The movies are there to show the aspects of the sculpture that exist in time. In other words, a cup on a table doesn’t mean anything until you’ve got water in it, or are drinking out of it. In the same case, a spaceship doesn’t mean anything unless it’s landing on Mars. So the movie, in a way, is kind of like a propaganda film that shows about how our rituals in the studio work.

Well, I spent my youth being an avid consumerist, and because I’m an active participant of consumer culture, I’m more authorized to comment on it. I’m not just a hater – part of it. And, growing up, brands like BMW were superior to brands like Chevrolet, and brands like Chanel are supreme in the world of fashion. So, I thought, what are the real brands? What are the brands that represent humanity? And NASA to me was the icon of all knowledge. It’s science, it’s in a lot of ways faith, it asks the same questions that religion asks: are we alone, and where do we come from? And, in that sense, we go to Mars to study a planet that’s very much like our own. Science is a comparative act, so you need something like Mars to understand something like it.

Films like ’10 Bullets’ show the ethics of the workplace. These are movies about organization. Things about getting enough rest and being on time, getting proper diet and exercise, and the methodology of building. Movies like ‘Color Show’ or ‘Color Code.’ We have a very kind of rigid manner in which we build things. It might not look like it, but in order to make a spaceship have the consistency and the qualities of everything else in our space program, we have guidelines when we make things. For example: we never paint the plywood after we cut it, we paint it before so that you can see the cut, so that you see the screws and the glue drips and the cum stains on the wood.

There’s no specific message or agenda for the space program, other than to convey the values of the studio – which are of transparency. I believe that the only real advantage that the artist has over industry is her fingerprints. Apple can never make something as flawed and human as one of my sculptures, but I can’t make anything as perfect as the iPhone. There is a generation of artists that are embracing digital printing, CMC milling, digital technology. The advantage of the individual is that your flaws say, ‘I was here’. Additionally, you can’t go to another planet without recognizing how your presence changes the culture of the locals. This has been going on since the beginning of the homo genus scene. So for the past 500 years, we’ve been going to – white people have been going to – brown people’s places and knocking down their round building and setting up cinderblock factories. That’s why the symbol of the space program is the cinderblock. Our space program will be made of cinderblocks.

Well, Van and I have been working together since 9/11. We’ve made movies together that show the aspects of the sculpture that exist in time, or the ritual aspects of the sculptures. Very short movies, the first movie was called ‘Nutsies’ in 2001, and led up to 2005. And then, we made movies like ‘10 Bullets’ in color. These are all streaming, you could see them all at www.10bullets.com. This movie ‘A Space Program’ is our first feature. It’s 72 minutes long so it qualifies as a feature and it’s got a beginning, middle and end. This isn’t some dumb art movie. I mean it’s dumb, don’t get me wrong, but it makes sense and you won’t, there won’t be anything you can’t understand no matter how little or much you know about art.

Well, I think about it like this: I’m a sculptor and I live and die to make sculpture, but more people will see images of my sculpture on a 2 ½ inch screen than they’ll ever see in real life, and that’s the reality. You can’t ignore it. That’s the world that we live in, and it’s a fantastic world. It’s a world where I can share my ideas. However, they’re very different in real life than they are in the screen. So, the movies help show, instead of a photograph, how you can move around space and understand it. You can see how we really use these things. We don’t use the word performance or performance art; we use demonstration or live demonstration.

I also think it’s worth noting that there is an elitism to the art world that I try to avoid. The elitism is the wall-plaque, the description on the wall. I always believe that there needs to be a description on the wall next to my art that says: “You don’t need to read this to understand what you’re looking at.”