notes from the lair of the beast
beasties Kristina Wilson Kristiina Wilson is an NYC based fashion photographer. You can also see her work in magazines such as Let Them Eat Cake, Atypica, Blink, H, Deleted Scenes, Highlights and Stimuli. Recently she has shot campaigns for Lacrasia, Marimekko, Monique Pean and Peter Soronen. Page 92.
Eric Hason Brooklyn native Eric Hason loves taking pictures, looking at pictures and talking about pictures. When not involved with his photography you can find him enjoying friends and family, relaxing at the beach, or tending his brand new compost pile. Eric cannot sing or play piano to save his life, but that does not stop him from trying. He shot Liquid Sky, inspired by Russian émigré Slava Tsukerman’s eponymous cult film, for this ‘East Sides’ issue. Page 82.
Slumming it in New York’s East Village after university, I assumed — like many in the emerging east sides of global cities do — that its geographic marker was only a historical accident. The reasons for the West Village being wealthier and more bourgeois than the East never crossed our minds. East was where it was exciting, creative & cheap, and we were proud to claim it as our own. Publishing B EAST Magazine for over ten issues, we’ve come to realise though that it’s not just New York’s art scene that is skewed towards the rising sun. East Berlin, East Prague, East Warsaw — and even East London — have similar vibes, with edgy artists and hipsters gravitating towards the grittier, low-rent working-class suburbs of major cities.
Ian Ritterskamp “Do you mind playing dead?” young German photographer Ian Ritterskamp asked his elderly neighbour Frau Fitschie while filming her for a videowork. Amazingly, the grumpy old woman obliged. The result is the eerie photograph on page 40. Ritterskamp studied at Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie, and is currently a motion designer for MTV Germany.
Magdalena Nowak Our new Warsaw B EAST is Magdalena Nowak, a 23-year old student who lived in Poland’s capital for a year during an Erasmus escape. We met her while on holiday in Estonia, where she told us all about Warsaw’s love/ hate relationship with it’s eastern suburb Praga. “Quit talking about it and start writing!” we told her, and so she did. Check out her Praga profile on page 72.
Khan of Finland (www.khanoffinland.com) If Prince were living in Berlin, he’d sound like half Finnish-half-Turkish Khanski, whose solo performances of sensual, ironic 80s-influenced electro music, with a cabaret twist, have won criticial acclaim and spurred his gypsy lifestyle. Based in Berlin, he travels constantly, both performing and seeking new inspirations. Having lived in East Berlin for many years, he finally decided to move out. His funny essay ‘Leaving the West’ is his farewell to the district. Page 40.
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The reason, as editor Joel Alas writes in his essay on ‘How the East Was Won’ is the wind. To paraphrase Dylan, ‘The answer, fellow B-easts, is blowing in the wind.’ Since the wind in Europe and America mostly blows from west to east due to the rotation of the earth, city planners during the industrial revolution built factories in the east so that the toxic air would blow away from the city, further eastwards… For the rich in their villas in the West, Kipling’s maxim that ‘East and West, never the twain shall meet’ suited them just fine. The legacy of industrialization and global wind patters is the industrial, arty/ underground east sides of cities. While East Europe was slow to jump on the bandwagon, the east sides of their cities are now seen as more dynamic and countercultural than the rest. For this special issue, we interview Czech artist David Cerny, whose mutant baby sculptures crawling up Prague’s TV Tower resonate with the gritty mystique of its Zizkov suburb above the river. Warsaw’s Praga (not to be confused with Prague), which is on the other side of the river and was a no-go zone for many years, is now bustling with atmospheric bars, lofts, artist spaces, and vodka distilleries turned into art galleries and performance spaces. We interview zany performance art group 3 Boys Move, and take our readers on a hip tour of Praga. Just in the last five years, East London has eclipsed Notting Hill and Portobello Road as the ‘in’ neighborhood for the alternative crowd. We present young East European photographers based there for the issue, and will be doing regular updates on our website, www.beastnation.com from the East’s new frontier in London. As the magazine gains more of a transatlantic audience, we bring you two fashion stories from East Brooklyn, one of which is inspired by ‘Liquid Sky’, an 80s cult film about aliens feeding on junkies, directed by Russian émigré Slava Tsukerman.
Maisie Hitchcock Germans have a new-found obsession with “Ostalgia,” the rose-coloured remembrance of the former GDR. Maisie Hitchcock has caught a bad dose of it as well. She's a lively Londoner who now lives in Berlin researching all things East German. Her feature-length radio documentary on GDR DJs was the basis for her first story for B EAST, and her next project will be a profile on the GDR's state artist or ‘court painter’, the much maligned Walter Womacka. Page 68.
Busy building our web portal to the region, and organising events across Europe, we took a bit longer than usual putting this issue together. The global downturn has had its impact, but we’re pushing ahead with our December issue despite the credit squeeze. Meanwhile, log onto our website and check out B EAST parties in your area. We’re starting a ‘Nasty, Nasty’ party series in Riga; and organising another one in cooperation with Budapest’s Kollektiva. Zatim,
Vijai Maheshwari Editor-in-Chief