MACY RODMAN
Macy Rodman follows the organic path, an intuition guiding her artistic pursuits — which, to a true artist like Macy, are parallel with pursuits of life. When she arrived in New York in 2008, she quickly ditched fashion school (the rationale for her move) as its creative restrictions and market focus didn’t sit right. She fell into making music through a garage-band ethos for the compacted cyber era; so, instead of learning electric guitar leads in suburban cul-de-sacs, friends in Brooklyn apartments and warehouse practice spaces taught her digital audio workspaces and synthesis, a DIY aesthetic that never took itself too seriously. Experiencing a new community of noise makers in this way continues to inform her work, by reminding her to retain the sense of humor and self-deprecation that accompanies such a learning experience. Do not be confused, though: Macy’s work is fun, mind-bending, thoughtful, both serious and non-serious all at once.
The immense fashion and art skill of Macy aside (she still makes her own costumes and alters much of her clothing) New York City was the goal, and fashion school simply the means to reach those ends. Growing up in the cloister of Juneau, Alaska, which can only be left by plane or boat, Macy found little to no queer alliance to speak of. Finding scant inspiration or recognition in that isolated community, she instead drew visions of alternative futures and alternative selves from fashion magazines, Top Cow comic books of Amazonian warriors, subdued art cinema, and video games. Tomb Raider and Lara Croft, specifically, left a big impression, the virtual violence providing a catharsis expressed through a radical femininity that could occupy any space.
The underlying trans rage of repressed youth, searching for a space of belonging, reaching through media for escape, becomes a theme of the Brooklyn resident’s work, though her media landscape these days is populated by pop stars and rom coms. Couple this with the absurdism of fantasy, a purposeful schizophrenia of a slew of characters that inhabit her songs, and you get closer to her new album, Unbelievable Animals, released on Accidental Popstar Records, the imprint founded by Shamir. Macy creates worlds that are not surreal, but hyperreal, where everything is false so everything is true, where the relativity of truth becomes defined by the ecstatic moment of performance and experience.