I mean, no, I mean—what Harry was good at was creating a sense of collectivity.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But the—but the—there was no performances and projects, it was all—everybody worked to support Harry's videos.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know what I mean, or—

CHON NORIEGA:  Or stage—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —or stage performances, and it wasn't like, oh, can you all, like, act as fully accepted artists, and do work that we will present together, it's not a collective sense of presenting work, in—a—a people presenting work—

[00:05:03]

CHON NORIEGA:  You were helping execute—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —we—we all—everyone that—was working in this then—

CHON NORIEGA:  —yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so, you know, Bibbe [Hansen] was around then, and, I mean, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Sean [Carrillo].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Sean was around then, and, you know, I mean, every—I mean, all these people, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Juan Garza.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Juan Garza, um, Humberto [Sandoval] um, Cyclona [Robert Legorreta], I mean, everybody, I knew all these people. I knew everybody, I knew everybody.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There wasn't any one of these people that I didn't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I fully integrated myself into this community, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But wait, no, there was no—there were no art projects, Chon, there were no installations, there was no "we are artists putting up work together," it was we all were just servants for Harry. And—and it was fine because, like, for me, you know why it was okay, you know, for me, was because I had a real life as a real artist. I never saw this as a life as an artist.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, most of them did, I mean—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know what I mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  Patssi—Patssi and Gronk and Willie [Herrón], they had their own thing as well, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I know, but outside of the art world that I recognize as being a legitimate art world. Right? I'm trying to get myself in the mainstream art world, this is still—people here are not doing that. They still wanna be in East LA.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—and so, the—the—

CHON NORIEGA:  Did people identify what they were doing as Chicano art? Or as part of a—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —Chicano art movement?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I didn't really—I mean, huge confusion on my part—it was—it—no, Chon, it—

CHON NORIEGA:  So what about some of the folks that—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so fucking painful.

CHON NORIEGA:  —what about some of the folks you met, I think roughly within that context. That you kind of connected with, like Roberto Bedoya?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah! Okay, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  Or—or Manazar Gamboa?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, so, that's—that's also interesting—we are gonna have to close up.

CHON NORIEGA:  About 15 minutes?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, so—so, in the '80s, aside from meeting all the people—I mean, so I—as you were just suggesting—so I was, I came out of left field for these people. I'm the—I'm the foreigner.

CHON NORIEGA:  How did you meet them anyway?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I went to something of theirs, I don't remember what it was.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you stumbled into a—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I stumbled into something.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and then that was it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah, that was like, sold the second, I like—because I recognized everybody.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They looked like me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They sounded like me. Essentially. You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  You guys photographed well together.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We did, actually. There's a lot of really great photos of us as a group.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, no, it's true.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There's some really, really good photographs of us as a group.

CHON NORIEGA:  No, you guys, you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Especially for, like a—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's very—very iconic stuff.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the ones that came out for LA magazine—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Those ones are great.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  With the photographer that shot us on Broadway—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —fabulous, right? But I had—but I—I—So, I had three images—I had Harry—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and then I met—and then—in this new community, met Manazar. Manazar was unique.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because Manazar was a—the—if anybody was an OG, it was Manazar. Right? He grew up in Chavez Ravine, he grew up there when the ROTC was—would kick down doors on Sunday, you know? He grew up, I mean he grew up—and this is a fully-identified, gangster Chicano poet, right? He lived the life.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, you talk about, you know, I mean—Manazar did time.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? I mean, Manazar was the real thing. I had never met anybody like that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And he—

CHON NORIEGA:  How'd you meet him?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I don't remember. I—I think I met him at a poetry reading at Beyond Baroque.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh. Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, but, he was—he was really really generous to me. He was—I mean, I was—

CHON NORIEGA:  In what way?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —he was just kind and friendly. He—he told me stories about what it was like for him growing up.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He told me—his history. And he told me the history that he perceived, of being Chicano in Los Angeles at a time that I would never have understood.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? I mean, he—he gave me first-hand accounts of his life, and what poetry meant to him. And how poetry had saved him, and he was—he was the kindest, most generous person I had ever met.

CHON NORIEGA:  What did you think of his poetry?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, it was fabulous. I loved what he wrote. I mean, I remember, I would—after I met him, I would go—anytime he read I would go. You know? But he was just, I mean, he treated me like he was like, you know, the veteran, right? The veterano, like, I was like the little boy, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —he was like, you know, like, wow, amazing. I mean, he—I was so sad when he died—I was very, very heartbroken when he died.

[00:10:03]

But he, but he, but—this was a new image for me. Someone much older than me—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that could have been my father.

CHON NORIEGA:  So he's a very different type of person from your own background.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah, I mean, I had never known anyone like this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Ever.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you tell him about your other work?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No. No, he only knew me through Asco.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I never shared, I—I was afraid. I think there's a couple of things. One is that no one wanted to hear about it, that's one. And then, I think, when I realized I was getting rejected, I didn't want to be rejected from a group of new family that I had just found.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so, I thought best to keep your mouth shut. Live in the—live a separate, completely separate identity with the white folk. [Laughs.] You know, and try to make art somewhere else, and do something else. No one understood science, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No one understood philosophy. No one was reading philosophy. Or theory. No one—no one was thinking about any—any of the things that I was thinking about. No one had—no one understood what post-studio was, or—you know? Like critique, institutional critique, or critique of any kind.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, it was—it was like a different kind of—more intuitive way of making art, you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  With Harry's creating a—I mean, Asco succeeded because Harry created this—a structure for it. You know? I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  They—they had some degree of critique, particularly in their kind of faked interviews, or—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —staged interviews.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but it—still confined to a sort of, milieu. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Again, I'm not trying to—

CHON NORIEGA:  So with Manazar, did you have the sense that he was accepting of you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  So.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He—he—

CHON NORIEGA:  You didn't share all the details, but you felt like he—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, but he didn't—he didn't—he didn't judge me for being an outsider.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I felt judged by everybody else.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, he shared with you some of the inside point of view—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  —that was maybe different than everyone else.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, radically different than what my father would have told me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My father didn't experience—my father grew up somewhere else. He didn't grow up on, like, the mean streets of LA.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He didn't grow up being a minority. Manazar was dark-skinned.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was—he was, like, Mexican!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, there's no hiding that, I mean, the way his face, and his—the way he grew his beard, and like—his whole demeanor, and the way he moved, he was a stocky man, you know? He's like, you know, he's like a thick Mexican man, you know, like, there was girth to him. He's not fat at all, I'm just—just a stocky guy, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, he was—he was—he was—he wasn’t—I can't exactly say what he did, but—it—it was important.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I remember almost every conversation with him.

CHON NORIEGA:  What did you make of that world that he opened up for you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well—

CHON NORIEGA:  And—and the fact that he was a poet on top of it—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —two things; one is that—it brought clarity to the racism my father suffered. That I didn't understand before.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you got a peek behind that curtain?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, I made—well, I got a—I got a clarification of the peeking behind the curtain of what my father experienced, because Manazar said it so clearly.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was clear, and articulate, and precise. The image of how he had suffered, and how Mexicans had suffered.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, it made me uncontrollably angry. And then the anger was coupled—doubled down, because of the anger I felt about my father, but I didn't know where to put it yet.

CHON NORIEGA:  Anger at him, for—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not at him, not at Manazar. No, no, no, anger at the world for what they had done.

CHON NORIEGA:  Anger for what your father had—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —experienced. Yes, yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  Gone through, but hadn't really explained to you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which—hadn't been explained to me but, when Manazar explained it to me, then the anger rose in me like a—like a thermometer. When he told me the stories he had told me, about things that happened to him growing up, and the Zoot Suit wars, and all the things that he had been part of, like—I—the anger was just raging in me when he would tell me these things. I didn't know these things.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yet. I didn't know them yet.

CHON NORIEGA:  You had a sense.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  A sense, but it didn't—no—no clarity.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There was no specificity to it, no tangible person that would tell me what had actually happened. Right? Oh, I was angry—I just—the rage, he unleashed the rage in me, Manazar.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did he—tell this to you in a rage?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, he was all—Manazar was very calm.

CHON NORIEGA:  What did you make of that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Very level. Manazar always spoke very softly.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was me that was like, [screams], you know how I am.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Everybody knows, like—people said that—that one of the funny things always happened in the '80s and '90s, or actually even, always happens, because of so many gallery openings would spill onto the streets and stuff, right?

[00:15:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] Even you said it today, so people would always know in a crowd, they would be coming up to an opening—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they would always know, they—"We heard you before we saw you."

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because they heard you—because people always say, oh, we heard you laughing, we knew you were here, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I heard that my whole life!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  People say, oh! Martinez is here! I hear his cackle, you know?

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   But no—it was me, I was—I was incensed, and he was just like, no Daniel, no, just—I'm trying to give you the history. You know what he did?

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That nobody else had done for me? He passed on a real history. He passed on the history of what it meant to be Chicano—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to me. Nobody had done that for me.

CHON NORIEGA:  You didn't feel like you got that from the Asco members?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  What did—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  —what's the difference?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [sighs]

CHON NORIEGA:  They certainly talk about the injustice. And—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They do, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  —and the way they experienced it as kids.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, but there's no rage.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Manazar was—Manazar was calm, but you could—you—you know, you know, if you have somebody who has been tortured and beat, and tortured and beat, and tortured and beat, they don't physically manifest the rage. They don't manifest it in their voice or their actions, but, there's a—a smoldering rage behind every word. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's what I felt from Manazar, and that's what I felt in his poetry.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—where with Asco, was a—was a reconciliation, a kind of conceptualizing of this, and translating it into another language, but it—it was different, because it manifested itself differently.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, part of their story is the fact of almost complete assimilation.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, but that's—

CHON NORIEGA:  But, residential segregation—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right, but that's—but—

CHON NORIEGA:  —so they're very much American, English-speaking American, deeply vested in that culture, but also aware of their parents' culture.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, but, I see that, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  And the fact that they're also racially segregated from the rest of the city.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right.

CHON NORIEGA:  So.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I'm—grew up in a completely assimilated environment.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I had been purposely segregated from all of this, because of the way my parents brought me up.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So I was never able, before Manazar, to connect the dot to the actualization of this history.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you didn't have their experience, your peers, and you didn't have your dad's experience.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right.

CHON NORIEGA:  And Manazar kind of connected you to that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Manazar gave me what I believe was an honest portrayal of what he had gone through, and of what he had seen his friends go through. And his family go through. In—in a way that was so visceral, that it changed me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It changed my view.

CHON NORIEGA:  —did he describe things through a kind of a judge—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Story telling. He just told stories.

CHON NORIEGA:  —judgmental filter?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nope.

CHON NORIEGA:  Or was he just—he was just telling you a story.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was just—he would—Manazar was—all he ever did was tell me stories.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He would tell me stories.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was—he had gotten past—that's what I'm saying, when you get past—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, there's different kinds of stories.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, I know, but these were—these were—

CHON NORIEGA:  Was he the triumphant trickster, the—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, the—no, these are—these are—it's a kind of, it's—it's—it's a kind of story I imagine somebody would tell about slavery.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay? My parents were slaves, they didn't escape slavery, they died as slaves.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. 

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So there's no triumph in that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But there is the pain in that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There is the authenticity in that. There's the recognizing that you have been—that—the kind of generational passage, and the passing of—the telling of—bearing witness.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Manazar bore witness for me, of events that he experienced firsthand. That was new.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Asco didn't do that, they didn't bear witness, to the firsthand—they had their firsthand accounts, but their firsthand accounts was the same kind of assimilation I had, but there was different assimilation. We had different forms of assimilation. They didn't recognize my form of assimilation. They expected me to recognize theirs. This is theirs—this is, again, another discrepancy in my world view versus their world view.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  All Manazar did was, he filled in the history that I never knew.

CHON NORIEGA:  As someone who had lived it in the same way—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Lived it.

CHON NORIEGA:  —that you got to know about Beuys.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right, yes, perfect, perfect.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Manazar taught me the same way that I had learned about Beuys. He taught me the same way that Marcuse told stories about Marx.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, so a lot of my education, I—is either direct with the actual progenitors of a theory—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right? Your Huebler, and your Asher, and your Baldessari—

[00:20:01]

CHON NORIEGA:  Baldessari.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —kind of people. Or I'm getting it from their proteges. But I'm now forming a new kind of sense of myself, historically—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —because I'm filling in the gap of that which was taken away from me, due—because of assimilation.

CHON NORIEGA:  So he shared that story with you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Stories.

CHON NORIEGA:  —or stories—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Countless stories. I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  —with the sense that they belonged to you as well, even though you were very different.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He—he did not judge me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He—he said what you just said. He told me this was my history.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nobody ever said that to me before. No one, no one was so generous to say, you know what, Daniel, maybe you didn't grow up in East LA, but these are your stories too.

CHON NORIEGA:  This belongs to you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right.

CHON NORIEGA:  And you don't have to change—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right.

CHON NORIEGA:  —in order for it to belong to you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This was—unbelievable for me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Why do you think he was like that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I don't know. I don't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did he ever explain how he became a poet?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  Just was, huh?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He just was.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He has—I think because he was a poet the same way I was an artist. I think, like, people ask me, when did you decide to become an artist, and I'm —I'm—my answer to that is always the same, it's like, I was born, and this is what I am.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I didn't ever decide to be an artist, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I know—I don't—like today, I read the—

CHON NORIEGA:  Some people do!

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —let's just decide to have a career!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, let's go do—let's go to school and learn how to be whatever. I didn't do that. I didn't make a decision to be an artist, Chon. I didn't.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was born, this is what I am, this is what I will be till I die. I think Manazar had the very exact same description. He was a poet, he was born a poet.

CHON NORIEGA:  And still trying to figure it out.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And that's what you do, as a poet or an artist, as writers, we spend our life trying to figure that out.

CHON NORIEGA:  Is there anything in particular that he told you that sticks with you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The—the most—the—the—the one story that was, the one that which I just was alluding to a little bit. He told me that—I don't remember the decade. He—he was young. So, '30s?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Has to be the '30s. He was living in Chavez Ravine. Which was, you know, very popular barrio, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But next to it was the ROTC.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And next to that was the police training up there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So he told me that, on Sundays, when people were gonna go to church, right? Because the Chicanos then were very visible. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, because, that he said that, basically were hunted down constantly, by the police, or by the sailors on Broadway with the zoot suits, or whatever it happened to be, right? But people knew they were always picking on the young men. And he said what the ROTC would do, they would—group of them would—be in formation—he said this is before guns and knives, he said, for the most part. Maybe knives, but not shooting people with guns, right? But this kind of fist-fighting. Kicking and fists and all this kind of stuff. Physical fighting.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He says, they would get in formation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You could—he said you could hear the boots [makes marching boots sound].

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Coming down the street, and they would kick in the doors. And grab the guys, and pull them out, and just whale on them, and beat them up, and go from house to house, beating up the young kids, right? The young guys. Right? And he says that—he told me, he says, one day, we're done, we're not—we're not gonna sit here and wait to get beat—so they started fighting back. And—and—and next time, they would come with more guys. And they said that it would just be—every Sunday, you knew there was gonna be a pitched battle, fighting for survival in your own neighborhood.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Scoffs.] One, you're doing it on Sunday, and goddamn people are fucking Catholics at church. Right? And you're kicking people's doors in. To—to drag them out, to beat them up? Of course they were gonna fight back, right? I mean, he told me this story that was profound in the—in—in—I mean, who does that? But then he tells—what happens in the story is—

CHON NORIEGA:  Future officers.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they—exactly. Men—the military, both police and military, but, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —but what—he said, we organized to fight back.

CHON NORIEGA:  So was he one of the people fighting?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. You know. That's why they'd end up in jail, and that's why they'd end up with broken ribs and broken arms and, I mean—skulls cracked, I mean, they  fought, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But the—but, you know what he taught me? You push back.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You push back, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's—that's—I think it's the one thing—he told me all kinds of stories like that—I think the purpose of all those stories—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —was to get—to make me understand one thing. You don't be—you don't passive.

[00:25:01]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You don't have to be passive. You don't let them come hit your door down, you don't let them rape your sister. You know what I mean? You don't let them do that. You push back.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You might end up getting hurt, you might end up getting killed, but you push back.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nobody had ever given me that before.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nobody. It was remarkable, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Remarkable. And, I mean, you know me, I was like, oh—that's one stoke of one fire you don't need to stoke very hard.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, I mean.

CHON NORIEGA:  You were activated.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, I just—I was already activated, because I was already, like—but this—he brought it home in a way I had never seen. I learned then something about my father that I had never understood.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it broke my heart. It broke my heart. Because my father was broken, and I didn't know why, and now I understood why.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because how they treated him. You know. And then, Bedoya, ha, Roberto—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This was when LACE was downtown, right? And I was, I was very—in those days we were all working very closely with LACE. I mean, that was the place you could get shows and performances and do stuff. And, you know, it was still white. But, you know, they were at least sympathetic, right? I helped—I was on the committee that helped get Roberto hired to be the director of LACE. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so this was another—the third example. So I have Harry, and then I have Manazar, and then the third example was someone who was an organizer. Someone who was literary, somebody who was conceptual and intellectual in a new way that I had not been exposed to.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Roberto was soft. He was a soft, funny man who lived in poetry. And what was fascinating for me was that, if you look at all three, they're—all three are writers.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Very different kinds of writers, and very different kinds of poets.

CHON NORIEGA:  Very different voices.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Very different voices, but Roberto was—very, very, very smart. And he knew how to move in the white art world.

CHON NORIEGA:  Smart strategically?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Strategically. Tactically.

CHON NORIEGA:   Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He knew how to talk their language. and he knew how to move in their world. And he, you know, Bedoya was head on—on every—he was, you know, with the NEA and the CAA and every organization, I mean, and those—they had one for nonprofits, I mean, he was part of everything, he was on everything.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was another example—which I already understood on a global—at an international level, and I rejected the more local one, but he saw—I learned you could operate on a national front.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because Bedoya was a natural administrator. He was a—he was a visionary as an administrator. He knew how to give other people opportunities, Chon. He knew how to work the system, to open holes and opportunities where holes and opportunities didn't exist before. He invented them.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Tactically. He knew how to—where the pressure points were. He knew how to—he knew the—he knew the language that was necessary in order to move into a world that was, essentially, categorically rejecting us.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was—and—and I—I just—he was just something lovely to be around. He was a lovely man to be around.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, so this is, this is a big deal. These are—and, you know, again, this is probably my—one of the things my life has always been full of, is writers.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I have known so many writers my whole life. I can't even tell you.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, writers and writers and more writers.

CHON NORIEGA:  You like reading.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I like reading, but I like writers, because writers—you know why I like writers? Is because, as opposed to artists, because I already know what artists are thinking.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But writers saw the world differently than me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Their approach, of storytelling and linguistics, and history, was different than mine.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I came in from a visual point of view, I came in through philosophy, but not—I couldn't—because of dyslexia and because of all these other problems, I never was—I'm not good at writing, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't—you—you can even see, my email is all fucked up all the time, because even with autocorrect, that makes it worse.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? But, it—I think being around writers—and poets, in particular, that I saw more clearly how to take advantage of language.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[00:30:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They showed me—not directly, indirectly. From reading and going—I mean, in the '80s, I loved going to poetry readings. I would go to everywhere for poetry readings. I loved listening to poetry. And nobody in particular. Just anywhere, you know, people—in those days, people—poetry readings everywhere, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, and I just, I just liked—I would just go. Listen to how people presented their words, and listen to how they crafted them and wordsmithed them, and, you know, what was behind them, and what the purpose of it is, and, you know, how some people were more fantastical or some people were more factual, and some of them were historic and, I mean, you know. Some people were pure imagination, and it was just—it was very, very—I didn't get any of that at CalArts. They—I didn't get poetry at CalArts. They—

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm. Interesting.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I—I was in the art department, the art department was very art department-esque. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So it took, you know, when I saw—and Bedoya was—I used to help—I mean, he's a—you know, I would—he would call me, I mean, he would call me, he would need to counsel on something. I was—I'm very—I'm good at a certain—

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_16of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I have a kind of mind for strategy and tactics, I just do, it's natural for me. And Bedoya was one of the first people that saw it in me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which I had been trying to tell people, this fucking—through the '80s, but no one listened to me, no one fucking cared that I was—could actually think about something differently.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Bedoya, goes the—he goes, you! Come here help me think this through.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So he took advantage, not in a—not—in a positive way, I mean, I wanted to work with him. I helped him, we—we—we thought through a lot of things. Grants—how to figure out grants and how to open up opportunities—I mean, I loved doing it with him.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I—I'm strategically and tactically sharp. Right? And he saw it in me. And he—he actually—I learned a lot from him, and he learned from me and—but he cultivated that. Which was, again, something maybe was still dormant, outside of my own self, but these were three fabulous models of men, very different kinds of men.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Roberto was, you know, very, very gay. Right? So, this one kind of man.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Manazar is very male, like macho male, right? And—and, you know, very old school.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was very traditional, Manazar was very traditional. But I learned something about the tradition, because I—you know, I categorically rejected it. Everything in tradition. I hate it. Right? He showed me that it was okay.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then Harry was the new—was the—a new generation, and that, you know, I saw them, I saw their attempt, even though I didn't agree with it, I saw their attempt was to build something out of the ashes.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, that they were trying to reconfigure something. I didn't think they were very good at it, but it was a lot of fun.

CHON NORIEGA:  At the time you didn't feel that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  At the time I didn't have the clarity. At the time I was too—I was too seduced by having a family.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  So this is more retrospective.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but, you know—even more so, you know, you know, as the—as even if you put aside all the European work, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which didn't get recognized—no one ever recognized any of that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Were there catalogs? Besides Demon des Anges?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There's some, there's some. Yeah, but, you know, as the '80s progressed I was starting to get in bigger and bigger shows.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My career was—you know, I started getting invited to do big public art projects, and I was getting invited to do big installations, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. That will be our next interview.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But—I—I'll close with this, is—even after everything fell apart with Asco, and everybody sort of went their own way, you know, I started working on Ignore the Dents, probably in '89, maybe, maybe even a little earlier, I don't remember exactly. But, you know, that—the ultimate betrayal there was even more impactful for me, because—I had, so much, I had given over so much to be part of a family.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had never experienced betrayal at that level.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I didn't have brothers and sisters.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I didn't have anyone—I mean, not—not relationships, relationships are something else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's a different configuration. And I'm not—you know, even people sleeping around, that's neither here nor there to me, that's what people do.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And that's—I don't even see them. I'm talking about a profound sense of betrayal. And—and—and, when that happened, I was literally in shock.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Complete categorical fucking shock. It's like—[slaps] —really?

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, we'll have to elaborate on that the next —

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, I can't tell you about it.

CHON NORIEGA:  —time.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I didn't—I guess the point that I'm trying to make is—you don't betray people that you've gone to war with. You don't. You don't do that, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[00:04:58]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You, you say you have—you say you act like family—you say you have people's back, you say that you are there for them, that's what you do. You don't conveniently don't do that. You either—you either, if someone tells you they're there for you, then that's what you assume, I'm there for you, too. It's a two-way street. You don't just arbitrarily decide it's not gonna happen.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You don't. That's betrayal. Don't get to do that. It's too much. Anyway. We should kill it at that. It's already six.

CHON NORIEGA:  Alrighty. Is it really?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, I'm gonna stop—

[00:05:41] [END OF TRACK martin19_17of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you're looking at.

CHON NORIEGA:  What?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Whatever that piece of Xerox is over there.

CHON NORIEGA:  This one?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh yeah, it's the Whitney Biennial, it just—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's pretty ineffective.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, it is they—they make it too, I just—just jotting things rather than—I don't have detail. So I guess I should start. This is Chon Noriega, interviewing Daniel Joseph Martinez at the artist's studio in Los Angeles, California, on December 20, 2019, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, card three.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  With the new ex-CIA director.

CHON NORIEGA:  Ah, yes.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Welcome.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't have to make friends with him.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  I'm sure they know a lot about you, so—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The CIA? I'm sure they do, actually.

CHON NORIEGA:  So we left off the other day, talking about the '80s.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  And, we haven't talked—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The '80s.

CHON NORIEGA:  We haven't talked about hair.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Hair or drugs.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] There we go.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Every decade, you know, different drugs, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  We touched on that. I don't know, you want to start there? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh—I think, you know, thinking about some things, it—you know, you've been bringing up—maybe just a place to start here is—as I think about things in between our times of speaking, which has been interesting, because we focus a lot when we're speaking, and then, in between, as I'm thinking about what we just did—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —or at least that's what I'm able to do to some degree, right? And—it's a curious activity that we're doing, because we're trying to cover ground from such a long time ago.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So there's a kind of—you know, there's a kind of, like, sketchy memory of things, right? Like, some things are clear.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And other things are very foggy.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then I was also thinking, too, tha—I was thinking about, it's sort of—even though we're doing—I think doing really good doing this. There's a kind of impossibility of the task.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because—you know, over 40 years, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I've been in hundreds of shows, Chon. Hundreds of exhibitions. You know, all around the world. Living all over the United States, living in different countries all over the world, and so, like, you know, a lot of the things we can do is sort of touch on, or at least what we've been trying to do I think, is touch on, you know, moments that are highlighted.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Um, I'm not sure what I'm saying. I—I just—it's just—it just struck me as this sort of impossibility of the task.

CHON NORIEGA:  That we can't capture it all.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, it's not even capture it all, but it just—it's just— the tenuous nature of it all, you know? Very speculative, it seems.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anyway, I—I don't know, I just—

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, it strikes me—I'm trying to see if we can have a discussion about works, starting with what is on the surface, what's known—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right.

CHON NORIEGA:  —more readily, and then realize even that is a pretty expansive effort—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It is, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  And then, each work conjures up other memories that represent sources—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right.

CHON NORIEGA:  —for the thinking, that—and the experience that went into the making of the work, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, the—the thing—

CHON NORIEGA:  And then, is that the right way to emphasize these—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, I think, no, I think we're doing good. I just thought I would bring up, I mean, I don't think we're even close to being done to be honest but—but I remember when we were in Houston, I think.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And you asked me—

CHON NORIEGA:  That's back in November, 2017, yeah. Or twenty—seventeen, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, recently, no, no—2017?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  For Home? [Home—So Different, So Appealing]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, it was November 2017.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You're kidding me!

CHON NORIEGA:  That's when we opened, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, you're kidding!

CHON NORIEGA:  No. Two years ago.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was two years ago?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I am like literally—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I thought that was like—

CHON NORIEGA:  You're still unpacking?

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Clearly, some—there's a—there's a gap there.

[They laugh.]

[00:05:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Um, okay. Wow, that's—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, it's called six quarters of teaching.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Is that what did—is that what did that to me? Okay.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But—but you made a comment once, you asked me about something, you said, you said you observed that—I have a tendency to talk about ideas rather than works of art.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And that's actually very true. Is that—I find most of the discussion around, in the field—so, when artists do artists talks, it couldn't be anything more boring ever than to listen to an artist talk. Because they tend to go—they tend to describe their work—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and then they go year from year, and there's no reflection on what I would actually argue is the substance of the work itself. They focus on little tiny details. This is a huge generalization, but having heard hundreds of artists talks, if not—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —thousands of them in my life, you know? That the pattern is the same, because the expectation is the same from an audience or an institution, right? So I think a long time ago, I shifted that emphasis from talking about the details of a work on to talking about what I believe were larger philosophical questions that the work attempts to address, in a social-political context that allows then the question to actually be juxtaposed against, a visible reality in the world that we live in.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So, maybe it's Plato's Cave, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That you have, that—was there in the cave, left, came back, said there's something outside, you know. That's—that's constantly how I feel in talking about work. I'm always trying to say, oh, look, there's—[laughs]—there's something—if you leave the cave, there's something outside the cave. And everybody wants to be left in the cave. And I was always confused why everybody wants to be in the cave all the time.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So I—I guess that's the—this is tethered to the—to what we're doing a little bit, and I think where we've been talking about much really larger ideas. Or attempting to, or as you suggested, that when we get on to a work or a period, even in the small discussion of it, it triggers a whole series of other ideas, because—I think—a lot of what, what I've done is something—I think I've been trying to describe, or may be better put, I think—I have been trying to live a life of an artist.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which then encompasses everything. It's no longer confined to the activity that—that self-described activity of making art.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Then everything becomes part of this, of a whole, right? So, I don't—I don't ever travel to be—I've never traveled to be a tourist. I travel to be a traveler.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I travel to learn things, I travel to discover things, I travel to—most—in fact, most of my life is I've only traveled to make work.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Every place I've ever traveled to, the reason to go somewhere else was always—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —because, you know ,there's a show, or somebody invited me, or to do a talk or something, and then you would go, oh, I like it here, maybe I should stay. [Laughs.] You know? And—and I—just—just a—just a—I don't know why I'm bringing this up, I don't know why it occurred to me, too, I'm not even sure what I'm saying exactly. But somehow, I think, that—that the difficulty in understanding that, I think in general, there has always, people have always had a very difficult time in, having any level of comprehension of my projects.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There's a—it's always seen—you know, this sort of feeling. I always had this feeling that—people become stupid—[laughs]—when they look at the work. Because all of a sudden they have these vast vocabularies, all this knowledge, especially writers and people looking, and all of a sudden it's this—it just drops off.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's just like, really? How could you have written all those hundred other pieces on, you know, pieces of criticism on works of art you've been doing for years, and then you get to this and then all of a sudden that entire vocabulary disappears, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So why do you think that happens?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—well I, I think that's where I'm trying to get at, right, at the moment. I don—there's—back to what we talked about last time, I think the way I see the world is very different, and therefore my behavior in this world, while it is not necessarily uncharacteristic, or that far out out of bounds, there is something about my perception of the function of art and why art exists, and that action of art and the consequence of art that move differently than what I see around me.

[00:10:00]

And—and it—and it—doesn't, it's not easily categorizable or fit in to a—a particular art-historical trajectory that your average individual in the art world, I'm talking about a pedestrian, seems to be able to locate. You do, because you've been looking at the work for a long time. So you see more threads and you've made more observations, because you've actually thought about the work. You know, but I, I always—there's a—there's a—yeah, I'm not sure, Chon. I'm just—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, there's—I think there's two threads, maybe, to unpack. I mean, you're an artist and you have a project that manifests itself through particular works at a particular moment. But your—your attentions on the project, and doing an interview like this, or in writing about you, I will inevitably focus on the manifesting of that project through a work, which brings you back to the materiality, the situation, the context for the work, and given that—some work is in collections and you can go look at it, some work has been well documented, and you can see it, but beyond that there's a need for a level of description. Just to put the pieces into play, in order to get at that idea, otherwise you're jumping past it and you're just strictly in the realm of ideas, and there's very little difference between a philosopher in a cafe in Paris and somebody who's working in a studio. And—and creating situations, creating objects, mobilizing certain dynamics and interactions. So that's—that's a kind of methodological thing. The other side, where I think the angst that I hear comes from, is you're a kind of a post-Duchampian artist, and while that's understood to a certain extent, it's been so easily recuperated back into the art market that it is once again under the kind of umbrella of a patron, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What does that mean? Under the umbrella of a patron? You mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  You can tape a banana to a wall and it will be sold, and you will make your money, and—and—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, but that—

CHON NORIEGA:  And you exist within it, but that's 99 percent of the art world, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, I mean, that's a—I mean, that's a recent—recent event in Miami Basel, which no one seemed to—in the—in all the articles that you and I read, no one even mentioned that it happened at an art fair.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, the context—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —didn't happen in a museum.

CHON NORIEGA:  Or that Banksy happened at an auction.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know what I mean, that, yeah, that these things are, you know, events for people at art fairs—

CHON NORIEGA:  But—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and for people at auctions.

CHON NORIEGA:  But we've reached a point where that is where the discussion is.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, I know, but it's a—it's—there's nothing to talk about a banana taped to a wall at an art fair. There's just, there's no, there's—I don't know what you would talk about. I mean, I don't, I don't know what—

CHON NORIEGA:  There's been thousands of articles that —

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I know, but they all think that—they talk about nothing. They do.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah,

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, they're defending nothing. There's no—the provoca[tion]—I'm all for a provocation, and a disruption—

CHON NORIEGA:  You've done very well at it, too. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know what I mean? But—but—you have—you have a—you provoke a kind of—or you interrupt a more, sort of, stable way of thinking about art, so that—because there's a point to make.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? Because there's something at risk, in the content that you want to reveal. I mean, art historically, all the people that have done that, and groups of people that have done that, their risk was very high.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because there was—there was usually a social-political, or identification as a tool, by which had to be interjected into a dominant discourse that was completely ignoring the fact that the, that the, the field of culture is made up of all of us. It's not made up of just a few people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Or the people that get identified as being the main contributors.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To work, I mean, so there's a purpose. You know? There's a consequence to their action. You know? I mean. There—there's no consequence to the banana except that it gets sold. And that—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and even though, you know, [Francesco] Bonami the curator says it's not about the banana, it's about the conversation. That's fine, except the conversation is only about the banana. And how much the banana costs.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, I mean, but yeah, but it—yeah, I guess it's—I guess it's that's your art history, your art-historical hat, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I—I think maybe, too, I—see, maybe I fall into the former description more than people realize, in the sense that—because it's not, I don't think it's common, so I would—I actually see myself more as an artist-philosopher than I do anything else.

[00:15:10]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And so the—this kind of struggle between sort of large meta philosophical concepts and then the manifestation of artworks that are designed to have a consequence.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I—like, to just make art that doesn't have a consequence, or at least an attempt at a consequence, seems really mundane to me at this point. Even—even though that's what we—you know, and as to the latter part of your description, is where we're at, right? I mean, we have the—and I—and that is difficult for me, I have to say.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, what counts as a consequence?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, it depends on what—I mean, there's many kinds of consequences, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, making a hundred and nineteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety dollar—ninety-nine dollar profit, on a banana, is a consequence.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, but not—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —sure, okay, sure. I'm speaking about intellectual consequences ,and I'm talking about aesthetic consequences, I'm talking about social—I'm talking about consequences outside the—outside of the—

CHON NORIEGA:  The market?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —capital.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Completely. I had—I—the consequence of selling art for a lot of money is not a consequence to me, that is just—a product of a business model, art is now a business. And it's—it's using a classic business model by which to, you know, supply and demand, you—you invent—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you, I mean, you know, there's a—little kid, I mean, it's just everyday, art has been ruined in my opinion. [Laughs.] But, you know, there's some kid, eight-year-old kid in China, compare him to abstract—to Pollock, right? So I watch the video and it's—it's nothing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's absolutely nothing. But he's selling paintings for half a million dollars.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, there's a 23-year-old girl in New York now, I mean, I can't even think of her name, you know, selling works for one-point-five million dollars, 23 years old. This is not, I mean, they're not buying art, I mean, it's not art—I don't know what it is. You know, it's people spending money, I—I assume it's just to hide money. You know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, very few people have way too much money.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, well that's—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so—but so, for example, like, in '88, if I’m not—I'm almost positive it was '88, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I wish I could remember—because I was trying so hard to find her, I tried to—on my—because some of this is so vague, right? In terms of my memory. Very famous, I mean, the most famous New Zealand female filmmaker.

CHON NORIEGA:  Jane Campion.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Native.

CHON NORIEGA:  Um—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Native.

CHON NORIEGA:  Tracey Moffatt.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  No?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  Am I completely off there? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no um, she was—Maori—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —filmmaker. The last, if I remember correctly, I'm almost positive is that she was the last, like, princess of the Maori—like, she had some kind of royalty in her lineage. And I can—I just cannot remember. Anyway, so at—again, like, this is why I think the stories are more interesting than—than—

CHON NORIEGA:  Than the memories?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, somehow I meet her.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? She's here in LA for a film festival or something. She's showing some films here, I don't exactly remember how I bump—and this is probably the story of my life, I don't know how I meet the people I meet, and I end up having these, like, intense— relationships with, and embarking on projects with them of one kind or another. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it seems that my life has been full of these. Just, meeting people and then these people and I we—people who see me on the same wavelength that I must be sending out.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So they don't have any—there's no distance in terms of, like a—there's no miscommunication. They somehow see the project of—the project of making work, and there's not a lot explanation necessary, right? Anyway, so I meet her, and so she invites me to come down to New Zealand, right? To go to Auckland. And she says, you know, we would like to see if you would—could come do a couple shows, so she sets me up with two shows at the main, non-profit spaces in New Zealand. Which were very famous at the time. And I cannot remember for the life of me what they were, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Um, so I go down there, and it was just like—I had never been to that part of the world yet, right? Fantastic, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Fantastic. I mean, in the harbor, I remember so clearly, Greenpeace had its boat parked there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it was the only harbor in the world that would let them park their boats, because they were—you know, they were seen as outlaws.

[00:20:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Especially in the '80s, right? I mean, this was like—they were full-on anarchists. Right? And so I saw that and I was like, wow, that—I mean, it was—I was actually really, like, that was eye opening, because you couldn't ever see that in the United States, right? Anyway, so I—I—I had a great time.

CHON NORIEGA:  So how long were you there?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, that's the—so I was just going to be down there for, like, a couple months.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—you know, I didn't bring anything, I just made everything there, right? And they gave me a studio, they gave me a place to live, I mean, it was deluxe. You know? And New Zealand is beautiful, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, it is.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  warm and beautiful, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's not warm. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —well, it was warm when I was there in the summertime. You know. No—it—it gets cold. You know, but—I started out in the summertime. And so they—so what I perceived was going to be the end of my trip, they invited me to into the middle of the country to where there was very, very traditional Maori people living in a very traditional way, right? And so they invited me—

CHON NORIEGA:  Still in the North Island?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —still in the North Island, yeah. Have you spent time down there?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, okay, good. So they had this, like, ceremony for me, and—so I'm sitting in the front, full of people, and they go through this, you're gonna really—like—like this—you're gonna die laughing, of course, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so what they do is, they kinda do a song-dance performance for me. When it was done, everybody looks at me. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And what I—what I didn't realize was going on is, what they did was they told me the story of the Maori people in this dance, right? And the expectation was I was gonna reciprocate. To tell them who I am, right? And I literally, I sat there for a moment, Chon, and I was completely stumped, because at first they didn't tell me, because this is just something you should be able to do, apparently.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] Right? And—and it—and I hadn't completely, you know, I'm probably still semi-attached to some vague notion of Chicano at this time, right? It hasn't complete—I have not completely driven the last stake into this vampire's heart yet. [Laughs.] So, I mean, so I'm there, and I'm like—this place is full of people with all—I mean, like—and I had—so, I basically—I had—I get up and, you know, I couldn't do any dancing because I—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —was not the thing I was gonna be doing, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so, and that's, you know. Telling stories about being Chicano.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Of all the things. And mind you, it might have been a little distorted and warped coming from my point of view. But it was a story, it—it was inevitably a story about me growing up here, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And what it meant to be who I was, and it was completely centered around my identity, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Or my perception of my identity at that particular moment.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, you know, when it was all said and done, you know, they loved it. Because that's all they wanted, was a story.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And this was really revelatory for me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I had never, come across, it's sort of like my Manazar moment. I had never come across a group of people in mass who, carry with them, the colonial scars—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the—the—the sheer weight of colonialism on the Maori, right? So, I don't know if you know, but, you know, of all the places in the world that the British went, right? Of all the atrocities the British committed on so-called Native people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The Queen of England at one point, in the past, you know—it wasn't, I think it was in, it hadn't happened when I was there, before I was there, I don't remember exactly, but the Queen of England, the only country to ever get an apology from the Queen of England were the Maori people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  For whatever happened there, so you have to ask yourself, what could have happened in New Zealand that was so severe that would cause a queen to want to apologize there, but, say, not India? [Laughs.] Or ,you know what I mean, a bunch of other places where they chose to wreak havoc, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, the social organization of their, of them as a people—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and the fierceness of their sort of, kind of, self-determination on that island. I mean, they are not letting go of their history, they are not letting go of their tradition, and they are not just rolling over, right? It might have been a struggle, and it has always been a struggle, but it was—this was really something. I had never seen this before, Chon.

[00:25:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I understood what it is in a U.S. context, clearly, minorities in a U.S. context fighting back, pushing back, I understood that. But nothing like this, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, when I realized that they had predicated so much of the exchange between people based on telling a story, something changed for me. Something really, really different clicked in my head—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —when that happened. So then, I end up—so I stayed, I stayed almost, not quite a year, but almost a year. Down there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I—I just, I hung out, made art.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, met people, got—is—got close to a lot of people, in the—in the Maori community, there was—I mean, they're—they're funny people.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Funny how?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like funny-sense-of-humor funny. They say, I mean—like a lot of people of the friends that I made, I mean, like, I swear to God, I don't think I stopped laughing, Because it—it's just—they just. Their sense of—it's just so different, they're in a different part of the world, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is like a really a different part of the world.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's not like going to Europe or Africa, or—I don't know, there's—this was important, so this—so the shows I made down there were pretty good, I thought. I made these large installations, I was still doing installations, so I think I made large installations with—in the one space, and then I did storefront window using video, and I did lectures for them, I taught some classes down there for them, just like, you know, basic—but there's some—the reason this is important is because it's coming off of a—the '80s, if I think back about the '80s, right? The '80s, since this is towards the end, right, the '80s seemed like pure chaos to me. Like complete and total chaos. I—I, many times I have, you know, I'm very regretful of the '80s. Because it—I think I made—all the different things that I participated in and they are varied, and they are vast, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The—the kind of experiments and the attempts at sort of trying to find multiple trajectories in multiple discourses, and this is key. I—I think the '80s, for me, was a vast amount of information coming into my head. Being exposed to radically new things, but I'm constantly caught—I was—the '80s, I was being torn into two directions—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that were crippling for me. One direction was this constant sense of being completely oppressed here, in this country. Where, I mean it's the '80s. It was—I mean, you know, Chon, in the United States it was almost impossible. The '80s were impossible. To be a minority, and particularly Mexican. You know, and make—and get someone to get—like, give you an opportunity to make art in a gallery, like everybody else seemed to be showing at, or should I say, white people were showing in galleries, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To break into that was—you know, I mean, it—I think it was virtually impossible. And I—I don't know anyone that did it. I can't think of an instance of somebody that did it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—and this—the strain of attempting to negotiate an identity that I—don't know yet. Like, I'm—I'm—my confusion and chaos is part because I don't think I have any sense of any way to identify myself yet because—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I find myself pulled outside of the country. I'm seduced by what I find everywhere else, but in the United States. And then when I come back to the United States, what I—what I seem to be caught up in is this kind of spider's web of regionalism. And that regionalism is then, is, is presented to me as who I am.

CHON NORIEGA:  Is it regionalism or provincialism?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Maybe both. Maybe a provincialism and a regionalism in terms of—self identification through the Mexican American history—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and Chicano history—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the way that it played itself out historically in Los Angeles and in California and in the Southwest. And the proximity to the border itself—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —i.e., the constant negotiation of immigration and the stages of immigration. So, FOB, or not quite FOB, right? This—we should—we should have a term for that. Instead of fresh off the boat, people were coming from somewhere else—

[00:30:02]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We have to like fresh—

CHON NORIEGA:  Fresh over the river?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Fresh over the river!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's it, FOR! That's it! [Claps.] Another new term, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Here we go.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  FOR point five, point one, one point oh, one point five—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So this expresses itself—our expression of our identity doesn't come through any singular lens, it comes through stages of identification through immigration.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think that's fair to say. In terms of how we identify ourselves. Some people come—or who come here, are illegal.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Some people are born here. Some people have been here for many, many generations, and that's confusing for people who just get here. They don't—they don't, we don't see the same things, we don't—we don't have the same taste, we don't have the same desire, we don't have the same ambition. Because everyone is still finding a footing. I think that the '80s, for me, was that confusing for me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Let me see if we got the—the—

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_18of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  —you said there were kind of two directions, and one was the oppressed here—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, feeling oppressed here, but that, but, and this sort of—as you said, maybe provincialism is more accurate, but no, it's trying to find a point of self-identification here in Los Angeles.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, this is where I'm from. You know, for most of my life, Chon, I would have, and particularly, in the '80s, I mean, I, you know, I loved LA.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I loved LA, because I thought LA was actually genuinely unique. You know, LA's not the East Coast. It's not New York. It didn't develop like that. It's something that is, if there's a point of autonomy, California is a state of autonomy.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? I mean, look at the political movements. Look at the social movements, look at the aesthetics that developed here. I mean, you have—Light and Space movement develops in California for a reason. Because we have light and space. [Laughs.] I mean, you know, why is experimentation the model of thinking in California, is because there was an opportunity here to do that, right? That was very exciting, and I thought it was actually part of the connections to all the different kinds of industries that were here, that were also  realized, that R&D was possible here that was not possible in other places. And it's—it's one, is because of climate, other is because of the politics, I mean, because the—the people that exist here are different. Immigration in California, as you know, is different than it is on the East Coast. Miami coming up through the Caribbean is one kind of immigration, right? But the door that we have here to all of Latin America is a completely different one.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So we, our sense of ourselves, is very different here. I mean, so there's that in negotiation, and then the other is—is trying, is this absolutely seductive world outside of here. Where people always seem to be much more open and engaged with things that I would talk about, and ideas that I had, and it was no point—there was no push back on me anywhere else. That I—the same way that I felt where it was impossible to move a straitjacket in here, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I guess the third leg of this is that, in the midst of all this—these questions, right? I'm trying to, I'm trying to identify, what are the questions that I have for myself in art making.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And what do I—what is the—what is it that I want to focus on, and how do I want to do that. I mean, this—this is why, this makes the '80s complicated for me, because, and so I—as you heard me before, I use the word failed a lot.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't mean that the projects fail so much, it's more of my feeling—I don't think most people—you could find people that saw things in those periods, I don't think people would call them failures. It think it's my—I'm very harsh, my own criticism of the work is harsh.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  As is my—if I think something genuinely succeeds, that means it has met a bar that is very high for me. Like, my bar for success in work is very high.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It is extremely rigorous. I do not—I'm not interested in experiments that are easy. I'm interested in experiments that are, that are actually outside of my reach.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like aesthetically, intellectually, formally, like, how do I—how do I push past what's, what seems to me to be the category and the classification that I'm expected to operate within. And this is actually something in—important in this time, is that we're just in the '80s, we're just starting to figure out the hyphenated existence, and we're starting to figure out that—the, in the '80s, you have the emergence of minority discourses—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in aesthetics.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Just the beginning, but it's there. And so everyone, you know, also with sexual orientation, and also with gender, all three of these things rose at the same time and it was, very fertile ground, very open ground—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to walk, because there was a sense of self-discovery. That goes along with the political discourse, which is trying to identify and effect what a postcolonial position might be. Or maybe it's—it was just a colonial—what the colonial position was. And inside of that colonial position, trying to get to a postcolonial position, right? And—even if that, if such a thing is possible.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? This sort of not following in a tradition of—of what has been presented to us as the only canon, which is a European sense of art history. But what is another possibility of that art history, right? How, how does one find the places of intervention by which to manifest ideas that—that them and themselves are unique to, what—how we saw art as functioning and how art addresses audiences, and what it was we—what the expectations of art were.

[00:05:22]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That—it—and it—and it seemed to me at that point too, that the gesture of the work had to be ambitious or it didn't seem—like just making, like, I don't know what I wanna say here, um—somehow—some—I'm trying—somehow to get some sense of experiments, to—what happens when you grow outside of the studio.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't mean make work outside the studio, when you go bigger than what the studio can do, right? And also the other thing that I wanna remind us here, in this, is that, as you well know, particularly, I would say then, but I would say it's always probably been the case, you know, the class distinction in artmaking, whom—the artists who have succeeded in the art world have had—have had the luxury of being able to succeed in the art world, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In the sense that they come from wealthy families, or they have trust funds, or they have sources of income that allows them to make art, or they've been in art families, and, you know, there's, there's a, you know, like going to Harvard—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right? You have your Harvard ring which, even if you were, like, getting Cs, you're still going to—you still might be able to succeed doing that. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We had no—you know—we have no history of art making, or if it does, it's fairly rudimentary, we have—there's not been opportunities open to a Chicano artist, particularly in the '80s, no such thing. I mean, why do you think Asco was still trying to organize things the way they did, is because there was nowhere to go.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There was nowhere to go. There was no galleries helping, there was no people buying work. There was no people funding projects. I mean, it was, you know, it was a fucking desert in a vacuum. [Laughs.] You know? It was impossible, the project—to be an artist, and be a Mexican American, or to be Chicano, or to be whatever label or category you wanna call that—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  it was impossible. An impossible task that was given, so it's not only are all these things trying to—figure—figure out an aesthetic milieu to operate within, figure out how that manifests itself, to really try to wrap your head on what a modern sense of identity would be, a contemporary sense of identity would be that was, that did not reject—and this is what people never understand about me, Chon, is that, it sounds like I want to reject my own history, that's not true. I'm just, I just demand a new sense of who I am in the New World. In other words, I don't wanna be a Chicano of the '60s, or the '70s, or the '50s, or the '40s, or the '30s, I don't wanna be that. I am more than have—I respect everything that they have ever done, and everything that all the efforts that they—that everyone made before me—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —all the effort every man and woman made before me is what enabled me to be who I am. And for that I am eternally grateful to all the generations of people that did that, because that's all I have, Chon. That's all we have is those people, and those stories that get passed down to me, and so, I see this, I'm exposed to this, but I want to reject it because I want to invent something new. I do not want to be trapped, straitjacketed to exist in—in a—in one degree of a paradigm that I'm told I have to exist in.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so, but this is like, this is a struggle, the '80s are a struggle like this for me, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you're in New Zealand for almost a year, you get this sense of—the value of stories as a form of exchange. So that's—and you're doing work, but what is the nature of the work you're doing?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Um—

CHON NORIEGA:  Is it—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Sculpture, installation—yeah, content-wise?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm trying to think—

CHON NORIEGA:  Are you engaging with local histories in the way that you would do in other contexts, or is it personal, or formal?

[00:10:05]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, I never do formal.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, it's only probably been—in the maybe—I never sort of actually spun back to, I would never qualify it as, or describe it as, personal. I would always—I tend to prefer autobiographical.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because there's a more poignancy in my opinion. To the idea of autobiographical, as opposed to the vagueness of the category of personal.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? I'm—I prefer the power of the—of the historical weight of autobiography.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—but are you doing more autobiographical work then?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, that didn't actually—didn't even—that kind of stuff didn't even occur to me until later.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, this—I'm trying to remember what I was doing down there. I was doing sculpture and photography. I was looking at—I was looking at prisons down there and comparing them. I had already done a bunch of work up here in prisons.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you're kind of researching the environment—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I'm—I'm, it's—I'm just sort of, I was also just having a really good time, you know, and enjoying myself down there.

CHON NORIEGA:  And did you never leave the country that whole year?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No. No, I just stayed—

CHON NORIEGA:  You—you were just there.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I was just there. I didn't go anywhere else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you have any contact outside of New Zealand during that time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, I'm sure. But you remember then it was like pre-everything.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Pre-internet, you know, all you had is a phone, and a fax machine.

CHON NORIEGA:  Or write a letter, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, write a letter, I mean, yeah, but it—I mean, no—you know, yes and no, I mean. I didn't have that many—I didn't have that many—I don't know—I mean, as you know, I don't have any family here, and I had a pretty—

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you have a place here? That you were—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —my family was estranged.

CHON NORIEGA:  Were you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, no, no, I had my—oh, sure. Because I—when I—as soon as I got that—I—when I—

CHON NORIEGA:  How'd you pay for all this? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  When I got out of school, when I got out of school—you know, I—I went straight downtown.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, this is—I mean, I—I lived in a dozen different studios downtown.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, I mean—I mean, the '80s in Downtown were fabulous, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you kept your place there.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, I kept my studio, because studios were cheap.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Everything was cheap in the '80s, Chon. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  We should go back, huh?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, no, I mean, yeah, I kept my place here, I kept my studio, I had—I remember the building I was living in, and I had a bunch of friends in the building.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In—in, no, it was like—

CHON NORIEGA:  What—what led you to leave the islands, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You mean, come back here?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, time was up. Time to get back to work. Like, to get back in the mix.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, no, it's the same, I don't—that's why I started maybe—maybe—again, I'm a little confused today. But maybe the—what I was trying to describe in the beginning—see, I think living my life as an artist means living my life as an artist.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it means if I go places and I meet people and the conversations I have with them then are impactful, and meaningful—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, eating meals with people is important to me, right? Making friends that I could have never made before, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Looking at landscapes, and looking at the political situation, looking at how other people deal with their identity. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  How other people deal with their political and colonial histories, right? How they deal with racism, right? How do other people do this, right? Not the only model that I had, which was useful and good, here, but how do other people that have suffered in the extreme ways do this? And it's not just—it wasn't just—you know, the Irish was another model of this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They're dealing with the same colonial issues, right? You know, when I was in Cairo, you know, it's the same difference there. I mean, I've traveled all over the world, so it's—it's—it's—I think going to other places then allows me to reflect in a new, more intimate way about my own situation where I am.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? But, but this, but, you know, is when—as soon as we get to the late '80s, right? Things start changing very rapidly. Because the kind of shows that I start getting asked to do are much larger—

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —kinds of exhibitions, right? Start a little bit of a museum attention, starting to be in big public art, you know, programs, cities-level, public art things, you know. I think we met in the late '80s, right? Or was it early '90s?

CHON NORIEGA:  Early '90s.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Early '90s, so, my—the '80s, in effect, seems like practice.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was like, it was like warmup.

[00:05:05]

Like, trying—maybe that my sort of harshness on the kinds of, you know, experiments and failures, and experiments and failures, is—that by the time the '90s come around, I think I'm starting to have a much clearer vision of what the power is that I have—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —by which to then manipulate matter, right? That the—that the, social-economic, social-political landscape is malleable. It can be—it can be, it—it's like dough, and I never saw that before.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, am I hearing you correctly in terms of the time in New Zealand that, in some ways you're working out a distinction between things that are done in a studio, and things that are going to have a scale that goes well beyond that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I think so, I think so. I don't—I don't know exactly, I mean, because you remember, I—I had already been in, been making large performances and large installations in Europe already.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had already been thinking on the, on a like, you know, I—Gerry Adams was a very good friend of mine. Who was the head of the IRA, right, I mean, I knew people who were in the IRA.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, that's who I sided with. You know, I mean, I—I heard other people talk to me about the challenges and the difficulties and the impossibilities of the task at hand. People were entrenched in war against a colonial nation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? I mean, you can ask almost everywhere. [Laughs.] Where it's gonna be almost anywhere you go, somebody's pushing back against colonial history. Somehow, some way, right? The other thing in the '80s too is, you know, because of the kind of first embrace of multiculturalism, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So this is where this word starts—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to come around. One of the great parts of the '80s on this level was that, when you're—when you're on the national circuit of, like, lectures and nonprofit spaces and university galleries and all that kind of thing? It's like—it was a circuit right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, and there was money.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, yeah, you could make money doing this, right? And this was another way of getting some income in the door, right? But you met people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So I—you know, myself, I—my relationship to Black America is actually more developed than my relationship to the Mex—to a Chicano community.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? Because I've always lived in Black neighborhoods my whole—almost my whole life. I grew up with Black artists around me. But the one that was particularly unique was, I met Native artists in the '80s, so, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  Native to the U.S.?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Native U.S., yeah, you know, like Duane Slick, or Edgar Heap of Birds, or James Luna, Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith, I mean—all these people, right? Everybody was young, right? Jimmie Durham, in those days, before Jimmie Durham's identity came into question.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Was he passing at that time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, totally, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  He kind of downplays that now, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, I mean, he—you know. I knew—I knew him a little bit, and we all knew each other in those times, you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nobody, Chon, in the '80s, especially the mid-'80s on, if somebody said that I'm a purple Martian from Alpha Centauri, people go, sure, you are! I mean, nobody would doubt, nobody, because nobody would—I don't think it occurred to anyone to claim an identity that wasn't yours, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, I can, I think—I think people would have been shocked—if somebody, if someone knew somebody was doing that as either as an aesthetic strategy, or as a political strategy, or to be what—the subterfuge of hiding behind something that's not yours. Or your—you know, something common is like you have a lot of white people who have, like, or identify as Black.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which pisses off Black people of course, right? But who does that? Who wants to identify as something that you're not?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's a peculiar position to be in.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I'm not even sure what the motivation behind that is, and why you would have to lie about who you are. Just say who you are and happen to be—yeah, I'm—I'm gonna, like, fight with this tribe, I mean, you could fight with the tribe and not have to pretend you're—you are the tribe.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Until they want to maybe make you an honorary member or something, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, but the—but the Native perspective here was unique.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Listening to Native people, Native artists, that was another moment here for me that was extraordinary. Extraordinary. Because these are people who grow up on the Rez.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Whom—and I met tons of people. And here—again, hearing stories—the only person see, I had ever heard stories from was Manazar.

[00:20:03]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had never heard stories from anybody else, right? I could read things in books, it's not the same.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  When I met Native people, U.S Native, you know, Indigenous people here, the same thing occurred, it just didn't occur in the intensity of my experience in New Zealand.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? But, so when you asked me earlier, what does consequence mean, and this—so, maybe consequence is tied to an effort to disrupt the colonial narrative.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? To intervene in such a way that you just slap that thing down, and you slap it back, right? And to then, by that intervention, you introduce a new history, a new trajectory into the understanding and the analysis of who we are, right? And inevitably that—that terms of identification, for whatever reason in the '80s as—as I think, is pretty clear, I think the '80s was really a lot about experimentation with technology' but it was also about trying to come to terms with what identification meant, and what representation meant.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I think the party line that I got told was that it was "a thing." And I was confused by what "a identity" was. When I'm not—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I didn't believe—I didn't believe, even though I succumbed to it to some degree, I'm not sure I believed the essentialized notion of what an identity meant.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so my precarious position, then, not being completely Chicano from the Chicano's point of view, and not being white from the white point of view, and then it leaves me in a non-identified state. So I become no one. So the position of no one, that is, that has no overt identification. Like, so people—even now, people don't even claim me for one thing or the other. Because no one knows what to do with me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So I have, you know, the Smithsonian, you know? Constantly trying to label me in their little shows that they do, you know, to post-label me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? To call up language. As you well know, I mean, I—I reject all the language. I don't wanna be called any of the things that people want to call me. But yet, people still hanging on tightly to these old categories, which I'm—I guess the point is, here I am—was struggling with in the '80s. Here we are, what, four decades later—[laughs]—and I still seem to—I'm still struggling with this, because people seem to be more entrenched in the essentialized terms of identification. Rather than this being—I mean, this is not the age of fluidity that everyone says it is. You know, there's a conservatism to the tools of identification as we currently have embarked now, i.e., X.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well is—is there a time in your life, when things were not in some ways organized around tribalism?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No. No.

CHON NORIEGA:  And so, if you don't—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because, I mean, though—the only—

CHON NORIEGA:  —if you don't fit into a tribe, then you're in a non-space, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, that's—but that's—but—this is the problem, Chon—

CHON NORIEGA:  That's been your career? Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And this is—and this is—and the reason that I'm bringing this up now, and this I think is where I was trying to go before is, this is what the '80s was.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't belong anywhere, Chon. I'm trying to— I'm trying to find places to fit in, and I don't belong anywhere. And even when I try to fit in, and try to pass—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in—essentially, right? I mean, like, I'm passing, I'm trying to pass as, not myself, but as something, what other people want me to be.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? But yeah, I don't have, I don't, and this is, this has plagued me through my entire life. And it, and it has impacted the work. It is—it is—it has changed my—lots of decisions I made, particularly when the '90s came about, it was distinctly different.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].           

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was an attempt to try to change that—I wanted to change the vocabulary, I want to train the linguistic model that was being used and try to have that appear to be something else, it was very very difficult to do.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because what if you're nobody from nowhere. I mean, essentially that—the upside of that would be you would have complete freedom, but it's not complete freedom. Because everyone who, conservatively, gets on the boat, right? Goes along with the program, as it is allowed to have happen. They all succeed, Chon. And they succeed on doing what, from my perspective, is, you know, I mean, if you're willing to do the, you know, folkloric primitive anti-intellectual, anti-art-historical work, you can go really far. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. So you come back from New Zealand and it seems like, right off the bat you're going in at least three directions, right?

[00:25:03]

You're doing these large-scale gallery-based installations. And they're comprised of smaller pieces that you can make in a studio, but once installed, they're quite monumental. You're doing 

stuff that's more graphic in terms of posters, billboards, messaging, through image and text, and then you're doing another kind of work in public space—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Seattle.

CHON NORIEGA:  —in Seattle. That's kind of laying a foundation for a certain kind of interventionist use of art within the kind of public sphere.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right.

CHON NORIEGA:  Right.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, Seattle's important because—and Seattle's '89, I think.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It had never happened before, Chon. You realize—I mean—the thing I want to like—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, this is a two-year project you have with them.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean it was, it—it took long to develop. And it's, you know, it takes time to develop things before you get them done, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Especially when you're working with a city. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, that's another story. But, maybe I—I think we can go from my experiences at CalArts to today—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and we can look—if you look carefully at the graph that that creates in terms of exhibitions, where and how and what they were. The—the spikes, are—are the ones I would identify are all moments, where I end up doing something out of—that I'm the first one to be doing it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They're not things that I have copied, or modeled after from someone else. Seattle, nobody, there was no public interventions of that nature called public art ever, in the United States. It was, the Inside project in Seattle [In Public: 1991] was the very first one of its kind. Second thing that was, to, again, now to—instead of taking on—making a project inside of a studio, or making something in a gallery, to—to completely re-shape the discourse at the level of a civic action, right? So now we're talking about it's more reminiscent of the civil rights movement.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  When people are marching down the street, or when people—the Chicano Moratorium. You have massive public display of anger, or—distrust, or some, you know, whatever grievance of something that has gone on, police brutality shootings, I mean, you name it, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, the reason that people act out in public, right? No one had ever used banners before.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, the—the, you know, I—I—I mapped downtown Seattle, I—I got a company down there to fully fund, making all these fantastic banners for me, and what I did is I just did a class analysis of the city. I mean, literally.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  With questions, and in these—and just clip—I just used clip art as imagery, right? With questions that, I mean, they questioned everything to do with our society. Put up—and in downtown Seattle in particular it, I mean, it—it branched off into different directions, but downtown Seattle is wealthy.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's extremely wealthy. And they have—I mean, it's like Beverly Hills in downtown Seattle, right? Not all of it, but a good majority of the stores that are there, right, are very high end.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, you know, this—the controversy with this, Chon, was just mind-boggling. I mean, I—to be perfectly, honest I—it didn't even occur to me that people would—

CHON NORIEGA:  Be upset?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it—well, no.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Upset, yes, but, I mean, it's, like, it's art. I'm not there, like, marching down the street with guns!    You know what I mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Or handing out cocaine on the street corner, or, I mean, I'm not I—I'm not advocating for violence.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm not advocating for an overthrow of the fucking country or something, right? I'm—I'm making—and the companion piece was at the, at COLA [CoCA, Center on Contemporary Art], the contemporary arts space there, Center for—who knows the acronym—

CHON NORIEGA:  In Seattle.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in Seattle, COLA [CoCA] in Seattle.

CHON NORIEGA:  Not the COLA here?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They—they had an art—like, a non-profit there. So I did a gallery installation there, which is of the kind you're describing where—and again, I think the '80s was defined as—no one, again, I don't believe that I can remember—I was aspiring to this question, this notion of aesthetic maximalism.

CHON NORIEGA:  So what does that mean?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Maximum meaning that—an overwhelming sensorial experience of objects. That are as densely packed intellectually, right? So that—that they're not the minimalist white box, white cube, one object in the room, one painting on the wall experience. This was literally the opposite of that. Fully immersive, fully deranged. [Laughs.] You know?

[00:30:01]

CHON NORIEGA:  So what—what would be an example of that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What would be an example of that, Chon, I don't know.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, so that—the installation there, I took a—they gave me a—I took—architecture, took a length—the longest wall area they had—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and I made it into maybe a four-foot-wide corridor. And then I had collected pulp novels, from mid-20th century, but thousands of them.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And thousands of them. And I covered the walls with these novels, and inside of those were, like, small windows that had new—other objects in them, within text, and other sculptures that they—so you go in and each box is kind of like a small vitrine that's connected into all this pulp, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So then in this particular thing was all—was—was a visual art, an installation version of dealing with—the questions on this show were always, in Seattle, were always about—

[00:31:03] [END OF TRACK martin19_19of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

 DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —class and race.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And this was more specifically dealing with questions around race.

CHON NORIEGA:  So this was in the COLA [CoCA] space.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, space, and outside I have these banners, these black—

CHON NORIEGA:  And you had the whole novel up on the wall?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. No, so you could see the pic—the pictures were, you know, the pictures of those kinds of novels were fantastic. And you go in and you can smell the books, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's kind of suffocating, right? The sense of books. And it—this was, I mean, this model I developed, I actually thought that I had done very well. This kind of maximalist, over, you—you know. Dense, dense, densely packed installations.

CHON NORIEGA:  So what is, what is your intent then, behind a work, that has so much content it can't actually be in some ways aesthetically engaged.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, it—it can't be aesthetically engaged, I mean, it's common now.

CHON NORIEGA:  It's—it's—it's par for the course right now.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. But, I mean, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  And it raises the same question because there seems to be less intent behind it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, but it—no, but the—but we—I mean, if you're looking. We'd have to look at the pictures or something, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you mean the—because I'm using neon and stuff that has—that where now I'm using—

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —my intervention with text into these things is—is as poignant as the texts that are, in the street, you know, talking about racism and class. So there—it's moving in the same direction, it's trying to, I think a lot of the—there was a really—there was a really famous one that I did in, in San Francisco, whatever the non-profit space was there. I cannot think of the name of it right now. Whatever the big main one was there, I did a piece there that was also very controversial that—that—where I completely transformed the gallery space, no one—no one from San Francisco recognized the space, I had transformed it so much. And in this instance it was filled, I made a labyrinth—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to get to the center. The labyrinth was filled with used clothes. So when you walked through the space it would be like walking through a closet.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You—I mean, you have to push your way through the clothes, and then—and VinZula had designed an audio work where he had speakers through this whole thing, and then basically when you got to the inside, it—the very center, the very center was the headquarters for a radical cell that was going to do terrorism, right? And so—but you didn't figure that out until you finally got through this thing, and you go into this sound, I mean, they're like going back in memory, like a cultural memory.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The books gave me a kind of cultural memory because they're traces of something else. The clothes do that, because clothes, used clothing in mass, is evocative. It, you know, it's—it's attempts at using massive amounts of signifiers to get to a point.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it's a journey to get there. So it's not just like, again, it was—I think it was a strong reaction against what was popular at the time, I mean, is always popular, but just a straight white wall, engagement with a white box.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, you're creating an environment.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, then, well, they're environments, but they're active environments. They're not passive. These are not passive spaces.

CHON NORIEGA:  There are a lot of things to pay attention to, and they also structure your—your mobility, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They're structured, they, well, they inhibit mobility.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? They're—they're—they're something that exists, I think at the time they were—the idea was that there is, the same way that a film, for two hours, two-and-a-half hours, completely disrupts your relationship to before you walked—so you walk into the movie theater, you sit down, you change the world that you're in.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It—if the film's done well, will literally transport you to the time-space that the film is enacted in. So if it's a period piece, Elizabethan film or, I mean, whatever it happens to be, right? In terms of context, you go there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And by going there you establish a new set of—of terms of reality. So that you tell a story inside of that new reality, and then you leave the theater and you go back to  the world that's outside. That's the model.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That the installations were transport devices. Maybe as a transport machine. A time machine. That they move, that the compression of all the objects and things in the—were the entire contents of a film. Compressed into one aesthetic space.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I think that they made perfect—I think they were overwhelming to experience, but I don't think that you were confused by what you were looking at. I think there's clarity in going from thing to thing or object to object as you see them, because the story is unfolding as you pass through time, right?

[00:05:08]

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And experiencing them.

CHON NORIEGA:  So in some ways, they're meant to be read differently than the way you look at a book by itself. You're looking at it as a, almost like a brick. And —

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, or, I mean, you look at a painting on a wall.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The reason that people—and I—I, you know, I've moved back to this, of course, but the singularity, the classic singularity of the experience for a viewer of a work of art is in the isolation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? I just felt there was a bigger story to tell. And it required more tools to tell, and so, the experiment was, can you change that time-space continuum in a visual art installation that when you are in the middle of the work, Chon—imagine that in the middle of the work you have lost sight of where you came in at. That it transports you literally to the place that the work wants to take you. And the fully immersive environment that, there's a new discourse in that kind of experience, whereas the isolation of experience that people had become accustomed to. And again, so as you, you—I mean, at the time, you know, again, nobody had—nobody was doing that. I mean, it was like, you know, people thought I was crazy—I've been using—now—now everybody uses the word maximalism now.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's, like, over-determined, of course. But—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, oddly, it seems like you're going after the same effect as the white cube itself.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, maybe. I mean, it's—but it's—

CHON NORIEGA:  But—to—to really, through an engagement with the work, and one's experience and thought to kind of go to another place than where you are now.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right. But—there—I just cannot think, I swear, my mind—remembering things—there was a new movement of art-making—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So like in, in 1990—maybe it was '89 or '90, I don't remember now. Mary Jane Jacob—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —did Places With a Past in Charleston, okay? What she did was, she invited artists to Charleston, a multi-year project, to look at the social, political, cultural space of what Charleston is. And its historic past, and to make site-specific installations there. That dealt with that history, right? Monumental project. Monumental project.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nothing like it had ever existed before, right? I bring that up as a comparative model for you, because I think I was already thinking about that model of working. I didn't have a context, someone as smart—Mary Jane was brilliant. And she—you know, she was the chief curator at MOCA, she left that job and her—I remember she—you know she said I left the job because—she said I couldn't do what I wanted to do curatorially inside a museological context.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Because it was too limiting for her.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  She wanted the freedom of working in the public sphere, right? I think—I think a lot of the installation work that I was doing in the '80s, I had never had the opportunity, to work large like that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, she gave them a lot of money, and she gave them vast, vas—people could go there and pick spaces, I mean.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Huge warehouses, or they could do anything they wanted basically, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The first time I ever tasted something like that outside of the Olympics, right, was Seattle.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  In terms of gallery space?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, no, well, in terms of public space. Like actually—but I think that the installations I was doing indoors, because they tended to always be a maximalist sort of proposition, I think that Seattle was the first time I was able to put a public and private discourse into one city at one time. And this—this was something that I developed later with you.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because, it was, it was unique, Chon. Because all of a sudden, there's no more rules here.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  See, the art world all for it's—all talk, talk, talk about everything. And freedom and all this—it's got a lot of rules—

[00:10:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —got a lot of rules. You know, art—and this whole idea of artists inventing and experimenting and all this stuff, it's like, no, no, not so sure about it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? And I, and—you know, I think maybe my lawlessness, constant lawlessness and attraction to that, you know, is part of this sort of manifestation, but I think—I think that I was just ahead of that style of working, and—and which, I mean, I'm not making much sense here but, the—there, it was the first time I realized there was a new power available.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There was a new opportunity to impact people in ways. I mean I, I didn't—I did not anticipate the pushback on the Seattle project.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you're kind of doing—you're bringing attention to class and race, you're doing stuff in galleries, you're doing stuff on the streets, they're both in some ways focusing down to text that's pretty minimalist.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  And they're both set against the backdrop of—of a lot of content, so on the streets it's all the buildings and the billboards—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  And everything else. And in the gallery it's what you are creating—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That—there—

CHON NORIEGA:  With—with—with objects.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean they—they could be, you know, they're the inversion of each other, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, how did you get this gig in Seattle, then?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What's that?

CHON NORIEGA:  How did you get the gig?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, I don't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] You don't remember how you ended up in Seattle?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't remember how I get any of these gigs. But no, I think somebody just—

CHON NORIEGA:  —contacted you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, you know—I mean, I—you know, Chon—oh, what was I gonna say—I'm not passive.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. [Laughs.] That's an understatement.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I think—I don't remember, okay, but I just—I just have to, when I think my—I think the same reason that I have found the things in my life, that I have found, which all of them I cannot remember exactly how I found them, I think it has something to do with the way that I move in the culture. And the way that I move. Period.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I think that, particularly in the '80s, I was traveling a lot, I was showing a lot, I met lots of people, people were open having—you know' I think it was the most, I think it was the time of the most solidarity amongst—across race, and ethnicity, and gender. I—I can, you could go into a room, there would be a bunch of feminists talking about something and they would happily welcome you into the conversation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? The discourses were lively, they were open.

CHON NORIEGA:  In the arts?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, in the arts, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, in the arts outside of the dominant—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, outside, no, yeah, this is all under the—all this I'm talking about is nothing to do with museums or galleries. Has to do with the non-profit world.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is very important, it's a non-profit existence, and what was understood then, Chon, was something really, really important. We all knew that we could exist, and have the respect of other people, and make projects, and never have to succumb to going in the commercial galleries, because they didn't want us anyway, and—nobody was selling work. Nobody was making any money, there was no money in the '80s. At least nobody I knew made any money in the '80s.

CHON NORIEGA:  And these—and these installations when they were done—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, they were just trash, trash.

CHON NORIEGA:  —disassembled and thrown out.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, or I would give, what I would do is I would work with the organization and we would give it, anything that was recyclable—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, recyclable—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —or reclaimable. or somebody could use the books. or we just gave them—everything back to people, right? I mean, so it just doesn't go into the trash can, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  So in Seattle this is the what, Quality of Life, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  You—did your initial plan, were you like actually putting, you wanted to put banners across the intersections?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, that's—that's San Francisco.

CHON NORIEGA:  That's San Francisco, okay, I'm getting them mixed up. So this was always vertical banners.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, but nobody had ever put banners—

CHON NORIEGA:  —for art.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in city streets, no, they—the banner use was almost non-existent.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  People did not figure out how to advertise on banners in cities yet.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The vocabulary that we see now—

CHON NORIEGA:  Did they have banners set up already?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, I invented the whole thing.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you in—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had a—I found a great business owner in Seattle, she was fabulous, she owned a big—

CHON NORIEGA:  And what were the banners hanging off of?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We invented it, we made poles.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We made—we made the poles.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you created an infrastructure for banner display.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right, and I did it with this woman—

CHON NORIEGA:  In the downtown quadrant—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in the entire—which was, the whole thing was—I mean, you know, it was a beautiful—I mapped the kind of banners and the contents, and they were inversions of each other, white on black, black on white, you know.

[00:15:02]

I paired them with this specific store—I—I did a map where I had every name of every kind of store there were, and how they branched off to the subway, and all the, I mean, I did a complete analysis of Seattle where the banners would go, she made as many—we made hundreds of these things. Hundreds of them.

CHON NORIEGA:  So who—who helped you then navigate with the city, in terms of putting all that in place?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The people who ran the public art project in Seattle. Which, I don't remember who they were.

CHON NORIEGA:  And then, you ran by the content as well? You ran it by the city? Like, here's what the banners are gonna say.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, they, no, they saw all of it. They saw—

CHON NORIEGA:  And they—they just thought, oh, this is fine.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, it's—it's the same as the fucking Whitney. I—I never—I don't understand it. Yes, they—the—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, no that—they—it was like any public art project, which were not that many of them yet, right? But, yeah—we had a—

CHON NORIEGA:  We'll get to this later but, when I worked with you at Cornell, it took a lot of behind-the-scene finessing, to get that approved.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, I understand—I know—

CHON NORIEGA:  Approval—but here you're just, you're just being very straightforward and they're looking at it, and they're saying this is fine.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, I mean, there was no, it—different than the Whitney Biennial, which they rejected my first proposal. Okay? But that was tactical on my part, I knew they would reject my first proposal.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it was so outrageous. I mean, it was so overtly outrageous.

CHON NORIEGA:  Such as?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, so, the—I knew that I had talked about where Charlie was going to put his fire truck in the front, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, Charles Ray?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. And which—you know—signal of emergency, which is a lot of the theme, for the Biennial. So myself being —one, Diogenes was a favorite of mine.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And has been for, a very, very long time. Because he—you know, Diogenes is the founder of the Cynic movement, not cynicism as we know it now, but actually a field of philosophy that is basically, essentially where we would—the position is to challenge everything around you.

CHON NORIEGA:  The status quo.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right, right? And so, that was very appealing to me, you know. Him being—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —living in his tub and, you know, be called the dog of Athens, this is like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Somebody twenty-six hundred years or—fourteen hundred years ago is —

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, is my model. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Twenty-six hundred years ago, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, Twenty-six hundred years ago, yeah. No, he would go in like, you know—one of my favorite stories about him, because some—they're all vague stories, but they're fantastic. He—I guess he was constantly fighting with Plato [laughs], you know, and so I guess Plato would be like, you know, giving a big lecture somewhere. Diogenes would run in and jump on the table and pretend he was a dog, and start barking at Plato. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's really appealing to me for some reason! [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  You have yet to use that though, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] No, but I mean, his writings are fantastic.

CHON NORIEGA:  So your first proposal was to take that phrase—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I took a phrase that said, that said—

CHON NORIEGA:  —and wrap the museum in it, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The—no, no, no, no, no, the first proposal was to put a banner on it, cover the front of the museum—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and strips of banners like this—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that said, "In the rich man's house, the only place to spit is in his face."

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, that's what I proposed to them.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, I saw the—the mock-up—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Mock-up.

CHON NORIEGA:  —for that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. And they were like, no! And it was like, well, of course no!

CHON NORIEGA:  So they let you put it in a gallery space.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No!

CHON NORIEGA:  You had that in the gallery space right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No but—no, but they—no—

CHON NORIEGA:  But that was—that was the first pass at the museum tags right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, so, so—no. I had the tags already in my pocket.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I already knew what I wanted.

CHON NORIEGA:  That's what you wanted them to do.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I knew what I wanted to do.

CHON NORIEGA:  And you knew they would shoot this down.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I knew they would shoot this down. Because it was too outrageous. If they shoot down something this outrageous, they're not gonna tell me no twice.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was my gamble. And sure enough, when I passed the phrase "I can't imagine ever wanting to be white" to them, which—you would have thought the museum board and the director and everybody else when this came across their desk, like, we're gonna pin this on every museum visitor for the entire—you know, the length of the Biennial, you think somebody would go, oh that's not a good idea—no! That's a great idea.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Well—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, so, Seattle was similar. They saw all the mock-ups to do it, they saw where the banners were supposed to go, they saw—they knew who I was working with to make them. You know, feasibility in terms of, you know, being able to get it done.

CHON NORIEGA:  And it, and—and the banners are posing questions that bring up to the surface the class disparities.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely, well, I mean class and—

[00:20:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  And race disparities.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —people, I mean—there, there's a, there's a, it's this thick.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Chon. I have a, I have a document this thick.

CHON NORIEGA:  A single document.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  A binder document.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, not even a binder, you know when you put those —

CHON NORIEGA:  Spiral—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   —spiral things.

CHON NORIEGA:  —you got a two-inch—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I have a two-inch spiral document, of all of the articles that came out during this time. And they are like, oh my God! [Laughs.] I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, it's like Cornell, that was about three inches of this. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They—these people thought I had landed from Mars. They had never even—the—the people in the stores, and the people in the city, they—they just freaked out. I mean, it was—it was a bloodbath.

CHON NORIEGA:  What were their complaints?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, it just—well, the first complaint—the most, the stupidest complaint, which is where they—the one they forwarded first was, "This might interrupt with people coming into my store." [Laughs.] You know, and then it just—and then it became, it was just a bunch of cliché stuff. You know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, my—I'm the racist, right? To point this out. I'm the one—I  shouldn't be talking about minimum wage and I shouldn't be talk—you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  And what do—what did the city do then in response to that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The city, the—not, you know, typical for me, it seems as—in this particular period that the public art commission in Seattle, who was responsible for this project—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they were very progressive, Chon. They didn't budge on their position. They stood behind the—we had a bunch of meetings with—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, freedom of expression.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, basically. We had a bunch of meetings with—you know, City Hall, and we had, you know, all the town meetings with them, and, you know, I mean, people yelling and screaming at me like—which, little did I know that that was gonna be my new norm. People yelling and screaming at me. And yeah, but they, they wouldn't budge. The banners stayed up the entire length of the time, there were, I mean— the—you know, there was a local columnist there who, you know, and this happened again in San Francisco too. Um, You know, every day wrote something fucking derogatory about me in the paper. Every goddamn day the thing was up. You know, because in those days there were a lot of people writing daily columns, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it was, it was—but it was, but Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, Prometheus—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —just showed me what fire was.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  You realized you were on the right path.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—oh, man, I, you know I, but—because here, here—so when I use the word consequence.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, consequence is very different—[laughs]—than people looking at a painting in a gallery. All of a sudden art has this new possibility to me. Not the only possibility, but a new avenue of possibilities.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That you can create discourse, at the level of a city, this was extraordinary, Chon. I never—it never occurred to me you could do that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  How would you—how would you know? I mean—it—it's the instances of in the '80s, even the '70s, there's—there's no, there's not that much art historically that would move to—I mean, you have Duchamp, but that's—it's in the Armory Show, you have—I mean, Warhol still hadn't been Warhol, is not the Warhol that we know today, it was not the Warhol in the '80s, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  These are still, these are—these are couched within movements, I mean, they're still, you know, you have Smithson doing the Spiral Jetty, but it's like, you know, or I mean, you have public art and you have these kind of other kinds of public art going on, but it's not like this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is actual discourse. Generating discourse. Generating debate around sets of ideas that are initiated by aesthetic propositions, that's a fabulous incredible—algorithm essentially—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that can be utilized. I mean, I—all of a sudden there was no more passivity in art. There was a way to, because I'd already been in galleries, I'd been, I'd shown in galleries forever now, at this point. You know, it wasn't old but it was just like, it never even occurred to me, I just did not imagine this was possible, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  So this was a new platform for you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. And, you know, and so after this, right, is—is San Francisco.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did it change the nature of what you felt the art itself was? I mean—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It changed the—the scalability.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[00:25:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the—and the opportunity to address really complex social issues. It seemed really—at my fingertips. I could pick the content that I felt was necessary to be examined in a very complex light. And that was brand new.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I—because of the lack of opportunity in—of, particularly in the states, of addressing—you know, the kind of art that we've come to know in the 21st century, right? Highly social, identity, political work that people make. Which is the norm now, right? That hadn't been realized yet.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, and then to put content forward this way, really content-driven work. Was brand new.

CHON NORIEGA:  But it's both content driven and context dependent.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah—absolutely—well, context—

CHON NORIEGA:  Situated.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, it's, there's—there—again, it's—it's a kind of dérive on Situationism, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It is context specific—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —content specific—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —location specific, right? So there's—there's a new vocabulary being developed here. Because the—the tools of the intellectual proposition here, I mean, it was a, it was like opening, you know, it was—it was a vocabulary that didn't exist yet, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I, again, found myself on the cusp of something that was about to break wide open.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, it was a—I mean, it was exhilarating. I mean, it—you know, so after this—you have a question.

CHON NORIEGA:  No, I just, I—I find that it's a fascinating moment because you're in some sense dealing with Conceptual art, installation, performance, image-text work—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and it's not quite become a genre of public art, which I agree it kind of domesticates it, in a way.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But—the thing—

CHON NORIEGA:  But it's very much dependent on activating a public space, and changing, at least at some level, the nature of the interactions of everybody that's in that space.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Right.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—but it also holds people accountable.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You come—you—you, you what essentially is presented as passive, but if the content itself and the way that it's presented to you, I mean, why do newspaper headlines, before—and this is because this is all before the internet, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Newspaper headlines are powerful before—the history of this country was the newspaper headline.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Why is that powerful, is because you have newsstands.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  People—kids on street corners selling newspapers. You know, "This happened today," right? The daily news, the headline of the news, that's public art.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's performance, right? Because whatever—World War II starts, Hitler invades something, ah, we bombed Pearl Harbor, you know, whatever it happened to be, right? I mean, what a vehicle. This taps into that same kind of zeitgeist of the moment, but does it through a different vocabulary.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The vocabulary of visual art, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it collapses multiple states of—of art and thinking and intelligence, it collapses them into a single—a kind of a gesture. That is cognizant not only of all these histories; and you have to remember, I'm probably just then figuring out Beuys again.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm just then realizing Beuys’ performances are able to activate, I think I was, I tried to do that myself but I think I'm—I'm not sure, some maybe were more successful than others. But this was something, because when Beuys would do something there would be controversy around them. The performances were controversial—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right? I was never able to get controversy, right? This was the first time, and it wasn't that I was seeking it—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —but I—because I didn't expect it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Careful what you— [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Careful what you ask for, I mean—you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  But this seems, just to jump all over the place a little, looking back at your work, this is a moment in kind of an understanding of art going—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Massive scale.

CHON NORIEGA:  —back—no but, not just the scale, it's the element of art that overlaps with communications. And it's getting away from that general sense of the iconic or iconographic work, and the way in which at one point in time, The Death of Marat, you know—that—that painting circulated as a form of communication.

[00:30:08]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  And, in a—and then when you're bringing in Diogenes as well, that—I've been intrigued by that element, and this piece seems to be the first to really sit in that public sphere, as it were. Which is all about communication.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, but the—the Olympics, I —I had imagined the Olympics were gonna do this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it didn't do it for me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I thought that that—I had brought a new technology to the public light, and I thought that—I mean, I thought it would be, it would have been, given the content of the work, that it would not only be celebrated for the invention of this new technology, but then that—they would recognize that I essentially was moving in the direction of a new genre. It literally was a new genre to put that kind of content, in a new technology, in a gallery space, right?

[00:31:04] [END OF TRACK martin19_20of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  But I think of the gallery as part of the—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, the gallery—

CHON NORIEGA:  —limitation of it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the—the, I think the gallery muted it.

CHON NORIEGA:  And it was an imaging technology, not a communications technology at that point.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, right.

CHON NORIEGA:  Right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, so as soon as you get—I mean, but imagine I have—you know, again, I'm in a—which I found myself in many, many, many times in my life, Chon, I just had an idea.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had no idea how to do it, I had—I had no model to do it. I mean, my entire life has been me finding myself in a situation, having an opportunity of some kind to show something or make something, and come up with a solution. But there was no—like, there was no practice. There was no example for me like, oh, I can go look in art history and see what someone else did in the same situation. You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  So, after this you go to San Francisco.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes.

CHON NORIEGA:  And what happens there?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  San Francisco.

CHON NORIEGA:  What was the name of that piece again?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is a Nice Neighborhood.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, that's right. Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  And that was a four-year project.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well—okay, well—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] So you go there in '91, same year, at the—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think it started at—I think it's—well, the date on that is a little weird, but it probably started a little earlier than that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, but—there was a request for propositions—proposals. This was the beginning of cities, and having one percent for art—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —for projects, for new building of projects, okay.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, they were gonna build a new—

CHON NORIEGA:  Was this the convention center?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, but what's the name of it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Moscone.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Moscone? What's it called now? Yerba Buena [Center for the Arts].

CHON NORIEGA:  Yerba Buena.?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yerba Buena.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it was a—yeah, the Moscone Convention Center was building what we now know as Yerba Buena—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and they wanted new public art to be in front of the convention center.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Okay, so, there were five—in those days, people worked as teams, right, so there were five teams that were finalists.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So I was working with Roger White, who's an architect, and Rene Petropolis.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, so we made it past the first round, whatever that was. We sent in something for that which was like, mostly like, probably qualifications, right? For doing this, and again, this is a fairly new field at this point.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In terms of getting these kind of commissions.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Now they're, again, they're completely commonplace.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But so it, you know, in—I think, you know, there was pay, you get paid for this right?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I don't think that I had ever imagined that they would ever accept an idea, because why would you give one of the first big multi-million dollar commissions to an LA team, when you had four other San Francisco teams that were competing?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  There is that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, so—it’s kind of the classic rivalry between LA and San Francisco, right? I mean, which at that time was very—palpable. Um,

CHON NORIEGA:  Is it because LA had a football team?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, and this is also after my, the—big project I did, installation there, which got me—

CHON NORIEGA:  Pretty good notoriety.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right. So, before you came up with your idea to make a model, a full-scale model of your project, this is—this is millions of dollars.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This project, right? So they had us up there for a week of orientation. All five teams. My—the best part of the whole orientation thing was, Vito Acconci was one of—because that was when Vito was really starting to go full-ahead with his public art stuff, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You—he developed a whole studio around just doing public artworks.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Later, as time passed on, but, oh, my God! [Claps.] So I made friends with Acconci and that was the best, he's so funny.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He's so funny, it's mind-boggling funny. And, so I remember, because I would start applying for these kinds of gigs, because they're paid, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I would meet him in different cities, and I remember one time coming off a plane with him, he goes, Daniel, I gotta go, I gotta get something to eat, I wanna go to McDonalds. He loved McDonalds. [Laughs.] Anyway, I—I make good friends with Vito based on this, one of these things up there. Anyways so, you know, they—city people talk to you, committees talk to you, and they say, well, this is what we need, and the people that are funding the project talk to you, and the people at the Moscone Center talk to you, city pride and this and that, and blah blah blah—

[00:05:02]

—and what we're gonna do is, you see, we had this neighborhood that was full of, like, poor Filipinos—they didn't say it like that, but that's what they, you know, there's a ghetto here, right, this neighborhood is a bad neighborhood. [Laughs.] And what we want to do is, we want to make it into a good neighborhood, right? [Laughs.] Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So it was classic gentrification.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? They wanted—basically you had a community of people living in a place that they want to push off.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And take all the land—imagine the value that those—I’m sure they saw that handwriting on the wall, right, even then, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so, in one of the meetings, this—you know, PR people, right, or someone from the company that was working for Moscone funding the thing, right, we're gonna make this a nice neighborhood. We're gonna make this a nice neighborhood. This is gonna be a really nice neighborhood. This—I mean, Christ, I can't make—just this guy kept saying that thing, and it started to irritate me because, it's like—and I'm sitting there, like, who the fuck are you? [Laughs.] You know, this white guy talking about how he's gonna, like, make the brown people go away, and it's gonna be a nice neighborhood then. And so I just, I came away, and I said, let's meet afterwards in the, you know—in the hotel, I said, I know what this is gonna be. I said, I don't know what it is yet, but I know what it should say.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It should say, "This is a nice neighborhood." And so when we—we developed this thing that was then based on kind of, quasi-Russian Constructivism, quasi-Eiffel Tower, quasi—it was a series of bridges—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —[laughs]—that were texts, that literally, and it was classic of my style of stretching texts, and letters, and I already had experience doing this graphically. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then you drive down the street, and it would say "This is a nice neighborhood." And then it would be neon in the back, and light up at night. [Laughs.] So we made a model, right, for this thing, right? And—nobody in their fucking mind would pick that, to spend millions—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —of dollars to do, right? It was like, you know, so, like, we presented the model, and everybody presented their models. And the models are up for public viewing. Now, when you ask me about Seattle, did the city approve it, or, you know, did the Whitney approve of me, I'm back again. I—you know, like, here we go! They—they have a model with all the other models of the other finalists for public view for like six months or something, I mean, it's like there, everyone looked at it. Everybody and their brother looked at it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Everyone—I mean, everybody saw it. And we got a call, you won!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  How the fuck does that happen?

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, really, Chon, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  That is earnest.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  You—you were asking me about earnest—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  —earlier—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know if I'm earnest—

CHON NORIEGA:  No, they—they were utterly earnest, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, yeah, I—they—but they approved it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They fucking approved it, right? So, to our shock, you know, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it was perfectly in line, if you look at Seattle—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This was perfectly in line with Seattle.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, it was identical, Chon. Except the only thing I did which something—

CHON NORIEGA:  It was permanent.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —permanent. Yeah, that's right. And not only permanent, though, I learned something else. I learned that it's not just site-specific and content-specific, but it's linguistically specific.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I learned something new, Chon, I learned that I could extract—extract something that was being told to me, and I could re-contextualize it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, by taking the phrase that they were using, by which to—to market and to sell the new construction, and the wiping out of a—the justification for wiping out a neighborhood, I just, it was like—I was like a surgeon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I just cut it out, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  You took the language of whitewashing—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right, and I just put it right— [Snaps fingers.]

CHON NORIEGA:  And you made a sculpture out of it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right. You know, and it was like, oh, Chon, you have no idea how excited I was. I mean, I, it's like, again, so, something new changed, linguistically, I started to understand linguistics differently.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Something really flipped here, Chon. And it was really great. You know, so then, okay—

CHON NORIEGA:  And then—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —then the shoe drops. [Laughs.] You know, I'm like a really nice guy—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —just proposing little art projects here and there—[laughs]— you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Just five little words.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, and, you know, really, beautifully aesthetic, tied it into Russian Constructivism, lovely, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  So what led them to take another look at this?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, unbeknownst to me, inside of San Francisco, right, the other artist groups were very, very upset that we had won. This is sort of after—this is way after I learned this, right? And that, basically, people complained about an LA team winning the commission, right?

[00:10:03]

CHON NORIEGA:  So it went tribal.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It went tribal. Full-on tribal, right? So then they—I guess the city commission who approved it, already approved. We have a fucking signed contract. Just to make the point here.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We already signed a contract for this. There was no way to back down out of this. Okay—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They call us back up there, and say, we have to have a meeting, that we're getting a lot of pushback on this project. That this project might not be appropriate for this site. Due to the controversial content. And I'm like—what controversial content? I said, the model was on display, everybody has seen it, we explained what it meant, right? We discussed it with the—not only the advisory committee, the jury of the committee that approved it, the commission inside of city hall that doubly approved it. I said, the mayor saw it! Everyone saw this thing. It's—I said there was no, like, sleight of hand, or trick here, this has been vetted up and down every way possible. And now you're telling me there's a problem with the controversial content? How is—how, I said help me understand that, right? And I go, now you have to come up, so we go talk there, so we—we really, you know, we have to have a public hearing which we didn't do, so that's how they got us.

CHON NORIEGA:  Ah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They say, we never vetted this as a public hearing for the city and the people who live in the neighborhood. Well, you're moving the people who live in the neighborhood. So, who—what people living in the neighborhood, well, you know, the people that go see the convention, and the people that would rent the hall, and the new Yerba Buena—

CHON NORIEGA:  Customers.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that's right. That's what they're saying, okay? And so we went up—you know, we had a meeting, very frank meeting with these people, and they basically said what I'm telling you inside of city hall.  And I—I mean, you could see the handwriting on the wall here. We were being, we were being set up, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So they say, we're gonna have—we have to have a town meeting. So that everyone you know, you—you get a chance to say what the piece means, and then at the, the public had a chance then, in public, on the microphone, tell us—if they're in favor of it or not in favor of this—oh, it was a fucking—fucking Slaughterhouse Five. You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  So, it happened.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, it happened. And it was —

CHON NORIEGA:  How many people showed up?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, hundreds, hundreds of people came, Chon. From every walk of life, from every—artists, political people, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Do you think they were mobilizing them? Or did it just happen?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I don't know, I don't know, actually. I don't know, but, so in the—so, so it—

CHON NORIEGA:  But you had a—a loud crowd there.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, a very loud crowd who—they were not just loud, Chon, they were very, very, very hostile, to this. I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  On what basis?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, they—

CHON NORIEGA:  Too upbeat?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I mean, because no, it—they just thought of—so it's similar to the original attacks on the Eiffel Tower.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm sure you remember, right, they—when the Eiffel Tower was first being built, when they got just to the very bottom portion, governments, heads of governments from all over Europe wrote whoever was in charge of Paris at the time, basically said, you can't build this. You can't—they had never seen open truss construction before. You can't build this—can't be a blight on Europe. This is—this is just ugly architecture, you're not gonna build some, like, pointy thing ,you know, here. And people, I mean, there was—these letters are all, you can find them, they're publicly available. I mean, letter after letter after letter, after letter, after leader, after leader saying don't do this. They told them to fuck off, right? [Laughs.] And built it anyway, right? But that's—but basically the pushback on that said that this is just horribly ugly, there was no aesthetic value in it. That—what did these letters mean, and you know, after we just told them what the word meant—what it meant, right? You know, it doesn't really—it doesn't  mean anything, no one's gonna understand it, it's like, you know. I mean, it was just—stupid. So the problem though, here, aside from the vitriol that was bouncing around the room like crazy, there was a man in the room named Herb Caen.

CHON NORIEGA:  Herb Caen! Oh, my God.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Herb Caen, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  This is—this is, what, '91?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  '91, I'm—I may have still been there.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Herb Caen.

CHON NORIEGA:  I used to read him every day, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, okay, you know what—maybe you don't remember then, he was there. And he was so offended, and he was offended by me. First thing he writes the next morning, he says, "the drive-by three from LA, led by Martinez." The drive-by three led by me. Like, who the fuck are you? You motherfucker. Like, you know, the—I mean, the racism, Chon. The outright fucking racism of this motherfucker. So I wrote him back, and I was just, I—I was just, I—I did, I was, you know, mind you, I was not diplomatic. I told him to fuck himself.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? I told him, who the—I'm just—I'm here—that time, I was even more crazy, I'm calm-crazy now.

[00:15:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In those days I was out-of-my-mind-fucking-crazy, right? And like—I—I just unloaded on him, and he didn't like it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, I think we met the year after, well no, this was when I, what, ninety?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is ninety—this has to be '91, I'm sure.

CHON NORIEGA:  '91, '92.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, it was a prolonged—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —thing, every fucking day. So I have, from San Francisco, another one of these—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —ring binders like this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Of all the articles written in San Francisco, and all the Herb Caen articles, and this guy, he just went up in my ass and out my mouth every fucking day. You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  So he was the equivalent of the guy in Seattle.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah,  I mean this guy was a—but Herb Caen had a following. Seattle's a hillbilly little town.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is not San Francisco. [Laughs.] This is San Francisco. Okay?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, you know, it—oh, Chon, oh, my God. And so, I'm feeling the opposite of my enthusiasm of San Francisco, I mean of Seattle, has been just diminished here, you know? What the fuck is going on here? Because, you know, we—anyway, so, in the end, Chon, they had a team of lawyers which we didn't have. We didn't even have a lawyer, right? We had somebody look at the contract when we signed it, but that was it, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Just to read it over. They basically threatened us legally, right? You need to—you need to, you know, you need to bow out of this—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and do it quietly.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We're not gonna give you a kill fee, nothing, you're just gonna, like, you know, we're gonna publicly announce that you have withdrawn your project from the  competition, and that we're gonna open a new competition to find good art—[laughs]—to put there.

Let me turn the light on, one sec.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So it was a—

CHON NORIEGA:  —did you ever—do you know what was finally selected?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, it was some stupid shit, I don't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, but here's the irony of all this, I mean, you're—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There's irony in here?

CHON NORIEGA:  —well, they dodged a bullet without even knowing it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, of course. But they didn't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  No.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They didn't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So they—they got rid of you because the locals got upset.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  And in the process avoided doing something that would have, at some point, brought it all up to the surface, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, but, but Chon, like—the caliber of the work—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —was first class.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was perfectly thought out. It was a perfect four-bridge architectural structure that incorporated language into a public discourse, right? That was not offensive on the surface.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It sounded like the marketing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Close.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So it sounded like it was celebrating Moscone Center, and the new Yerba Buena, right? It was—it was the double—the double entendre of it—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —is what made it so powerful.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it was a beautiful work, Chon. It wasn't—this was not sloppy. This was not amateurish. This was a multi-million dollar, and it looked like a multi-million dollar project. It was perfect. It was a perfect public expression. Had they had done it, and this was—I told them, you just threw away having the Eiffel Tower here, I said. I said, this would have been that famous, in time—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it would have aged beautifully. Because we would have gotten over your little problem right now. And then it would have looked like you would have put forward something radical.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That would have been perfect but, I mean—we had maintenance for it, everything was delineated in the—in the documents, right? That would have been visionary for them to have embraced, what they were doing. This didn't tell them not to do it, it just pointed out to the content of the subject, right? And, and instead they took what you did—they took the short route which was, yes, they didn't think they could dodge a bullet, but what they—they don't, they cannot dodge the historic bullet, though.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, they would have created something that embedded the critique within their own language, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But, I mean—it was a beautiful project, Chon. It's a beautiful project. You know, same—I mean, it was just—and imagine this, same Seattle I did on a shoestring.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I did it with just banners.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, and some like printing. Silk—we silk-screened those. We didn't have —

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, you had to do some poles, and—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We didn't have any—you know, we didn't have—it's not like today, you know. Like, there were no machines to print—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —like that then, right? So it—just—you know, made these screens, it was really great though Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And this—text in public, and they had money for it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Permanent. Millions of dollars. To make something that was a combination between Constructivism and Paris? I mean, it was—it was they—they threw away, they have no idea what they threw away.

[00:20:10]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But, texts in public places.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you felt that that would serve both purposes?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, absolutely.

CHON NORIEGA:  The whitewashing they wanted, and the critique of it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes. Because the only way to sell—the only way to get the critique, the critique was subversive. The critique was hidden inside of their own language.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  All that appeared to them, that's why they—I'm sure it's why they picked it. I merely mirrored back their own marketing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. And they believed it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And they believed it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, I was like, it—it was, again, I learned something from Seattle.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  See now, the projects are building exponentially.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The language is building—is a monumental radical paradigm shifts in—there's an escalation of, how I'm problem solving opportunities, by which to get content, and the form that I want. That is—has a very clear understanding of art history, but in—and, I believe and again, I'm—I think I believe this, through that chart we're making, I think all these places are places where I'm inventing something.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I'm inventing something that has never been there before. And essentially I'm—I'm at the—I'm the first one to try to do this thing. And of things who have now become—everywhere, and popular everywhere.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There was no precedent for that before. I'm always on new ground. And it—I mean, for the longest time I was always on new ground. And I—you know, but it was, in the end—so then I became—nothing. I have never ever done anything in San Francisco again.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They never—I—no one ever, will touch me. I would go back—I have friends—I had a lot of friends up there—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —always—had a lot of friends at Berkeley, you know. Friends in Oakland, and, you know, I knew tons of art people, and art—I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  That was it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that was it. Nobody, no one I knew defended me when I was there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No one stood up with me. Everyone's protecting their own fucking ass. Like always. You know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Do you feel like there are people that you knew that understood what you were doing?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I think so, but they—they weren't gonna risk their—

CHON NORIEGA:  They weren’t gonna stand up and defend it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in their own territory. In their own town.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, and say, Martinez was right.

CHON NORIEGA:  Let the foreigner have his —

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. I mean, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] —public art piece.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was also something I learned—Seattle was okay because Seattle, Chon, they stood by me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay? But in—in—I was hung out to dry, you know? With—in San Francisco, you know. And I realized then, if I continue on this trajectory, I have to do it on my own. There's nobody's—no one's gonna take the beating with me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it also taught me something else. That I then quickly applied, you know, as '93 comes approaching, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Is that—it taught me to push the risk.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Bigger the risk—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? That means, the more—it means, the more consequence, perhaps even detrimental, which is—has happened every single time. So if I get blacklisted out of, if I get blacklisted out of San Francisco then, and the same thing happened to me at the Whitney, which is more devastating, because—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —after the Whitney Biennial, I couldn't get a show anywhere in this country until Christian came around with The Project.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Think we're gonna get that alarm going off in one minute.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It should be going off in one minute. Yeah, you wanna stop there? Is that a good—?

CHON NORIEGA:  Uh, let me pause it at the very least.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay.

[00:24:14] [END OF TRACK martin19_21of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  And we're recording, okay. This is Chon Noriega interviewing Daniel Joseph Martinez at the artist's studio in Los Angeles, California. Leimert Park, right? On December 23, 2019, for the American—for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, card number three. And we're rolling here.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Rock and roll.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, where—we want to kind of deal with the transition from the late '80s into the early '90s. And the—did you have anything in particular in mind in terms of loose strands from last time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Um, yeah, but I did think—maybe in this instance—I just got out of physical therapy. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] For good behavior?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Maybe we'll talk about my broken body.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, well. That's on the list.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well—that—me being sick and other moments is one thing but, you know, in the midst of all the—of—I do think it's worth noting, in terms of—something I had to live with, ongoing-ly.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it's kind of—it has actually been, you know—anyway. Don't know what the fuck I'm saying. So, things that are wrong with me. [Laughs.] Besides being insane.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay—I was born with compound scoliosis.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, I—I don't know if you know what that means?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It means that my back is—goes into two different directions, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like a Bonsai tree, basically. So, I was born with that—it's genetic.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did your parents have it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My mother.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And my—her mother had it, but it bounced gender.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Normally it would stay with the women, it bounced gender to me, right? And I was—you have to get it—to get it fixed, you have to have operations before you're ten.

CHON NORIEGA:  Ooh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And, that wasn't gonna happen.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] For all kind of obvious reasons, but, so, when you— when I say that to people most the time, when people talk about pain, I—I, sometimes just chuckle, because I live in, from, on a pain scale that most doctors use—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —one to ten, I live in an eight.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I've always lived in an eight.

CHON NORIEGA:  Day to day?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Every day. Every—I mean, it goes up a little, it goes down a little. But it doesn't go down much, right? It mostly goes up.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So it's a kind of chronic pain that—when I was younger it was not as impactful.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But by my thirties, which is about more or less the period we're talking about, you know, it was really damaging. Because, I mean, I was just taking every possible drug you could think of to try to numb the constant pain. Because the pain interfered with the brain.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the thinking, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  It's in the brain.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, you know, but it just—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, and now, it's like, you know, it's beyond fucked up because as you get older, I'm getting shorter, displacing the organs, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anyway, so I have that, which is lovely. I have bronchial asthma, which I've had most of my life.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which, for people that don't know what having an asthma attack is, they haven't—it's like drowning. Basically. Or the opposite of it, which would be, it's sort of like a—like a spigot?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You have the water on, that's like breathing, and then someone decides just to turn the spigot off. [Laughs.] Because your throat goes—[closing tap sound]—it just shuts down.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  For no apparent reason either. Which is, really, even worse.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you can't anticipate or mitigate—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You cannot—you cannot anticipate it. And this was something, since I've had this most of my life, too, was what led me to the meditating, right? As opposed to meditating for some clarity, is that—because what happened after—like, I've passed out many times having an asthma attack.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But what it is, is the valve in your throat shuts off, and the air is gone. You turn blue and you hit the ground. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's what happens. And you hope that you don't hit something, like, you hope there's not like something that you don't bang your head on to get a concussion while you're doing that, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had a—so it's a horrible feeling, because what happens is it shuts off, and you—you're all of a sudden—[gasping sounds].

CHON NORIEGA:  And you freak out, huh?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You freak out. Because you're, like, you're desperately trying to, like gag—grab for air, that's why it's like drowning, right? And there's nowhere to get air from. Right? And so then I had a doctor teach me—he says, what you have to basically do—which is impossible to do. You have to completely—so you're in the middle of panicking—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you have no air, you have no help, there's nothing to fix it, and he says, what you have to do is you have to calm down completely, in the midst of this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then what you do is you basically [gasping sound]. You get one tiny bit of—[gasping sound]—like—

[00:05:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —air in, just a little bit. And then you have to do it again. And slowly, you have to not panic so you pass out, but just take any amount of—any tiny little whiff of air—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —into the lung before that happens, right? And I said, how—when he first told me that, I was always confused, like—I said, this has already happened to me a couple of times, and now you're telling me I'm supposed to, like, get air in there when there's no place to get air in there. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, with training—how stupid is that, with practice—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it actually works, right? But you have to learn to calm down.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And not panic, so I started taking meditation classes. To help me learn how to do that.

CHON NORIEGA:  How long ago?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, like 30 years ago. At least.

CHON NORIEGA:  Wow.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, because it's horrible—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to—to, like, you know. Passing out's not fun.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Well—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There's a pun there.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Sure you're not exaggerating?

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, certain kinds of passing out is fun. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Ah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then, what else. I—I have tinnitus.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which completely makes me insane. So that's the other thing that meditation is really amazing for. So, like, the asthma you calm yourself down so you can get air, and open your throat back up again. The meditation helps with the tinnitus, so that you take the sound and you push it out of your conscious mind.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It doesn't turn off, you just have to push it away.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, you just step aside from it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not easy to do either.

CHON NORIEGA:  No. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  When it's like, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —like that sound when you came in the studio, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Kind of like house music in your head all the time, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  So is it always there for you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Always there. It's like—so now, with you, right now I can hear it very loud because I'm focusing on something.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's, you know, it—it comes and goes at different volumes. But yeah, it's always there.

CHON NORIEGA:  I find it—what it changes is my attentiveness.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, you have it?

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah, so you know what I'm talking about.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fucked up.

CHON NORIEGA:  It's always there, and always very loud.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. It's like, how do you, how do you deal?

CHON NORIEGA:  I just stop paying attention to it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, okay.

CHON NORIEGA:  Let it go to the background.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Do you ever—do you ever meditate?

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, okay, good.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I have a good—my friend Duane Slick—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —at RISD. He, chair of the painting—he's the chair of the painting program there, and he got it, and he—he couldn't cope. He—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the sound was so loud in his head, and he didn't—he couldn't figure out, the doctors couldn't help him to get his mind—to move the sound around, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and suppress it, and do this thing. He had to take stuff to—you know, to sedate him.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because the sound was so overwhelming for him, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  If you fixate—it's just like pain, if you fixate on it, it gets even worse.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, yeah, but it's—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —but this—as you well know, there's times when—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's hard not to.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it just overwhelms your—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —capacity to negotiate it, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anyways, so those—those are three things that I have always had to deal with, are pretty severe.

CHON NORIEGA:  Plus—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Plus the dyslexia. Right, which gives me—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —four. You know, if I could think of one more, I could go—

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  This is not like the EGOT, you know.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Really, I can't—that's not what I—come on, man!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's—that's exactly what I was going for here.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anyway, so that's been a—those things have been real challenges in my life.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, on top of this sort of everyday racism and colonialism. [Laughs.] You know? But it's—I think it's worth mentioning because I, particularly with the scoliosis—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —is really some—has been damaging to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, and then—when we get to, you know, later, maybe this is like a preface to then getting sick in the '90s, and then getting sick again in the 2010s, you know. Which, in both instances—both of those different instances I lost several years of my life to them.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were that severe.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, everything came to a complete standstill.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  And in the '80s, you were just coming up to the fact of a body that's now aging, is that it, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well.

CHON NORIEGA:  Or was there something in particular happening?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What do you mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, there wasn't a particular flare-up or a—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, I mean, it was just—

CHON NORIEGA:  —you just mentioned the—your thirties as a reference point.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, because at that—because when I think I started meditating—

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —is around then. No, it was—it's always, it was there. Just that I, you know, when you're younger, when you're under thirty, you're still, even with all that stuff, you still feel fairly invincible.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[00:10:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know what I mean? And the body rebounds quickly and—you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and plus, like, you know, I've poured a mountain of drugs into this body.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So, had that started even before '84?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah, yeah, are you kidding? CalArts was just so much fun.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  CalArts was so much fun. The most famous event at CalArts is the Halloween party. And it was in its heyday when I was there.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, you—you know the campus, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, you know it, so in the—in the main hall, right? Is where they would—that would be the sort of basis for it, right? Everything all fixed up and everybody—it's crazy. They would have the most famous CalArts LSD punch. Which was just a fabulous—I'm sure, I think every year it got stronger and stronger, and you would just be—just—you're—you're perfectly clear that there's many realities.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Long before science ever showed you that!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because they're—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —wow, we—I remember then when—I was so young, too. At some point when people would sell this, right, and, you know, you put it on a piece of blotter paper or a sugar cube or something, right? They skipped that. They would have, like, small like eye-dropper small bottles that you would use for your, like, eye drops?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Full of LSD-25, and they just, you pay—give them cash, they go tink tink tink, right on your tongue, man.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think we—I think we hallucinated through CalArts. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Was that the—where you first came across drugs, or in high school?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, in high school, too, yes, but not like that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mostly pot?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Mostly pot. Pot, pot, pot.

CHON NORIEGA:  So this is the time, the '70s—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The '70's were great! [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  —I mean, it wouldn't be until the early '80s that—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Cocaine.

CHON NORIEGA:  The "No Tolerance," and the cocaine deaths.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Cocaine, but cocaine was—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —did mountains of cocaine in the '80s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, cocaine was like—I mean, you could buy it anywhere, Chon. It was everywhere. I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  All the—all those movies, you know, about cocaine coming from Colombia was true. It all came through California.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then it distributed its way across the country, you know. This was it, this was the—this was, like, people want to go skiing, you didn't have to go to the mountains. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So how did you see this? You saw it as integrated into your curriculum? Or—? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] Yeah, absolutely. No, I mean, I think—I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Or, you mentioned—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, but you—you know, it was a further state of—it was a continuation of the project of the Beats.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And Burroughs and Ginsberg and, you know, Paul Bowles, and these writers who were attempting to unlock—a project to unlock consciousness, one.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Two, a project to leave this reality. To break free from the constraints of a highly normalized, highly regimented, highly repetitious existence of the human body, in—in a social platform that was completely stifling for them. And they were looking for ways, not necessarily to be addicts—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —but as a methodology. A tool—tools to escape the confines of the singularity of this reality everybody believes in. And so, I mean, everybody believes in this reality so much and henceforth denying everything else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which is—they just said, is just—are you—that's just crazy. Why would you think this is the only reality that exists?

CHON NORIEGA:  So were you reading things like Huxley's Doors of Perception?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh sure, absolutely—all that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything that had to do with them, and any kind of, you know, mind-expanding projects that people were doing. Were—I thought were very enlightening, and—you know. Sure, let's try it all!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, mushrooms, I mean, you name it. You name any kind of hallucinogenic—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —we were downing it like crazy. I mean, it was—it was, you know. So, even though I have an obsessive personality, I don't have an addictive personality.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which is interesting. So—

CHON NORIEGA:  You say that now, or did you have that sense at the time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I think I—because I—you know, like you can do—you can do, like, I would see other people do drugs and they would become addicted to the drugs.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And that addiction then would be their undoing. I had some kind of, and I think this again may be the weirdness of the—my own body composition, but I could be doing as much drugs as anybody else, and just go stop one day, and that was it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, I didn't need to, there was no—there seemed to be no chemical necessity for me to just keep doing the drug because I was addicted to the drug, and couldn't stop doing the drug.

[00:15:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think here, part and parcel to my—what I think I have had—be extremely strong will in my life. I think that's attached to that. I could just stop doing something.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Didn't mean nothing to me the next day. Just—okay, I'm not doing that no more.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, that much will. Just, boom. It's like if you're an alcoholic and you go—I'm either gonna go on a program, twelve-step program—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —or I'm gonna stop today and never drink again, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They're the two different kinds of personalities.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I think mine was closer to the—to the, you know, the former, where I just would go no, I'm not gonna do this anymore, and it would just stop.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I've never actually—yeah, I don't think I've ever been addicted.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Certainly abused. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  This is starting to sound like a Steve Martin sketch.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  "But never in the early mid-late afternoon."

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right! [Laughs.] "Never before noon." It's like—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it's like my, it's like my—people always make fun—people would always like—because, you know, we—all we have been doing our whole lives, right, is— I mean, I don't do anything else. We just talk about art.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's what we do.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, people would always, like, want to talk about art in the morning. I said no, no, no, are you mad? Are you mad? Never talk about art before noon. I said, you never talk about art before noon. That's just, like, no one's awake before noon, for one—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and the other thing is, you're not awake enough to talk about art before noon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's like, how about, like—and I just —I used to say at school, anyone that goes to a 9 a.m. class, are you crazy?

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Or when you travel, right, when we—like when we've been on the road, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And we go places—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —always make you fucking get up for, you know, a press conference, or give a little thing there, and they're always in the goddamn morning!

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, let people wake up first.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you had a pretty clear sense of the artistic lifestyle.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah! Yeah, I mean. Ongoing-ly, and has not—well, I don't— I mean, I stopped drinking—actually—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that's funny.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I don't drink.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't drink alcohol. Haven't had alcohol since Asco.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because of the excessiveness of drinking with Asco.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it, and it—the trouble that I got in—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, more than once arrested, on more than—on numerous occasions, right? And I—at one point, I had—I had, I just had to—I—I liked to drink too much then, and it was like—so I just stopped.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was it. And then I haven't had another drop of alcohol since. That—actually, I think that was my Achilles’ heel.

CHON NORIEGA:  So when did you stop?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Ah,  '85 or '86?

CHON NORIEGA:  So even before they had formally—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —closed the doors.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Because it was just—it was too much.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We would get so fucking wasted.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We—remember Yee Mee Loo's? Were you here for Yee Mee Loo's?

CHON NORIEGA:  Unh—uh [negative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh you, oh you— [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yee Mee Loo's?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yee Mee Loo's Chinese.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, Yee Mee Loo's.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yee Mee Loo's, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yee Mee Loo's was the greatest fucking bar in Chinatown. I mean, it was just—it had been there forever.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, it had been there before, you know, I think it might have probably been there before I was born. I don't even know, but it was, you know, it was just the—it was one of many, many, many, many, many, many, many dive bars downtown.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it was the one that people went to. I mean, you ask anyone that grew up in that time, in the '70s or '80s, and you say Yee Mee Loo's, they'll know exactly what you're talking about, if you're from LA, you know. But we—had—it—because, you know, Chinatown was also just a Hollywood set. And they left it there, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  All the Chinese workers, you know. [Laughs.] Anyway, yeah, I mean—anyway, so if something, I think, I also still think that—part of it has also been trying to numb the pain.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's—

CHON NORIEGA:  The physical pain.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —physical pain. In my back, in particular.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now you mentioned, at the end of the Oscar—the Olympics, starting to take heroin.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  As a—as a response to the—kind of the turmoil of everything that kind of followed that. The—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  —sense of being hung out to dry. Or—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —well, it was—you know, the thing is that, I wonder what—I never—what's the response to a society of abundance and corruption? I mean, I don't know what the response is to that, and it seems that you either cooperate, or you don't cooperate.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I—and I think that, maybe, many things that I think about is, what are the many forms of non-cooperation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, how does that actually work, in a positive way. In a constructive way. In a proactive way, in a strategic way. Right? So you don't just not cooperate because you don't—because you're being a brat. You don't cooperate, because it's like being a conscientious objector.

[00:20:04]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Why do I not want to go fight in the war?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Why don't I—because I have ethical and moral reasons for not doing that. I wonder if a similar application can be applied to a context of living in what one believes is a completely corrupt government. Or a completely corrupt society, where—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —inevitably, it was very clear. I think it was clear to anyone that grew up in LA. Or anywhere for that matter. But, I can speak to being here, that there is nothing that we can do is going to change this program. There is no—it—it's like—it's like, it's like shooting spit wads—[laughs]—you know, at the—at a mountain. So what is it, so then there has to be strategically and tactically a workaround.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, how do you work around that? Right? I—I don't have the answer—that's a purely rhetorical thought.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, I don't have an answer to that, but I think—making art, I think the only thing that has ever saved me in my entire life—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —which is, attaching to the ideas that philosophically, of the—of the—of the project of art itself.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That it's an—it's an endeavor, it's a philosophical endeavor that manifests itself as a visual sort of proposition.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And that proposition then—art historically carries a tremendous amount of weight. So, what's the first thing that you learn? The first thing that you learn is that you—that—the reason it made more sense—art made more sense to me before, than it does now, is that—that yes, yes, everybody needs to make a living and, yes, like to—you know, you and I got born into a different circumstance, and, you know, you have money in your family, but if you don't have that, the—the question of—of capitalism in art is irrelevant.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What matters is that everybody's fighting for a place in art history. Everybody's fighting for a place in the canon. Regardless—I don't give a fuck what the canon's made up of, at this point.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's a fact—if you can forge a path to get there, and it doesn't even have to happen when you're living, but to get there, even if you—if you could get recognized enough to—that where you can linger on in death, for people to study, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's more important. That's the project. The project is—is—is breaking that down. And that—that is a complicated and difficult thing to do.

CHON NORIEGA:  How does that link to the heroin, though?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Um—

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, when we spoke before, you tied it very directly to the experience of, you know, the hologram exhibition—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, yeah—

CHON NORIEGA:  —and because, not meeting the deadline, but also not getting any critical attention, and then—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, I mean, it's—it's being silenced.

CHON NORIEGA:  —yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I wasn't—I—I mean, I—again, I'm of multiple minds all the time.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, I think—I don't know, I—I—I had not come—I had not become accustomed—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to being silenced and made invisible yet. This was something pretty shockingly new for me, right? Imagine that, just a couple years before that, I'm basically, I'm working with a world-renowned artist.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So in my head, the distortion in my head, right? A reality distortion field, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Very Jobs-esque, right? That—obviously, this is what's supposed to be done. Obviously this is how this works. That's it. Rigorous, rigorous ideas sustained over your entire life. Project after project, show after show, building one idea on another idea, on another idea, that is a—like blockchain.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's a series of ideas that connect, to making even a grander idea. So it's not a small—bunch of small little things that are not interconnected, it's, in fact everything is interconnected. And that interconnectivity produces something that is massive in scope.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Massive in scope. It—it—its inertia itself is like almost—the ability to defy gravity itself. Like a—in Zero G, right? All of a sudden it just—pffff—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, like floating in space—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —where everybody else is still on the ground. So, I mean, and I—and I—so, I think my shock of, in part—in part, I mean—oh well, I shouldn't even say part.

[00:25:02]

I had this idea that—you can expand beyond your limits. Like, genuinely. Like, literally.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the only way to do that, like, if you, if you follow a—a traditional trajectory in, say, Darwinian sort of evolutionary development, it is very slow. It's very, very painfully slow. Right? It just moves and takes millions of years.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm just using a metaphor, right? Millions of years to get from a, like a—[laughs]—frog to whatever it got to next, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, as opposed to a notion of mutation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Mutation is—is—is fast and is unpredictable, because it is drawing upon things that nobody would anticipate being drawn upon. So what if that is the model for building ideas?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So—the only way, it seemed to me, to be able to grow in the way that I believed I wanted to go. The direction I wanted to move in was to put tasks in front of me that were completely outside of my reach.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like really, like higher than I could ever imagine. Something that you would never have gotten permission from anyone to do if you said you needed credentials to do it. Or the experience to do it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That is something, like, you know, when—when the Wright brothers first said, let's put—pick this thing, and let's lay you down horizontally here, we're gonna push the thing like that, that's like, you know. They had no fucking idea. They had—they understood aerodynamics, they understood—they had two wings, they—but they didn't understand anything else. They took a chance.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They looked at birds. Same as da Vinci, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, it's a leap. It's beyond their skill set.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, this was your first effort at that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is my first effort at flying, and I fucking crashed. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, you—you crashed in terms of—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I crashed in terms of—

CHON NORIEGA:  —publicity.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And well—and well—

CHON NORIEGA:  But ultimately you got—got it up and running.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, but no, you know what, no, you know, where—it's not—it's less the press than the complete rejection of the field. And—and what I mean by that is, no response from artists.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No support from artists. I mean, it was just like, I—I mean, I was, it's like I'm fucking on an island by myself doing this. I got no feedback from people. I got no response from people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, I think—you know, I think I needed deviation. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, you did put yourself out there in a category where no one was standing. So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, that's fine, that's fine, I guess.

CHON NORIEGA:  —they left you there.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm trying to—yeah, I just—I'm trying to, like—since you're asking about heroin—I mean, I think, one is, I had never done it before. I had done a bunch—like, some things really close, but never that, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So it was something I needed to try. Because my—my idea was, I should try everything.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Why not? There's no reason I should not try stuff. Because the—idea of mind-expanding and consciousness-expanding proposition is too, it's—it's too close. I had already—read enough about Burroughs, that he was—had been a heroin addict his entire life. Well, I mean, he can write—write like that?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And fucking do heroin and smoke pot all day like he said he did, and drink? Gotta be worth trying, right? I mean—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and also I think, you know, maybe it's just to lick my wounds, you know? Also.

CHON NORIEGA:  So it offered some—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I worked—a—a—momentary, you know, reprise from, it was—you know, just sort of like, okay, I gotta, like pull myself together again. And start getting back at this.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, how long were you taking it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know. Year?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. So around the same time that you quit drinking, you also were stepping away from heroin.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean it's not that big a deal, you know what I mean? It just—people think—I mean—heroin, you know. Because, again, it's like the question of addiction. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I—again, whatever it is in me—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I just, like—one day I just go, I'm not gonna do this anymore.

CHON NORIEGA:  But most people—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I know.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But, I—I, you know—what we totally forgot in the very first part of this to talk about was, you know, I'm not from this planet.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I wasn't even born here.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was brought here as a project at five—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to live amongst humans. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Is that the memory?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's the memory. That's the one they put in me, that I had to—I—as a scientific study of human beings I had to be brought here at five, and then I had—then they made me look like one, and my—the reason that nothing works for me here is because I'm so confused by humans. [Laughs.] And I'm really something else. You know?

[00:30:08]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm an alien.

CHON NORIEGA:  Your alien parents thought, oh, that's a nice brown couple.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] Exactly!

CHON NORIEGA:  They must be well-respected.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They must be well—exactly!

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  He'll gain access.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To—to the—to mainstream American culture. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Is this a—is this a new writing of your life, or did you feel this way at that time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no, no, I've been—I have always thought I was an alien.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You think it's funny, but it's not—it's—it's true, actually. I've always—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —thought I was—there was something wrong with the rest of the world, not me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I—I assumed it had to be—

CHON NORIEGA:  You can be considered largely right, I mean— [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I know, but I thought it was mostly because I was not, I was just not from this planet.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So— [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? So it made sense to experiment with drugs. That's the—that's the real answer here.

[00:31:03] [END OF TRACK martin19_22of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Alright—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, that's been an ongoing theme—I mean, I also think that's been a—a—a kind of—no, yeah, so in all seriousness, that's not new. That's something I, like—

CHON NORIEGA:  As a child even?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  If you ask me—do I really believe that?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know what my answer would be.

CHON NORIEGA:  But you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But in fact—it is useful as a metaphor, to thinking being apart from something. Right? Like—the poem you sent me was actually ironically well put, wasn't it?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I thought, I mean, I couldn't have even made an—a more apt sort of description of myself as that poem did, even though it meant—it was a more generalized pointing at a general sort of feeling for people. Kind of, maybe malaise, or a kind of, some sense of being outside of anything considered normal, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But no, so, it's—it's—if you tell people, if people think you're insane, you're fucked.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You're just fucked. Because there's no mechanism, even today, in the culture, to talk about madness, literally madness, as a—as a positive attribute. As something that is empowering and enlightening, and that would give you a unique perspective and vision of the world that we live in. There's nowhere to do that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It doesn't exist. But if you say something like, I'm not from this planet, everyone laughs, and it—it opens a door to then making the suggestion that intellectually you exist in a different platform.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In a different way—that therefore the parameters of the thinking, philosophically, are embedded somewhere else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That they have been nurtured off of a different set of principles and ethics. Right? Outside of—not necessarily rejecting that which is other, but recognizing that you are not part of that. You only have to put up with it. [Laughs.] Right? So it's—it's a philosophical distinction. Perhaps.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you picked this up early on—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Very early on.

CHON NORIEGA:  —as a metaphor for—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I—but I think it—so when you asked me, yes from when I was a child, and I think, was, I think my father did it to me. You know, I think he—could be jokingly, it could have been serious, I don't know exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  What he picked you up from the moon and—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, I think, I think because of he was—he was on—even though I never knew exactly what he did, I knew that he knew a lot about astrophysics, and I knew he understood a lot about planets, and space, and all these things and, you know, maybe unconsciously I picked up something from him in conversation. Right? That there are people that had been visiting this planet for millions if not billions of years, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, that was certainly circulating at the time.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely. Absolutely, remember War of the Worlds when it—you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —H. G. Wells and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Thor Heyerdahl.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I mean, yeah, I mean, there was a—I mean, look at—

CHON NORIEGA:  He had all of these various theories of—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you can look at Jules Verne, you know, I mean, these are fantastic stories. By people, right, that, imagined, I mean, they imagined things that didn't exist yet, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And were able to indulge that imagination in writing. Writing, I mean, that was—it's my missed opportunity. Should have been a writer. Because in writing you can imagine anything you want. Just have to put it on paper and make a story about it. You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's fantastic. Anyways, but it's useful, because I think, I mean, I think—I mean, it's—it's—it's very possible that I'm—that—that I'm, like, I could be completely mad, actually.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But again, you can't say that to people, Chon.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You just can't do it. Gonna let me have a job, at UCLA, you know?

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  There may be some wiggle room there, in the University of California, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, I mean, I think it's right here, isn't it? Uh, see? Madness and Civilization, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  There you go.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] Anyway, so yeah, so some things—so, I think maybe an important conversation—so, in the late '80s something—let's add a little context.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, so, you have in 1989, the Berlin Wall falls, right? '89, you also have—'88, '89, you have Jesse Helms.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You have the war on censorship, right? So when that happened—this whole censorship thing is important—

[00:05:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, so, when that first broke, I helped, and I can't remember who else was in this for whatever reason. But I helped form the first, the LA chapter of the Artists Against Censorship. And I did—I—I myself did the first event at the Federal Building in Westwood, where I did, like—you know Krzysztof Wodiczko? The artist?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He does those large projections?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, so—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, so I did those kinds of projections, with some friends of mine, on the Federal Building at the beginning of this whole censorship thing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And what it was, was pictures of everything that had ever been censored in history.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We took pictures of every book and every event and every person and everybody that had ever been anything—that had ever said anything before that was obviously wrong, and we just kept flashing them. We had—we had—and we had a great time, because it was—there were signs, and, I mean, where else do you protest but the Federal Building, right? Had a long history of that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So we, I—we took the side of the building. I got some friends that had those kind of projectors, and—I mean, giant, the whole side of the building with these images, it was fantastic.

CHON NORIEGA:  So when was this?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This had to be like—I'm sure it's '89.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I don't—

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you get coverage, and—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there was a bunch of us who worked, because it still had the non-profit network was still in place. So, I went on a circuit, I mean, I went all over the country lecturing against censorship, with—on panels, we'd have panel discussions, we'd have individual presentations, not of our work, but of why censorship's not a good idea. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So this, this was going to various non-profits.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, and other places. Other public places—no, not just, no, no. Non-profits were easy.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, this was actually going to places like, you know, civic buildings and places where there would be protests and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —speaking with people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—actually organizing, no, they—the National Coalition for the Freedom of Expression [National Campaign for Freedom of Expression] was a very, very tightly run organization.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, one of the things that we had in our favor is that we were smart. I mean, artists are smart. That—I mean, that—my—my contention is always artists are smart. Until they prove themselves otherwise. Okay?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, we're not gonna go there yet. [Laughs.] But, there was a lot of—like Roberto, and lots of people were involved in this kind of organization, and every opportunity there was we could put our face in public to do that, we did that, because, the battle for PR, right? Public face is different in the '80s than it is, say, today.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? Today, I stub my toe and it's on Instagram. [Laughs.] Everybody in the world knows about it, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Those—it was a much harder battle, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  So it was harder to get a message out.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's—oh, sure. You know, more difficult, and then this is directly connected to something.

CHON NORIEGA:  And you had to rely on mainstream press?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Completely rely on mainstream press. Or, your kind of alternative small—

CHON NORIEGA:  Underground press.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —underground press stuff. You know. So, but this—so that—so I was very involved in that, and I was very happy to be involved with that, because it was important. You see, this—the movement against censorship, Chon—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is, I think, worthwhile, is the people that did that, and there were many of us, on a national level right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Everybody understood something very, very clearly, was this was not about our individual freedom.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was about the collective freedom. This was important because it mattered to all of us. Right? So you didn't have anybody becoming—grandstanding to becoming stars of this movement, right? It was—it was a collective effort to stop censorship, period.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Or to stop what they—the way they were characterizing, you know, federal taxpayer dollars, being used for—not pornographic art.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] Right? Which is an absurd statement in the first place, right? But they were getting—they—they had, they made, it was a—it was a—you know, it was a ploy, right? It was a strategy on their part. Tactically, it was very good that politicians took advantage of, to defund the NEA—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —by which they then claimed that the NEA was funding, basically, pornography, right? Without any art—any historical context to put that in. I mean, really, we're gonna ban every Greek and Roman statue since the beginning of time, you know? Anyway so, so we—in my life, I have, counting today, I've won every award there is, except for the Macarthur.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had—at this point I had already won two NEA grants. And then I won the last one, which was in the early 2000s—or early 1990s, I think it was '92, or ['9]4 was the last one.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So I ended up winning three, but at this point what happens is, like in any of these cycles, which I know you're more than aware of—

[00:10:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —once you win something they will—they will cycle you back into the mix, right? That the—I was asked to be on a NEA panel. Which is a great honor, actually. Again, the peer panel reviewed NEA grants, either at institutional or individual level, which we completely lost sight of in this country, was a—it was—one incredible thing, Chon, because they were peer-reviewed.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There was one institutional person in the room of seven other people, and everyone else on the panel were artists.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:   It was amazing, Chon. I mean, I never sensed more—I felt that there was a community of artists then. I felt that we—that we were in a field together, right? That, regardless if people had individual accomplishments or not, that you could achieve individually, but you never forgot of the collective.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Our collective sense of our identity, as artists in this country, right? This was really, really important, and the NEA did this correctly, peer panel review. You know, in those days—I mean, have you ever been on one? NEA?

CHON NORIEGA:  Not NEA.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Not NEA, okay, so it takes a week. You give a week of your time—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —like, seven to—seven days-plus, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You go to DC, and you look, there's no—there's no digital, there's no—pre-anything. They set—you know, you get this binder of material—like, stuff to—preliminary stuff to look at, but—and they're not pictures, there's just all the data. The—the applications, right? But, we literally go through—five thousand people would apply for these things.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We would go through slide after slide, mountains of carousels, mountains of carousels!

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Chon, I mean, it was like—but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you—but you felt, I mean, it was a labor of love.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Everyone on the panel had received an award before. Right? So they understood the nature of it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so, what was at stake. These weren't a lot of money. These weren't very much money, they were—they were, like, I think it was at 10 thousand at one time, and then it moved up to 15, and I think the highest that I think it was, was 20 thousand. Okay? This is not gonna change your life. It wasn't the money. It was—that you had won an NEA grant.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's the same as the Guggenheim, it's not the money. It's a—it's—it's that—you're in the company of people whom have achieved this before.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In a history. In a historical lineage, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Sighs.] So, we would—I was asked to be on a sculpture panel. Right? And the NEA—this NEA stupidity is going on, full-fledged, right? And—so we're there, we've been in a couple days of deliberation, and there was a show at the ICA in Boston.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There was a show of Annette Messager, do you know her work?

CHON NORIEGA:  Who?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Annette Messager, she's a French artist. Okay, so she—very, very well known, it doesn't—she's a sculptor-esque, but she makes these little, tiny—[laughs]—she makes these tiny, little photographs, like this—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and then they're strung on, like—they have strings on them, and they're kind of hung in a, like, imagine a hundred little photographs like this, all hung at different levels, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They're kind of like—they're sculptural assemblage.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But they're very photo-based, right? And what they are, are each little photo is a different part of the human body, so you would have a hip, a leg, a breast, a vagina, or whatever it is. Right? And it—it's not—it just—it's like live drawing. These are beautiful photographs of a human body. That's it. You couldn't possibly be a—no one in their right mind would attempt to call this pornography.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, they're—her work is beautiful, it's not even trying to—she's just making beautiful work and not trying to press some boundary, no—there's no agenda, there's no—[laughs]—she's just making art, you know, Chon?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And she uses the body, and it's—some senators up there, you know, in Boston, I don't remember exactly now the situation, they shut the show down.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Say, we will not allow government taxpayer money to be used on pornographic art. So I—next day, this came out in the paper, it was all over the papers, right? So I came with my papers, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —we all stayed in the same hotel, you know, they didn't care if we talked to each other or not—I—I came down to breakfast that day, I said, look, we got a problem. I said, we're here deliberating grants for people, that—our decision is supposed to hold fast. Right? It cannot be rescinded later.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I said, but this just happened. Did these people—this show, and the ICA were given money to produce this show—

CHON NORIEGA:  By the NEA.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —by the NEA, they were get—that was it. Done deal. You can't just all of a sudden now say it doesn't meet some kind of, you know, moral standard, which is just some bullshit somebody made up—

[00:15:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —because it was politically useful, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then cancel an art show that was already in progress! It wasn't like, we stopped before it went up, they want to shut the show down, period. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I said that's a compromise of our job here. That compromises our position, our ethics, it compromises the NEA. And I said, you can't let that go by. So—they said, okay, well, what do you want to do? Let's just talk about it when we go—when we go into the thing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so I said—you know, of course, I'm, I end up being the—

CHON NORIEGA:  Spokes-alien.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —spokes-alien, that's right!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's very good.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I said okay, I said I—I made my pitch to the people at the NEA, I said what I'd like to do is, I think we should stop deliberations, and we should cancel the panel.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I said that's the only ethical thing to do, so that we can then stop them from saying—we're going to say no now, because it's politically more sound. To do that. As opposed to then letting them to then rescind grants after the fact that we have given them. And it—and I—and further, I told people I thought that this was—this was a proactive approach to dealing with the problem, I said, because what we will do is we will get every newspaper on the planet to cover us, because we're here in Washington.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the NEA panel stops deliber[ating]—I mean, are you kidding? This is the perfect media sort of strategy by which to get attention to the cause—that we will not allow censorship to happen in the United States, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, my God! Oh, my—and I'm not even explaining this that well, but you get my point, right? Well, you know, what is that—how is that saying, Chon? What's that saying when people show their colors—ugh, there's so many, I can't think of what it is, well anyway, you know, when we're all at—having breakfast—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right, everyone's—I didn't go that far, but I said we need to do something. Everybody's, "Yeah! We need to do something." When we get into the meeting with the NEA people there—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they leave, they hang me out to dry, like, oh, Martinez thought of this. It's like, well, not—it's not exactly did I think of it, I'm just trying to think of a proper response to the fact that they're compromising the job that they're supposed to be doing here. I mean, what did they need us for, why are we here to make decisions on who gets grants if some other agency, or some other government official, can come in and say no, what you made a decision for is wrong? And I said, there is an opportunity—I said, there's a war being fought in this country. It's a culture war. And why are we not involved in this? So it took me three days, three days.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Of arguing, and arguing, and arguing. I had to make the case, every way inside and out, I lobbied these people after we went home and ate dinner. Everybody was a fucking coward. They're all fucking cowards. People were like—it's like, oh, no, this is too scary, oh no! What are we gonna do? What will people think? It's like—what will people think? What the fuck does it matter what people are gonna think? What you should do is, how about trying to do something that is right? Here.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's a culture war. That means you have to fight the war, right? Oh no! Too scary! [Laughs.] Might lose something. You know, it's like, it's a fucking disaster, Chon. It's a fucking disaster. So anyway, not one to be giving up, I fought to the fucking end. And I finally convinced everyone in the NEA. And it was the only time, so the NEA makes a formal announcement, and then the shit hit the fan, like— it was exactly as I predicted. I mean, exactly as I predicted. It was just a crashing media storm. They had the newspapers and the TV and the radio and NPR, I mean, everybody was on this. And it did exactly what I said it was gonna do, it—it forced a new visibility of something that was—the high ground had been taken, because the senators have the ability to manipulate the press at another level. What I did is, I took from—a bunch of artists running around the country, giving little speeches and panel discussions, I brought the—I brought the anti-censorship fight to the light.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  By doing this, by canceling this thing, right? It was—it was a—it was a shitstorm. You know? But it was the right shitstorm, right? It was the right thing—it was—it was—I mean, it was, I was—I was very proud of this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did the rest of the panel feel that way too, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, after the—after the media started coming. After they started getting their picture in the paper. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Then they realized—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, no, I mean after I—I convinced everyone—it took me the rest of the week, I convinced everyone this was the right thing to do, in addition to having private meetings with the people that were running the panel and the NEA.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I said to them, I said, look, I said, do we not have any autonomy here as the panel? I said, what exactly are the rules of engagement here? I said, if you have given us the charge to disseminate these funds, to the—to picking artists out of this cohort, and that is our job, if we decide to not give any funds, and say that we are, this is the basis of fighting censorship, I said, is that—do we have that right? And they said, absolutely, you do.

[00:20:11]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Said, but—you know, they—and as—it had never been done in the history of the NEA before. No one has ever done that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No one took the money that was supposed to be given out and said we're not gonna give this out in protest to what is taking place in this country. Right? So, you know, they—everyone was afraid. Everyone warned me, you know, again, once again, right? Oh, you know, I’m sticking my neck out too far, it's too much of a risk, the consequence to this could be just devastating for your career. I was like, what the fuck you talking about? Other people are such cowards, anyway, so—it, you know, was—it was— it was, the only time, I saw the—it's like, like a crystal bullet had hit me in the head. Perfect clarity. Perfect political clarity, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had never seen my thinking enacted so perfectly. I saw—I saw the problem, I came up with a strategy.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I enacted the tactics, I predicted the outcome, I just had to make it happen.

CHON NORIEGA:  And that was political.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was political. That was political.

CHON NORIEGA:  So this is all lead-up to Seattle? And San Francisco?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely. All this stuff. But I—but it was—yes, there—in a way people were right. I mean, you have to put your life on the line.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, did—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, Chon, it—what it—what does it mean, and here's—if being political means, I mean, is it—you need to be safe in your office and your living room?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Or does politics actually mean that you have to take this battle to people?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, why wait to get beat up when you can, like, move the other direction first. Right? I'm not gonna sit here and get my ass kicked when I know I'm gonna get my ass kicked, well, why don't I just, like, step up and move the battle towards people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Yeah, I mean, it was a big risk, but somebody's gotta do it. Someone has—when everyone else wants to hide under their chair, people have to stand up and do something. They just do, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And this mattered to me. Because I thought it was the right thing to do. I talked to—and, you know, I called people in between, and I called all, like, people that I trusted. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Like who?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What's that? Oh, like, Roberto was one person, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Bedoya?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, and I—you know, I talked to people who—friends of mine in New York, I mean, nobody particularly here that you would know, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  You talk to other artists?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, I did talk to other artists. I talked—I talked to a few—I didn't know that many people I trusted with this, but—and I didn’t want it to get out.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? But people who would keep it close—cards close to their chest until this thing broke and, you know, people that I trusted who were older than me, more politically savvy than me. You know? They're just like, do it. People didn't even hesitate, you know. Real politics, that's the difference between politics and the art world, and politics and real life, there's no—you know. Everybody in the art world wants to claim they're doing politics, but there's no risk. The politics is to make money. [Laughs.] As you know, it's like hanging—it's like decorating politics, you know. Real politics is people risking things to change something for the better and not for yourself, but changing it better for the community.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's what politics are. You put—you put your life on the line for it, right? This wasn't even my life. I'm not in a war, no one is pointing a gun at me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No one's gonna assassinate me over an NEA panel, you know? [Laughs.] So once again, this all worked out well, and it was—it's—you know, it's a huge moment in the NEA, it's a whole moment in the country.

CHON NORIEGA:  You came back to LA, and everybody greeted you with open arms.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Sighs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, in those days, I mean, I took—I followed suit with something Baldessari taught me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He, I remember him, in school, he says—he told me, you know how you learn about art, Daniel, he says, besides studying and like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —he says, you go to shows.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He says, Daniel, you go to shows. You go to all the shows. He says, you go to shows everywhere, you know. Baldessari was really good about that. And Baldessari in the '80s in particular, and also in the '90s, he was legendary, legendary, Chon. Baldessari would appear at every little, tiny little art opening there was. Like—you know, in the middle of nowhere, right? Some little space that somebody had just opened, that nobody—it was not a mainstream anything, right, just some spaces, you know, Baldessari would be there. And all of a sudden you realize, Baldessari—fucking Baldessari was everywhere. You couldn't go—and you can't miss him, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] You know, seven-feet-whatever he is, and—but—

CHON NORIEGA:  He's a big guy.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —but he—he told me that. He says, you go to shows.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, and so in those days too, we—I mean, maybe useful for you, Chon, is that LA was a very small art community.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know that, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In those days. It was really, really tiny.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So the clarity of the racism and the classism and the, you know, the divisions between the Westside, you know, Midtown, Downtown, the Eastside, the Southside, right? The Valley, I mean these are all—these are tribes.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] This is an extremely tribal art world. And the white art world didn't give a fuck about anybody but themselves.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They could—that whole notion of diversity and feminism and queerness, that we all talk about today, that didn't exist in Los Angeles, it was only on the fringes, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But anyway, I'm back from the NEA panel, I feel—I'm exhausted as if I had been in war, right? So, you know, go out for some openings, because you always run into people. Great thing about openings in those times, you always run into people, right? It was cool. I mean, it was—what I thought was, like, part of being an artist right? You go out and see people's stuff.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And you get excited because, in those days, you know, there was no pre-press. There was no, like, advertising it to death and looking at the show before the show happened. There was something, this is something I completely miss now. One of the most lovely and beautiful things about seeing your friends' work, or artists coming from other places, is that you hear somebody else, oh, somebody's working on their show, been working on this show for a couple of years, right, and they're gonna have another show at whatever place they're having the show at, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was, the—this excitement for people would be palpable, in a sense, because, what's the new work like? We know what the old show was, we know what that old work was, what's the new work gonna be? There was—you didn't know. So you would go to the shows and be like, wow! This is—you know, you would be excited.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, oh, this isn't what I thought, what is this, or this is exactly what I thought, or no, it, like, took a different turn. Or, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —there was excitement about the content and materiality of the work itself, right, like, what are you doing? What are you conjuring, right? Where is your head? Where is your thinking at? What are you making? Why are you making it? Why did it do this? Whereas it did that before? This was incredible, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  It became a real statement.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was really important, because what was exciting was you didn't know until you showed up at the opening what they were doing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was, it was exciting. It was fantastic, Chon. It was everything that I wanted, everything I believed in what art was, was like this, you know, you would work on your shows, you would work on your work for years, to get to form a show, to literally form a show which was a statement.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was a—it was a manifesto, it was a—it was a—you took a stand, you made a point. You had a—you—you had a position by the nature of what the work was, and that was looked at in relation to art history.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the contextual work that was happening in the country, and the contextualization of that happening in the world, right? This was fabulous! Fabulous, right? So I went out—goddamn! The first—somebody I didn't even know, right? This fucking finger points at me, is like, you're Daniel Martinez. I—you know, like, yeah, and, you threw away my NEA grant? Who the fuck are you? You know? It's like, that was—I didn't, it didn't even occur to me, Chon, it didn’t occur to me—I—I did not come, I did not do what I did to get accolades, I did it because it was politically savvy.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  But you weren't thinking about all the people that had applied?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I didn't think about any of the people—I couldn't give a fuck about the people who applied. Because I—if they really believed in the ethos of what they were doing, they—there would be no reason to not support this action. This was a political action. Our reputations were on the line for this. Not theirs, you know. I took more shit—

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —from more people, like—shoulder-shoving me, and bumping me, and talking shit at me, and it's like—and I don't have, you know, I'm the fucking wrong person to do that with.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, and I snap—I snap people's necks now, much less when I was younger. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  You're, like, thirty-two at this point.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I'm like fucking—I'm completely insane. You know, like, it was, really? You know, I got into fights with people, not physical fighting, shouting fights with people, it's like, you know, you think—oh my God, Chon, you have no idea. And people kept—I caught shit for years for that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Was their position always the same—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

CHON NORIEGA:  —which is that they had a personal stake?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That—they—they—it was everybody—everybody was the same.

[00:30:02]

CHON NORIEGA:   And you shut down that opportunity.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I shut down their grant. I said, you know what, fuck you. You know, it's like, you weren't even gonna get a grant anyway. We rejected you on the first round.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because we went through several rounds, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The way that—the way that we—the way the NEA used to do it—so, the first round is blind.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. You're just looking at work.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You just look at slides. And one hand up—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —can kick you out.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because we have too many, we have thousands of applications to go through. So the first round is brutal. We knock 60 percent of the applications out on round one. And then it's like this— [Snaps fingers.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, you have to.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's like fucking lightning, Chon. [Snaps fingers.] I mean, lightning. These things are going by, like, massive, you know, five images at a time.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Twenty images per application. People, some people didn't make it past the first set of five.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Hand would be like that, out. Out. Of course, you could recall something.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? But we had—you had to cut it down 50 percent in the first round, you cut it at another 50 percent in the second round. And then you get to finally get to what debating—

CHON NORIEGA:  Fine grain.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —fine, fine grain. Reading the application, reading the statements.

[00:31:03] [END OF TRACK martin19_23of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Looking at all the materials submitted. Looking at the titles. Looking at the context, looking at the show. I mean, all the normal stuff, right? And these motherfuckers, and all—and white people. White people. White artists shoved me up. Minorities—

CHON NORIEGA:  So John Valadez didn't come to you—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no—

CHON NORIEGA:  —I mean, he wasn't a sculptor anyway. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, but—but—people who understood politics, which is who, minorities—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right? They were all like, yeah! Ha, right? People who—the censorship people, you know, everybody—and again, it's not to get accolades, it's simply, you're in a war. You fight battles, right? Battles win war.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right. We fought and we had won a battle. A big one.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And people who understood that were supportive of it. And then people who thought that I took away their individual grant, their measly little 15 thousand dollars, that was gonna—oh, you ruined my life—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Wow, 15 grand's gonna ruin your life? Fuck you, then, you know. It's like, you didn't have much of a career if you thought this grant was gonna save that shit work that you were making. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  This—this made for—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, man!

CHON NORIEGA:  —a good period for you. Now, did any of the other panelists have similar experiences?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, not that I know of.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were all from different parts of the country, I was the only one from LA. No, because some people were from small towns, you know. And the other thing was is that, you know, I'm not invisible in LA, because I'm the loud Mexican.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? I'm not the quiet, timid, like, you know, sombrero-cactus-sitting Mexican. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Well—so, so this—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So anyway.

CHON NORIEGA:  —this left—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This—people hated me

CHON NORIEGA:  —an impact on you, yeah?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  People hated me. People already didn't like me in the art world, they tolerated me, so I had some friends, of course, but in the white art world—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, and—I bring that—I say this like this, because there was really a difference, Chon. There was the minorities in the art world. And then there was the white art world.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].           

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And that's a simple, clear division.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, it was actually structured, whites got NEA grants by and large, and people of color got CETA [Comprehensive Employment and Training Act] grants.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right, that's right.

CHON NORIEGA:  That's what was funding all of these—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  —centers in LA.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, but can—so imagine, then, the Mexican on the NEA panel, who had already received two of their grants, I had gotten two NEA grants before, right? And he's the one who stops us from getting the grants? Right? So imagine how that looks.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is not, you know—but again, anyone that has met me for more than like five minutes, I don't know why that I'm the one you think you can push into the corner and I'm not gonna bite. I—I don't understand that. I—you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Most people want to not have me become a rabid dog. [Laughs.] You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  What's that work of yours you were doing at this time? Don't Bite the Hand That Feeds You?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —That Feeds You, yeah.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So, quick question.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Were you aware of David Avalos and Louis Hock and Elizabeth Sisco at this time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  They were doing in '88 their piece—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —with the—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  With the border and—

CHON NORIEGA:  —the super bowl.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yup, yup, yup. I know all those guys. I know all those people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I knew everybody. There's nobody I didn't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  No, I'm just wondering, because they—they were doing something similar in terms of, you know, you were doing bus shelters, they were doing—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —bus advertisements.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, because, because—the tools—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —the tools that we had—since we didn't have mainstream galleries, we didn't have mainstream press, we didn't have mainstream funding, we had alternatives. We—the word alternative was always in—the preface to everything if you were a minority.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  As you just pointed out with the CETA grants, which is true. CETA was like taking the third class award. It's not even an Oscar. [Laughs.] It's like—[laughs]—it's like the local award, you know, what I mean? It's not—

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, it's a work program.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, I know, but that's—but that's also, like the—those kids that get out of juvie, or, like they do that work program where they clean up the streets back in the day, what was that called? Anyway, they—they would take minority—mostly minority kids who were in trouble—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right? Either in jail or something, and they would put them on work crews, right? And there's a name for these kids—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I just cannot remember, and it was a big deal. Because these kids got a chance to show that they would work and do this stuff, but it was always shit work. Right? And it was always minority kids. In those days, actually, it was predominantly Latino kids.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Because they were always the troublemakers. Right? [Laughs.] And, but no, but the point being, Chon, we still have not made it into—we, you know, we haven't—minorities have not cracked open the gate of museums and galleries yet. This isn't even begun to start for minorities. Okay? And I'm not talking about Harlem either. I'm not talking about the isolation of the Harlem Renaissance—

[00:05:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and Black people in New York.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, that's a completely different phenomenon. I'm talking about the national sort of breaking through into museums and galleries, it didn't—had not happened yet. So the division that you're speaking of, that we're speaking about, is extremely palpable and it's very clear. And there is animosity on both sides of this.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know. One group wanted to keep us all out, and us trying to get in, and it—and it's, and, you know, the—the—the hierarchy is incredibly clear, Chon. I mean.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, just to wrap up with the NEA, I mean, what strikes me is the peer review, they're taking a kind of hallmark of academic scholarly evaluation that's used by the NIH, the NSF, NEH, did you have that sense of it? Because the pushback that was being done at that time was on freedom of expression. But the other side of it is, this has conformed to the most rigorous form of academic review within a discipline.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I—I wasn't aware of that.

CHON NORIEGA:  That, so that wasn't kind of part of the argument.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That wasn't part of the argument.

CHON NORIEGA:  And this is before that—many of that cohort were actually professors.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, no, no, none of us, nobody had been professors yet.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nobody, we hadn't—minorities at large had not broken into academia yet. That didn't really happen until the '90s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, the NEA was an opportunity, and I took it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's really simple.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know—you know what—and this is consistent in my life, but it's also consistent in a broader, much larger political arena. Is that, or just in general, Chon, if you—like, some people, you can take a couple people and put them in the exact same situation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  One person sees opportunity where there is no opportunity, one person sees nothing, and another person thinks it's gonna send them into, you know—some kind of negative situation, right? So how do you go into every situation and find the opportunity? I happen to be good at that. I've always been good at that. Right? And this was the first time to apply it to something that meant more. The stakes were high, Chon. So I took a gamble, and I was able to convince people, and I, you know—it was—I didn't—and I—and I—and I—you know what, people were right, Chon. I didn't—I didn't give the applicants a second thought. Didn't even cross my mind. They were just collateral damage in a war. And anyway, crying over 15 thousand dollars, they should be—should be ashamed of themselves. They should be ashamed, Chon. That they don't—that they didn't think—and this is the point, they couldn't possibly conceive of something larger, more important than just their goddamn individual fucking 15 thousand dollars. To win an NEA. And they're not even sure they're going to win it, just the fact that I took their opportunity away, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So what's wrong with people, they're so egocentric, they're so selfish, to think that that's all that matters, when this country was in a full-fledged culture war. That—that my little itty bitty money is what matters? And a bigger political gesture is not—I mean, what the fuck if this turns into Stalin Russia, or Nazi Germany, or some other way that we're all—the freedom of making art that people have taken for granted, all of a sudden disappeared? They'd all be crying then, wouldn't they? You know. But who do they—who wants to take the battle, nobody wants to take the battle, though.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nobody wants to go to the war. You know? It's like, fuck them then, Chon.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm not kidding, I was angry.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, I gather, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was angry because, you know, everyone's talk, Chon. Talk, talk, talk, liberalism. Talk, talk, talk. We're for this, we're for that, oh, no. Poor this, poor that. You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  So were you prepared to take the collateral damage that came from doing that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I mean, I took it, I wasn't prepared for it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It—because I didn't—I just thought it—I actually didn't—

CHON NORIEGA:  It seemed like it surprised you.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it did surprise me, because I didn't think, I didn't think anybody would think anything. To be honest, it didn't occur to me that anybody would be so—so selfish. To care about 15 thousand dollars.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, it blindsided me, I was naive. It—you know. I—you know why, I was busy thinking about something very fucking complicated. How to make this—I was trying to win a battle, and it—and it took everything that I knew to make this work.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To convince people, to convince the NEA, to get them to have a press conference, to—to—to get our stories straight on the panelists, on what to say, and how to say it, so we sounded uniform.

[00:10:00]

We had put one front out to the press, we put one—everybody says the same thing, you said it from your point of view, but everybody says the same thing. We say—we know what the—what the talking points are, I outlined everything for everybody. We—we worked it through, we agreed, you know? We fight together. If we're gonna do this, we go all the way. Right? It took—you know, I organized these people on the spot. You know. And then, yeah, yes. It didn't occur to me that when I would get home, a bunch of crybabies would be—white people pushing me around because they didn't like what I did.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What—I told someone, somebody said, what, you know, who are you to do that? I said, my name is Daniel Martinez, that's who—I—I decided to do this. That's right, I didn't ask your permission. Fuck you. These people. Fuck you, you know. I like—I like—I'm supposed to ask someone if I should take a political action, really? [Laughs.] The history of civil rights was not about people asking permission.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They just fucking did shit. You know? And this was modeled, I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? It's modeled off of civil rights.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's a civil rights gesture, Chon. Nobody saw it like that.

CHON NORIEGA:  So this has been thirty years, and it still gets you very worked up.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because people are cowards.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They're—you know why it gets me worked up, is because we are in—we are in a world of cowards now, Chon. If there were cowards then, now it's unbelievable. Corrupt, unethical, unprincipled cowards who hide under the most facile notions of what they think politics are. Right? And while everybody’s getting paid, the one percent is getting paid, and everybody's fattening their fucking, you know—lining their pockets with money, we're still here with the empty fucking bag. You know, it's—it's insulting. It's insulting that we're still here. You know, and why are we still here, and why is that the report we just read about eighty-six percent of people showing in museums are white males? Still.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In 2020, eighty-six percent of the shows in museums, and the collections are white men.

CHON NORIEGA:  But it's down from eighty-seven.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right! Whoa!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah! That's progress! [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So have you ever been asked to be on an NEA panel since?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no! [Laughs.]  They never asked me back for anything!

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  But you got one after this.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What's that?

CHON NORIEGA:  But you got one after this.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I did. I got the last round of NEAs, which was like, I don't remember, '90-something.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I mean, you—I—I'm in a small group of people you know, Chon, that got three NEAs.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's a very small group of people. I mean, there's a bunch of us, but it's not like the norm.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, but I don't know, Chon, it was just—just a clusterfuck.

CHON NORIEGA:  So yeah, that's—you come out of the '80s, we still haven't even covered—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, we have to—well—

CHON NORIEGA:  —some of the things from there, but—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You want to come out of the '80s? I wanted to—

CHON NORIEGA:  No, we'll end up circling back.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —we're gonna circle back, but I wanted to mention the other Mexicans.

CHON NORIEGA:  The other Mexicans? Oh, the—show.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, not the show, the other Mexicans.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's not a show.

CHON NORIEGA:  What?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] You know, my category when I—

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, yeah, yeah, you wrote that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —when I wrote for you. So—

CHON NORIEGA:  OTMs.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, OTMs. Yeah. So I was—it had to be in this, also, like '87— it has to be like '87. I think. Because it was post-Asco.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was at Barnsdall or something, Because Barnsdall was more important in those years.

CHON NORIEGA:   Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Because they had the theatre, they had the gallery, right? And then, most—a lot of the—I'm sure you've heard from all the Asco people, a lot of the shows and stuff were all done in community centers.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? I mean, lots of them were manifested in these community centers, right? Because you could get some money, like you said, CETA grants and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they were places you could take over for the weekend, right? And put on the shows, and I'm sure you've heard all those stories. Anyway, so I met this woman named Martine Rivera. She was—had some kind of, like, you know, assistant curator job or something at Barnsdall then, right? And she would just—well, she was strikingly beautiful for one, I mean, like strikingly beautiful.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And so, as par for me at the times, naturally chatting her up. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  She—something happened that is different than, sort of the Manazar moments or the, you know, Roberto moments, or any—like, meeting people. So I meet her, and she—I mentioned something about Asco, she burst out laughing. Like, literally just started laughing.

[00:15:04]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  She says, you were part of that? Like— [Laughs.] Right? And I—it wasn’t so much—

CHON NORIEGA:  Why was she laughing?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —well, that's what—it wasn't so much that it was like—I'm trying to think of the word to describe—it was some—there was something about the tone, was that it was—that was just ridiculous. That was just a ridiculous thing. And what—so what ended up happening is that, so, she invited me over, her brother was Ray Rivera, who was a very, very famous photographer. So they introduced—so when—and meeting them, and they had another sister, and I can't remember her name. And they were in Echo Park. But they had grown up on the Eastside, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—but they were a different group of Mexicans, Chon. These kids, they came out of—they came out of the same East LA, they want—they had nothing to do with the notion of Asco or that traditional view. These were hipster kids. I mean, like real hip—they were like fashionistas, they were in the clubs, they were in the bars, they were, I mean. This was a very, very, like, sophisticated sense of, you know, fashion posturing in the world, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, were they the same age as you? Or younger?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They—you know, Chon, they had to be maybe— it has to be in the ballpark.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It has to be in the ballpark. I mean, maybe they were a little bit younger than me, but couldn't have been by much.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They just wanted nothing to do with this other image of being Mexican. They had—they were still—I mean, they were very Mexican, right? Grew up here, of course, like all of us. [Laughs.] Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So they had that assimilation. But they, the way they looked, they didn't dress in—I mean, it wasn't like any of the attire, the attire was extremely sophisticated fashion, right, it was very much about being seen, right? It was about being out all the time. Their sense of themselves was, like, like club kids.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And their interests in art and music and fashion all coincided, but it was a complete, like—it was as if two worlds—this was the first time I had ever seen it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I had not seen it before, Chon. Because I had only been orientated to the other version.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So it's not that I—I ever thought that everyone was lacking like that, not by any—not by any stretch of the imagination, but I had never seen a completely independent group of people that came out of the exact same time period. That evolved into something else. Because they had their own set of friends.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They were all, they—they couldn't care less—I mean, they—they just, I mean, again, it wasn't out of disrespect, it just, it was like, why would you do that? And these are—they were in the art world, they were in a different part of the art world, they were, I mean—It was very, very interesting. It was—to be quite honest, it was really exciting.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because their sense of themselves, they had no—they had no lack of confidence. Because to be in fashion and to be in the clubs like that, you have confidence. And their sense of themselves, the—something that was really overwhelming, they were a very tight family, and the people they hung out with. But, the—their—their sense of themselves in the world was not diminished.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was as if the trauma of growing up here, either it was so overwhelming that they completely displaced it, or they took the trauma and transformed it into something else. I was never sure of which it was.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it was really, given the sort of downer of Asco at that particular moment— [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So this is the late '80s—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is late '80s, it was very exciting to meet these people, right? I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  So what came of that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Nothing.

CHON NORIEGA:  They just—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They just existed. They lived their lives on a—they made shows, and they made work, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  What kind of—were they artists?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  What kind of artists?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Martine painted, her brother made photography, the other sister did some kind of sculpture, something or other, I don't remember now. And they—they had a whole group of people that they hung out with, they were, you know, I mean, but they were out. They were—they lived—imagine like punks in the—in London.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? At that time, or think of any—any kind of fashion movement. This is what they were. They were, you know, they were always—I mean, just to go to the store in a car to get some bread, you know, they were dressed, like, to kill, always.

[00:20:04]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was extraordinary, actually.

CHON NORIEGA:  And did you ever keep up with them, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I—I mean—actually, I had a relationship with Martine—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and then that disappeared, as all things do, and then after that I didn't see them any more.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, during those few years, is when I was around all the time. And you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, by the '90s it was—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —oh, by the '90s it was gone.

CHON NORIEGA:  —yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it was—I—I bring it up only in the context of the kind of shaping of things that we've been talking about, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, were you able to share with them that other part of your life that you kept from Asco?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I don't think so.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you still kept that boundary.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I still kept a boundary.

CHON NORIEGA:  This was your—your Mexican fix?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, I guess.

CHON NORIEGA:  Connection—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, because the thing was—you know, I don't think anyone would understand me anyway. And I didn't want to take the chance of getting rejected. I was already getting rejected out in the world, and, you know, I think—I think a lot of times that I overcompensate for my own trauma, and I overcompensate for—it's certainly not a fear of being rejected. Because I’m—you know, by this point have been rejected more than once, so it's not—not new.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, so—and an unfortunate thing is that to become accustomed to being rejected and demonized for sets of ideas that you try to activate. I mean, imagine trying to activate ideas in the world, and there's so much resistance because, people don't—people—this is true in everything as I'm sure you know, I'm sure you would agree even if you don't say so, but, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that if you could—if you present someone with an idea—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that is outside of their worldview, generally speaking, the first thing they will do is reject it. Because it doesn't fit into a category or a way of their understanding of something. So why—why is most science fiction predicated on this—or why colonization like that, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, when the Spaniards first came, what was one—especially in the—in, you know, the Caribbean, and they first came to the Americas, what was one of the things they—Native people had no reference point for guys with beards and hats—metal hats on their heads, floating on the ocean.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, there was no reference point. It was—it was beyond culture shock. They—I think some of the accounts that I've read, people thought they were dreaming or hallucinating, they didn't know what they saw. So they just walked by. I mean—it's not there. We've never seen anything like that, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So what—why—why is some of the best science fiction—there's a great show on—on Amazon Prime called The Expanse. Have you seen this?

CHON NORIEGA:  Unh-uh [negative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, it's a fantastic—so, anyway Earth has colonized the planets, so there's a Martian colony, and then there's something called Belters, because they exist in the place where they—it's the working class, of course. Where all the resources are farmed—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and mined and then supplied to Earth, but Mars declares itself as an independent world. Of course, the Earthers don't like that, right? People—they're not Earth—they're not humans anymore, they're Martians right? You know, but—but some unknown entity appears, and what's the first thing they want to do? Kill it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, that's all science fiction—every time—and I think that's true in the art world. You present people with ideas that do not conform to their very linear interpretation of what art history is, and their very linear interpretation of the use of media, i.e., painting or sculpture or photography or film, video, all this, if you break from the format to try to invent languages that adhere to those languages, right? Like dialects.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? There's many forms of Spanish, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Many dialects of Spanish, and many forms of English. British English, Australian English, English English, and then American English and then there's like Spanglish, I mean, there's like, there's hybrids. Everything hybrid. It breaks—in hybrids, break hybrid, break hybrid, break hybrid, right? So why doesn't that—why is that so alien in art? You know, you reject—you reject the idea. So—

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I lost track of where I was supposed to be going—

CHON NORIEGA:  —with that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. I don't remember, sorry.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, there's a certain Buñuel quality to the '80s—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —we can't leave it. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Buñuel, I love Buñuel.

CHON NORIEGA:  But we'll continue regardless, so—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What else is on my little list there, Chon?

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, I think things that may go beyond our—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Time?

CHON NORIEGA:  —time frame here.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Let's talk—we have fifteen minutes. So let's—

[00:25:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, if you want to talk—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What's another subject we can just tackle a little bit?

CHON NORIEGA:  Santa Monica museum installation.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What else is on there?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, well the other things are even longer, so—I've been wanting to ask you, and we've hit on it a little bit here and there, but maybe just because—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, ask me, yeah—

CHON NORIEGA:  —when I first met you, you know, I also met VinZula Kara.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  VinZula, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  VinZula Kara, and I just—you did a number of things with him in Seattle— at Santa Monica—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, Santa Monica we did—we worked out—so—

CHON NORIEGA:  —so I was just wondering about—you've collaborated with lots of people.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Lots of people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Just, he always struck me as interesting because he was a musician.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  And he did your sound design, and—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He did a lot of sound for me.

CHON NORIEGA:  —just something about—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, so that's actually good. That's actually really good, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and we—I can talk about this a little—I think it's important. So let's talk about—so my—my first understanding of the concept of race was growing up, and what was very clear to me, you had, in Lennox you had poor Mexicans, in Inglewood you had poor whites, in Watts you had poor Blacks.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In my world, the very first thing that I knew, is that there were at least three kinds of people.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  When I was very little.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. And they were all poor?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And they were all poor. But it was very clear that I grew up in a world that was not only incredibly hostile, I mean hostile—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —violent, poor, but we didn't look the same.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And didn't live together.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. No, we were completely isolated communities.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now you seem to be moving among all of these communities.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I moved—I moved through all these communities because I was stupid. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, your parents led the way, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, but, I mean, but also, but I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  As an adult.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —well, as an adult too, but I mean, no, but, as being—and—so the notion of later—as you know, in the '80s, people coming up with the notion that we live in a multicultural society, or multi-ethnic society, was odd to me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was really like, one of those, like, you know, head-scratcher moments, like, this is peculiar because—I always got up, and there was always different kinds of people. You know, we got bus—I got bussed when I was really little. You know, that was when bussing was happening.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And you would get bussed from one part of town to another part of town, and there was always—there was fights and everybody—each ethnic group was fighting each other on the busses. And people would fight each other in—off the busses. People, you know, they wanted your coat, they beat you up, they wanted your shoes, they beat you up, and then you would take, you know, people would carry chains and knives and, you know, I grew up in an environment where people had full-on fucking fights all the time. To get to school was a fight. If you got to school and you didn't get beat up, it was probably a good day.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And people, you know—if you didn't get stabbed that day, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Or someone breaks your leg that day, you know, I mean, people carried chains, like, I don't mean like little chains, I mean those like big fucking chains, so they could beat your brains out, you know. And, this was—I thought that was normal, I thought this was how everybody grew up.

CHON NORIEGA:  Multicultural. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] Exactly! This is what multiculturalism was! You know. But, I think the—I think some of the closest people I had ever had as friends—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —were Black people first, Chon. To be perfectly honest.

CHON NORIEGA:  As a child?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  As a child. And I think that stuck with me. Because my—my best friend in CalArts was this graphic designer named Nolan Curtis.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And he was older than me. But, you know, we, when we met, he was doing this graphic design, and I'm in the art department, you know, I'm sure the first thing was let's get high, you know? [Laughs.] But, you know, he—but this young Black guy becomes, like, my best friend there, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We went to school together that whole time. I knew him after that, we actually had gotten an apartment in Marina Del Rey after. That's what you do when you get out of CalArts, you go straight to Marina Del Rey. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And a couple of us had an apartment, you know, but—I think that I had always had a, like, all the—old, old Watts Tower, Black era community artists, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They all—all—I mean, they were really old then—when I was young. Right? I can't remember people's names at the moment, but there was a whole generation of them that were really, really early pioneers in LA. They all knew me, I knew them all. I was always at Watts. I always—I mean, these are people who taught me stuff.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, different, I mean. The Black community, for whatever reason, for me, and given that I'm not—overtly look Mexican.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[00:30:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? I'm really pale.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, it's curious, I never understood actually, Chon. But they always welcomed me in.

CHON NORIEGA:  Hmm.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I learned more about being Black than I ever learned about being Mexican. Right? That's also part and parcel to the way I grew up, as we talked about before.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's also part of the geography of this, but so, getting out of school, simultaneous to meeting, like, Asco people, I met—one of the first people I met in the early '80s was Ulysses Jenkins.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Ulysses has—Ulysses has, I mean, I've known Ulysses for forever. And we remained friends forever.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, I helped him, I hired him at UCI, he was one of the first people there with me in there, and—anyway so, VinZula was a friend of Ulysses, and so were like a whole other crew of these—and they were all making music. Right? And VinZula was very, he was very tall, and thin—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and he was—

[00:31:03] [END OF TRACK martin19_24of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —very suave.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was all—I mean, again—you know, he was always dressed very well, and he moved very slow.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? He was—he had a kind of southern demeanor.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, that kind of long draw, right? You know, he just seemed very southern to me. He had nothing to do with it. He grew up here. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But he, he—you know what I mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, you take on a kind of way of being. Right? It was like, oh, you know, it's really hot and humid, and I want a mint julep kind of time.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was always VinZula, but he was super talented. He was an experimental, musique concrète-educated musician—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that was doing wild, crazy, experimental music. And he, and—all the people I knew, all this group of musicians, they were—they had crazy bands and making, like, noise music stuff, like Dada—very Dada-esque. You know, but more sophisticated in a sense than Dada. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  How so?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Electronic music had already been, you know, what—a good twenty years in development—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —at this point.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, the Moog synthesizer—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —came in—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's what I'm saying.

CHON NORIEGA:  —two decades before.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's what I'm saying, and this language had been severely developed, and he had—he had that education, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, where did he go to school?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I don't remember, I mean, he didn't have, like, education like I did.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But he was very studied, in his own craft—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and just very good at it, right? And so I—I hung out with these guys. A lot.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know. And I think that—

CHON NORIEGA:  Throughout the '80s, then.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Throughout the '80s, throughout the '90s, I mean, I—they—they, yeah—I would say the last project I worked on with VinZula was, he helped me in—in Culture in Action in Chicago in '93.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because the same problem occurred, Ulysses was formally educated like I was. He was a graduate of the old Ot—old Otis!

CHON NORIEGA:  Old Otis!

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  The old Otis.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The old Otis! That's the one we all loved because it was next to MacArthur Park, and the gallery was on the corner.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was—it was our only in-the-city art school. The oldest art school, right? Everyone knew—everything was centered around Otis. Back in the day. Everything was centered around MacArthur Park, you know. Buy your drugs, get a little sex, you know, whatever you needed the Park had for you, you know.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But no, I think that, again, part of my—lack of defining, or —better, inability to recognize or define my own identity—a lot of my identity came out of Black America. Because I—I—I had always been around Black people. My whole life, Chon. It's a really curious thing, because, it's—

CHON NORIEGA:  And you live now on what—is this considered Leimert Park?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is called the flatlands of Baldwin Hills, or Leimert Park, or—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —Chesterfield Square.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Or, there's like lots of names, but yeah. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But yeah, this is a half Black—this was at one time all Black.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Now it's half Black, half Latino—

CHON NORIEGA:  And Central American, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Central American, that's right—neighborhood, so you could—I could walk up a—you can walk—we can just go to the corner, you hear Spanish.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, the—the—as you were here one day, the ice cream cart goes by that's always—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So with VinZula, did—did you come to a sense of sound and music, as an element of your work, through him, or had you—been something you'd been thinking about beforehand?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think that—so, I'm pretty tone deaf. I mean—like, not in hearing. I'm using that as a metaphor. I for some reason have never had any facility for making, like—I couldn't ever figure out the piano and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I tried some basic lessons on guitar and piano and things, and I just didn't—I don't have it.

CHON NORIEGA:  You can appreciate, you can't make?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah. But it was odd to me though, because I'm, in—in the course of my life, I have become extremely skillful in almost all media. There was—there was never anything I couldn't just learn to do and, you know, figure out how to do when I wanted to do it. Music was always a big block for me. So I just go—I didn't press the point, because it was like, if I can't—if I don't have a natural talent for it, I'm just gonna do what I can—actually naturally skilled at.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So—I did, I learned a lot from these guys. Black music was really important.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And that didn't come—there was nothing like that happening, you had, you know, you had Los Lobos, who everybody loved, and you had, like, The Ramones, and you had like a few, like, you know, garage band people who were underground. Of course, that—you know, the late, you know, the late '70s and the early '80s, you had, you know, you had punk happening and all the bars, and you—I mean, you know, there was a huge punk movement—

[00:05:07]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —underground music scene, but this was rooted—you know, Black music is rooted throughout the entire history of this country.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, and it's, it's sophisticated. Yeah, so they—they—in my sense of wanting to do these really complex, you know, multimedia extravaganzas, right? These installations and things, I always wanted sound in them.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And what I realized early on was that since I can't do it, I would get somebody to collaborate with me who was really good at it. And these guys were wild. I mean, they were wild. You know, and they—they tossed everything out. Just like, reinvent it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They—no—it was like—actually, this is an interesting point. The unwillingness—this is my observation. The rigidness and the calcification around a set of principles of cultural representation, i.e., art and music, which seems to me, in the Latino community in particular here—like frozen in time. It's—it does not desire to move out of its comfort zone.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It wants to stay in the same place, decade after decade after decade. Right? It's not true with Black America.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's not—particularly not true in the music world.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's just reinvention and reinvention, experimentation and reinvention, and experimentation and reinvention, and experimentation. As fast as they can make it, they would change it. And they would do it. And it was exactly the same principle I had already lived by. It's, like, experiment, new idea, experiment, try another one. Try an experiment, re-work it, try another one. Just keep doing it. They were perfectly in line with my philosophy on how to make art. You know? So we got along well. It was cool. I learned a lot from them. And we made a lot of good projects, you know?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was—and again, you know, long before, you know, I think—I think—so, I think it's a decade though, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But, I had always worked with everybody. I've worked with more people than I can possibly name. Okay? And all kinds of projects. I was always grouping and organizing people. Always. Right? But they're always mixed groups of people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Women, queers, you know, I mean every—Black people, Latino people, white people, I mean, there was always mixtures of people, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Always, on everything. So again, I'm—I'm a little dumbfounded. I'm constantly dumbfounded by the fact that—why does this seem so normal to me?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like, this is just normal, like, why would you do this any other way. It's not—and it wasn't like this—oh, we're gonna go like—now, you know, or you have to make sure we have our, like, quota, or we have our, you know, check the Latino box, or the Black box. This was just—you knew people, you had friends that were talented, and you want to work with talented people. Didn't matter what they were. There was no question about race. None, zero.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You just work with talent—you want to be around talented people, you want to be around people that you can learn from, you want to be around people you can share with. Two people thinking about an idea is stronger than one person thinking about an idea. Five people thinking about an idea and working to a goal, is stronger.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It just is. It was exciting to do—to work with people. And these guys were great! They were fun.

CHON NORIEGA:  You don't see that happening outside of yourself, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I did—well, I didn't see it happen—I didn't see that happening, I didn't see any representations of that happening in the '80s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I saw—I mean, I can't name anybody else that was cross—across ethnic lines, and sexuality lines, I don't know anyone else doing that. Mixing up that stuff like that. I mean, maybe there were, I'm sure there were.

CHON NORIEGA:  The CETA program allowed for that, or—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I know, but, I mean—but—

CHON NORIEGA:  —a little bit here and there.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it wasn't—they didn't act—I mean, I'm talking about active in participation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm talking about participating in big—because I'm getting invited to big projects.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative], yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I brought, I mean—these guys, I mean the thing—what ended up happening, you know, with—you grow out of people, Chon. Like, you—here's what happens, Chon. If you're around people who are at least as ambitious as you are—like, ambitious people—here's what ambitious people do, and even if they don't—if they have the same skill sets, or have different skill sets.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You put people that are ambitious together, and they push each other. They push each other intellectually, so, they say, I'm reading this, you're reading that, did you see this, did you see that? Did you look at this, did you look at that? Have you thought about this, have you considered this? Smart ambitious people push each other to achieve even more.

[00:10:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Even if the projects are separate projects, their own independent projects, but just ambitious people being around each other are successful.

CHON NORIEGA:  So is that the methodology behind the residency? The artist residency?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What artist residency?

CHON NORIEGA:  Just any of them. Where you're in—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, I think—

CHON NORIEGA:  —a space with other artists.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, I think so, but that—but the difference there is—

CHON NORIEGA:  And you've been part of these.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —oh, I've been in lots of residencies but, yes, I think in some instances that works really well, and in other instances it doesn't work well at all.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay, but my point being, though, is that, if you're—if you're with people of varying ambitions and or insecurities, and or have been so fucked up by their traumas and can't get past them, or their sense of social alienation, or their sense of individual alienation, or whatever the issues are that they have, that stops them from moving forward, what happens, very quickly is you grow out of them.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because they no longer can sustain themselves in a—in a fusion reactor, in a sense. They just don't—they can't last.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so what happens is that—it's not fun anymore, it's not exciting anymore. So it—it's a drag then. Like, not a drag, like social meaning, like a drag on the boat, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The anchor's still out, so you're not moving so fast, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It—and I think, for me a lot of times, I've grown out of people.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because they don't want to go farther, and they don't want to go as fast as I want to go. So I'm always, my life has—the reason I collaborated with so many people is that I collaborated with them at moments when they were at their best.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then, when they weren't at their best anymore, I couldn't—I couldn't help them or they couldn't keep up, then it's just time to go, because it doesn't help me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? The project is not helped. Even if the project isn't always me, sometimes the project—like the NEA thing was not about me. Was about something else. There's been a lot of projects that are not about me.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I—I tend to not even center myself, most of the time. I’m angry now, but, I mean, that's a different story.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's a different story.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But the—but—but—VinZula—we had—one of the projects that we did up in—I mean, we did one in Chicago, we did one in San Francisco, we did the one—

CHON NORIEGA:  Phoenix.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in LA, we did—yeah, I mean, we've done a bunch—we did a bunch of projects together.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was—he was really—he was—we did a—in '90—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, stylistically you guys are almost complete opposites.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Completely!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that made that even better.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's what I mean, that's a great—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that's what I mean, Chon. Because it's not about the similarity. It's about the difference that's exciting.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, I think we went—what was that cafe that used to go to?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, Cafe Tropical, I used to—that was my cafe—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] Everybody—I used to have meetings—I used to meet everybody at Tropical.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. That was the first place we met—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We met, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  —besides your studio.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, I think you got more hopped-up on coffee, and he got relaxed. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, I know, VinZula was always, like—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I told you, he's like—very southern, man!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm still downing four, five double espressos a day. [Laughs.] That's like probably our time, huh?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, I think we're gonna have to stop here before the chip runs out.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yup.

CHON NORIEGA:  So here, stop that—

[00:13:21] [END OF TRACK martin19_25of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is Chon Noriega, for the Smithsonian.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Interviewing Chon Noriega at Daniel Martinez' studio, Christmas Eve. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Imposter.

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  And this is Chon Noriega—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Sure it is. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  —interviewing Daniel Joseph Martinez at the artist's studio in—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Beverly Hills!

CHON NORIEGA:  —Los Angeles, California.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I moved to Beverly Hills since you were last here.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] On December 24th, 2019, Christmas Eve, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, card number four.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  On the 26th, we'll be in Bel Air.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  On the 28th, we'll be in Malibu. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  You've got a busy night tonight. Flying around the world, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Only locally flying. The new Uber helicopter.

CHON NORIEGA:  You're the new local Claus?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, you know, since it's a very flat space.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, I wonder if we can just briefly dip back into the late '70s, I realize we kind of missed a—for me, at least, what's an important piece at that time, which is Eye of the Needle. Your pinhole camera project.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, that's—well, maybe we should, maybe I should—since we're doing—

CHON NORIEGA:  Go back to the 1940s.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, maybe just to bring some part of this, since we dipped between history and today—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —so in—my parents live in Durango, Colorado.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They live actually outside of Durango, Colorado, like about an hour. Kind of tucked away at the edge of the Rocky Mountains, and pretty much the middle of nowhere, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You can't see other humans from where they live. [Laughs.] That's how isolated they are.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But in June, I found out that my father has terminal cancer.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And, you know—he—he fell—he fell outside doing who knows what.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  When he shouldn't have been, at 90 years old, right? And it's not like walking around the city, it's like, land, it's dirt—[laughs]—rocks, and it's uneven. Right? I mean, it's not exactly—if you can't walk, and you need help to walk, it's not the place to be doing it, right? Nonetheless, my dad is out there doing who knows what, and he falls, and they wait—my parents wait a month to let me know this happened.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Of course, because of my father being typically stoic, he's maybe hyper-stoic.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, he—he—he's probably, you know, would be the one who would be shot in a war and just keep on going, right? And never like—I'll die in battle or something, you know, I don't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anyways, so when the situation became more than they could manage, without telling me, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I find out, so he goes to the hospital, he gets—while they're X-raying him for the—his back, which he fractured, and his tailbone, fractured and, you know, which is one kind of pain, they find the tumor, which is the size of a grapefruit—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —on his kidneys, right? And, fast, you know, fast-acting cancer, right? So anyway, last night—my dad's been in home hospice. He was in a facility most of summer and so last night the nurse called me and basically said that—ten days, tops.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Before my dad passes. You know, so it's—I mean, I've been dealing with this for the past, you know, what, six months now?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And trying to take care of my parents, and my mother's 93, my dad's 91, you know, this is—they live in a completely out of touch world. They live in complete isolation. And have lived in complete isolation. You know, so it's—it's—you know, it's been something. It's been an uphill trek.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? On my—from my side. Aside from what—anyway. It was just, so I'm now having to make new plans for him.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I have to move him from the house to—back into a facility, because he needs—I mean, he needs 24-hour care.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Get him into a hospice.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —hospice, yeah, I'm gonna get him into a real hospice, with real—

CHON NORIEGA:  How far away is that from where they live?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  About an hour, so.

[00:05:00]

But, you know, just, I don't—I guess I'm only mentioning it because I think it makes, I think it's relevant, since we're discussing, since we began with my father—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right? And started talking about the history of my parents, and my relationship to my identity, and my city, and the relationship of, you know, his influences on me and, you know, I don't know what to make of it, I just thought—but I thought it was important to mention right now because of, it happened last night, hours of phone conversations with the nurses and the director of home hospice, and, you know, everyone was like, oh my God, something terrible happened over the weekend. He just went down.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He was sort of just plateauing, and then he just went whoosh.

CHON NORIEGA:  Is he conscious now?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's still—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, but, you know. He's—his body's weeping fluids.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? He's completely swollen.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He's like, poof. I guess the body starts just disintegrating. Is what—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I don't know. I've never seen someone die of cancer directly.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anyway, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, usually what they're giving you can make you bloat, the steroids, or something to keep you going.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, they have him on all kinds of meds and—anyway, I'm not sure what to make of that. I have to figure, I probably have to just figure—help them, and I'll figure it out later—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —what that's supposed—what that means.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, I have a pretty estranged relationship with them.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But it doesn't mean that I haven't been there to try to, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's still a relationship.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I've been, you know, I've been doing everything I can do to—I mean, there's not more that I can do.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anyway. So, the pinhole camera truck.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was a—

CHON NORIEGA:  Is that what it was called?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, that's what—I mean, that's what you call it, right?

[They laugh.]

CHON NORIEGA:  I've never had one.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Of course you have. Every—I thought everyone had one.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  This is a big truck.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, so out in Saugus, Newhall, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which is, you know, past Valencia. It's going uh, east. Saugus, Newhall is like—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's where they had that student shooting.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, I mean, they've had a—they've had a lot of horrible things happen out there. Because it's like a—it's like, serious, like, white trash desert people—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —who still fly the fucking Nazi flag, and have Ku Klux Klan cross burnings out there, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, this is—when I went to school there, it was common for people to hear about cross burnings.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? Like, we're talking about really extreme crazy nutcases, right ? Out there. Which, you have—so you have this kind of, what? Road Warrior-esque kind of existence, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So there was a lot of, like, you know, how like the city just has a natural abundance, and then things—so you have—one dead car, ten dead cars, dead trucks, they become like graveyards of technology. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So there was lots of these out there, because there was a lot of, like, car industry also out in that area. Anyway, so that's where I found my semi-truck. [Laughs.] Out in the, kind of like, graveyard of trucks and things. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Now is this the truck or the trailer?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was a trailer, but I had to move it around, Chon.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was—I wasn't pulling it myself.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] I'm—I appreciate you thought that I was—could do that—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —could pull the semi-trailer, you know.

CHON NORIEGA:  Your little Volkswagen Bug, or—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Something, you know, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  So this was like an 18-wheeler?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  It was a big—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was a big one—

CHON NORIEGA:  It was a full—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —was a full-on one. And what I did is, there's lots of really good math and people who have worked—pinhole is really a fantastic phenomenon, actually. It is a kind of—if photography itself, which I would argue today, even today, even though it's on—it's sort of in its twilight, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think photography—different than film, even though I think they're—they're tributaries of the same kind of thinking, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's—it's really the last form of alchemy, you know? It's—you have a—

[Car alarm sound.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Wasn't mine, was it?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No.

CHON NORIEGA:  My little car.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They won't take it. [Laughs.] And if they do you can get an Uber.

CHON NORIEGA:  They'll probably replace it and give me a better one.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I was gonna say, you know, get the insurance from that. But, you know, it's kind of a fantastic thing, Chon. It's a—you have a box, with a lens on it—

[00:10:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  So—yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and you have a piece of plastic in it, you shine some light on it, you put it in some—you go into another black box and you put it in some, like, liquids, and then poof. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  An image appears.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  An image appears, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  And you see that as alchemy?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That absolutely is alchemy. There's no doubt—you worried? Should we go—

CHON NORIEGA:  No, no, it's just—was like—weird sound.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Let me go look, just to make you—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you don't have to move, but you can—you can, like, sing a Christmas carol.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, we'll just keep it running.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Singing] Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

[Audio break.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Singing] Chon's car is missing, Chon's car is missing.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Singing] Rudolph.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.] Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Santa took your car.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  Probably fit three stuffed socks in it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I know.

CHON NORIEGA:  So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, no—

CHON NORIEGA:  Alchemy.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —absolutely, I think it's alchemy. It's—it's a form of magic. It's—it's a transformation, it's a multiple-stage transformation of light into something else.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, it genuinely makes—you make an image from chemicals and light.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, it's an extraordinary process, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  So most people talk about it in terms of indexicality. That it's an actual imprint from the world, onto the celluloid, or onto the paper.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, but that's because they're, like, they're missing the point.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, yes. We can move to the idea that—that the index as an image is a classical way that people saw photography. But I think—I think I would tend to err on the side of magic.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Rather than, or—the alchemist process, of turning one substance into another substance.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because there, the possibility of the actual, sort of, making—manipulating the alchemical process to do something other than what it is designed to do has a greater possibility. In other words, the apparatus itself, like [Vilém] Flusser talks about, the apparatus as a technical machine, right? The technical surface, Flusser, you know who I'm talking about, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, he was the first one to—have—actually, he's the only one that I know of that ever wrote a philosophy about photography.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And he approached his analysis of photography radically different than what you had just suggested, which is where everyone else comes from. Photography's always indexical, always capturing what exists in the world. I don't think that that's true, necessarily.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because it—photography has always been manipulated. Photography is always something other—it is a lie. Photography is the greatest lie that has ever been invented, because it's not what we saw. It is something that we have invented.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Ansel Adams, those places did not look like Ansel Adams photographs. They did not look like Robert Frank. They didn't look like, I mean, these things were conjured.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, they're two-dimensional, for one.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Well, they're two-dimensional but, I mean, yes, of course, taking the three-dimensional world into two dimensions, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  And turning an experience into an image.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yes—

CHON NORIEGA:  As an object.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yes, but, it's still—it's still—I guess I would prefer the not—the pragmatic approach and the use of photography, I think, is what has drowned photography in—it has taken something that is a highly skilled endeavor—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and the iPhone in particular has made this into, you know, everyone thinks they can make photographs.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because they think they have—they think all it takes—the same ways as everyone thinks their kid can be Jackson Pollock. Just give him a can of paint and a brush and he just throws the paint on the brush. So—it removes any intelligence from that, right? So I'm—I would like to add the intelligence to the apparatus, and additionally adding into that the possibility for the complete manipulation of that into something, into a storytelling form that has unpredictable consequences as a device. And I think it happens both on the material level, which is the process of light coming through a black box onto a piece of plastic, and then another black box with chemicals making it, is one process, but the intellectual process of manipulating that.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, alchemy plus intelligence.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely. I mean—everything is always plus intelligence. It's not—

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —anyway, so I thought, if—again, recently we've been talking about, I told you, I've been trying to—I'm just practicing now, but, been shooting my 8x10 like a 35mm.

[00:15:05]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.] You know, hand-held.

CHON NORIEGA:  You out there doing your snapshots?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Exactly! So, so the thinking for that, Chon—actually, I wouldn't have even thought of this before, but the thinking for what I'm doing now actually comes from then.

CHON NORIEGA:  From the '70s, from—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  From the '70s. Because—

CHON NORIEGA:  —taking portraits of your teachers, or—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, no, no, no, no, no, from the truck.

CHON NORIEGA:  —from the trucks.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because the idea here was, what if—what if you change the scale of the apparatus?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  See, the apparatus has always been, they've been—they've been large and cumbersome, awkward—

CHON NORIEGA:  But never bigger than the paper.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —right, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —they're—they're always confined. So, what would happen if you, if you turned the largest vehicle possible into a moving truck. Which is—so, the technology is not that hard. Right? You—you take a thin piece of metal and you—you can make different apertures.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, with small drills. Right? Really small drills on a rotating piece of metal. Then that's your—that is your aperture. And then a shutter is just opening and closing, have in a device—so you rotate the aperture on the inside, you have the shutter on the outside, right? And inside, what you do—I was rolling out mural paper.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Literally, just, you know, cover the entire inside. And so then what happens is, you can either—it took five—I think there was five shutters, across this, and even—evenly spaced so they would overlap each other.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because the focal length can't be changed. It's only the distance between one edge of the truck to the edge of the paper. So, the surface of the paper. Right? But what it does, it makes—

CHON NORIEGA:  So, it will only reach a certain size.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, exact—well, I mean, it covered pretty, pretty good, right? But it was—

CHON NORIEGA:  But did you have to have, like, four holes?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, five holes.

CHON NORIEGA:  Five apertures.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Five apertures across the whole thing, to get complete coverage. So it's in effect a kind of, it's a—it's another kind of panorama, so the—so I was experimenting, I mean, so I could either open all the shutters at the same time, or I could open shutters in series—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and then close them in series. Right? But what they—this is fantastic, because it was a—it was a way of—rethinking the landscape. Through this, a—monumental thing. Looking at the sort —what the—I'm sorry, my brain's a little—what am I thinking about? Oh, the sublimity of the landscape, right? Of nature and of the built environment, and driving a truck around, then, as a device by which to make these pictures, there's something that it is actually pushing—the idea is that it's somehow pushing against the landscape itself. There's something—it was just a fantastic experiment in making, and no longer being—having the mobility that the camera has as an apparatus, part of a human being. Right? So the—we move a camera, it moves with your body, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No matter what size of camera you're using, unless you have something that has to be on a tripod. This, though, is now—has to be moved in a very methodical way in order to do something. So you can take a picture here—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —then you move your truck here. [Laughs.] Then you move your truck here. So there—

CHON NORIEGA:  So the conditions of mobility shifted with the scale.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —with the scale, and it also, but also to produce negatives instead of positives.

CHON NORIEGA:  So how did you turn the mural paper into a negative?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, it comes—no, because the light exposing, it's a negative—it's—the first thing you get through a camera is a negative.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So it produces a negative on the paper. So it just stays that way. It doesn't change. So, in other words, you're producing original work inside of the camera itself.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Inside of the truck.

CHON NORIEGA:  And it sticks to the—the image imprints on the mural paper.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, absolutely, just—just the same way that you would expose a sheet of paper—you have to remember, this is still—we're a fully chemical paper darkroom world in the '70s.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, this was some sort of, this was some sort of departure on my part, thinking through the history of photography as I had learned it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? To—and also, at that point, very immersed in darkroom—thinking about what darkroom stuff was, right? This somehow just freed it from all of that activity. It kind of—it's not a reinvention but it certainly, it's a shift in—in what the apparatus of the camera is, what the actual event of picture making is. Like making a picture.

[00:20:10]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Making a photograph is different than what people do. So it's like making a painting.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, it's essentially—there's something about the scalability and the way that the truck moves and how it moves, by dragging it around, and parking it at locations and the time that it takes to do—there's something—it was a fantastic project.

CHON NORIEGA:  And what's the exposure time?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, I don't remember. They were long. Because I wouldn't—I would just—you'd do the smallest pinholes possible, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, I don't remember that, I don't remember, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, but you had worked that out?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah! Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of, there's ton—you know, I mean, pinhole photography even then was massive. There's like all kinds of complete, like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, I did it as a kid, so.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —tech nerds, no, no, but there's like serious tech nerds that—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, there's—there's graphs and charts and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —formulas.

CHON NORIEGA:  And had anybody ever done that scale though?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, nobody had ever done this before.

CHON NORIEGA:  So what were you—what were you aiming it at?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was—it was literally, the kind of, I mean, everything was confined to that area, because I didn't want to, I was too young—I couldn't—I didn't take it into the city. Every—everything was about the kind of—and at that time too, you have to remember, that was the beginning of planned housing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Built—

CHON NORIEGA:  Gated communities, or—?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —gated communities, but, you know, when they, like, in the '70s, when they first started making all the housing that looked the same, they were like—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —not quite gated communities yet, but, you know, every house on the block, in the cul-de-sac, looked identical.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  My brain is just not working.

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, it's like Levittown after World War Two, they just—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, but, I mean, this is, this took, this kind of housing took off here, massively.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? In the, in Los Angeles in particular. I just can't, normally I would be able—I know this history in my head really well, but right now I'm not remembering it.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, you had mentioned the sublimity of landscape, but were you also saying the built environment was also—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, because I'm saying that they—

CHON NORIEGA:  —or were you distinguishing the built environment from landscape?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, because this was the beginning—

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in this area, and I just—in, well, Valencia was beginning to have massive amounts of the transformation of land, into this new form of housing that they had not experienced yet.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So if you go there now, what I grew up with there—you had CalArts on the top of a hill—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and then you had the peasants down, and the villagers down below.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so we were up here sacrificing babies and, you know, doing all this horrible stuff that they couldn't imagine we were doing.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, I'm just, you know, it's Frankenstein story, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so there was always tension between the students at CalArts and the locals, because for them, it's like—they—you know, I remember one student, he did a kind of blasphemous restaging of the Stations of the Cross, right? And it was like—it hit the newspapers, it was like, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:   The local papers up there?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —well—yeah, because, you know, he was just complete—you know, it was a complete parody of Christ, I mean, you know, with dildos and who knows what else.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It didn't play well in the local press.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. [Laughs.] So you weren't the only one.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, oh no, no, no—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —there are people that made me—I remember at one graduation, when Robert Fitzpatrick was the president, and the graduations were equally as fantastic as the—you know, it—it sums—it—it's unbridled freedom right? And it's a test. I think in those days, it was a test of the limitations of what could be produced. I mean, it's like shock and horror, right? I mean, there's something—there's something about the testing ground of this. Anyway, so a student goes up on stage—it was—it was commonly—it was a history of the graduations being extreme, right, so, you go up on stage like any place to get your graduation, right? And so, you shake hands with the president, he gives you the thing, so one student goes up there, I remember this vividly because it was right up my alley, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So he's up there and he brings out a giant machete, and goes like this and chops off his arm. And [makes blood squirting sounds] all over the president, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  For real?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. [Laughs.] But it wasn't his arm really, right? It was a—

CHON NORIEGA:  Prosthetic?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —prosthetic arm. But it was great, I mean, it was like—[Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  This—this—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —this is the environment I grew up in, Chon. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  You—it would take you 20, 30 years to circle back to that, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  That's your—

[00:25:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, that work. Yeah, but, you know—anyway, so to answer your question, yes, you have this sort of, this very old world desert landscape, with kind of like extremists living in the landscape. And then you have the—close to the 405 there, or the 5, excuse me—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You have a—the beginnings of the—of the architectural and housing transformations from a very sleepy little town, where there's nobody around, into something that is extremely viable, where you have then—you know, now high-end condos and people,—I mean, that's not considered far any more, Valencia. People live in Valencia and drive in to LA, to go to work, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So somehow, the documenting, making these landscape pictures of both of these kinds of things. The intrusion of the built environment into the natural environment, but it—you know, again, it was like another experiment of mine. What happens when you make a camera that big? I guess that was the question.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What—and what happens when you go directly to the paper, not to the—there's no—interstitial step.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? It's like image to paper, so it's a kind of—a truer transcription of whatever a kind of—what if photography was an event, I think that was maybe probably more closer to the thinking. As opposed to, right, we can take pictures, right? But they're—we take lots of pictures in the hope of getting pictures that are of a high—highly successful.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? That's the old way of thinking. Shoot more, so you have—you can capture that. What if images were—were not like that, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which is today—so today, what you have, everybody has an iPhone, people are taking millions of pictures on their phones. Millions of millions if not billions on a daily basis of photographs, to just get caught in the scroll of the library, those images they'll never look at again.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They just—even my images on my phone are useless.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because they disappear.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They're nothing, they just go bye. So, what if photography was about the precision of painting?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What if it was an event? A image. You take 10 images, and only 10 images.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And each one of those images is interconnected to whatever thinking or whatever one wants to represent, or maybe disconnect it, right? But—but not like—so I'm talking about something—a highly-skilled activity. Highly—a planned activity, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  So, did the print then consist of the product of all five apertures?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, one—that paper is huge.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You just roll it out—roll it out inside the truck, and then it produces all the images on to the paper itself.

CHON NORIEGA:  So how many of those did you do?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  How long did you rent the truck for? [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I—there was just a guy that, I mean—because it was no damage. Just drilling the small space—

CHON NORIEGA:  There’s just the tiny little holes. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —holes into it, and just gutting it out, right? And making it so I could go in dark, so, you had to make a darkroom.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So you had to make two curtains, to open the door, get in, get out, so the light doesn't go on—you know. And that's easy, I mean, I knew, you know. I don't remember, but none of them survived. I have no document—I have no—

CHON NORIEGA:  Oh, really?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —nothing survived of this. I have no—

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you ever show them or?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —at—at school, at CalArts. CalArts was great because you could just sign up for the galleries and you could put work up. And that's what people did in those days. You just signed up for one of the D—D300, or D301, one of the big galleries, and—

CHON NORIEGA:  So they showed and then they were—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —gone. Just went into the waste bin of art history. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  This is potentially something you could recreate, I guess.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, actually, there—there actually is—

CHON NORIEGA:  But different.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I mean, I laughed, there was somebody, I mean, even when we were doing our show—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know, they—they made a big deal out of some woman who was—had a large camera, she was hauling it around LACMA, you know, taking pic—basically she was doing a smaller-scale version of what I had done in the '70s.

CHON NORIEGA:  So how did these images look?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, I mean they looked like, they looked, I mean, they're magical, that's why I—I'm offering—I’m erring on the side of—they look like, they look like dreams. They looked—

CHON NORIEGA:  So was it kind of like My Father's Trees images?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, just like that, except more fantastic because—

CHON NORIEGA:  Was it very low contrast?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, no, these were—no, you could—this was—no—

CHON NORIEGA:  Did it look like a photograph, or did it look like something else?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —no, it looked like a negative. You're looking at a negative. Except they were giant, giant negatives. And so, what it does is it—it instantly, it sort of, it's otherworldly, almost instantly. Because you're—because you're not sure what you're looking at—you ever been in a camera obscura?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's like that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, so it's upside-down, too?

[00:30:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, not upside-down too.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I just would—I mean, it would be upside-down if I didn't turn them around.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So I turn them around, right? It's just, but—it just—I don't—you know, Chon, it's like a—it was just a fantastic thing to try. As an experiment in testing the parameters of the visuality of the apparatus, and the possibility of changing the terms of the negotiation of an image in camera, and what that can do. I mean, it was, it was just another experiment.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This was something—I mean, to be honest it's something that I miss now—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —because, you know, every show you do now, Chon, you can't—you can't misstep in the world we're in.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They don't let you put up work that is too untested.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The gates of the gallery and the museum require—

[00:31:03] [END OF TRACK martin19_26of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —success. And that requirement actually curbs imagination and experimentation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because there's no way to then actually get something—like with films, it's really interesting, so you—what people call bad films, I mean, yes, there are some legitimately bad films, but there's all these other works where people are testing ideas.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the films maybe don't make much money, maybe some independent films, you know, I mean. But you can see when the person gets to their next film, you can see what they learned—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —from doing that. Right? They learned. And they learned by getting something done and getting it into a cinema, even if for a week. Right? So that other people can see it, and people talk about it, and there's discussion about this. That's something that's very difficult to do now. And that's something that you can't do without the necessary support of ongoing-ly being able to put ideas out, test them, learn from them, and then move again, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To try it again. Maybe school is one of the moments that you get to do that without—I'm certainly, I mean, as you know, not—I'm not shy of being—having harsh criticism, because I have been—all the work throughout my whole life has been harshly criticized. That doesn't mean I'm not—that doesn't intimidate me at all. I'm more than happy to put up work that is highly experimental, but I just think you can't—you can't fail anymore.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which is a shame.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, like you said, the experiment, which by nature has to be able to fail—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It—it has—you almost—how else do you learn? Like, if you say, jump over something that's a foot high, oh, I can do that, I can just—I'm over that. Then you go two feet high, and then three feet high. Well, if you're trying to get to three or four feet high, that's harder to do, you have to be able to try to jump over it and knock the bar down—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —to then put the bar back, and then you learn how to jump three feet high. I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  Or that you can't.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —or that you can't. Exactly. Or that—yeah, I mean, but I don't know, it's just that it—it was, I guess it's more attuned to my thinking at the time, Chon, where, how do you learn—how do you learn about the parameters of your own skill sets if you don't test them? I mean, you have to do it at some point.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so that was—I mean, it was—I wish I had those images. It would be something to redo them in the city, actually. That would be a fun project—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —which I could do even better now. Of course.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? I mean, literally—I mean, that would be a fantastic project, now that you bring it up.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Is to get—have somebody to rent me a full-on semi-truck with a driver, get me one person to help me, right, an assistant, spend a year making pinhole images around Los Angeles, or maybe—

CHON NORIEGA:  Forty years later.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you know what I mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, but I mean, because, to test the idea again, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But here with a kind of extremely conscious, very articulated sense of what to make the images of, you know. I mean, that's probably not far from what I'm doing with the 8x10, because—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —my 8x10 images I doubt will be in focus.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Even, for one reason or another. You know what I mean. Because I just put it on infinity, and I hand hold it, and even if I shoot fast it doesn't make any difference.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? There's also something about the, you know, the—I find myself constantly pushing back against the state of sharpness and high megapixel, right? I mean, I don't know what you gain out of hyper-sharpness. You know? Which is where the state we're at now, I mean, everything is hyper-sharp.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And so—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's almost beyond what we can see right.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, no, of course, I mean, you know, there's lots of cameras that can produce extraordinary images, but I don't know—what do we gain from that state of image-making as—the aspiration is that we all are chasing sharper, and sharpest, and sharp—I don't even know what the third state of that is, we just keep chasing sharpness without a reason to chase sharpness, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. That's a tongue twister. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. [Laughs.] Anyway, so but—I think that there was, I think, the allure to mid-20th century photography was that it's analog. And it—and it being analog, it's always about impressions. It's a—it's an impression machine. They're—they are not these hyper-sharp images, no matter who made them they were not hyper-sharp.

[00:05:07]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There was always, because of the process of film—focus, f-stop, film—processing to paper, paper to reproduction, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  So I'm—before we move on, I'm still wondering about this piece, you call it Eye of the Needle, I think in one context, something—okay, you can do a really high-resolution negative and then blow up something to that size. Or, in your case, you're printing from the optical world right onto the paper. You still have—no matter how big that scale is, it's still a great differential to the real thing, right? That you're photographing.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, but I mean, no—but no matter—

CHON NORIEGA:  I guess—what is it that—at the end of the day, when you walk into a gallery and you see this—if it were next to another one that was done off of a negative—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You—there's no comparison. None.

CHON NORIEGA:  —what is it—what is it that's different?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The absolute difference is that—any other—these images were naturalized.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They looked—outside of the fact that they were in reverse, the way that they felt is they felt as if you were there. Where any other attempt, and I don't care what you shot it with—

CHON NORIEGA:  Looks like a big image.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —well, not only looks like a big image, but it looks strained to get to the scale.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There's a strain in the—your suspension of belief, of what it is that you're looking at, to get it to that scale, right? And then it always look—and then what you did, the shorthand of that, is that you're saying, what you just said is, I agree with, it looks like a blown-up image.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So, now the technology is different, of course, but we're talking—this is 2020 so, you know, what is that?

CHON NORIEGA:  Forty years ago.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Forty years—forty-five years ago, maybe. You know, more or less.

CHON NORIEGA:  You did this in '79?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, but I—you know, you're talking about mid-'70s, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We're talking about 45 years ago, yeah, I mean, you had to push the limits of everything, and it looked like you pushed the limits. So it's a different—you're conjuring a different—the substrate of the way that the image functions as a visual device when you look at it looks completely different than when you do something that—I mean, it's—how else—how much closer can you get to making an actual contact print—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —of the outside world? It's a contact print, Chon. It is direct. Location, hole, image.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There's not even a lens here. So that—so I gain sharpness—so the reason people do pinhole is because it—it is the smaller and small, like, you know, 250th, 460th aperture, right? It's infinite—it's infinity—it's at infinity.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So, it's a— it's a—it's a Xerox of the world.

CHON NORIEGA:  So this is—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's a direct. It's a direct—it's—it's Plato.

CHON NORIEGA:  So the only thing closer would be a rub.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right.

CHON NORIEGA:  On an—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right.

CHON NORIEGA:  —obelisk, or something like that

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, but just—to do a rubbing of something—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —a rubbing of something as you're suggesting, yes, that's a very good metaphor. That's as close as you can get to the actual object as an index of that object, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  It's like the Shroud of Turin, it actually laid on top of the object—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's right. Because, well, now we see it as a photographic image.

CHON NORIEGA:  —and was physically imprinted.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, that was—that was alien technology.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That was, you know. But—

CHON NORIEGA:  But you're doing it on a large scale with—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I'm just doing it on a large scale—

CHON NORIEGA:  —with light.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —it's—it's as pure an image as you can make. There's no, there's no mediation, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's—it's the world and the image. I—I think there's a—there's something grandiose in it, right? There's something, I think—I think it's a way to—I think the images actually came close to capturing what is impossible to capture, which is the sublime.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, and plus, it was just—I mean, even if it doesn't work, it's the—I mean, what better idea, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To attempt to make an image of something that's impossible to make an image of.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To—I mean, to—I mean, isn't that—I mean, what—what a fantastic idea, to attempt to challenge the impossible through aesthetic ideas.

[00:10:00]

How else do you understand the world—how—what do we do? We translate ideas as artists into form, and what does it always—I mean, at the very core of it is what—we're always trying to do the same thing. We're attempting to understand the world that we live in. We're attempting to understand ourselves, and how we find our place in that world. So whether those stories are personal narratives, or those stories are grand narratives about the, you know, about the machinations of the politics in the world, or—I mean, they're just stories. They're—they're points of views, they're perspectives on something, Chon. And here I'm trying to capture something that is out of scale.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So how did the—how did folks at CalArts respond when you showed these?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, I don't know.

CHON NORIEGA:  You don't remember?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't remember. No. I mean, people, I mean, people never paid much attention to me. So, just did—did what I wanted. [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  So, jumping ahead a decade, let's talk about the installation you did at the Santa Monica Museum of Art.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's not—is that the '90s? That's not the '90s.

CHON NORIEGA:  That's '89.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's what I was gonna say, '89, '88, '89, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  See, never gonna get out of the '80s!

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah. [Laughs.] I know, we're trying.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  [Laughs.]

CHON NORIEGA:  I thought taking us back to the '70s would speed it up.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I know. I know. No, we're almost out of the '80s. Not really, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  You never leave.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —fair enough. I mean, I wish I had more documentation of the performances and the technology stuff, but that's the way it goes. A lot of my life became—I lost a lot. You know, I moved a million times.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I've lived more places than I can count. In more countries than I can count, and stuff disappears, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's not like—I mean, you know, it would have been better to be a rich artist than a poor artist.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  The Belters on The Expanse.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's us.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We're the Belters, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In the—in the space in between the fight between Mars and Earth, right? It's always a class war, it's always the same thing.

CHON NORIEGA:  True. [Laughs.] So—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So. Oh, yeah, Santa Monica Museum, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So the Santa Monica Museum had a—before it was built, which is a Frank Gehry design over on, what's that last street over there? In Santa Monica, before the water?

CHON NORIEGA:  Main.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Main Street. Thank you.

CHON NORIEGA:  This is—it was in an old bank, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, there's an old egg warehouse.

CHON NORIEGA:  Is that what it was?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was—it was egg processing.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Like eggs, like chicken eggs.

CHON NORIEGA:  I guess I confused eggs in a basket with a bank. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  With a bank! Yeah, I mean—golden eggs. You know—

CHON NORIEGA:  It was there until, about '90—1990, I think.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, it wasn't there very long, because it was a transitional space.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? So before it opened, before they did any interior—they just gutted the inside, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And what they did is, they—a kind of an experimental curatorial project to commission, like, I think five or six artists, to do site-specific installations in the museum.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, which is just a vast empty space. So, you had to think of something to do, to take advantage of the sort of—site—non-site essentially, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's more akin to what a lot of people do in Europe, which is taking, you know, old buildings that have probably thousands of years of history, right? And converting those into like, you know, siting contemporary, the Venice Biennale does that, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, with the Arsenal.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the Arsenal, and the Aperto, and all this different stuff. But there's like lots of great shows around—all over Europe, I mean, everywhere. Where they take, you know, classic buildings that have been restored, or even in states of disrepair, and curate shows there, right? To let artists sort of do stuff.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I think this was akin to that. In that project.

CHON NORIEGA:  So they invited you?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So they invited me. I mean, I don't—I'm trying to think of what to—so, still—in the '80s, I think that my height of confusion, and political confusion, and confusion about my identity, and confusion about what I should—finely honing a—subject area and a skill set, I think it comes out in this work.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This—I—I think that this work was unsuccessful, it was very popular, but it was—but from my point of view, it was unsuccessful.

[00:15:02]

I was trying—the ambition of the work was attempting to look at an authoritarian state. And it was attempting to look at a very sort of 1984, you know, view of the world.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? The automaton worker and, you know, looking at Metropolis, all the—you know, Fritz Lang, and all the classic literature, Orwell, right, writing about this—again, it's also spun out of Marx, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  In looking at a kind of disillusioned working class. It was attempting to represent a kind of a mass working class in that—in that classical vein of the worker, right? I worked with—as you've noted, last time we were talking about—this was a great collaboration with VinZula. You know, we made, again, we—making music with him was always exciting because we collaborated—I mean, I could give him an idea that he would then manifest in music, right? And he was always—VinZula combined the use of these sort of melodical instruments—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —a lot of plastic instruments he would use, and odd sound instruments, and I was very much interested in technology, so I would combine my access to technology and my interest in that with his sort of more organic notion of sound. And in this case it was a field day, because an empty warehouse like that is, it's the—it's kind of the environment you want because it was very live. I mean, it was—[claps hands]—I mean, you go like that, and shooo. So we tried to take advantage of making a very haunting kind of almost cinematic score of the end of the world. It was really about, I mean—we had a lot of—we had been studying a lot of marching bands, just the idea of, you know, troops and—anybody that's marching together, making sounds like that. Anyway, so, I made—you know, it was a—I filled the center of the space—plumb bobs, I used plumb bobs. You know what that is?

CHON NORIEGA:  Unh-uh [negative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, you don't? It's—a plumb bob is a device used by surveyors—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and what it is, is a—it's used by many people for many different things, but one of the ones, you would know, a surveyor needs to take measurements of something, and in order to do that they have to ground themselves.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And it's a—it's usually a—it's weighted—

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —and that has a point on it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And the most simple one is kind of like a four-sided triangle with a flat bottom, and it points downward with a hook in it. And that gives you a center to the magnetic center of the earth right? And so, that centers, and then you can set up your—the rest of your instruments by which to make measurements with. Right? But they’re used in lots and lots of different things. Even—even clocks, like, this is a kind of plumb bob. Like grandfather clocks.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Anything that's got a weighted end by which to find the magnetic center, right? So basically, I made, I filled the entire room on lines of these plumb bobs. I mean, I don't remember now, but they were, I mean, there had to be thousands of them.

CHON NORIEGA:  Or at least hundreds. Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I mean—I mean, it had to be like a thousand, right? It was vast. I mean, it was—because I remember we were, like, dropping lines and tying those things, and dropping lines and tying those things, it had to be a lot—I don't remember—it doesn't matter. It seemed like a lot to me. [Laughs.] And then underneath them were these kind of alien figures.

CHON NORIEGA:  25 by 40, would be a thousand.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, that's—I'm sure that it was like that.

CHON NORIEGA:  At least—at least that.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  There was at least a thousand.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Because I—I remember the—if it was only hundreds, I could have gone to the store and bought them. We had to go to great lengths to find a manufacturer who was willing to supply them, they had to be a certain weight, and then I had to get the line, and I had to set up a grid on the top in order to, like, drop them on a grid down, right? And then I made these sort of, like, very peculiar strange alien creatures, marching underneath of them. Right? So they had this sort of sound—did you see it?

CHON NORIEGA:  I've just seen the slides.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You've just seen the slides, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  I wasn't here then.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So okay, you didn't work here yet, so it—you had this very ominous sound in the room, and you had a kind of, like, throne set up at one end.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And then you had all these people marching in different lines, back and forth, I mean, it was really, I mean, it's straight out of, you know—

[00:20:00]

CHON NORIEGA:  So you had the plumb bobs hanging, and then underneath it were fig[ures]?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Underneath were figures, ceramic figures, not—actually plaster figures, they really looked like aliens. Like, large heads and no eyes and weird deformed bodies, and it was—it was kind of—I mean, it was a kind of an examination of—you know, humans', you know, insatiable appetite for torturing other human beings. I mean, they looked like tortured little things, you know what I mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  And you had to walk around.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You had to walk around it in its entirety. We set up a complete audio station there, we had—at different moments VinZula would do live music. So we had multiple turntables, and multiple—we would do a lot of scratching with reel-to-reel, and—we basically built a kind of sound laboratory, in the museum itself—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —with, again, speakers, moving all the way around the place itself. So you—it was a completely immersive, it was observational in terms of the way you saw it as a visitor, but it was extremely immersive.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, it was a—it was a new scale for me, in the sense of I had never had that much space to do something, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  For a gallery-based show.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  For a gallery-based show, and at the end, you know, when the show was all done, I mean—I was never very—like I said, I was very dissatisfied with it, but—because I was trying to talk about race and class, Chon. And I—and I don't know if I got to where I wanted to get to with it, you know? But like I said, it was—it was hugely popular. People loved it.

CHON NORIEGA:  So what—what do you feel failed?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I think—I think I didn't make—I don't know, Chon, I don't know, I—I—there was something—it left a bad taste in my mouth, for some reason.

CHON NORIEGA:  Did it being popular factor into that?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I don't know, I don't know, but—but what I was gonna say is, part—actually, an important part of the show, so we—just say for the sake of argument, there was a thousand plumb bobs.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That means there was a thousand figures.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Okay. So you think about what—I mean—the sheer scale of trying to get this done was, I mean, it was—it was crazy, Chon. I never—this was huge, right? And so what I did at the end, we threw a closing party, and I mean, in those days too, you know, Chon, you could get a—you could get 500 people to an opening with the blink of an eye. I mean, nobody— I mean, it was like massive openings, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And this was a big deal, because there was lots of people doing this, right? So we—we threw a big, kind of, like, party—closing party at the end, and anyone that was there, we gave away the figures. I just gave them away.

CHON NORIEGA:  Ah. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Everyone, I mean—no, literally it was kind of like, you know, I've always been big on this idea of potlatch, you know, giving something away to people and, you know, I still see people with them in their houses. You know, now and then, they still—they're still lingering around somewhere.

CHON NORIEGA:  So was—was your intent like the potlatch? Was it a—in some ways, competitive?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Competitive? What do you mean?

CHON NORIEGA:  Who can give the most away.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, not like, no, potlatch is, like, to give, you give something without expecting to get anything back. That's my—

CHON NORIEGA:  But in some ways it's a way of establishing standing.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah—no, it was a pure act—it was just generosity.

CHON NORIEGA:  So you saw this—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was just pure generosity.

CHON NORIEGA:  —okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was a giveaway, not unlike actually the architecture of—I mean, so when this came in to play is the architecture, that architecture of giving away came into great play when—in the Biennale, because then I understood it more clearly—I—so this is a case of learning something, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I learned something about giving things away and the response it had. So this was a—unbeknownst to me, was something—a trial run of learning something that I took full advantage of in the Whitney Biennale.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? To—to with—with their—great clarity of attempting to do something. you know, but, you know, it was—it was all fine. I can't—I certainly don't think of it as, yeah, it was another test. It was another experiment.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? It's a difficult thing, you know, Chon, to—you're always learning on the ground. You know what I mean?

[00:25:02]

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So—so here's the—here's something that doesn't get discussed very often, which is that one of the great advantages of being in the studio all the time is you get to practice all the time in the studio.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So your successes are even greater, and your failures are gonna be whatever they are.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And you can keep working on it, and keep working on it, and keep working on it. And it's never done in public. It's always done in the confines of the studio, so it's only who you let in. Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But if you wanna work on—on massive scale, I mean, massive scales, right? You don't have that luxury. The only time you get to practice is in real time.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative], you can do all the making of, and documentation, and—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, you can do all the—all the models, and the sketches, and you can—all the planning and all the reading and all the theorizing, I mean, you can do all this till the end of the world, and when push comes to shove, either you give up the—either you deliver the goods, or you don't.

CHON NORIEGA:  You're not gonna know that the umbrella's gonna fall over and kill somebody until you're—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Exactly.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Exactly. I mean, yes, I mean, he killed a couple people with that—with that project.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You're talking about Christo?

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Here.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah! Yeah!

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  One here, and in Osaka.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Which is where the other one was, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —yeah, I mean, but—

CHON NORIEGA:  But that's the contingency, you don't know.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But that's—but that's exciting.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's exciting. Like, Christo's a good example. I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  He studied the hell out of it, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —what an extraordinary life, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  What an extraordinary—from Running Curtain [Valley Curtain], Running Fence, to wrapping, you know, the Pont Neuf in Paris and, I mean, the—the Reichstag in Germany and Berlin, I mean, what a monumental, extraordinary sense of—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —creating phenomena, an experience for people that is completely outside of this like nonsense in the studio.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know? I mean, this is—when he wrapped the islands in Florida and, you know—

CHON NORIEGA:  I think even the Central Park piece in 2004.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, yeah, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  It—it did something to that space, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It's so—I mean, this is—

CHON NORIEGA:  But—but you never know until you're on site.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —you don't know—you don't know, because—also, you have to remember, too, this is—

CHON NORIEGA:  Did you feel that installing—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Oh, yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  —was this called Big Fish Little Fish?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Okay, and as you were installing it did you have the sense that, yes, this is the way I planned it, but it's not quite working?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, no, because I—I'm overly confident.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I mean, you must know that about me.

CHON NORIEGA:  You're very confident saying that, yes.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I—I—so for better or worse, right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? I don't lack self confidence.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And—

CHON NORIEGA:  So when does the self-critique come in?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  After. And also, certainly in the decades to follow.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  When I saw—when I saw—when you really hit the sweet spot, Chon. It is really the sweet spot, right? When you know a work is essentially—I mean, the aspiration is for a work to be transformative.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  This is—the highest aspiration is for a work to genuinely do something when people engage with it.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  That's a very difficult thing to do, Chon. It's a very difficult thing to do. I don't mean passive viewing. I mean—I mean the kind of viewing when a person can not get it out of their mind. They look at a work, they see it, they experience it, they go home and they're talking about it. A week later they're talking about it, a year later they're still fucking plagued in their dreams by the thing that they saw. Because it has done something, it has disrupted that linear repetitive narrative of everyday life. That's the ambition, is a transformation of the individual within their own everyday life.

CHON NORIEGA:  Now, does it matter to you, the nature of that transformation?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No. Absolutely not. Just simply the fact, being able to accomplish it through a visual—through a piece of art.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It’s very difficult to do. Very few works do that in history. Right? I mean, each of us have our own sweet spots, right? You know, different periods of time, you know, I happen to love Goya.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, I love Goya.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Every time I can see Goya I will do it. You know? I love Velasquez, right, I mean—I—there’s just—you know, there’s Titian, Caravaggio, I mean, you know, there’s—there’s certain works throughout all time that we find. I mean, we could do that in the 20th century also, right?

[00:30:01]

But the—but—imagine for a second, Chon, that—I think the scale of ambition and the idea, the sheer force of invention of imagination was at its absolute height in the 20th century. I think—so the 20th century is the most volatile, most violent century on record. More people died in wars in the 20th century than any other century in human existence. Right? It is the most volatile, hate-filled—[laugh]—tortuous time, I mean, you have, you know, you went through economies—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —industrial revolution, technological revolution, revolution of ideology, fascism, wars, you know, the ascendance of the United States to world domination, I mean, just pick it, I mean—assassination, I mean everything has happened—

[00:31:03] [END OF TRACK martin19_27of47_digaud_m.mp3.]

[00:00:00]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —in the 20th century. Communism, I mean, socialism, I mean, pick a place, right? I mean, it is—it is a fantastically exciting century, right? And I think that, on par with that, Chon, was the—was the mirroring of that—was the invention, and the imagination, and the ambition in the artist.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So that's how you get a Christo in the 20th century. That's how you get a Warhol in the 20th century. That's why you get the kind of monumental thinking in the 20th century that has not been repeated in the 21st century. Because these are people who were breaking ground with the very idea of attempting to do something that had never been done before. And I think that a lot of my influences come out of the, out of the challenge to—I lived in—I wanted to get out of the shadow of the giants that taught me. And the precedent that I saw—which is the most seductive, is to work like that, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Can you imagine, I mean, how many, in an artist's life, how many works do you actually need to be perfectly successful? How many? One? Five? Ten?

CHON NORIEGA:  Well, if you're a conceptual artist, zero, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —Duchamp made, he made the urinal, and he made, like, ten other things in his life.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  His entire oeuvre is, like, ten things.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right?

CHON NORIEGA:  And he—and he stopped.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely, he stopped.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But—

CHON NORIEGA:  You've gone the other direction though here, you've done many things concurrently.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, no, but I'm saying that you don't—but in the life of experimentation, like—okay, so, Einstein did a lot of work.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But the only thing anyone ever remembers Einstein for is E=MC².

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  They don't even remember him for making the atom bomb,  right?

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  So whether he likes it or not, that's his legacy.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  His legacy is about, you know, thinking about dimensionality and reality and—I mean, you know, there's the theory of relativity. I mean, Galileo had—he had a lot of ideas, but he had one really good idea.

[They laugh.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know what I mean, if you look back at what Pythagoras, I mean, you know—I'm looking at people who were monumental in changing the course of their field, which had an effect, and I'm not saying that art can do that, but certainly within the field itself there's a possibility of recalibrating what one inherited to something else, a complete—this is where I go back to the alchemy again. I think it's true, it's an alchemistic process, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  To have the ambition to want to—to literally change the direction of the field. And I'll be absolutely candid with you. I had no—my ambition was no less than that.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Change it how?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It doesn't matter. It doesn't actually matter how it's changed.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But simply to affect the direction of the—of the trajectory, of the—of the makeup of a way of thinking about something.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, in the—in the same way that you didn't really care how your work transformed the viewer, it was just that it would transform them.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, because you can't—I can't control the transformation.

CHON NORIEGA:  As opposed to—I would assume that someone like Hans Haacke, he's got a message, he's got a particular direction he's wanting the thinking to go in, and he does it very well.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right, but—but it's also, its limitation of the work—

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —is—is precisely that—

CHON NORIEGA:  It's bound by its critique.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that's right. But it's bound by the specific—the locked-down specificity of the content.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  He narrows it down to a, like—so tight, he's wound that so tight—so if he's looking at renters, the piece in New York about the—the rent—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —I don't remember what it's called right now, but that's all that is. The only way that you get more than that, right, is if you add it yourself. You bring your own content to that and then, okay, I'm gonna think about what that—how that reflects upon in my own life. Right? But he doesn't do—he doesn't allow that. He doesn't allow—there's no ambiguity at all in this. So I'm looking at—it's not as open, I mean—

CHON NORIEGA:  But your work is political as well, but you're saying you're not trying to—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  But I'm not trying to convert people.

CHON NORIEGA:  —okay.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm not—I'm not—I'm not interested in conversion. What I'm interested in is in—

CHON NORIEGA:  Because you don't belong to anything.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —that's right.

CHON NORIEGA:  [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I don't belong—literally—that's a fact, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah, yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  No, I'm interested in transformation.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  I'm interested in consciousness. We—to be mindful, to be conscious, to be self-aware. To be self-critical. And to take that self-awareness, and self-criticality, and use that as a—so you have—

[00:05:08]

CHON NORIEGA:  So you're a modernist in that sense, right?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, I mean, I'm a—I'm an anarchist modernist. [Laughs.] But it's—it's—

CHON NORIEGA:  But it is about art as a form of thinking and engaging with the world through an object, or through an experience.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Absolutely, but it—but the thing is that, as you well know, they've never seen this point of view before.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  We—we've not played on the field yet. We've never been allowed on the field, Chon.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  And I'm trying to get on the field, I don't want to play in the sandbox any more. [Laughs.] Okay? I don't wanna wear my serape, and have my tamale in my hand, I want—I want to get onto the field. And I might get smashed every time I get onto the field, but at least I'm playing on the field.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Right? And—I think, I think, all the labor—even though I think I had some successes, prior to the early '90s, I think all of the work, all of it, Chon, because also, you know, also in the '80s, you know—this was, you know, the '80s was learning to speak in public.

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  You know, the '80s was learning to bring a voice to a public discourse, which I was very much in favor of. Because it was a strength for me. Right? And so I pushed that parameter and the boundaries of that speaking—in other words, doing—get—as soon as I'd be allowed to speak in public, I would do the opposite of what anybody expected, right? Everybody else was tame and—

CHON NORIEGA:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  —still was coloring within the lines, well, why do you want me to color within the lines when I can do something else? You know, but it's—but I think all this practice, I think all the experiments in the '80s, or the '70s and '80s, led up to the '90s.

CHON NORIEGA:  So, to cap off the '80s, you were associated with B-1 Gallery for about four years?

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  You were in two group shows, two solo shows.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah.

CHON NORIEGA:  Just say a little bit, I mean, just sign-post that in terms of—I mean, it's you having representation, I take it.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yes, yes, yes. I mean, okay, so—

CHON NORIEGA:  This is in Santa Monica and—

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah. Do you know anything about this?

CHON NORIEGA:  No, it's—but I'm intrigued. [Laughs.]

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, okay so—okay so, no one had gallery representation in those years.

CHON NORIEGA:  Yeah.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  It was impossible. Okay? The—I say impossible in the sense that it just didn't happen. Not that it couldn't happen, it just, no one figured out how to do it.

CHON NORIEGA:  I mean, by the '90s, Dan Saxon kind of stepped in and represented some folks.

DANIEL JOSEPH MARTINEZ:  Yeah, b