Why do you think Example: None were able to cross the performance art/performance poetry border freely?

Steve Seddon:

Certainly the warm welcome to Chicago we received from Marc Smith the first time we went to the Green Mill in June 1990 helped immeasurably. By the time we settled here in August, Marc had booked us for features and introduced us to various artists and promoters. Marc gave us the space and enough time so that we could show all we were capable of. We had tons of material that became new again in a different city and we could construct shows that would go well at the Green Mill as well as Randolph Street Gallery.

Kate Anderson:

Example: None is text-based. Words, words, words - we use them. We cross-over into slam poetry, performance, and music because we don't perceive boundaries. There was a time when we made and showed films, too. The one constant is the idea of being live, and that's what's important to me. Marc was great to us. He gave us the opportunity to be ourselves.

Steve Seddon:

I think what helps us cross the border is the humor and unpretentiousness of our work. We came from working class backgrounds in a dying industrial state so that's added some pepper to our observations. Of course, Providence looks much nicer now.

Which side of the border would you say is home for you?

Steve Seddon:

For me, performance poetry is home but there's not much choice anyway at this point. All of art spaces [in Chicago] that were here when we arrived [Randolph Street Gallery, Club Lower Links, NAME] are gone now.

When did you two begin to collaborate in earnest as Example: None? How did you discover that poke music was what you wanted to do?

Steve Seddon:

Upon meeting we discovered that we each had been experimenting with recording spoken pieces on cassette. We exchanged tapes and found out we were operating on parallel lines.

Kate Anderson:

We were on parallel lines. Our sensibilities were more than similar - we saw the world the same way. We both sang songs and wrote. I was into filmmaking and performance. Steve was in a band. When we found each other it all came together. We both had something we needed to say aloud, some way to negotiate the world. Live performance was the answer. It was immediate, unmediated and we got to work on our feet which is incredibly important if you believe in doing live work.

Steve Seddon:

At the time (1984-85) I was writing songs for the rock band and had a notebooks full of other things that didn't apply to the rock format. There were no performance spaces in Providence until AS220 opened. We asked for a booking [at AS220], constructed a show out of the pieces we had, and decided to keep on with it. At the time, our policy was to produce entirely new work for each performance. This allowed us to build a large body of work that we could draw from when we were offered work at rock clubs and eventually the slam.

What would you call cabaret performance? Did you see Example: None as a kind of latter-day cabaret ensemble?

Kate Anderson:

We used to talk about being new vaudevillians. Cabaret fits, too, because historically cabaret was provocative and we always hoped for that - to talk about the everyday and provoke a response. We called ourselves Poke artists, keeping things a little uncomfortable, a little biting, and hopefully levity would result.

We wanted to be intimate and raw, unencumbered by technology and flash, and ask the audience to see the world our way. I think Cabaret does that. It's less formal than theater or performance. There's more room for experiments and chance in the moment. Pieces aren't rehearsed to death -- or to life depending on your viewpoint. There's room for real life to intervene and compliment what's happening on stage.