Art & Creativity Quote by Ikue Mori

Ikue Mori is mapping a scene the way musicians actually do: not by pinning labels on people, but by triangulating vibes, motives, and economies. When she says “Mars is really different, into art,” she’s not just praising DNA’s Arto Lindsay or Richard Hell-adjacent weirdness; she’s signaling a lineage of downtown New York where “art” is both an aesthetic and a refusal of rock’s usual masculinity and polish. Then she pivots: “Lydia Lunch is more energy.” That’s a beautiful downgrade, almost affectionate. Lunch’s power wasn’t formal innovation so much as voltage: intensity as a compositional principle.

“James Chance is more commercial in a different way, in funk and jazz” is the quote’s slyest move. “Commercial” here isn’t an insult; it’s a recognition that borrowing groove languages (funk, jazz) creates an immediate interface with the body. In the No Wave mythology, purity is supposed to be the point, but Mori acknowledges the hustle: even the avant-garde negotiates with accessibility, with tradition, with dance floors.

The generosity lands in the final turn: “They were all doing original things… I think they’re all great.” In a scene famous for gatekeeping and scorched-earth polemics, Mori refuses the ranking impulse. Subtext: originality isn’t a single track; it’s a set of strategies. Her taxonomy honors difference without turning it into rivalry, and it quietly frames No Wave not as a monolith of nihilism, but as a crowded room of distinct urgencies trying to invent new rules fast enough to live inside them.