Harmony Korine and his Miami-based media collective EDGLRD recently touched down in Tokyo to unveil their latest visual experiment AGGRO DR1FT.

GATA Magazine’s editor-in-chief Marta Espinosa was there to interview the man himself.

It’s 8 PM and people are running around in preparation for the EDGLRD party at WWW Shibuya. I’m waiting for the sound check to finish in order to interview Harmony Korine, but I’ve heard he’s not a fan of interviews and he often likes to joke during them. Will he catch me off guard? I run into him on the staircase, we move to the green room and decide to just let myself get carried away..

AGGRO DR1FT projection at WWW Tokyo. Photo by Jun Yokohama. Courtesy of EDGLRD.

Marta: It's a pleasure to meet you. I've been a fan of Gummo, for a very long time since I watched it for the first time, when I was 15.

Harmony: Oh, wow, I ruined you.

Marta: So yesterday I watched AGGRO DR1FT and it was amazing.

Harmony: Thank you. Thank you.

Marta: I think you’re bringing cinema to the next level. It’s one of the best things I’ve watched for a long time. There was one part of the movie where BO’s wife was leaning over the bed and I was like “Yes we’re going to see some psychedelic, and colourful sex”, but we didn’t right—so I was curious have you ever considered adding any sexually explicit scenes in your movies?

Harmony: It’s tricky you know. It’s a tricky thing. In some ways, violence is easier to explore and less taboo than sexual stuff. In this film, I didn't really think about doing that. But there have been movies or things that I thought of, that you know could get into that more—it would have to be something specific, or it just becomes porn.

Marta: If there was like no censorship would you be down to do it?

Harmony: I mean, if there was no censorship…gosh, I can't even imagine. The world would be so different.

Marta: I’ve never been to Miami, it seems like a pretty wild jungle; are the people in Miami walking around with guns and knives?

Harmony: Well yes, in Florida in general there are a lot of weapons, but really in the south, we grew up with them so there's nothing taboo about it. It's really part of the culture. Most everyone I know has an arsenal of guns.

Marta: Wow. That's so crazy. Recently I was shooting a gun in Korea and I was shaking.

Harmony: You’re a friend of Gaspar [Noe], right? Did he ever tell you about the time I took him shooting?

Marta: I saw the video you guys filmed in Tennessee right?

Harmony: He was actually really amazing, like a marksman. It was the first time he shot a real gun. I couldn’t believe it. He was much better than me already. He was like a natural killer.

Marta: Maybe he is! haha. Was the knife fight in AGGRO DR1FT real?

Harmony: It was. I mean they weren't like cutting themselves, they weren't really trying to kill each other.

Marta: The bad guy, Toto. He was using a katana. Were you inspired by anime?

Harmony: Yeah. Anime, and It just felt like it was part of his character [laughs].

Marta: So cool. I loved that part.

Harmony: Yeah, when he’s humping the air and saying “Dance bitches! Dance bitch, dance!”

Marta: He is really good. He had that Trash Humpers “old man” mask on right?

Harmony: Let me think what that [was]. I think we actually built that digital. We created that, it’s like an avatar that they created using special effects.

Marta: I haven’t had psychedelic drugs yet… If you could compare AGGRO DR1FT to any drug trip what would you compare it to?

Harmony: Probably something like Molly maybe, but there are probably elements of acid a little bit in there or amphetamine.

Marta: In some of your interviews you mentioned that AGGRO DR1FT, is like a visual language that has come to look more like someone’s dream rather than a movie. I’m personally fascinated by dreams, I write them down not to forget them. Do dreams play any role in your creative process? Do you ever create something that you saw in a dream?

Harmony: Well there are lucid dreams, that are just like something that are closer to like imagination, Which is really like how deep you can go with your thoughts…I have a very deep, explicit imagination, so I can within my mind…lose myself, it happens all the time, all day.

So then there are dreams when you like sleep, and those dreams I don’t remember. So one of the things that we are developing at EDGLRD is a tech, that is called a dream machine; which basically is something that you attach to your brain that allows you to download your dreams in the morning.

Harmony Korine and Reid Waters at WWW Shibuya. Photo by Jun Yokohama. Courtesy of EDGLRD.

Marta: Visually?

Harmony: It illustrates them, so you wake up and it will be illustrated. We're like very very close to releasing it. We've been working on it for almost two years. It's called the dream box. But it like basically allows you to download your dreams.

Marta: I would love to try that one day because there was a time when I had nightmares every single night.

Harmony: And essentially with nightmares, you can actually now see the illustrations.

Marta: Wow, I hope it comes out soon. What is the craziest dream you had that you remember?

Harmony: Mmm, I don’t even know, they are all in the movies, they are all in the films.

How often are substances taken on your sets?

Harmony: I mean I haven’t taken any substances at all in like 20 years. Nothing. But when I was younger, I definitely, you know…

Marta: Because I remember in Gummo, there was one scene where Tummler and Solomon are laying down and they have a bag of glue, they looked so high..

Harmony: I was never really personally a glue sniffer, although I went one summer to a sailing camp, I wanted to learn how to sail and all of the kids there were sniffing Wite-Out. We would put it in bags and then pass out by the side of the boat.

Tummler and Solomon high on glue in *Gummo* (1997)

Marta: Let’s talk about video games. Which games have you been playing recently and who are you playing them with?

Harmony: I’m playing Fortnite, Call of Duty, Rainbow Six Siege, Elden Ring, HELLDIVERS. All of these guys at EDGLRD are super gamers and my son Hank is like a real gamer, so I’m always like around it.

Marta: Imagine one day you wake up and you’re in a video game. What would your avatar look like? Would you look like you or would you take the chance and change your appearance? Like for instance, would you be like an Asian, fat guy?

Harmony: Asian fat? Yeah sure [laughs]. I would definitely have like a cool skin. I don’t know what it would be. It would be something very masculine, muscles, demonic, [wearing] a codpiece.

Marta: If you could design a video game, what would it be like?

Harmony: We’re making games right now. We’ve got this one called Leprechauns vs Yakuza, it’s about these leprechauns that invade Shibuya and fight the Yakuza. Red hair versus Asian.

Marta: Does it come out soon?

Harmony: In three weeks on the PS5.

Marta: I know that you are no longer interested in cinema, but that you research a lot about AI, video games, technology. Is there anyone or anything you've discovered recently that has impressed you, and that we should know about?

Harmony: Gosh. I see so many, but it’s like the ones that are really exciting, I have no idea who really makes them.

Marta: Where do you find them?

Harmony: Just mostly, different platforms, TikTok, X or anything that people send or find, but constantly like every day I see something that I can’t believe.

Marta: I want to talk about AI because it’s so interesting. You can do anything with it. It’s a tool where you can create a photo, you can copy someone’s voice. A lot of people are scared of it, we sometimes make posts about AI and people criticise us because they are scared it’s going to take someone’s job. What’s your view on AI?

Harmony: I think it's the most exciting technology, maybe ever. I’m excited for humans to try to transcend form. I actually hope that we can become something else. This idea of transhumanism, of evolving into machines, I’m excited by it. I actually just wish I could live long enough to actually see it become something…

Marta: I believe that humans will destroy the world at some point and live in a Blade Runner world. Will you be ready for it?

Harmony: Of course. I’m ready. I’m already ready. I don’t think any of it is real anyway. I think it’s all fake.

Marta: I remember you did something with Chris Cunningham, called Mitch Poppins.

Harmony: Oh wow, you know about that?

Marta: It never came out right?

Harmony: Chris and I made a full movie called Mitch Poppins about a guy with Tourettes syndrome but he turns it into like a break dance move. And each move has a sound. It’s about a tourist who gets lost, comes to London, and gets lost trying to find Madame Tussauds. So it’s about his adventure trying to find Madame Tussauds but getting locked in his extreme Tourettes and he hangs out in clubs and ends up in this weird, gay, party town. In the end I think Chris for whatever reason got scared by it, and something didn’t work out.

Marta: Oh wow, so it will never see the light?

Harmony: You can never say never, it exists, so…I’ve talked to him over the years so, maybe at some point…We shot it all with hidden cameras, it was done 20 years ago.

Marta: Is he still doing stuff? I haven’t heard from him for so long.

Harmony: He is a mystery…he is around, he lives in LA, but yeah…

Marta: He was one of the coolest when I was a teenager.

Harmony: Yeah he is great.

Marta: Okay, almost done. Imagine it’s 2099 and someone stumbles upon your grave. What’s written on your tombstone?

Harmony: It would just say “Deez Nuts” and just like a big glob of testicles, swinging in the wind.

Marta: And the last one, we saw that you were hanging out with Hideo Kojima, can you give us a sneak peak of what’s happening?

Harmony: I can’t really say yet, because it’s still really happening. But he’s like a hero, he’s one of the greats, a legend and hopefully, we’ll have something exciting.

Marta: Cool, that’s it, are you ready for tonight?

Harmony: I am always ready, these nuts are always swinging on.

Marta: That’s it, thank you so much Harmony.

Harmony: My pleasure [He gives me a high five]. Good one!

Interview by Marta Espinosa

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DEEZ NUTS! - A GATA MAGAZINE INTERVIEW WITH HARMONY KORINE