BOOK
STRIP BOOK #0 kill your idol issue
limited edition of 100 copies
PROJECT
Strip Project wants to propose a different way to reconsider each thing through the direct and spontaneous expression of the artists that were invited to cooperate, write, photograph and participate with their art works. A visual/textual space embracing an idea or a feeling. A dream of a group of people who share the desire to change and escape, not necessarily in need to know where it would lead to. An idea with a real reason to exist can only reflect his own creator. Strip project is like a band with two guitar players, their music/vision merges aggression with sweetness. It is a trip that leads where you want to be taken to.
Martina Spagnoli and anna Ka
interview by TONI THORIMBERT
RAY BANHOFF The Pussy Pusher
TT: Hi Ray, what is your daily routine as 'Pussy Pusher'? RB: 'The pussy pusher' blog was born to escape the everyday boredom at my desk, in the open space in Milan, where I work. I actually do it on the sly with the risk of being caught. I act like this almost on purpose to contravene those hours of forced silence of the temporary employee who is afraid of being fired if he stays away from work. 'Do you keep me here? so then I escape.' Anyhow I have always been attracted by the underworld, as Paradoxal says, by pornography and digital erotism since i was a kid.
the news. and they like it. They write me emails with requests and me, the pusher, finds everything. ebony, students, cocaine on butts, stretch marks. Everything they want.
TT: More than a pusher, your style seems to me much closer to the one of a Dj or better a 'music selector' : if your blog PP would be music, how would you define your dj set? RB: Moody, Random and well Sought. PP works by free association, it is a quick flick through among thousands of images. It is like finding the 'riff' while improvising music, it is a creative moment.
TT: What is the role of William Paradoxal? (Poet and Writer, the name is obviously an alias) RB: ahaha ahah (I laugh because I can imagine his face). I could do Pussy Pusher only with Paradoxal. He also uses PP for his research. He takes some photos I post and writes short poems always ending with 'always yours', a sort of signature. A sort of deviated Haikus. If PP for me is a daily escape, for him PP is an interior trip, a 'death and loathe in Las Vegas' kind of trip. Paradoxal is Doctor Gonzo. He is like your old school buddy, the one to make trouble with. Without him, I wouldn't be inspired doing it.
TT: there are already many web sites dedicated to 'pussy' on the internet, many from which also yourself draw on: why then the need to create your own selection? RB: PP was born after reading a review on your blog about a website "Ne-te-promene-doncpas-toute-nue", i think. I found it simply: beautiful. I remember thinking it was a very refined work, coherent, that was talking and telling thoroughly about my generation. I like to collect and master cds with compilations and I said to myself: I may be the best pussy photo editor alive. So like this, I started. TT: Is PussyPusher a personal need or a web marketing strategy? RB: As any human being with allegedly artistic ambitions or 'potentials' as they say in Milan, I would like to transform my 'personal need' in a source of profit. Ideally I would like a newspaper hiring me to do this for work.. but it is pure utopia. There is no strategy behind it., it is a daily journal written with other people words. PP will be online for few more months, then it will become a book written in cooperation with Paradoxal and then the blog will be shut down. TT: What about the feedbacks from your followers? RB: there are two strands: the ones that blast me, that write me in private asking me whether I am ok, or calling me pervert. Then there are regular followers connecting everyday to see
TT: Do you know for a fact if there are women following regularly Pussy Pusher? RB: Yes. My girl friends, friends of my girlfriend, facebook friends. Many I have to say. The ones that still talk to me and the ones that do not look at me like if I would be Charles Manson, appear to be, veeeeery alert! Reading through it their own meanings. Even the ones that repin/repost bukkake images on Pinterest.
TT: Are there pictures taken by yourself on PussyPusher? RB: There are a couple and I liked doing it. Naked necks on a tram or a pair of legs on the metro. Then I took them off. One thing is to be the pussy photo editor, shooting it is another job. I may start one day, but with a dedicated blog. I am keeping the distance at the moment. TT: Digital Photography lowered the medium quality level of photography in about every field, except amateur pornography. Do you agree? RB: Yes, I fairly agree. I bless the amazing abundance of the digital images, of the variety of the digital cameras, mobile phones and the growing fashion to take pictures. Pornographic and erotic photography has become more accessible by users with the result of more spontaneity and freedom of expression and exhibition. TT: Do you parents know about PussyPusher? Does your girlfriend agree? Did you have moral doubts to start the blog? Have you ever being accused of chauvinism? RB: Even though I have a hierarchic respect and relationship with him, my father has been the first person to whom I sent the link. He is a
Born in Lausanne (CH) Toni Thorimbert began his career in Italy in the mid seventies as a concerned reportage photographer. At the age of 20 he won his first award of exellence from the Italian Professional Photographers Association. In the ‘80 he contributed to define the image of top italian magazines such as Amica, Max and Italian Vanity Fair. In the mid ‘90 he began to export his work (and himself) overseas, shooting, among others, for Brutus, Wallpaper, Details and Mademoselle. His work has been shown around the world in solo and group exibitions.
manager in a powerful multinational and I am a college graduate in cultural arts who works as a temporary employee. But my father, who has been married 3 times with various extra marital adventures, is the first Pussy Pusher I met. I clearly wanted to demonstrate something. I wanted him to peep the blog with his colleagues from meeting to meeting, or pass the link to his bosses with brand new ipads, you know, all these business men with smart phones, auricular, i-pad and i-phone? whenever you get close they are always watching youporn. My girlfriend knows me, she knows how I am. at the beginning she was doubtful about my intensions, then we talked and everything went back to normal. Yes, I have been accused and pointed of chauvinism and vulgarity. Especially to be out of place and vulgarity, and usually by people who spend most of their time showing around how much emancipated they are. but I was expecting it. I had no doubts at all, I am not ashamed to say I suffer of hemorrhoids and not even that I watch porn. TT:'Canini'('little dogs') is your personal exhibition held in Milan recently, showing photos taken with i-phone of small dogs acting like psychos. An exhibition you can call nice and 'cute'. Supposing there is a connection between this show and thePussyPusher experience, what would it be? RB: 'canini' was held and wanted by by Cristiano Coppi, a friend of mine who took the photos from my i-phone and created something bigger. Both 'Canini' and 'PP' are two ways of saying something. I have always played, written, thought. Like everybody else I have a bunch of different ideas/feelings that push and are eager to come out. Sometimes is solitude, melancholy, so then you have canini, other times is tits. I think that is important not to wither and show what you have and feel inside. For this reason I am grateful both to Paradoxal and to Coppi, who stimulated me to keep going. TT: In real life, how do you make a living? RB: I say this with a little embarrassment, but I am a photographer. I do not have a traditional background, and I am a product of the lowered quality level brought by the digital era. I worked as free lance writing and shooting for various magazines, now I work for an editorial company and I take pictures of famous people who are invited to talk on the radio.
It is in Russ Meyer's Supervixens hypertrophic shapes, in those voluminous breasts able to defy the G-force, in the fine cerebral erotism exploring the feminine body of Chantal Akerman in 'Je tu il elle', on those white sheets blackened by unkept pubic hair, in the sensual and desperate look in the eyes of the young lost souls in Harmony Korine movies. in the colorful, funny and impudent Tex Avery's cartoons, in the Los Angeles muscles ready for night cruising in William Friedkin style, in the soft core sweat on
tired and sun burned skin of Marilyn Chambers. The sensuality of these bodies about to erupt is everywhere and anywhere it is enriched by suggestions, able to evoke film echoes apparently so faraway but secretly bound by the spasmodic search of its own physical identity, recognition and self acceptance. but more than anything by the beauty of sinuous shapes telling more than words alone, that splendor called body of the soul.
CECILIA ERMINI
TEXT BY CECILIA ERMINI cecilia.ermini@gmail.com TRANSLATION MONICA MANETTI mkmlove.tumblr.com
CONTRIBUTORS
MARTINA SPAGNOLI
GIANGIACOMO PEPE
ANNA KA
LAVINIA MALLEGNI
NATALIA RESMINI
RAY BANHOFF
http://martinaspagnoli.com
http://annaka.it
http://nataliaresmini.com
ERIN M RILEY
http://erinmriley.com
http://giangiacomopepe.tumblr.com
I.mode@libero.it
http://pussypusher.tumblr.com
WONDERFUR LUKA
http://wonderfurluka.tumblr.com
STRIP BOOK #0 kill your idol issue
limited edition of 100 copies
Publisher and Art Director: Martina Spagnoli and anna ka Designer: Antonino Giacalone
Special thanks to Toni Thorimbert
Published by STRIP PROJECT, 2012 info@strip-project.com
Copyright
2012 PROJECT