His real name is Ernest, he is a musician, an artist, a prankster, and a film maker. He lives in downtown Los Angeles and was blamed for a High School massacre that pre-dates the Columbine killings. He proudly boasts of putting the "sick" in music and the "harm" in harmony, and apparently likes small people because they take up less space. Welcome to the strange and beautiful world of Ego Plum.

Your current exhibit features a picture of an elephant being hung by the neck, how did you first hear about this?

Actually, I first heard about it through Carl, the guy who runs the California Institute of Abnormal Arts, he lent me a book that mentions the hanging of the elephant. After that I started doing some research and I even spoke to a woman whose Grandfather was a witness to the hanging. So, just to give you a little background, the year is 1916, the town is Erwin, Tennessee. There was a circus called the Spark circus that was coming into town and this elephant called Mary had trampled and killed a trainer. As the circus was coming in the town actually found out there was a killer elephant and they said the circus couldn't stop there and do the show and the word was getting around that Mary the elephant was in the circus and they were going to lose all their sites for setting up shows. They were actually in a town called Kingsport which is 30 miles from Erwin and they were trying to find a way to get rid of the elephant. They considered electrocution and they considered shooting it but there were no guns big enough, but in Erwin there was a train yard with a 70 ton crane that was used for moving box cars around. So they took the elephant down to Erwin and a crowd of about 4000 people gathered because they made an announcement that they were actually going to hang the elephant, and basically they put a chain around her neck and lifted her up for 30 minutes. Children, women and adults just watched, nobody said anything. It's really one of the shames of this town and they pretend that it never happened, and the spot where the elephant is buried isn't even marked, but it's still there to this day.

You seem to have an obsession with Oksana Baiul, the Ukrainian ice skater. How did that come about?

A lot of my work is based on certain obsessions I develop that usually don't make sense at the time and are difficult to explain. I try to understand it but it's just the way I work creatively, things will just pop up out of everyday life that will just grab my attention and that will be what I'll focus on. And it works well for me, it's almost like an obsessive compulsion that I have and that's the way I'm able to create. Just about a month ago I made a discovery, one of my favourite artists, Salvador Dali, had this theory he called "Critical Paranoia" which was a technique he used to create artwork, where he would take an everyday setting and focus on one detail. For instance, he was obsessed with the area on Adolf Hitlers' face right between his nose and his top lip so he made a whole landscape that was just focussed on that area of Hitlers' face and somehow in that he found a whole landscape of ideas. When I read that I felt- I don't know if it was a sense of relief or just a sense of I think I am doing the right thing, because if someone that I idolise, like Dali, had the same sort of idea then I must be on the right track.

So where do you find all your pictures?

I've been collecting images like this for years. I really can't explain what attracts me to a certain image, there's just a feeling you get when you look at something and it's just like "I've got to have this!" I've collected tons of images, either I buy them at auctions or I find them in magazines. A lot of them I've modified slightly, mostly blocking out the eyes, and that's just part of an aesthetic that I like, I look at the censorship as an aesthetic.

Surely you don't agree with censorship?

No, but I like using it because it raises certain questions, like "Why? Why would you censor this image?" This one here especially (referring to a picture of a woman with 3 breasts), it's clearly an oddity yet the breasts and the eyes are censored. What really made me think about that was that someone sent me some Japanese pornography from the Internet. Now, this woman is in a bathtub, on her back, bent over with her ankles by her head, and she's having a bowel movement that is shooting up into the air like a geyser and landing on her face. But, what is more disturbing than the fact that this shit is coming out and landing on her face is that her vagina is blurred out, it's pixellated. Now I'm looking at this really shocking image and I'm thinking the vagina is pixellated so some people won't be offended! I mean it's so insane, and I actually love that, in an artistic sense, I love that concept of why would you censor something like that.

What is your favourite picture?

Over here (points to a ballerina girl), I call this the "Prettiest Girl in the World." Carl was telling me that he walked past and looked at the picture for several days before he actually realised that she only has one arm. Yeah, that's really what's so beautiful about it, and I just love how she looks and her confidence.

All this work is from last year, what are you doing at the moment?

One of my current projects is i'm looking at cockfighting.

Isn't that a weird thing for a vegan to want to do?

I don't support animal cruelty. But I am quite aware of the cultural significance of cockfighting around the world and thus fascinated by the "sport." My great grandfather with a cock fighter in Mexico. It is often looked at as a third-world phenomena but its importance cannot be denied even in America. Do you know why Abraham Lincoln was nicknamed "Honest Abe?" Not for his bravery and courage in the face of a divided country or for his roll in ending slavery. It was over his great reputation as a fair judge of cockfights. The wi;lful acceptance by many people of such bizarre acts of barbarism, like cockfighting or the hanging of elephants, are an endless source of fascination and inspiration to me. Especially in the case of someone like Abraham Lincoln, who despite his progressive thinking and profound wisdom, could actually spew this convoluted titbit of rationalization:

"As long as God permits intelligent man, created in his own image, to fight in public and kill each other while the world looks on, it's not for me to deprive the chickens of the same freedom"

I have managed to gain entry in to the illegal world of cockfighting in California. Yet I will not be there to cast judgement on these individuals, but to document a fight in sound and vision and collect some cinematic truth. I hope to capture what I consider the beauty of brutality through perspectives that have never been witnessed before on the screen: a miniature spy camera placed on a rooster, views directly from above looking down on the fight, and macro-zoomed perspectives that will show a cock fight from the inside out. The end result will be a slow-motion kaleidoscope of feathers, dirt, beaks, blood, cheers and taunts that will swirl with the fury of a tornado yet be as graceful and elegant as a ballet. In about a year, I will showcase this work as a video and photographic installation in a gallery.

What else?

Let's see if I can describe this. I want to do a photo of a photographer down on his knees with one of those old fashioned cameras that looks like an accordion, and he's taking a picture of this glorious ostrich that is mounted by a Klansman in full robes.

That is a bizarre image.

Right, right. So the photo I'm doing is actually of the photographer setting up this picture of the ostrich with the Klansman on top. I've found the ostrich farm already and I'm getting close to getting this done. It is difficult though because it's one of those things, like I said, there is this sort of obsessive compulsiveness which is the only way I can get this done. I have this picture in my head, so it starts with the image already done and then it's just logistics really, how do I make this happen, and it doesn't just end at an idea, I have to get it done. There are a lot of dangers involved because ostriches are really dangerous so I've been doing research on what does it take to have someone hold an ostrich and ride on top of it, which actually does happen, people do ride ostriches. There is a whole technique, two people have to catch it and then you put a little sack over it's head so that it calms down and it can't see what's going on, then you get into position. The person has to get on top and hold on really tight to the wings so there is only going to be a few moments when I can get this photograph. I think the process itself is more fascinating than the final product.

You should get somebody videoing you taking the photo.

That would be interesting, you're right. Those are some of the things that I'm working on right now so, maybe by the end of the year, next time I do a show, there will be a lot of stuff dealing with fowl, the ostrich, the cock fighting as well as different elements of racism.

Racism..?

Yeah, another thing I find fascinating too is that during the slavery era there were all these terms- like if you were one half black you were mulatto, and it goes on to the 1/32. There are some images that I am working on that go through the different phases, almost in a children's story book sort of way. So you'll have little rabbits, like Hello Kitty style rabbits, and you'll have them together and it will say something like "This plus this equals Octoroon," so it's like a children's story book teaching different categories of racism. It's kinda absurd, but also kinda interesting.

How is the Ebola Music Orchestra going?

We had a great show here a couple of weeks ago, with a dozen musicians and it was nice to have this whole place filled up with people to hear instrumental music. We had a couple of guests who came up and sang with us, a German woman who sung one of my songs in Spanish and then I had another girl come out and sung a song in sign language. I introduced it as "Our next guest is going to sing, in what I think is, the most beautiful language in the world." And people were thinking it was in French or something, and she comes on stage and is just... silent, just signing this story that I wrote. I personally think that was one of the highlights of the show.

Sounds like a great show.

It was. During the last song Bridget the Midget, the infamous porn star, had about a bottle of vodka and was completely out of it, she came out on stage and she was holding onto my leg and biting me in the knee while I was trying to play the melodica. So I'm trying to play the song and shake her off of my leg at the same time, and she was just in her underwear and we were all dressed in suits, it was quite interesting.

Didn't your drummer used to play for James Brown and George Clinton?

Yeah, Kurt. Kurt is amazing, he's really small because he has a degenerative bone disease but he is the most confident member of the band and he played the last gig just wearing a thong. That's really what I admire most is that sort of confidence, you know, we're all able bodied and Kurt doesn't give a shit about what anybody thinks and just comes out wearing his underwear. I'm more self conscious than he is.

How do you deal with critics who say you are exploiting people with disabilities?

It's hard, I don't know what I can do to justify what I'm doing, I don't know what I can say in my defence. Does it help that there were 3 or 4 people in wheelchairs in the audience? Does it help that some of the people in the band are disabled and they're my friends? Can you really say that? It sounds like a cop out. It's like they say Howard Stern is racist but he has a black co-host so they can't use that on him. So I don't like to say that, you know? My art and everything I'm doing is kinda cryptic, all I can do is hope that people understand what I'm doing and the ones that don't... I don't know what to do. It does make me sad sometimes, but I just can't explain everything all the time because then it takes away the confusion I want to cause and the questions I want to be raised by certain images. If you lay it down on a platter for people then it defeats the purpose. When we perform we don't explain what we're doing we just do the show, and there's no explanations for any of the art either.

Do you enjoy the fact that it winds a lot of people up? I'm not saying that you do this deliberately, but do you enjoy the outcome?

You know, at one point I thought I did, I thought I'd really enjoy the shock value, just for the sake of it, but I realise that I don't, it hurts. I believe in what I'm doing, and that it is something positive, it made me realise that no, I don't like negative comments. I deal with them because I have to, and a lot of the stuff I'm doing is controversial and raises a lot of questions, and it's only going to get worse with my interest in the cock fighting thing and all that. But I like people to like me. I guess I'm not too jaded yet, and I have a lot of faith in people still. And I'm inspired by the support I do receive and the e-mails I get from people that think that what I am doing is very humane and challenging.

In May 1998 Kip Kinkel, a student of Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon killed both his parents and then went to school and murdered 2 pupils and injured 25 others. The press made a big deal about the fact that one of the hobbies he listed on his web site was listening to the music of Ego Plum, and your website started receiving a thousand hits a day. So, how did he get into your music in the first place?

I don't know, I don't know.

So he's never been in touch with you?

No, I've never met him or talked to him. I really want to know if it was true, if he really knew me. It was a little frightening to be honest, it came all of a sudden, all my friends were calling me "You're on the news... you're on television... you're in BIG trouble.," so it was a lot to swallow. I can't lie and say it was great or that I loved it. I got some death threats and a lot of hate mail.

It seems that is the kind of publicity you just can't buy.

That is the truth, but once you have it you realise...

It's not the kind of publicity you would buy in the first place.

Right, right, you know, I got people wanting to kill me, people wanted to kick my ass. I actually have these e-mails saved, they're great to read.

And it's always the music that gets the blame.

Of course, and on top of that instrumental music?

As a musician, what do you think of Napster?

I go there, sometimes, to search for my stuff and I'll find kids that have my music on there, so I'll write to them and go "Hey! It's me!" (laughs) and they won't answer me.

They just go "Yeah, right!"

Yeah! Friends of mine go on and talk to these people because I'm always fascinated, you know, someone likes your music you want to know them, you want to know who it is. So friends of mine will go on and chat with people on Napster using the Instant Message facility and they'll ask them "Hey, what do you know about Ego Plum?" and they will reply "Oh, he's great. Isn't he a Satanist?" All these different perceptions of what you're doing are floating around, you can't control it, so I have a fanbase of people who like me because they think I'm a Satanist! I don't even know where that one came from, but what can you do about it?

Looking on the website you have a lot of influences from music and film, like Oingo Boingo, Tim Burton, XTC, John Waters etc. Anything more recent?

Yes, film wise, Harmony Korine, he's probably one of the artists I can relate to most right now. He's my age, he's 26, his films, they are looked at as bleak but I don't think that's what he's trying to get at. Again, he's another guy that's seen as exploiting people with disabilities and in his perspective he's trying to portray reality, that's one guy I wish I could talk to and get to know. I think my music is more influenced by visuals or certain scenes from films. I like a lot of punk rock, but mostly it's old stuff.

Didn't you once play drums for the Buzzcocks?

Yeah, when they played in L.A. about 5 years ago. Their drummer hurt his hand, something happened and he couldn't finish their set and Pete Shelley says "Is there a drummer in the house?" and I was with a bunch of friends and they all pointed at me and so I went up and did "Boredom," the last song, so that was a lot of fun. So then, a few days later we went to see the Buzzcocks again in San Diego and Pete Shelley was completely wasted. After the show he got in our Jeep, we were driving him around, and we took him to his hotel and a surreal moment happened, I was listening to the Buzzcocks on my tape and he's singing along to the song I'm listening to. It was amazing, one of those things you never forget.

What's the music scene like in Los Angeles?

People are so jaded, you know, everyone is in a band in L.A. and every night there's 50 bands playing in 20 different clubs and everybody has an attitude, they keep their arms crossed while they watch you play, it's so bitter and negative. It's really tough in L.A. I guess we're different because what I'm doing, I don't associate myself with any music scene or other bands, in fact, when we played here I didn't want opening or closing bands. I want to try to separate this as much as possible from whatever music scene there is, I'm not trying to put us above it, I'm just putting us beside it, somewhere else.

Apparently you were supposed to be performing on a television show called "You Asked For It" and your set got pulled because you wanted to have a breakdancing amputee onstage with you. Is this a wind up?

Right, yeah, they weren't very happy with that.

So this is genuine?

(laughs) It's so funny, to me. They couldn't tell me in person, they left it on my answering machine, I still have it saved. They said "The higher ups at NBC were just a little bit uncomfortable with this... we're very sorry, we know you worked very hard on this project." It's a great story, it was good experience.

There is a section on your web site "The Lyrics of 7 Songs by Chuck Berry." Is this another one of your obsessions?

You know what, I think you're right, that's exactly what it is. I've been fascinated with Chuck Berry ever since I heard about this incident where he urinated into a white woman's mouth on stage, and it was caught on video. Now, this video is actually circulating, and I found it once, but the guy wanted $60 for it so I didn't buy it. Apparently, after that incident, the girl goes to give him a kiss and he tells her "Get away from me, you smell like piss!" So then, I was just reading his lyrics and I saw a pattern of, you know, this penchant for underage girls. And it was so fascinating and I thought that somebody has to do an exposé on this, and I guess it will be me. Why the news didn't pick up on it, why nobody cares, I don't know, but I do. So that's the only reason I put that on there.

Why do you do what you do?

The main reason I create the images and the music that I do is because I want to see it, I wish there was a performance group that did this. That's the only reason that I feel the need to create it because it's something I would want to see, it's self indulgent but, maybe it's supposed to be that way, maybe art is supposed to be self indulgent.