FLOOD 10 — SIDE B — Alex Honnold Version

the sustainability issue

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Jeff Bridges · Animal Collective · Swoon Local Natives · Philippe Cousteau Jr. + Michael Muller Weyes Blood · Gary Clark Jr. · Big Thief

the sustainability issue

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SMALL TALK: FLOODFEST, MARTIN FRAWLEY, PATTY CHANG, ALEXIS KRAUSS

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BREAKING: COLA BOYY, JENNIFER KENT

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FOR BIG THIEF’S ADRIANNE LENKER, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE LITTLE THINGS

20 WEYES BLOOD ISN’T AFRAID OF CLIMATE CHANGE 28 PHILIPPE COUSTEAU JR. AND MICHAEL MULLER ARE MAKING WAVES 42 LOCAL NATIVES: TURNING CHAOS INTO SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL 48 SWOON: STEADFAST AND SELF-SUSTAINING 62 ALEX HONNOLD: THE ROCK WHISPERER

FLOOD MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY FLOOD MAGAZINE LLC, 542 N. LARCHMONT BLVD., LOS ANGELES CA 90004. VOLUME 1, NUMBER 10, 2019. FLOOD MAGAZINE IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE RETURN OR LOSS OF SUBMISSIONS, OR FOR ANY DAMAGE OR OTHER INJURY TO UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS OR ARTWORK. ANY SUBMISSION OF A MANUSCRIPT OR ARTWORK SHOULD INCLUDE A SELF-ADDRESSED ENVELOPE OR PACKAGE OF APPROPRIATE SIZE, BEARING ADEQUATE RETURN POSTAGE. ©2019 FLOOD MAGAZINE LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. FLOOD IS DISTRIBUTED FOR FREE IN SELECT LOCATIONS AND AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE AT FLOODMAGAZINE.COM PRINTED IN CANADA SWOON COVER PHOTO BY TOD SEELIE / ALEX HONNOLD COVER PHOTO BY SAMUEL CROSSLEY TABLE OF CONTENTS PHOTO BY MICHAEL MULLER

NAIA IZUMI

ORIGINAL TRACKS is a monthly series, brought to you by ORIGINAL PENGUIN and FLOOD Magazine, featuring performances and interviews from some of today's most unique and talented artists.

AR M AN I WHITE AND LOUIS FUTON

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SMALL TALK

Leikeli47 Live at FLOODfest SXSW 2019 Leikeli47 was among the most talked-about performers of SXSW 2019. The deceptively diminutive rapper proved to be incredibly inspiring, blessed with the nature of a motivational life coach mixed with Lizzo’s infectious energy. Her gleeful FLOODfest set was filled with self-affirming messages and positivity. We can’t wait to see

DANIEL CAVAZOS

what she does next.

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SMALL TALK

Live from the garden Growing your own vegetables is wonderful; picking them, then taking them to the kitchen and preparing something with them is even better. I love having to go and water them after dinner. I love going out in the dark night and shining my light on the plants and seeing what they have been up to all day, then giving them a big drink. I’m currently in a pretty shitty house in between places and don’t have a great garden set up, but I do mow the lawns often and have a small seasonal garden only for my mental health.

Spending a day in the garden, getting my hands in the soil, makes me feel one with the earth, and breathing in the fresh air makes me a little more sane. I think one day I’d love to have a farm and have a huge garden with fruit trees and make my own wine.

When I’m on tour I really miss cooking. I think it’s because I find it comforting, and I can finally be in control of what I eat. When you’re in a new town night after night, you can really have some shit meals—even if you have watched every single Anthony Bourdain episode. I don’t mind eating out every night, but I hate eating shit food. I work at a health food store in Australia and because of that, I eat really well. When I don’t eat well, I feel it within days.

DANNY COHEN

— Martin Frawley of Twerps, whose solo record Undone at 31 is out now on Merge

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Bodies of water

ELON SCHOENHOLZ / ICA LA

Artist Patty Chang is a product of New York’s ’90s alternative art scene, though she now lives and works in Los Angeles; from provocative performance-video art to experimental films, Chang frequently used her own body to give audiences a visceral, challenging experience.

Organized by the Queens Museum in New York, The Wandering Lake is Chang’s most ambitious work to date, an eight-year project integrating video projection, photography, sculpture, publication, and performance— though significantly less focused on Chang’s body, and more centered around earth’s landscape as a whole. Now on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the exhibition relies on moving water as a metaphor for subjects such as gender fluidity, the internet, and climate change.

Chang is interested in humans’ relation to bodies of water and the environmental shifts that contribute to significant changes in the location, composition, and existence of those bodies. The project was partly inspired by colonial explorer Sven Hedin’s 1938 book The Wandering Lake, about a migrating body of water in the Chinese desert, which Chang visits; she also travels to the shrinking Aral Sea and views the ritual washing of a whale corpse. The work additionally delves into the death of Chang’s father and the birth of her son, the running theme being the fleeting, mercurial nature of everything.

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SMALL TALK

This land is our land

CHRIS VULTAGGIO

When Alexis Krauss isn’t inspiring people with her music, she’s inspiring them to make the world a better place. The Sleigh Bells singer is also an avid rock climber who helped spearhead Young Women Who Crush, a climbing program that teaches urban teens how to become informed and empowered outdoor leaders. Additionally, she co-founded the website Beauty Lies Truth to educate consumers on purchasing sustainable cosmetics and personal care products, and formed the Our Land Collective project with photographer Chris Vultaggio to help preserve the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.

“Collaborating with the Native communities of southern Utah for the Our Land project was one of the most transformative experiences of my life,” Krauss says. “I learned how to channel my anger into activism. Despite the ongoing struggle to protect our public lands, and Bears Ears in particular, the people who have called these ancestral lands home for generations haven’t given up. More importantly, they continue to move forward with compassion and hopes of healing.”

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BREAKING

COLA BOYY COLA BOYY HAS NO PROBLEM WITH YOU CALLING THE MUSIC ON HIS DEBUT EP “DISCO.” Mention Cola within the rich history of

dark (as you can hear on the messily obsessive “Penny Girl”), but eventually they became more wry, finding both romance and inclusivity. “Beige 70,” genre avatars like Giorgio Moroder, Cerrone, and Nile Rodgers, and you both the song and its corresponding video, is the best example of this, as feel him blushing across the distance the lyrics and images remove disco’s between cell phone towers. But when usual sense of decadence and pleasure you consider the whole of Black Boogie principles and subtly, cleverly look Neon, disco might, in fact, be too limiting through the lens of inclusion at a cast a term. of differently sized, shaped, and abled “I would not say that I’m trying people. “Thanks for noticing, as I haven’t to perfect the genre, or even replicate discussed this yet,” Urango says happily. it—quite the opposite—as much as I’m “It’s a love song about a girl at a club breaking the rules of dance music,” he whose clothes are shabby and her friends says. “I’m mixing things up: disco, ’90s are making fun of her, but it doesn’t pop and punk rock, blurring the lines, but matter to me because she’s a star. It’s in a way that is tasteful and unique.” about being judged and accepted.”

That high level of taste and panache, That acceptance carries over into to say nothing of his roots in the Mexican Cola’s imagined theme for his EP: a place sounds that are indigenous to Oxnard, where people who don’t fit in anywhere is very much present on Cola songs like else are desirable and beloved. “Like “Beige 70,” a lo-fi track as elegant as it is the club in that video, I wanted to create hypnotic. When I suggest the simplicity, an entire world within my songs where repetition, and mesmerizing quality of his all are welcome,” he says. “I wanted tracks might be connected to his youth disabled folks in the video along with as a Ramones fan, he brightens up: “Ooh, me, but in a way that wasn’t tokenizing BACKSTORY: A twenty-nine-year-old singer and multi-instrumentalist very much so,” he agrees. “My teens and them or me, and that didn’t seem unreal. whose punk-rock youth led to making spaced-out, modern disco in his bedroom for SoundCloud—all while maintaining his activist political early twenties found me deeply involved I didn’t want it to be tasteless or fucked roots and living life with spina bifida in the punk scene in Oxnard. It shaped up or have any weird moments for FROM: Oxnard, California me. Not just the music—that scene was anyone. We’re normal people. It shouldn’t YOU MIGHT KNOW HIM FROM: If not for his pulsing 2018 single “Penny the first place where I was exposed to a be weird seeing disabled people dancing Girl,” then perhaps his contribution to Oxnard’s community-focused grassroots group Todo Poder Al Pueblo and its initiatives for immigrant community that I liked, who liked me, and and enjoying themselves.” rights and against police brutality that I wanted to be around.”

Ask Cola Boyy if he sees this, or any NOW: Signed to French label Record Makers, the artist born Matthew Along with Oxnard’s dominant of his songs, as directly political, and Urango dropped his debut EP, Black Boogie Neon, last year, and played Coachella 2019 Latino population, Cola found the punk he’ll reply that everything is political. community was filled with misfits, more “Especially in my case: Afro-Latino and accepting because everyone there felt out of place. “When I was young disabled,” he adds. “There is a political existence and a political reaction I was bullied,” he reveals. “It turned me into a hardened person—an angry to living this way. The songs are just my experience: love songs, with person. I needed an outlet and people to look up to and work together with dark twists, telling of the moment I was writing them—when I was super in a positive way. That scene made me less of an angry person…I hope.” depressed, at a difficult place with my health, and with my mortality at Having first written for anarchist punk acts, morphing into bedsit the forefront. I feel better now, and I am looking forward to singing about disco wasn’t such a stretch for Cola Boyy. At first his lyrics were hard and that, too.”

BY BY A.D. AMOROSI 12

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PHOTO BY DAVID LURASCHI

BREAKING

JENNIFER KENT

MATT NETTHEIM

“I’M DRAWN TO DIFFERENT WORLDS, RATHER THAN GENRE,” Jennifer Kent tells me, quickly dispelling any assumption

BACKSTORY: A writer/director whose films are just as likely to keep you up all night as they are to finally help you understand your most complex emotions FROM: Brisbane, Australia YOU MIGHT KNOW HER FROM: Her horrifying 2014 debut feature, The Babadook NOW: Prepping for the wide release of her second film, The Nightingale, through IFC Films

that the Babadook director is, in fact, a horror filmmaker. “Not to diss genre, but it’s not a personal concern of mine.” On the surface, her 2014 haunted-house picture is unquestionably of the horror lineage, with its searing imagery of the titular monster, bodily possessions, and more than enough regurgitated blood to warrant an R rating.

But if you dig a little deeper, you’re certain to recognize it as a story about grief, and how suppressing it not only harms yourself, but also those closest to you—a real-life terror more painful than any knife to the chest. “With Babadook, there was a certain idea that came, and the film told me what it needed to be,” she explains.

It was a similar process that led Kent to write her new film, The Nightingale, which tells a very different story, though one with a similar focus on the competing violence and humanity of its subjects. Set in Tasmania in 1825, the movie follows an exiled Irish convict, Clare, as she exacts revenge upon a British officer who raped her and murdered her husband and newborn child. With Clare and the officer being led by Aboriginal trackers, the movie explores the cruelty exacted upon women, as well as the island’s colonized natives—a concept, Kent notes, that’s far from specific to the film’s setting. “With The Nightingale I wanted to explore violence toward women and from women,” she explains, referencing Clare’s ill treatment of her tracker, Billy. “I wanted to not tell it in a modern day context. To remove it in some way gives the audience a bit of perspective, and helps to make it more universal.”

Although the story is universal, Kent was particularly drawn to the Tasmanian setting due to the island’s unique history and atmosphere. “I find it such an intriguing place, and I felt that its ghosts of the past were very present there. It’s a small island, very isolated. I always felt there was a great sadness there, and I looked into the history a lot over many years and became familiar with it and wanted to tell that story.” The wooded landscapes share an ominous undertone with the Twin Peaks universe, though the director’s choice to forego any non-diegetic music in the film’s soundtrack lends itself to an even more subtle discomfort. “It wasn’t something I set out to do,” she clarifies of the film’s lack of soundtrack, “but we’d watch a scene and think, ‘how could we put music over that?

It’s being disrespectful.’”

BY MIKE LESUER 14

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about what happens when you suppress grief and pain, and I’ve been so surprised and moved by who’s connected to that. I’m not a parent, but I understand what it means to have so much pain you’re suppressing that it starts to affect other people—and there’s no one more impressionable than a young child.” Leaving it up to marketing departments to decide who will best be able to relate to her films, Kent is more concerned with her own personal vision for her stories: “It’s not for me to say how this or that person will respond to a film. I steer away from trying to work out my audience and just focus on making it true.”

Although it isn’t set for a wide release until August, Kent has already observed the same diversity in positive feedback for The Nightingale.

“I’ve spoken to men and seventeen-year-old girls who’ve been moved by it,” she reflects, this time around citing the movie’s convoluted portrayal of love as its universal theme. “It’s easy to love when everything’s a romantic comedy,” she concludes. “But when things get tough, this is when we need to enlist qualities like empathy and compassion and kindness—otherwise we lose our humanity.”

AISLING FRANCIOSI IN THE NIGHTINGALE, COURTESY OF IFC FILMS

What a genre-obsessed audience may consider a period piece, The Nightingale is instead another of Kent’s psychological probes into the mind of a grief-stricken maternal figure—albeit with a meticulous attention paid to historical details. “I think there’s an assumption that life was perhaps more bloodless or formal,” Kent notes of the setting for her film, “but people still felt the same feelings that humans feel now.” Rather than idealizing the past, Kent insists her film is an honest depiction of timeless violence and cruelty, totally unsanitized for the sake of nostalgia or aesthetic. For example, she explains, “In a lot of period films the British redcoat costumes are pristine and blood red, but the reality is that they would have looked like shit. So we made them look like shit.”

Kent’s eye for detail also lends itself to the emotional elements of the picture, particularly the portrayal of sexual violence. Again subverting genre, The Nightingale rethinks the exploitative tradition of rape-andrevenge films by exploring empathy where most horror movies or Spaghetti Westerns lean on justice for the feature’s substance. When Clare is sexually assaulted at the beginning of the film, much of the scene is shot from the perspective of the victim—vision blurred, eyes focused on a mundane detail of the room instead of the graphic assault itself. “It was really important that I created those scenes through the eyes of someone this was happening to,” Kent says, “so every angle was about creating empathy for her, and actually being in her skin.” The result is considerably more powerful than the conventional Hollywood idea that brutal on-screen violence lends itself to a more satisfying apotheosis.

“It’s funny because the rape scenes have been referred to by some as ‘graphic,’” Kent notes. “They aren’t graphic—they’re emotionally true to what a person would go through if their soul was being destroyed. I think that’s what [an audience] actually finds more confrontational than seeing a naked woman being attacked, which is a way to objectify that.”

When I draw attention to critics’ particularly frequent use of the word “brutal” to describe The Nightingale, she doesn’t object, but explains that there’s considerably more to the story than brutality: “If they’re not seeing that there’s an enormous amount of love and hope, I think it’s an incomplete description of the film.”

On the other hand, as with her previous movie, Kent has been pleasantly surprised to see how The Nightingale is received by viewers across different demographics. “What I’ve found with both films is that their audiences are a cross-section of ages and people around the world,” she enthuses. “With The Babadook, I just felt I wanted to write

COURTESY OF IFC FILMS

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FOR BIG THIEF’S ADRIANNE LENKER, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE LITTLE THINGS

The band’s frontwoman on their 4AD debut, U.F.O.F., and how she combats the music industry’s waste.

BY ERIN OSMON

ADRIANNE LENKER IS HERE FOR THE JOURNEY. On rare breaks in her touring schedule, she travels. It’s a willing itinérance that confirms the singer-guitarist’s rapport with the unknown. “I’ve become very translucent,” she says. “I allow things to pass through me, rather than feeling them hit me, like a defense mechanism.” Her band Big Thief has built their reputation on a transcendent live show, where the boundaries between performer and audience evaporate in the wake of Lenker’s vulnerability, words sprouting from her harrowing and beautiful depths. The folk-steeped indie-rock quartet has toured relentlessly since their 2016 debut Masterpiece and its 2017 follow-up Capacity became hits for Saddle Creek, playing hundreds of shows across North America, Europe, and Australia.

“I’m living out of my truck,” Lenker explains. Speaking from that vehicle, parked outside a café in Los Angeles, Lenker explains that life without a permanent home is freeing, but also has its drawbacks. “I’m driving this truck, and it’s a gas guzzler,” she says.

“If I could afford it, I’d get an electric car, and I’ve been thinking about converting this one.”

The band’s third album, U.F.O.F., marks their debut for indie stalwart 4AD. Recorded with longtime producer Andrew Sarlo at Bear Creek Studios near Seattle, the record showcases the locked-in nature of the band whose communal instinct has been honed by the intimacy of its live show, and the tacit bonds formed from an aggressive touring schedule. Capturing this spirit was essential in the recording process, and the band largely played live in a cozy, rustic room.

“There’s always some element of that alchemy of us playing together in real time, rather than stacking everything,” Lenker says. “It’s important. When a band is actually playing together you can feel it in the recordings.” Though U.F.O.F. is sharp in its instrumentation—drums, bass, and guitars passing through one another with a patterned fluidity—it also exudes spontaneity.

Ambient sounds and textures punctuate the songs, and Lenker’s vocals growl and skitter.

There’s an unexpected bite when she sings the phrase “screaming sound” on the fourth track, “From” (a song that also appeared on Lenker’s 2018 solo album abysskiss). The heart-rending enunciation poured out unexpectedly, and was a point of discomfort at first. “I’ve been practicing trusting the band, even to the point where I don’t always choose my vocal takes,” she says. “Even if I don’t like something, I let go of it if the collective thinks that it’s good. I’ve realized that I’m not SHERVIN LAINEZ

a good judge of my own singing.”

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“I FEEL PART OF THE EARTH IN SOME SMALL WAY. YOU CAN IGNORE THESE TINY THOUGHTS, OR YOU CAN TURN OFF THE LIGHTS WHEN YOU LEAVE THE ROOM. THE SMALL THINGS ARE REALLY IMPORTANT.”

Though her life isn’t tethered to possessions, there are aspects of keeping a home that she misses. “I imagine that if I lived in one place I would have a compost toilet, and would be gardening and cooking my meals, and biking around a lot,” she says. She’s also not remiss about the volume of disposable wares commensurate with life as a working musician. “It’s a pretty wasteful industry that we’re a part of, even making records,” she says. “All the paper products and fliers and water bottles and driving. Not to mention when you play festivals, there are all these products that are offered to you.”

This macro view of the music industry can feel staggering, so for now Lenker is focused on more easily attainable and conscious decisions when it comes to avoiding waste. “When I bring my little ceramic mug made by my friend into the coffee shop, and ask them to please put the coffee in there, I feel more myself,” she says. “It’s little things, like turning off the water when I’m brushing my teeth.” Though it can be easy to abandon these principles when rambling from green room to green room, she feels more grounded when honoring them. “I feel part of the earth in some small way,” she adds. “You can ignore these tiny thoughts, or you know, you can turn off the lights when you leave the room. The small things are really important.”

This spring, Lenker begins playing in support of U.F.O.F., marking the start of fifty tour dates at mid-sized clubs and European festivals stretching into November. She’ll have only July and September off to recharge, and admits that this amount of travel and outpouring of physical and emotional expression can be depleting—but to her, it’s mostly a blessing and an opportunity to connect.

“The only way we can do this is to try to knock walls down with our music,” she says. of self. “That’s Big Thief in a nutshell,” she says. “We’re digging through all these layers that separate us.”

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MICHAEL BUISHAS

It’s in this open posture, on the road and in performances, that she’s found her greatest sense

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WEYES BLOOD ISN’T AFRAID OF CLIMATE CHANGE

The Los Angeles–based musician’s fourth album confronts humanity’s bleak future head-on.

by Max Freedman photos by Katherine Levin Sheehan

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hen I first heard about this article, I wanted to go to the sea lion sanctuary in San Diego,” says the LA–based musician Natalie Mering, better known as Weyes Blood. We had planned to do something interactive related to sustainability—climate change is central to Weyes Blood’s newest album, Titanic Rising—but since we met in New York rather than San Diego, our plans shifted to a stroll along Greenpoint’s Newtown Creek Nature Walk, where we would have learned about the massive 1970s Greenpoint oil spill and its cleanup efforts, continuing to this day. Instead, torrential last-minute rain relocated us to an eighth-floor room at Williamsburg’s Wythe Hotel.

The view from the room is oddly relevant. Graffiti-covered industrial landscapes flank exactly one patch of short, splotchy grass, while a building that is clearly the product of gentrification stands out. The East River and Manhattan skyline are in plain view against a white-gray, foggy sky. Though all appears tranquil, it is apparent that mankind’s creations are steadily contributing to earth’s destruction.

Across Titanic Rising, Mering ruminates on climate change from a measured standpoint. Through faintly psychedelic whirlwinds of reverberant piano, arid guitars, lightly humming synths, and choral singing, she posits that humanity can power through its ongoing crisis via hope, myths, spirituality, and by treating climate change as an extension of human nature rather than as an insurmountable antagonist.

Titanic Rising’s climate change commentary is at its least subtle on “Wild Time,” which swells from a gently sweeping folk tune into a string-flanked hymn over a generous six minutes.

Its chorus neatly summarizes the song’s statements about misinformation and the immense energy toll of overpopulation: “Don’t cry,” sings Mering. “It’s a wild time to be alive.”

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“That’s about looking at the sheer masses,” Mering says,

“not as this huge chaotic evil force terrifyingly bigger than we can imagine, but instead looking at it like, ‘What a beautiful hive mind, such a crazy machine.’” To her, it seems we’ll only conquer climate change by staring it down instead of flinching at its vastness: “I’m talking about being able to connect all this destructive mess with nature and not seeing it as this harsh, cold disconnection, but as an expression of our natures.”

Mering’s disarmingly hopeful take is built on her

longstanding, steadfast fascination with spirituality and mythology. She has a borderline encyclopedic knowledge of how belief systems have aided humanity during global crises, and on Titanic Rising, she often sings of our collective need to place faith in something.

Shared myths, to Mering, are central to conquering climate

change. “I think we need to re-adopt some more primordial, ancient myths to try to cope with the reality of the chaos of existing,” she says. “There’s a darkness to climate change—the powers that be, capitalism, and overpopulation—but we need to mythologize it a little more to understand it and cope with it.” This practice is nothing new: “When we become aware of death, we need to create myths and little rituals to understand the chaotic cycles we are subject to,” she analogizes—but these days, “the shared myths around the world are geared more toward individualism and money and things that don’t bring you back into the whole.”

Global lore comprises Titanic Rising’s cornerstone. Its very

title recalls one of the most well-known tales of the past hundred years. “The Titanic is a very symbolic tragedy of the hubris of man, thinking we can conquer nature,” Mering says. “It’s ironic that the Titanic would crash into an iceberg and sink, and now the icebergs are melting and sinking the third class of the world. They’re going to suffer at the expense of our wealth.”

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“IT ’S IRONIC THAT THE TITANIC WOULD CRASH INTO AN ICEBERG AND SINK, AND NOW THE IC E BE RG S A R E M E LT I NG A N D S I N K I NG T H E THIRD CLASS OF THE WORLD. THEY’RE GOING TO S U F F E R AT T H E E X P E N S E OF O U R W E A LT H . ”

Eventually, the oceans will submerge the world’s first class, too, and Titanic Rising’s artwork blatantly depicts our forthcoming immersion. An unphased Mering appears in a bedroom with a twin bed, a warped dresser, a tiny desk, and some modest prints—but the room is filled to the ceiling with water. Mering is literally submerged in a bedroom, an “altar” she finds “symbolic of young people creating their sacred spaces.”

If our personal shrines aren’t safe from rising sea levels, the artwork suggests, nothing is.

Mering hopes that her album’s imagery and lyrics will contribute to sustainable causes, but she realizes her art is not enough. “People will need to divert from their individualism,” she says, not excluding herself. “I’ve done plastic cleanup at beaches. That might be a habit of people who grew up in the ’90s, who associate environmentalism with just cleaning things up,” she continues, implicitly acknowledging that such efforts often have minimal impact.

Her hopes for a garbage-free ocean tie into her love of that San Diego sea lion sanctuary, which helps detangle sea lions from fishing line. “I see the ocean as one of those things that’s particularly vulnerable,” she says, placing the onus for repairing it on the companies that produce massive volumes of plastic packaging. “Dasani and Pepsi and all these big companies have left it to ordinary people to control their waste, but they’re the producers of it.” In other words, they should be held responsible.

Otherwise, the world’s population might find itself like Mering on the cover of Titanic Rising, or maybe like those San Diego sea lions: trapped by the byproducts of a careless humanity.

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JEFF BRIDGES INTO THE DEEP

The Fire Within

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Animal Collective · Alex Honnold · Swoon Local Natives · Philippe Cousteau Jr. + Michael Muller Weyes Blood · Gary Clark Jr. · Big Thief

T H E N AT U R A L WO N D E R O F

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

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Jeff Bridges · Animal Collective · Swoon Local Natives · Philippe Cousteau Jr. + Michael Muller Weyes Blood · Gary Clark Jr. · Big Thief

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25 YEARS AIN’T NUTHING TA F’ WIT

AND THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

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COVERS-FINAL.indd 2

THE FASHION ISSUE

STARRING DR. STEVE BRULE

6/15/16 2:42 AM

Philippe Cousteau Jr. and Michael Muller

AARON MEEKCOMS

Are Making Waves

The grandson of the most famous ocean explorer of all time and the world’s foremost shark photographer chat about how social media has affected conservation efforts, how virtual reality can inspire empathy, and—of course—how we should go about saving our seas.

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL MULLER

PHILIPPE COUSTEAU JR. AND MICHAEL MULLER have known each other for years, first crossing paths when their nautical passions coincided: Emmy-nominated TV host and producer Cousteau and renowned undersea photographer Muller both spend a majority of their time in the ocean, and when forced to walk on land they’re each attempting to educate new generations about environmental conservation and stir cranky adults into long-delayed action.

Initially famed for his intimate portraits of elite actors, musicians, and athletes, Muller fell in love with sharks (a creature he was previously terrified of) and began building a portfolio of underwater shark photography—equally gorgeous and ferocious—with the intention of dispelling preconceived notions about how dangerous the animals are and aiding in shark protection. Cousteau is the grandson of none other than Jacques Cousteau, co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung and of modern scuba diving, and Philippe carries on Jacques’ legacy with fervor: Along with his wife and collaborator Ashlan, he stars on Travel Channel’s Caribbean Pirate Treasure, a series in which the pair uncover maritime mysteries like pirates and lost treasure; he’s the host of Fox/Hulu syndicated series Xploration Awesome Planet, another earth science exploration of our planet; and he additionally leads EarthEcho International, a foundation dedicated to the education of youth in regard to environmental challenges and solutions.

Both Muller and Cousteau have made recent forays into virtual reality—Cousteau with a new film that premiered at Tribeca, focused on the plastic pollution crisis plaguing our oceans, and Muller with a multi-part series of VR films that will be released soon, featuring all manner of undersea creatures filmed all over the globe. Both are terrifically excited about the birth of this new medium, one they hope can inspire people to care about climate change, man-made contamination, and the health and safety of a secret blue world that for so long has remained a mystery, but can now be experienced up-close.

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So how exactly do you know each other?

bioaccumulating as they work their way up the food chain,

Michael Muller: My wife Kimberly and I made a book—well,

as the larger plankton eat the smaller bits of microplastic,

my wife did, and I supplied the photos—called Last Night I

then the even larger plankton eat those, and the fish eat

Swam with a Mermaid. She wanted to find an organization

those, on and on until it gets to human beings. There’s a

to partner with that focused on education and kids, and we

real concern that by the middle of this century, we could

found Philippe’s group, EarthEcho. I obviously knew who

have more plastic by volume than animals in the ocean.

he was, and had huge respect for his family heritage.

What do you define an area that is mostly trash as? A dump.

Philippe Cousteau: Yeah, we had drinks at the Chateau Marmont with my wife Ashlan. It was love at first sight.

What is it about a VR experience, specifically, that you

Then we started scheming and dreaming all sorts of things.

think might make people care more about the ocean?

Muller: The majority of people don’t go scuba diving.

Philippe, tell us about your new project, Drop in the Ocean.

They’ll see it on TV, Blue Planet or whatever, and there’s

Cousteau: Ashlan and I are co-narrators and co-producers

obviously a lot of people that dive, but even divers

on this virtual reality experience, which just premiered at

don’t necessarily see great white sharks and whales.

Tribeca Immersive. We asked the question: How can you

Watching it on a one-dimensional plane on a TV...it’s

allow people to experience a critical part of the ocean, but a

just completely different when you put on a headset. I’ve

part that most people don’t even know about—and certainly

been with very high net-worth individuals in the middle

few, if any, have ever seen? That’s microplankton and

of a restaurant in their three-piece suits, and they put

plankton. Just to see both phytoplankton and zooplankton,

the VR goggles on, and they try to reach out and touch

which form the basis of oceanic food chains, and then also

the whale swimming by. You’re like, “Dude, you’re in a

provide the majority of our oxygen on earth...arguably,

restaurant.” But they forget.

that’s pretty critical. Two out of every three breaths is

To give people that experience—like they’re actually

generated by phytoplankton in the ocean. It doesn’t come

swimming or becoming plankton— is great for empathy. It’s

from the rainforest—there is a lot of oxygen contributed by

a really powerful tool. Especially for this next generation—I

that, but the majority of our oxygen comes from the ocean.

know Philippe is in the same boat I’m in, which is that I

We wanted to find a way to expose people to that world.

don’t put a lot of worth on what we’re doing. It’s this next

That’s what is wonderful about VR—it gives you an

generation that is inheriting the dump. My goal is to

immersive experience. It’s designed in a curated space, and

inspire, to get that one kid who sees it, to plant the seed,

you’re shrunk down to about the size of a thumb, then you

and he changes our world in ten years.

float through the ocean. As you slowly ascend up toward the surface, you’re startled to see all of these things floating

Michael, you’re working on a VR series too?

there—plastics and microplastics. People are familiar with

Muller: Yeah, I’ve been shooting primarily focused on

buoys and nets and flip-flops and straws and all these other

sharks and changing people’s perceptions around them

things that we see on television. But they don’t biodegrade.

and raising awareness about the 100 million plus sharks

They photodegrade, so with exposure to sunlight, they

that are being slaughtered every year. I’m doing that with

break up into small pieces that never go away.

my photography, I did some TV shows, I did clothing lines.

One of the things that we are able to see through Drop

But then VR came along, and I said, “Wait, this gives me an

in the Ocean, by shrinking people down to this size, is the

opportunity to take you underwater and see these things

microplastics that are now insidious and permeate every

I’m seeing, and it’s a brand new medium?” How many times

square kilometer of oceans on earth. Those microplastics

do you get to see the birth of a new medium? I’ve never seen

are getting into the food chain, because small planktonic

it happen, so I really jumped on it. You have to completely

animals mistake them for food, in the same way that

rewire how you shoot. You have to learn it all over again,

seabirds have been known to swallow bottle caps. They are

how you capture, how you edit, how you tell the story.

“By the middle of this century, we could have more plastic by volume than animals in the ocean. What do you define an area that is mostly trash as? A dump.”

—Philippe Cousteau Jr.

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Muller (continued): When Philippe talks about our ocean

think about this new Game Boy?” It’s coming up on Christmas

becoming a dump, he sees it. He’s out in the ocean regularly, as

and my grandfather was seventy-nine at the time. How many

am I, and you see these plastics, or you see fewer and fewer fish.

people in their seventies and eighties are constantly embracing

You see all these things happening, the coral being bleached.

new technology? But he was. In his wonderful French accent,

It’s like you just want to grab people by their necks and say,

he started talking about Game Boy, how he had one, and it

“Look what we’re doing to our planet.” That’s our life support

played Tetris and Super Mario. He loved these new gadgets

system. No one would go into a hospital where your father’s

and tools. He said to me, “I know you want one for Christmas,

on life support and just start unplugging plugs. We would

and I know you’re very excited about it. But as you grow up

do everything to keep that life support system, to keep that

and become a storyteller yourself, these are the kinds of tools

person alive. Yet we are destroying our life support system,

that we need to be embracing—because games are not just a

and everyone knows it, but we’re all sort of like, “Yeah, well,

wonderful tool for entertainment. They’re a wonderful tool for

okay, climate change is real, but…” What does it take for our

education.” I never forgot that.

government to say that it’s real, and we have to do something

My grandfather was making The Undersea World of

about it?

Jacques Cousteau and so many of his films and documentaries

Cousteau: Let me give you an example on land: What if you

between the ’50s and the ’70s. There were six channels on

wanted to catch rabbits, and you bulldozed an entire forest

television then, so your audience came to you. Now, there’s

and killed all the birds, deer, squirrels, foxes, anything you

a thousand channels, the internet, social media, streaming,

could think of in order to catch those rabbits? You piled up

all these different things. It’s more important than ever that

everything else in a mountain of dead stuff—trees, bushes—

you go to your audience. I think that’s a fundamental shift in

and then you had a couple rabbits, and you walked away?

storytelling from forty years ago. We need to be on television,

People would lose their minds. That’s exactly what bottom

in books, in classrooms, on radio, and we need to be embracing

trawling does for shrimp. It’s the number one killer of sea

new technologies like VR in order to empower a whole new

turtles and dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, because they

generation. Where my grandfather could have a television

get trapped in these nets and drown. That would never be

show on Sunday nights, and thirty million people would tune

allowed on land. It’s just another example of what Michael

in—now, that’s not the case.

was saying where we look out on the ocean, we kind of know

Muller: As a kid, watching Jacques Cousteau, I think what stuck

it’s around, and we kind of choose to ignore the reality.

out to me—and I have this experience with my crew when we

Everybody says, “But I love shrimp cocktail.” Okay, and that’s

go out—is the camaraderie that would happen on board. His

a reason to just completely destroy the ocean? It sounds like

grandfather would be at the table with wine and the crew, and

nonsense to me. But, that’s why Kimberly and Michael and

they would all talk. That’s what it’s like when you’re out to sea.

Ashlan and myself are so focused on education. That’s what’s

It’s like you detach, you get off the grid. There’s no phones. It’s

exciting and hopeful. Kids are definitely engaged and fired up

a bonding experience, and you’re connecting with nature in a

in ways that our generation and previous generations weren’t.

way that I haven’t really found elsewhere.

Muller: I grew up watching his grandfather as a kid. That’s what got me first, what planted those seeds. So we’re taking

How has social media helped or hurt conservation efforts

that torch, and passing it on.

and education?

Muller: Listen, I think it’s great, because it’s a big bullhorn. It’s

Philippe, what memories do you have of your grandfather?

opened the gates. But if there was a button right here, and I

Cousteau: One of my favorite stories is actually very relevant

could hit it and go back to 1999 and turn the internet off, I

to VR and why I’m so interested in it as technology. I think I

would. Because I don’t think the pluses outweigh the minuses.

was about nine years old, so it was 1989. I remember we went

I think this has disconnected people. I go out to restaurants,

into New York City to visit with him for dinner, and halfway

I see a couple, and they’re both on their phones. You go to

through, my grandfather looked at me and said, “What do you

concerts, and everyone’s taping it.

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“I chose to try and give people hope and make them fall in love with the ocean.

I do believe people really protect what they love.”

—Michael Muller

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COURTESY OF VOYACY VENTURES

TOP AND BOTTOM LEFT: ASHLAN AND PHILIPPE COUSTEAU JR., TOP RIGHT: JACQUES AND PHILIPPE COUSTEAU JR., BOTTOM RIGHT: PHILIPPE (SR.) AND JACQUES COUSTEAU

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Cousteau: This is a controversial statement, but I can’t think

people watch it and say, “Well, what the hell can I do about it?”

of anything that’s as pervasive in society—that has such a

So then they’re like, “I don’t want to hear about it, because I

huge impact on our culture, in some cases our economy, our

feel so horrible.”

politics, our democracy—as Facebook. Yet if you switched it

Cousteau: There’s enough doom and gloom out there. People

off tomorrow, I think you’d get a collective shrug in the world,

know, generally, that there are problems. Beating them

except for maybe the investors. Although since it’s here, I

over the head with that is a short-term motivator. It’s been

think it does provide an opportunity to reach people directly.

employed to great effect to get people to write a check and

It’s very exciting for me to be able to do an Instagram video or

make a donation in the environmental movement, but in

something live when I’m on an expedition.

terms of long-term change, fear and negative reinforcement is

This year is the 75th anniversary of the Aqua-Lung, my

not the way. You train dolphins, dogs, and human beings with

grandfather’s co-invention—so it’s only been seventy-five years

positive reinforcement. Once you get people to take action,

since we’ve really been exploring the ocean. Prior to that, all

they’re much more likely to continue, have ownership, and

we knew about the ocean was what we pulled out in seafood,

raise awareness that lasts.

and what we dumped in. In the early days, the late ’40s and ’50s, my grandfather was a tinkerer. He broke his back in a car

Are there any urgent policy measures people should know

accident, and was told to swim in the Mediterranean to rebuild

about?

his strength, and was given a mask and goggles by his captain.

Cousteau: I will not make a comment about anything

He was in the French Navy at the time. He became frustrated

else, because it’s not my lane, but from an environmental

that he couldn’t hold his breath longer, so he talked with an

perspective, this administration is a disaster. All the changes

engineer, and they invented the valve that could allow people

in the EPA—there’s a coal lobbyist who’s in charge! How does

to swim like fish.

that make any sense at all? But you know, we’re so focused on

But that wasn’t enough, because he always loved

our federal elections that we ignore local elections. There are

filmmaking. So they tinkered more and basically took cameras

different issues all over the country that are important around

and put them in a box, figured out how to waterproof it with

renewable energy adoption, plastics, things like that. There’s

a little button. There was no viewfinder, there was no focus.

lots of ballot measures that come up in various states—so get

You had eleven minutes of film. You took it underwater, you

engaged in those kinds of things.

pressed the button, you pointed it at stuff, and then you went

We need Republicans and Democrats. We need differing

up to the surface and swapped out the camera and did it over

perspectives and viewpoints. But when one party really stands

and over again. That was filmmaking just fifty or sixty years

for the destruction of the environment, and one party stands

ago, in the early days of diving. At the end of the day, being

for the support of the environment, that’s dangerous and scary

able to film and photograph stuff and reach people in real time,

and awful, and young people need to demand that both parties

right now, is amazing. This is just like VR: it’s the birth of a

get back on the bandwagon. I always remind people that it was

new thing, and as a society, we have to learn to balance it like

Richard Nixon who created the EPA. He passed the Clean Air

anything else. I think we’ve been abusing [social media] lately.

Act, the Clean Water Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act,

Hopefully, it will level itself out.

the list goes on. The Republican of Republicans, and he was very pro-environment. It was a bipartisan issue back then. It

So how do we get people to recognize the horrors of what

wasn’t really until Reagan that it started to shift for various

we’re doing to our oceans and actively respond?

reasons; it was Reagan who dismantled the solar panels on the

Muller: It’s tough. When I was making my series, I chose to

roof of the White House that Jimmy Carter had installed. But

try and give people hope and make them fall in love with the

yeah—it’s a shame that we are in the political situation that we

ocean. I do believe people really protect what they love. I know

are right now. Some things should be universal, like putting

personally, when I see these documentaries that show you the

the health of our children and the health of our communities

truth, you feel like you’re getting hit in the stomach. I think

first and foremost.

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TURNING CHAOS INTO SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL Between recording and touring in support of their most experimental album to date, the SoCal rockers search for long-term solutions to managing waste.

N A T I V E S

BY LAURA STUDARUS

PHOTOS BY ERIK VOAKE

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Before recording their fourth album, Violet Street, some of Local Natives’ greatest exploits involved low-stakes pranks. Case in point: when the Los Angeles quintet moved out of their former Silver Lake recording studio, they staged a Beatles-referencing rooftop concert. (“I’m supposed to be mad...” vocalist Taylor Rice remembers their baffled landlord saying in a phone call.)

When it comes to the music, however, the band takes things much more seriously.

When Local Natives began an eight-month recording session with producer Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Kacey Musgraves), the band—which also features Kelcey Ayer, Ryan Hahn, Matt Frazier, and Nik Ewing—quickly realized they were being pulled into uncharted territory.

“We would show up to the studio and kind of not know what was going to happen that day,” Ayer explains of the uncharacteristically experimental sessions. “Usually we write every single part as closely as we can, and then we’d go to a studio and try to make it better.”

This may sound like a case for Oblique Strategies, Brian Eno’s famous creative strategy card game, but the band assures me that some of the fixes Everett proposed for their write-on-the-spot method were much stranger. Sometimes it would involve using tuning glasses filled with water until they produced the right note when tapped, or smashing those and using the destruction as part of the chorus on “Someday Now.” For “Megaton Mile,” they ran analog recording tape around the room, pulling on it as they played their parts to create the desired distortion. (“This stuff is hard for us to explain because a lot of times we didn’t know what was happening,” Frazier laughs.) It was a far cry from the regimented approach they took with their debut, Gorilla Manor, at a time when—they admit—they wouldn’t have even understood some of these production suggestions, let alone heeded them.

“It seemed like our hit rate was high,” says Rice of the unorthodox process. “Let’s try this crazy thing— we were all nervous to do it, and it worked out 99 percent of the time.”

Crazy, yes—but all members agree it brought the best out of them, to the point where they often didn’t recognize the level of craftsmanship they were achieving on the fly. To that end, they also agree there was one stand-out moment when all of them began to truly appreciate the process.

“We would do things with Shawn, like everyone running around this microphone screaming and banging on stuff and turning it into this beautiful aural chord over the sparsest song on the album,” recalls Rice. “That was for ‘Vogue,’ the opening track.”

“Running around this microphone defined the record,” adds Hahn. “We ended up naming the Spiral Choir Tour after that whole thing. That felt like it encapsulated the making of the record. Turning chaos into something beautiful.”

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“TOURING COMES WITH INCREDIBLE, HEARTBREAKING AMOUNTS OF WASTE. THERE’S SO MANY SINGLE-USE PLASTIC THINGS.” —TAYLOR RICE

Violet Street benefits from the band’s willingness to think outside the paradigm they’ve created over their previous four albums, while maintaining Local Natives’ signature vocal and folk rock harmonies.

But how to present it to fans without destroying the planet in the process? Although acutely aware of how humans impact the environment, their understanding of the matter was enriched in 2017, when they were asked to participate in VICE’s Earthworks documentary series. During the filming, the band traveled the length of the Colorado River and learned about the source of Los Angeles’ water and everything, from farming to politics, that threatens the supply. It was a formative experience that they’re still unpacking.

“I think the lasting impression as the trip went on was that this is vastly more complex than we originally thought,” says Rice. “At first there was depression about it. It’s insurmountable…but working together and doing your part is important psychologically—for everybody to be in that mindset to make the moves required as a society to get to a sustainable point.”

Although they are lifelong Southern Californians—an area where short showers and dry lawns are an accepted part of daily life—the experience forced the band to think of how they could lead by example and help green a profession that requires a fair amount of travel and resources.

“Touring comes with incredible, heartbreaking amounts of waste,” says Rice. “There’s so many singleuse plastic things. Food can be really difficult to consume wisely and can get thrown away all the time.

There’s a really big environmental footprint that has a lot to do with your rider, and how materials are being used. On every single tour, we’ve battled harder and harder to have less and less waste. On our last tour, we bought a water filtration system. Usually it’s just pallets of plastic water bottles that people take one sip of and throw away. The only way not to do that is to ban it and have reusable bottles.”

“Just having those water bottles out on stage says something,” notes Hahn, mentioning that, thanks to a donation from reusable water bottle company S’well, the band and crew are even more capable of enforcing this policy.

The members of Local Natives are no strangers to speaking out about what they believe in. In another example of giving back, they’re working with Plus1, which gives one dollar from every ticket sold on their upcoming tour to support gender-based violence intervention programs. However, they warn that discussing the matter and taking personal responsibility are only the first two steps toward a long-term solution.

“The big thing we learned was to constantly be in your local politicians’ ear about water preservation,” says Ewing. “Showering less is great, but these issues are so complex that if you can affect your community in a local way, it really feels like it’s a non-partisan thing to do. We all want water, we all want to live, we all want our cities to continue. It can’t be just on a grassroots level.”

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S W

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BY SARAH GOODING SWOON PHOTOS BY MICHAEL LAVINE

S T E A D FA S T A N D S E L F -

S U S TA I N I N G The Brooklyn–based artist details the intersection of personal and global sustainability in her work.

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There have been times when art almost killed Caledonia Dance Curry, the multidisciplinary artist and activist known professionally as Swoon. In 2009, she and thirty friends were nearly run over by a barge while floating in ramshackle rafts from Slovenia to Venice. They had built them out of crates, plywood, and other junk rescued from construction sites and dumpsters across New York City. They sent the scraps in shipping crates to Europe, assembled them into twenty-foothigh floating islands, and set sail across the Adriatic Sea, uninvited, toward the Venice Biennale.

That project, titled Swimming Cities of Serenissima,

was a comment on capitalist waste and excess, and it sparked a global conversation about recycling and radical self-reliance. It also cemented Curry’s already-

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legendary status as an artist.

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“I never felt particularly successful as an environmental artist,” says Curry, perched on a chair in the middle of her warehouse studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn, not far from the Gowanus Canal, another body of water famed for its floating trash. Faces from her trademark life-size portraits peer out around us—on recycled wooden doors stacked against the walls, on sheets of brown paper hanging from the rafters, on a canvas placed on top of paint cans arranged on the floor. Each surface in the large industrial space has been employed as part of Curry’s artmaking process, but it isn’t a mess. Shelves housing containers of carving tools, string, glue, and other supplies are neatly organized with neon pink labels. As with the rafts, there’s a sense of order to the chaos.

“We had a lot of aspirations on that raft trip, but I think we never felt that successful in terms of devising systems,” Curry admits. “In some ways it was great— we ended up producing very little waste, being in this self-created space. But I think that as an artist, you figure out where your strengths are.”

That project may not have gone exactly as Curry intended, but experimenting and pushing boundaries has always been her MO. Her career began twenty years ago with wheatpasted street art while she was a painting student at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Put off by the thought of creating art that would only hang in wealthy people’s homes, Curry started drawing, printing, cutting, and pasting portraits onto walls and surfaces throughout New York. The images were often made from recycled newspaper and were intended to decay over time—but they made a mark.

Curry’s wheatpastings secured the artist her first eponymous solo exhibition, curated by Jeffrey Deitch in 2005. Following that exhibit, her work was added to the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern, and she became the first living street artist to have a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2014.

Titled Submerged Motherlands, this exhibition started out as a reflection on climate change and rising sea levels, having been commissioned not long after Hurricane Sandy devastated New York. But after the death of her mother from cancer following a long battle with opioid addiction, Curry found herself exploring more personal, maternal themes.

“I would say that’s one of the times when art saved my life,” she says. “When my mom was dying, it was one of those things where the only thing I could do while she was sick was draw a portrait of her. It felt like this little flagpole of sanity that you hold onto in a strong wind, and you’re like, ‘If I can just make work while this is happening, I can keep rooted to the earth.’” The resulting exhibition was both grounding and groundbreaking—its centerpiece was a sixty-foot tree that utilized the full height of the rotunda, a first for the Brooklyn Museum.

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Curry has a way of not doing things by halves, sometimes to her detriment.

In 2010, following the catastrophic magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, she and a group of artists, builders, architects, and engineers flew to the country to undertake a project called Konbit Shelter. It saw them build three sustainable houses, one community center, and start English and after-school programs— but they pushed themselves to the brink in achieving those things. “We didn’t know how long it would take, so we ended up cancelling our plane tickets, and we stayed until our health started to fall apart,” Curry recalls. “That was when we were all like, ‘You know what? Even if the final plaster isn’t finished, we’re going to have to leave. The rainy season is taking its toll, we’re working too hard, we’re working too long hours, and we’re just going to have to come back in the winter.’

It was one of those wake-up moments of like, ‘You have to take care of yourself.’

You can’t help others in crisis if you’re driving yourself into the ground.”

Following the death of both of her parents, Curry started to unpack the emotional toll that growing up around opioid addiction had on her. “Personal sustainability feels really big for me right now,” she says. “I found that I was coming from a place of real chaos and woundedness, as somebody who grew up [around] addiction, and just people who struggled a lot. The thing about harboring deep and repressed unconscious wounds is that it makes you do crazy shit. When I look at people who are hoarding so much wealth that they could never spend it in fifty lifetimes, and yet they’re still clear-cutting forests to get that palm oil and build their fortune, I’m like, something’s happening with that person. They’re scared of death, they’re trying to impress their father; there’s some deep psychological processes. If they could just confront the fear of death, if they could just confront the fact that their father is dead and is never going to approve of them, they wouldn’t have to do psychotic things that are harming the planet.”

Acknowledging and dealing with her trauma has enabled Curry to be more sympathetic to herself. She’s begun to take an increasingly measured approach to her work, which has expanded from her original wheatpasting to include a range of practices like performance, architectural installations, and communitybuilding projects around the world. “I realized recently that I was constantly adding projects and I was doing, like, ten at a time, and finally I got to a point where I was like, ‘I can’t do them all simultaneously, I need to alternate a little bit.’ So I set down a bunch of my core practices, which were block printing, wheatpasting, and installation-making, and I put them on hiatus. Because if I didn’t, I wasn’t going to be able to teach myself new things.”

Curry’s work often has a purpose or practical application, whether it’s housing disaster victims, shedding light on climate change issues, or humanizing refugees. Throughout her career she has regularly blurred the line between art and activism—still, she views these things as fundamentally different. “Even though I very much love to harness creativity in service of social change, I also really believe that creativity needs a place to just be born raw,” Curry explains.

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This renewed sense of self-sustainability and reckoning with her parents’ addictions inspired a recent project Curry undertook with Mural Arts Philadelphia.

There, she hosted art therapy workshops at the Kensington Storefront, a community center in one of the areas that’s been hit hardest by the opioid crisis.

The Storefront is a safe space where people can embrace creativity as a step toward healing—just as Curry has done herself. She acknowledges that these things may seem like small gestures, but for an issue that can feel insurmountable, it’s a step in the right direction.

Curry has addressed many overwhelming issues with her work, and is open about the challenges of achieving her lofty goals. She says the abandoned church she’s been trying to rebuild in Braddock, Pennsylvania as part of the Transformazium artist collective has been “a tough nut to crack.” With the collective, she was able to establish a separate company called Braddock Tiles, which “works with folks who are aging out of the Braddock Youth Program and teaches them soft skills so they can get jobs,” but they haven’t been able to transform the church into a fully functional community center just yet. “I discovered that me not living there has just not quite worked out,” she shrugs. “I’m actually looking to transition it. We’re talking to some folks locally, and my hope is to find somebody who’s doing work that’s about bringing up the community, who’s not just a gentrifying developer.”

She acknowledges that it’s important to know “when to call it, and be like, ‘Okay, this is bigger than me, I need help, I need to pass this on.’” Sometimes ending something can be as challenging as beginning it. When she made the decision a year ago to shift away from her primary art practices, she was scared—even though she realized that it was necessary for her personal growth. “Your processes become like a security blanket, and people know you for them, they like them, and they want you to keep doing them. So you feel like, ‘Oh my god, what’s going to happen?’” she laughs nervously. “But you just have to do it!”

She continues, “I feel like, over and over again, my creativity has led me to places that made me feel a little scared. When we first made the rafts, I was like, ‘Girl, what are you doing?’ You could make your creative life so easy right now, but instead you’re digging in dumpsters and living with thirty of your friends on a fucking raft! Like, why are you doing this?!’ But there was a part of my brain that was like, ‘I’m not listening!’”

Curry now incorporates ten-day silent meditations into her annual self-care ritual, along with three-month trips to Panama to surf and work on art away from “When I was a baby, we’d spend months at a time living in some random place by the sea. We’d go to the beach every day, so I think it’s just in my blood. The ocean is my happy place.”

These days, downtime can feel like a luxury many cannot afford—but Curry

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the bustling city. Having grown up in Florida, she says surfing was a way of life.

learned the hard way how crucial taking a break can be. “I burned out a couple of years ago, and even though it sounds really decadent, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to Panama to go surfing for three months!’ It’s a matter of self-care, and it’s a matter of carving out time for primary creativity.”

“EVEN THOUGH I VERY MUCH

REALLY BELIEVE THAT CREATIVITY NEEDS A PLACE TO JUST BE BORN RAW.”

LOVE TO HARNESS CREATIVITY IN SERVICE OF SOCIAL CHANGE, I ALSO

“I FEEL LIKE, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, MY CREATIVITY HAS LED ME

TO PLACES THAT MADE ME FEEL A LITTLE SCARED.”

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This change in mindset is reflected in her work. As she’s allowed more time for herself, she’s put more of herself into her art, from Submerged Motherlands to her most recent exhibition, Every Portrait Is a Vessel, at Treason Gallery in Seattle, where Curry gave a talk on the very personal inspiration behind the work’s exploration of trauma.

Now in her early forties, Curry can’t believe that she’s done some of the things she has. “Ten years ago I drove a motorcycle across India, and now I would never do that!” she admits. “Maybe I’m becoming a wimp.” She’s still doing things that scare her—she’s just being more emotionally vulnerable, as opposed to physically endangering herself. “When I started giving talks about my family and addressing trauma and doing all these things, I was like, ‘I’m more scared doing this than I am being on a raft that’s breaking down in front of a barge!’ You know? There are different ways of facing your fears at different stages of your life.”

Since her earliest wheat-pastings, her work has cultivated curiosity, and twenty years later that light hasn’t dimmed. Even when she’s confronting the darkest, most harrowing subjects, Curry radiates hope. It makes sense that her first name, Caledonia, means “steadfast or hard-footed.” It originates from an ancient Scottish tribe that fought off the Romans, she says.

She points to a portrait on the wall of a beautiful woman laughing. “That’s a young woman who had left the Syrian Civil War under extreme duress, as a refugee. Her family made their way to Sweden, and I was asked by folks there to help. Sweden had taken on 6 percent of its population in immigrants, and they were like, ‘We need artists who will help us with this moment of welcoming this new community.’ So I linked up with a friend of mine and she helped Maram tell her story, and I made this portrait and put it up in the museum,” she says, referring to Skissernas Museum in Lund, Sweden.

“I was thinking, ‘This woman has been through tragedy that most of us will never even imagine.’ Society is at a place where it’s struggling, but when I look at the news and the images that we’re seeing of people like Maram, it’s 100 percent focused on distress. And the situation is distressing, but if you look at somebody and you’re only ever seeing them in distress, you’re seeing them in a one-dimensional way, so you can’t see the whole of their humanity. I was like, ‘You know what? Maram is in this beautiful town now, she’s starting a new life, let me show a different side of her! Let’s see that she’s actually a normal teenager and she just wants to be happy like everybody else.’ So it was a conscious choice for me to draw her in this really celebratory moment, to show that there’s more to her life than the suffering that she’s been through.”

If there’s a key to solving any of the issues Curry has come up against throughout her career, it’s empathy—whether we are looking inward or at someone else. “I think that people who are in that frame of mind will, in the long run, be making a more sustainable world,” she smiles. “I hope so, anyway!”

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Professional rock climber Alex Honnold is the only person to have scaled Yosemite monster-wall El Capitan without ropes, a feat detailed in the Oscar-winning doc Free Solo—but he’s passionate about pulling people out of poverty via solar energy with his Honnold Foundation, too.

BY ANYA JAREMKO-GREENWOLD PHOTOS BY SAMUEL CROSSLEY FREE SOLO IMAGES BY JIMMY CHIN/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

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dam Ondra screams as he hops from rock to rock like some kind of lunatic spider, and Tommy Caldwell presses his body up against bluffs with twitchy limbs and obvious nerves, but Alex Honnold’s climbs are deliberate and quiet. He slides his palms over stones like you might cup a lover’s thigh, hands roughly the size of two pale catcher’s mitts.

Alex says that Ondra is the best climber in the world—but it was Alex, not Ondra, who was the subject of the film that took home Best Documentary at this year’s Academy Awards.

both travel so much an elderly neighbor often has to collect their packages.

Sanni has dent-in-cream dimples and she’s giving Alex a haircut in the backyard when I arrive. After that she heads to the supermarket for the seven

Directed by married pair Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Free

hungry visitors who are spending the weekend, all board members of the

Solo tails Honnold’s two-year journey toward becoming the first person to

Honnold Foundation. It’s a nonprofit started by Alex, dedicated to bringing

ascend El Capitan, a three-thousand-foot wall of granite in Yosemite National

solar energy to communities around the world.

Park, without the help of ropes or safety equipment. The film’s crew—many of

The full board is meeting for the first time here in Vegas, where Honnold

them friends of Alex and experienced climbers themselves—watched him with

lives because it’s cheap, non-trafficky, and has easy access to four-season

gritted teeth and severe misgivings about whether taping the climb could make

outdoor play. He only visits the strip once or twice a year; far more frequently,

their friend lose focus and fall.

he heads to the crumbled cinnamon cliffs of Red Rock Canyon just outside the

“So delighted,” the Sacramento-bred athlete said upon reaching the

city, where the board is joining him for a climb today.

summit after four hours without plunging to a grisly death. His voice is deep

“The Honnold Foundation began because I wanted to donate my own

and croaky like the beginnings of a burp, and he’s clad compulsively in his

money to environmental projects that I cared about,” Alex explains as we sit

primary sponsor, The North Face. Clif Bar used to be a sponsor too, but the

in the white-glare Nevada sun, interrupted only by board president Maury

company dropped him after deciding free soloing was too dangerous a sport

Birdwell throwing eggshells in the garbage; Alex gets up and directs him

to fund.

to the compost pile instead. “The question was whether I should do it in

The climber’s modest home sits on a street lined with near-identical

a public or private way. I could’ve donated privately, but I felt like the one

peach-colored homes in a Las Vegas suburb. The signature white van—lived

thing I could contribute is that I’m a public figure, to some extent, and can

in by Alex for nine years while he “dirtbagged” around the country, and

potentially rally funds for the cause—even though it feels slightly douchey,

inhabited part-time by his girlfriend Sanni McCandless in the documentary—

making it public.” He pauses politely before saying “douchey” to ask me how

is parked in the driveway. Sanni shares this house with Alex too, though they

fancy this publication is.

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HONNOLD CLIMBING EL CAPITAN IN FREE SOLO

HONNOLD CLEANING HIS VAN IN FREE SOLO

HONNOLD GETTING A HAIRCUT FROM GIRLFRIEND SANNI McCANDLESS IN FREE SOLO

It’s funny how wrong people are about Alex Honnold. Most assume he’s a

“high sensation seekers” like him processed fear, and found Alex’s amygdala (the

hardened risk-taker or adrenaline junkie who cackles in the face of danger, but

brain’s fear center) to be perfectly healthy—though it lit up far less frequently

his famed free solo climb was as precise as a robotic surgery, as choreographed

in response to disturbing or exciting images than an average person’s. Honnold

as Swan Lake. He prepped for years, scaling El Capitan with ropes over and over

suspects his threat-response has been neutered over time, with thousands of

until he knew every move by heart. Alex is fond of pointing out that unlike

hours spent in danger zones. Unsurprisingly, in these tests Alex also scored

football or boxing—both of which prompt myriad brain injuries—free soloing

high in conscientiousness and premeditation, but low in neuroticism. He

is comparatively safe, up until that one fatal misstep.

doesn’t replay scenarios in which he might perish in his head, or obsess over

Big wall free soloing is the easiest type of climbing to sell, but not the

what could go wrong.

hardest to do, Alex will be the first to admit. People see him clinging to a rock,

Honnold is not a fiction reader (he prefers non-fiction) and hates

inches from death, and without knowing anything else about the sport, they

both comedies and most horror films (he doesn’t enjoy “being tricked” by

are hooked. But Alex doesn’t always climb without ropes. On the contrary:

jump scares). His ideal movie is something “upbeat and action-packed.” In

he mostly climbs with them. Even accompanied by all the trappings of safety

attendance at this year’s Oscars, Alex told a producer of BlacKkKlansman that

gear, there are dangers; a knot untightens, a bolt pulls out, a hold breaks,

he liked Spike Lee’s film, but thought it was half an hour too long.

a storm makes terrain slippery, a bat flies out of a hole and surprises you.

When I suggest that his lack of trepidation in free soloing might

From two thousand feet, Alex would fall for over ten seconds before hitting

correspond to a lack of imaginative sensitivity—at least the kind typical of

the ground. That’s enough time to contemplate all the things that make life

those affected by scary films and fiction—Alex is resistant. “I can be imaginative

worth living.

and thoughtful without being neurotic,” he insists.

There’s something almost holy about climbing so high. Like Icacus’ wings melting in the sunshine or the Tower of Babel creeping skyward until it was dismantled by an angry God, Honnold seems to be tempting fate. “When he’s free soloing is when he feels most alive,” Alex’s mother protests in the

Honnold sometimes struggles with empathy, something he freely admits to.

documentary. “How could you even think of taking that away from somebody?”

He’s sympathetic in spades, but it’s harder for Alex to step outside himself.

I ask Alex whether scaling an inhospitable rock quenches some conqueror

When I accompany the board to Red Rock, Alex encourages me to climb for

urge inside of him—surviving these climbs is, technically, like trouncing

the first time (surprise: I am not very good) and later asks if I am now going

Mother Nature. “If you learn one thing from climbing, it’s that you never

to become a climber. I very much enjoy watching others do it, I tell him—

conquer nature,” he laughs, dismissing the idea. “Nature always conquers you.

but some people’s bodies just aren’t built for feats of athleticism. He disagrees.

No matter how great you feel as a climber, all it takes is one event to remind

People can train their bodies to do anything.

you that you’re an insignificant piece of dust.”

In 2016, Alex got an MRI at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Psychologists and neuroscientists were interested to know how

“Could you do ballet?” I respond, thinking I’m making a sound point about our varying capabilities. He sticks his arms out and pliés a few times, toes pointed in soft climbing shoes. He definitely could, he says.

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Sanni is the empathetic one, as evidenced by Free Solo. She’s the eternal optimist and he’s the cynic, the kind of guy who requires a patient girlfriend—

to free solo El Cap once, but bails because the conditions don’t feel right. His second attempt is the victorious one.

and one who can handle him risking his life for sport. He has a sarcastically

In the movie, Alex’s mom Dierdre Wolownick is vaguely described

blunt way of speaking, and some viewers have criticized his description of

by her son as a sort of critical perfectionist. Nothing he did was ever good

Sanni in the doc as being “cute and small” and not taking up “too much room”

enough for her. “If you’re seeking perfection, free soloing is as close as you

in his bachelor van.

can get,” Honnold says, revealing an early seed. It’s the truth about this weird

“I might not like the way I’m portrayed—actually, I don’t really care,” Alex tells me of Free Solo, “but whether I like it or not, I think it’s fair. There are

and wonderful accomplishment: one wrong move and you perish, but do it perfectly, and you’ll access the sublime.

certainly scenes where I’m like ‘Man, I’m such a dick.’ But if you watch anyone

Wolownick began climbing in her fifties, and has since scaled El Capitan

for two years, they’re going to be a dick sometimes. I’m also more harsh in the

(using ropes) with the help of her son. She recently wrote a book about her

film than in real life. Having a camera on you all the time adds extra stress. You

experience as the oldest woman to summit the wall, though Alex isn’t sure

constantly feel like you’re being watched.”

whether that claim is precisely true. “I don’t know if it’s brought us closer, but

I don’t see him as inconsiderate. “Follow your heart,” Alex advises Sanni when she says she’ll cook him an egg for breakfast during our interview,

she does have a better sense of what I’m doing,” he tells me of their climb. He hasn’t read the book yet.

which could be perceived as condescending—but I was there, and can tell it was not intended as such. Alex is someone learning intimacy, while Sanni is a born nurturer.

Alex got into free soloing because he was too shy to find belay partners

As the story goes, Alex and his longtime climbing buddy Maury Birdwell were

as a kid, and he taught himself to hug at the age of twenty-three because

gabbing in the car on their way back from a climbing trip in 2012 when the idea

no one in his family had ever showed physical affection; they also didn’t

for the Honnold Foundation was born. On an African climbing expedition with

use the word “love.” Alex’s father was morose when Alex was growing up

North Face two years prior, Alex had seen villagers living without electricity;

(he would probably be diagnosed with Asperger’s today, Alex’s mother says).

so with Maury, he decided to combine his passion for fighting climate change

Pre-divorce, their marriage was an unhappy one, and he died when Alex

and poverty in one fell swoop, using his philanthropic inclinations to promote

was nineteen.

solar energy.

After his father’s death, Alex dropped out of UC Berkeley to begin climbing

There are one billion people on earth currently living without access to

full-time. He’d grown up idolizing ropeless alpinists like Peter Croft, a legend

power, but our sun might hold a solution: renewable energy that won’t run out

of the ’80s who appears briefly in Free Solo to give Honnold some advice: “You

for another five billion years. A resource for producing sustainable electricity

made a perfect choice,” Croft, then in his late fifties, tells Alex after he attempts

with far less toxic pollutants and global warming emissions.

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Since its inception, the Honnold Foundation has operated as a donor-

work even in cloudy places like the Pacific Northwest, they are less vulnerable

advised fund under the Tides Foundation, but this past year they became an

to extreme weather than our current systems, and the panels last for thirty

independent 501(c)(3) public charity with more operational freedom. They

years. While Alex does not claim to be an expert on any of this—more of an

are best described as an intermediary between donors and nonprofits, using

“enthusiastic hobbyist”—he’s installed solar panels on the homes of his mom

Honnold’s clout in the outdoor community to support pre-existing work

and multiple friends, and sometimes loans people money for their initial

from organizations like SolarAid, GRID Alternatives, and the Solar Energy

installation costs. “Almost every solar installer will lease you a system for less

Foundation, to name a few. When his foundation began, Alex was funneling

than your utility bill,” Alex assures me.

one-third is a number he says he’d like to return to.

He’s been noticing more solar panels cropping up around Vegas on his bike ride to the climbing gym, and is confident solar will become ubiquitous in

“The easiest way to think about it is: imagine living without light,” Alex

ten years’ time. “Renewable energy is bipartisan—even the most conservative

explains with the same placid practicality he applies to climbing. “Especially

people appreciate the idea of generating their own energy,” he says. “It’s a very

if you’re in the tropics, that’s twelve hours of darkness a day. Not a lot of time

democratic, fair way of powering a society.”

to learn how to read, do your homework, do productive things we take for

HF board member Len Necefer used to work for the U.S. Department of

granted. In East Africa, people spend up to a quarter of their income just on

Energy, but left following Trump’s election (“The policy of the administration

kerosene to light their homes. If you don’t have that much money to begin

now is energy dominance, which basically means fossil fuels at any cost,” he

with, that’s a tremendous amount, combined with the health detriments of

says) and Necefer concurs that saving money should be a politically agreeable

burning kerosene in a confined space. People are poisoning themselves to

position. “Some rural communities in Kansas are very Republican, for

light their home in a very inefficient way. Solar lanterns and LED lights are an

example—and they’ve supported solar and energy efficiency because it makes

elegant solution to that problem.”

sense economically,” Necefer tells me, though he admits that renewable energy

Solar panels can cut a home’s utility bill in half, though there is a sizable upfront cost, and not everyone knows about the myriad benefits: Solar panels

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is commonly conflated with environmentalism, and that’s what turns some people off. “Go figure,” he adds dryly.

HONNOLD CLIMBING EL CAPITAN IN FREE SOLO

in a third of his income. At this point he’s worth an estimated two million, and

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The foundation’s only full-time staffer is Executive Director Dory

On our day at Red Rock, Alex climbs a little, but mostly acts as a patient belayer

Trimble, who learned what it’s like to live without power firsthand during

for the other board members. At one point he leads a quick group climb he

her time stationed in the Dominican Republic with the Peace Corps. Without

claims will be a 5.4 grade difficulty, but expert climber and board accountant

access to refrigeration, fresh food went bad; in searing heat, the dearth of air

Nancy Feagin informs everyone it was more like a 5.6, which is a good amount

conditioning was crippling; when cell phones and computers could not be

steeper. To Alex, everything is no big deal.

charged, communication became impossible.

He explains how climbing is much more social than people realize: a large

“Energy access work is like social justice work,” Trimble says. “The people

part of it is hanging out, shooting the shit with your friends or kindly strangers.

who are most affected by it are the people who are the most traditionally

When he climbs, people pay attention—a small group of bystanders collect

marginalized. And it isn’t really sexy the way other development questions are.

nearby to watch us. Alex falls several times, but the ropes catch him. When that

It often shows up as a second order need. I think it gets less attention because

happens, he pushes himself off the rock with his feet and dangles like a kid on

it’s so fundamental—people forget it exists.”

a swing, contented in midair.

The Honnold Foundation member who knows Alex best is co-founder

It’s startling to hear people fall. There are lots of climbers outside Vegas

Maury, now serving as board president. Maury appeared on camera in Free

that day, amongst the tawny mountains and scratchy shrubs, scrambling up

Solo, but ended up on the cutting room floor; he was a little disappointed there

and down low-lying sand-smooth rocks. Their falls are halted by ropes, but

wasn’t more talk of the foundation in the doc, though he understands it was

sometimes they fall kind of far. Sometimes they yell. Alex has seen someone

chopped for time and narrative tightness. Alex and Maury have a close, playful

die at Red Rock; he wasn’t close enough to witness the accident itself, but he

relationship—Maury delights in proving Alex wrong whenever he can, but he is

heard screams for help and later saw a man bleeding out at the bottom of a cliff.

also tenderly impressed by his friend’s progress.

“I have a low threshold for things that I perceive as inauthentic,” he tells

And yet, he still comes. He knows what might happen, but he keeps coming.

me. “That’s kind of why I’ve been drawn to working with Alex—authenticity

Board member Peter Martin and his wife Emily are there with us too, and

is one of the values that resonates deepest with him. And I don’t think

Peter loses his wedding ring on the group climb. The ring was wisely pocketed

we’re preachy in our message, we’re just trying to do good things, and we’re

beforehand, but tumbled out when Peter reached the summit, so we all search

not saying we have the best answer, but we’re making the effort. Alex isn’t

through brush that is crawling with caterpillars and study complex patterns in

dogmatic or declaratory—he just says, ‘We’re doing our best.’ He’s also a dick.

the rock faces trying to discern a tiny silver band. In the end, Emily finds it—the

Very matter-of-fact. His upbringing didn’t necessarily give him the tools. But

ring bounced much farther than Alex told us it should have, Maury points out,

he’s learned them.”

ever eager to one-up his pal.

In Alex’s world, it could have been worse: he had a friend who lost a thumb while scaling The Nose of El Capitan, he tells us. But they found the thumb, and sewed it back on. Alex perceives that as a pretty happy ending.

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