TUNICA Magazine Third Issue

(Letter from the Editors)

To promote in every possible way the interests of the arts, recognizing no taboos. It’s here that we stand as particles, as a whole, like a body in a continuous drift, longing for a place to fuse and elevate its deeds.

The postmodern scene is a good picture, we admire your energy, silently, expectantly, Ma-ga-zine ‘de vers’.

Enormous Youngsters, you and Artists are the only things (you don’t mind being called things?) leaving the world with a little life in it. You are the word of change and prevalence, all emphatic ions.

A word of advice; leave works of art alone, the ego is a great enemy of progress, a modern caricature.

A Tunica is what we all would wear in our hope against oblivion.

Staying power! Brave comrades!

l ArISSA lockShIn

lArISSA lockShIn

l ArISSA lockShIn

Arriving at recent Parson-graduate Larissa Lockshin’s live-work studio, little abstract paintings are stacked by size from right-toleft along a white wall-edge. While Lockshin’s practice might be restricted to painting, her choice of medium resists limitation. From colorful outbursts of wholesale printer ink, to crushed Micah, acrylic, oil stick, latex paint, enamel and chalk, her canvases contain a cacophony of sugary color. Incorporating a multitude of materials, she sheds the dated connotation that might accompany one material or another, allowing Lockshin to reach closer to her abstract objectives.

TEx T BY AnTonIA MArSh PhoTogr APhY BY JoSE c. gArcIA

By framing her paintings either only on two opposite sides of the canvas, or with painted wood, Lockshin furthers her attempts to separate her artwork from sustaining what she believes to be a limiting categorization as purely painting. Founded out of a frustration with the emphasis in her undergraduate years at art school on performance and conceptual art, Lockshin insists that creating objects remains a prodigious priority. Not just images hung onto a wall, Lockshin’s canvases reach outward and exist in the liminal space situated between painting and sculpture. Lockshin maintains her concern to create paintings that can exist as objects, and not just vessels for pictorial content. If, therefore, a wall-based artwork is to exist as an object in this way, does this collapse a distinction between painting and sculpture, or even suggest its ultimate futility? When asked to what extent she feels this distinction remains valid, Lockshin responds that while the art market still demands a distinction, perhaps brought about by a loss of the context in which an artwork exists brought on by image-sharing platforms; in relation to her practice, the distinction remains defunct.

Freeing her work from the pictor ial constraints of painting, exhibition in the gallery space emphasizes the object-hood of Lockshin’s artworks; separated from the walls either suspended from the ceiling or

freestanding. Deliberately devoid of particular content, Lockshin’s abstractions therefore exist in their own context as their own individual units of display. The decision to delve into abstraction stems from a conviction that the extreme over-abundance of images we are confronted with in quotidian visual culture drains any value from the image itself. Consequently, in her attempts to raise the object value of her paintings, Lockshin chose to distance her works as far from a recognizable image as possible.

Replacing image content with object-hood as her major priority signifies an attempt to frustrate the viewer, a response reflected in Lockshin’s dissatisfaction with the perpetual conundrum for artists working since the Internet: how can artworks maintain value as physical objects rather than through their image content when they are most often viewed online? As if by mirroring the behavioral tropes of an image online might provide some kind of catharsis towards this problem, Lockshin insists that she seeks to create works outside of any context whatsoever.

A side from these object-pai nti ngs, Lockshin continually collaborates with artist and friend Georgia Cronin on a series of latch-hook rugs. Varying in size and suspended on the wall either framed or unframed, these furry entities are the result of extended, almost tor turous t went yhour-plus sessions over numerous months,

(Por TfolIo)

TunIcA

p. 3

ISSuE III

p. 4

l ArISSA lockShIn

l ArISSA lockShIn

of hooking wool thread through netting.

While this endurance denotes a feeling of discomfort in any viewer, the contrast of this emotion with the irresistible desire to stroke each tactile achievement is perplexing to say the least. As if through naïve wonder when faced with the largest rug piece, I instinctively turn a corner over to reveal the side flush with the wall, a state that apparently was considered a potential method of display.

Accompanied by a list of sentences the artists composed together while working, when read aloud alongside these rugs, it becomes easy to enter into a not dissimilar trancelike state to that Lockshin and Cronin found themselves in: “The rugs are about silence. The rugs areabout time. The rugs are about intersections. The rugs are about connections. The rugs are about softness. The rugs are about hooking with purpose. The rugs are about sitting for an extended period of time. The rugs are about craft. The rugs are about journeys. The rugs are about learning… The rugs are about cutting strips, controlling your physical movement. The rugs are about reaching down and smoothing over. The rugs are about aging. The rugs are about making your eyes hurt.”

T he repet it ive nat u re of th is text, twinned with the recurring action of hooking each piece of thread through becomes almost performative, as if chanting a mantra or manifesto qualifying their draining labor. As well as denoting the core aims of creating these rugs, The List equally makes evident precisely what the works are not about. Through the absence of engagement with certain discourses, namely theories of domesticity and

female labor, it becomes clear that Lockshin and Cronin are deliberately avoiding association with the dated connotations that link craft and womanhood. When asked about these potential implications, Lockshin agrees that weaving can unfortunately prevail as an inherently female activity in the popular mindset, however the rug works enabled her to cathartically draw attention to this discrepancy precisely through their lack of engagement with it. The List chimes in: “The rugs are a question of artist or artisan, ” and this point remains crucial to Lockshin: what might be considered painting or sculpture for a male artist, might still be considered craft for a female artist. For Lockshin and Cronin, the difference between the art object and this craft object definitely lies in gender historically: an associative trope that requires imminent redefinition.

This desire to articulate her concerns through a definite clarity in what she rejects, ignores and abandons, almost as if a conceptual process of elimination, recurs in the impetus behind Lockshin’s individual practice. Often beginning from a lucid awareness of how she does not intend her paintings (or objects) to exist, Lockshin seems to work backwards, where what began as limitations, become opportunities, and vice versa.

What lingers after our visit is particularly clear: for Lockshin, exploring a balance between the material and technological limitations - whether related to the object-hood of a painting or the context in which it exists – propels her practice forward and into a realm where dated associations and categorizations are no longer useful or productive in defining an artist’s work. Ⅲ

TunIcA

p. 5

ISSuE III

p. 7

SIgrId cAlon

SIgrId cAlon

TEx T BY AnTonIA MArSh

(Por TfolIo)

SIgrId cAlon

Based in Tilburg, in her native Holland, Sigrid Calon’s (1969) visual practice collapses the boundary between fine and applied arts, and serves as an assault upon the inessential existence of a separation between these two fields. Her volume of 120 distinct pattern-like designs To The Extend Of / \ | & opens out the graphic possibilities of aida cloth, a material most commonly associated with arts and crafts. Calon, however, as if with Fibonacci-esque intensity, sees in this basic fabric a wealth of investigative visual potential. By employing these embroidery grids as a basis for her risographed images, she imposes a structure on her process; a sacrifice of linear freedom that consequently and perhaps contradictorily allows for a myriad of experimental opportunity. More specifically, the intricate and yet functional pattern in the structure of this fabric becomes a framework within which an intense experimentation with color occurs.

The designs on each page of this book stand monolithic, supported by no text or title, simply a number. Nothing distracts from the powerful image of saturated color, and as a consequence this decision subverts a normative expectation of a publication. Despite its lack of textual content, this book has much to say. Reflecting an inherently human search for order amongst the unfathomable chaos of nature, Calon yearns to seek patterns in the exterior environment that surrounds her. Quoting the biblical creation story as a search for order and the theories of Ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras as a longing for beauty and harmony, Calon draws a parallel

with her own desire for these essential qualities. In a similar gesture, while working with man-made material, Calon similarly searches for detail in the minutiae of our exterior surroundings. Calon renders the chaos of our surroundings more structurally comprehensible, and yet still resists reducing its complexity, and in turn that of nature, to anything less staggering.

To create the designs in this hefty publication, Calon initially chose eight colors: pink, blue, orange, brown, yellow, green, black and red, and combined these to generate 28 two-color combinations, 56 threecolor combinations, and 72 four-color combinations. From this abundance, 28 final

TunIcA

p. 9

ISSuE III

p. 10

rYA n dE l A h oz

SIgrId cAlon

images exist in the text, and each appears only once. By layering colors over a basic textile arrangement via the repetitive printing process of the risograph machine, Calon imbues her compositions with a depth and volume that vibrates across each page.

As with her choice of colors, the risograph, which functions as a high-speed digital printing system not dissimilar to the photocopier, equally serves as a limiting system to Calon’s work. The question as to whether these limitations may be unproductive remains. However, this machine affords Calon the opportunity of working in a layered process, where, again, the potential for seemingly innumerable compositions abounds. This technique differs greatly to a more standard printer, where each color is printed simultaneously and the resulting image takes far less time to print. By using a risograph, Calon therefore has no choice but to take her time in image-making, decelerating and methodizing her practice.

Feeling the rhythm of the risograph as you turn each page, awash with texture despite its two-dimensionality, each image comes alive as it dances in front of the viewer and bounces off the page. W hile printed, each design displays an utter pulsation of color and together this text becomes an artwork in its own right, a cacophony of succulent compositions. Juxtaposed next to one another, each print would stand strong on the wall, however in the decision to exhibit them page by page, Calon gives the viewer time with her images. The body engages with each design through the necessity to actively turn a page to see what follows.

The question as to whether this volume represents an exhibition in book form feels defunct. An alternative imagining for this series might instead be offered in the “artist’s book.” Associated with a high degree of control of the artist from the conception to the production of a publication, these texts are often understood as artworks themselves. Returning to To The Extend Of / \ | & - Calon insists that aside from the binding, the entire book she created herself. From the methodical printing process that came with the risograph to the arrangement and folding of each page, Calon personalizes bookmaking. The book, an object inextricable from its academic associations meets a time-consuming, hand-oriented process that might otherwise align with craft. In this approach, the artist’s work re-engages with this aforementioned idea that fine art and applied art no longer diverge and instead collide to offer a liberating space for creative practice. Ⅲ

rYAn dE lA hoz

TExT BY k ArEn SchAuPETEr

TunIcA

p . 11

(Por TfolIo)

Simple Deconstruction “Make everything as simple as possible but not simpler” are words to live by, and for Californian artist Ryan De La Hoz this is a steadfast mantra and one of his favorite quotes of all time. “I apply it in all sorts of ways to everyday life. As far as art making is concerned I use it to consider when to stop working on a piece. I try to stay minimal.

I think that what you leave out is equally important to what you include.”

I met De La Hoz in San Francisco over burritos and a beer; a close friend and well rounded art enthusiast Adam Cimino made it a point that we meet and in 2012, I felt like I was a little late to the party. Deep in his practice, he already had a small independent clothing line called CoolTry and was working at the Oakland Museum of Art, making it very clear early on that he would be dedicating a life of servitude to the arts. Over the past two years his career has begun to soar having a two person show here in New York with Ed. Varie, a solo show in Los Angeles, another solo exhibition rapidly approaching this year in Seattle, and not to mention all of the Internet praise. He is humble and grateful as he rises to the challenge of taking on the art world.

ISSuE III

p. 13

rYA n dE l A h oz

rYA n dE l A h oz

of these pieces in a state of disorder that is the world.” While searching for ways to address disdain of capitalism, freedom from oppression, the depletion of natural resources, and the pursuit of happiness, the wellloved Americana tie-dye motif, an undeniable symbol of defiance of corporate culture, is borrowed and mated with oversized two dimensional images of ancient statue heads.

The manipulations of antiquity point to the seriousness of the state of our union, as the contradictory tie-die border embraces the desire for change. The goal is all about finding the solution.

Method, symbols, and simplicity are key to De La Hoz’s work. With the graphic nature of his art, design programs would be a logical and time saving step in his process, but working in a traditional manner, pen to paper, blade to cutting mat, allows him a direct tactical relationship with his work, and to explore the variation and its imperfections. He has created a unique visual language of skeleton gloves, stark black platforms and ladders, magician and sorcer-

er hats. All these are forms and images that resurface time and time again representing the emotional force behind the experiment on any given day. He creates from pure emotion, and trial and error. Self-imposed and methodical repetition of his visual language has created an alphabet giving him a set of characters to draw from, but also offering an increasingly distinct voice to his work throughout the years of development.

De La Hoz looks to mentors and inspirational places such as his family home in the countryside in the Bay Area to continually remind himself to stay grounded and in the present. He remains an optimist even amid the impending chaos and frailty of life. Metamorphosis is a strong current throughout his work and is important to the process of his ideas and the messages he draws from the experiences both for himself and for the public. Balanced, expressive, and reassembled, De La Hoz has a way of making art for everyone, art for the masses from what he knows best, keeping it simple, but not simpler. Ⅲ

MEMPhIS grouP

Martin Bedin, cucumber, 1985.

In many ways De La Hoz is a traditional artist. He maintains a steady studio practice, a vital sensibility to the mark of the artist’s hand, and keeps the use of technology to a bare minimum. Somewhat in opposition to this stance as an analog art maker, a wide range of materials and schools of thought, both non-traditional and modern, are drawn from to communicate his ideas. These materials such as digitally printed fabrics, rugs, and puzzles are used as a point of entry for the work. The puzzle, as a medium, although mass-produced, allows the assembler to connect individually with an image that they themselves did not create. This process of putting a puzzle together relates back to one of the earliest developmental skills we learn as humans, and as each piece is examined, tested and eventually reunited with a congruous piece, the metaphor of working through the chaos of our lives eventually becomes apparent and clear. As we as humans mature and develop, the puzzles we are able to navigate and accomplish get more complicated, as does life. De La Hoz balances out the chaos with clear, concise messages and noteworthy titles such as, “This is Your Doom” or “Fault Line”.

Always integrating appropriation into his work, whether it is from his memory or from the deconstruction of his current environment, he extracts symbolic objects from past and present as an expression of prior existence and as an iconoclastic means to open more expansive and omnipresent dialogue. De La Hoz uses this dialogue to dissect and redefine new and old ideas of our culture and humanity in general. Frequent homage from antiquity present themselves as iconic views of harmony, balance, masculinity and classicism. His work references 5th Century BC Greek sculptor Polykleitos “The Elder”, taking replicas of Diadoumenos and wrapping them in a battery operated neon jump rope, effortlessly combining the then with the now.

He deconstructs a commentary on self-image and the idea of the perfect being with

a delicate sense of humor about modern society and rave culture. In other works, soft cotton fabric is custom printed to mimic a marble slab, reshaping a classic material into a modern form in the same shape and dimensions of a bandana. The hand-sewn Americana patches express apathy, dissent, and fear of threatened selfhood at odds with a collective societal identity transforming the piece into a realized and tangible version of the idea of waving your flag.

His is skilled with an almost uncanny ability to connect and modify fragments of what we are familiar with into something direct, deliberate, meaningful and visually appealing. In response to an interview question posed about how and what major fragments play a role in his art, he responds, “My work consonantly references a bit of destruction and isolation. Things are always in disarray. As far as ‘life fragments’ are concerned I think of it as trying to connect all

TunIcA

p . 14

TExT BY clAudIA EvE BEAuchESnE PhoTogr APhY BY dEnnIS z AnonE, ThAnh Truc TrInh & courTESY of MEMPhIS-MIl Ano.org

ISSuE III

p. 15

(Por TfolIo)

Brendan Timmins, Threshold Bookends, 2013.

MEMPhIS grouP

Memphis was a groundbreaking and influential design collective founded in Milan in the early 1980s around the celebrated architect and designer Ettore Sottsass. Its large cast of international designers shared a common attitude that could accommodate each designer’s unique set of cultural references while remaining cohesive. Between 1981 and 1987, the group produced seven collections of instantly recognizable furniture and housewares that soon became icons of postmodern design, combining bold geometric forms, bright colors, and hyperkinetic patterns. Memphis was so of-the-moment that the striking look of its anthropomorphic bookcases, oversized chairs and toylike lamps was quickly perceived as dated, perhaps a sign that the group had succeeded in creating objects that had the same immediacy as snapshots. Now, almost thirty years after the ephemeral movement ended, Memphis has been rediscovered and reinterpreted by young designers and artists.

Born in Austria in 1917, Ettore Sottsass Jr. grew up in Milan and was trained as an architect, but became a prolific product designer and cultural theorist. He first made his mark on the design world in the 1960s when he designed a series of lightweight portable typewriters for the Italian firm Olivetti.

Sottsass saw electronics as mysterious, futuristic objects, and wanted to show that they could be more than purely utilitarian tools for secretaries with humdrum lives. In 1969, he designed the Valentine typewriter, whose sleek, bright red plastic case set it apart from the bulky, greige office equipment of the time. Evocative and sexy, the

Valentine boldly questioned the validity of the modernist approach to product design.

Modern design (exemplified by the work of the Bauhaus school, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, among others) attempted to (re)form the world in accordance with a strictly rational, utopic model. For modernists, form must follow function, so purity of intent is essential, hybrids must be avoided, and desig ns need to lend themselves to cost-efficient, democratic mass-production methods. As a result, modern furniture is simple, symmetrical and unadorned, usually done in neutral shades with an occasional pop of color intended to draw attention to

TunIcA

p. 19

MEMPhIS grouP

MEMPhIS grouP

Bel Air chair

by Peter Shire, 1982 The Bel Air chair is American Peter Shire’s most memorable contribution to Memphis.

Influenced by california’s surfing and sailing culture, as well as by Art deco and googie architecture, the chair’s “shark fin” back was inspired by architect John lautner’s Stevens house, located on Malibu Beach. The chair takes its name from los Angeles’ hotel Bel-Air, but the name’s aura of sophistication and luxury is offset by the fact that the chair seems to be balancing on a giant beach ball. like a hot rod, the Bel Air chair was produced in various color combinations and could be customized to fit a client’s tastes. When sitting in such an outrageously oversized armchair, it’s nearly impossible not to approach even the most casual conversation as a performance. The Bel Air chair invites us to reconsider our participation in the comedy of everyday life.

hilton Trolley

by Javier Mariscal, 1981 The often-copied hilton trolley created by Spanish cartoonist and industrial designer Javier Mariscal (with the technical know-how of Pepe cortés) for Memphis’ first collection boasts an extra pair of wheels and an aerodynamic shape that calls to mind the Streamline Moderne architecture of the 1930s. Tilting back as if travelling at high speed (with splashes or red and yellow reminiscent of a custom car flame job), the hilton Trolley embodies an exuberant, childlike optimism about technological advancement and progress.

ISSuE III

p. 20

MEMPhIS grouP

the piece’s functional structure. Sottsass felt that design should reflect the fact that humans experience the world through their senses before they can order and intellectualize it. He wanted not to overthrow modernism, but to go beyond it; to approach function like a sociologist rather than like an engineer in order to explore the potential impact of a richer design language.

In the 1960s and ’70s, Sottsass traveled to India, where he was inspired by the geometric shapes and bright colors of the buildings. He also studied Asian traditions, as well as the bold architecture and design of the American suburbs, which celebrated technological progress and consumer culture with day-glo colors and dynamic forms referencing cars, exotic destinations and space travel. These new inspirations would soon inform his designs, and eventually become part of the Memphis aesthetic.

In 1977, Sottsass joined the experimental Milanese design collective Studio Alchimia, which was part of a larger movement of Italian designers intent on coming up with strategies to dismantle the rigid ideology of modernism—they called their alternative “Nuovo Design.” Alchimia’s furniture, housewares and decorative objects borrowed the colors and design vocabulary of the 1950s to explore the idea of banality and kitsch in everyday life. The pieces were functional but featured seemingly arbitrary decorative elements meant to stimulate the senses and rouse the imagination. They offered riddles rather than sensible design solutions.

More like an art movement than a design studio, Alchimia organized exhibitions, issued manifestos and took part in demonstrations. Its unique, handcrafted pieces were made to spark debates, not to sell. Sottsass felt that, in an industrial society, the most effective way to remain culturally relevant was to engage with the market by making products to be sold in stores, not put on a pedestal. He wanted to develop a commercial business model for these innovative designs.

In the fall of 1980, he left Alchimia to concentrate on a new initiative: Memphis.

Sottsass had been invited by the owners of the Arc ’74 showroom to design a collection for the 1981 Milan Furniture Fair.

Instead of working alone, he suggested the idea of a collective project involving some of the young protégés with whom he had recently founded an architecture firm.

In November 1980, he gathered his business partners Marco Zanini, Aldo Cibic and Matteo Thun, as well as Michele De Lucchi and Martine Bedin, at his apartment to discuss the new venture. With them was Barbara Radice, a design critic who

would become the group’s spokesperson and Sottsass’ wife.

Sottsass was 63 years old at the time, but all of his collaborators were in their twenties, some of them still students or freshly out of architecture school. Sottsass chose to work w ith you nger desig ners because he found them more honest and sensitive, and wanted to help kickstart their career: “When I was young, nobody gave me any work opportunities,” he explained in 1988. “I knew I could have done outstanding things... I have always remembered that.”

As the group f leshed out their project, Bob Dylan’s single, “Stuck Outside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,” was playing on the turntable. After hearing the song many times in a row, Sottsass suggested calling the new venture “Memphis” as a reference to both the birthplace of Elvis Presley and the ancient capital of Egypt’s Old Kingdom. It was an aptly strange combination of ancient history and popular culture, made even more intriguing by the fact that the group was based in Italy. At the next meeting, the British designer George Sowden and the French illustrator Nathalie Du Pasquier were invited to join the group.

Together, this small team of like-minded designers developed the Memphis ethos.

In the following months, Sottsass invited several architects and designers whose work had affinities with the Memphis sensibility to suggest designs for the first collection.

Among them were the Californian artist Peter Shire (who made teapots that Sottsass found “fresh, witty, and full of information for the future.”), the Spanish cartoonist and product designer Javier Mariscal, the Japanese designers Arata Isozaki, Shiro Kuramata and Masanori Umeda, and the world-renowned American architect Michael Graves. Memphis became a large, international collective of emerging talents and “big names” supported by Ernesto Gismondi, the founder of the Italian company Artemide, who agreed to manufacture and distribute the group’s designs.

T he f i r st M e mph is c ol le ct ion wa s launched in September 1981 at the Arc ’74 showroom during the Milan Furniture Fair.

It included 55 undeniably innovative pieces (furniture, lamps, clocks and ceramics) that bore the names of luxury hotels and exotic destinations, like the Tahiti lamp, Fuji cabinets, Brazil table and Riviera chair. Although over twenty international designers had contributed pieces, the collection had an impressive stylistic unity, in part because Sottsass reviewed every proposal, but also because each designer brought his or her own culturally-specific influences to the mix.

TunIcA

p. 21

Tawaraya Boxing ring

by Masanori umeda, 1981 Masanori umeda’s Tawaraya boxing ring was the pièce de resistance of Memphis’ first collection. Presented as a conversation pit, it could also be used as a dining area, a bed, or a shrine. umeda’s witty design references the dual nature of Japanese society. The tatami, wooden tray, and silk pillows represent Japan’s minimalist interiors and polite, civilized rituals (the pillows’ bright, diffused colors also evoke urban graffiti), while the imposing black and white exterior with curved bedposts doubling as (street) lamps symbolize the struggle to survive in Japan’s fiercely competitive and overcrowded cities. Ironically, only a large, open concept interior can accommodate this spectacular folie de grandeur. The Tawaraya ring became one of Memphis’ signature pieces when the group’s core design team was photographed in the ring in 1981.

casablanca Sideboard

by Ettore Sottsass, 1981 Ettore Sottsass’ larger than life casablanca sideboard combines storage and display and can also serve as a room divider. going against the modernist belief that form should follow function, its angled arms can hold wine bottles or simply stimulate the imagination by making the piece simultaneously resemble an insect, a cactus, a totem, and one of keith haring’s radiant figures. The casablanca’s garish colors and plastic laminate surface finishes are inspired by the cheap and easy to wipe furniture of fast-food restaurants. By using them in high-end, handcrafted pieces, Sottsass challenged accepted notions of “bad taste,” introducing a new spirit of irreverence into furniture design.

ISSuE III

p. 22

MEMPhIS grouP

The packed opening party and hip, international designers proved irresistible to the mass media, and although reactions from the press were far from unanimously favorable, the polarizing new style did not leave anyone indifferent. Barbara Radice soon published a series of articles celebrating Memphis as a groundbreaking new movement, and Sottsass’ friend, the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, had his Monte Carlo apartment furnished with Memphis pieces, sparking another stream of press coverage. Memphis became the world’s most popular avantgarde movement.

gabon Textile by nathalie du Pasquier, 1982 At the age of twenty, french artist nathalie du Pasquier traveled to gabon on a whim and was impressed by the gabonese’s exuberant vitality and by the colorful fabrics in which they dressed. Those traditional African fabrics inspired this textile design, which also evokes new wave graphics, microbes seen through a microscope’s lens— du Pasquier’s father was a virologist—and comic book explosions. By incorporating references to Western culture into traditional African patterns, du Pasquier’s designs remind Westerners that they live on the same planet as the people of so-called Third World countries like gabon, zambia or Burundi. gabon was created as a covering for Memphis furniture, but the appropriation process eventually came full circle when the fabric was later used to make neckties, bowties, and shirts.

Tahiti Table lamp

by Ettore Sottsass, 1981 The Tahiti table lamp was designed by Memphis’ founder Ettore Sottsass for the group’s debut collection. Its zoomorphic shape and bright colors stir up memories of toys and cartoon characters, and its base features Sottsass’ iconic black and white Bacterio pattern. The Tahiti might look like a toy that just happens to have a light bulb built into it, but its swiveling head lets the user redirect the light shining from its “beak” with a flick of the hand, a practical feature that offsets its quirky look. Beyond its basic function as a source of light, the Tahiti lamp’s true purpose might be to diffuse tension through humour and to remind you not to take yourself too seriously.

TunIcA

MEMPhIS grouP

MEMPhIS grouP

p. 23

Memphis designs raise questions but refuse to answer them. Instead of building objects around a pre-determined structure, the group deconstructed both the objects and the structure in order to explore the ways in which they can communicate meaning. This intentionally nebulous ideology allows for a variety of interpretations.

It seems that one of the group’s main goals was to create products that merge structure and decoration, giving a physical form to abstract ideas and provoking an emotional response. Sottsass saw objects as physical manifestations of their designers’ worldview, and of the relation between an individual and society. In this optic, a new interpretation of the potential of life would inevitably lead to a new kind of design, which might itself inspire a new way of looking at the world. Memphis wanted to blur the lines between subject and object, to make objects that could potentially choose their own users, fostering a reciprocal relationship between people and their belongings.

Memphis designs also appear to be critiquing social hierarchies and the (often capitalist) power structures on which those hierarchies rely. The Memphis designers were keenly aware of the cultural connotations that make a color, shape or material high or low class – for example, marble is commonly found in banks and corporate offices, while plastic laminate covers the tables of suburban fast-food restaurants, and a bright, diffused color looks like it could have come straight out of a South Bronx graffiti writer’s spray can. By scrambling those connotations, and combining expensive materials with inexpensive ones, Memphis pieces symbolically laugh off the distinction between socio-economic classes, inventing a new, democratic, stylistic syntax.

Existing in a grey area between art and furniture, a Memphis piece might also prompt questions or invite contemplation, its irrationality jolting us out of our everyday routine. Looking at a sculptural Ashoka

ISSuE III

lamp or at the alien-looking Cipriani bar can lead us to imagine other countries, other eras or parallel universes in which such unusual objects would have their place.

Those daydreams have the potential to counteract apathy and to transform our lives by expanding our conception of society and of our role within it.

In fact, it seems like some Memphis objects (especially the teapots, vases and tableware) were made specifically to inspire their owners to dream up new rituals in which to use them. As Sottsass had learned through his exploration of Asian customs, rituals are an opportunity to pay attention to the present moment, and to remain aware of the passage of time.

Many have accused Memphis of being a novelty, and the group encouraged this view.

Memphis aimed to be thoroughly contemporary and forward-looking, its mixture of colors, forms, and materials perhaps mirroring the overwhelming and absurd overabundance of Western society at the end of the twentieth century. The group knew from the start that its designs would soon go out of style, but instead of fearing obsolescence, they saw its inevitability as an opportunity to constantly come up with new ideas. To them, being seen as a fad was a sign of vitality.

As Richard Horn wrote in 1986, “to sit on a Memphis chair is to sit on a question mark,” each piece providing not only a solution to a practical problem, but also an opportunity to examine the ways in which we interact with the people and objects that surround us. For example, with its hard surfaces and strange angles, the Beach lounge chair might be perceived as an invitation to come up with a new way to recline on a lounge chair. Meanwhile, oddly-shaped storage pieces like the Carlton bookcase may prompt us to ask ourselves why we should order and display our possessions in the way dictated by mass-produced furniture.

If civilization compels us to act out a comedy in our everyday interactions, how can we control this comedy, or at least try to learn something new about it?

Paradoxically, some Memphis pieces seem so concerned with communicating sensory and socio-cultural meaning that they may not provide a comfortable setting in which to communicate with one another.

For example, the Agra marble sofa is visually striking but looks decidedly uncomfortable—it might makes us reconsider the idea of relaxing at home without actually letting us relax. Despite their visual and intellectual appeal, some Memphis pieces have been criticized for their impracticality by those who believe that good design should facilitate human interactions, not complicate them.

Although Memphis objects could be interpreted as pure decoration, status symbols, talismans, conversation pieces and/or works of art, every item also serves a basic practical function: a bookcase holds books, a cabinet holds objects, lamps provide light, and chairs and sofas can be sat on. For the Memphis designers, an object has value because we can touch it and use it in our daily lives. Its function might be manifold and not immediately legible, but it is necessary for a true connection to form between an inanimate object and life.

After Memphis’ initial success in 1981, the ever-changing collective released a new collection each year until 1987, moving toward more luxurious materials like silver and blown glass, and introducing a wide range of decorative objects like ashtrays, plates and vases. The group continued to produce new items even after Ettore Sottsass left the group in 1985. Several international manufacturers (including Fiorucci, Esprit and A lessi) also commissioned desig ners associated with the group to create special collections of lamps, teapots, carpets or jewelry in the distinctive Memphis style.

Nathalie Du Pasquier’s eye-catching patterns were especially important in the widespread diffusion of the Memphis look because they could be printed on various materials and turned into small items (clothing, dishcloths, pencil cases, plastic laminate sheets, etc.) that were more affordable than furniture, and within reach of a broader market.

The trickle-down effect was all-encompassing, with Memphis-inspired designs infiltrating every sphere of culture. As early as 1982, Crafts magazine proclaimed: “You don’t have to own, or even to have seen a Memphis design for it to affect you sooner or later.” In America, Europe and Japan, countless decorative objects showed an obvious Memphis influence. Meanwhile, Memphis’ official high-quality, handmade pieces were too expensive for most customers, and quickly became status symbols. Memphis designs straddled the line between precious, exclusive objects and mass commodities.

Memphis’ deconstructed aesthetic was initially a challenge to the modernist program, but it was eventually seen by many as a mere style statement, a way for the nouveau riche to simultaneously broadcast their sophisticated taste and their lack of pretension. This interpretation is evident in the 1986 black comedy film, Ruthless People, in which the home of millionaires Sam and Barbara Stone (played by Danny DeVito and Bette Midler) is entirely furnished in the Memphis style, with almost exact replicas of the Bel Air chair, Lido sofa, and Plaza dress-

ing table. The Stones’ over-the-top décor is clearly meant to convey their shallowness and their preoccupation with displaying their wealth and keeping up appearances.

In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, the Memphis style became entrenched in youth culture, its bright colors and cartoonish shapes strongly influencing the aesthetic of toys, board games, and television shows like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Saved by the Bell, and the French-Canadian series Robin et Stella for years after the Memphis group itself had dismantled.

p. 24

TunIcA

p. 25

It’s been just over thirty years since the Memphis group came together, but many already regard its designs as contemporary classics. In the last decade, dozens of designers and artists (many of them born in the 1980s and early ‘90s) have been using a variety of strategies to bring the Memphis attitude, history and instantly recognizable style into today’s reality.

The 24-year-old Brooklyn-based furniture designer Misha Kahn shares Memphis’ interest in devising complex systems of sensory and cultural signs rather than “simple, smart solutions.” In his More Like You buffet, a pink neon tabletop balances on a wedge whose surface is inspired by one of Ettore Sottsass’ lesser-known patterns for Memphis. Sottsass’ patterns drew attention to the flatness of surfaces by giving them an artificial texture and dimensionality; Kahn did the opposite, gouging the pattern into ebonized wood in order to make the natural material look more like one of Memphis’ signature plastic laminates.

Today’s designers sometimes use new technologies to pay tribute to the pioneering designers and their work. For example, Belgian illustrator Tim Colmant recently created a series of patterns that commemorate Nathalie Du Pasquier’s hand-drawn designs, but were made with MS Paint. With names like Safari and Afrika, Colmant’s patterns are printed onto shirts and hats on-demand by the online design/retail platform Print All Over Me. For a total look, Coltman’s hat and shirt could be worn with Adidas’s 2005 limited-edition Sottsass-inspired sneakers, American Apparel’s multicolored Memphis socks, and a jacket and purse from Proenza Schouler’s/ Fall/Winter 2013 ready-to-wear collection.

Recent Memphis-inspired creations are even more aware of themselves than the original pieces were because, in addition to their striking appearance, these post-Memphis designs often comment on the original movement, its star designers and its many by-products. For instance, the Bacterio book-

MEMPhIS grouP

BArnEY BuBBlES

“Armed forces”. courtesy of Barney Bubbles State.

Michele de lucchi, flamingo, 1984.

BArnEY BuBBlES

ends by Portland’s Table of Contents Studio are made of wood covered with plastic laminate in the Bacterio pattern designed by Sottsass in 1978 (and used in many Memphis pieces). Table of Contents appropriates the well-known pattern to comment on its impact on design history: “We’re fascinated by the process of dispersion: how an idea or symbol that begins in one place or among one small group finds its way into the minds of millions . . .What began as an expression of anti-design, of the miscegenation of high and low culture, now, 35 years later, stands as an iconic signifier of ‘important’ design.”

The 29-year-old Philadelphia designer Brendan Timmins has an equally conceptual approach, but one that brings into play his ’80s childhood memories. Timmins says that his discovery of the Memphis group’s work in a design history class was a revelation: “Prior to that point, I had tried to reference the ‘Pee Wee’ style without knowing its name or the proper historical context.

After I learned about it, a lot of self-prescribed limitations about ‘good design’ were lifted from my work, and I felt better about making work that might not be appealing to everyone.” Since then, Timmins has referenced Memphis’ “seemingly disjointed combination of shapes and materials” in many

of his pieces, most recently by combining scraps of plywood, marble, and metal rods in his geometric Threshold bookends. He also uses parts from Zolo “playsculpture” toy sets to make lamps that highlight the group’s enduring influence on the design of everyday objects. “I like the idea of these toys, a distant echo of the Memphis g roup’s design experiments, being repurposed as a new design object.”

T his is why the post-Memphis aesthetic has such a broad reach now, infiltrating every realm of design at once. It appeals not only to designers and consumers who know about the work of the Memphis group (and perhaps about the radical ideas behind it), but also to those who simply feel a connection with objects that evoke and reinterpret the Memphis-lite style of the ’80s and early ’90s. Memphis references in current design seem unanimously positive, embracing the original aesthetic earnestly, without irony. Maybe that’s because today’s young desig ners admire the Memphis g roup’s game-changing ideas about design, but also grew up in a period in which the once avantgarde style permeated mainstream youth culture. They now approach the Memphis aesthetic with a mixture of childlike wonder, reverence and, in many cases, nostalgia. Ⅲ

TE x T BY vAnESSA nunES

ISSuE III

p. 26

(Por TfolIo)

Barney Bubbles (b. 1942—d. 1983), was one of the key figures in design world during the 70’s and 80’s creating both beautiful and original albums covers that had a huge influence on how people thought about album art. In spite of his prolific output, he managed to remain both illusive and enigmatic throughout his career. One reason for this was that design in the music business was still in it’s its formative years and its influence and significance had really not been established yet. Today a medium all in its own, design itself lacked a sense of ‘history’ and narrative. But Barney Bubbles is also to be held somewhat accountable: not only did he refuse to sign his work, his name was another way for him to underline his desire for anonymity. Born as Colin Fulcher, Barney assumed his alter ego whilst traveling and working in San Francisco in the late 60’s creating psychedelic light shows using bubbles.

After studying at Twickenham College of Art, Colin Fulcher landed a job at the then prestigious Conran Design Group in 1965. At 23 years old, he cut his teeth at projects like the catalogue for the Habitat homeware stores and the D&AD exhibitions. In spite of a bright future in commercial design, Fulcher left all that behind to join London’s underground scene. He started to collaborate with indie magazines Oz and Friends (later Frendz). Existence is Happiness, the foldout poster that Bubbles designed for Oz’s 12th issue (1968), shows bold blocks of color together with highly decorative images. An example of his love of appropriation and reinterpretation brings together influences of Pop Art as well as Art Nouveau.

It was during this period that Bubbles met Hawkwind, for whom he designed the cover for In Search of Space (1971). Although this early work is to be considered a precursor to his more influential post-punk design, In search of Space is a masterpiece of what can be termed a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, or a total work of art. A hawk-shaped, two dimensional spaceship design that opens to reveal a poster layout with the band’s portraits. It was an amazingly ambitious design. Although the general concept for the album art came from Hawkwind, they gave Bubbles full freedom, and he acted upon it by taking control over the band’s visuals, applying his motifs everywhere from their communications materials to their equipment. Unrestricted by the physical space of the record sleeve, he created a cohesive and unified picture that translated the bands own mythology.

TunIcA

p. 28

BArnEY BuBBlES

Jake Riviera, a friend and co-founder of Stiff Records, begged him to return to London and offered him total control over his bands’ image. Bubbles was to follow him from Stiff to Radar and later on to F-Beat, always creating original artwork that had a perfect match in Post-punk’s urgency. In this setting Bubbles found a new home, leaving his hippie days behind and embracing the post punk scene.

The Damned’s 1977 album Music for Pleasure is an appropriation of Kandinsky with hidden portraits of the band members, while Generation X’s Your Generation makes a direct reference to the work of ElLissitzky.

Elvis Costello’s 1978 album This Year’s Model plays with design’s work process by showing CMYK color bars and an apparent misprint of the album’s name. There is a lack of preciousness and an energetic eclecticism that characterizes Bubbles designs. Not recognizing boundaries between high and low culture and always trying to merge them allowed him to avoid being pigeonholed, as was the case for many successful designers.

Looking back at Bubbles career, it is hard to understand why he did not wish to be recognized. Although the fans knew the covers, they were most likely unaware of the man behind these.

A rare interview published in 1981 in The Face magazine sheds some light over the subject with Bubbles displaying a strong sense of professional ethics. As a designer he saw himself as an interpreter of his clients wishes: “I feel really strongly about what I do, that it is for other people, that’s why I don’t really like crediting myself on people’s albums – like you’ve got a Nick Lowe album, it’s a NICK LOWE’s album not a Barney Bubbles album!”

W he n a ske d ab out t he at t it ude of young designers who saw their work as Art, Bubbles expressed nothing but disappointment. “All that to me is highly suspect because you’ve got to wait, hear the music and meet the guys, and they tell you what they want and then it’s up to you to deliver that.”

In the last few years of his life, he did less and less work as a graphic designer and committed more time to working as an artist and painter. In his final years he had spent some time dealing with a nervous disorder and finally, in 1983, at 41 years old, Barney Bubbles decided to end his life. In many ways Bubbles modesty was a double-edged sword that allowed him to perpetually grow as a designer without getting pompous and never stale. Yet, it was also this modesty that allowed him to completely under sell and under promote himself and so allowing his contemporaries to take center stage.

With more recent attempts at wider recognition, his work has been included in exhibitions and retrospectives, press coverage and a book (Reasons to be Cheerful: The Life & Work of Barney Bubbles, Adelita, 2008). Although Barney Bubbles went to great lengths to make himself anonymous, we can see today how his designs keep influencing new waves of young designers. Ⅲ

ISSuE III

p. 31

The damned, “Music for Pleasure”. courtesy of Barney Bubbles State.

Ian dury & the Blockheads, courtesy of Barney Bubbles State.

Bubbles moved to Ireland around 1976 and took this opportunity to fill in the gaps of his Art History education by researching early twentieth-century art. Constructivism, Cubism, Dada, and anything else that caught his attention became a part of a renovated visual vocabulary.

EvAn roBArTS

EvAn roBArTS

EvAn roBArTS

No, No, Yes, No, No Diatribes occupy a large chunk of our scope in the living life of this new millennium.

In a society transfixed on maintaining a vital root in both the visual and virtual world rants are gaining power. The effectiveness of “the open letter” can wipe a person’s public image clean. Opinion boards breed without second contemplation at this rate, with the virtual, prose trash-bins dating back to the early stirrings of the Internet. Self-validation is not an illness plaguing the modern world, but a way of being. It is now the modus operandi to garner connections in the technology age, and to gain recognition. It grows more and more difficult to decipher distinct voices in the masses. The leading professionals are beginning to doubt their ability to determine validity, to critique without fear. Incomplete, underdeveloped standards reaping blind acknowledgment grow at an alarming rate.

Everyone is an expert and no one is an expert all at the same time.

TE x T BY WInSloW l ArochE

While the art world wages war against the strengthening bond between capitalism and the narrowing creative fields, it is not too hard to identify with Detective “Rust” Cohle as he shoots back jet-black meditations on the crumbling society before him.

The television crime drama, True Detective, shines best with this particular character’s cutting discourse and its ability to entice questions. I think it evokes a need within the audience to dissect what is in front of them, as if their senses are always lying. Rust’s disdain, his almost biting disappointment on

“the state of things” rings clear in my head whenever I try to look towards the art world.

Nepotism and trophy hunting control the art market. The history of art also provides evidence that the systems and infrastructures have not changed much, as if having hope for justice and a level playing field are a thing of daydreams, but then you start to see shimmers of promise; authentic and fiery work created by artists from all demographics. This is the work that makes you challenge your own awareness, your own tilt on materials, process, and troubling

(Por TfolIo)

TunIcA

p. 33

ISSuE III

p. 34

EvAn roBArTS

EvAn roBArTS

thoughts about the art world. Not everyone is trying to push their personal brand to the point that it overshadows their own work.

Not every artist is waiting for a flippedart career. Or brand heavy group shows.

Or misguided auction nights based on speculation.

I first met Miami Beach native, New York based artist Evan Robarts during the install of a group show at Ed. Varie in May 2013. Alongside Tyler Healy and Dean Levin, who at the time all shared a studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yards, produced one of the few exhibitions I can still remember every piece from. A practice began in experimentation then took the extra round to apply their own intimate message to each piece, a procedure forgotten by many hollow artists clinging to un-actualized sketches. Art cannot stop at process, for every artist relies on it in their practice. It cannot be the only justification for a worked out creation. There has to be a little more to it. Not a lot. Just something or why should anyone take note?

For me, the show was an inquiry on material and a “course of action”, allowing the viewer to dig further than their accepted usage of particular symbols and “homegrown” materials, one vital angle needed for resourceful transformation.

Evan’s work speaks to a nurtured connection with process and material. While talking with him in his studio preparing for this piece, we both agreed that the talk of “ready-made” goes straight out the window.

It’s like stating, out loud, that your work’s influences lie only in Marcel Duchamp. I could jam this piece with Walter Benjamin quotes, art buzzwords and suitable fine art references, but I believe it distracts from understanding and exploring Evan’s work. He dances between various mediums to softly land in sculpture. With his acute manipulation of found objects, he continues to develop into an artist that revels in failure. Robarts does not go down in a fight but lets his materials cultivate and grow with him instead of forcing a happening. His earnest appreciation for uncanny representations and the blue-collar materials he uses in his work allows the pieces to gain natural weight, without the need for theory to help it stand up.

His usage of nostalgia is not a crutch, but another link to a box of questions, inquiries on childhood memories that approach one core principle in art: making audiences aware of what they know and what they didn’t know they already knew. This is a crucial stance in creating multidimensional works and Evan’s art objects, which branch

with ease between painting and sculpture, draw from letting his material breathe then interjecting personal inf luence without breaking the ever elusive equilibrium needed to make pieces vibrate or cry out of stupidity in front of one of Rothko’s color fields.

Evan’s work reminds me of the attitude that I am slow in solidifying, but stand by now even in my wee 24 years old on Earth: Sometimes Art just is. I’m not saying Art cannot find support and necessary debates addressed in Western rhetoric like in Freud or Greenberg. I recently got the chance to delve into Susan Sontag’s earlier writing.

I now subscribe to her statements on the waves and waves of interpretations eroding contemporary art at a startling rate, eclipsing the primary intentions and diminishing the direction of the long-range discussion.

The waters are now murky, harder to find ingenuousness and golden statements for progress in a darkening sea of opinions. She also argues that art should exist without context and theory, but that the two were interchangeable now in contemporary language and conventions. Art becomes vague and indistinct with too many implied undertones and exclusive art references that cloud the original “moment” that artists strive for when they create their pieces in the first

place. Evan’s art brings a sense of buoyancy, just good vibes. His work leaves you pleased with clever aesthetics while still requiring you to question the arrangement of your accepted notations.

Left to their own devices, some artists will continue to protest the consensus. Intellectuals must sift deeper and remain steadfast in showcasing honest artists and write.

Inform. Concoct even when it fails, goes wrong, making mistakes along the way to strike conversation and new manifestations.

Without artists like Evan who do not rely on half-baked testing and dogma to spring their work to life, but rather unfeigned metamorphosis, there will be more unwarranted blog posts, there will be more think pieces, ego stroking, and complacency. Artists need to stick to their logic and eagerness when taking the next step, doing it all because it is what they need. Maybe we are all doing it wrong, but some artists and critics are out there creating well-grounded substance by disregarding controlled, trite contemplation for wholehearted freedom, and unabashed evolution from what we know we know. Ⅲ

TunIcA

p. 35

ISSuE III

p. 37

ThE rodInA

ThE rodInA

ThE rodInA

We met with The Rodina in mid February after their Neo New York presentation at Cooper Union and this is what they had to say.

MJf:

It was funny to see the presentation, because I think I read that work differently when looking at it online. It’s hard to tell with a lot of things where the line of sarcasm is, and where the sincere line is.So starting with love…

mind set than when you work with computer. We didn’t believe in it, but now we understand. And then we mix a lot of different softwares. It’s more about juicy combination of unusual tools, like the 3d stuff.

MJf:

MJf: Tr:

It’s in our culture. We are from middle Europe. It’s all sarcasm. czech style, we work with it a lot. The sarcastic point was that we’ve educated ourselves.

Meeting clients we needed some story to sell things. So, there is a sarcastic point. In our case, called our self-education, that’s how we create our reality. We can connect different points of view, and then we can collaborate and discuss things from different angles.

We think that’s a serious way of working.

MJf:

So are you guys actually married?

Tr:

Yes! (in unison) This is the ring!

It’s legit.

MJf:

Just checking. I don’t know what the reality is. What is not sarcastic?

I do see some themes that seem sincere because they come up again and again. certain things about different cultures, a relationship between global culture..

Tr:

Yeah, we’re global and the internet thing is still there. We know it’s boring to say that, because it’s overused, but still, we are dealing with it a lot. With the blogosphere, for example, but that’s not sarcastic for us. It’s very sincere to do graphic design. It’s not a joke.

Probably it’s in our approach that the work we make should create environment around us. Its not just service. We should choose our clients and not just sit there waiting for a miracle.

MJf:

You were talking about the physical object-ness of things and, as graphic designers at this stage, usually the physical object is not as important when you’re working completely on the computer – Well, are you working completely on computers?

Tr:

WITh MElISSA J. forST

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

n o t c o m p l e t e l y, b u t a l o t . We do sketche s and we al so do little models. for example dummies of inner book structure. When you work with pencil, you sketch faster and use a different

TunIcA

I’d say a lot of people think that’s a dated idea because, as computer technology becomes more assimilated into our lives, it becomes more like the process of sketching. It can be just as intuitive.

Tr:

Yeah, but it’s a fact that there are a lot of things in your brain which are connected with your body. Therefore using your hand is much more simple, and we can work with that, but then we always go digital.

And we also use and test the medium of performance art, so then we go physical again. our work relates with music, so the process of creation is really more expressive-intuitive. on the other hand our working process is based on a dialog, is more organized and structured. We both do research and concept. But vit didn’t know what conceptual Art was five years ago. he has a background in Psychology and Architecture. (laughing) A l s o , w e c l a i m t h a t w e d e s i g n a f f o rdance, not forms. Affordance is what thing s like env ironment or a w hole v isual identity or a poster offer, it’s about its hidden capacit y. It constitutes a full field of potential and possibility of action and it’s up to us, designers, to find that. for instance ocean around a tropical island offers you to swim, taste the salty water, observe small fishes, watch the horizon or dive for pearly seashells. A real example from our practice would be the book ‘The Internet Wise glossary’ which was not finished after we printed it, but rather once it was covered with stickers. Then the book became an object. An extra aesthetic value was given to it. The stickers were attractors and established connection with post-internet art subculture. It’s important to feel free, we can do a web or we can do a poster if it’s possible with the clients. If we really want to do something, then we try to convince them.

This is about introducing the idea that what we present is the right way or the only way to do the job right, even if it’s a bit different than what the client expected.

Tr:

Tr:

MJf:

how much of your work is client based? Is some of it independent?

p. 39

MJf:

Tr:

MJf:

Tr:

MJf:

Tr:

80% is client based. When we do something by ourselves, it’s when we organize workshops. Then that’s our idea, and we spend a lot of time and money on it. This is what we really want to do. We have this strategy, but we are not sure if it’s a good working strategy but we are still using it. So, when we do something like this we just do one part of it. for instance, if we want to educate czech students, we need to organize workshops. Then we invite friends—other graphic designers—to create the visual identity. And we invite other designers to run the workshops. So we become managers. It gives us the opportunity to meet the people we know only from the Internet in real life. That’s cool, right?

The other designers that you tend to want to collaborate with, do you think they consider themselves graphic designers? Is everyone basically like you, where they don’t feel like graphic designers?

There’s a big discussion, a terminological discussion. This discipline is not progressive to the future. In germany and Switzerland they are called communication designers.

They don’t use the term graphic design anymore. And other designers describe themselves differently, as Art directors. We started to call ourselves Memory designers, because we design memory. Every printed matter is like a memory. We think pure perception and pure memory exist only in theory. Because perception is always affected by memory, and pure memory is dependent on the brain.

Is your work recognizable just to your own process or to the time of the world?

Yeah, it depends on the context of course. We can say that we can be visually inspired by stuff around us, but the visuals don’t mean that we can work in the particular style or trend.

I don’t mean ‘design trend’, I mean what is going on in the world.

Yeah, we realized that working within a social context could be very strong. We are just investigating this, new possibilities of design (affordance haha). for example, this video “farting for the ukraine” where we wanted to connect the farting to some form of political protest. Being revolutionary could be fun, but at the same time it’s something serious; 2 weeks after that video went online the first people were killed in kiev… one guy made an iPhone application for farting five years ago and he was quite successful…but he could have connected it with something more important.

M: I’ve been watching this happen here as things get more ridiculous. comedy seems the only way to approach what is going on. We have The onion, a satirical newspaper, but it can also get really heavy because it’s able to show how absurdly fucked up things are by making a joke of them. The same with two news shows on the comedy c e n tr al c h anne l he re—they s how the absurdity of news and politics. It shows the absurdity through parody. It shows the truth so much more, which is disturbing.

Yeah, It might be because the audience is bored with the reality, which is just really sad and heavy, that it’s much easier to connect with them through this… oh –wait! (Tereza is thinking hard) it’s such a famous artist. from a long time ago, in Spain, like in the18th centur y. no, it’s not velazquez…It’s goya. he made these drawings (aquatint prints) showing in detail the tragedies and disasters of the Spanish Independence war from france, as a form of protest. We want to see sometimes that civilian form of effort, civilian strong things and social change. If you want to integrate within a culture or media stream you have

ISSuE III

p. 40

ThE rodInA

ThE rodInA

to use contemporary language. That works also in a visual way, that’s the reason we do these kind of strange balls every where. Because of goya’s legacy...

sion of AutocAd or rhino they were made on.

The building resembles the drawing, and the drawing had a lot of the program in it. So, I think it’s funny that you’re using architecture programs to make something crazy. Because those programs were definitely set up to…I mean, there are things like grasshopper that were set up to make weird things, but they’re not really meant to make things that you build. You know?

Wait, what are those strange balls?

MJf: Tr:

our z-Brush / 3ds Max balls. We don’t have to use the rational language of the existing media, and we really don’t believe that if you give people enough information they will change something, it’s really absurd. Sometimes it is necesary to use some manipulation to get the right thing... one month ago, we were discussing that if we will have to fight against neo nazis in Europe, we would never use their visual language.

To fight them, we would not design the stuff mimicking their visual language. I mean using the red and black and bold typefaces. rather than that we will draw the swastika with these offensive bullshit 3d balls, that would completely destroy their image.

Tr:

The hippies are a very good example, they had a special language to fight against conventions, do you know what we mean? So, if we want to do something to change society, we should do something really crazy and cynical. We believe this would disturb the system in the right way.

MJf:

can visual activism actually translate into the real world? how would that happen, is it just true culture?

MJf: Tr:

Tr:

MJf:

Tr:

MJf:

Tr:

MJf:

It’s difficult. There has to be the unity of content and image. Most of the political things we know are just different in content, but visually they communicate and look the same. We think that’s the problem, hippies and the 1960’s movements were quite good at it. If visual artists or designers want to push things further they have to develop new visuals. It’s funny, in schools students are still doing some fucking posters against something, but posters are not popular any more. If you check their portfolios, they usually present their online posters surprisingly in a very static way. Its ridiculous, posters are often treated in a portrait size. Why they never change the shape of it? It’s sad to see that everything is still the same, even when you use different softwares.

And the thing about using software is that you’re always working in the parameters of the person who programmed it, so in that sense we are always restricted. So while these kids are working more within these parameters, we are all kind of stuck.

MJf:

This is about the role of the future designer. A designer who establishes new tools together with the programmers or with the coders. create software for people to use.

These days you can generate your own posters for a party so easily on the Internet.

There are several websites where you just have to upload your information and it will generate a poster for you, and it would look like it’s from a good designer, maybe too ‘trendy’. That makes you think about the role of the designers. The thing about this products – softwares - is that they make everybody think the same way, and in that way somehow control your mind. Some people really hate Adobe products, they do this open source things…

Tr:

MJf: Tr:

What kind of programs are you guys using?

Mostly just Adobe?

Yeah, for professional print we are restricted to use it. (smile) We still hope we can control it. It’s funny though, we do a lot of graphic design in architectural softwares.

That is a different style of thinking.

It’s funny because in architecture they’re, like, really restricted about how things look. I was thinking about how in architecture there is definitely a thing where a lot of people canlook at buildings and can tell what kind of ver-

TunIcA

If you need some unfamiliar generative tools, it’s better to take them from architects or artists than from graphic designers. These softwares, for example grasshopper or z-Brush, don’t use the common graphic language and are restricted from visual world.

We like breaking rules... or more, like, we like playing a game. That’s visible in our way of documenting our printed and digital work. We always try to prove that it’s real. for example sometimes we do print screens when the work is shared on tumblr or somewhere else in the cloud. or we put plastic tomatoes on the poster. It’s very stupid, but important for us. (ha,ha,ha)

MJf:

Tr:

p . 41

I thought they were part of the poster!

Well, those tomatoes were part of the presentation of the poster. We prefer to link the finished design to the person who created it these days. So Tereza holds a poster every time we document it. We enjoy the fact that when you finish your design and print the poster it’s still not finished yet. We like the constant change or development. You can revisit the work again and again. We also tend to show the work to the public before the client. naturally, some of the clients don’t like it though. (laughs) Some clients write to us:, “Please, please, please hide it, don’t show it, show it to me first.” But why not to show it? There is no universal rule about why you wouldn’t do it! Sometimes we show the process. If we feel we want to do that, we go for facebook, or for tumblr and post it there! It’s fun!

It’s about sharing our ideas with people. Sometimes you ask somebody who’s creative, or somebody you look up to, for help or a source or explanation of his stuff. unfortunately he/she wants to hide his/her sources, or the name of the software used, and it’s really shitty, you know? When somebody ask us, we explain totally how we make things, what we have used and the whole process. This copyright thing is a little bit absurd.

Everything is copyrighted by the god of the Internet, so…. (everyone laughs) Yeah, but we should be better in stealing or be inspired by other people’s work.

We have to work a lot on this. We are really limited by our culture, we don’t intend to steal things, but we should. It would help, at least.

You don’t have to steal things, necessarily!

We think that at least in order to learn more, you have to. In uncreative Writing by kenneth goldsmith there is a really brilliant idea where students are pushed to rewrite great existing works. It is not about to write like kerouac, but to really rewrite/steal every sentence, as a way to understand his process and certain decisions. for instance vit worked in many architecture offices, and he experienced that the work process in real-life it’s completely different from what they teach you in school; that is, to be unique and cool. forget about that, in praxis, a lot of offices just take and mix stuff from magazines, especially in competitions. We think it’s a problem in the Western World when the public image of your unique creativity is completely different from the reality.

Especially now that everybody is a graphic designer.

Yeah, thousands of graphic designers... Ⅲ

ISSuE III

p. 43

ThE rodInA

colBY PoSTEr & chrISToPhEr MIchIlIg

colBY PoSTEr & chrISToPhEr MIchIlIg

Not a Painting, Nor a Common Object: Waxing on Los Angeles & The Colby Poster Printing Company The landscape of a Los Angeles is simultaneously a sun-bleached paradise and decaying post-industrial wasteland. This unique conflicted beauty is exemplified by the loud weathered lettering on day-glow gradient flooded backgrounds of the Colby Poster.

Cheap and effective at calling the attention of the passing driver or lonely streetwalker to anything from local yard sale to mega concert, The Colby Poster Printing Company —located centrally in Downtown, has openly and humbly serviced the community of LA from 1941 to 2012.

WITh krISTIAn hEnSon IMAgES BY chrISToPhEr MIchIlIg & dEvEnIng ProJEcTS + EdITIonS PhoTogr APhY BY JoShuA WhITE

TunIcA

p. 44

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

The Colby Poster Printing Company’s everyman quality and matter-of-fact typography has been valued by the visual art community as far back as 1962, when Ed Ruscha commissioned a poster to advertise his exhibition New Paintings of Common Objects, the groundbreaking first institutional survey of American Pop Art at the Pasadena Art Museum.* Colby posters would later be appreciated as artworks in and of themselves, displayed at art institutions.

In recent years, the Colby Poster Printing Company’s typographic style has come to be synonymous with Los Angeles. Many contemporary artists and designers have used Colby Poster Printing Company’s services and mutable format—out of utility or self-expression—in such frequency that it has created a cult following. Three such individuals, Brian Roettinger, Jan Tumlir and Christopher Michlig, have such love and fanaticism toward Colby that they began an archiving project, culminating in the 2013

book and exhibition In the Good Name of the Company. A collection that draws no line between which pieces are ephemera and which are works of art. It is also heartbreaking, like an effigy, because Colby stunningly closed its doors in 2012 in the middle of their research—cutting short its rising popularity.

I chat with Christopher Michlig about The Colby Poster Printing Company’s unassuming creep into the art world, the florescent reflection it casts on the meanings of Los Angeles and the passing of a well-worn, well-adored print shop.

ISSuE III

p. 46

*Said p oste r for Ne w Paint ing s of C ommon Obje cts at the Pasadena Ar t Mu s e u m was p r inte d b y re v ival s h op Majestic which Colby later incorporated in the mid-seventies. It is commonly referred to as a Colby Poster because it typography and commercial qualities are a close resemblance.

colBY PoSTEr & chrISToPhEr MIchIlIg

colBY PoSTEr & chrISToPhEr MIchIlIg

kh:

can you talk about what you feel i s the relationship bet ween the colby Poster and the city of los Angeles?

“new Painting of common objects” commissioned by Ed ruscha, 1962.

cM:

TunIcA

p . 47

The exceptional longevity of colby’s letterpress printmaking process, a carr yover from pre-digital commercial printmaking, relates in some ways to the cultural endurance of los Angeles’ unique urbanism - the old mixed with the new, continually overlapping and intersecting, constantly unraveling an coalescing. los Angeles is in a particularly energetic phase of development, and colby closed amidst this, however colby’s iconic, bold type faces, split fountain gradients, and fluorescent colors convincingly constitute a popular shared public image of los Angeles. If you think of the city as a group of criss crossing sentences, colby often took on the role of punctuation, giving inflection, tone, and disambiguating content.

Jan Tumlir has equated colby’s presence in los Angeles with a kind of concrete poetry, both in terms of it’s embeddedness and the way it orients the passenger-pedestrian. kh:

What drove you to archive these posters?

cM:

Brian, Jan and I had been loosely researching colby’s history as it related to artists commissions and collaborations for about 2 years before colby closed.

We had zero knowledge of an archive. for my own collage process I always maintained what I referred to as an “inventory” of posters that I constantly collected from the streets after the events they advertised had passed. I mercilessly ripped the posters down at night, and chopped them up in the studio as a subject material. Sometimes, even if it was in the middle of the day in busy traffic I would pull over and put my emergency lights on. I would jump out of my car, cross lanes of traffic, stand on newspaper boxes, climb telephone booths, to grab a fluorescent pink poster, for example, which was a very uncommon color. or any poster with the letter “h”, because “h”s are a low frequency letter. There was an internal economy to the posters, aside from their social and cultural cache, that I became fluent in - typefaces, particular hues, compositions - and my work depended on the transference of those qualities through collage.

When Brian called me to tell me that colby was closing I really panicked. I was in my studio at the time and as I was on the phone I was looking at the big stack of posters I had amassed, scraps everywhere like usual, and suddenly I froze up. At that moment my raw material became an archive just like that - it was instantaneous.

ISSuE III

later that week Brian and Jan visited colby and glen revealed the colby “archive” as it were. Which was really more of a physical record of past jobs, not maintained as an archive per se, but literally stacks and stacks and stacks of posters reaching back to the late 1980’s, on modest plywood shelves in a storage closed. glen agreed to lend the archive for the project and we have kept all of the posters together. It’s an incredible mishmash historical record of merchant posters and artist projects, in no particular order, uncategorized, totally nonhierarchical. kh:

how would you describe the process of working/printing with colby?

cM:

glenn hinmann was the go to colby person for artists. he was incredibly gracious and pragmatic and supportive. he loved working with artists, because as he always said they were polite and always paid with credit cards. colby was a union print shop so artists could not be directly, physically involved with the printing process, but rather participated at an arms length. glenn understood the significance of that dynamic, and always synthesized those two poles.

There was a spectrum of involvement, or art direction, that was possible, and the exhibition represented that range - from prints that were phoned or faxed in, to prints that were typeset with great particularity of composition, typeface, etc.

As an example, in 2011 I constructed a collage invitation, letter-by-letter from my archive of colby posters and scraps, for a group exhibition at lTd los Angeles.

I then took the finished collage to colby and asked them to typeset and print a “copy” of it as a small edition, which we then stapled up around the neighborhood adjacent to the gallery. When I took the poster in, I felt like I was turning myself into the police. glenn was sort of shocked when he realized how I had made the poster, realizing that I had obviously cannibalized several posters to make the collage. he was simultaneously enthusiastic about the challenge of reverse engineering the collage to then make a print of it. The resulting print is astonishingly close to what I brought in, despite reckless kerning and tracking, and irregular typefaces on my part, but also something entirely new and even better, because of the magical translational quality of the colby process. kh:

how would you say colby evolved from ubiquitous populous medium into a vehicle for poetic or artistic expression?

p. 48

colBY PoSTEr & chrISToPhEr MIchIlIg

cM:

That is a challenge question! At a certain point, colby posters evolved from being things, posters, in the city, to becoming so inseparable from peoples’ mental image of los Angeles as an urban center that the posters themselves became a part of the city, if that makes any sense. So, at a certain point, making a colby poster became a way for artists and designers to be the city, speak with the voice of the city, through the printing of a colby poster. The idea of “voice” is often used as a shorthand for the idiosyncratic thrust and tone of one’s creative mode, and colby was the voice of los Angeles: bilingual, landscopic, transient, metamorphic. kh:

Many interesting artists and thinkers such as reyner Banham, Ed ruscha, Joan didion, and david lynch have philosophized about this city. do you have favorites within your colby archive (artistic or merchant), which might aesthetically embody some of their ideas of an “lAness?” cM:

Banham connected his four ecologies - Surfurbiua, the foothills, the Plains and Autopia - with a social language of movement. The city in this way is freed from conventional notions of “city” and is characterized by interdependent systems which produce their own distinct character, continually overlapping, splitting, and coalescing.

The wide strewn distribution and appearance of colby posters throughout the city reflected that idea, both in the way that their irregular repetition constantly reminded one of where they were, in a general sense - moving through los Angeles - and also in an ecological sense ala Banham, the posters were often distinctly community-specific. The gradients functioned this way, signaling and reflecting

cultural and social specificity, as did the text elements - sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English, sometimes speaking to specific audiences, sometimes speaking to anyone and everyone.

As for favorite posters, I am especially fond of the merchant posters. I have a Tv cafe poster that was the first I remember seeing regularly, which features a drastic range of type size and style on a red/white/ green split fountain gradient. The Tv cafe has long since closed, but it was an iconic downtown food destination that was open 24 hours a day. You placed your order with the staff who were behind 2 inch thick bulletproof polycarbonate panes. The ambiance was pure pre-re-redevelopment downtown dangerousness.

nIck von WoErT

kh:

What now? colby is gone. What impact do you see happening to l A visual culture in its absence? how will its voice change or remain? cM:

colby is irreplaceable and inimitable, as is obvious by the half-assed colby knockoffs that local commercial silkscreen shops are now pumping out to fill the void.

What has been lost is a kind of tactility, an aura and authenticity that is immediate in the hand typeset colby poster. colby was all about legibility, but also about specificity - the specificity of the city, in the lefebvre-sense. When a city stops reproducing its own history, the stakeholders change also.

There is a cultural shift taking place in los Angeles, which despite its rich and idiosyncratic history is the result of the forcefulness of globalism, from which nothing is immune. los Angeles, despite its history of making, also has a rich history of forgetting. Ⅲ

WITh WInSloW l ArochE PhoTogr APhY BY JoSE c. gArcIA

TunIcA

p . 51

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

nIck von WoErT

nIck von WoErT

We went for a studio visit with Nick Von Woert at his Greenpoint studio, in New York.

He gave us a really nice tour around his new projects. Winslow and Nick extended their talks a little bit longer.

over again. okay, time for me to either quit or move on to something else. It has always been a push to try to make things more real and so sculpture seemed like it would be next. The work I have been doing started to tell a story and I can look at it and talk about it, like with the landscape paintings and the plexiglass boxes, they all star t to be just about the world around me. I think artists have always done this. They make stuff from what’s around.

nIck von WoErT

he turns them and mixes them in way that makes them totally destructive by mixing hair gel and chlorine for example. chlorine from swimming pools which is kind of wealth and vacation and then hair gel that is about looking good. What I started to see through that book is that all these materials that provide a certain comfort in our lives, and all that comfort is just camouflage for the fucking horror underneath. I think that’s more true.

nvW:

nvW:

Wl:

nvW:

Wl:

nvW:

Wl:

nvW:

Wl: does the idea of value hold importance in your personal work?

Wl:

I don’t know how to define value, but you know when I got the unabomber stuff... I got it at an auction. Well, value I think equals meaning and so if something is meaningful, it has value. So I’m in the business of making, trying to make, meaningful things, and so when this stuff showed up, it’s ordinary stuff that all of us have. A sweater, a shovel or an axe or whatever, stupid generic stuff, but this stuff had an aura to it. You could feel the history of the object just by looking at it and so it kind of diminished a lot of the efforts that I put into my work because this is just stuff that someone used in their life and you can just feel the meaning, and the value and the horror behind all of this ordinary stuff. And for me, it just went to show how important the story behind objects can be, where the material was used or is used or the context of it and then, I try to adopt all those histories into my work and the story I’m trying to tell. But I try so hard. [Both laugh] I don’t think I need to do that. Just based on the kind of presence those objects have compared the presence of the objects that I make.

I just think is a complicated situation for artists to define for themselves. It’s hard for someone to interject them self into something they can’t personally connect to. I can’t draw a line like that. Where do you draw it?

The stuff I feel closest to is usually born out of circumstances where it feels it’s more real, and rather than fabricated in an isolated environment like the studio. This can be the place where these things can happen but sometime you can fall into certain patterns and I don't want to do that. I think the work should be as diverse as the world around me. not just one facet of it.

Should sculptures, and all art objects in general, strive to last as long as possible? or can pieces remain temporal while stilling hold the same grit and weight?

There’s no time. I think some of the best stuff falls apart. I mean when something dies, it feels like it occupies the same world that you occupy. If you can make a sculpture that’s always changing, or seems to be, that would be… better. You can keep it growing or have it erode…. There’s this one piece we did a long time ago where it said “Every Thing Must glow,” it was a big like steel thing and the panels were filled with plaster, but every time it moved, the plaster continued to fall out and pile up below. At a certain point, all the plaster would be on the ground. That kind of thing is way more intriguing to me because the work itself has a life that changes like we do. how do you go about looking for materials to work with and how does an artist avoid the pitfalls of poor material selection/poor appropriation?

I don’t know where it all started, but I think years ago, you know, I used to make paintings, and I used to draw and paint, then I started making the same painting over and

But I feel like a lot of artists right now. Because they see how easy it is to make it using materials that the art world sense, but they keep using materials that... over again. okay, time for me to either quit or move on to something else.

nvW:

nvW:

The trends are fucking crazy….

Wl:

But I feel like your materials are very attuned to you, it is very intimate.

That’s what makes your work better than… you know? nvW:

Part of it is from [my] architecture background, I think, because those years in school were so much more informative than my years in art school. Art school was a fucking huge joke. I didn’t feel like I got a lot out of it. I had to un-learn a few things two years after school and then, well no one cared, which was the main thing. The schools treated the teachers like shit so they feel like they don’t need to contribute that much. And school always seemed like this amazing place in my mind where people come from all over the world to meet at the same place, at the same time. Amazing things should happen, but usually you show up to class, and it’s like here, here, here and like “uhhh, can we take a break?” “can I get a cup of coffee?” And the teacher’s like “Yes, and I will join you in a couple minutes.” and I’m like what the fuck?

What are we doing? oh, yeah, but the material question, I get bored real easily and tired of making the work I’ve been making so I’m always looking for stuff. Some of the stuff is found like in the Monkey Wrench gang Book. dave foreman, who is one of the founders of Earth first wrote this nonfiction book the field guide to Monkeywrenching where they took Edward Abbey’s book kind of literally and we were like let’s really fucking go blow up some bridges and burn some billboards down. This book is a home economics course in destruction and it flipped the way that I see materials, like everyday materials, because it is very domestic. Its origin. So he is taking all of these kind of domestic materials that support a life of leisure, comfort and wealth and

What motivated you to take a more 2d direction with the diptychs and triptychs in 2013?

With those, it was more about trying to make a more direct connection to landscape paintings. So at first it was the plexiglass boxes. In those boxes, it's just one material usually, they stack like strata, like you cut through the landscape in a way.

All the colors relate very directly to the hudson river School of painters, or landscape painters, especially the romantic ones because the colors are extremely vibrant. They cover the full spectrum, yellows, reds, oranges, everything, so in these plexiglass boxes, I was using Pine Sol, Mr. clean, mouthwash; so you start to see the bright yellows and oranges that you could almost see the sunset over donner lake in the materials. So the colors were similar with those paintings, but the materials were totally opposite. not trees anymore but like... asphalt. So then I took those plexiglass boxes and made these panels backed by ply wood. We make the metal frames and usually that metal frame is the mold that we just dump the stuff into and just cut it and put it back in or leave or just see what happens next. going into those was about getting to core of the history of landscape painting and just put it on the wall.

nvW:

Wl:

p. 53

TunIcA

nvW:

Yeah, so I’ve always felt like my actions need to justified. And that’s rooted, I think, in the architecture school and a lot of it in school, you are there to learn so if you can’t give someone information they could sink their teeth into, you’re not gonna get anything back. And so, you always want to get some feedback from the people. So, if you can give them something raw, they can be like “oh! pfft” and then, they can give you some feedback and you can be like “yes, cool. Thank you, I can move forward now.”

Because if you just go [blah], then they go [blah], and you’re left going [blah].

Yea, but I think that conversation has been happening in art schools since the dawn of time actually.

If you are given the opportunity to make something meaningful or meaningless, why not try meaningful? It is way harder, and I think it is way riskier and it’s scarier. [Both laugh] So much scarier.

Wl: nvW:

Wl:

nvW:

Wl:

Because then, it’s like you have to take responsibility for it and a lot of artist don’t.

People don’t like to do that because then you are held accountable and it’s like “fuck, I don’t want to go on trial for this”, but why the fuck not?

You are supposed to stand up for your beliefs and what you intended your piece to be.

A lot of the work begins just based on a hunch that I might not be able to write it down or communicate to anyone. And I don’t like to do sketches because I like the work to be... “the work,” not the labor where you do the sketches which are “this is what I would like it to be” and then, “let’s produce it.” It’s gotta be fun to make it. The scale of the work happens at 1:1. no models or anything.

You saying that would scare millions of people. “What?! You don’t sketch?!” I definitely sketch certain things, but I do feel, like you said, when you think of something randomly in my head just go with it.

nvW:

Wl:

ISSuE III

Wl:

finding out more about the context of your work is wild for me.

for me, like in architecture school, well let me just start by saying that an art school, you can do whatever and no one gives a shit. There’s no ramifications, there’s no explanation. It’s just like “what is that?” “I don’t know…” not everyone’s like that, but a lot of art works like that. I used to do that all the time. But, in architecture school, you’re putting your work on the wall ever y week and there’s a teacher sitting there and you’ve got to tell ‘em what they are looking at and it’s kind of painful because you are like “here it is! You know what a building is! check it out!” and they are like “what, what the fuck?”

Exactly. “give me a point here!”

Wl:

Wl: Wl:

It’s usually about order, so you need to communicate the order to them. Some people can pick up on it right away which usually has something to do with the relationship with what you’ve done to the site or the surrounding environment. or you’re trying to do whatever. Well, you find out real quick how much bullshit you are full of when you have to explain this thing you don’t even know what it is to someone else. And they weren’t kind about it. They were like “What, are you fucking kidding me? You don’t even know what you're doing!”

“What’s the function of this room?”

p. 54

nvW:

Wl:

nvW:

You have to give yourself the freedom to do that or else you will get stuck in your patterns. So I try to give myself the freedom to try something new or try out a hunch or material or combination or whatever. And just run with it. And if it sucks, so fucking what?

Yea! At least you tried. You just gotta try it.

There’s danger and stakes, but you gotta do it anyway. It seems that theory and art cannot be separated in this point in the art world and market. What do you feel about the concrete marriage of context and content within contemporary art?

I don’t really care what other people do. I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do. I don’t think one way should be criticized more than the other. I guess it’s about your preferences, I guess? Maybe that dodges it a bit, but I prefer to have some link to maybe history or something because like the archaeology thing: I’m not creating anything. I’m just

ISSuE III

p. 55

nIck von WoErT

discovering it, so I don’t know. Maybe say the question again. [repeats question] Yea, I don’t know. I don’t really think about it. [Both laugh] I think about it in my own work, but it’s more like I know what I’m about to do has probably been done in some form or another and if I could find that, I can add to the conversation. If I can’t find that, then I’m most likely just saying the same thing that someone else has said, over again.

So if you can get to the root of things, you can help the conversation evolve and move forward rather than just fucking saying the same shit that’s already been said. It’s like “we’re congratulating this again?! fuck!”

Thank you! I see some work and I’m like “come on, guys! This really…? If you just look at art for about… two seconds, you can see that this has been done. The point has made already and you have not said anything to add to that point. how do you find your historical influences?

nIck von WoErT

person or maybe through their actions by carrying them out on your own or whatever.

Wl:

Yea, I feel like a lot artists, especially young artist want to know what is the “right path” or I always feel like there is never gonna be a clear path for anything you do. nvW:

Yea, this feeling won’t go away.

Wl:

Exactly! You guys think it’s gonna get a little easier figuring out what you want to do? no. nvW:

only if you start making compromises. [laugh]

Wl:

nvW:

The Ancient roman stuff came out of that I wanted to get to the root of why we live the way we live now and I thought, “oh, let’s look at the romans” because they were some of the first people to build roads and buildings. And you start to see that a lot of the tools they used thousands of years ago are still in use today which why things looks sort of similar, at least the gridded, rationalizing nature. And then you find all these crazy characters like a haruspex who go to a site where they were going to build something, ie set up camp for warfare or put up a new building or new city. The haruspex would collect animals and dissect them and inspect their entrails and if they were healthy, then that meant the land where the animal was found was deemed healthy and suitably for occupation. So there was a mirroring happening between what I’m made of and what the world around me is made of.

So if you go to the natural world and you do that, it’s one thing, but to take that idea into a manmade world, then, you know, concrete, sheetrock, glass, steel… that should be me.

Another footnote for my work is about returning to nature. I want to find out who I would be if outside the comforts of modern life. So let’s try to strip everything away and see what we are really made of and who we really are. So then, it’s like “okay, Thoreau lived in a cabin in the woods. We had the unabomber who lived in a cabin in the woods.” Both of them wanted to escape the modern amenities that life had to offer and so there has been certain projects that have gone down those paths where to understand myself maybe more fully, you try to look at yourself through the eyes of another

TunIcA

Wl:

I’m not trying to do that. I only live once! What the hell! I hate using that phrase, but I could die at any moment, I’m about going with what I thought initially. nvW:

You gotta wing it [Both laugh]

Wl:

Yea, just hope it works out because it has to, right?

nvW:

Yea, I mean, look at all the people that you admire. They are the ones that took the biggest risks. There’s not a single person who has been super conservative and just like “fuck yea!” Artists are like the only fucking people who are allowed to and are expected to do radical things. do what no one else is doing. You have permission.

Wl:

Your career is built around that.

nvW:

So when you see people just mimicking or kind of doing the same thing over and over again…. I think there’s merit to that. certain people can just repeat.

That’s just their work. That is what they do.

Wl:

If you weren't an artist, what other career would you prefer to pursue?

nvW:

Probably work at an olive garden.

[Both laugh] no, I always kid around with people because I always think this is gonna be over. There’s no guarantee and I spend every penny I make. I don’t save anything hoping the shit will hit the fan and I can just make motorcycles, and race rc cars and rock climb. Because I think it’s difficult.

I think being an artist is difficult.

Wl:

Yep, that’s from a dimension we have not all looked at… yet.

nvW:

To keep that up for a long time is not easy. Takes a lot of fucking work. Ⅲ

p. 57

ISSuE III

p. 58

l A coTE du dESIgn

lA coTE du dESIgn

l A coTE du dESIgn

Jean-Michel Homo is a French cartoonist, a design collector, the owner of an antique shop in the nearly coastal city of Rouen by the English Channel, and the author of a recently updated guide of design soberly called “La Cote du Design, Edition 2013-2014.”

That is a short summary of what he would rather qualify as, when asked to tell a few words about his background, “a long story.”

With the crisis of print media in the 1990s, Jean-Michel Homo turned to his second addiction: design. He opened a second-hand shop that remains closed half of the week for him to continue taping his pencils under no less than five pseudonyms.

The rest, we learn speaking about his book, with vintage as a guideline. Vintage— the fashionable word that seems to mean everything today. An updated definition of vintage would read:

“I have even seen people call vintage something new!” he says ironically. “In reality, it only means something more than 30 years old.”

Vintage or not, what we are talking about here is made very clear in the video-presentation Jean-Michel Homo did of his book. The camera is fixed. He shares the screen with a shelf filled with thick black guides. The lightning is neonish.

“Hi everyone. La Cote du Design Tome 6 Edition 2013-2014, as you already know, it’s this.”

He places a book in the half frame that was previously occupied by the shelf.

“A book of a hundred and eighty by two hundred and thirty millimeters, six hundred and twenty four pages, more than three thousand references and, last but not least, one kilogram.”

He pauses.

“La Cote du Design, today, is also this.”

He now displays a USB Stick.

“An eBook, in a PDF format, for Macintosh, PC, Smartphones and other tablets. So! Print edition, or eBook? I invite you to visit my website www. lacotedudesign. com to purchase the print edition or the eBook. Or the print edition AND the eBook. See you soon.”

There is the new edition, as given in a rather row data. There is a vintage poster, too. (Vintage extended to items featuring vintage elements, as suggested by definition #4 of updated dictionaries. ) “People show some interest, but no one is sharp!” Jean-Michel Homo started with only 500 references and three decades: the 1950s, 1960s, and

TunIcA

p. 60

1. Euphemism for old.

Ex: Jean-Michel’s phone is vintage. It added a sizzling track over our buzzing conversation.

2. Dubious synonym for retro-style.

Ex: Homo’s website looks vintage. It reproduces in shapes and colors the early stages of the Internet.

3. Word used for funny.

Ex: His tone is vintage. It is filled with the neighboring British humour.

1970s. Every two years ever since, he dives into his overloaded files thickened by pages and pages of magazines featuring design objects and adds 500 more references each time, from the most expensive pieces to the most trivial. In an elegant architectural fashion, he draws the structure of each featured item with fine and precise lines, black and thin. Not the kind, grating and caricatural, that he signs Braka and which feature a hunter who politely asks a painter who admires his portrait of a rabbit: “Where is the model?”

As for the selection of the objects, Jean-Michel Homo follows his only will.

Never his whim: that causes him to constantly change furniture at home. The only piece that never bored him is the Ball Chair by Eero Aarnio, one that he bought a long time ago and that was part of the first edition of La Cote du Design. In this early inventory and its consisting implementation come what are largely considered the classics, the ten names that echo with design avant-garde : Knoll, Cassina, Mobilier International (who edited Eames before Vitra, in Europe), Eames, of course, and Saarinen, Le Corbusier, Jean Trouvé, Mathieu Matégot (for the perforated sheets), Serge Mouille (for the lights), Charlotte Perriand (for her wooden furniture inspired by Japanese motives), Marcel Brauer (for the Wassily chair) and Mies van der Rohe. “Did you know that he actually invented the chauffeuse in 1929? It was called Barcelona. And it’s still today the best chauffeuse ever made. It is simply a low chair without armrest!”

Anything to add?

lc: JMh:

*

JMh:

Yes. Mister homo, how do you estimate the objects? This is a very good question, thank you for asking.* Since it was a relevant question, here is the answer homo gave to his own question: I follow the auctions in Paris, the estimates as well as the acquisition prices, and I work closely with an expert who owns a gallery in Paris. he double-checks every estimate to make sure they are representative of the market price in Europe.” As for the uS, these estimates are still relevant. The author would gladly make an American edition of the book though, if an expert or an editor were willing to. Ⅲ

JEAn-MIchEl hoMo WITh lAurEncE cornET

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

ISSuE III

p. 61

chArlIE EngMAn

chArlIE EngMAn

We met Charlie Engman at one of the past NY Art Book Fairs. After following his work for some time, we arranged a conversation.

Wl:

I was excited to speak to you through google for this conversation, but then I thought: “Would the new Ig [Instagram] chat work better? Maybe it would be more in “real time,” on the go [running Man emoji]? how do you think your art is effected by the rapid ebbs and flows of the internet? do you think your connection with the internet will change in 2014 or in the near future? do you agree with ‘the artist and their brand’ mentality used by many? cE:

I have to admit, I have this weird feeling that I left the internet a long time ago. of course, like most people, I spent an inordinate amount of time on the web, but it’s become much more of a library or slideshow than anything else; I graze like a cow.

I think I’m as much affected by it as I am by seasonal depression or something like that. right now, I can only see that ambivalence getting deeper in 2014 […] maybe ambivalence isn’t exactly the right word, but I definitely feel like it’s more of a resource than anything else. It doesn’t carry the weight that maybe it did when I first started adding my work to it. It’s been normalized.

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

the back of some kind of brand-able element.

So I was doing a lot of work that felt like a repetitive exercise, and I was trying to find any possible excuse to do something “off brand.”

I was simultaneously trying to build a brand and thwart the idea that I could be branded. or maybe really I was trying to bolster the brand by providing a good venture off of it.

It’s confusing and frustratingly egoistic territory. Everyone is interested in a lot of different things, so naturally the concept of branding seems unnecessarily limiting. But I guess it depends on your goals and priorities. And everyone has their patterns.

So you are trying to be less affected by the internet’s scope? Also, do you believe in developing a personal brand?

Sometimes it’s hard to grab onto an artist’s voice in the editorial field, I think that’s why certain artists find security in creating a brand or aligning themselves with a familiar brand for the audience. So many eyes, thoughts, hours, online polls, viewer counts go into producing a story for a magazine so it is easy to lose distinction between characters. Are most of your shoots collaborative works with the editor and art director or do you come in with something calculated and planned out to engage with?

Where do you think your influence ends and begins with a shoot? What do you believe is the role of an artist’s Pov when it comes to editorial photography?

cE:

cE:

Wl:

WITh WInSloW l ArochE Ph oTogr A Ph Y BY JA M ES PA r k Er

chArlIE EngMAn

Yes, well, the whole branding question is a whole other ball game! It’s not that I’m actively trying to be affected by the internet, it’s more that it’s been normalized like I said. I’m certainly affected by the things I read and see online, and the connections with people and institutions I make there, but it doesn’t feel like it supersedes other forms of communication necessarily.

But, about branding: do I agree or disagree with the artist and their brand mentality…It’s funny, just this week I had a lengthy conversation with a commercial photo agent who represents some artists I really admire, and he asked me to boil my work down to three essential concerns maximum. Essentially, “what is your brand” / “what are its fundamental components” It was funny, because while I was initially put off by the question, I immediately had an answer. It was something I’ve really been reacting against lately, too, because commercial work all comes off

TunIcA

cE:

Wl:

”The highlight Magazine methodology”?

cE:

do you remember highlight Magazine? It’s probably still around... it was an amazing kids magazine that I would always read in the doctor’s office lobby. It always has a section with a short story where certain words in the story are replaced by recurring pictures. So instead of writing the word “dog” for example, they would use a picture of a dog. Basically really cute chinese characters for English speaking kids. […]

So, I don’t know. To me, everything is a symbol. I think that’s why photography is so exciting, is because it’s really good at defining and sharing symbols.

Wl:

I recall highlights and I agree, I feel like we are always following symbols. Which ones to see?

cE:

That’s the question.. I just flipped through the photos on my phone, because that’s generally the best indicator of what symbols I’m seeing at the moment. Apparently, it’s furniture. lots of chairs.

Wl:

have you read John Baldessari / Barbara Bloom: Between Artists? They have a great exchange about chairs in their dialogue.

Wl:

In my case, the majority of my editorial and even commercial shoots are collaborative, up to a point. But of course each project is it’s own project. My general approach isn’t particularly calculated, so I usually try to approach projects from the inside out. It really ranges—sometimes a client will give me a storyboard and expect me to reproduce it, sometimes a client will present me a problem and ask me to find my own solution. I would like to believe the artist’s Pov is the essential ingredient to editorial photography, but it’s really a case by case scenario.

Wl:

John Baldes sari’s work revolved around communication and I believe in that logic whole-heartedly, so I’ve been researching symbols lately and how humans digest them, consciously and subconsciously.

What are some symbols that follow you and/ or symbols that you look for in your daily life?

p. 63

Totally! I’m obsessed with the idea of symbols and symbology. With all my denial about the internet early, I have to admit though, that the thing that immediately comes to mind is Emojis on Instagram—we were joking about that earlier. I really love that that highlight Magazine methodology is becoming assimilated into contemporary communication.

cE:

no—gotta read that!

Wl:

What’s your favorite article of clothing that you own currently? As a kid?

cE:

ha! You know I love this question. I have the happy advantage of living in the same apartment as my boyfriend’s closet, so probably my favorite article is a pair of his pants or something.. I like clothes that have kind of been decided for me, if that makes sense.

I also have a huge candy-blue coat that makes me look like a jellyfish or something— really into that one. As a kid, the first thing the comes to mind is a color-blocked sweatshirt —really 80s preschool realness. But I think that’s just what I like now looking back on it. Probably at the time my favorite thing was a scholastic book T-shirt with bugs or frogs printed all over it. I had a lot of those.

Wl:

Ah, I think I am still searching for a good color block sweater but I will never beat my 5-year old self in style.

cE:

our moms were on it!

Wl:

I had a discussion a few days back with a group of friends about how looking at music history can help put a positive spin to the state of art right now and the sea of opinion pieces on the matter. decades ago, artists used to pull from the same library of songbooks which ended up with several musicians covering the exact same song. It’s was about seeing what’s available, finding the source and interpreting it in a way that is in tune with your interests which creates something visceral, a moment. The same feeling the original artist felt when they made the piece. Who are your influences and mentors

ISSuE III

p. 64

chArlIE EngMAn

and how do you filter them into something new for your work without looting [copying] from them, but rather stealing? [“good artists copy, great artists steal.”] cE:

Yeah, it’s kind of like the joy of finding the symbol in the picture... I love a “me too” photograph. I think my greatest mentor, and who really got me on a track, was richard Wentworth. his approach is both very matter-of-fact and very poetic/cheeky. So, yeah, I guess I try to look more at artist’s approaches rather than their works. I’m a big materialist, too, so if I see someone using a material that I like, it’s mine!!

Wl:

regarding being a materialist—“Me too!”

cE:

I don’t know, sometimes I feel like I’m staring so hard at my navel or the tip of my nose that the filtering does itself!

Wl:

Photoshop: friend or foe? how long have you used the creative Suite and how has it changed your work since you started shooting?

cE:

Are you kidding! What would I do without Photoshop! I mean, not the program itself per se, but the ability to manipulate your images? I really can’t understand arguments against photoshop. Against poor use of photoshop, sure, but surely editing images is just as important as making them. The act of taking a photograph already has so many technologies folded within it: who’s taking the picture and why, what camera is it taken with, where is the film getting developed or who made the digital sensor... There’s no reason to uphold the sanctity of those processes over the photoshop. There’s that whole uproar of vogue vs Jezebel and the retouched pictures of lena dunham for their february issue... The whole thing is really a farce.

Wl:

Agreed, I felt the argument was a low-point for the popular internet outlet

cE:

So Photoshop, or some variant thereof, came pretty quickly into my practice. I think it’s guided a lot of change in my work in the sense that it made certain types of experimentation much more accessible.

Wl:

how do you introduce color to your process? When does the palette for the shoot or image you are editing come into play? Is it sometimes based on material availability?

Which materials do you prefer to work with and why?

cE:

Are you asking the million dollar question? So, I’m a bit notorious for using studio paper backdrops in all kinds of silly ways, and that is definitely about availability.I love paper, it’s such an amazing material, but my use of it is really more about using the studio environment at large as an active material (as opposed to a false space). I am all about availability. regarding color—it’s not really something I feel like I introduce I see in color and color is really important, so it’s there from the start. I’m pretty promiscuous with my colors, too every color is beautiful given the right context, so my use of color is just a response to context. I’m all about availability!

Wl:

Music playing doing a shoot or no? What’s playing?

cE:

definitely! If I’m shooting a person, it’s what they like to listen to. Barring that, it’s booty jams.

Wl:

favorite booty jams?

TunIcA

p. 67

chArlIE EngMAn

chArlIE EngMAn

roBErTo PIQuErAS

cE:

oh, there are so many. There’s the step variety like rye rye, there’s the cardiovascular booty like “look At Me now,” there’s the deep booty like “Pony.” And then there’s the weird indie booty. I can get into them all.

Wl:

Yes! My friend teased me once because I said I would be honored to shoot for Popular Mechanics. how do you do choose who to shoot with? What was your favorite shoot of 2013? Who are some clients you would love to work with? cE:

Well, I’ve been dying to shoot the u-line catalogs personally.

Wl: Me too! or maybe a u-line look book?! My designer friend Maisie wants to do a collaboration with them one day!

I take on commissions based on how interesting the project sounds or maybe how challenging it sounds. Maybe it’s a rather uninteresting project with interesting people involved. Maybe it takes me to a place I’ve never been to before. It’s not an exact or particularly complex science. 2013 was a rather intense blur, so I’m not sure what my favorite shoot was. I did a weird, semi-”sexy” editorial shoot with my mother at the beginning of the year, and that was definitely a trip! I hope to keep working for at least a few clients that let me do that kind of strange stuff.

cE:

My life is so consumed by photography and it’s off-shoots right now, it’s really a hard question to stomach! I would be sleeping my proper 7hours a night, I guess.

Wl: If you had to choose another ”career” though? And this is the last question! cE:

I’m still into bugs and frogs, so probably something in the natural sciences—it has the same kind of balance between interpretive and objective as photography, so I could get into it.

Wl:

for me, it would either be a P.I. or a firefighter.

cE:

I would be terrible at both of those.

I’m more figure skater or preschool

cE:

teacher.

Wl:

I’m archivist at heart so I could see my mind’s eye working well in private investigation. Preschool teacher could be fun though, but I don’t have the patience. cE:

Me neither, actually…

Wl:

Are you packing now? Sorry, had to copy/paste all that. Thank you again for taking the time for this interview!

Is you could be doing anything be sides photography in your life right now, what would it be?

cE:

Yeah, packing and emailing and taking phone calls…it’s a crazy time in charlie-land today. But this was my pleasure! let’s chat more often, Winslow. Ⅲ

WITh lIl govErnMEnT PhoTogr APhY BY MArcuS rIco

TunIcA

p. 69

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

Wl:

ISSuE III

p. 68

roBErTo PIQuEr AS

roBErTo PIQuEr AS

Some designers are defined by their work, but the aesthetic and spirit of Roberto Piqueras’ namesake sportswear line are virtually inseparable from the man himself—Piqueras is his work. Principle. Sincerity. Rebellion that goes beyond yet another exposed editorial nipple and listlessly winding trail of cigarette smoke—are we sure we’re still talking about fashion?

Not exactly; while there is no lack of visual interest + ingenuity in the collection, the philosophy and action behind the product—which includes the signature slouched pants, softly billowing draped tees and some amazing sport-gimp facewear options Kanye wishes he invented—bring it all, quite literally, to life. Throw in a few guerilla fashion week presentations, an international customer/fan base of like minds and a collaborative spirit (illustrator Simon Fortin designed 3 t- shirts and a mask for RP’s most recent AW14/15 release) and you have yourself a lifestyle.

lg:

Wonderful to finally chat with the allover prince :) You’re par t of a new guard of internet-driven brands with a decentralized global reach that seems less concerned with the fashion status quo. Your SS14 show was a downloadable .zip file; your AW14/15 show was recently live streamed from Bethnal green, simply but well-choreographed and with little excess crowd in sight, save for children playing nearby. Even your Irl shows are an f-You to Irl; for AW13 you unofficially showed at london fashion week by unrolling a lookbook banner + got kicked out by security despite the positive crowd response. does the traditional fashion industry structure matter anymore? does Irl even matter anymore?

doing before. Since then, I started to show my collection in art galleries via video, installation and photos, sponsored by alcoholic drinks and sport brands. That way to show my work gave a better idea of what rP means, better than an empty, clinical fashion catwalk. That was the moment when rP started to be a brand, and not just a collection. That answers the question of whether Irl matters…and yes, it matters. Internet culture lives connected with street culture; we don’t have to forget that.

to be able to see the show; all this happened without music or any given notice to the museum, which is one of the biggest and most respected public spaces in uk. They were asking about me when we finished and people start clapping, tourists and guests, but I ran to the hotel with the models and journalists to avoid any trouble. The day after, we were on the cover of vIcE with the title “guerrilla fashion Show at British Museum”.

As I was feeling fashion needed a bit of revolution, I wanted to try for the next season (AW13) to be involved with lfW but they never replied to my emails, so that is when I decided to unroll that real size lookbook banner in front of Somerset house (where lfW is celebrated). This time they kicked me out, but I already had what I was looking for! not happy with that, a week later I pasted it on a Brick lane wall as a street artist but someone who hates me or loves me ripped it off when the glue was still fresh and it’s probably decorating his bedroom. for SS14, I decided to use the street but in a formal way. filming a short movie and sharing the downloadable file as a mediafire.zip; around 1k people have those files in their computer. The last one for AW14 wasstreamed live thanks to film director Adrien le cavil, with music produced by Melissa gagne, so as not to lose the same feeling of sharing megabytes of creativity and energy, and to show people that not everything in the industry is money and sponsors.

lg:

Any other good renegade fashion show stories? The lfW one delights me to no end.

rP: I finished my school in fashion in 2006, right after a few months working for a leather company; I moved to Madrid and there I tried to work my own brand in a traditional way, with no buyers but a lot of national press media—that means no money and lots of popularity. I was showing my collection at Madrid and Barcelona fashion weeks over approximately 6 seasons, always very connected with the url network (MySpace and fotolog). In that moment I was named a 2.0 generation fashion designer. I gave up with the traditional industr y, my expenses were much lower and the orders in Asia started growing, so that gave me the idea that something was wrong with what I was

rP:

Yes, I’ve got many! during my first exhibition in london at Primitive gallery we were surrounded by police because a bomb threat just behind the place we were.

The first show I did on the street, for AW12, was really calm; we prepared everything at my place and the public was not that massive. The anecdote came when I uploaded the final group picture on facebook and it got over 1k likes; in 2011 that kind of success was something for lady gaga and Beyoncé.

The rebel movement came when, for SS13, I prepared the models in a hotel and we walked into the British Museum hall with a facebook event call of 500 people. Security came to me straight away when they saw me screaming at people to stay on the stairs

ISSuE III

p . 71

TunIcA

p. 73

roBErTo PIQuEr AS

lg:

Your clothes are often pegged as having an “internet” sensibilit y, which is funny because any of us who were alive before + after the dawn of the internet as we know it can see how the sheer flood of information previously unavailable in one place is the defining aesthetic influence of our generation. do you like or dislike the “internet” label? Why?

roBErTo PIQuEr AS

rP: 100% it’s me, my persona and my own experience. I would never design something I wouldn’t wear.

lg:

You said in a previous interview that your move to london + the first 6 months you were there were the result of a prize from Burger king won at Madrid fashion week.

This is the stuff that memes are made of- how does it make you feel that an undeniably corporate entity assisted you in obtaining the artistic freedom you so deserve?

I think I started to experiment with my clothes and look when I was 10 years old; I had long hair and at the age of 12 I remember asking my mum to dye a piece of hair a pink color, though I think earlier I had a shaved head and a bleached pigtail. The clothes I started a bit later, because I was obese till the age 15, but before I was always customizing my plain white/black t- shirts and doing my bell pants bigger with extra piece of fabric in a triangle shape. My early personal style icons were Aqua, no doubt, Alanis Morissette and Spice girls.

rP:

It makes me feel ashamed of my country, because it should be them who help us to grow and not a fast food private corporation. But they were just a piece of that freedom, they had tried seasons before with other designers and it didn’t work. They gave me the money, but did not help me at all to find buyers, or ideas to promote the brand in an international way. That’s why I see always people spending money and not doing any business.

lg:

Between this + the Mcdonald’s-inspired Moschino collection, do you foresee #frypunk becoming a relevant fashion trend?

Perhaps #mcnuggetcore?

rP:

for me, I see more a #googlefashionweek or #appledesigns by.

lg:

lg:

If you could wave a magic wand + make any style of look widespread on a mainstream level, what would the former basics of the world wake up wearing?

lg:

Around what age did you first start owning your look, and experimenting with your own clothes? Who were your early personal style icons? rP:

rP:

I lovE the internet label. If I had been born 30 years earlier, I would have loved to be associated with movies probably, like Thierry Mugler or Jean Paul gaultier were. Every generation lives through changes, and those changes define who you are and how you translate that new language into fashion or art. lg:

do you think it’s damaging or positive that visual representations of subcultures are unearthed to the masses before they have a chance to flourish? nothing stays underground anymore, only caricatured ghosts of what might have come to pass…

This is nothing new and nothing to be worried about, people in the mainstream have always used subcultures’ elements to appear new or fresh but eventually they will get bored of it and change. The subculture, however, is not gonna change but to evolve, to go to the next step and for me that is the interesting part. for example, I was worried when Jeremy Scott showed AW12 with lots of tumblr inspiration, as if he was a part of that internet generation. I was thinking “okay roberto, go next level” because this is already too mainstream, but when I saw his next season and he was back to all that pop culture, arab, comic sans, I kind of understood how it works. for them, it’s just a season; for me it’s my life. We grew up that way so I’m not gonna change, but for him it is just a trend, no more care than this. So my message for those subcultures is keep doing it and try to evolve your way of doing things step by step, not because rihanna goes seapunk. Seapunk is death…

Were you always a designer at heart, or did the desire to create clothes others could wear come later?

rP:

lg:

The look—unisex, high impact visuals but low maintenance shapes, often oversized—feels like a direct reflection of you. how much is what you want to wear tied into your designs for the collection?

ISSuE III

rP:

In my mind I thought I was more of a stylist, but when I finished my studies I knew I wanted to make clothes and see others people wearing them. I remember selling my first designs before I finished school in a shop in Barcelona, and lots of local go-go dancers were asking for them. lg:

You lived in Barcelona/showed in Madrid before moving to the uk . did the streets always inform your design influence? What are some of the main cultural differences between Spanish cities + london where you currently reside? rP:

It is not that much difference, be cause chavs are kind of similar everywhere, always loving the excess, gold, tuning cars... that’s the definition of the neighbourhod where I grew up. Since I moved out of my parents’, I always lived in the muslim part of the city; in Barcelona it was raval, Madrid was Tirso de Molina/lavapies, and I’m currently based in East london, Bethnal green. That’s why I mix the arab costume with sportswear as a part of my label. If I grew up in the Jewish community, I probably would have gotten the inspiration from there—I just need to live it in the first person.

p. 75

rP:

Any collection from Walter van Beirendonck.

lg:

What is the best thing about having a clothing label in 2014? The worst thing?

rP:

The best thing is that I’ve got a new wardrobe every season. The worst is that everyone thinks they can judge your work by having a blog.

lg:

What’s more important, clothes or style?

rP:

Style.

lg:

If you had to design an entire Piqueras season using all white, no prints, how would it change your silhouettes?

rP:

Probably I would create prints using different-shaped textured fabrics, all white on white. Ⅲ

TunIcA

p. 76

chE Yco lEIdMAnn

chEYco lEIdMAnn

chE Yco lEIdMAnn

One of the editors took out a 1983 copy of Foxy Lady by Cheyco Leidmann and handed it to me. “Tell me what you think.” I was discovering both the photos and the name for the first time. For those as clueless as I was, Cheyco Leidmann released several mythic photo books in the 1980s that established him as a master of color with a twist of sexy fashion. His photographs were later used to illustrate book and album covers of disturbing works of fiction such as those of Truman Capote, John Fante, Thomas Pynchon, and Ceronne.

Foxy Lady came out loud, acclaimed with noisy titles: “Rocking photos,” “An avalanche of colors” (this one was inspired by Leidmann’s comment: “Color must be able to shock, like an avalanche),” “Color Choreographer,” “A rainbow of madness,” “Sex, symbol, drama,” and many more until “the count was more than two thousand portfolios and reviews globally published in the print press. I didn’t keep track anymore.”

Almost every person to whom I have mentioned the name Cheyco Leidmann while fishing for anecdotes here and there reacted with a variation on “Of course,” sometimes followed by: “Do you like his work?”

Yes I do! One single image can in a strange way bring together Bourdin, Bond et Bowie, and many more geniuses whose names start with a B or other letters. In a photograph from the book, a woman sits in the middle of a crossroads, on a yellow Papillon chair, in front of a red and narrow building. A yellow sign announces “Motel.” While comfortably wearing a tight pink bathing suit, the woman raises a pint of beer, and her empty eyes pierce through a thin golden mask. The dark side of the moon lights the scene. Each road surrounding the heroine is as unwelcoming as the other. A curtain blocks the window on the second floor of

WITh lAurEncE cornET

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

ISSuE III

p. 78

the building: there must be something happening in this bedroom. Or is it the tainted car that seems to be waiting for something?

Or perhaps it is the character, whose hand is firmly leaning on the seat as if ready for action. While her body is appealingly human, we don’t know if the mask hides a woman, a zombie, or a robot.

“Your suggestion of ‘behind the scenes’ is great. If I had a curtain to lift, which I don’t, there are no hidden mystics. And actually there are no anecdotes which I could recall being worth talking about. Only incidents, yet too nihil to mention.” Here is the true story: “I was cruising a 1980 film thriller in which the suspect is a serial murderer picking up homosexual men in NY and taking them to cheap motels to kill them. In my knowledge the motel in the background of where I set up this image was one of these locations.”

The golden lady, with her red-painted mouth, looks eager to bite. Her teeth are probably molded in the same metal as her mask and would reproduce the same reverberating sounds of synthesizers. Heavy Metal, R & B, and Punk influenced him. “The procedure was such that I listened to different genres of music at night and sketched down the ideas of images I was intending to realize. After location hunting, I then decided which idea was right for which particular setting.”

So cruelly you kissed me…* There is pouring blood on certain images.

Set up throughout the West Coast, in the desert and other open landscapes and sunfilled skies, Foxy Lady is like a saucy hon-

eymoon photo album that could turn into a flashy nightmare. One that lasted more than a romantic month. “From the first initial idea through creating the images, through the procedure of doing a book—many don’t realize the amount of work which goes into it unless they have done I themselves—till finishing the whole process: about two years at a nonstop pace.”

The wondrous bride with the mesas of Monument Valley in the background. Her lying on a shiny car. Her losing a pump on a grassy Californian boulevard. Her again, dressed in a bright polka dot t-shirt in front of a casino. Her blocking the view over the light-house with her sculpted legs – the nasty husband has the habit of taking pictures from his pocket so that he only reveals his wife’s curves, and rarely her eyelashes. Here she is again, taking a nap under a palm tree without suspecting that King Kong is ready to drop fluorescent paint on her immaculate trousers. Her, again, at the door of a neon-lit diner. She is wearing the same over-curving skai leggings as comic book’s super-heroines do. She relaxes by a tiny swimming pool that matches the wavy shadow of her thick flying hair. The surname of James Bond’s enemy, Octopussy, would fit her as well. Octo standing for October. The trip goes on at a frenetic rhythm despite some misfortunes.

In another photograph, she appears shaving her armpits by the remainders of a crashed plane.

Eventually, they visited wilder places.

TunIcA

p. 79

*Excerpt from Killing Moon, by Echo & The Bunnymen

chE Yco lEIdMAnn

lc:

cheyco, can you tell me about your experience with editors, at vogue or Photo, for instance, with whom you worked a lot?

cl:

I left this chapter in the jungle.

lc:

how did you decide to go to the uS for foxy lady? Was it an assignment or a whim?

cl:

It was not really whimsical; a dutch publishing company supported my idea. Initially, though there was a desire, a dream, a biological need for me to realize this project.

I have always been mesmerized by the monumental united States, by the grandeur, the enormous variety, the landscape of sky and space with no boundaries, and the cityscapes which have an eloquence on their own. The 80s were a fertile decade. The biggest trick was to do something that I had not seen before, with a lot of courage.

lc:

Some of your photos are really cinematographic. how much were you inspired by cinema?

cl:

I am a scene out of a movie. The images are the frozen frames of an ongoing film.

In America there are locations that look like a giant film set. I tried to make these artificial places come to life. By extension, I tried to create something historical. There are always influences but no guidelines.

lc:

can you give a few examples? Which musical trends or visual elements were you inspired by or in opposition with?

cl:

What really influences me is everyday life. I try to stay away from distraction.

lc:

Who were the people around you at that time?

cl:

There were many people around me for better or worse. I respect their privacy by not revealing their identities.

lc:

can you tell us who were the models?

cl:

foxy lady is not about ‘models’ and subordination. It is about coequal women expressing their vision!

lc:

I am sorry. how do you like your martini? Ⅲ

Note 1: As the limited length of the interview suggests, Cheyco Leidmann often preferred not to talk. He even spent an opening with a piece of tape covering his mouth.

Note 2: All Foxy Lady images were taken in original settings, temporary with built decor, genuine orchestrated, not manipulated, therefore having something permanent and putting one in contact with the wealth of the image.

ISSuE III

Note 3: Ypsitylla von Nazareth is Cheyco Leidmann’s partner in crime, stylist and producer. “I worked with a ‘unit’ and Ypsitylla von Nazareth kept them together and also contributed her enormous creative energy through styling,” he precisely noted.

Note 4: Cheyco Leidman also revealed that among his favorite movies are The Devils

by Ken Russell and Cul-de-Sac by Roman Polanski.

p. 80

cAhIll WESSEl

cAhIll WESSEl

cAhIll WESSEl

When I’m not fighting super villains in far off places, I’m busy drawing pictures of this crazy world we live in. It is a world of great wonder, limitless chaos and exceptional beauty. lSJ:

You call your self a “beach par t y monster” and it seems like you are good at having fun. What kind of role does fun have in your life? does it provide inspiration? cW:

“fun” has a very prominent role in my life and work. Above all, I want my work to be lighthearted and fun, and I strive to let these traits carry over into my day to day life. I do my best work when I am in a positive mood, so it pays to keep my life fun and entertaining. I spend much of my time skateboarding, surfing, and wandering around various places. These activities keep my mind clear, and I often think of my best ideas while doing these things. I try to maintain an active social/party life. Being in festive social environments gives me an opportunity to study what people are drawn to, how they react to certain stimulation, and how local cultures manifest is such environment. I want to create work that is easily digested by a wide variety of people, and partying deeply informs the manner in which I attempt to accomplish this. I often take notes while out at night, and some of my favorite drawings began as quick, drunken lists in my phone. lSJ:

can you tell me a little bit about your process? What does a day in the life of cahill Wessel look like? cW:

W IT h lIz A S T. JA M ES

I try to wake up early. I always start my day with coffee. depending on how busy I am, I try to set aside a few hours in the beginning of the day to do something physical, whether it be going for a long walk, or going skateboarding. If I don’t do something at the start of my day, it makes doing work much more difficult. After that, I generally try to sit a get a good deal of work done.

I usually take a break in the early evening to go out and do something with friends for bit.

Afterwards, I come back home and continue working. While working in the evenings, I often watch stupid comedies or documentaries because it stops me from becoming too consumed in my work. Background distractions are crucial to my process. Without them I focus far too hard on what I am doing, which usually leads to mistakes.

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

TunIcA

lSJ:

You’ve spent time in Santa cruz and live in Benicia. how have your surroundings affected your work? cW:

Even though I do not live in Santa c r u z a ny m o r e , m y e x p e r i e n c e s there continue to inspire me. Surfing, and the culture that surrounds it, has a huge influence in my work. I reference surf culture through my use of bright colors, tropical imagery, and I aim to give much of my work a “beachy” ambiance. My drawings, paintings, and designs often strive to exist in a middle ground between grotesqueness and beauty, and Santa cruz, as a town often embodies this. It is an idyllic surf town with a thriving beach culture, yet it also has a dirty and disturbing underbelly, composed of murders, drugs, gangs, and so on. lSJ:

When did you first become interested in ar t? fir s t s tar t making it?

Where do you get your ideas? cW:

I have been making art since I was a small child. for as long as I can remember, I have always been drawn to making pictures. When I was younger, I mainly drew my favorite creatures and toys. These subjects included dinosaurs, sharks, whales, Power rangers, and airplanes. now I mainly draw inspiration from popular culture. The main facets of this broad concept that I reference include entertainment, fashion, food, and mass production. I try to merge objects, creatures, or characters that I am personally drawn to with these popular culture symbols or modes or presentation. one of my main goals is to produce work that is relevant to the modern times while simultaneously representing myself as an individual. As modern humans, we are constantly bombarded with media, and this informs the chaotic, overly-patterned nature of some of my work. lSJ:

Your work has a certain timeliness to it—it feels super internet-age a p p r o p r i a t e . d o y o u t h i n k c o n s c i o u sly about creating work that is very “now”?

W hat was your work like pre-internet?

p. 84

ISSuE III

p. 85

cAhIll WESSEl

MIchAEl WIllIS cW:

The Internet definitely plays a huge role in creating work. Before the Internet, much of my work was derived solely from my thoughts or notebooks. It was much more surreal and less based in reality. The Internet is crucial in helping me follow trending topics, which helps me design new bodies of work. I want my work to comment on relevant and current issues. I casually research these trending topics in order to discover the varying and conflicting opinions within the discussions, and then try to create work that explores each side, without expressing any personal opinion.

lSJ:

Speaking of the now, what kind of role does pop culture play in your life and work? “Justin Bieber and the golden Pussy, Mona lisa and the love Snake live to Party, If Bill Murray was a Triple Bacon cheeseburger, If Whoopi goldberg was my Best friend…” these pieces are fun, imaginative—do they come to you quickly? do you feel very in touch with the pop culture world?

cW:

I don’t necessarily feel in touch with the pop culture world. however, I feel a need to create work that is slightly informed by it, because so many people are completely obsessed with it. The Bill Murray and Whoopi goldberg drawings were actually titled after they were finished. While creating those two drawings, my main intent was to create portraits composed of food items, and I never intended them to slightly look like well-known people. But, after completion, titles such as “hamburger head” or “Steak face” seemed hollow and unimportant. naming them after celebrities gave the drawings unforeseen meaning and relevance to viewers. These titles became as important as the imagery itself, which was given added significance through the referencing of familiar people.

I drew Justin Bieber a few months back during the time in which he was getting a lot of press for acting up. I saw countless articles in magazines and various Internet sites about him and felt compelled to draw him. he is an interesting icon because the public is so divided over its opinion of him. Many people absolutely love and adore him, and many people would love to personally slaughter him. While designing this drawing, I wanted to create a piece that equally explored both sides of his stardom, while remaining neutral. The drawing did very well on the Internet, and it was very interesting, because half of the people that commented on it assumed I was praising Bieber, while the other half thought I was criticizing Bieber. I viewed this as a great success because I want my work to expose viewers to the manner in which they view the world. Their interpretation of my work is not derived from my intent as an artist, but embodies the way in which their personal world-view causes them to react to loaded imagery.

lSJ:

how long does it take you to do a black and white drawing as intricate as, say, “future fuck”? how about the colored drawings?

cW:

The black and white drawings are pretty quick doodles, and I spend between 1020 hours on most of them. however, the Justin Bieber and Mona lisa drawings take between 150-200 hours. Working with colored pencils takes a very long time, and a process of never ending blending, burnishing, and layering of colors is required to achieve the smooth consistency of the work. Ⅲ

TunIcA

p. 86

WITh SorAIA MArTInS

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

MIchAEl WIllIS

MIchAEl WIllIS

There are times in life when you just know that you have something that will leave you awestricken for a very long time, thinking about all the possibilities life can bring you if you work hard and pursue a creative, selfless path. In that crazy instant, there is something that will keep you continuously interested in discovering more and more about it. This happens to me almost on a daily basis, really, mainly when I am browsing for artists, illustrators, musicians or any other fruitful eminence online and I am able to find the perfect correlation between two chief things: first off, stories that are being told through colour, patterns and lines—visible matter, details that you can visually hold on to; secondly, those inherent elements that portray what the artist is all about, whether influenced by third parties or just what is going on in his mind, which I have learned over the years is always prompt yet insane ideas about how you can change the present and improve the future.

SM:

A quick glance is not enough to fully appreciate every single graphic layer of your work. how would you deconstruct it and what kind of visual language are you conveying through it?

MW:

I have always tried to make rich imagery; for me it is more about the construction, finding exciting links and projecting ideas for the reader to deconstruct.

I do not think I necessarily convey a specific visual language, more an amalgamation of many.

SM:

There is a clear mash up of influences and mediums, from psychedelia through pop culture and digital references. do all of these comprehend your own style or genre? Is it a goal of yours to portray a specific trademark style to your work?

MW:

I am definitely influenced by many things. I am interested in life, music and culture from lots of different places so it is hard to pin an exact point of reference.

As an independent designer, I think it is fundamental to bring a unique perspective to your practice—your view on the world is ultimately why people work, pay & collaborate with you and not the next guy. certain colours, aesthetics, motifs and ideas do filter through my work but I would not say I have a specific style, more a methodology or approach which keeps my practice evolving.

p. 89

MW:

We star ted Panther club back in 2009. It was a personal project that gained momentum and grew. With Tumblr now, it is really easy to find great imagery, but in 2009 we did not feel there was anybody sharing the stuff we wanted to see. We started a blog and people really took to it. over five years we worked on lots of different projects, publishing prints, putting out mixes, initiating collaborations and organising exhibitions. We collaborated with a lot of our favourite artists and made a lot of good friends.

At the end of 2013, I decided to archive Panther club and focus on its successor worldwide. imgltd. org.

SM:

IMg lTd has been created as the happy successor for Panther club, as you said. What can you unveil about this brand new platform you have been working on and how does IMg lTd differ creatively from Panther club and how will it stand out from other art platforms/networks?

SM:

Is storytelling something you try to depict in your work? Are you conveying messages that can be sensed in some way—or are the senses a significant part of your inspiration and creative process?

MW:

narrative has always run deep in my imager y, it is how messages are transmitted from person to person and sensing is a big part of it. When you feel drawn to a story, a book, film, whatever, and cannot explain why — it is likely it speaks to you on an unconscious level. overtime, the real truth or message can reveal itself. I always try and collate and consider ideas over an extended period of time, building up layers and discovering unexpected relationships to instil in my work.

Panther club was founded because you and lindsey gooden wanted something that would promote and showcase new and amazing work for your own personal pleasure, but soon became something bigger. Although it no longer exists, can you describe its genesis and development, both as a platform to showcase and

The best way to describe the difference between P/c and IMg lTd is that digital could not existed pre-analog, and analog cannot become what digital now is. Panther club was analog and IMg lTd is digital. With the current saturation of image culture and the influx of data on the internet, we exist to create order out of the chaos.

IMg lTd is a progressive publishing and collaborative network sharing what we consider to be exciting, new & progressive—promoting stimulating ideas from intelligent people.

We also act as an experimental design and research studio, facilitating projects and collaborations from a global network of future-orientated creative people. We have no plan to stand out from the crowd, instead believing everything must co-exist.

TunIcA

p. 90

SM:

ISSuE III

a network for contemporary & independent artists?

MW:

MIchAEl WIllIS

SM:

one can easily interpret and connect most of your works to music. Although not something you can ac tually see, how has music influenced you, visually speaking?

MW:

I am very much influenced by music.

I listen to music most waking moments. It helps set tone, pace and perspective. Aesthetically speaking, I might use motifs, typefaces or colours associated with a specific music culture if it reflects the project I am working on. recently, the most predominant influence has been a rave culture aesthetic but in a few months’ time who knows? how do you feel about the editorial and print indus tr y nowaday s?

Is it still an industry per se or have things changed so much one can no longer account for it as an actual industry where everyone can step in? do you see yourself as part of it or anything similar to it?

MIchAEl WIllIS

SM:

As a graphic ar tist and designer showcasing a pioneering style, what do you feel is your greatest daily battle?

MW:

Staying focused — I am interested in a lot of ideas and aesthetics, so making sure I do not deviate too much is a big one! I always try and challenge myself with colour, style and process, getting involved as much as I can with the production of the things I design. Editing is really important to me to, identifying what works and what does not is an ongoing practice and a skill to be good at. If something is not right, it is wrong and having to power to self-edit can be very liberating.

SM:

MW:

I find this hard to answer as I do not feel I have been around long enough to really experience the shift. If you were to ask somebody that was active pre-internet, then you might get a different response, but for me digital has been fundamental to the evolution of our consumption of information. Things change. I love print, but to say that there will be nothing better in the future seems ludicrous! There will always be an industry for sharing ideas and information no matter what format it comes in.

ISSuE III

SM:

do you think london is still the place to be when it comes to independent entrepreneurship or is this idea of everlasting creative opportunities fading?

MW:

I have always worked around london, so it is hard to answer that objectively. The boundaries are definitely blurred now, I would probably say 70% of the work I do is actually with clients outside of the uk. I do not know if there ever was a golden moment of everlasting opportunity, things move so fast now on a global scale — if you want to be successful I think you have to be active, contributing to the future, not just consuming it! Ⅲ

p. 93

TunIcA

p. 94

AnnA EBorn

AnnA EBorn

AnnA EBorn

“Spirits eat—just like us” –John Little Finger 19-year-old Bert Lee sits in the shade of a tree in Yo Park. Cassandra Warrior feeds her daughter, Diamond Rose. Daniel Runs Close sweats under the sun at Wounded Knee Memorial site. Kassel Sky Little puts his boots on at the Waters Rodeo. Vanessa Piper is alone in the middle of Badlands.

Lance Red Cloud hangs out behind the gas station at night. It is summer and they all live here, at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, USA. What question, if answered, could make the most difference to the future of Bert Lee, Cassandra Warrior, Daniel Run Close, Kassel Sky Little, Vanessa Piper and Lance Red Cloud, all living adrift at the ‘Rez’ of Pine Ridge, one of the poorest parts of the U. S. , the home of the tens of thousands of Oglala Sioux?

This we ask from Anna Eborn, a Swedish-born young director, whose debut is the feature-length documentary PINE RIDGE, developed and shot in three visits in 2011 and 2012 at the Native American reservation.

ema, I create a separate universe where a selection of takes and this unique structure rules. The reality outside of the film may speak another kind truth—one where, for sure, a far more complex world is present.

Maybe my film asks you to reflect upon the structure of the world around you, upon the consequences of history.

I often think that if I deliberately extract something obvious or something very violent from a film reality, it will somehow shine through; and because I believe in the creative and intelligent mind of the audience, I can insist that you feel what you don’t see.

“The solution” you speak of is, then, of a political kind. And if there is a humanistic solution in this modern world it should, at least, be idealistic, not a burden for the young people to solve alone, but a weight lifted from their shoulders with the help of the responsible surrounding society.

A:

from my experience the united States does not offer security to many of its citizens, and there is a very striking unequal spread of goods and benefits to the different states and areas, depending on what “kind” of people inhabit or have historically inhabited these areas. I mean, every man or woman needs a job to survive. And the fact is, in Pine ridge there are none.

I was attracted to Pine ridge because of the landscape. Maybe the open plains reminded me of the open ocean around the island where I grew up. It is obvious that you long to get away when it is hard to leave—but then, once you left, it is so easy to return and nothing seems to have changed while you’ve been gone.

T:

What emotion is your motivator when seeking a subject for your films in general? And what individual emotion or disposition struck a responsive chord with you when developing Pine ridge?

A:

I like places where nature plays an important and inspiring role in the Mise-en-scène.

In Pine ridge, this was the case, on a historical level, political level and—most importantly—in the now, and in the landscape, air and weather.

The themes in my own life have been family, grief, longing, loneliness. I look for emotions and a sensitivity in the characters and in the landscape. And I am attracted to characters who have a certain strength in his or her personality, who seem to have secrets or strong dreams.

Since I work with cinema, the gaze of people or the visual feel of certain landscapes play an important role in my storytelling. Another theme that usually occupies me is age. Youth or old age doesn’t matter—growing up or growing old can be equal interesting for me, as can themes concerning god. I like the sound of trees, wind, footsteps and voices—all of these are “emotion triggers” for me.

T:

Any “fakery in allegiance to the truth” (as henry luce, the head of Time Magazine, described certain staging in journalism) in your methods?

A:

I think not. But no, there are no re-enactments in my film, and every scene—every image and sound seen or heard in the film—was recorded on location in Pine ridge.

Early in the making of this film, I decided that the words of my characters should function as the truth. I never wrote what they should tell me. I sometimes will interview the same person once or twice, but I never recorded anything new after leaving Pine ridge. I edit what I capture and edit what they told me. for me, the research and the shooting are one. I continue to research until the last day of shooting. Throughout the whole process, until the final edit, I try to be as open as possible and put all my attention into the film itself and how it develops. did that answer your question?

T:

Yes it did indeed! In this world ink costs more than human blood! But, jokes aside, you also told me that you usually only film people you really like. And that you have great respect for ever yone who appears in your film. I feel that your choice of characters will depict a certain outcome. But did it ever get dangerous?

T: T:

What is it that we are not seeing?

A:

W I T h TA n JA S I r E n PhoTogr APhY BY oScAr ruIz nAvIA ScrEEn ShooTS froM “PInE rIdgE”

I make cinema to create emotions.

Every scene or every combination of images in the film are there because I wanted you to see and experience them in this particular cinematic order. What lies beyond these images, what is absent in the film, but might be present in reality, is there as only indications or directions for you to reflect on what you see.

I could argue that I was hoping that the film would incite the audience to ask a question like yours. What I mean is that I do not make cinema to give straight answers, nor to explain the world. I film and edit moments of real time and, with the help of cin-

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

ISSuE III

And if we assume there is necessity and possibility, urgency even, for a better future for the youth of Pine ridge, did you see anything there holding-out the promise of a solution?

ing of empathy, and this is the reason why telling each other stories makes sense to us. It enriches our lives and gives us meaning and connects us to each other.

T:

A:

People are the way they are, and live the way they live, as a natural reaction to the world that has surrounded them. People are like plants with roots— sensitive to the environment. If there is a need for water, or love, we will stretch and bend our mind and bodies until we reach it, because we have a will and the instinct to want to sur vive. And we all live with the consequences of the actions made by the generations before us. But aside from plants, each human being owns the feel-

p. 98

TunIcA

p. 99

AnnA EBorn

A:

AnnA EBorn

I need a kind of like or respect between me and that person to be able to stay longer.

The people in my film are pretty brave and strong, and that’s why I wanted to work with them. And I wanted to make the film I had never seen. I have seen the all-American youth a thousand times in documentary, fiction—but it’s never captured here, never at a reservation, and not in the way I wanted to make it. My focus was never on the stuff you hear on Tv, or the more historical documentaries people have made in this area before.

So, my choice of characters has to do with what I want to show, and who interests me.

There were a lot of situations, images that I never filmed, because I didn’t think they fit the film.

I wouldn’t say that things got dangerous but, sure, a little out of hand at times—but nothing happened to me or my cinematographer. I mean, there was a lot of shit going down around us, but in that sense, we were really outsiders and not part of the conflict.

What could have ended bad for us was a tornado drive-through that happened one night. We had just picked up a soaked woman on the side of the road and then ran over a huge eagle. But with the guys I was filming, I always felt they had our back if trouble came walking in. or, if our car broke down, some of the guys would come to help us out. People tend to warn me or tell me—do this, don’t do that—only at one time, the warning was so striking, like, he said it like he meant it, and I took his word not to go with him that day.

T:

Why documentary?

A:

I feel like you have more freedom with documentary in the way the film is (supposed to) be developed. film institutes are not so eager for fiction films without regular narration. In the documentary world it’s better—and what I am doing is closer to documentary than fiction, I think. But I really have one foot in each grave. I can’t say I prefer one or the other. I prefer to call what I do “film” or “cinema”, that’s what I strive to make.

T:

A:

Well, right now I am editing a short documentary that I shot in november when I re-visited a village in ukraine (where I previously made a short film four years ago).

But the next feature film is a fiction, and its a collaboration between me and oscar ruiz navia; a director from colombia. The title of our film is Epifania, where the memories of our mothers intervene into a film about regaining life. The shooting starts in colombia in June this summer.

T:

listen, Anna, tell me what you ache for? And what’s the biggest thing you’ve been wrong about? or can you say what is unnameable?

A:

can I answer lovE to all three questions?! I am a very emotional person... no, but for real, aside from my personal love life being that of a tumbleweed, love in its true meaning is the biggest accelerator for my creative work. We are here to inspire, to get inspired, to put questions in other people’s head, to strengthen, to give, to see, to listen to each other. Sounds like hippie talk but, for real, today I read yet another hate crime story from russia, and I really feel we need a new summer of love—or at least to believe in one.

T:

When is the best time to do each thing?

A:

In the moment when it feels right.

T:

Who are the most important people to work with?

A:

People who inspires you.

T:

What is the most important thing to do at all time?

A:

Be receptive in the moment. Pay attention. Ⅲ

What’s next?

“If I name anything it leaves me.”

—John Little Finger

ISSuE III

p. 10 0

TunIcA

p. 102

E . S . P. T v

E. S. P. Tv

E . S . P. T v

E.S.P. TV is an audio/visual organization devoted to broadcasting art and music events taped live before an audience. Their practice explores the analog media technologies of the past while simultaneously producing, distributing and archiving what amounts to tomorrow’s culture. Operated by Victoria Keddie & Scott Kiernan, E.S.P. TV has no fewer than 59 episodes to its credit and a VHS boxed set distributed through Printed Matter. nc:

hi. We are going to conduct this entire interview in what appears to be a form of question and answer but which will in reality be a series of psychic conversations… is that okay?

Sk:

I think you already know the answer to that, nathan.

vk:

Psychic conversations.

nc:

Tell me a little bit about your backgrounds prior to ESP Tv?

Stan vanderBeeks cinemadome, The outer limits... videofreex! Jack goldstein’s short films. Early Bell labs video experiments. Potato Wolf/MWf video collective.

We really were blown away by this one vancouver public access show we found called “Survival!”

vk:

nc:

nc:

E.S.P. Tv has a certain aesthetic. how would you describe it?

Sk:

Aside from the overall look which is colored by our interests in analog video, the aesthetic is one of self-organization and a willingness to embrace the possibility of failure.

All of our cameras are lining out to one deck. What you see being made live at a taping, is the only real edit there can be.

vk:

our aesthetic is in a way lost in time, but yet completely contemporary. We record to Beta SP, so there is a look that is entirely different to what we are now used to seeing in hd format. Also, we are using cable access as a platform to broadcast the live taping events. The live experience is a theatrical one, say Brechtian..

nc:

how does the technology you use play a role in your aesthetic? Why the tape? Why the analog gear?

Sk:

The show started using analog gear partly because at the time everyone was throwing all of their Tvs out on the street and it was there for free. But further than that we had an interest in the look, tactility, and associations made with this particular flavor of analog video.

how did you two meet and bring to day’s E.S.P. Tv to genesis?

Sk: Sk:

I had been running a project space in Williamsburg called louis v. E.S.P. that I co-founded with Ethan Miller. The program reflected our shared interests and leaned heavily towards performance and/or exhibitions that were organized according to games or originated in unconventional ways.

E.S.P. Tv started as one of these shows in the space. vk:

Prior to E.S.P. Tv I was working full time as a media archivist preserving sound and film. I was programming experimental cinema and sound events around the city. I started optics o:o. , a film based screening series that focuses on optical printing and early video with film. I coformed the artist collective, oPTIPuS, and was merging strings with oscillators... nc:

What past audio visual projects, in the wor ld s of T v, film or ar t , inspired you?

vIcTorIA kEddIE & ScoT T kIErnAn W I T h n AT h A n c E A r l E Y

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

vk:

Perfect lives by robert Ashley, Soho Tv, nam June Paik and Merce cunningham together, Mike kelley’s day is done,

ISSuE III

our programming comes from the drive to connect artists and invite collaboration in practice. Media, artists, they all get partitioned, or categorized unnecessarily.

We want to create a synthesized environment.

Sk:

victoria invited E.S.P. Tv to be part of a two-day exhibition which was part of IndEx, a larger month long festival she co-organized. The collaboration was a success and it wasn’t long before she joined the team as co-director. vk:

I had formed the IndE x festival with partner, kristin Trethewey back in 2011. Scott had just put on an episode of this E.S.P. Tv at his loft space... I was more than interested. I wanted to have the project as a part of the festival, and did. Then, I wanted to be involved directly. nc:

how do you approach curating the different artists and musicians you tape?

We both discuss artists whose work we have witnessed firsthand or are curious to see more of and sort out what suits the specific space we are taping in. We want the artist’s work to make sense together, while avoiding lineups that are sort of expected.

vk:

The gear is broadcast based, and we are too.

nc:

What is the reasoning behind your emphasis on live tapings?

Sk:

The audience is a part of the show. We try increasingly more to capture them in the middle of the action because they really will be the marker years from now as to what a specific time and place was like.

vk:

Scott’s on point here by saying we blow the studio apart and show the spaces in between. Performance, sound, video, film, speech, movement... they are all kinetic, in motion, in flux, evolving, breaking down... why wouldn’t we want to document this, live?

nc:

You have filmed a lot of episodes! Which episodes stand out to you and why?

Sk:

p. 104

TunIcA

p. 10 5

E . S . P. T v

Sk:

lo n g d I S TA n c E P o I S o n

It’s hard to say, I have a personal relationship to almost all of them. There are the ones shot in dublin at Pallas Projects which hold fond memories for me. Some of the recent shows we taped at Storefront for Art and Architecture were interesting because they had to be different because of the space and the focus of the show. E. S. P. Tv #51 “Just desserts” with victoria as Saffron Eclair in a mock cooking show is a favorite of mine.

vk:

I loved working on Modular Synthesizer Solstice with you, nathan.

nc:

Ah, you really are reading my mind! Tell me a little about the philosophy behind using public access television?

Sk:

We want to increase awareness of it again because it’s free and accessible to anyone.

Too many people assume that everyone who wants to create media has a laptop, digital camera and a high-speed internet connection and that has rendered anything else invalid. The Mnn studio in midtown is there for you to use for free or little cost and is fully equipped with beautiful equipment.

vk:

We are watching communication outlets get snuffed out every day, internationally. cable networks exist as a vocal medium for the community it serves. We should support that.

nc:

When I was young, public access was a space where one could get a direct connection to the weird. It was inter-dimensional. I grew up near Portland and would catch all sorts of things on public access—the guy who owned the city nightclub had a Queer and drag talk show on it and there were all kinds of crazy political shows including wackos like lyndon larouche and white supremacists interviewing Boyd rice. Is public access still a kind of underground or “outside”?

Sk:

I think it is. or it can be. It allows for it and is sort of a disregarded format which inherently gives it a bit more freedom to be whatever it wants to be. Also, the rules for what you can show on public access in nYc are way more open than what you can post on social networking platforms.

vk:

It depends on the city or state, I think. The underground is there, very much so.

It might not be the cable access network, it might be on an old Tv dial or through radio... but weird is out there.

nc:

ESP Tv has taped so many diverse types of performance. As far as the future is concerned, are there any new kinds of performance you are aiming to tape that you haven’t yet captured?

Sk:

vk:

long dISTAncE PoISon

ISSuE III

p. 10 6

It’s rare to find bands or collectives who although are part of a scene or a network linked to an specific area and time frame— like the current thriving Brooklyn scene— don’t really fit in a label, description or movement. For Long Distance Poison sound is beyond genres or styles, it’s a kind of rite, a means to be transported to exterior dimensions not necessarily spatially but within the self. Nathan Cearley, Erica Bradbury and Casey Block and are devoted to the sheer production of otherness through sound and electricity. I had the chance to talk with Nathan in his studio in Brooklyn. dgc:

how did ldP start?

Erica and I started it. for some reason I ended up living in nashville after living in Brooklyn for many years, which is weird… but we met in nY, she had a band here, I had a band there in nashville but it was electronic so we didn’t fit in (laughs).

Erica and I were both ver y much into soundtracks and specifically into horror films.

We started hanging out, I flew here she flew there and over time we started thinking to do a project that somehow would resonate with the tone and sound of horror films. But that was the point of departure, and then things started to change quickly.

dgc:

like in a traditional song with chorus and refrain?

nc:

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

Yeah, when I listen to traditional songs where I can predict what is going to happen then my brain shuts off and I don’t listen anymore. And the same applies to beats and rhythm, unless it is dance music. But dance is even a different set of problems... dgc:

It’s very physical, corporal…

originally we were doing short pieces, more like songs, but after a while I got bored with songs, I really don’t like songs and I personally don’t like rhythm and melody because it’s really distracting to me.

I want to hear sounds but don’t want to be distracted by predictable melodic patterns...

I want to listen and not react or predict.

TunIcA

p. 10 8

In what sense?

nc:

n AT h A n c E A r l E Y WITh dAvId gArcíA cASAdo I M A g E S B Y E . S . P. T v

nc:

Exactly. You aren’t listening, you are moving. So I became interested in emotion, and primarily emotion connected to the music that was influential to me when I was young—bands like Tangerine dream and Popol vuh, but also slow heavy stuff like Earth, the Swans, the Melvins. To kind of make drony music that felt similar and wasn’t distracted by melody or rhythm or the concept of song. So we talked a lot about this and about making longer pieces since you don’t really have time to listen to something in 4 to 5 minutes. There’s not much passage to it.

dgc:

We are currently about to work with Alex Waterman on robert Ashley’s vidas Perfectas for the Whitney Biennial, though while we are producing the live video, that’s not an E. S. P. Tv project. however, like his operas, I would be interested in having more long-format, interdisciplinary performances on the show that combined sound, video, lyrics, narrative all in one. oh, and animal handlers.

Also, our next live taping will incorporate a team of filmmakers doing in-camera editing of performances. They and the room will also be recorded with stationary video cameras. The goal is to broadcast filmmakers in action as well as performers... everyone’s a player. All will be broadcast on Mnn network. All will be available to watch online at www. esptv. com. Ⅲ

Playing in Rivers of Electricity

nc:

lo n g d I S TA n c E P o I S o n

dgc:

nc:

dgc:

nc:

What kind of experience do you aim or are looking for in those longer passages, in the experience of the music? for me when I want to hear something, I don’t want to think about it, don’t want to interpret it. Although sometimes feelings can change depending on the time that you listen to the songs, I don’t believe that songs need to have one specific feeling. I want the song to be transportive. I don’t mean physically but rather sensory and psychologically, to be mind altering, psychedelic. And I don’t want the melody to distract me and I don’t want rhythm because although it can be psychedelic, it is more externally physical and not psychological.

So I feel that it takes a certain time to let an experience work on you, to absorb you.

So the piece follows a transformative process where you don’t end up the same way as you started.

There is a way to do rhythm but not necessarily patterned, I am thinking of Steve reich for example… do you think that has some kind of mind altering power?

Yeah, absolutely, percussive and repetitive stuff can be mind altering as well but perhaps we should call that rhythmic noise rather than beats per se.

lo n g d I S TA n c E P o I S o n

dgc:

right, you don’t necessarily use the rhythm as something used to hold the melody or structure, the song or the experience. nc:

right. A thing we decided was to work within a sound or note and try to explore its possibilities and interiority.

What we try to do is to work the whole room of a key or even note, the various harmonics of it, try to modulate it as much as possible and not change until we explore that space.

We play slow, we are not frantically doing things because we are listening as we play. Sometimes in the performances I am really playing for myself and learning about this song that is being created that is teaching me about myself, allowing myself to be transported, being less in control and more driven by it than its being driven by me. given the formal requirements of your pieces, what is the format you use to release your stuff?

Well, cds don’t mean anything to me, the way they sound and are packaged. We’ve done record albums with labels that would let us do what we felt like doing. for us the release is something itself, beautiful or unique or strange, odd…

That’s why I am really interested in tapes in cassette culture. There is more thought provoking sound art in that world than there is to me in other parts of music. So yeah, that and records. I like working with cassette people because they are artists too. focused on making weird music rather than being big musicians.

I hope that there is some kind of mystery towards music, because if everything is defined music is not too transportive, I mean you are already there from the very beginning, you know where you are going to go. There is some kind of mystery to tapes, some hiss… dgc:

do you feel connected with a particular scene?

nc:

We are kind of old fashioned in that sense, not too defined. We don’t fit into the post punk leather industrial world, we clearly don’t fit in the heavy metal scene either and because we do really slow music, even though it’s electronic, we don’t really fit in Brooklyn’s current electronic music scene which is really defined right now by techno and house revivalism. So we have and share the vibes but we don’t really fit in scenes. The only scene that has really been a home for us is the experimental noise world.

p. 10 9

What is your work or composing process?

nc:

for some reasons there’s always three parts or passages, 3 territories. I start patching things, and something starts to happen, the territories are being sketched. Then Erica and casey coming and showing them where I am at and they add their parts and everything becomes more like a whole—a whole formed as a negotiation between us and the alterity of the machines and sonic bodies. But the most important thing is always the sound and not our thoughts about what we want it to sound like. So I guess in a weird way the songs write themselves.

TrAnScEndEnTAl dAncE

dgc:

for what I see and heard, it seems that you are only interested in analog keyboards and modular synthesizers.

dgc:

nc:

ISSuE III

dgc:

TunIcA

nc:

We are all analog. I am not dogmatic against digital but for me there is much more otherness that makes itself apparent in analog because it’s more organic, it’s the natural voltage process. The waveforms are more present. So it’s not just the aesthetics: digital has less accidents, it’s more controlled.

We started with keyboards but 2 or 3 years ago I begun using modular synthesis because the degree of relationship with the electricity and sound is more direct with modular synthesizers. It’s almost like playing in a river of electricity whereas the keyboard is like working with aqueducts, much more controlled. With the modular I feel more freedom. dgc:

how did you learn the technique?

It looks pretty complex.

nc:

It’s crazy, right? (laughs) When I was 16 I worked in a record store in a small town in the middle of the woods owned by a guy who had been in prog bands like in the seventies and was kind of a father figure and he gave me that (showing a vintage Minimoog) and learning synthesis on that gave me the foundations for knowing how to use something like this (the modular). And also when I went to college, Evergreen had a complex modular unit, a Buchla, in the musical department. We would go there in the middle of the night to play and get crazy… (laughs). Ⅲ

gAvIn ruSSoM & chrIS honToS W I T h h u go c A PA B l A n c A I l lu S T r AT I o n S BY gAv I n r u S S o M

p . 11 0

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

T r A n S c E n d E n TA l dA n c E

T r A n S c E n d E n TA l dA n c E

hc:

I’ve been massively sick the last few days, Thinking about it now I should have sent a feverish proposal full of dadaist topics, but it scape me. hope you still have some minutes to enhance in a discussion? chris, when I asked gavin to remix your track knossos, it was not a random choice, I was very aware that both of your respective projects, food Pyramid and The crystal Ark operate somehow on a transcendental sphere; you both work with dance music (or peripheral elements of it, anyway) and somehow you translate it into impulses that appeal simultaneously to the classic escapism of the genre and towards a conscious or unconscious awareness. Is this a matter of taste? Is it provoked? or are you just trying to reach harmony on a meta musical level?

What gavin thinks of this?

Also, what are your thoughts on modern and traditional “ trance mu sic” (talking very generally, from goa trance to traditional African, native Indian or South American ceremonies, passing by Motorik krautrock), is this a conscious influence for both of you? back to the future? do you think you need more guidelines, or you rather go freeform? I have the feeling this could be more interesting if you end up letting topics develop by themselves…

Although Moroccan trance music and it’s contemporary interpretations have played a big role in the development of my musical aesthetic. When “gift of the gnawa” (flying fish records, 1991) came out my friend and I listened to it on a long drive through the mountains of vermont

ch: gift of the gnawa is a favorite of mine. I agree that Transcendental is a funny word—one that implies so much and yet is relevant to every facet of our lives.

I have found that in my band the idea of transcendence has two components. one is the very tangible process of making and creating music that is largely improvised and automated (to some degree at least) with machines and also with other people.

In this sense I consistently find that our mu-

Interesting stuff. And I can connect with a lot of it for sure. ok, so if I can track my own relationship to these ideas and the questions hugo mentioned earlier as well, absolutely the effect you talk about as transcendental is 100% intentional in what I do. That mostly has to do with why I started making music in the first place. It was essentially about healing rather than self expression or even “art”. I found that when I was making music, and listening to certain kinds of music I experienced a state of consciousness that felt better than what I normally felt like walking around in the world and interacting with people, since that always felt pretty terrible. I noticed that this effect lasted after the experience of the music and seemed to also have a cumulative effect, in other words

each musical experience built on the one before so that I began to see that there was actually a real and direct healing process happening. And then I started to learn about these situations in the world such as rituals or celebrations where music is really used in this way with consciousness and intention. once I got onto that I felt like I knew what I wanted to pursue with my life and work and that was it, and I did that through a lot of reading and listening because I wanted to deepen my relationship to this energy, whatever it is, and also learn how to work with it better.

That became about figuring out what these special states of consciousness were actually good for, what service they could be, rather than just enjoying or experiencing them for their own sake. not that there’s anything wrong with that, this is just where my path led me, and The crystal Ark definitely comes out of that, using these special states of consciousness to awaken people’s awareness of the world around them, both its beauty and its major problems and how they interact, and also to empower them especially around being connected to their bodies. Process wise it’s interesting because the making of the music happens through a lot of different layers, individual, collaborative, improvisational, compositional...

I have my own individual process in how I write and viva, my collaborator, has hers, and there is certainly much transcendental and psychedelic experience going on there. When I work I’m using the states of consciousness I first experienced through improvising music to open myself up to the sounds and rhythms that want to work through me and that’s what becomes a song or a track. viva and I put the songs together and then we get the band together which mostly happens around the recording and live performance. And yeah the live performance is geared to transmit this experience to people by any means necessary. We’re moving a lot of energy around with the intention of creating healing and consciousness raising through the special power of music that I think is what we’re talking about here.

Something really cool happened for me as a listener and experiencer of music when I was able to draw these lines of connection between dance music, jazz, psychedelic music and traditional musics from outside the music industry, I guess what people market as “world” music…It was powerful to see where those things connected and also where they differed from each other and why, and The crystal Ark grew out of that process. I think you hit on the important thing there chris that this music is both celebratory and pur-

ISSuE III

p . 11 2

TunIcA

p . 11 3

gr:

lots to talk about here for sure.

Where to start?

ch:

Where to star t is the question indeed…

hc:

I wanna ask if you’ve ever heard the music of nass El ghiwane. They are a Moroccan group that has embraced the traditions of African trance music.

Pretty far from dance music as we know it in 2014, but the principles of repetition and melody seem to transcend itself over time and become something new - with dynamics and possibly even a narrative sense of direction amounting from it’s minimalism.

I find this concept to be relevant always in my own music and the music I am attracted to. To me this is where the idea of transcendental becomes an important theme in expression. It is important for it’s simultaneous newness and timelessness. gr:

at night and I remember thinking, “this is the the kind of experience I want to create with my music”. The Master Musicians of Jajouka record as well as heavy research into both the music and philosophy of the Moroccan sufis were also big building blocks. This stuff was like when I was 14, 15, 16 years old and trying to figure out what to do, because playing in a hardcore band started to seem limited and a little boring…

But yeah the repetition and the intention of connection to the divine, those are big parts of what draws me to make and hear music.

Transcendental is a funny word since it implies that these experiences take us out of what’s happening in front of us, whereas my experience is very different. In fact what I experience is a deeper and more present relationship to what’s happening in front of me.

I feel like the idea of transcendence is locked in a bit of a prison created by the western idea that god exists somewhere else rather than in everything, in a real way.

It’s interesting how you describe the dynamic aspect of this track (nass El ghiwane ‘zad al ham’), I think that has a lot to do with its power, yes, the basis is repetition but there’s something else happening as it unfolds in time that has to do with an “energy curve”.

And the repetition actually contributes to that, highlights it…This is undauntedly related to very important spiritual concepts as well as musical aesthetics…

sic grows, changes, develops, digresses and progresses in ways that transcend the original intention that we have for it. our idea of recording/performing is essentially getting four (or more) people in a room, turning on the machines and seeing what happens. It nearly always ends in a different space from where it started, and it always transcends itself and brings us to a place of unique perspective. The connection to the spiritual is totally important in this kind of creation.

What happens in that time period from when the song starts and the song ends that changes my consciousness, making me feel like I woke up from deep sleep? This is why I make music. ch:

The other component is the transcendental happening that is the live performance. listen to a song on headphones on the subway, then go to a warehouse and listen to it blasting through the monitors with sweaty bodies all around you and you will have a completely different relationship with the music. Particularly with live performance there is this moment when a collective mind develops in the audience.

This is when people start to dance and freak out and move. There is something divine when all people become enveloped in movement, impelled by the sound. It seems to me that The crystal Ark really has this idea in mind. To create an individual experience - multi-cultural, multi-layered and perhaps multi-purpose in it’s ability to function as dance music and a transcendental experience. It brings to mind the tradition of funeral dirges in greek music. They function as an elegy for the deceased, an outlet for the grieved and in many cases a dance of celebration for life itself. I wonder if you’d talk more about the crystal ark in relation to transcendentalism? gr:

T r A n S c E n d E n TA l dA n c E

Thanks for the questions. We live in a time where, because of the convergence of technology, we are simultaneously aware of the freedom of information and it’s overbearing presence on our

cognition. I think any expression that can take us away from this is ex tremely important. I think also that using the ubiquitous state of information in a way that subverts it and allows us to see or experience or hear something that exists outside of this paradigm is really valuable right now. food P yramid operates on a political level if for no other reason than our awareness of this idea. The idea of playing improvised music, of never playing the same show twice, and experimenting with different modes of style is inherently a political gesture when contextualized within the milieu of modern music. In a sense these are also simple elements of a creative process, but they are conscious decisions to reformulate how Pop music is made - and more importantly - heard. There are numerous examples in history of how this is probably done more effectively than we do with our humble midwestern music unit, but to engage in the greater dialogue of music and culture is impossible without at least taking a position on the subjects of that dialogue - and ours is firmly rooted in the truly transformative power of this music. gavin, I’m glad you mentioned viva and your creative process. The spirit of collaboration is really what drew us to making music in the way that we do. In one sense I feel as though our music in this project is totally insular and apolitical as well, because it revolves solely on our relationship with each other. But in the greater picture this insularity and our ideas of music and art is informed totally by our political status. never taking that for granted is at least the first step to becoming politically aware. We are deciding to commune in sound as a first step towards a recognition and practice of our own agency in the world. There’s a reason why music is the first move for us. It’s transcendental powers aren’t merely intoxicating; they are also transformative of consciousness. I can think of no greater pursuit than the transformation or elevation of consciousness when considering our current political and social position.

The first time I truly began to understand the transcendental implications of music was the first time I heard countdown

by John coltrane. I believe it’s the punkest song ever recorded. A complete subversion of the paradigm of my understanding of music at the time, it was as though I was hearing The rite of Spring in 1913. I realized that any form can contain a structure that exists independently or in an entire different world altogether. And that a person can use a form (such as traditional jazz music) to almost any end, in a transcendental way. Ⅲ

ISSuE III

p . 11 4

poseful, multi purposeful or maybe modularly purposeful and that’s where the element of transcendence comes through. I suppose the deepest relationship I have to that idea is the transcendence of artificial boundaries or marketing categories like genre…I definitely have an interest in making music that lives in a different place than where that stuff lives.

It’s a political thing too, I mean you see that a lot of the problems in the world come as the result of the drawing of artificial boundary lines even in a literal way between countries or territories. Boundary lines that ignore and violate the actual experience of the people affected by those lines. And I think what we have in music a lot of the time is the exact same thing and so I’m interested in transcending these genre boundaries not for artistic reasons so much but for these political reasons, and as such I’m also interested in finding authentic and ethical ways to do that... chris, do you feel like there is a political aspect to your work with food Pyramid? I’d also be curious to know what drew you to working with the kind of energies you work with musically and how you see the function of these unique states that it seems to be able to create. ch:

lABor

lABor

lABor “The creative process has a high degree of useful unproductiveness that has to be protected in some way.” “ M i s t a ke s a r e s i m p l y b a s e d o n w r o n g expectations.”

“If we want to work with society, the best thing is to do it with what that society discarded: its rubbish.”

“Somewhere between attention and distraction.”

“To transfer all the underlined passages in books to a. doc file.”

The last two pages of labor are dedicated to notes: sentences or ideas taken from the articles of the magazine. These fragments work individually and are isolated from their original contexts. Those two pages sum up one of the main intentions of labor: to try to be a tool for the daily work of people from any discipline, by taking ideas and inspiration from it.

We use labor as a tool ourselves. for example, in the first issue, Malcolm hearn (an American film editor) explains in his article how he used lots of cards displayed on the floor in his house to build the structure of a documentary. In our second issue, we used this methodology to decide the order of the articles.

dB:

We cut paper strips of different sizes according to the length of each article and moved them around the table testing different combinations. This way we could work on the editing of the magazine in a visual and tangible way.

AS:

I think that the “notes” section was the last piece needed to define the magazine’s concept. It’s easy to say it now, but I’m not sure how aware of it we were at that time.

dB:

In the beginning, we had some ideas about how our magazine was going to be. We wanted to feature artists (and people from other disciplines too), but not in the way they are shown in most magazines. We didn’t want to print the same images you can find online in an endless list of webs and blogs. We realized that we didn’t want to show finished artworks or projects. following this idea, we slowly discovered that our magazine could be about processes, about everything that goes before the finished work. People talking about themselves, about their own everyday work. That’s why we called it labor, which we also liked because it is bilingual, as the magazine is.

But we had no clue about how to really start making the magazine. After struggling for some weeks doing things that led nowhere, we finally chose a different way to begin: making a short film to explain the project to other people (and to ourselves). We spent 6 months making this video, and in the process of making it, we ended up understanding what labor was about. labor is an ar ts and culture publication based in Buenos Aires that focuses on work processes, everything that happens on the path between the birth of an idea and the finished work. In its nearly 200 pages, it captures different processes, from the day to day life of a mathematician to the reflections of a piano tuner, from the details of building a sound studio in the living room of a house to a conversation between an industrial designer and a photographer about marble. collaborators from different nationalities and disciplines write a first-person account about some aspect of their work.

c o n I c A S TAg n E T, A l A n S EgA l , IrInA kEnIgSBErg & dIEgo BErAkhA PhoTogr APhY BY fr AncIScA dErQuI

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

cc:

TunIcA

p . 11 6

ISSuE III

p . 117

lABor

lABor

Ik:

from the start, we tried to have the collaborators write about their work process in the first person. This becomes an intimate content specifically generated for labor.

AS:

We wanted collaborators to adapt - so to speak - their work to the magazine. We try to get people out of their daily activities and to think about their work process. This way people who are not used to writing do it for the magazine, and therefore, the texts we publish give different perspectives. There is a shift there that enriches the magazine’s content.

cc:

The first article we received was from Pablo Polosecki, an Argentine neuroscience researcher based in new York. contrary to what you might expect from an article written by a scientist, we received a very personal and warm text about vocation and how difficult it is sometimes to keep working with enthusiasm in very hard conditions, for example, living in a foreign country and working in an atmosphere of intense academic pressure.

Ik:

The guideline of writing about work process might seem too narrow at first, but we realized that it could be approached in many different ways. Although labor has a precise central concept, heterogeneity is one of the magazine’s key principles in almost all of its aspects: disciplines covered, the format and contents of articles (texts which can be abstract and general or descriptive and thorough, photos, documents, scans, illustrations), and ways to talk about process. Each collaborator has the freedom to propose how they want their article to be.

dB:

for the second issue of labor, we contacted Apparatu, a ceramics studio from Barcelona. They wanted to participate by making a photo novel illustrating a day’s work in their workshop. They did it and designed it themselves, along with their friends of Bendita gloria (a great graphic design studio also from Barcelona). We never ever would have thought to include a photo novel in labor.

We meticulously design each page of the magazine. But in this case, the article arrived already finished: seven pages with a completely different design to the rest of the magazine. This was something new and challenging for us, and it wasn’t easy to accept at first. But ultimately, I think this intrusion enriched the magazine by making it more unpredictable.

cc:

In fact, at that point we questioned the control boundaries in our editing activities.

There are some articles that are delivered to us almost finished and ready to be printed, but there are others in which we have much more work to do, and we work closely with the collaborators. An example of this process was with hsuan-li, a Taiwanese artist living in Buenos Aires. he couldn’t write well either in Spanish or English. So we decided to talk with him and record the conversation. This conversation was in a kind of precarious English and lasted four hours. We edited the material afterwards and transformed it into a text trying to preserve the spontaneity of his words.

AS:

Anyway, this methodology (the interview) is the one we use least, and we also rarely receive articles that are ready to be printed as they are. In most cases, the work includes a prolonged exchange of emails. We always play with the idea of publishing them because sometimes this correspondence reveals an aspect of this person’s process in a very raw and natural way.

My house is in Martínez. unfortunately, and until we get our own building, the library is scattered around various homes, same as documents, paintings, etc. Therefore, we don’t have a central office, but rather what we do is as everything in the foundation, a little bit each of us.

Besides that, my office is partially taken, half turned into one of my daughter’s bedroom.

You can still visit it, since it’s interesting anyway.

This might sound weird to you, but it is the Argentinean reality, it’s very hard to find a stable place.

AS:

dealing with all these difficulties, and not having to respond to any pressure or external requirements, allows us to focus on our own concerns and to work with the people with whom we want. Making a magazine today, with high publishing costs and not having any kind of advertising, is a way of taking a stand.

ThE offIcE of culTurE & dESIgn

dB: featuring a successful artist and an unknown construc tion worker equally is another way of taking a stand. It’s not an ideological statement, but a matter of interests: one job (and its process) could be as interesting and fascinating as the other. In fact, a lot of artists often tend to repeat their ideas and say expected things.

In an ideal world labor would be our full time job, but we haven’t found a way to make this happen. Yet. labor members alternate this project with their daily work. Irina is a writer and student of Psychology; coni has a degree in communication and likes singing; Alan is a filmmaker and artist; and diego is a graphic designer. The four of them are friends and besides that are couples (coni & Alan, Irina & diego).

Making the magazine is inseparable from their everyday life. It is a constant work, not limited to a fixed schedule or certain activities.

dB:

We just received this email as we speak. It’s from a future collaborator of labor 3 who is the president of a foundation dedicated to maritime history and archeology. he thinks this might sound odd, but in fact our situation is pretty similar.

We don’t have an office either; we meet at our homes or in a cafe. The magazine is not our main activity; the four of us have jobs that take up most of our time.

Ik:

labor goes through our daily life, becoming a permanent filter in our way of looking. Situations in our day-to-day lives, people we meet, things we hear, all become starting points for articles.

Ik:

dB:

Today it’s almost impossible to make a living from an independent cultural project in Argentina. cc:

Yes, and in our case we decided that we didn’t want any kind of advertising. I guess that complicates things a bit, but we avoid any interference.

d:

Especially little things, things that you take for granted and often go unnoticed, and that of course affect everything else. Personally, with labor, I started to think of work as the purpose of life and not as merely a means of subsistence or a thing we must do in order to get something else. cc:

We are even working on bringing labor into other formats, by taking its concept and the perspective it gives us and translating it into new projects. I like to think of labor beyond the object, as an idea. dB:

dB:

Thanks to this, we have total freedom and control over the content we publish. We think of ourselves as readers, and we print what we would like to find in a publication.

TunIcA

p . 11 8

ISSuE III

In this shor t film we made, three years ago and not knowing what we were doing very well, a voice-over said “We want to make a magazine that leaves an echo in your daily life, an abstract tool for your work, a magazine that makes you want to get up and do something.” Something like that is happening. Ⅲ

p . 11 9

c l A r A lo B r EgAT B A l Ag E r WITh AudrEY n. cArPIo

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

T h E o f f I c E o f c u lT u r E & d E S I g n

Cla ra L obregat B a lag uer is a n a r t ist living in the Philippines, and to call her such is to consider the term in its most multidimensional form. She works out of her antiques-filled home office far from the city center, designing books, editing films, writing poetry and tending to her plants. In 2010 she put up the Office of Culture and Design, an outfit that enables social art projects, like Kaid Ashton’s Home School, the Zamboanga Hace workshops for students in the conflictridden south of the Philippines, and other visual literacy events that engage with underexposed or marginal communities.

She frequently collaborates with other artists who share a “common sense to know that finding new solutions involves throwing common sense out the window from time to time.” Lupang, an experimental feature film she recently completed in collaboration with Carlos Casas—a Spanish documentary filmmaker—and a young Danish graphic designer turned Director of Photography, Stefan Kruse Jørgensen, tells the stories of an Ayta community displaced by the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption. Clara talks to us about her film, her fascination with Filipino kitsch, and her own sense of displacement. And her bald head.

TunIcA

p. 121

T h E o f f I c E o f c u lT u r E & d E S I g n

Anc:

You recently shaved your head. What have you discovered about yourself baring your scalp?

clB:

Mindless noontime show / not a drop of shame, just

APPlAuSE / [blink] / APPlAuSE / [blink] clB:

I have discovered that the shape of my head appeals to people, that gay men dig women with bald heads, that femininity and hair are intricately linked but that the relationship can be supplanted with posture and movement, that I have a mole on my head and that most of the sensation of grime at the end of the day comes from having dirty hair.

It must be liberating, especially since we live in a long-hair-obsessed society. has this affected your fashion in any way?

more more more of this dancing / more more more of this tourist attracting / more more more of your wealthy fat sexy rubenesque korean dollars / less less less human than they were / before before before you asked them to dance / like dolphins or bears or shamu / sham(eon)u / men of action, burning their fields / to spit(eyo)u / because they haven’t your permission to fight you

Anc:

clB:

not really. Maybe I wear more make up because it’s really easy to look like you’re terminally ill when you’ve a shaved head and have odd sleep patterns.

APPlAuSE / [blink] / APPlAuSE / [blink] roman king has an exquisitely crafted vocabulary / and he only reached the third grade / Bert sings a song that could be written by the Eraserheads / and he also knows a few verses of the dororo prayer.

APPlAuSE / [blink] / APPlAuSE / [blink]

Anc:

let’s talk about your film, lupang (The land That), which was funded by the Earth observatory of Singapore, shows some surreal moments of touristic exploitation, honest karaoke, and personal, almost sacred instances of spirituality. What were some of the things you decided to leave out of the film? clB:

cooking lessons. An elder Ayta posing an open question to scientists that was so guileless and earnest it brought tears to my eyes: he asked how far the human eye could see, because from hunting knew he could only aim a certain distance with his bow, but then at night he could clearly see far, faraway the stars in the sky. The bulk of an intimate conversation with our neighbor, Marisa, on what women usually talk about when they get together at night, which is men. Twelve-minute long story telling exercises about the Aytas memories of the volcanic eruption in 1991. The one that displaced them from their ancestral lands and forced them to live near urban centers. The one that accelerated the process of their culture’s dilution. As is usually the case, leaving things on the proverbial cutting room floor is difficult. There were some moments that were very meaningful, but we either had to respect privacy, move away from stereotypes or keep to the focal themes of the film we had chosen to make.

it was a delicate balance / on the weakest of finest of lines / between stupid flippancy of outsider / and profound frequency of time you did not set / and not knowing a single thing / and drones and beats and rhyme / without actually rhyming / without actually having anything to say / to make it better. let them eat patani. / let them eat cake.

APPlAuSE / [blink] / APPlAuSE / [blink] Anc:

having lived with the Aytas for close to two months, what can you say abou t the filmmaker s’ (you and Stefan kruse’s) relationship with the community? clB:

Anc: As a poet, how would you describe lupang?

I had never felt like so much of an alien as I did at the beginning of the shoot in Monicayo village. I was in my own country, but in some sort of alternate reality. At times, both Stefan and I were almost ashamed at feeling, keenly, the exoticity of living in a tribal village. It looked almost like any other village in the Philippines, but it wasn’t. Even though we built relationships with the people we filmed (and I hope that trust and respect comes across on screen), standing behind a camera creates a distance.

Perhaps we didn’t spend enough time, on shoot, in order to become invisible. There was an awkwardness, a performative element, a lights-camera-action feel. It wasn’t dishonest, it was just a feeling of preamble to deeper relations.

ISSuE III

p. 122

T h E o f f I c E o f c u lT u r E & d E S I g n

T h E o f f I c E o f c u lT u r E & d E S I g n

Anc:

last year ocd started a publishing hou se and de s ign s tudio c alled hardworking, goodlooking with Brooklyn-based designer kristian henson. Tell me about some of the printed matter you’ve been working on. clB:

clB:

Anc:

clB:

Those deeper connections began after shooting, and generally happened off camera.

The film was only the beginning, a shoehorn for us to enter the community. Also, the tactical character of the filming process was conditioned by the budget’s limitations.

After shooting we continued our relationship with some of the Aytas as the project moved into the next phase, a cookbook of tribal recipes and a future livelihood project. now I can say that I am starting to feel familiar (at times maternal, filial or fraternal) with the community. I don’t know yet if I am an insider. That takes time. Trust is built and earned, not given away in front of a rolling camera. We are working on it, and the Aytas are thankfully being generous with their favor. (It’s my birthday tomorrow, and the Aytas are already texting me like crazy to wish me a happy birthday. not even my dad remembers its my birthday tomorrow.)

The head of red cross told me that the Pinatubo disaster, which happened in 1991, was worse than typhoon haiyan, in a way. from your experiences what do you think we can learn and apply in terms understanding and rebuilding a stricken community?

The non-expert lessons I have learned from Pinatubo and other disasters large and small: 1) Ask before giving. listen and observe before asking.

2) nobody is themself when they need and have lost. giving of yourself is often an unromantic experience and ripe for mistakes and misunderstandings, in this context.

In any context, actually.

3) Immediate disaster response requires people with a “muscle memory” that comes from have been in the field before. Situations are volatile, and acting with inexperience often adds complexity instead of solving. The urgency draws inexperienced people (like me) who, despite a lack of disaster muscle coordination, feel they need to help.

We do not, however, have to help all at the same time. The same way that people have to get in line to receive aid, people should get in line to give aid in a scaled manner.

As someone who reacts too viscerally to other people’s pain, I am perhaps not well suited to the front line. The lesson I have to relearn constantly is that natural disaster has an arc as long as it is tall. response efforts are as crucial in the long as in the short term, contrary to what some humanitarian models have led us to believe. There is room for patience. And there is something to be said about finding places where crisis has become ingrained in way of life, where there is no logo visibility or media presence, where journalists kind of yawn unless it’s the 30th anniversary of something.

TunIcA

p. 124

We recently printed the second edition of our rISo readers. I decided last year that all the projects completed at ocd should live on in printed format afterwards. While we’re getting all the material for each project together, we’re printing small project primers at “backyard” printers and copyists around Metro Manila. There’s a really interesting cottage industry around printing in the Philippines. Professional printing is too expensive and uncompetitive compared to the rest of Asia and the world, but itty bitty printers are more affordable as well as more interesting. It’s a learning curve for them to do this sort of book, but one that also gives our readers an edge when laid on a table next to any old Western publication. not all of our books will be printed this way of course. We are now preparing issue number 3 of Edit magazine, and are set to print a book for filipino artist Wawi navarroza.

Those we will do in offset and with a push for quality. But not all that glitters is offset, especially not in the Philippines.

Anc:

SAIAo (Selected Artifacts in Alphabetical order), your product line inspired by the rural filipino lifestyle, is set to launch this year. What kind of goods will you be selling? clB:

We will be selling goods that I have found in my travels around the Philippines, for starters. The idea is to respect the products as much as possible, repurposing them just a tiny bit, but only to adapt the goods for “first-world” lives. like there is this aluminum stove we have combined with 3 fighting cock leashes (cock as in rooster) to turn into a hanging planter. Eventually, we would like to work with the local manufacturers to come up with designs in collaboration with all kinds of people, but for now we want to keep it simple. It’s what we hope will keep our operations sustainable, and will become the added value that we provide to communities that we encounter. In four years of working on ocd projects, my grand realization has been deceptively simple: social challenges inevitably boil down to livelihood and the lack of it, for any group of people. So to truly contribute, I want to be able to provide an avenue not just for cultural experimentation or catharsis, but also for economic opportunity.

ISSuE III

T h E o f f I c E o f c u lT u r E & d E S I g n

Anc:

What draws you to native folknography, accidental design, the aesthetics of working class and rural life? clB:

Maybe I’m drawn to sariling atin [uniquely native or a concept referring to filipino culture] because I have always been an outsider and insider in my country. unfortunately the environment that I was born into was not necessarily filipino-proud.

In the first grade, I remember we would get fined 25 centavos for every Tagalog word that we spoke inside the classroom. Supposedly this was meant to encourage command of the English language. There were always veiled comments of criticism towards filipinoness within earshot. I grew up with a sense of entitlement, superiority and otherness that was shameful. And that somehow could not be helped, or at least that’s what I tell myself. The Philippines was a volatile country when I was a child in the ‘80s and a teenager in the ‘90s. It was normal to live in fear of being kidnapped. It was normal to have school suspended because of a military coup. It was normal to feel that, outside of your air-conditioned bubble, people wanted to take advantage of you. And I suppose I processed all that post-colonial information in twisted ways, because I was not in the habit of contrasting information with adults.

When I was older, I had the seven-year opportunity to make a life for myself abroad. It was that experience that taught me an important lesson: the feeling of otherness was not limited to living in the Philippines. It was endemic to me, and rejecting my heritage was rejecting myself. I belonged less abroad than I did at home. That’s where I began to look at my Philippine experience in a different light. Where I used to see negative and unremarkable, I saw sublime and brand new. I returned to Manila feeling almost like a tourist.

I loved the city in exactly the way that I was learning to appreciate myself. You know how tourists look up all the time to observe a new place from all angles? That’s what I did when I came back home. And the sense of wonder remains, even five years after I moved back home. I cultivate it by moving as much outside of my comfort zone as much as possible.

Anc:

having had past lives in television and advertising and what not, when did it coalesce for you that this—”to make art to write or design with the intent to contribute to the well-being of others”—is what you wanted to do with your life?

clB:

When my mother died. I had returned to Manila, sort of lost and wanting to be with my mother when it was confirmed that the cancer was going to win. When the battle was finally over, I don’t know… the umbilical cord had been broken for the second time in my life. And there was no going back to my old life. I can’t say exactly what it was, or when it was, but a feeling began to creep on me. The feeling that life was short and that the sense of otherness was my own fault. In my naiveté, all I could think of was to “help” people I thought were in “need”. It was rather “stupid” of me to assume I could “help” or that I was “needed”, but alea jacta est. There was a guy in the Astérix comic books that always used to say that when the pirate ship he was on inevitably sank in each episode. It means the die is cast. It’s been a strange journey on an often sinking ship, but I’ve committed to it, my ignorance notwithstanding, in every episode, book, project, life lesson. I always say that if I were a plumber, I’d be trying to put myself to good use through that. I’m nowhere near as handy as a plumber. All I can do is this sort of stuff, and I operate in that incomprehensible no-man’s land in between ideas and aesthetics and cheerleading and soapboxing. It may not be the most conventional approach to serving others, and working in the creative or artistic or literary field most definitely has a component of self-service. It’s not classic altruism, but it serves others and me better than where I was before, peddling phone plans and luxury cars and spirits and the dubious catch-all of lifestyle. not that my former occupations were evil.

They just for some unexplainable reason stopped being enough after I became a motherless child. Melodramatic and Piscean perhaps, but it is the truth as far as I can tell.

You’ve shaved your head, obviously.

What other things outside your comfort zone do you feel you need to do next?

Anc:

By the way, happy bir thday dear Pisces!

What’s your birthday wish?

clB:

clB:

can’t think of an answer that doesn’t make me sound like a douchebag. lol. Ⅲ

Anc:

I don’t really know. life naturally progresses into discomfort zones without us having to help it along. Will wait for the next step to be revealed while walking in that general direction.

p. 12 5

TunIcA

p. 126

AnnA SÖrEnSon

AnnA SÖrEnSon

AnnA SÖrEnSon

The Order of Things and All That A nna Sörenson is a conceptual artist, a child of the 80’s, a constant traveller and a nomad. When I was invited to her current home in Brussels, I envisioned archival desks and shelves filled with objects from her escapades around the globe. Surprisingly, her working space is quite the opposite of what I expected. Four meter ceilings and emptiness, apart from two plants, a computer and a few sketches neatly lined up on the floor. Her work reflects her travels, but not the way in which you expect. She is a serious collector, but she is not collecting memorabilia—she collects to understand; articulating politics, philosophies and values.

Following her work from the early years in Northern Sweden to her graduation show in New York, I began to see a neatly composed pattern of ethics. From the well pronounced paintings in “Valence in Everyday Objects” and “The Neverending Book” to the rules of power and bureaucracy in “Your Application is Pending ” per for med in Stock holm, Brussels and Miami. Anna captures the complexities of our time through her own political systems, in what could be seen as a chaotic traveller’s journal of order, organizing and reorganizing the essence of her every day practice.

lf :

how do you think the extensive travelling in the past years have shaped your relationship with your work?

AS :

When I was little I travelled a lot with my family and became accustomed to a constant shift in environments. Both my parents are writers, so they talk a lot about what they see and what they perceive. When I was young, I started to process what was around me, how one country was different to another. I think experiencing that as a kid, my notations became a way of understanding the world around me. I constantly try to understand how we behave in different contexts. The benefit of being a conceptual artist is that I do not necessarily need a studio to work in. I just work with my notebooks and my pencils.

lf :

You have a piece of work titled the “The neverending book” why is the book format so important to you?

AS. :

When I think of it as a book, I think of the relationship between the reader and the narrator and the fact that the relationship is constantly unfolding, it is about all the shifts in time. Some of the images in “The neverending Book” are repetitive and others, random. for me the notations of time become the way to connect to the imagery.

I am interested in the idea of the book as something you share with someone. There is something with the flatness too, the layers, on top of each other. It’s a very clear image for me - time, space, memory and experience all layered in our body and minds.

A beautiful word I use is palimpsest, the way in which experiences creates layers over time. To try to record constant change is an impossible task and that is also why the book is never ending, I can never complete the work, it will go on until I die.

lf:

What does your workspace look like in relation to these layers? With “The Analog database” and “The neverending Book” I imagined stacks and stacks of paper?

AS:

In many ways I perceive the world as a very confusing and chaotic place, since I was a kid I really enjoyed to create order. My desk is very neatly organized. All the pens are sharpened and lined up; even the pushpins are lined up symmetrically in a grid. Sometimes when I buy a bag of mixed nuts I can take an hour just to organize them by shape or color. This way of organizing, systematizing and examining what I have around me, is a way to find the potential in the shifts in between the objects themselves. There are so many ways of going about your life and I am simply not aware of all the possibilities.

lf:

looking at your work, the object is often central; can you tell me more about your relationship to the objects themselves?

AS:

I always collected things with great seriousness. As a kid I collected stickers, bookmarks and stamps, but I also collected strange stuff, harder to organize, like the shavings you create when you sharpen a pencil - the little fussy things. I put them in jars to see what it looked like when it was organized, almost like a laboratory. I also had pet fish in different sized fish tanks, small fish in small tanks and large fish in large tanks.

I do not know anyone else who thought it would be a good idea to have different tanks as it’s a lot of work to clean a fish tank, but the different tanks was a way to organize the species.

lf:

After the performance pieces of “Your Application is Pending” you created “The Analog database” collecting material from the interviews conducted - would you describe that as a lineup of people rather than objects?

WITh lIA forSlund (c o n v E r S AT I o n)

ISSuE III

p. 128

TunIcA

p. 12 9

AnnA SÖrEnSon

AnnA SÖrEnSon

AS:

It’s a lining up of people, but it’s people in a specific context. They meet me at a performance in a format that they all have to relate to. There are set questions, following the regular format of bureaucratic interview. I did this performance in different countries and in order to keep a record, to see what happened, I used the analogue database as a parameter. for me the notes let the interviews become visible. I have a much clearer understanding of things when I can see them.

lf:

When conducting the inter views, do you notice the difference when people are lying from when they are telling you the truth?

AS:

I can tell when they are lying or when they find something hard to answer. The cultural impact plays a large part in how you deal with authority. Miami for example, is the largest point of immigration in the united States. There is an evident formalized format of political language. We all have to obey it, it is super rigid, everyone knows that. When the Miami audience recognized the format and realized they were allowed to play with it, they expressed such joy to do so. When I performed “Your Application is Pending” in Brussels, the audience was almost too aware of the context, as most people in Brussels have worked with bureaucracy in some form. When they answered, they knew how to organize the information according to how important it was. It was much harder to tap into their production of fantasy, to make them want to play with the format. In Sweden, most people have a more subtle relationship with bureaucracy. With a small population, very close to the power, the Swedes have more friendly or familiar ways of talking within the bureaucratic setting. After the formal conversation people would continue, off the record, creating small talk or asking me to adjust something, almost as if there is some kind of general understanding - it’s boring yes, but it is probably boring for her too, so lets try to keep it sweet.

lf:

You make it sound like a game, if you learn the rules you succeed. do you really see it as a game?

AS:

It is less painful if you see it as a game, but I am a privileged white woman and not everyone has the liberty to view bureaucracy as a game even if they wanted to. having said that I find it hard to play with authority, even though I have nothing to hide, I always get a little stressed, I am always afraid that I will do it wrong. I like to view people in bureaucracy as water in an espresso machine. You have to become steam, travel through the pipes, pass the curves, pour through the coffee and through the tiny pipe, you come out as another type of liquid, but you are essentially the same substance.

This ability to transform yourself and push yourself through a labyrinth and still come out as good coffee in the end - it’s a skill.

lf:

Your work with “departments” is clearly political, how political is the other projects in your full body of work?

AS:

I think all my work is political, I believe the choices I make as an artist are extremely related to different philosophical, political and ethical conceptions. You are invited to complete something with me, like “The neverending Book.” You need to be the narrator, you need to flick the pages. To me it’s a political choice to make the viewer take part and complete the work with me. I am not presenting a solution, but to act as a facilitator of the game, the play or the score - that is how I see myself as an artist.

lf:

The way in which you organize your objects, pets and people, could the hierarchies and value systems in your work be seen as your own political system?

ISSuE III

p. 13 0

TunIcA

AnnA SÖrEnSon

p. 131

AS:

There are always value systems when you organize something; I take the need for me to organize things very seriously. I value and organize materials in front of me to gain knowledge, however, I do not think there is one way of lining up in order to succeed.

You can organize, organize again, reorganize and I think the potential lies in the constant flux. It’s a western conception that organizing things is about time, anticipating the speed of things. This idea of efficiency is really interesting, as the opposite often occurs; the system involves so many people, that people within the system do not know what the other people in the system are doing, so you cannot speed up the process. This grandiose idea that the western culture has, with one truth, one god, one way of organizing things is a fun conception, but it is not working, the system was so carefully designed, it does not apply to people anymore. I find this both funny and tragic, but it also says a lot about how we try to invent systems in order to understand the world and how difficult and misleading it can be.

lf:

As a person who invents systems to understand the world, are you more fascinated by the system’s structure or the time it takes to create them?

AS:

I think it’s important to visualize the shifts, to show how crazy it can be when you try to apply the same kind of organization to many different things. If I applied the same kind of rules as I had to my stamp collection as a child, to the rest of the world, it would become evident how crazy that idea is. The made up systems often stemming from ideology or idea that this system will make things better. That kind of absolutism is interesting to me, because we submit to it quickly. It goes back to foucault’s “discipline and Punish” – what will happen if you don’t follow the system? I am critical of how easy we submit. To obey the system, without questioning, enslaves people and creates hierarchies, this is probably the scariest course that the world can take; I think nothing good or humanistic comes out of that.

lf:

do you question your own systems, the ones you have created?

AS:

Yes, all the time, because being an artist is a kind of privilege. As I get time to investigate these things, I constantly evaluate my responsibility to society as a person as well as an artist. With regards to my own system, no system has ever been constant, when a system is done it’s always time for reorganizing. As soon as I have organized all the stamps in the stamp collection after country of origin, I go on to reorganizing them again after motifs. no system can ever be representative in and of itself, it is the reorganizing that makes things appear for me.

lf:

I was picturing you in a room full of paper and here you are with a computer and a few sketches, how do you envision your imaginary office?

AS:

I have a clear image in my mind of what my dream office would look like, file cabinets and workstations. The office would be based on material, because I have to pick up and look at things. It needs to be three rooms though, one for the meeting, one for the organizing and one for archiving. The audience is as relevant as my organization, therefore a meeting room is needed. My actions formulate the way I speak to my audience and how they perceive me. What I do and what I take agency for is the platform for our conversation between myself and the audience, and that relationship is what makes my work or research an art experience. Ⅲ

ISSuE III

p. 132

M I k E d I A n A & h E AT h E r B E n JA M I n

MIkE dIAnA & hEAThEr BEnJAMIn

Illustration by Mike diana

Illustration by heather Benjamin

1:

Md:

hi, yes I will answer this question also but you should come up with some for me and if you want answer them as well. This is my answer to the first question: when I was seven dad got me ugly stickers, these were stickers in a pack with gum. Monsters in the cards, also horror head tattoos, I would put these all over my body, haha, I started drawing monsters and asked dad if I could draw monsters and send them in to be made.

In school I was fond of art class and mom enrolled me in after school art classes. Whatever the assignment I would go in a morbid direction it seemed. one project was to go to lake Seneca in town of geneva n.Y. Where I was born. The assignment was to collect items off the shore to place in a collage. All the students picked up the shells but I noticed the shore littered with broken glass made smooth by the water. Also bottle caps and soda and or beer can pull tabs and I collected these items, even a tiny 2inch long dead fish. Back in the classroom we took our items and placed them in a cut off bottom of a plastic half gallon milk jug. I put my litter and dead fish in, then we pour plaster on top and place a wire hoop on back for hanging. When plaster dried we discarded the milk jug bottom and you hang this up. Mine started to smell bad as the fishy dried up.

And I loved the 25 cent rubber bats and bugs. I had all kinds of slime, a toy, slime with worms, slime with eye balls, and a rubber life size human brain that when kid squeezed it green slime oozed out of the bottom. When nine in 1979 we moved to florida, I was in middle of the fourth grade. I didn’t adjust well to school, each teacher had their own paddle, many reinforced with duct tape. I also saw lots of racism. But I did enjoy the beach. At 12 I became a fan of the pre-code horror comics, about a year later I discovered underground comics sold by mail, I signed that I was 18 but I wasn’t. By high school I was drawing my own comics with gross out and funny themes, pass them around the class. I made friends with three guys on the wrestling team, each day they wanted to see new comics and since everyone knew they were my friends I never got bullied.

hB:

okay, as a kid, the thing that really got me drawing at first was Sailor Moon... I drew a bit before that, but I got really obsessive around age 8, making fan art for Sailor Moon and copying all the manga. I think that carried over into my work today a lot. I felt serious about art all through high school but didn’t have any real direction with it until my second year of art school, when i was going through a very lonely and rough breakup and feeling very bitter and not fucking anybody, and started making all this work about celibacy through drawing people fucking and having a terrible time, trying to show how stupid I felt that it was, how stupid and futile I felt that intimacy was. Ever since then, it’s sort of changed a bit, but mostly stayed along those same themes…sort of satirical of sexuality, and with a huge emphasis on loneliness and shame. I still haven’t stopped making work about that. It’s been about six years since then.

2:

Md:

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

What would you say were your influences as a youth? do you feel like your art was sent in a certain direction at some point?

did you have any pets as a child, how about now, any strange , funny things happen with an animal or insect, visit to zoo, etc...?

My dad would tell me and my sister that he had turtles, fish, dogs, cats, and hamsters, and more, and they were too much trouble, so he wouldn’t allow us to have any. By age 13 I had seen a tarantula at the pet shop and begged enough so at xmas time I got a box, and in it was a fake tarantula, but then it moved. Well, turned out it was a tarantula finger puppet, and he made a hole in bottom of the box to wiggle it, fooling me for a moment, but then he had another box with a real tarantula. I named it cuddles. It would eat little lizards that we could catch outside in florida. kids around the neighborhood would catch lizards and bring them over to see it feed. It lived for about three years and when it died I cried for days,this was my first experience with death. I had a funeral and all. I later had hamsters, but it just wasn’t the same.

TunIcA

p. 13 5

hB:

3:

I didn’t have any pets growing up, only time I remember anything like that was when my mom took me to the super market and we got some snails from the seafood section, live, and brought them home in a yogurt container.. And I just kept them in that yogurt container, until they died, which I think was only a few days later. only thing that comes to mind with a bug was this one time in high school that I was sleeping on the floor of an unused classroom during a free period and woke up with one of those huge million-legged big millipede things between my tits... It was horrible. I jumped up and shook around until it fell out of my shirt. So disgusting. oh I also fell off a horse when I was about six.. no serious injuries though. Actually I guess I probably wouldn’t remember if there were? one time I was asleep on a construction site under a bush in downtown boston waiting for the first train from south station with nowhere to go...

I woke up with a skunk staring me right in the eyeballs, probably a foot from my face.

We made intense eye contact for a while and then it moseyed off. narrow escape. do you listen to anything when you draw?

Music, or radio, or talk, or just silence?

Md:

for a bit I was into listening to punk music while drawing. I had turned 18 and got my first car, bought a tape player—this was before cd’s. I liked to go to a record and tape store called Peaches, an early chain. The drive there went past an old longclosed-down orange grove—these used to be all over. Well the orange trees were still there, couple football fields of them, and when the orange blossoms bloomed you could smell the sweet orange fragrance. I liked the early Black flag, circle Jerks, dead kennedy’s, many others. I was going to concerts at that time, saw nirvana before they were known—they were the last band and all but me and couple others stayed to see them. I saw g.g. Allen play in orlando, florida and he got mad when people ran out the door after he shit on the floor and started throwing it. he was nude and covered in his own blood and chased people as they ran out, throwing bar stools, which brought cops who arrested the whole band for being nude. The club was closed down and became an Indian restaurant. I saw Sonic Youth a few times, Butthole Surfers, gwar, Skinny Puppy, red hot chili Peppers. I went with my younger brother who was a fan of guns and roses to one of their shows, saw Slayer, Megadeath, Alice in chains and Anthrax in one concert—crazy how many different bands I saw back then—so I would blast this music and draw. later I started to get crappy comedy albums at yard sales and flea markets. When I was younger my grandparents were obsessed with redd foxx and would play bits of jokes for my parents who tried to cover my ears; I found them all.

As a 14 year old I had discovered Blowfly and his dirty songs, so I kept listening to that.

But as I got older, like 20-21, I got in the habit of watching the T.v. news. In florida the stations would compete to be the most shocking. nightly reports of murders, rapes, children being molested and even killed by catholic priests. Talk about serial killers was rampant.

hB:

I used to listen to music very regularly while drawing, but lately I’ve been more into either drawing in silence, or listening to talk. I have been making my way through all the back episodes of ghost to ghost with Art Bell. There is something great about listening to ghost stories while drawing, but also to find someone with the perfect soothing voice to keep me company through hours of sitting at my desk. I love Art Bell’s voice.

I also used to listen to the best show on WfMu with Tom Scharpling, every Tuesday while working, which I have done for years, and still listen to the back-episodes a lot. his voice was great, too, but that show ended a couple months ago. I keep meaning to try audiobooks, but haven’t yet. I used to really like just listening to music while drawing, but for some reason in the past year it’s felt sort of distracting to me, like I can get too caught up in my own thoughts and my brain going a mile a minute, and I’m not just focusing on what I’m working on. When I’m listening to talk, it feels more streamlined or something - like because half my brain is focused on what the person is saying, the other half can just focus on what I’m drawing, and there’s no room for anything else, and that feels really good.

4:

do you ever have moments where you feel shame or embarrassment about making graphic, hyper-sexual and violent work?

ISSuE III

p. 136

M I k E d I A n A & h E AT h E r B E n JA M I n

hB:

Pretty much never. I never really have second thoughts about what I’m drawing, or the graphic or violent or sexual nature of it, in a negative way, except for this one time, my freshman year of college, I was home at my folks’ house over a winter break, and my parents had gone out of town, so I had a party at their house. The next morning I was super hungover and sat on my front stoop smoking a cigarette—it was a rollie. I didn’t think anything of it. A couple years later I had dropped out of school and was living in Brooklyn and talked to my dad on the phone. he told me that the night before there was some loud high School party in the house behind them and he and my mom couldn’t sleep, so he went down there to ask them to keep it down since it was pretty late. I guess as he was walking down there, my shitty jock-dad, golfer nextdoor neighbor followed him down there, and as my dad was trying to talk to the people having the party, jock-dad was like, “don’T lISTEn To ThIS guY! hIS dAughTEr’S A drug AddIcT!” I guess this dude was watching me through his window when I was rolling/smoking a cigarette on the porch and thought I was smoking weed. And he took pictures of me through the window; he showed them to my dad. Then he said I was also a pervert, and he had looked me up online and “do You knoW WhAT Your dAughTEr drAWS, IT’S SIck,” blah blah blah. So when my dad told me that I definitely felt a lot of shame.

I like my dad, I don’t want him to have to deal with that. So at that time I was kind of like, wow, I wish I wasn’t putting my parents through this, with this kind of reputation, or something. But jock-dad was right, I am a pervert. Anyway, both my parents knew already, for a while at that point, the nature of the stuff I was drawing, and just didn’t really say anything about it…so that was an embarrassing time. now they are fine with it.

My mom reads my blog and sends me emails when she sees a drawing she likes. Sometimes that feels weird, since usually the girl will be like stabbing herself in a pool of menstrual blood or something, but I think it’s nice.

to her pussy, they would just call them fuck books. I use to like visiting his farm for summers when I was young. Also when I had to go to court I didn’t like the idea of my art being looked at by those that didn’t appreciate it, this art and the boiled angel books were made for a specific, special audience.

5:

graphic violence, but that’s the thing that really gets me, and sneaks up out of my subconscious in ways like that...I have a hunch that it’s because back in like 2001/2002, right after September 11th, I was in seventh grade, and was sort of over-cognitive about everything, and kept asking myself why i wasn’t “feeling” what was happening as much as everyone else was, why it wasn’t hitting me as traumatically necessarily. So I decided i needed to “feel” something about it, and in those sort of weird early-ish days of the internet, it was oddly easy to find kind of disturbing, uncensored graphic content —not that it isn’t now, I guess, but I feel like things of that nature can be a little more obscured these days. But anyways, I just looked up all the videos of hostages being beheaded by terrorist groups and watched probably like ten of them in a row…at age 11.

It still didn’t really make me feel much—I think at that age i just couldn’t really wrap my mind around it—but those images really stuck with me.

have you had a nightmare that you never forgot?

When I was drawing my boiled angel #1 my grandad from kentucky was visiting, he was a farmer of tobacco and raised cattle. So I was drawing a woman with naked breasts and she had a big eyeball hanging out and grandpa looked over my shoulder a bit then said, boy son, you really can draw those tits and eyeballs. I realized how cool he was about stuff, he then told me when he was a teen they had little books of nude photos if women and a man with a cigar, there would be a close up if his face holding the cigar next

I’ve had some crazy dreams, but the one that really sticks out is this nightmare I had three or four years ago. I was living in this really small, windowless room, and had “lofted” my bed—which was really just a big pile of furniture I’d found on the street with my mattress stuck on top of it— so I had to climb up the pulled-out dresser drawers to get up there, and in the mornings I just jumped out onto the floor, like five feet.

Anyways, I woke up in the morning for work during one day in the summer, and jumped out of bed, and just landed flat on my face.

My legs wouldn’t hold me, they were super charlie horse, like I had just run ten miles the day before. But i hadn’t!! I was literally in so much physical pain, from my thighs down to my calves, that I had to hold onto the wall to get down the hallway and couldn’t ride my bike to work like I usually did, just sort of waddled there pathetically and had to lower myself in and out of chairs all day, putting my weight on my arms. About halfway through my workday I had this crazy flashback, and realized I’d had this horrible nightmare. The first part I remembered was this really graphic scene—I guess it was a sort of really dramatic us-versus-them dream—and the bad guys had won, and they had captured one of my good friends, and were just really slowly, brutally beheading him in front of me, like sawing through his neck with a blunt knife.

When they finally had finished, I had this clear image of one of them holding his head up from a fistful of hair, dangling it in front of me with all the sawed flesh curling up and my friend’s eyes still moving, mouth slightly open. It was horrific. Anyway, I had that memory, and I realized I’d had this horrible, horrible nightmare. i didn’t connect that with my leg pains until later that night when I was talking to a friend about it and she told me she’d had a similar experience where she’d had a horrifying stressful dream and woke up with different parts of her body hurting. I guess it just means I was clenching my muscles so hard all night that they were sore for over 24 hours afterward. I’d never had that physical of a reaction to a dream before. Incidentally, o definitely have a “thing” about beheading; I’m not too disturbed generally by

TunIcA

p. 137

Md:

M I k E d I A n A & h E AT h E r B E n JA M I n

hB:

Illustration by Mike diana

M I k E d I A n A & h E AT h E r B E n JA M I n

Md:

I used to have many nightmares when I was a child. Monsters chasing me, giant killer bugs. I must have been seven, and it was storming out, and I dreamt I saw evil elves peeking into the second floor window. I screamed for mom and she hung a big beach towel over the window, but it had a cartoon kind of print on it of a sailor, so when I fell asleep I saw the sailor coming in the window all mean-looking. I had a dream many times in those early years that I was falling from an airplane or tall building, my stomach would have that feeling of falling, like on a roller coaster, and I would wake up right before hitting the ground, and it felt like I was bouncing on the bed as I woke. Some nights I would have to sleep in bed with mom and dad, and when I looked up at the dark ceiling I saw colored shapes that kept switching around and turning into new things like a baby carriage. I asked mom if she saw them too; she didn’t. When I was eight we moved to florida from new York, were I was born. We were starting a new life in florida since my mom was from there, and it was warm. I remember the last dream I had in new York state. My dad woke my at 5 a.m. to leave, the moving truck was full and the family car in tow. Well, I fell back asleep, and I was suddenly hanging upside down from my legs, and on each side of me was a big bat also hanging upside down from their feet. A man’s face came out of a little dude and said a rhyme along the lines of, “You must push a button next to a bat. If you pick the wrong one, you will fall.” I pressed a button next to one of the two bats, and the bar holding my legs vanished and I fell, screaming. I woke and my dad said,”let’s go to florida.” As I got older my dreams got more sexual at times. Strange dreams of twisted people and creatures screwing. I once dreamt I was mad at mom and she was looking at me through a window, and I lightly hit the window, shattering it, sending glass shards in mom’s face—it was horrible.

ISSuE III

p. 13 8

MEgAforcE

M I k E d I A n A & h E AT h E r B E n JA M I n

MEgAforcE 6:

oh man, I can think of a lot of dream jobs that are totally out of reach for me. The first one that comes to mind is designing shoes, but I don’t really have any interest in learning how to actually construct them, or any sort of engineering skills. I would just want to be able to spend all day drawing the most fantastical shoes I can think of, and have other people make them. never going to happen. I guess the same could go for clothes. I think it would be fun to design things; I’ve always had a bit of an interest in apparel design, but not enough to pursue it any further than making things for myself every once in a while. My dream job in general doesn’t have much to do with art, aside from that it would make it really easy for me to work on my drawings all the time: I wish I could just open a junk shop and have that be sustainable. It would be the greatest junk shop ever. I wish I could just travel around and pick things from estate sales and flea markets and then curate the ultimate junk shop. Then I could just hang out in there, and draw all day, and listen to records and hang out with the other junk hoarders who come in, and take pleasure in my perfectly curated trash. I wish.

Md:

My dream art job is to work on public service announcements that inform the public about evils, such as a power company over charging, corrupt government, pollution, but I would hope that people would actually pay attention to them. I do relate to the dream of having a cool junk shop. I have had a long-time hobby of collecting junk, trinkets, strange dolls and figurines. I used to find items on the curb on garbage day. If an old person cleaned out the attic or died, all their junk would end up on the curb, and I would find some nice items. once I found a taxidermy buffalo head, probably originally from above the bar in an old saloon out west. I have also sold items on weekends at the Mustang drive-in theater. They used to have a flea market on weekend mornings—a whole strange crowd of regular sellers and buyers there. one guy would walk around shirtless with tattoos above his nipples. one said ‘sweet’ and the other ‘sour’. I have often seen triple features—horror films, mostly—at that and another drive in, the Thunderbird drive-in. Ⅲ

TunIcA

p. 13 9

From Paris with love Megaforce are a French quartet comprised of four directors: Charles Brisgand, Clément Gallet, Léo Berne and Raphaël Rodriguez, who not only do music videos but also advertising campaigns, photography and art direction. They took their name from a 1982 cult movie with the same name and have been making quirky, creative, outof-the-box projects since 2007. They have worked with Dizzee Rascal, Is Tropical or Metronomy among others, Pitchfork chose their Yeah Yeah Yeahs video “Sacrilege” as one of the top music videos of 2013. They have also done advertising campaigns for many companies an even won a Silver Arrow Award for one of them. These guys are setting the world on fire, one video at a time.

Illustration by heather Benjamin

hB:

What would your dream job be with your art?

WITh AnA cABrAl MArTInS

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

ISSuE III

p . 141

MEgAforcE

MEgAforcE

chEn & kAI AcM:

Mf:

AcM:

did it all start with the video for “live good, ” by naive new Beaters? had you thought about all four joining forces before? or did it happen organically for that video and then you thought about officially being a collective?

Yeah, the “live good” video was the first job we worked on together. As it was a success on the Internet, production companies contacted us and we naturally presented ourselves as a collective.

You seem to use provocative imagery: kids cursing and making drugs, pornographic images... do you strive to do things outside of the box and not think in ways that may be limiting?

Mf:

our influences come from all around the world. We’re not sure that our style can be defined as french. for the Is Tropical videos, we chose typical french places because we thought they would be exotic for people outside france.

Yo u ’ v e t a l k e d a b o u t b e i n g a s comfortable with animation as with cinematographic styles. do you feel like you want to explore more of a convergence of styles or find the right technique depending on what you are asked for?

Mf:

Each time we’re working on a project, we feel like novices, so we check a lot of references and analyze how they are done and what we like in them.

AcM:

do you have favorites in your portfolio?

Mf:

Maybe the “Sacrilege” video and the Is Tropical ones.

AcM:

Mf:

We’re just thinking of the best way to achieve the idea. for “The greeks” video, we had a debate on how to treat the fx: should they be like video games or cartoons? finally, we went for Japanese-like animation because that was what excited us the most. Sometimes the mood of the tracks leads us in a certain direction. for the “Sacrilege” video for instance, we felt the track was very cinematic, so we searched for an idea in that way.

AcM:

What do the four of you bring to the table, as individuals in a collective?

Mf:

It depends on the projects we’re working on; it’s hard to say. We started by being 4 on the shoot, but now, to be more efficient, we have to split two by two, and it’s always hard to make the choice of who’s going on.

AcM:

What are the greatest concerns you have when doing videos?

Mf:

Time and money.

AcM:

What are your biggest challenges?

Mf:

Making something each time that we’re not really sure how to do.

AcM:

how was working with kid cudi?

Where did the idea for that video come from? Were you sorry it ended up being remade by the artist?

Mf:

At that time we didn’t know too much about organization on a shoot, so we didn’t see many problems of production coming. We had to shoot an extra day to finish the video. kid cudi was cool; in some scenes he was high for real, which made it difficult to brief him, but actually quite matched the concept of the video. Yes, we were pretty disappointed when we saw the other video being released, we didn’t even know, we were still waiting for feedback on the edit…

AcM:

do you have different approaches for different styles of music?

Mf:

When looking for an idea, we try to respect the mood of the track and the spirit of the artist.

AcM:

do you want to keep living in Paris or would you relocate? Are there any countries you’d like to work in?

Mf:

Mf:

It really depends on the projects, the band, and the track. We just want to explore universes that fascinate us; we don’t intend to be specifically provocative.

I think we’re up for moving. nY, lA… I would personally love living in Tokyo, but the market is too different and I’m not sure they would need directors like us.

AcM:

AcM: AcM:

Mf:

AcM:

You’ve worked with megastar Madonna: how willing was she to experiment and was it a fun process? did she have a more hands-on approach towards an aesthetic she enjoyed or did she give you carte blanche?

We first received the track with these constraints: shoot in two weeks, in new York with M. I. A. and nicky Minaj. So during the creative process we could write anything we wanted, while keeping in mind it was a competition with other directors. Then for the shoot, she chose many people from the crew, and she had a lot of control in the post process.

What do you have most fun doing: videos, commercials, or art direction?

Since the name “Megaforce” came from a movie, what are your favorite

movies?

Mf:

Mf:

Basically, everything that we’re not paid for.

AcM:

When you stopped being just graphic designers and started the collective, were there things you had to learn (for example, directorial skills, or anything like that)?

I’m in love with the trilogy “female Prisoner Scorpion”. I’ve recently been blown away by “12 Years a Slave”, “The Master”, “Blue is the Warmest color”, and Sono Sion’s “Why don’t You Play in hell?”

I also could watch “Akira”, “ghost in the Shell”, and “Evangelion” more than a thousand times. Ⅲ

how well does your aesthetic mesh with artists outside of france? do you feel you have a specifically french aesthetic in any way?

TunIcA

p . 142

WITh MElISSA J. froST

ISSuE III

p . 14 3

(c o n v E r S AT I o n)

chEn & kAI

chEn & kAI

MJf:

right. I actually had wondered if you have been able to get spray foam in colors, as I’ve never seen that. k:

You can get foam that you can mix and then add colors.

MJf:

But, I mean, that’s interesting that you just choose to work with the chemical processes as they happen.

chEn & kAI

k:

Initially, we were doing stuff out of pla s tic s and then we were like, there’s a natural composite that we can use: stone. And then after doing stone for a while we decided to experiment (this is not a very interesting piece, but) with corian, which is, you know, the counter top material, a premade version of this, so it’s always about that back and forth.

Also, this stuf f is just so un-uvstable that you have to paint it no matter what, so we paint the material with a rubberized paint.

c:

Yeah, I feel like no matter what you kind of stumble upon yourself, once you start looking into it you realize there is this long history of people making exactly what you just invented yourself (laughing).

k:

MJf:

k:

This has only got a couple layers on it.

Totally.

k:

MJf:

c:

When I was looking at your work, I was mostly really interested in the material aspects— there is clearly an influence from a modernist tradition, but there also is a lot of play and contradiction that makes the work very contemporary. for us, it’s like, you come with an understanding that materials aren’t inert. They are going to do what they want to do. We basically design everything to be the most efficient. We’re not trying to fight the material or trying to make it do something else. It’s a lot harder to make a perfect minimal white object. Even though this work is a really ornate object, the process is really simple—just dipping netted spandex in resin and wrapping things.

c: Yeah, so it needs a couple more. But yeah, it’s kind of AMAzIng to me that you can spray this and it can cover all the foam parts and then leave the color—I don’t think I could have thought that through.

MJf: MJf:

right, So was that something you found by chance or something you knew was going to work that way? c: no! I was just like, “I gotta paint this!” So I just started spraying, and I was like, “If I dust this lightly it doesn’t have to pick up all of it.” k:

k:

c:

MJf:

c:

We come from an industrial design background and there’s this sort of structure that we try to keep from that in, like, making products vs. totally making art. one of the things that we do that doesn’t necessarily exist in the architectural tradition is that we end up making everything ourselves—the first time at least—a lot of times all the pieces (laughing), so that efficiency ends up being from that. We’re trying to design a process to make something.

Yeah, and I think that’s really what separates design from craft. having efficiency in mind.

It’s funny, that comparison of design to craft—craft as fighting the material. one way your work relates to the modernist obsession with materiality is your obsession with following what the material wants to be naturally, even if that means fighting the material in the construction process to get it to be “what it wants to be.” There’s actually a kind of visual violence to much of your work: the slicing, the shards, the fragments; but in the end that’s really the more natural process. for example, this thing, it’s just a netted bag with foam sprayed into it. Then, when you spray paint onto it, because these are convex surfaces, the surfaces actually want to pick up the paint, whereas the netted fabric does not want to pick up the paint.

I couldn’t have made this happen if it didn’t want to be like that.

TunIcA

p . 14 5

I think, also, that when we started the weird maybe-toxicness of some of the materials, there was a lot of natural design going on that I think that we initially started pushing against.

Well also, because it shrinks, traditional paint that’s not rubberized will flake off, and so it has to be made with rubber paint. c:

Yeah, But a lot of the way we design things is like, “let’s just play around with it.” You can’t really think this through all the way, and know all the hurdles, so might as well just design as you go. k:

or like the chairs—the first three collapsed. It’s just faster to build a prototype then to model it and do physics tests on it. This is a really early block that we did and theres just a lot of nice stuff in it that has informed other pieces. You can find a nice moment and try to reproduce it.

There’s a certain kind of chemical alchemy here, in contrast to a lot other people who tend to focus on materials, a chemical unnaturalness, but in a way a simulation of natural materials. Are you intentionally trying to simulate marble or other natural materials at times?

I read something about your joke blog with all the toxic things.

c:

Yeah, we tend to take contrarian position on things, so it was also just a way to separate yourself from the pack.

MJf: k:

MJf: M:

Is it being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian or is there actually something to it, something possibly more honest or even dishonest?

It’s nice not to have other examples of stuff that your work should be like.

I’d rather work in an area that’s open and not filled with other people making good decisions.

k:

I think it’s not really one or the other. But one of the things I do always want to fight against is designers who won’t produce a good idea because they are too interested in keeping a certain aesthetic. That’s horrifying. Why would you do that? right, to sacrifice things for the body of work.

I’d rather make a project that I felt was good at the time or, you know, even a stupid project.

But obviously there does end up being narratives between these things and a lot of that is not function but material.

I think any connection is hopefuly a natural connection because of the way we work, rather than [because of] some larger attempt to control the whole.

k:

for us, it’s really not even about aesthetics at all. You can kind of see the same decision making process, but that chair out there has aesthetically almost nothing to do with this. for us it’s really about what that object wants to be. When we decide that we want to make a chair, ok, so these are the materials that kind of form the thing.

MJf:

MJf:

So, does function or object always come first and materials come after?

I think with the planters that was our main goal—to make something that was very easily accessible. It’s just like a simple thing that we can make here that has a lot of appeal and is priced very affordably.

k:

That and, about a year ago, we were just walking around the nY art gift fair—which in a lot of ways is one of the worst places on earth—just full of total junk. It also became sort of a thing for us.

c:

I think it’s easy to design things that are expensive.

k: MJf:

c:

for us, it has to be what it has to be.

We are not really trying to take an aesthetic position.

MJf:

So, when you make bangles and coasters, is it that you find a material and think, “this would make good coasters, ” or do you decide, “we want to make bangles and coasters”?

p . 14 6

how important is accessibility? The ability to make something reasonably inexpensively so that people can have it and use it?

c: c:

MJf:

ISSuE III

k:

right. right, I think that’s why the fallback of wanting to have an experimental practice—same with a lot of art practices—becomes dependent on the mega-wealthy to afford what you make.

k:

I think it’s very important to have that project. It’s a really hard problem to try to make something that costs like $3. 00 in materials.

c:

for something to retail for like $18. 00 we have to make the material cost $1. 50, $2.

00. That is a difficult kind of problem to solve.

TunIcA

p . 147

chEn & kAI

ISSuE III

p . 14 8

chEn & kAI

MJf:

k:

c:

chEn & kAI

Part of the problem is solved because you can get a higher price for these things because they have designer-made kind of appeal. do you think you’d be interested in making something that was mass produced or is that removed from your process too much?

I think we’re always interested in industrial processes, and if it was mass-produced I’d be interested in that as well, but one of the things we like doing is being able to make it for the first time ourselves.

We did this collaboration with Tai Ping carpets and they took our coasters and turned them into 4’ wide carpets, and that was like one of the first times where we didn’t have any tactile control over the thing. They would draw up the diagram of what everything was going to be, and then have these little samples. “This piece is going to look like this...” And you’re like, “Well, alright, I don’t really know what it’s going to look like...”

k:

But that’s also an extremely non-industrial process going on there.

c:

Yeah! But at the same time, whatever that carpet looks like from that process that is going to be used to make it, it’s the same philosophy. We don’t really have control over what this is going to look like. We can compose it, but I don’t really know what it’s going to look like until the last second when I cut into it.

k: MJf:

c:

MJf:

We do try to compose it. I know that that one was made by me.

Well, most industrial processes remove the operations of chance, to take away the potential for one object to come out differently from the others.

But to the designer you’re letting go. We made this like, “I dunno, I think we might have hacked it...” We were working on this mask that has a stand and we had spec’d this stand and the factory was like, “We think this might work better and it’s easier to make.” And when it came back, we were like, “oh yeah! That’s totally fine.” our philosophy is that it’s going to look like what it has to look like. We’re pretty good at letting go and letting the process happen...hopefully. obviously your parents [kaI’s parents, architects William/Tsien] are coming from this kind of phenomenological-sensuous relationship to material that is kind of precious.

You’re obviously moving away from that. Is it a desire to create a different kind of sensuousness or is it intentionally grotesque? Is it an attempt to elevate toxic materials to the sensuous?

k:

I think any of those materials have to speak to you. They have stricter clients that I have, but I think anyone that’s interested in materials can be interested in any of the materials. There is something grotesque about this, but I don’t think that it’s. . .

c:

Yeah, it’s grotesque yet appealing at the same time. It’s almost like a dangerous object.

You’re attracted yet repulsed by it at the same time. I think if you can illicit that kind of feeling, you’re obviously doing something right.

MJf:

right, like with the shanks being this dangerous ugly object, but at the same time the craftsmanship and the ingenuity is remarkable and strangely appealing.

TunIcA

p . 151

k:

I think making things on spec gives you incredible freedom that I like.

Then you can find the audience that would buy this thing, rather than working to make something sensuous. c:

We’re not like the best craftsmen or anything. for us it’s about this, kind of, this Macgyver moment. You can take this bubblegum and stick it on this, and then this will happen, and there it is! That’s kind of an important aha moment. Everything we make has that. There’s that one moment where, for us, we’re excited when we see the end result. like, wow, I cant believe that happened out of … basically nothing. The materials for this cost about ten dollars. or making a bookend out of some rocks you found in the street— you put it in a very simple mold, and all of a sudden, it’s this very appealing object, but the final object kind of comes out on it’s own.

Then there’s possibilit y for your work to change just based on what kind of materials you end up finding, or what kind of chemicals and materials end up coming out. I’m always getting excited about new materials that are coming out. have you guys seen neverWet?

out and bought all this stuff, and of course immediately afterwards... who was it.. ?

k:

It’s true, but I am also obsessed with that industrial process of making things. It’s so cool.

c:

c:

for us, we’re like, that’s interesting but you want to move onto the next material. Ideally, I would love for someone to make these things for us because then it would also allow us to explore more things.

k:

one of the other problems is that we keep on buying… like, “oh! lets get into making these stone things.” We can’t find a polisher that’s cheap enough. “let’s just buy our own water polisher and do it ourselves.” And now we’ve got a whole stone area of the shop. We’ve got a metal area of the shop. We’ve got a wood area of the shop. We’ve got the plastic area—it’s just too much stuff. It’s a problem to keep producing all the stuff at once.

oh yeah, formafantasma! We bought all this shellac like, “Were going to do this!” and then the next day the press release came out for the formafantasma collection. k:

Exactly that same idea! I’m like, “Ahh, c’mon.” Studio Portable made a lacquer bangle with real industrial diamonds in it… I’m like, “dammit!” But I still want to do that stuff. There’s all these natural resins that we bought that I want to mess around with. c:

There’s also incense, like copal…

k:

frankincense and myrrh are also all-natural resins.

c:

So they smell really great, but they’re like non-toxic plastics to mold.

MJf:

BloWS MY MInd! It’s so good! Are there any recently engineered materials that you are excited about?

We’ve been sort of heads-down and just producing stuff for christmas season, but I have been wanting to make stuff out of candy for a really long time. There’s all these materials, as were packing, like, “Ah shit, I got this years ago. We need to do something with this!” We had these cement chunks that I want to use…

They were drilling out spots to put posts for this fence next door.

k:

It’s totally trash.

c:

But they are these are totally beautiful objects.

MJf:

It’s so pretty.

k:

To drill it out, you have to anchor the drill in the concrete next to it.

To produce that, it would be very expensive.

I got all this shellac years ago because somebody gave me this bangle—which was a lacquer bangle. It’s this stuff that bugs produce, so it’s an early plastic. It’s an indian bangle, yellow-studded, fake diamonds. So we went

ISSuE III

Then what is the direction that you think the new shop setup may go in then?

Is toxicity or even non-toxcity at all interesting or not-interesting to you? It doesn’t seem like you really mind it so much either way. k:

I t ’s j u s t a n o t h e r q u a l i t y o f t h e material.

MJf:

do you ever worr y about getting cancer working with resin so much?

k:

Yeah, I’d rather not work with resin for the rest of my life.

k:

c:

MJf:

MJf:

k & c: Yeah!

MJf:

chEn & kAI

c:

I’m like the safety nerd here. I cover up completely and wear like six layers of ever y thing when I’m working with plastics. When we see something non-toxic that we can work with, we’re definitely chomping at the bit to use it.

k:

Initially, we started producing objects that are mid-range price, in that maybe they’re like $100-$300. 00. If that’s mid price, I dunno. We’ve used that as mid price, and we’ve produced products that are less expensive products, which are basically like the stone planters. I think it’s better to have that range. I think always keeping a range of stuff is a really good thing, so I think we need to be concentrating on both the low- and high-ends.

k:

Also, if you’re making anything, it’s not good for you. Wood dust is not good for you. Any kind of metal finishing is really bad for you. Blackening is terrible for you.

c:

Yeah, we have a bunch of things in the couple hundred dollars range. I think material-wise we’re really interested in the cement that we use for our planters. It performs really well. It sets fast. You can make it really thin. We’re making those dripping things with it, and I feel like that’s an interesting avenue.

MJf:

k:

I had a dream about this. I really want to combine these two materials, the fake and real stone.

c:

Yeah, we did that table where we kind of laminated the two materials together, but I think we could do a lot more.

k:

Bunch of ideas we haven’t gotten to, and we’re probably not going to get to for a while.

That’s one reason I was asking if you guys were interested in moving towards a situation where you were just making prototypes and having things manufactured.

That’s always considered the trajectory: that when you’re young you do your own work, and then gradually you become more hands-off with your own work. But if you’re someone who really actually enjoys the process, and the process is so much of your actual design process, it seems difficult to move toward a practice where you’re more separated.

p. 152

MJf:

keep wearing the masks when you work and you’ll get to them eventually. Ⅲ

TunIcA

p. 153

TIgEr MoodY

TIgEr MoodY

t igh dn Mi n ago Dr (ES S AY )

TIgEr MoodY

I was a sixteen year old sophomore in high school, and I was completely miserable. It had been a rough week.

My sister had been raped by a couple of jocks a few days before.

Upon discovering who’d assaulted her, I pulled a knife on one of the dudes in the school parking lot. Unfortunately, he was carrying a large t-square and I ended up in the ER with a severe concussion and 17 stitches in my forehead.

Additionally, Justin (the feather-earringed foster kid living with us) had just stolen half of my comic collection and sold it for whipits and Patrick Ewing hi-tops.

When I complained to my mother about it, she told me to shut up and quit being so insensitive to Justin’s needs.

Even my only refuge, a semi-fun job at a Princeton pizzeria, had been tainted. My boss Carlo’s brother Venuzio had recently been released from a Colorado prison and installed as manager. His cocaine-fueled paranoia quickly became intolerable. A week earlier, he’d sent me on a stealth mission to trail his ex-wife’s boyfriend for 25 miles, despite my protests that the white Suzuki SamuraI’s hood was clearly labeled ‘Lydia’s Pizza’.

I remember walking around between classes in a daze for a few days, trying to figure out how I could possibly improve my life. The only answer that seemed to offer any credibility was suicide.

I blinked a few times to try and shake off my suicide haze.

Finally, I spoke.

“What the fuck do you want?”

Without breaking her smile, she said, “You look sad. I think this might make you feel better.”

She shoved the book closer to me.

I told her that being sad was for pussies, but grabbed the book anyway and walked off without saying thanks.

I was fucking pissed. I couldn’t figure out if she was making fun of me or just plain crazy. Either way, it was an invasion of my privacy, and I resented it.

I looked the book over in my customary back-row seat during fourth period Social Studies.

It had a purple dust jacket that said ‘The Sirens of Titan’ by Kurt Vonnegut.

I’d heard the name Kurt Vonnegut before, but I wasn’t a reader and the only people I’d ever heard mention him wore glasses and carried violins, so I figured he was some hoity-toity, pussy-ass bullshit artist.

I looked at his picture on the back cover.

He seemed tired and weary. There was an expression in his eyes that I recognized. It was the suicide look.

I figured, fuck it, cracked the book, and started reading.

Just fucking end it, dude. It’s not worth it.

It was about this time that I was approached

by Katie Whitbury in the hallway. She had a book in her hand.

Katie was a pretty, blonde cheerleader with pert tits, cute knees, and a beaming smile.

I’d always had a crush on her, but was wellaware that she was off-limits to a cretin like myself. She was the property of Biffy Hoopingarner, All-American jerk and quarterback extraordinaire.

Yet there she stood, in her green and gold uniform, staring me dead in the eyes and holding the thick, hardbound book with outstretched hands.

People shuff led hurriedly all around us, rushing to class, but we just stood there, frozen and unmolested, like there was some kind of forcefield around us.

ISSuE III

I got to work and Venunzio was already throwing a shit fit.

It was only three in the afternoon, but he’d already locked himself in the bathroom, refusing to come out because he was convinced there was a mob hit out on him.

He was afraid that the assassin would come in the form of a customer, or even myself.

So I put the book under the register and took over as ma nager wh ile Venu n z io sobbed and wailed.

Much to my amazement, I absolutely loved the book.

It was a science fiction story, but that aspect meant nothing to me.

It was the dismal, ironic humor that filled me with real warmth. This guy clearly understood the same pain and isolation that I felt, and yet had managed to concoct something wonderful out of it.

For the next three days, the book was my best friend, and all of my trouble, fear, and confusion seemed to dry up and blow away.

Finally, on the train to work, I arrived at the last page.

Reading it was a gruesome experience. I felt like I was watching my best friend’s eyes close for the last time as he died.

I shut the book and my heart sank.

p. 157

About thirty minutes into the shift, a tall, older man with curly hair and a grey mustache entered the pizzeria and approached the counter.

I said, “Can I help you?”

He stared at the stitches in my forehead and asked, “Do they call you ‘Frankenstein’?”

I said, “No, just Josh.”

He ordered a slice of pesto and a black coffee.

I poured the coffee and looked at the old man’s saggy face again.

He stared back and smiled awkwardly.

He paid me with a fiver and as I popped open the register drawer, the book slid out from beneath it. The back cover was facing up, and I looked at the photo.

I looked at the cold man’s face again as I handed him the change.

It was an exact match.

He saw a glint in my eye, and clearly knew I recognized him.

He waited politely for me to say something.

I wanted to thank him.

I wanted to tell him that I’d just finished his book, and it had changed my life.

I wanted to tell him that he was my hero.

I wanted to thank him for helping me realize that I’m not alone in this awful world.

But it all seemed so fucking queer, so I didn’t, and I could tell he was thankful to be spared the embarrassment.

He picked up his slice and his coffee, said, “Thanks, Frankenstein, ” and walked away.

I swapped out his five for one of my own and put it in my wallet behind a black and white photo of my Grandpa Bob in his army uniform drinking a beer in Paris. It said 1945 on the back.

That afternoon convinced me that fate, or magic, or some strange mysterious force really does exist. Not god, that was just retarded, but something.

The school year dragged on and petered out, and I could never get Katie Whitbury out of my mind.

The Vonnegut encounter had been some kind of sign.

TunIcA

SHE had made this happen.

SHE had convinced me that magic exists.

That maybe there was some cock-eyed meaning to our existence. And I LOVED her for it.

Finally, in late July, I worked up the nerve to risk an ass-beating from Biffy Hoopingarner and called Katie’s house, but her mother told me she’d already moved to France to spend her senior year as an exchange student.

I didn’t see Katie for another fourteen years, until after I finally looked her up on the newly-minted internet.

She was a marine biologist living in Boston, but she was going to a friend’s wedding on Waverly Place in a few weeks, and wanted to know if I’d be her date to the reception.

Of course I said yes.

We had a terrific night.

She’d put on a little weight, but it did nothing to diminish her beauty or charm. And her affection for me was plainly obvious.

I was on cloud nine.

This was some kind of grand karmic reward.

We got totally wasted on champagne and brandy, and started making out on the sidewalk as soon as we left the party.

We stumbled back to her hotel room at the Chelsea and messed around like adults.

It was kind of weird that a natural blonde with pale skin and green eyes had the brown nipples of a Mexican, but I was too drunk and happy to care much.

As the sun rose and lit up the room, I finally thanked her for giving me the book, told her about the fluke Vonnegut meeting, and explained how it’d positively shifted my life’s direction.

Katie was half asleep, but awake enough to process what I’d said and reply.

“Are you sure that was me, Josh? I’ve never read a Kurt Vonnegut book in my life. I started one once, but it was way too hokey for me.”

I stared at her blankly for a moment and she smiled.

“I’m thirsty, would you go get us some more beer?”

At the deli, I realized that the only cash I had in my wallet was the fiver I’d kept tucked behind Grandpa Bob for all those years, and Kurt Vonnegut’s magic universe-glue became two 40’s of Midnight Dragon, which we drank and later pissed out.

T hat stuff makes for some tr uly w icked-smelling piss.

p. 158

k AY l A g u T h r I E

kAYlA guThrIE

f Cle

We had just pulled out of the city and the late day burst moodily upon us, light breaking from the shelter of tall buildings.

Highrise windows f lashed and shingled rooftop water tanks cast shadows on graffitied chimneys. From my seat on the pale blue molded bench I detected a stir of ardor in the expression of a woman gripping a pole near the doors. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, embalmed by the gleaming presence competing with the fluorescent light of the overhead bulbs.

I felt cold and un-mammal-like, as if the stark shades of the setting sun were beckoning me into some primordial vacuum, massaging me with goosebumps as the train hammered along.

And now the long sunset burns robust and orange-gold through the bridge’s suspension cables, growing ruby and devilish as the cab glides forward.

The taxi driver sits up straight, a turquoise turban wrapped around his head. His car seems intravenously fastened to the traffic pattern, sliding cleanly off the bridge and fluently navigating lanes up Bowery to 11th Street.

A rush of contentment passed through me, and for a moment it didn’t seem to hurt that I felt restless and otherworldly, as if I were living in a hallucination, under the skin of a dream realm where I temporarily made contact with a truer version of myself, which I was sure existed in some other nearby dimension, and that from time to time aligned with me in my present body.

I didn’t experience these notions as real but they were compelling enough to worry and distract me, interrupting my work, which I had already been neglecting very badly - a condition that did not suit me well.

For without working I felt my work oozing out in wrongful paths: into my thoughts and through my pores, how I walked the streets, the faces I made at people and the look in my eye when I went out. What I wrote in my notebook. Ⅲ

ISSuE III

p. 16 0

lIzA ST. JAMES

sse Ba rée Ma

nA ma Ro (ES S AY )

I sit on the plastic seat of a cab on its way across the bridge, the floral musk of fresh makeup and perfume rising from my skin and filling the vehicle with a fragrance of denatured alcohol and agarwood.

As we drive I speed-write in gray pencil across the gridded pages of my thin blue notebook.

I’d been crossing in the other direction by subway only an hour earlier, watching the sun lapse toward its own reflection in the river below.

(ES S AY )

SuBurBIA ShoWdoWn

lIz A S T. JA M ES

Antoine has a stack of philosophy books to get through, enough to last till spring.

He reads to me in French and I let his words merge as only someone who doesn’t depend on meaning can. When he pauses for a paragraph or a chapter, I feel the sounds echo and form something else. Sometimes I repeat them, and when the sounds I repeat make bad puns, Antoine jokes that he’s going to sleep in the roof garden. This is his name for the ledge high above the toilet where the water closet has a small window for breeze. He would make a generous real estate agent.

We sleep with chestnuts under our pillows. Something about dream enhancement that at this point I think Antoine must have made up. He acts in riddles sometimes, and it’s hard to tell if he means to. I’ll ask for water, say, and he’ll bring me four ice cubes in a cup, one with a giant bubble in it. He likes to go long stretches without speaking, so I’ll look at him and search his body for an answer. If language is beautiful, he says, it must be because a master bathes it. I am master of nothing.

Antoine says that vodka is compatible with his blood type. We could all say that, I tell him, it being the diminutive of water and all. But he shows me photographs of his grandmother holding him in a folded blanket outside the Pokrovsky Cathedral and begins to plan a trip there. He fills out visa application forms and practices Russian. I bring home copies of texts I’d like translated from the Archive, mostly the untranslated letters and theater bills of Asja Lacis, the longtime love interest of Walter Benjamin. The words come slowly, but I have never felt so excited about a romance. Ⅲ

Suburban and interior decors. Signs of life exhibition, the home section. Photos courtesy of vSBA, Inc

I move in with Antoine and we live together in a crumpled bed. Really it’s more of a giant mattress, no frame or anything, but we leave it infrequently enough that it’s comforting to be this near to the floor. With winter closing in around us we have begun a ritual of dares with the furnace in which, flanking it, we hug ever closer to the coals. When the kettle whistles we cut ginger and return to bed, circles of it bobbing in our mugs like uncertain islands.

SuBurBIA ShoWdoWn (dAn grAhAM vS dEnISSE BroWn)

row of Tract homes, Jersey city, new Jersey, 1966

Excerpted from “Rixdorf”

Note: I borrowed the following line, spoken by Antoine, from Dominique Laporte’s History of Shit: “If language is beautiful, it must be because a master bathes it.”

TEx T BY crISTInA guAdAluPE

TunIcA

p. 162

(ArTIclE)

ISSuE III

p. 164

SuBurBIA ShoWdoWn

SuBurBIA ShoWdoWn

Tract houses, Bayonne, new Jersey, 1966

In 1965 the United States created the department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), partly to deal with the biggest urban crisis of American modernity to date. The triumph of the automobile and the new urban infrastructures built after the war transformed the anatomy of the landscape and the city, emptying it out and converting it into the last stronghold of poverty. Everyone with the remotest chance would try to buy a house outside the city walls, in the new Eldorado of the suburban expansion.

To d ay, af t e r al most 50 ye a r s , we’ve witnessed a come back to the cities and the failure of Suburbia and the urban sprawl as an economical and sustainable model. Despite efforts to think about solutions, much hasn’t changed yet; especially people’s desire to still want to live there.

Back in the 60s it wasn’t much different really. The staunch criticism of Suburbia that we are familiar with comes from those times.

But critiques were somehow less economical and more social. The press speaks about the homogenization of man that would lead to a conformist society through the serial or mass production of housing. But as the sociologist Herbert Gans rightly says “this criticism is a thin veil that disguises an attack on the cult ure of the working and lower classes, i n si nu at i ng t hat ma ss-produced hou si ng leads to mass produced lives”1. The reality of this new housing, which was cheaper as it was produced in the same way as all other North American industry was that suddenly the most disadvantaged classes could have access to dwellings that the middle and high classes already enjoyed. And this terrified a very inf luential part of a classist, racist and conservative society. Suburban life predates the urban sprawl in America, it’s a life style well engrained in people’s mind. “America was once a nation of farmers, and love for the earth still courses nostalgically through the veins of even its city dwellers”2.

Two different art and research studies on Suburbia appeared on the 60›s and 70›s that counteracted the establishment’s critique.

Despite sharing a similar perception, they end up being quite different in their nature and their focus. It is extremely interesting looking at them side by side.

We are talking about, on the one hand, the work of the artist Dan Graham ‹Homes for America› 1966. And on the other hand we are referring to the 1970 Yale studio Learning from Levittown by the urbanist and architect Denise Scott Brown and the architect Robert Venturi and their exhibition Signs of Life: Symbols in the American City at the Renwick Gallery in the Smithsonian Institute in 1976.

Both works are f u ndament al for understanding the change in mentality and at t it ude t hat st a r ted to t a ke hold at t hat t i me. T he eve r yd ay real it y produced by a n i ndu st r ial i zed con su me r societ y (t he a d ve r t i s i n g m a c h i n e a n d t h e s u b u r b a n culture of the automobile) and its impact on the environ ment are st rongly at tacked or simply ignored by the bourgeois, conservative critique. These two works are perfectly placed to confront head on and translate this reality, without omitting any value or judgments.

Social criticism is one of the key aspects in the work of Venturi Scott Brown, especially inf luenced by Denise, who in 1959 moved f rom L ondon to Ph ila delph ia , follow i ng a recom mendation of the Smithsons, who were doing parallel social st udies on the English New Towns built after the war. They re com me nded he r a nd he r t he n hu sba nd Robert Scott Brown to go and study urban planning with Louis Khan at Penn University.

Sociolog ist s a nd u rba n pla n ners such as

Herbert Gans, whom was also her teacher at Penn, but also Melvin Webber and JB Jackson at around the same time, were denouncing this hypocrisy of suburban criticism.

T he st udio Lear ni ng f rom Levit tow n whose subt itle is “re me d ial hou si ng for architects” tries to help the profession to see into the real problem of housing since “to most architects ‘residential work’ means the design of houses and apartments for the rich”. As the authors say “we shall be more interested in what people make of their housing than in what the architects intended them to make of it”3.

The conclusions from the studio are then augmented in the exhibition Signs of Life, where they attempt to survey the pluralist aesthetic of the American City and its suburbs, to u nder st a nd what t he u rba n la nd scape means to people, through an analysis of its symbols, their sources and their antecedents.

“The ‘ordinar y’ symbols and signs of the commercial and residential environment are not acknowledged but are significant in our daily lives.”[…]“In learning to understand our symbols and signs, we come to understand better ourselves and our landscapes“4.

A f u r t he r a i m of t he ex h i bit io n wa s t o suggest to urban designers, architects and plan ners, that they open-mi ndedly st udy today’s urban landscapes, and specially the symbolic meanings people invest in them.

I n so doi ng, these u rbanists would lear n more than they know about the needs, tastes, and preferences of people whose lives they influence, and particularly about the tastes of

groups whose values are different from their own. “Understanding the raison d’être of the physical environment is a necessary prelude to improving it”5.

The material for the show is based partly on graphic material from the student’s research on popular culture and society group values through advertisement, television and printed media and partly based on actual photography.

The photographers are Denise Scott Brown who has been photographing social housing and urban culture since the early 50s in South Africa, Europe and the US, the students and two very young artist; Steven Shore and John Baeder who are commissioned to photograph for the home and city sections.

The photography for the Levittown and the American Suburb study tries to catalogue, make typologies and group themes to decipher and understand better the nature of people’s desires, as the exhibition panel title reads: Themes and Ideals of the American Suburb.

Dan Graham’s also sees in New Jersey track houses and Suburbia in general, not the evil, as some might say 6, but rather plain reality; an actual and contemporary vision of society. He himself lived until the age of thirteen in government-funded social housing in New Jersey, where he recalls being happier that in the upper-class suburb they moved after that. So he very soon realized the falsity of the whole thing. As he says, “the cliché was to say that tract home suburbs were about alienation.

And I didn’t think the lifestyle was about alienation. I just thought of it as representing a fascinating new reality” 7. Back in the 60s the

TunIcA

p. 166

ISSuE III

p. 167

SuBurBIA ShoWdoWn

conditions of city life were very bad, crime and misery made the suburbs a very nice aspiration for many people. Since the 80s, big cities are experiencing a huge turn around. Thanks to TV series like “Friends” or “Sex in the city” the wealthy suburbanites are coming back to the for lower income families to stay or to move in due to the increasing real state prices.

Graham never really liked sociology and was not that interested in people’s specific desires and taste, he was more into the artifacts themselves and their intrinsic language and aesthetic. The interest in serialization is the basis of his research, not as a criticism, quite the contrary, he tries to reveal a new aesthetic system product of its era, very in keeping with the avant-garde artistic movements of the time, whether pop art or minimalism. He was also interested in the new materials that emerged and spread, like plastic. Plastic symbolizes this new fast, cheap, pop and disposable new culture. The houses are sort of disposable, not built to last forever and their visions are like beautiful plastic dreams. “This is about the suburbs at the edge of the city. It’s about the aspirations of people who come from near-slum neighborhoods to recreate a kind of Arcadia in the suburbs”8, Graham says.

Th rough his photography he capt ures the generic and systematic nature of these mass housing developments, translating the aspects of a new language consistent with the production methods of the time. His approach

and ordinary’. Graham is not trying to help or further the tunnel vision of the architecture profession but rather to point out a reality of our landscape tracing its origins into the reality of the mass-produced environment more in accordance with other art investigations, f rom the serial music of Pier re Boulez to the minimalistic expressionism of his friend Donald Judd “When Judd moved to New Jersey, where I was from, I think its work became very much about its materials: plastics, aluminum, a n d ch e a p sid i n g s .” 9 A n d i nt e r e s t i n g ly enough Judd wrote an article about Kansas City and the XIX century city plan. So those artists (Graham, Judd) and urban planner and architects (Scott Brown and Venturi) are really crossing disciplines and helping to formulate the avant-garde language of their time.

As Graham says “all my work is about urban planning”10.

WAh WAh rEcordS

1.

The Levittowners, Herbert j. Gans (p.171, Pantheon Books, 1967) Life magazine, 1947 On Houses and Housing, Venturi Scott Br ow n & A s s o c i a t e s (A D Ac a d e my editions, London 1992) p.51 4. Idem, p.58 5. Idem 6. “the evil made suburbia” says Ole Bouman i n h is a r t icle ‘Tr ut h or Subu rbia’ on Suburbia after the crash, Volume magazine #9 (dec 2006) 7. New Jersey, Dan Graham (Lars Mueller Publishers, 2012) p.108 8. Idem, 9. Idem, p103 10. New Jersey, Dan G raham ( p.97, Lars Mueller Publishers, 2012) 2.

3.

TunIcA

p. 16 8

Walking down the narrow streets of the Raval district in Barcelona I stop by number 14 of Riera Baixa Street, where Jordi Segura runs the prestigious Wah Wah Records shop—which is also the main headquarters for his record label of the same name. Once inside I see thousands of boxes packed with amazing records, including some of the rarest items you will ever see in your life. Going through the small room, I stare at the blue cover of the extraordinary Future Days by krautrock band Can or the exotic charm of Yma Sumac’s Mambo! On the wall also hangs a huge original poster of The Cosmic Couriers, the legendary kraut collective / record label that featured musicians such as Manuel Göttsching, Klaus Schulze, Jürgen Dollase, Harald Großkopf, Sternenmädchen (Gille Lettmann) or Dieter Dierks, some of them also famous for their works with Ash Ra Tempel and other krautrock experimental bands from the seventies.

T E x T BY A M A n dA dE PA B lo

I find Jordi at the back shop, where he stores hundreds of records that have been released on his own Wah Wah label since its inception in 1997. He asks me to wait for him in his office on the top floor, from which you have an overview of the whole store. The office is packed with more records, invoices, four or five computers, printers and scanners.

Jordi is a modest, friendly man who treats his costumers in a really relaxed way, and he owns one of the most impressive and exclusive record collections in Europe, being an expert in many different music styles. Finally, when the store is about to close, he gets into the office for the interview, gone are the customers and their constant enquiries about new releases, rare originals or peculiar editions.

I’ve known Jordi for a long time, so the interview becomes a cordial chat about what he has been doing since he decided to open the store in 1992. My first question is, obviously, which was the first record he released on the Wah Wah label. He doubts for a while –he has already published over 160 records– but then he proudly answers: Attilio Mineo’s Man In Space With Sounds, issued in 1997.

A legendary space age album composed and conducted by Mineo for a pavillion of the 1963 Universal Expo held in Seattle. The opportunity to license this album came through the Swedish label Subliminal Sounds, who had released the CD version. Jordi had this space age LP in his collection and he loved it, when he saw the chance of producing a vinyl

(ArTIclE)

ISSuE III

p . 17 0

Trucks, Seacaucus, new Jersey, 1966

banal. He was inspired very much by writers like Rober t Pinget, who himself was ver y inf luenced by Flauber t. A sensibility also shared by Bob and Denise who always refer to their architecture, very consciously, as ‘ugly

WAh WAh rEcordS

WAh WAh rEcordS

WAh WAh rEcordS

ThE MISSIng rEcord

LP reissue of it he just took it and thus the Wah Wah label was born. It was the start of a constant search for rare, interesting material to reissue and make available again for the new generation at reasonable prices. Most of the records reissued through Wah Wah since then were long lost gems, originally released in the 1960s and the 1970s.

Albums that had been out of catalogue for years and had since become collectors items, some exchanging hands for obscene amounts of money.

There is nothing more grateful for a real music lover than to sit in your most comfortable chair or lay on the bed listening to your favorite record album—inspect the cover, hear the melodies, look at the pictures, scrutinize the origins of that sound that makes you feel all sorts of emotions. Jordi knows this feeling really well, therefore he tries to produce his releases considering all these issues, paying the same attention to the packaging -working to get the most faithful reproduction of the original sleeve in top quality board, plus the addition of inserts with photos and liner notes—as he pays to the sound—location of the highest quality master source, remaster when needed for an optium result, quality heavy weight virgin vinyl.

Jordi has a graphic arts background. Before opening the store in 1992, he ran a graphic studio where he designed t-shirts, posters and stickers in silk-screen. It was one of the first places in Barcelona where you could find t-shirts by mythical music bands such as Faust, Kraftwerk or Can. His experience on graphic design is clearly the embryo of the great care he puts into his production’s design. He showed me an example of this passion through one of Wah Wah’s releases for which a new sleeve design was needed: Formula 1, an album by Spanish composer Beltran Moner, originally released in 1973. In honor of the album’s theme, its cover was die cut into a circle imitating a steering wheel, with a photo montage of a real wheel from a collectable 1960s sports car. He went to a vintage car repair garage and took the photographs to have best quality images.

Every new release becomes a witty challenge for Jordi: he always seeks for special papers and cardboards to print over and to play with textures and colors, putting all his care in trying to maintain the highest quality in order to offer his clients the optimal experience. These efforts don’t stay under the radar: Mojo Magazine recently chose his vinyl packaging for the reissue of U.K. folk legend Heron as the best of the month. Heron has actually been released on a friend label -Mapache Records,—but all its production was done at Wah Wah and it is distributed through Wah Wah. I ask Jordi about the recent reissue of Popol Vuh’s first five LPs. This krautrock band “led by pianist and keyboardist Florian Fricke, and named after a Mayan mythology book was formed in 1969 and stayed active until Fricke’s death in 2001. In 1969 Fricke joined forces with Holger Trülzsch—percussion—and Frank Fielder—synthesizer, recording engineer and technical assistance- and they soon became one of the most interesting bands of kraut music’s avant-garde, being pioneers in sounds that have later been categorized as ambient music, space/cosmic music or New Age music.” The launch of these five LPs took Jordi five years.1 However, this was not the most difficult album release. The Voice Of Silence, by Peter Michael Hamel. Apparently, Hamel was a buddhist when he produced the album, but as he was not anymore and he did not feel comfortable with the album being issued again. Thanks to Jordi’s perseverance we can now enjoy again Hamel’s amazing second LP.

TunIcA

p . 171

Seeing the impressive dedication that Jordi puts in every release, I have to ask which albums would he like to reissue in the future. Good news for kraut fans is that plans to release the rest of Popol Vuh’s catalogue, their soundtrack to Werner Herzog’s version of Nosferatu amongst them, are in his mind. But in the near future will see the light a record from Barcelona band Suck Electrònic (with previously unreleased tapes from 1975/1976) and the 1968-69 works by Spoils of War, the avant-garde psychedelic band who travelled the same paths than Fifty Foot Hose or The United States Of America had walked. Other future plans include The Andromeda Strain film Score—not only for the music itself, but also because its jacket has an hexagonal shape and he loves the object and the challenge to reproduce it.

Up to here it is pretty clear that Jordi loves his work. But are there any complaints?

But are there any complains? Sure there are some, the main one being that Major labels that hold the rights to recordings that are not on catalogue anymore, or even some that have never been released, do not have any will to licensing them. The big trouble that a small label in Spain like Wah Wah has to obtain licenses from the majors is really a pity.

Many of those masters deserve to see the light of day, but they won’t as long as the majors have zero interest in licensing them.

But thankfully there are still many interesting records to be reissued, originally released by small labels that have not been engulfed by a major yet - or even private editions. Thanks to that, Wah Wah’s current catalogue spreads over 160 releases filed in three categories: one for progressive rock, psychedelia and garage/R&B; one for soul, jazz, funk, bossanova; and one for exotica and library. There used to be also one for -now sounds,- new artists and bands, but it was shut down as it was not feasible. Wah Wah works better as a reissue label, it is a good moment for the public that is looking

for cool lost gems from the past. Many other interesting labels share this market, some of Jordi’s favorite ones are Superior Viaduct based in California, Numero Group, Chicago. Lion Productions, Illinois. Finders Keepers, UK or, closer to ‘casa’, Guerssen Records from Lleida. All these labels offer very interesting stuff for a music lover like him, who besides his labour of love as a reissuer is also an avid collector himself. When I ask him for tricks to get the best deals on rare originals, he shares just one secret: look for punk records in a jazz oriented shop or jazz records in a pop oriented shop – he jokes about that, he found the sought after Sexadelic Dance Party album on a Barcelona record fair stand devoted to cheap orchestra records.

In a world full of collectors ready to pay crazy amounts of money for one concrete record, and some of those are stored at the Wah Wah shop. Items like an original copy of Princess Flower and The Moon Rays (whose creator Loren Standlee sadly passed away last month), a 1969 AZ Label copy of Nick Garrie’s “The Nightmare Of J.B. Stanislas” (bot records also available at a more reasonable price on Wah Wah’s reissue series) or the rare Spanish editions of Pink Floyd’s “See Emily Play” EP or Van Der Graaf Generator “Pawn Hearts” can fetch up to 500, 1000 or even over 2000 Euros in the case of Princess Flower! I ask Jordi if he has ever had to sell any of his own collection pieces. The answer is that of course, and more on these days— the economic situation of the world today has forced him to let go of some of his jewels, either to finance new releases on the label or just to pay the rent. But when you have children, as he does, they give you the strength to keep fighting in the music world every day and priorities change—but the passion is always there!

1. Text extracted from Wah Wah Records’ website, http://www.wahwahsupersonic. com/html/news.html (25/01/2013)

TE x T BY S EBASTIAn hoYoS

ISSuE III

p . 17 2

(ArTIclE)

ThE MISSIng rEcord

ThE MISSIng rEcord

1. Last night while I was packing my records for a long trip to a new city looking for the love of my life, I realized that an important record was missing. I bought this record from an old school second hand dealer from Medellín.

2. He told me the story behind this gem.

It was one of the first African records played in Colombia and in the mid 1960s started a whole revolution around record digging and DJing. The label was scratched, so I could not know the name of the artist or the year of recording. Anyway, that mysterious record that is still anonymous for me was pure black gold pressed somewhere in the motherland.

3. Foreign records like that started to cross the Atlantic and Pacific seas with workers and sailors enlisted in the army and mercantile ships. Without knowing it, these people, who arrived in Cartagena and Barranquilla, brought with them all the elements to start a new social and cultural movement. If we understand DJing as the art of record digging, picking and playing music, this global movement started here.

This particular record was part of the collection of a guy that used to play at the “Verbenas”: Hot street parties dominated by

massive sound systems called ‘Pick Ups’ or ‘Picós’ and operated by local record diggers and disc jockeys under mystic names like “El Rojo—La Cobra de Barranquilla, El Coreano—El Tanque de Guerra, El Isleño—El León de la Salsa, El Solista—La Potencia Nuclear, El Sibanicú—El Azote Africano, El Concord Nro1—El Veterano Indestructible, El Guajiro—El Tira Flechas de Cartagena, El Gran Nagith—El Ganster de la Salsa y el Sonido” (The Red—Cobra from Barranquilla, The Korean—The War Tank, The Islander—The Salsa Lion, The Solo—The Nuclear Power, The Sibanicú—The African Spank, The Condor N1—The Indestructible Veteran, El Guajiro—Cartagenas Arrows Thrower, The Great Nagith— Salsa and Sound Ganster) A fr ican music, salsa, and champe ta rhythms sounded up and loud to fill the souls of the proud dancers and give them the freedom to move in that sexy way that only they can do. Exclusive records were the key in this business since the beginning,

TunIcA

p . 174

so scratched labels were common to be sure no one else knew what record was playing.

New names were given to the tracks trying to mimic the phonetics of the original song sung in native incomprehensible languages.

It happened to “MU MEKUA MUKARO” an original African song renamed as “EL INDIO MAYEYE” and probably the first foreign hit at the Verbenas. These sexy and bloody music battles were recorded on mixtapes, and later the copy of a copy of a copy was suddenly played on a boombox in another city in the country.

4. Also in the 1970s, Salsa from New York, Puerto Rico, and Cuba arrived in Cali and Medellín and a new breed of DJs was born.

Salsa was mainly performed by live bands, but in time more and more underground bars appeared and outstanding vinyl selectors ruled this sub-urban world. In Medellín, guys like Monchito García from the legendary club “Brisas de Costa Rica” heated the dance floor with his wild selections of salsa bombs. Conga and Bongo ruling the night, the palm trees shaking his arms, outside a blade fight and Eddie Palmieri, Hector Lavoe or Ray Barreto as the soundtrack. In Cali the thing was hardcore. Salsa schools taught kids how to dance, and listening sessions guided by salsa gurus were the everyday meal. Salsa is to Cali as Samba is to Rio, and “Juanchito” is probably the hottest place in the world to dance salsa music. In the 1980s you could find legendary bands like Los Hermanos Lebrón or La Orquesta Aragón playing in one packed club and also serious DJs spinning the hits of the moment in the next packed club, and so on.

5. No later than that, Hip Hop records arrived in Bogotá and Medellin, and the DJ was already an established icon of this culture. Some of the pioneers in these cities were DJ Fresh and DJ Yeyo Mix. They led b-boy battles here and there and gave the kids the opportunity to spin their heads off with the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Apache” or Jimmy Castor Bunch’s “It’s Just Begun.”

6. Then electronic music arrived, by plane I guess, and DJs like Diego Mezclas and DJ Boom in Medellín were the ones rocking radio stations like Veracruz Stereo 98.9 FM and La X 103.9 FM en Medellín. They used to mix Early House hits with Euro Dance and Miami Bass.

7. Finally the Internet appeared, Native Instruments was founded, and a DJ can be almost anyone. Ⅲ

ISSuE III

p . 17 5

(Tunica Magazine — Issue III) Editor in Chief: Jose c. garcia Editor & Communication: hoon Ju ko Editor: victor Esther Junior Editor: Ben Mckernan Guest Editor: karen Schaupeter / Ed varie Creative Directors: Jose c. garcia victor Esther Art Direction & Design: Studio lin — studiolin.org Copy Editors: Julie Sengle raquel vogl Music Editor: hugo capablanca Web Designer: Juan Astasio Web Editor: Joseph Thomas Collaborators: Amanda de Pablo Ana cabral Martins Antonia Marsh Audrey n.carpio claudia Eve Beauchesne courtney conwell cristina guadalupe david g.casado gloria Strzelecki James Parker Jenny Pretschker Jordi Segura kristian henson laurence cornet lia forslund lil government liza St. James Melissa J. frost nathan cearley Shannan Smith Soraia Martins Tanja Siren vanessa nunes Winslow laroche Cover: ryan de la hoz Memphis group

Contributors: Anna Eborn Anna Sörenson Barney Bubbles cahill Wessel charlie Engman chen & kai cheyco leidmann colby Poster & christopher Michlig cristina guadalupe E.S.P. Tv Evan robarts gavin russom & chris hontos kayla guthrie labor Magazine larissa lockshin la cote du design liza St. James long distance Poison Mathieu laurent Megaforce Memphis group Michael Willis Mike diana & heather Benjamin nick von Woert roberto Piqueras ryan de la hoz Sebastian hoyos Sigrid calon The office of culture and design The rodina Tiger Moody Wah Wah records Thanks: Alex lin nicholas Weltyk Ana reguera Tereza rullerova vit ruller Max San Julian Patricia del Portal Jordi Segura Marc Argenter rafael carbajal Patrick Bower to.be

Tunica: Tunica magazine is a receptacle of international culture based in new York city, stemming from an urge to assemble a publication that curates talents, combines disciplines and shares new ideas and styles. Tunica contributors represent a wide range of international and cutting-edge artistic disciplines.

Every issue of Tunica is spearheaded by different art directors, guest editors, and an influential team of creative minds who advocate a different approach to publishing constantly renewing Tunica’s form and content.

Tunica magazine is a biannual publication.

Contact: u.S. 616 E. 9th Street East Storefront nY 10009 +1 347 270 6273 Distribution and other inquiries, please contact us at: info@tunicapublication.com For Advertising: adv@tunicapublication.com For Collaboration: submissions@tunicapublication.com Gallery: info@tunicagallery.com Studio: info@tunicastudio.com Publisher: Tunica llc Print Production: Shapco Printing Inc. Sponsorship: david Schulman @ Shapco Printing Inc.

There is no us without you!

Ed Varie: Ed. varie is a creative institution in heart of Manhattan. opened in february 2010 under the guidance and support of artist, founder and curator karen Schaupeter, Ed. varie has become a pillar to the contemporary art community. Inspired by the fundamentals of open programming, Ed. varie exhibits artists of all media and encourages the exploration of new concepts in artistic practice. With a mission to bring artists in various stages of their careers to the large and influential art market in new York and worldwide, Ed. varie represents and mentors a wide range of artists both nationally and internationally.

www.tunicapublication.com reproduction of any part of this publication is stricly forbidden without written permission from the publisher (including all logos, titles and graphic elements) The opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher.

All rights reserved, 2014 © of all content: the authors ISSN 2329-3004