Artist Take with Olivia Kan-Sperling : 5 Things I (Don’t??) Like On 𝕹𝖆𝖗𝖈𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈 𝕾𝖊𝖑𝖋-𝕬𝖋𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖒𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝕻𝖗𝖔𝖏𝖊𝖈𝖙s

Hollywood Superstar meets with Olivia Kan-Sperling, writer and New Yorker and editor at The Paris Review. Her writing has appeared in Heavy Traffic, The Paris Review, Art Review and Spike. Moat Recently, she has released Little Pink Book (2025) a softcore porn fantasy about a lonely barista-blogger in Shanghai, following her first novel Island Time (2022) a novel concerned with the psycho-geography of Kendall Jenner

This Artist Take should be read in full, continously, rather than in modicom

I understood the Artist’s Take prompt as “things that inspire me” and/or “things I like.” I realized I don’t have much to say about things I like and that the things that inspire me do so because they leave something half-empty / fill me with negativity. I also just like things because they are bad. Mulling over my taste, I often think of a line in Huysmans’s Against Nature: “𝒯𝒽𝑒𝓈𝑒 𝒷𝑜𝑜𝓀𝓈 𝓌𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝓈𝑜 𝒶𝒷𝓈𝓊𝓇𝒹, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓌𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝓌𝓇𝒾𝓉𝓉𝑒𝓃 𝒾𝓃 𝓈𝓊𝒸𝒽 𝒶 𝒹𝒾𝓈𝑔𝓊𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓈𝓉𝓎𝓁𝑒, 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒷𝓎 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓈𝑒 𝓉𝑜𝓀𝑒𝓃𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎 𝒷𝑒𝒸𝒶𝓂𝑒 𝒶𝓁𝓂𝑜𝓈𝓉 𝓇𝑒𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓀𝒶𝒷𝓁𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓇𝒶𝓇𝑒.”

Huysmans’s hipster edgelord aesthete protagonist, Des Esseintes, has a very advanced contrarian aesthetic sensibility, especially as regards badness of all kinds. His turtle doesn’t match his rug so he encrusts it with jewels until it dies! This is a list of things I’ve obsessed over but feel badly about in different ways.

1. Rihanna

In 5th grade I read a New Yorker article about a woman who has written many hit songs for Rihanna. It described her process: singing random phrases into the microphone while scrolling through her notes app, into which she had copied language ripped from TV shows or advertisements encountered while walking around the city. That’s when I knew, I love words…(Equally inspiring to me: how Young Thug writes songs, which is, scrawl a shape on a napkin while on drugs, then “read” it in the recording booth while on drugs.)

So because since 5th grade I’m into language, I like that Rihanna has an album called Talk That Talk. Rihanna is always singing about saying stuff or even writing. “Birthday Cake” rocks and it’s an extended metaphor involving writing stuff in icing on her birthday cake. (“Come and put your name on it / Put your name on it / … Cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake… / And it's not even my birthday / But you wanna put your name on it!”) Rihanna is not a singer, she is a speaker, the blown-out speaker in an Uber that is playing the radio that is playing Rihanna. This is the ineffable beauty, mystery, and melancholy of Rihanna, and I find it very moving, but I feel this good girl gone bad’s music is, mostly, bad as in not good.

I think Des Esseintes is fascinated by bad books because the worse something is, the more impressive the mental labor required to enjoy it. In my heart, I know I don’t “like” Rihanna except in some convoluted intellectual way, which makes me sad. So does Rihanna. Her best lyrics are: “Yellow diamonds in the light / Now we're standing side by side / As your shadow crosses mine / What it takes to come alive.” The senseless fragments of her club song lyrics hopelessly grasping for meaning yet failing to achieve any kind of real emotional resonance is very poignant to me.

2. Edouard Levé, Autoportrait

It got back to me that someone—“this guy”—said my work is a “narcissistic self-affirmation project.” My writing is like always an explicit interpretation/homage to other people’s writing/art/etc!! But yeah I have written about my life sometimes?? (I’m generously assuming this is a genuine critique of my writing and not how I dress FashionNova on instagram.) Obviously all art is partially a narcissistic self-affirmation project, because it means forcing your stupid interiority into an immortal object, then asking other people to care about it. Certainly everything that goes “against nature” is a hubristic human enterprise...but usually only one half of humanity is reprimanded for any of this. Less glaring instances of misogyny are honestly so sad and painful and crushing to me, but towards this unknown (not even interesting to narrow down which guy it was) reader, I feel condescension and abstractly pissed off, which is very very inspiring! I wonder whether “this guy” likes the autofictional work of Huysmans…Mishima…Josef Strau…Proust… Or Edouard Levé, another male inspiration of mine:

Levé’s Autoportrait (English translation Lorin Stein) is a short book composed only of true, first-person statements about himself. The variability this simple constraint produces is stunning: the book is a time-lapse experience of content moving around in a very tight contour, meaning being created through rhythm and differentiation. Autoportrait is a new literary form, but also a tale as old as time…The truth and beauty of all autobiography is that it’s the most humbling form of literature: nothing mutilates your own subjectivity so much as reducing it to a text. It is also the most generous to the reader: nothing teaches you about your own subjectivity like the ruthless dissection of someone else’s.

But in order to learn about yourself you unfortunately first have to learn a lot about Edouard Levé, who seems like a typical guy and asshole. You learn the facts of his life, but also, more interestingly, that he believes an accurate self-portrait can be rendered only in facts. Facts, he clarifies, are unchanging truths. So he can write about his eye color and what parts of women’s bodies he has come on, but not his feelings or future. Even more suspect to me, the implication that a person/ality can exist in a void—the longer Levé’s monologue goes on, the stranger it becomes that all of these confessions lack an addressee. In a text that strives towards unsparing realism, Levé has accidentally constructed a conspicuous fiction: that he exists in a world of one.

Anyways I thought it would be a fun exercise to invent my own protocol of speech to write what I would consider a “true” portrait of myself. I did butmy autoportraitwas actually agonizing, a hysterical self-negation project!!

3. Euphoria

Des Esseintes also likes the other type of bad: everything that is morbid, perverse, and disturbing. One of his favorite artists is 17th century Dutch engraver Jan Luyken, whose prints show “𝒷𝑜𝒹𝒾𝑒𝓈 𝓇𝑜𝒶𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝑜𝓃 𝒻𝒾𝓇𝑒𝓈, 𝓈𝓀𝓊𝓁𝓁𝓈 𝓈𝓁𝒾𝓉 𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓃 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓈𝓌𝑜𝓇𝒹𝓈, 𝓉𝓇𝑒𝓅𝒶𝓃𝑒𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓃𝒶𝒾𝓁𝓈 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝑔𝒶𝓈𝒽𝑒𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓈𝒶𝓌𝓈, 𝒾𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓃𝑒𝓈 𝓈𝑒𝓅𝒶𝓇𝒶𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒶𝒷𝒹𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓃 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓉𝓌𝒾𝓈𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝑜𝓃 𝓈𝓅𝑜𝑜𝓁𝓈, 𝒻𝒾𝓃𝑔𝑒𝓇 𝓃𝒶𝒾𝓁𝓈 𝓈𝓁𝑜𝓌𝓁𝓎 𝑒𝓍𝓉𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓅𝒾𝓃𝒸𝑒𝓇𝓈, 𝑒𝓎𝑒𝓈 𝑔𝑜𝓊𝑔𝑒𝒹, 𝓁𝒾𝓂𝒷𝓈 𝒹𝒾𝓈𝓁𝑜𝒸𝒶𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒹𝑒𝓁𝒾𝒷𝑒𝓇𝒶𝓉𝑒𝓁𝓎 𝒷𝓇𝑜𝓀𝑒𝓃, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒷𝑜𝓃𝑒𝓈 𝒷𝒶𝓇𝑒𝒹 𝑜𝒻 𝒻𝓁𝑒𝓈𝒽 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒶𝑔𝑜𝓃𝒾𝓏𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓁𝓎 𝓈𝒸𝓇𝒶𝓅𝑒𝒹 𝒷𝓎 𝓈𝒽𝑒𝑒𝓉𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝓂𝑒𝓉𝒶𝓁. 𝒯𝒽𝑒𝓈𝑒 𝓌𝑜𝓇𝓀𝓈 𝒻𝒾𝓁𝓁𝑒𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒶𝒷𝑜𝓂𝒾𝓃𝒶𝒷𝓁𝑒 𝒾𝓂𝒶𝑔𝒾𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈, 𝑜𝒻𝒻𝑒𝓃𝓈𝒾𝓋𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝒾𝓇 𝑜𝒹𝑜𝓇𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒷𝓊𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔, 𝑜𝑜𝓏𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒷𝓁𝑜𝑜𝒹 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒸𝓁𝒶𝓂𝑜𝓇𝑜𝓊𝓈 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒸𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝒽𝑜𝓇𝓇𝑜𝓇 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓂𝒶𝓁𝑒𝒹𝒾𝒸𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃𝓈, 𝑔𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝒟𝑒𝓈 𝐸𝓈𝓈𝑒𝒾𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓈, 𝓌𝒽𝑜 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝒽𝑒𝓁𝒹 𝒻𝒶𝓈𝒸𝒾𝓃𝒶𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓇𝑒𝒹 𝓇𝑜𝑜𝓂, 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒸𝓇𝑒𝑒𝓅𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓈𝑒𝓃𝓈𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝓈𝑒-𝒻𝓁𝑒𝓈𝒽.” That’s how I feel watching Euphoria! Except Euphoria is more than morbid; it is evil. Think of a greedy Hollywood man, or woman, sitting at a big desk, cutting deals, with Eckhaus Latta, with drugdealers pushing fentanyl, making teens ADDICTED to pain, making teens want to rape, wear Eckhaus Latta, and kill themselves… I wish sometimes to create a work as powerful as this.

4. Dallas, Texas (George Bush Meditation Garden)

I went here with my boyfriend on his business trip. I was excited because everyone said Dallas—at least, the parts of Dallas to be seen on a boyfriend’s business trip—was the most boring place ever. I love places like Dallas because I am perverse and take pleasure from forcing a thing to give something up to my perspective against its will [[narcissistic self-affirmation]]. A curious detail, an accidental angle!—it feels good to see something no one has ever seen before. What’s there to say about Paris? But as it turns out, it’s hard to say anything about Dallas, too. It’s hard to see it in the first place. A city that has nothing hidden is the hardest to see, and Dallas has no secret from me. It is not a secret that the city’s symbol is literally the fucking Exxon Pegasus.

I went to the George Bush Presidential Library and there was nothing to photograph that would be like, “holy shit…?” Everything seemed obvious and good, like universal human rights. As a contrarian I’ve always thought Bush was subtly charming and funny, but after driving around his neighborhood in Dallas I know for real how bad being a Republican is, and how being a normie is no joke at all, because they are so fucking rich and run not just Dallas but everything. Actually, Dallas is a Democrat city with a gay rainbow crosswalk area, exactly like my hometown, which made it even worse. Dallas has a thriving LGBTQ community. In fact,Dallas seemed like a place of perfect equality. Nothing rose to attention or sank below it: an even field.

At one point I did a reverse orientalism exercise where I imagined “a Chinese person” taking note of the phrases repeated in gilded lettering across the mirrored skyscrapers and white wooden signs decorating businesses around the city, trying to come up with the occidental’s Auspicious Moment Good Fortune Golden Dragon Trading Company—something like: ᴜɴɪᴛᴇᴅ ᴍᴏɴᴛɪᴄᴇʟʟᴏ ᴘʀᴇᴍɪᴜᴍ ᴘᴀᴛɪᴏ ꜱᴏʟᴜᴛɪᴏɴꜱ ꜱᴇᴄᴜʀɪᴛɪᴇꜱ & ꜱᴏɴꜱ ʀɪᴠᴇʀ ᴄʀᴇᴇᴋ ʙᴀʀ & ɢʀɪʟʟᴇ ɪɴᴠᴇꜱᴛᴍᴇɴᴛꜱ ꜱᴛʀᴀᴛᴇɢʏ ᴏɴ ᴘʟᴀᴢᴀ ꜱᴛʀᴇᴇᴛ. But then I remembered it’s not my imagination—I technically am “a Chinese person” :(

At 5PM I walked out of the Presidential Library into the glaring sun of the George Bush Meditation Garden. The park achieves what a French theorist wrote about Chinese painting: the ideal landscape displays a perfect blandness; the eye should catch on nothing. Sitting in the George Bush Meditation Garden I realized that, in real life, perfect blandness is terrible feng shui. It is upsetting to walk around in a Chinese scroll painting, not to mention the pages of an in-flight magazine. I mean everything in Downtown Dallas looked exactly like the photos of Dallas printed on ultra-thin-shiny-paper in those magazine inserts, which are basically just real estate catalogues, that fall out of free regional newspapers or the coffeetables of hotel lobbies and bring news of local vineyards and interior design firms that look exactly like the local vineyards and interior design firms in the fake magazines trying to boost the economies of every other United State. When you’re in a car it’s okay because this flat city passes by like a movie, but actually walking around in a 2D-looking place like that gives you a kind of media-dimensional-vertigo that would have a stupid name in a Christopher Nolan movie: “the bends” or something. “It’s all wrong,” diCaprio would say, “See that?” And he’d point at a tell-tale sign like two fire hydrants placed too close together. Then he’d start getting “the bends,” a torturous mental-physical state that comes from being in the wrong dimension for too long. Dallas Syndrome is just Paris Syndrome for people with a narcissistic self-affirmation problem, like hipsters. You’re not supposed to find Paris in Dallas, Texas. I like to do what I am not supposed to. But Dallas didn’t let me!

For example, “George Bush Meditation Garden” is funny, and that’s why I had to invent it. In reality, the garden was named after a different white male politician whose name did not clash so obviously with the idea of Eastern spiritualism and therefore would not make for good writing; I cannot remember the two words at all.

5. Robert Duncan, “Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow”

I love this poem so much! I love a lot of things so much, but this is the only thing that is to me like a prayer. If you’re always going around being inspired by things (taking and using them for your own narcissistic etc etc) then what is left that is holy? I think this poem can only be holy because it’s aesthetically alienating to me; the language seems intentionally archaic (it’s 1960), which I usually find embarrassing, contrived, and definitely irreconcilable with my “pop” sensibility. Therein lies the disconnect that creates a negative space, a blank space,an emptiness “so near to the heart / an eternal pasture folded in all thought / … created by light / wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.” The meadow is inspiration :) and this place of inspiration sounds like death.