This past February, I had the honor of being invited to a press screening of River of Fundament, the new cinematic opera/operatic film by Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler. After the screening—and a couple days to digest the spectacle—I sat down with Jenna Crowder of The Chart to discuss the film. That conversation (edited for coherence) is now available in the March issue of The Chart.

“You become a part of the universe as a whole. So if you’re going to talk about that, you need to acknowledge that sex is a big part of existence. And just the same way that there’s all these different cultures represented, you can’t talk about universal rebirth and only have white guys in America. You miss your own point in doing that. It has to be multicultural. It has to be from the most beautiful compositions and beautiful parts of nature to people covered in shit licking each other’s assholes. You can’t have one without the other.”

River of Fundament will be screening at the Portland Museum of Art, April 1st-3rd.