“This interview is so fire the 
alarms went off!”
Kim Petras, pop’s newest “it 
girl,” was entirely unphased 
when interrupted by the fire 
alarms that went off during 
our 
conversation. 
Calm 
and 
confident, she perfectly mirrors 
the music she has been working 
on for years, and she never misses 
a beat both in conversation and in 
her work as an artist.
“After 
working 
on 
music 
since I was like 13, 14 years 
old, I started writing, started 
being really obsessed with it. 
So (gaining recognition has) 
been really amazing, I kind of 
performed to semi-empty clubs 
my whole life and really hustled 
really hard to get recognition 
and stuff like that,” Petras said. 
“So it feels really amazing, and 
I’m just really thankful that I get 
the opportunity to play to packed 
clubs and sold out shows.”
Petras’s hard work is clearly 
starting to pay off as evidenced 
in her rapidly growing fan base 
while earning her an opening 
slot on Troye Sivan’s current 
tour. Her artistic vision has been 
influenced by this struggle, often 
offering a foil to the fantasies she 
weaves into her songs.
“‘I Don’t Want It at All,’ for 
example — I wrote that in a 
shitty apartment, like sleeping 
on a futon. I sometimes write 
songs about how I dream about 
my life or how I fantasize about 
life. For me, as a kid, loving pop 
music, growing up loving pop, I 
ran home from school everyday 
to watch the new Gwen Stefani 
music video, and I just like live in 
it and forget about my problems 
and school,” she said. “To this 
day, a good song can make me 
forget all my problems and just 
be happy for three and a half 
minutes, so to me that’s the most 
beautiful thing about music. So 
that’s what I’m trying to create, 
that’s what I’m trying to do for 
my fans.”
To date, Petras now has 
a repertoire of eight singles 
and a seven track Halloween-
themed EP titled TURN OFF 
THE LIGHTS, VOL. 1. While a 
relatively newer artist, her music 
is as addictive as anything you’d 
expect from a veteran of pop, 
which is likely a product of her 
wide list of influences. Petras 
isn’t just a massive pop fan, but 
an artist who draws inspiration 
from a wide array of genres and 
musicians.
“I really am a fan of all music. 
Especially currently, there’s so 

much amazing rap happening. I’m 
just a huge fan of the new Travis 
Scott album ASTROWORLD. I’m 
really into Rae Sremmurd; my 
friends lil aaron and Baby E have 
some amazing songs coming 
out,” she noted. “I’m just making 
a bunch of playlists recently. And 
I’ve been listening to the first 
Beyoncé album Dangerously In 
Love a bunch.”
What is most impressive about 
Petras’s debut music is that it’s 
high quality pop spread across 
a wide spectrum of sub-genres. 

There’s the hard-pressed verses 
and lackadaisical chorus of “All 
The 
Time,” 
the 
R&B-tinted 
“Slow It Down,” sugary pop on 
“Heart to Break” and the house-
pop hybrid “In The Next Life.” If 
her track record is any indication, 
then Petras is an artist with 
almost unlimited potential and 
flexibility: “My goal is always to 
keep growing and to not repeat 
myself, to do whatever feels right 
and to write authentic songs to 
me. I’m going to continue doing 
that really,” she said.
Petras writes music not just for 
herself, but also with and for her 
best friends: “We love to put on a 
song that we love and scream at 
the top of our lungs and go really 
crazy, and I want to create that 
same thing.” And this idea seeps 
into her collaborations as well. 
In the past, she has worked with 
Charli XCX, lil aaron and Baby 
E, and also revealed that she has 
collaborations 
with 
SOPHIE 
coming out in the near future.
“I have collaborations with 
SOPHIE coming out, so that’s 
really exciting, I’m a big SOPHIE 
fan. I always love collaborating 
with people like Charli and 
artists that write,” she revealed. 
“For me, I just want to write with 
people who care about their music 
and want to write songs and can 
write songs. So I collaborate a lot 
with one of my homies lil aaron, 
I’ve done a bunch with him. He’s 
one of the most talented writers 
I’ve ever met. I love to work with 
people that are friends and just 
have a good vibe. I like when it 
feels like hanging out with your 
friends, opposed to feeling like 
work and feeling stressful.”
The periodical release of her 
singles over eight months leading 
up to the release of her EP on 

Oct. 1st (the perfect gift for the 
beginning of the Gay Christmas 
Season) was a purposeful decision 
from a modern artist of the 21st 
century. In an effort to build up 
hype around each release, Petras 
and her team made this decision 
to release a single every month, 
which clearly paid off given her 
current popularity.
“Even before I put up “I 
Don’t Want It at All” I had these 
songs ready to go. We were just 
thinking about how to release 
it best and to break me as a new 
artist. And especially now, I just 
love how rappers are doing. They 
just constantly put out new work 
and new mixtapes — there’s kind 
of no rules for that,” she said. 
“I think in this streaming era, 
you know, artists just have to 
do things differently, and how 
artists work is going to be so 
different from now in a while. 
It was exciting to not release it 
as an album, but to drop a new 
song every month. Every month 
we could get more playlisting, we 
could get a new set of eyeballs on 
each song.”
Along with her incredible 
talent, Petras is an absolute 
inspiration 
to 
the 
LGBT 
community. Being queer herself, 
she 
proudly 
discusses 
her 
beginnings in queer clubs and 
blossoming popularity within 
the LGBT community that has 
begun to infect the mainstream. 
Now, opening for fellow queer 
artist Troye Sivan, the duo are 
alighting 
crowds 
with 
their 
energy and pride.
“This tour has been such an 
amazing LGBT — like 20-gay-
teen — moment. I love Troye 
and what he stands for. I love 
his music so much, and I think 
he’s an amazing artist. And I 
think it’s great that LGBT artists 
are getting recognized for their 
work rather than their sexuality 
or their gender identification. 
I think that’s such an amazing 
thing that’s happening right now, 
and I’m so glad to be a part of it,” 
she said.
Given her daring attitude, 
seductive 
fantasies 
and 
multifaceted talent, Kim Petras 
has arguably been 2018’s biggest 
breakout artist in the pop scene. 
Her creativity and passion bleeds 
into her music, with pomp and 
energy that let her listeners melt 
into her world. If Petras is any 
indication, there’s a reason pop 
music has always been one of the 
most boundary-defining genres, 
and if she continues to deliver, we 
have some incredible content to 
look forward to.
This Sunday, you can catch 
Kim Petras as she opens for 
Troye Sivan at the Fox Theater.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, October 12, 2018 — 5A

Kim Petras just wants to 
hype up her best friends

DOMINIC POLSINELLI
Senior Arts Editor

ARTIST PROFILE

COURTESY OF THOM KERR

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

Troye Sivan and 
Kim Petras 

Fox Theater

Oct. 14th, 2018

$29.50+

RYAN COX / DAILY

Prominent 
Chinese 
artist, 
filmmaker and educator Xu Bing 
visited the University’s Museum of 
Art (UMMA) this past Sunday to 
give a lecture entitled “The Origins 
of Creativity” as part of the Penny 
Stamps School of Art & Design’s 
ongoing speaker series. Bing’s work 
has always been highly reactive 
to his surrounding environment, 
both in China and the U.S., as his 
wide array of multimedia work — 
although often based in tradition 
— is always in dialogue with the 
present.
At a recent retrospective exhibit 
of Bing’s work in his hometown of 
Beijing, Bing — as the curator of his 
own work — pondered the question: 
“Where does this ability to make 
creative works come from?”
Having 60 works from his 
40-year career all in the same 
place at once, it seemed like several 
different artists were responsible 
for the work on display. Where did 
these varying inspirations come 
from?
Bing’s 
earliest 
work 
of 
prominence, “Book From the 
Sky,” came in 1987, the same year 
he completed his Masters of Fine 
Art at the Central Academy of 
Fine Arts. The vast work featured 
large scrolls that spanned the 
length of the room, both lying 
flat against the walls and draped 
from the ceiling. Beneath the 
immersive environment of scrolls 
are 
luxurious 
and 
carefully 
bound books containing the same 
characters. For those illiterate 
in Chinese, the exhibit creates 
an almost holy environment of 
Chinese 
language. 
For 
those 

literate, however, it creates a 
confounding and uncomfortably 
unfamiliar illusion of knowledge.
Every day of Bing’s childhood, 
his father would make him fill 
one page per day with Chinese 
characters that “followed the 
literary 
tradition 
of 
China.” 
Happening all around him at the 
time, however, was Chairman 
Mao’s reorganization of the entire 
Chinese language. In a time of 
increasing global connectedness, 
such rigid enforcement of the rules 
of language made no sense to Bing.
Thus, 
reacting 
to 
his 
environment, 
Bing 
dedicated 
several years to formulating 4,000 
fake Chinese characters on wood 
blocks to be neatly printed onto 
these scrolls. They are a complete 
mockery of the subjectivity and 
limitations of language. They were 
also a perceived as a threat to the 
Chinese government. And, as such, 
Bing relocated to the U.S. in 1990.
“The path every artist takes 
isn’t always under their control,” 
Bing said in his lecture. Art is the 
manifestation of each individual’s 
“cultural-genetic code.” When we 
take thinking to unfamiliar places, 
this is the realm from which we 
can create. In this way, art, just 
like Bing’s forced relocation, is not 
planned out.
Bing characterizes his early 
works in the U.S. as “existing in 
a place between two cultures.” 
His first exhibit in the U.S. — 
“Transformations” — translates 
a text from English to French 
to German and so on until it is 
eventually translated to Chinese, 
at which point it’s essentially 
nonsensical. Ironically, the lecture 
itself was a display of this loss of 
meaning, as Bing had to continually 
correct his English translator in a 

comically clear display of his point.
Bing continued producing art 
that is more than initially meets 
the eye for the next two decades. 
He’s had an ongoing series of 
“Background Story” works that 
look like ancient Chinese ink 
paintings but are actually milky 
glass backgrounded by plants. His 
largest recent work, “The Phoenix 
Project,” transforms the remains 
of construction site debris into two 
100-foot long phoenixes. Covered 
in a careful arrangement of LED 
lights, the phoenixes represent 
the transformation of the ugly 
process of rapid urbanization into 
something beautiful.
For Bing, while art is often 
in conversation with the past, it 
should never imitate it. Artistic 
ability is not dependent on one’s IQ 
or historical knowledge. Good art 
always reacts to the present. While 
many of Bing’s works appear to 
follow Chinese tradition, they are 
all in one way or another layered 
responses to current local and 
global events.
“Dragonfly Eyes,” Bing’s latest 
project, is no different. Bing has 
always had an acute awareness of 
the environment he interacts with 
on a daily basis. In “Dragonfly 
Eyes,” a storyline is made using 
a composite of real surveillance 
footage and acted out scenes. In 
this sense, the whole world is a 
film set. The work, intentionally 
shocking, blurs the line between 
reality and cinema.
This 
presentation 
was 
sponsored by the University’s 
Confucius Institute, Lieberthal-
Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, 
the Penny Stamps School of Art & 
Design, Museum of Arts and the 
Department of Film, Television 
and Media Studies.

‘Dragonfly Eyes’ director 
on the origins of creativity

BEN VASSAR
For the Daily

AUDIOTREE ARTIST PROFILE

When 
a 
friend 
of 
mine 
suggested I listen to a band 
called Palm, I asked what genre 
they fell under. My question was 
greeted with something along 
the lines of: “Uhhh, I don’t know. 
I think they’re kind of DIY? 
Maybe Art Rock?” At that point, I 
still didn’t know what to expect.
Then 
I 
actually 
listened 
to Palm, and I understood 
my friend’s ambiguity. With 
so many different influences 
present — lyrically, sonically 
and rhythmically — it’s a little 
overwhelming at first, but in the 
best way.
A quick Google search for the 
genre “art rock” suggests artists 
like King Crimson and David 
Bowie. To me, those artists 
are drastically different. Even 
some of Bowie’s later work (see: 
Blackstar) is quite different from 
any of King Crimson’s material. 
The only common denominator 
is some elements of their music 
are derived from rock music. 
So, I guess, in a way, you could 
say Palm is art rock because 
of the fact that they borrow so 
many elements from rock but 
view those elements through an 
avant-garde approach.
The more I listened to the 
group, especially after the release 
of their newest full-length studio 
album, Rock Island, the more 
I wondered how the band was 
able to develop that signature 
sound they had. Luckily, I had 
the incredible opportunity to 
not only see the band live, but 
speak with bassist Gerasimos 
Livitsanos 
and 
guitarist 
/ 
vocalist Eve Alpert about their 
sound, and how they developed 
into the genre-defying band they 
are today.
One of the best aspects of the 
band’s sound is just how unique 
it actually is. With Brian Wilson-
sounding vocal lines, prog / 
math rock influenced rhythms 
and an overall sound that could 
be described as almost island-
infused indie rock, they seem 
to sound like every band I can 

imagine, and, at the same time, 
like none of them at all.
“We all listen to tons of music. 
It’s where we get our pleasure 
from,” 
Alpert 
said. 
When 
working on their latest album, 
however, Alpert says the group 
listened to a lot of Footwork, a 
movement of music based out 
of Chicago involving spastic 
rhythms and beats accompanied 
by, at times, extremely lush 
soundscapes.
“This label called Orange 
Milk was really inspiring. Not to 
say that it rubbed itself into our 
songwriting, but it did in weird 
ways.”
When it came to writing the 
record itself, the group attributes 
a lot of their songwriting process 
to practice.
“We practice all the time, and 
generally there’s one core idea 
that comes in, and then we jam 
to it,” Alpert commented. “And 
then once it clicks, it clicks,” 
Livitsanos replied.
In another interview, the band 
mentioned using a drum machine 
as a compositional tool; putting 
on a random pattern while the 
guitars dissect it between the 
two of them and drummer Hugo 
Stanley plays a contrasting beat 
overtop. These rhythms written 
over the drum machine “felt 
integral to the song,” Alpert 
explained. But in regards to their 
sound, Rock Island features a 
variety of guitar sounds that don’t 
really sound like guitar. Using 
a MIDI (musical instrument 
digital interface) guitar effects 
controller, the band incorporates 
guitar tones that sound like a 
variety of other instruments, 
most notably steel drums.
“We started incorporating the 
MIDI guitar when we started 
writing 
the 
record,” 
Alpert 
explained, “And we just used 
the sounds we had on the synth 
module. We were just using the 
equipment we had.”
But the band sees themselves 
taking this sound in a slightly 
different direction in the future. 
As Livitsanos discussed: “We’re 
trying to program more of our 
own sounds. We kinda started 
with just what we had, but going 
forward, we definitely want to 

try generating things to sample, 
and sounds like that.”
Hearing Palm live, I was 
amazed 
at 
how 
close 
they 
sounded to the record. Every 
nuance present in the record 
was also there in the live 
performance. Many groups view 
live performance and recorded 
performances as two different 
things entirely. There are things 
you can do in a recording studio 
that you can’t do live on stage, 
and vice versa. Palm seems to be 
somewhere in the middle.
“I think we all want our 
live performance to be pretty 
raw. We’ve come up being 
influenced by a lot of punk or 
noisier music, so we want our 
live performance to be a little 
bit more unpredictable,” Alpert 
said.
Livitsanos responded, saying: 
“On Rock Island, there were 
certain things done for certain 
tracks, like some sort of drum 
loop in “Dog Milk,” for example, 
and then after it was recorded, we 
were like, ‘Oh, maybe we could 
try this a little bit differently for 
the live show’.”
“My hope is that we can write 
a record and then reinterpret it 
in a more raw way live,” Alpert 
said.
The band seems to be gaining 
traction in the music community. 
Audiotree was one of the band’s 
first festivals and it seems to be 
a new experience for them, but 
one they’re treating just like any 
other.
“I 
want 
us 
to 
always 
make mistakes,” Alpert said. 
“Sometimes it winds up working 
and sometimes it doesn’t. It 
makes it all more worthwhile.”
“Both for us and as audience 
members, I think it make it more 
fun,” Livitsanos replied.
“We’re 
definitely 
not 
a 
conventional festival band, and 
I think we’re still figuring it all 
out, you know?”
For a band that’s still figuring 
things out, Palm certainly seems 
to be a well-polished chaos 
machine, putting out material 
that’s pushing the limits and 
putting on one of the best 
live shows I’ve seen in recent 
memory.

Palm dissects their sound

RYAN COX
Daily Arts Writer