Natasha Stagg considered calling her latest book ‘Name Dropping’ – something she refers to in the introduction as “one of my favourite pastimes, you’ll see”. Real-life encounters with Sarah Jessica Parker, Vincent Gallo, and Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel are indeed sprinkled throughout the book, although in the end she opted for Artless, a title she decided on with her editor – Chris Kraus of Semiotext(e) – since most of the essays in the book were about art.
But to conclude that Artless is only about art, or celebrity, would be limiting. New York is arguably the main character; since leaving her hometown of Tucson, Arizona after college, Stagg has emerged as a wry, singular chronicler of the city’s illustrious downtown scene (her previous book of essays, Sleeveless, documented New York’s fashion and art scenes throughout the 2010s, while her first novel, 2016’s Surveys, was about an influencer’s ascent to fame). A followup to Sleeveless, Artless comprises dispatches from New York’s fashion, art and nightlife scenes between 2019 and 2023 (some of the essays first appeared in Spike, Artforum and Buffalo Zine), along with Stagg’s discerning thoughts and observations on cancel culture, celebrity, social media, branding, online dating, gentrification, and the pandemic. Referencing Marguerite Duras’s 1990 book Practicalities in her introduction, Stagg writes, “At most the book represents what I think sometimes, some days, about some things.” To simply call these ’thoughts’ is deceiving – free-flowing and associative, the essays in the book will make you re-evaluate mundane things like texting, shopping malls and corporations as vessels for complex societal meaning.
Fans of Joan Didion, Eve Babitz, Cookie Mueller – and even Roland Barthes, although Stagg always keeps her cultural theory accessible – will enjoy Artless for its gossipy, idiosyncratic snapshot of the New York zeitgeist and wider cultural mood. Stagg is at her best when writing about how we behave on the internet, dissecting algorithms, the attention economy, and explaining why “relationships mostly take place in texts”. But, in 2020 she quit Instagram, and smoking too, something she calls “such a huge part of my personality”. Considering that so much of her writing delves into the online world, how is she faring without it? “You can quit things. It can be done,” she says. “I’m learning something about myself with this.” For now, Stagg can be found on her Substack, Selling Out, or in print.
Below, Natasha Stagg tells us more about Artless.
Violet Conroy: Tell me about the title of the new book, Artless?
Natasha Stagg: It was sort of a joke. Sleeveless didn’t really mean anything either; Chris Kraus and I went through a lot of names for that book, but she said the word sleeveless was nice. Artless is the follow-up book, and lots of the essays ended up being about art. The title is a double entendre because it’s like ‘without art’, but also artless doesn’t actually mean that, so it’s kind of clumsy. And I feel like the book is a little bit clumsy, in a good way.
VC: That reminds me of the part in the book where you say you aspire to be more careless in your writing.
NS: I do aspire to be more careless, even in daily life. I’m always down on myself for not being serious enough as a writer, because when I talk to serious writers they write every day, and I’m like ugh, I’ve never done that. Am I really a writer? But when I look at the books that I get the most enjoyment from, they don’t feel that serious. They give the sense that somebody took notes on their phone and then turned it into a book.
VC: You write in all these different modes: press releases, ad copywriting, magazine journalism. Which way of writing is most important to you?
NS: I guess the jobs that pay me more are more important. I need money all the time – who doesn’t … am I selling out by writing in a certain way or for certain people? What’s the difference between what I do and content creation, or advertising myself, instead of advertising for other people? I think these lines that we draw have become so blurry that it creates a very interesting tension between what counts as serious work and not.
I think everything you write has a purpose, and if you understand the purpose and the audience, you shouldn’t veer too far from what its intention is. I would like to be good at writing ad copy, writing press releases and writing articles in all their correct ways, but then also be able to experiment and expand the form.
“Fashion is pointless. It’s just selling an idea to people who are stupid enough to think that that would change their life. And it obviously doesn’t” – Natasha Stagg
VC: I loved this line in the book where you say, “I love brands like I love people. Brands protect me when they pay me.” Tell me more about that?
NS: I’ve always loved branding. I don’t tire of it. It’s such a simple concept, but at the same time, I’m like, isn’t it insane? We look at a logo and get a feeling from that, and it’s not the shape or look of the logo, the organisation itself is symbolic. It’s just a bunch of people in an office. Now, brands are people and people are brands. The way it keeps morphing and the way we use the word brand … it’s such a large word. In this kind of basic, dumb way, I've always loved it.
In the 90s, T-shirt ads for the United colours of Benetton, Diesel or Fiorucci were beautiful scenes with people having fun. And it was just so honest, in a way, about what branding is. It’s like: do you want to be beautiful and have fun and like, have sex? Here’s a photo of that, and here’s our brand. And it worked because people are easily persuaded by that image.
VC: Some of the book feels quite cynical about the fashion industry. What’s your view of that world?
NS: I think I’ll never not love fashion, for better or worse. But I texted a group chat yesterday: ‘I hate fashion, when will it end?’ And everybody was like, ‘No, you don’t!’ But sometimes I do truly hate it. I don’t want to call anybody out because they’re my potential employers, but just the stupidity of fashion campaigns being so the same thing over and over again ... at some point, we’ve seen everything.
It did feel like maybe there was a peak when everybody was like, here’s some people being sexy in a T-shirt. That was the peak because it was admitting that none of this does anything for anyone. Fashion is pointless. It’s just selling an idea to people who are stupid enough to think that that would change their life. And it obviously doesn’t. Fashion can’t change anybody’s life. It’s not as easy as ‘fashion helps you express yourself‘. I don’t think that’s accurate.
VC: There’s quite a few celebrity encounters in the book, with cameos from Sarah Jessica Parker, Vincent, Gallo and more. What interests you about the notion of celebrity?
NS: They’re not like us – they have different lives, and they’re being scrutinised in ways that we are not – and so I’m interested in what that creates in a person. I’ve always been interested in the ‘celebrity encounter’, and how people will meet a celebrity and then tell you about it, and then they realise halfway through their story that it isn’t really a story, so they have to come up with this idea behind it like, ‘Well, and they were a huge bitch to me!’ I’ve always been enamoured with that basic paparazzi image where someone is walking down the street, and they can’t see because there’s flashing lights around them. It’s a strange way to live, I’m sure.
“[Celebrities are] not like us – they have different lives, and they’re being scrutinised in ways that we are not – and so I’m interested in what that creates in a person” – Natasha Stagg
VC: Do you ever get scared writing about people who are still alive, like Vincent Gallo?
NS: I just do it, and I am totally afraid of what they’re gonna say. [Laughs.]. I’m not in touch with Vincent Gallo anymore, not for any particular reason, it was just a strange period of time and it’s over now, I guess. But I actually remember he once said that he’s never read a book in his life. So I hope that that’s true, and that he continues.
VC: You talk about how self-publishing your own life in real-time is expected from everyone, not just writers anymore. What do you think it is about our current culture that encourages such a high level of narcissism?
NS: We’re being asked to represent ourselves constantly. It’s very scary to think about for too long … it feels like it’s not going anywhere pleasant. But it just happened this way with the advent of the internet. We were like, what can we do with this thing? We’ll make little tiny newspapers that advertise our lives every day, each individual person can be their own press machine. I think that was instinctive to everyone. I guess we had the precedent – we had newspapers – and then we made the internet in that image.
VC: Are online and IRL relationships equally valid?
NS: Yeah, they’re definitely equally valid. They have different components to them, but you can definitely have a very fulfilling relationship that isn’t face-to-face. It just has a different flavour. It could feel more romantic. It’s like letter writing, you attach more meanings to each word.
VC: I noticed that you’re still off Instagram. Or maybe you have a burner account?
NS: I don’t have a burner account. I haven’t gotten a flip phone, which I feel like a lot of people are doing right now. I keep seeing people at parties with flip phones. I don’t have Instagram, I don’t have any social media other than a Substack, and I barely write on that anymore. It seemed like a good way to make money, and then it actually wasn’t. Because I would have to have social media to promote it, basically.
VC: Why did you decide to go off social media in the first place?
NS: I just think it has become too professional. It’s boring to me to see people only advertise things. It’s like I’m channel surfing and it’s all commercials – that’s how it felt. I don’t want that to be my go-to distraction. Maybe I would rather my go-to distraction be a book or a movie, you know?
VC: How long have you been off Instagram now?
NS: I think I stopped in 2020. I’m learning something about myself with this. I also quit smoking a year ago and I really thought that I would never do that. You can quit things. It can be done. It was such a huge part of my personality, I actually miss it.
VC: Obviously smoking is bad, but I think it actually leads to so many things.
NS: I think so too. It leads to relationships. I feel like people my age, lots of my friends who were big smokers are quitting. And now everyone just vapes. But then you still have some smokers.
Artless: Stories 2019 - 2023 by Natasha Stagg is published by Semiotext(e), and is out now.
