Correspondence With Julian Razkovic

The performance artist Julian Razkovic was born and raised in Shenorock, New York. Once, an accomplished ebay entrepreneur and a founding member of the Benevolent Anarchists, a nondenominational amorphous global body of aspiring super heroes, evolutionists, and modern day American revolutionists with ties to the slow food movement, Razkovic’s radical political engagement strategies and actions briefly came to national attention in the alternative media communities of the Great Lakes Region and Milwaukee during the 2004 United States Presidential Election when, during the Republican National Convention, Razkovic rode laps around Madison Square Garden on his bicycle naked, evading police for over an hour while followed by helicopters from above. Since 2005, Razkovic has been incarcerated in Federal Prison awaiting trial for tax evasion. I corresponded with Razkovic over the last month. Below are two of his more unique answers to some questions I asked.

PN: Is it wrong to say that you see the work of an artist as inherently political?

JR: “Is it wrong to say…” What is wrong is thinking it is wrong to say anything. Isn’t that what living in a free country means? In that respect being politically correct is actually being un-American. Politeness, being demure is unpatriotic. That’s the problem with politicians. Can you imagine a single one of them engaged in sex? But you can see each and every one of them masturbating at a Pixar movie, can’t you? Each one is so stuck on moral turpitude they make me think of self righteous priests in the gym locker room of a catholic rectory. Not one of them feels comfortable with being naked. Have you ever been in a men’s locker room? Why is it that so many men don’t take their towels off before they put their underwear on? Instead they stand there like idiots, pulling their underwear up their legs then pulling them up beneath their towel until they’ve covered their holy genitalia, and only then do they take the towel off. Its as if they think no one else in the world has a dick and balls or a crack in their ass or something. Is it the same way in a woman’s locker room? Could you find that out for me? Perhaps, a deeper investigation into this matter might reveal why there has never been a woman president.

PN: Are you going to watch the Superbowl?

JR: Isn’t it unfortunate that we deny ourselves the respect and glory that is autumn. What is wrong with Steven Tyler’s face? He looks like Joan Rivers! And Madonna? I wouldn’t miss her performance for the world (We have a nice flat screen here, best television I ever had thanks to US taxpayers. The library is unfortunate though. I guess that makes this place no different than Main Street, USA). But I’m worried about Madonna. Because she’s getting old. And she seems determined not to. And who can win that battle? I don’t do religion. But I hope there is a passage in the Zohar that says something like “its human to be old.” To many people think its the other way around, that “its old to be human” and we should be more like an iphone or one of those newfangled whatever you got out there on Mars.