Mirror Mirror are David Riley and Ryan Lucero, with Matt Bagdanoff and assortment of friends. Mirror Mirror's collaborations span music, video installation and performance, from Brooklyn to Art Basel. In late 2008 they toured the UK and France with the release of their second album, The Society For the Advancement of Inflammatory Consciousness (S.A.I.C.), and founded the real-world group of the same name. Momenta Art in Brooklyn will be showing the fruits of the S.A.I.C. in a show this fall, and in the meanwhile Mirror Mirror are working on their next EP. Catch them next Thursday performing at The Tank in midtown with Emily Pope-Blackman in her psychadelic blowout, HYPOGEUM.

Conversation with David Riley and Ryan Lucero of Mirror Mirror, at their studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn on March 30 and by emails April 6 – 15, 2009.

Paul Sepuya: Let's talk about POO, the new monthly party at the Hose. That space is having some of the best new parties in the East Village I think. At the last party the two of you conducted a new-age Church bar intervention of sorts. You even had neon wafers!

Ryan Lucero: Yeah POO is a great party! it's the brainchild of our friends Sarah Ball and David Toro, and I think they're aiming to make it as much of an event as a party. Each month has a theme and decorations and performances. We were dressed in custom-made robes and a bishop hat that came from the San Francisco Opera. We found the technicolor wafers at our local fruitstand, i guess it makes religion more fun for the kids. And then we made some pamphlets so we could do some litnessing. For anyone interested in litnessing, I recommend David Berg's Shiners or Shamers, in which he offers TEN TOP TIPS FOR TIP-TOP TIPSTERS FROM YOUR TIPSY OL'TIPPLER TO TIP THE TIPPLE!

PS: Oh my god! That's a lot of alliteration. David, you've mentioned in an interview with NME that New Horizons was inspired partly by the aural convergence of Brooklyn storefront churches: "Off-key choirs and distorted sermons mix with car noises and pumping bass." Your performances combine concerts and parties, gallery performances, and group participation. Tell me more about Mirror Mirror's group of collaborators.

David Riley: Yeah there are more storefront churches in our neighborhood [Bushwick] than anything else, so it was hard not to be inspired... I love the evening services in the summertime, when it's twilight and the doors are open... or sometimes a church will just have speakers playing religious music right out the window. Anyway we started the band with the hope that our group of collaborators would keep growing and changing. We try to encourage participation at our shows. I think it's great when someone says "i want to play with you!" and we've never turned anyone down. Ideally there will be a point where we play a show and there's no clear boundary between performer and audience.

PS: Have you worked with designers? DR: We haven't collaborated directly with any fashion designers, but we have lots of friends who own stores or have styled us. Some of our favorites: Harmon, Henrik Vibskov, Bernard Willhelm.

PS: Tell me about The Society for the Advancement of Inflammatory Consciousness. What is art making like within the communal bonding and group psychology exercises?

DR: We're not really sure yet. It's messy. It's an experimental process, where we're trying to erase the distinctions between all the participants. Egos are so delicate, especially with artists. We're inviting chaos into our lives, so we don't have much control over the results. However play seems to be an important concept for us. It feels a bit like a child's game where you keep going along and changing the rules as you go - and then making up elaborate stories to explain it. We adapted our activities from other groups, like improv troupes or S&M subcultures, and play is important to all of those too.

PS: There's a cutout of Hurley in this collage drawing of yours, Ryan. I love him! Do you guys watch LOST? Talking about mind-altering experiences and changing the rules as you go...

RL: I watch it when I can catch it. I never really know what's going on though. Maybe everyone on that island is on a insanely powerful collective LSD trip?

PS: Your newest video is for the song Eugene. I think it is such a sly sexy video. And it also gives me the creeps. Who are those adorably cute boys? Do you identify with Eugene or the old man?

RL: The blond boy is someone I work with. He is a glass artist. The brown haired boy is in an awesome band called dinowalrus. They were both so great in the video, so cute and innocent but also mischievous and complicit. I think at different times in our lives we have identified with Eugene but as we get older we get closer to the clown.

PS: Speaking of playful youth... Ryan Trecartin is a good friend of yours, and his new video Sibling Topics (Section A and Section B), 2009, is in Generational: Younger Than Jesus at the New Museum. Did you check out the opening or the show yet?

RL: We haven't checked it out yet. I really want to get over there soon. I hear it's a good show!

PS: Ok I need to go too. Let's do that soon. So what's next for Mirror Mirror?

RL: A new EP of 4 songs titled Oddfellows scheduled to come out in the Fall. It's very funkadelic, upbeat, colorful... but also a little creepy and offbeat. We're also having a SAIC show at Momenta Art in Brooklyn and we're going to tour in Europe in the summer.

PS: I'm there! Thanks guys, can't wait to see you around again soon.

*All photos by Paul Mpagi Sepuya except first photo which is by Anne Hall.