Gaga - The Mother Monster The Culture Show

This programme contains some strong language.

Hello and welcome, to a somewhat nonstandard edition of the Culture

Show. In which we meet someone we thought we already knew as one of

several different people, and discover that she, Lady Gaga, is

someone else entirely. There was really a voyage of

-- void. And as the blood rushed out of my body, how do I explain it?

Friday, October the 25th. A little more than two weeks before the

release of Lady Gaga's third album, ARTPOP. Gaga's been out of the

public eye for getting on for two years. Forced to cancel the last

part of her previous tour because she quite simply danced too much and

injured her hip. She is about to arrive in London, and when she's in

London, she always stays here. At the Langham Hotel, no more than a

hop, skip and newly revitalised jump from BBC Broadcasting House. Her

fans are waiting. I really am thankful that I am a fan

now and I can experience everything she is doing in real time because I

know that in years to come, people will look back and realise how

significant she was. The Little Monsters, they are

called, and Gaga is Mother Monster. It's a selfie with Mother Monster

that they are really waiting for. I have so many friends here now.

All because of her. I skipped university because of her, I skip

life for Gaga! To the fans, she is not just a star,

she is a fellow sufferer. They don't simply admire her, they identify

with her. She was bullied at school, and so

were they. Gaga has almost taken every single

underdog who was insecure, used to walk away from the kids at school,

and she has put them in the limelight and made them be proud of

themselves. She has made the weird people at the party look cool.

She has become a defender of the bullied and oppressed. None of that

has changed. And the music hasn't really either. The first track from

the new album is Applause. A trademark Gaga, pop club anthem.

Same small woman, same massive voice. I like it. It's a great song.

She will be here very soon. Within the next hour, hopefully. If not

sooner. Gaga finally arrives at the Langham

after 9pm that night. And she arrives the way she always does.

Strangely. You are amazing, Gaga! We love you

so much! The paparazzi, of course, go into

snap-happy frenzy. Their flashes wreak havoc on our cameras.

She is tiny. White face, black contacts. Bare feet. The dress is

translucent and there is nothing underneath. She doesn't seem to

speak. And when she does speak, it's bizarre.

To the goddess penis. -- Venus. Put your arms up!

And she keeps it up all the way into the hotel lobby.

Are they going inside? She is a human being, let her have

her space! The paparazzi went in first and we

went in with them. She did that thing, straight to the left. That is

what I love about her, she keeps the performance and she does not stop

even if she looks ridiculous, it is amazing, it is my favourite thing

about her. She is so theatrical. So there she is. In the hotel. We've

been promised an interview. The only question is, when?

On Friday, we thought we might get an interview. On Saturday, it was a

maybe. Sunday, no. It was going to happen on Monday, and then we were

definitely happening today. But that got cancelled yesterday, and then it

was on again. And now it has been cancelled again. So what are we

doing? We are waiting for Gaga. But it's not just me. Because we thought

of her as the world's most alternative mainstream artist, we

thought we would dress the set. It would look amazing! It wouldn't just

be me interviewing Gaga, it would be a comment on the way that she talks

to the fans. So we brought some other people along. Do you want to

meet them? Here they are. They are waiting for Gaga too.

The new album is called ARTPOP. Not pop art, like Andy Warhol and his

Campbell's soup cans. It is the other way around. ARTPOP. As the

release date approaches, Gaga uses her Twitter account to keep more

than 40 million followers, including me, in the loop. Snippets of music.

And updates on the art ingredients she has been throwing into the pot.

The artists she has been working with. There is Marina Aramovic. A

New York-based performance artist. Creator of 'The Abramovic Method,' a

blend of performance and meditation. You can watch this on YouTube. Gaga

practising said method. Then there's Robert Wilson, High Priest, maybe

even the Pope, of American experimental theatre. Brows can't

really get any loftier. And there's Jeff Koons. The most commercially

successful artist in America. Not highbrow. Possibly best known for

his sculpture of Michael Jackson and his chimp, Bubbles. Koons has made a

sculpture of Gaga. It's the centerpiece for the album cover. And

if you listen carefully to Applause, Jeff gets in a bit of product

placement. It is odd. I know more about the

artists she has been working with than I do about the album. And

whilst I'm waiting, the only thing I can really do is practise. So now I

am going to ask you about the difficult third album. You've done

two albums so far, you've done The Fame and Born This Way, now we have

ARTPOP. It's a different direction for you. You are trying to bring art

into the album in the way that Warhol brought pop into art, you

want to bring art into pop. How successful do you think you have

been with that? Is the art just the sprinkling on the top, the hundreds

and thousands on top of the cake, or is it actually within the cake, like

the egg within the cake? Would you like to unpick that? Or not? So it

took until Friday first November for us to finally secure our interview.

We were offered this attractive function room at The Langham to do

it in. So we could disguise it completely, we draped it, we draped

the mannequins. I thought about draping myself. Set-up began at 7am

and Gaga arrived at around 11. She hadn't had any sleep because she had

been working with Robert Wilson on a series of installations, recreations

of masterpieces in which Gaga replaces the central figure. Like

the Death Of Marat, or The Head Of John The Baptist.

The finished works will be shown at the Louvre next year. Can you

imagine any other mainstream pop artist doing something like that?

Answers on a Tweet, please. Gaga? Yes. Thank you for having me.

You had an enforced absence because of illness, how were you as a

patient and how is it to be back? I guess I was a good patient because

I was so excited to rejuvenate my body. It was an exciting experience,

you feel like an infants, but in another way, I felt dead all the

time because I could not be onstage. So I just really took to enjoying

and appreciating the parts of what I do that I -- that our life as art to

make it through that sort of torture I was feeling. I think it was good

for me because the stage is a place and I started to rely on it, the

fans and that interconnection, and it went away so I had to find a more

spiritual connection with music and art. I am on that journey now.

So, press pause. The interview has been going for a couple of minutes

now, and I notice something. It's kind of impossible not to.

Sometimes, before questions, Gaga just shuts her eyes. I wonder if she

is falling asleep. I wonder if I am boring her.

Before you speak to be, you drop your eyes and you centre yourself,

did you learn that Marina Abramovic? I did learn a lot of that from her

and from Bob Wilson. I have been working with her for longer than 48

hours. What were you doing? We were doing a series of portraits

together. His work. So I was really just...

His clay, to Mold into these pieces that he was recreating, into these

beautiful moving pieces. So I like to make sure I give you my full

attention and there is a lot of noise around me. I have learned,

working with Marina Abramovic show... Can you hear the door? It is

like a ghost. It is good to be aware of the sounds. So I like when I am

working that I am aware of things around me because otherwise, I

cannot react to real life. But I like to make sure I am breathing

properly and I am centring myself to get through these... I did that

wrong. To get through these long works. I do not necessarily consider

myself to be a performance artist just yet. Just yet? Just yet! She

did Graham Norton the other week and he got this normal pop star.

Look out for the hat! Be careful! You are going to see his eye slide

away! What are you doing?

Oh, well, let's just try talking about pop and sex.

If you think about how you present yourself onstage and you think about

a lot of pop artists, particularly female, they are presented in a

sexual way very often. They have to be good-looking and presented as

though the first thing you will react to is, do you fancy them? And

you do not do that. Sometimes you do, and sometimes you do not. How do

you regard your body? Within that context. I would say that in pop

music, in that particular sphere, there is a 1-dimensional polity to

sexuality. -1-dimensional quality. The difference between what I do is

that there is an intention always behind the sexuality, if the

sexuality is present. But most of the time, I do not particularly find

myself to be very sexy. And in the beginning of my career, I think some

of this exploration of covering myself up and transforming into

other icons and other states of life force was a sense of sexual freedom

for me. I wanted to escape things. You'd use sex on this album in an

interesting way. There are different aspects. Often, it is used as a way

into love, it seems. The sex will lead to something that will touch

you a little more, is that right? I would say that is right. But I do

not create with the intention of the finale, if that makes sense? I do

not always know what will come out of it so it is really beautiful to

hear your reading of my experience with sex and love because my earlier

experiences with sex were quite perverted. And quite scary,

terrifying, fear. I do not know, it reminds me of these things. Sitting

around. They are quite spooky. It was a bit terrifying for me. But now

I have really great sex. Which is good! It is a natural change. I

guess we are dealing with two different conversations. When I am

working with Bob, I am his vehicle for an expression of him having a

conversation. We did The Head Of John The Baptist for example.

I find myself speaking to a million selling artist with an album coming

out who would rather speak about her relationship with a theatre

director. It is about, I hope John the Baptist

will come to me and say, it is OK, you are allowed. We did the death of

Marach as well. And this piece was the same, -- the death of Marach. I

had to breathe through it, I had to have a tremendous honour and

understanding of the artist that created the work. This is the

duration of my own life, it is completely separate what I'm doing

with Bob and Marina, but with ARTPOP, I wanted to put art in the

front, to show that being a student is OK. I feel that the education of

your teachers and the knowledge of what you have learned, every

conceive have danced with, every paintbrush you have touched -- every

dancer you have danced with, every music you have heard, if you channel

that into what you are creating, there is an intention in the work

that runs to the centre of the earth. That is quite interesting,

because what people might say or worry about with your work is you

have so many artistic references within it.

OK, pause again. One of the good things about Applause is its video,

which has a lot of cultural references. So many, websites have

started counting them. This one shows 48. We see Fritz Lang,

Botticelli, Casy method of the caso, Warhol and Jeff Koons. Anyway, carry

on. -- Picasso. It is like you are walking through

and saying, I will have you, have you, have you. Wearing it like a

hat. Putting it on and taking it off. So to put it in an album and

make sure it is embedded, it is hard to do, given that you have so many

references in your work. You don't want to feel like Michael Jackson

going through a home furnishings shop saying I will have one of these

and these, you want to make sure it is in the work. You do and you

don't, because then we are getting back into this idea of defining art

and John Rose sticking it into particular places. I want a free

myself of that -- and -- I want to free myself about. I

don't even know if it is any good, it matters that it is and it is

there to feel and for you to experience. It is a life force on

its own, and I'm still very young. In the duration of my work. And if

you look at the early work of many artists over a sphere of many

mediums, you can see them channelling and imitating and

bringing along the artist that they have admired and learned from, their

teachers. And then later on in their careers, that is when the really

amazing work starts to happen. So I don't know if anything I have done

is very good but that is not really the point. I am not really the

point, if that makes sense. You are saying you are a major only to

discover the art you can make and you don't know if you have made it

yet, it may be in the future -- you are on a journey. Sure. It is worth

it to be a student. To not be a student would suggest I create in a

vacuum, with no knowledge, just floating in space, with no gravity,

no and no oxygen, no nothing. And perhaps that is something I will

never do. It is quite hard. I don't know if anyone does. I am yet to

meet any great artist, and I'm very lucky to work with Jeff Koons,

Marina Abramovic, Bob Wilson, and I'm yet to have any moments with

them when they are not looking at artwork or reading books or talking

about things that are happening before. You just have to trust in

your teachers that they will guide you. How did you pick those three

teachers? The me, they seem very different. Jeff Koons is very

different from Marina, and then from Robert Wilson. They come from

different spheres and have a different approach. I think they are

kind of like my holy Trinity. In a way. You have theatre, you have this

discipline, this meditative performance discipline, and then you

have commercial art that is viable as fine art. These are all the sorts

of things I'm very interested in, so it is the combination of what they

represent the me and how it has guided me and in my views of where

we are now, in terms of pop art and how it has travelled into ARTPOP,

like an inferno, so without disrespecting Warhol, I'm just

trying to explain it to young kids, but the soup can art, putting the

soup can in the Museum of the gallery, what we are doing is taking

that soup can art and putting it back on the soup can. It has already

happened, it is not my idea. When you drink Perrier water, it says

Andy Warhol on the bottle. So the soup can art is already on the soup

can. I'm saying I have done this from the beginning of my career and

I have discovered its meaning now. So in the album, I found artists

that I feel very connected to, their vibrations and their work. We speak

a language that I understand, if that makes any sense. And how do

such experiences feed into your pop performances? Pop is so quick, it is

so grab it. It is, it is like a cum shot, it is quite masturbatory, but

a lot of theatre is that way as well. It is entertaining. When you

watch Bob's work as well, with the lighting. The lighting is

overwhelming, how beautiful it is, you cannot take your eye of what you

are seeing. So I guess what I am saying is I think a lot of people,

like, for example you, you are seeing me this way for the first

time, but there are a lot of people in my life that have known me in

this way for sometime and see grow into this. -- and seen me grow into

this. I have gone through stages of being centred, then being addicted

to drugs and alcohol, having a difficulty handling the chaos in my

mind, then returning back to the centre. But actually, when I go on

stage, you can't imagine the energy of all of those fans. When you are

talking about your reaction to your fans, we have been talking about a

grisly to some of the fans who have been making video diaries and

obviously they love you -- we have been talking to some of the fans. I

am interested in your relationship with your fans. Every artist has a

lot of fans and they have a certain relationship, yours seems to be

particularly intense. It is. What you get from them, not just when you

are performing, but when you see them outside the hotel and they talk

to you? Well, I choose to receive their love. And because of that, it

has become very intimate over the years. I think that, you know, maybe

in your suggestion that my relationship with my fancies

different than some other pop artists, I think some of it is

because there is a separation between them and the work, for some

people. That what I am doing here, and what is happening here are two

different things. But because I have studied Stanislavski since I was 11

years old, I have a sense of... I have a sense! So because that I am

aware of their energy all the time, and receive it -- because of that.

And I needed. I cannot survive as what I have become without them,

because they have injected this love into me that carries through every

single moment of my life and for me to separate and compartmentalised my

work from them is dishonest, and that is what I am learning, working

with Jeff Koons and Marina and Bob. Working with Jeff Koons is very

intense, because you see his pure joy in creating, like a child. I

mean, he loves it so much, and this is what I am so inspired by, because

then you make it accessible for everyone to know that if you love

something and then you apply the discipline, and then the eye for the

theatricality of it, whatever it may be, and then the integrity of the

message, for me, which is what Jeff Koons is all about, then it is

something really magical that can occur, that is when the moment

happens. That inexplicable moment. I didn't mean to interrupt, sorry. I

didn't mean to talk for some long. These things happen, you have a lot

to say. Do I? I might sound like total shipped. My belief -- total

shit. Your ratings will go down. When you go out and see your fans,

you present yourself in various ways and they are very different looks

that you might get on ARTPOP when you perform on X Factor. It is like

another world you are creating. I think it is important to be

intelligence about -- intelligent about your artist and delete fans.

Walking -- I think it is important to be intelligent about your fans.

It is not the same as performing on the X Factor. When it is just me and

my fans and the paparazzi, it is a different thing. And I always stay

in this hotel now. It has become a stage for me to leave and they

probably love it as well, because they are able to see me. There are a

lot of things that you don't see. The corporate music world is

terrifying and I hated. Why do you hate it? Because they try and tell

me what to do the whole time. Even know? Yes, of course. I became a pop

star because of my incessant drive and my love of creating and you are

faced with the choice of am I going to go left or right and allowed

these corporate injections to drive what I'm going to do? And it is

torment for me, it is physically painful, so I had to just decide

whether I was going to allow that and allow people to project things

onto me, and do that, and I decided the only people I am going to

project things onto me Marina Abramovic were Jeff Koons and Bob

Wilson, because I would rather be their vehicle and be controlled by

corporations and things that really don't know what the fuck they are

doing, and it is poison, it is the death of... It is killing young

people. It is just like fast food. It might taste good at first but

after you eat it for many years, you might get fat, or sick, and die. So

I just want to feed my fans are little food. I would like to say

thank you very much, you're completely not what I would have

expected at all. Can I shake your hand? I will give you a nice big

Marina hug. So, some unanswered questions. The main one being art,

is there any art in ARTPOP? Well, the music, at least six fantastic

songs, is what we expect from Gaga, big, bulky pop design for the dance

floor at 3am as much as it is for the charts. If you think of her as a

multimedia mistress, though, you could say the art is in her videos.

It is certainly in her encounters with her fans as she moves from car

to lobby. It is interesting also that a few days after hate rapidly

this interview, -- after this interview, the relationship with her

original manager Troy Carter came to an end, so maybe she really is

working her way from the corporate world to art, and maybe this will

result in work that is rich and strange. As for Gaga herself, you

know what? I liked her. She is all ready rich and strange and in fact,

I was slightly blown away by her. I hope you were to.