The following interview was first published in Boot Print, which is available for download here. Other highlights in the magazine include an interview with the Guerilla Girls by Virginia McKenny and an with Tom Friedman. The following is an unedited version of the interview:

Robert Sloon: Could you describe how Avant Car Guard started? What was the moment?

Zander Blom: We started with doing a group show, which we were going to call Avant Car Guard.

Michael McGarry: At Dirt Contemporary

ZB: What happened was the dude who ran the gallery got arrested or something.

Jan-Henri Booyens: And evicted.

ZB: And the gallery got closed down. It was going to be just solo vibes, the three of us. A typical group show. And then we were thinking, “Why are we doing this? Why don’t we just work as one thing? Like a band would”. Make stuff that’s one work. We were tired of that whole group show with your solo stuff, trying to find a space to do stuff.

RS: Had you all known each other from before? Studied together?

ZB: They studied together, and me and Jan went to school together. And then we all met in Joburg later.

RS: And put together that first show at Bell-Roberts?

MM: It was like a book, and there were a lot of ideas. Shit that kinda irritated us or just funny stuff or whatever. And it got into the book. Tthe idea was to pretend like we were already a fully functioning entity, and have a book launch and a book signing. Do that really sort of Modernist/Rock Star sort of bullshit. Not a rock star… more of a nerd star.

ZB: It was the three of us in a room, coming up with ideas. And then it was natural to translate that into a photograph.

MM: And the modernist idea of the single genius working alone in the studio. So the studio was the nexus point for where things get manifest from. And then took the piss out of that by having the Michael McGarry Studio, The Zander Blom Studio, The Jan Henri studio in Paris. Paris? Or Pretoria?

ZB: We weren’t thinking of it as works. We were just thinking of making something, like that isn’t that art work. And it has taken a long route, to get from that, working together and coming up with things to painting which we are doing now.

JHB: Initially, it was more about having fun.

MM: It still is.

JHB: I don’t want to say it’s not serious. But it’s not serious but we take it seriously.

ZB: We couldn’t imagine, then working on an image, cause that’s what we were doing in our own vibes

JHB: I really don’t thing three years ago we would have imagined doing paintings.

ZB: And doing a proper show. This is our first proper show.

MM: Ja, we’ve never had a solo show before.

ZB: We’ve done a publication and launched them.

MM: Or a performance and you can buy shit.

RS: Essentially you have reversed engineered your collective.

MM: We’ve kinda gone full circle, and Avant Car Guard is now an artist, its not like Michael, Zander and Jan, it is like Avant Car Guard.

ZB: In Volume 1 it was still like our solo weird vibes, but know its one soup of shit.

MM: Now we have two solos in one year…

ZB: We more developing a visual language for the group in term of everything we are doing.

MM: Like any artist.

RS: Have you felt that working in Avant Car Guard, which has such a strong aesthetic, has affected your personal production? Has there been a seepage.

MM: In my stuff, totally.

RS: Did you have solo careers before.

MM: Not really. Zander did, we didn’t. We kinda did, but not really.

RS: Avant Car Guard essentially launched your careers.

ZB: No. But it propelled a bunch of other shit

MM: And also we learnt how to take photos. We learned how to do that whole production side. Also the three of us can manifest shit quit quickly

JHB: A lot faster than we could alone.

ZB: I think its definitely shaped what we do now, in terms of what we’re actually doing.

MM: The two feed each other.

ZB: And strengthen each other.

MM: And also we were on shows where Avant Car Guard is a separate artist, to us. But we are on the same show. Its fucking weird.

ZB: But that’s where we wanted to go.

MM: It wasn’t supposed be like “quirky” and “rabble-rouser” and all the other words attached to us. We’re just an artist and it’s not going to stop. It’s also not a hobby, its commercially viable.

ZB: Plus, the way we think about it is we are working on a thing, as opposed to Jan’s visual shorthand plus Mike’s ideas makes Avant Car Guard. It’s more like we are all working towards an idea which is what Avant Car Guard is.

MM: Like the way a band works.

ZB: Or working with a brand. Its that thing, and you put ideas into that, that would work in that context.

MM: It’s not the sum of its parts.

ZB: And then you don’t get caught up in, “This is my solo shit,” or, “This is mine.” And we’re not like precious about it. It’s very democratic, in a weird way, cause it takes two votes.

RS: Do you work democratically? What is your working process?

ZB: We come up with an idea. One of us will be, “That’s rad,” and the other two will be, “That Sucks.” Or it will go the other way.

RS: Just a discussion?

MM: It’s like any artist, you’r sitting in traffic and you come up with an idea, or in Pick and Pay. But the difference is it goes into this soup.

ZB: It grows very fast.

RS: How do you decide what ideas go into your collective and what ideas you use yourself?

ZB: I think some ideas just work. Your brain is just split, “That’s rad for solo,” “That’s rad for Avant Car Guard.”

MM: Avant Car Guard is so different. It’s seldom that you keep an idea for yourself. You definitely think in terms of what works for what.

ZB: It changes the way we do our solo vibes, we learn not to take ourselves as seriously. But they definitely help each other on rather than eat at each other.

RS: I was talking to Doing It For Daddy, and they said that one of the advantages to working in a collective is that it allows you to criticize the system more than in your solo career.

JHB: It gives you more power definitely.

MM: If each of did, “This sucks,” then it would be really lame. Not that Avant Car Guard isn’t lame, but there are three of you you can’t go, “You said that.” It just diffuses the whole thing. Avant Car Guard is like a holding brand device that you can author shit from.

ZB: Its something we do, but its not that whole precious thing, it just work. I don’t ever feel this is something I did. It makes it easier just to say shit , because you don’t necessarily feel that connected to it.

RS: Like a corporation that represents.

MM: It’s just an abstract thing. The whole project is abstract.

JHB: We are actually a corporation. We got a CC.

ZB: It’s easier if we got sued.

RS: Equal ownership?

ZB: Well, Jan’s the drummer. I write the songs and Michael does the website. No, we’re all equal, and we all bring different soups to the table. You can’t measure it.

RS: You guys always play on the rock band thing.

MM: Not so much anymore, now we’re playing on being an artist.

ZB: Its been there from the beginning, in Volume 1 it was very much there. But it’s more of a punk sensibility than a rock band sensibility.

MM: Like an angry young man kinda vibe.

ZB: I think we’ve kept that punk sensibility, but we’re more like an artist with a punk sensibility than a band.

JHB: We used the ideology of the rock group as a starting point, to not confuse our independent situations. You never go like, “Oh, wow! Eddy Vidder is amazing.” You go, “Pearl Jam.”

MM: I hate pearl jam.

JHB: [laughs] I don’t know where that came from.

MM: A lot of interviewers go like, ”Who’s responsible?” But it’s not like that.

JHB: We all come from different environments, and it works really well when we get together.

ZB: And we were friends to begin with.

RS: And working together hasn’t affected that? It’s not like you got married and suddenly hate your partner?

MM: No. Cross swords.

JHB: We haven’t met Yoko Ono yet.

RS: How do you end up moving from the performative stuff to painting?

ZB: It was looking at another way to manifest similar ideas we had in another way. Some things you can do as a painting.

JHB: We also wanted to make real work.

MM: Really become one artist. And the way to do that is to make really hand authored things. Like paintings.

RS: Do you work on the paintings collaboratively? Do you sit the three of you and work together?

MM: We work on two at the same time.

JHB: And then one will swap.

ZB: Its like paint by numbers. We work it out.

RS: It’s definitely something quite unique.

ZB: It’s very high school

MM: It’s a fucking bizarre process.

ZB: “Don’t use that colour.” “What the fuck.”

MM: Painting as a process is quite a bizarre, and when there are three of
you, it’s like Jesus Christ.

RS: By moving into real objects are you trying to establish yourself more? Trying not to be the guys questioning the art world, trying to move back into the centre?

MM: I don’t think it’s that strategic. We wanted to make things that would be very authored and confuse the issue further.

ZB: I think 80 percent of that was, “Fuck, Let’s try this.” A big part of it is trying new stuff.

JHB: Someone gets an idea and we execute it. Someone says, “Hey lets build a raft,” then we build a raft.

MM: Because there’s three of you, you can.

ZB: It’s a thing of hanging out, getting drunk and coming up with ideas. It’s not sitting down and this is our fucking manifesto, this is what we work with, this is our brand.

MM: Its just being in the same room together, it doesn’t matter where the room is.

RS: And working together accelerates the processes?

MM: And because there’s an expanding glossary, like any artist has, Avant Car Guard has its own series of languages. It generates it own bullshit, basically, by itself almost. I mean fuckit, I don’t know where the ideas come from.

JHB: Some of the ideas we keep them for ages. We have one idea on this show that we had two years ago. It’s about getting that idea and then finding ways to manifest that. Its like, “Oh rad, that’s a good idea,” and then we log it. And then we work from there: What is our capability to manifest that.

MM: And the graveyard for ideas is pretty big.

ZB: Things get shot down pretty fast. A lame idea comes up and almost instantly disappears.

JHB: Sometinmes we go on a shoot and it doesn’t work at all. And we scrap it. And we just spent four trekking through a jungle to a river.

MM: That sucked. And we didn’t even use it.

MM: But we’ve recycled a lot of shit recently.

JHB: Shhhhh

RS: Do you ever feel you are oversaturating the market? You are working really fast, and in a bigger pond it might not be so noticeable.

MM: To begin with one of the ways we structured it was to do so much stuff we couldn’t be ignored. But, dude, we haven’t done shit really since Joburg
Art Fair last year. We’ve been on a couple of group shows. This is our first proper solo show.

RS: I guess you have a strong brand.

MM: We didn’t want to do the solo show every two years sort of thing. We wanted to work as much as possible. Undo that solo bullshit that we wanted to undo in the first place. Undo all the normative processes.

RS: How has getting some success affected the original punk ideal?

ZB: It makes more things possible. We are able to phone Justin, “We need some props, give us some cash vibes.” Its not like we have massive success vibes, and are living in mansions. We are little more able. It really helps in terms of …

JHB: Picking up chicks.

ZB: Not really, sigh.

MM: And putting them down again.

ZB: It helps in terms of motivation for the project.

MM: Its such a tiny little swamp we’re working in, that success is really sort of easy. What is success, we’re just making shit anyway.