Issue 2 Vhcle Magazine

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Editor Cassie Lee cassie@vhcle.com

Editorial Director Charlie Lee charlie@vhcle.com

---------Contributing Proof-reader Jamie Dance Thunder Features The Twilight Sad, The Album Leaf, Stiina Huhtanen, Julia Bulla, Nina Pieroth, Andrea Shear Writers Marc Ingber, Cassie Lee, Susan Purdy, Lauren Silva, Tim Sunderman, Jamie Dance Thunder Contributors Elena (Pearl Model Management), Valerie (Viva), Ira Shiwek, Anne Deppe, Alex Mirtschink, Annette Kamont, Halea & Andris (seedsmanagement.de), Elena Rott, Janine Pritschow, Dario Doerffel (Viva), Katrin Trautner, Natasa Milojevic (seedsmanagement.de), Marika Ernst, Clara (Izaio), Nele (Izaio), Merle (Izaio), Melissa Boyd, Paige K. Parsons

---------Cover ‘Walking with a Chair’ (Sketchbook)

by Andrea Shear www.andreashear.com Contact: contact@vhcle.com Online: www.vhcle.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/vhclemagazine Twitter: www.twitter.com/vhcle ‘The Room’ cover artwork p6, courtesy of fatcat records

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Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission from both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this magazine.

Vhcle is not responsible for the return or loss of, or for any damage or injury to, any unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.

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----Published by Charlie Lee Vhcle Magazine, www.vhcle.com.

All content copyright 2010 All rights reserved

CONTENTS — Issue Two 2010

--------002 Masthead .

004 Contents .

006-007 Contributors .

008-017 An Interview with The Twilight Sad by Cassie Lee .

018-027 The Three Years of Silence is Up: Releasing A Chorus of Storytellers by Susan Purdy .

028-031 Adapting to New Technology by Tim Sunderman .

032-035 Media by Jamie Dance Thunder .

036-039 A New Generation of Warhol “Superstars” by Marc Ingber .

040-055 Old to New & New to Old by Lauren Silva .

056-065 Metteleuropa, Stiina Huhtanen, Stylist .

066-085 White, Deutscher Junge, Pastell, Julia Bulla, Stylist, Designer .

086-093 Adorable, Nina Pieroth, Photographer, Stylist .

094-117 Sketchbook, Andrea Shear, Artist

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—Contributors

(left to right)

------1. Melissa Boyd/Photographer A naturally talented photographer based in San Francisco, CA. For this issue of Vhcle, Melissa shot The Album Leaf show held at SF’s Great American Music Hall.

------2. Julia Bulla/Stylist A passion for clothes and drawing led to studying Fashion Design at the FH in Bielefeld. Also studied for one semester at the UTS in Sydney. While studying, she completed different internships – one in a showroom, and another in a graphic design agency in Berlin. She participated in a fashion show in Hamburg, and worked as a fashion designer for a Berlin street wear label, where she looked after the catalogue shootings and designed new styles. Since autumn 2009, she’s freelanced as a stylist based in Berlin. www.juliabulla.com ------3. Stiina Huhtanen/Stylist Stiina Huhtanen (29) was born in Finland and now lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She studied Fashion Design and Communication Research at the University of Lapland. During her studies Stiina started working as a freelance stylist and editor for various Helsinki-based fashion, design and lifestyle magazines. In 2007 she moved to Berlin to write her thesis about fashion in the Weimar Republic. After having graduated with an MA in Fashion Design, Stiina has continued her career in Berlin. www.stiinahuhtanen.com ------4. Marc Ingber/Writer A journalist with Sun Newspapers, based in Minneapolis, MN. He was born and raised in the Twin Cities and attended journalism school at the University of Kansas. His primary interests include rock ‘n’ roll, movies, food and drink, the Minnesota Vikings and the Minnesota Twins – probably in that order.

------5. Paige K. Parsons/Photographer Paige K. Parsons is an internationally published photographer specializing in live concert photography and musician portraits.

Her award-winning work has appeared in publications such as Pitchfork, Stereogum, Crawdaddy, Prefix Mag, 7x7, Keyboard Player and SPIN. Paige has photographed over 500 bands over the past 20 years and has shot numerous music festivals across the country including Lollapalooza, Sasquatch, Outside Lands, and Treasure Island. She graduated from M.I.T. with a BSAD in Architectural Design, and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two children. www.parsons.org ------6. Nina Pieroth/Stylist Freelance photographer based in Berlin. Studied Communication Design at University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt in Germany, and Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, France. Her exhibitions have been featured all throughout Germany. www.ninapieroth.de

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------7. Susan Purdy/Writer A freelance opinion writer from Sacramento, California. She is currently working as a permanent substitute teacher at a Performing and Fine Arts School while pursuing her passion for acting, play-writing and modeling.

------8. Andrea Shear/Artist An artist currently based in Los Angeles, CA. She studied Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University in England and at the New York School of Visual Arts. Inspired by everything from nature and everyday life to creepy narratives and interesting characters, Andrea strives to evoke feelings of sentimentality and curiosity through her work. Her art has been shown in galleries and boutiques throughout the U.S. and internationally. She is also a designer for Blood is the New Black and is one half of the art collaboration LittleLift. www.andreashear.com ------9. Lauren Silva/Writer, Photographer A Lobbyist/PR gal in Sacramento, California. When she’s not working, you can find her scouring the town for antiques and vintage accessories, sifting through magazines for decorating dreams, and dabbling in photography. Currently she is attempting to master the world of gardening and planning her next big trip – Spain, perhaps?

------10. Tim Sunderman/Writer An illustrator who is also a full-time college graphic design instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Never content in a single medium, he has experimented broadly with photography, video, writing, and even marble sculpture. But graphic design still pays the bills.

------11. Jamie Dance Thunder/Writer (Yes, that’s his real name.) A final-year English Language undergraduate at Cardiff. He is a news editor for Cardiff’s student newspaper, gair rhydd, and hopes his twin interests of current affairs and bad puns will help him to one day get a job on a national newspaper.

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The Twilight Sad

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The Twilight Sad ---Interview by Cassie Lee PHOTOGRAPHER PAIGE K. PARSONS

The Twilight Sad, for those unfortunate enough to have not yet heard their music, are an indie rock band from Scotland, whose full-length debut album Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters received rave reviews in the States, positioning them to cult status in their genre. It’s Scottish folk at its base, layered with arousing walls of deliciously aggressive noise, and vocals that instantly mesmerize and that strangely comfort – at times gentle, at times wailing. Their just as brilliant second album Forget the Night Ahead was released in September 2009. They’ve toured with the likes of Mogwai, Beirut and Smashing Pumpkins, and are currently touring in the UK, and across the U.S. starting in May. With a filled tour schedule and a new album in the works, we’ve got much to look forward to from the boys from Glasgow.

Vhcle got to chat with vocalist James Graham over the phone. After graciously enduring a surge of gushing from me, we moved on to talk about the band, and also a little bit about James himself.

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Vhcle: For the readers who might find this interview to be the first time they’ve heard about The Twilight Sad, please tell me a little bit about who you are – quick history, pertinent info.

James: I went to school with Andy, our guitarist, and Mark, our drummer, lived at the end of Andy’s street. That’s how we all know each other. We started playing music together in our early teens, basically just messing about and nothing too serious – it was just something to do. We started to take it seriously when I was about 21. We played three gigs in three years and recorded a demo, and our label, fatcat, came up to Glasgow and signed us. We were then put into a studio and shipped off to America to tour and mix our first record. It was all a bit of a whirlwind to be honest. Now we find ourselves two records in and countless tours of America and Europe done.

V: How did the name come about?

J: I am not really that sure. Mark came into the studio and said he heard the phrase ‘the twilight sad’ in a Wilfred Owen poem and it just kind of stuck. There wasn’t much thought put into it. It was the best we could come up with and we just got used to it.

V: Influences and inspirations?

J: I am influenced by where I stay. I stay about 45 minutes outside Glasgow in a small farming village called Banton. It’s really small – five streets and a pub (the best pub in the world). I write about the people I know and personal things that have happened to me, my family and friends. I am inspired by lots of music; I grew up listening to bands on the Scottish label Chemikal Underground, such as Arab Strap, Mogwai, etc.

V: You’re quite a loud band, but not in an annoying way or just to be noisy. It’s rather beautiful noise and every sound is a perfect fit to what you want to express. You sound familiar yet completely unlike any other. Thoughts?

J: I think it’s pretty accurate. When we write the songs it’s usually stripped back, like one guitar and vocals, then we layer it up with all the different sounds. We use the noise to complement the song, never the opposite way round.

V: I read a while back that you have a bigger fan base in the U.S. than you do in the UK – is this still true currently? And if so, why is that?

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J: To begin with we did have a bigger fan base in America. We released an American-only EP to begin with and toured America before the UK. America just seemed to catch on to us a lot quicker. We would play gigs to a lot of people in America, then go home and play to just our family and friends. These days I think we are just as big in the UK as in the U.S. We haven’t done a headline tour in a while so I am not sure to be honest.

V: I think your music has the potential to appeal to a broader audience. What are your thoughts about that?

J: We just do what we do and if people like it then that’s cool. I have no aspirations to be a huge band playing to thousands of people every night. I would just like to keep making the music and if a broader audience comes then we will take it in stride. To make a living out of playing music is a privilege, and to get to tour the world is amazing, so I am happy with that.

V: What city has been your favorite place to play so far?

J: New York, Glasgow, Chicago, Prague, major cities like that. I really like Chicago, reminds me of Glasgow somehow. We don’t get to see the cities we play too much though. Friends will think how great it must be to visit these different places, but we don’t see much of it. We go from tour bus straight into the venue, and back again, so basically it’s just the venue. I plan to go back and visit some of these places and just look around.

V: You’ve done a few covers – the ones I’m aware of are The Smiths, Joy Division, and Radiohead. Anymore I’m not aware of?

J: We have covered the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song ‘Modern Romance’ and The Wedding Present song ‘Suck’. They are both acoustic covers. We only do covers that we feel we can make our own and do justice to. It’s fun doing them if they work out.

V: Are you currently working on a new album? Same direction as the first two?

J: Yeah, we are currently working on a new record, got quite a lot of songs started already. I am really excited about it, feels like we will be taking a new direction but with all the things that people like about our band still in there. We have a new release coming out this year. It’s a 12inch single with some remixes by our friends Errors and Mogwai. We are looking to have the new record out in the first half of next year.

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V: What do you do for recreation when not busy with band stuff?

J: Going to the cinema, going to pubs, watching rubbish TV. I love watching films. Normal things that everyone does. Nothing unusual like sky-diving or anything like that. Or skiing.

V: Being that fashion is one of the departments in on our magazine, I’ve noticed you are quite stylish. Not in a perfectly coiffed boy band manner, but your personal style is nice. I’ve particularly noticed your cardigans. Is this something you are conscious of, or do you even care?

J: Yeah, I do wear a lot of cardigans. And baseball shoes. That’s nice you’ve noticed. I’m telling my friends you said that [laughs]. But no, I don’t think much of what I’m wearing. I wake up, pick up the first thing that looks clean, and if it smells alright, that’s what I’m wearing for the day.

V: This is one of the common questions we ask during our interviews – favorite drink?

J: Buckfast – it’s a wine from England and Scotland. The caffeine in it has the equivalent of eight cans of Coke. Also, Irn-bru.

V: Finally, can you tell us a miscellaneous fact about yourself?

J: I like to bake. If I wasn’t in a band, I’d probably be a baker. It sort of runs in the family – my uncle has a bakery.

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The Album Leaf The Three Years of Silence is Up: Releasing A Chorus of Storytellers

the album leaf The Three Years of Silence is Up: Releasing A Chorus of Storytellers ---

Writer Susan Purdy Photographer Melissa Boyd

Jimmy LaValle of The Album Leaf takes the darkened stage at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall and opens with a soft, low pad on the keys. Band members Matt Resovich (violin, keys, vocals), Drew Andrews (guitar, keys, vocals), Gram LeBron (bass, keys, vocals), Tim Reece (drums) and Andrew Pates (live visuals) join him in what first appears to be some sort of pre-game huddle before slowly spreading to their respective plots on the stage. The pulsing of LaValle from the keys is partnered with a quiet cadence on the drums by Reece.

Soon the entire band is joined in creative collaboration, and we watch and sway to the rhythmic heartbeat of The Album Leaf’s opening song from their latest record.

The new set has been a long time coming, but when Album deliver, they deliver.

Nevertheless, the question must be asked: how does one maintain a relevant voice after not making a sound for three years?

While understanding that LaValle got married and can easily be forgiven for spending time with his lovely wife, chalking up his silence to three years of “writer’s block” doesn’t cut it for some of his fans. Apparently he feels guilty about it too, according to the band’s website. “How do I stay fresh, realizing that The Album Leaf has been around for so long and that a lot of people wouldn’t give a new record a chance?” he says, referring to A Chorus of Storytellers (albumleaf.com).

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Regardless of uncertainties, the album was released February 2nd and LaValle refuses to kowtow to any doubts furthered by presumed musical hibernation.

Good thing, too. The band’s sound has benefited from the silence. We’re like children waiting for Christmas, and LaValle and his touring musicians, recorded live for the first time on the new album, have supplied quite a present for us to unwrap. It seems as if LaValle is turning toward an almost (though not quite) acoustic feel and isn’t as dependent on mixing several tracks of a more computerized nature to create the typical Album melody. “We sound so g-damn technical up here,” LaValle tells the sound crew after finishing their first song, and they appropriately adjust the feed.

Storytellers seems to be a small step away from the electronic and a step toward the organic. It is not more honest, just more raw.

I can still remember the first time I actually listened to Into the Blue Again, their 2006 record: I was mowing my yard, ear buds shoved into place, with tracks like ‘Broken Arrow’ and ‘Red Eye’ programmed to repeat. There’s no arguing the last record gave the individual a chance to let the mind go blank, to relish in a moment of repose bordering on mental catatonia (even if one is doing something as physical as cutting the grass), and after talking to fans who follow them, it’s clear Album Leaf are a band you listen to when you’re studying for a History exam or writing a term paper, or after you’ve just realized four years of higher education has done absolutely nothing for your future. You listen to them when you either don’t want to think about what you’re hearing, or, on the opposite side of the spectrum, when you want to over-think.

Not so for their newest record. A Chorus of

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Storytellers is an album that makes one not only pay attention, but mentally participate. Storytellers offers more of a vocal presence on tracks such as ‘There is a Wind’ and ‘Falling From the Sun,’ and this layered and textured sound allows a stronger narrative to the stories LaValle presents. Everyone likes singing, whether they admit to it or not, and these are songs to which we can sing along. It’s the difference between sitting in silent rapture as The Album Leaf tells their tales versus being pulled into and sharing in the telling. “Here we are, locked together,” they sing. “We’ll find a way to fall.” The sense of community and fellowship are so much more prevalent in their newest album. They take us from introspective contemplation to more of a “collective” connection and world view. Even tracks like ‘Standing Still’ are ironically titled as the orchestration musically pushes you to put one foot in front of the other and do something with your friggin’ life. “We’re in this together,” the album says, “whether you like it or not.”

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adapting to new technology --Writer Tim Sunderman

The compulsion to create and explore is unstoppable. It is like the profusion of flowers in the Spring. We have all lived our lives in a period of accelerating change, particularly technological change.

And the vast majority of the most recent change has been in communication.

Communication developments are to the new century as transportation was to the twentieth century. The evolution of telegraph to telephone to gramophone to radio to television more or less hit a plateau until the emergence of the internet.

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The digital storage and transmission of information has such broad implications that it is changing us as a species. People are primarily social creatures and the presence of the internet connects us personally to a global social circle. The old methods of communication — broadcasting a single voice to millions of mere listeners, or private phone line dialogues have been far surpassed by social networking sites, and blog and news sites not beholden to corporate sponsors. The breadth and specificity of information truly subverts the status of authority and brings new realms of power to the common person.

be wrong. If the message is contentless drivel, no medium can augment that message. But in deference to McLuhan, the point that he was making, that the message is shaped by the medium that carries it, is understood. Certainly cell phone texting is an obvious example.

But every new plateau of technological advancement comes with its own consequences.

If the core of our new technology is essentially seated in communication, then it is incumbent upon us to rise to the task of honing our communication skills as we embrace this new ascension. This is not happening. In a British study in 2009 analyzing a couple hundred thousand tweets and social posts, fully forty percent of them were as vapid as, “I am now eating a sandwich,” (directly quoted from the study).

It is a curious thing, and at times laughable, our innate adaptability. The flattening constraints placed on language as we adapt to things like text messaging is predictably spilling over into our spoken language. As I stood on a platform waiting for a train, I overheard a woman telling her friends a story which she concluded with, “Sad face, L.O.L.”

Marshall McLuhan famously commented in 1964 that “the medium is the message.”

The British study firmly proves that axiom to

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It is a failure of adaptation when we adapt ourselves to our devices rather than adapting our devices to us. The technological constriction of language can have the unintended consequence of also constricting our thoughts to fit the devices. I have seen this behavior repeatedly in my years of teaching art classes. Drawing used to be a formal discipline that I taught in Graphic Design.

Now, our school has decided that software instruction will be the only techniques taught to demonstrate design principles. The unfortunate result of this path is that the first-hand intimate knowledge of what is a straight line or perfect circle is never internalized (not to mention more complex shapes). The design choices don’t flow from the mind-hand connection, but from the choices dictated by the familiarity with the software, creating a much more generic look.

consider that through the context of civility, then there is probably some substantiation to that claim. Our civility is the basic cooperation and consideration with which we deal with society at large — a social platform of agreement. With the loss of personal contact comes the erosion of civility.

A study was conducted to determine why people react with greater anger when driving than when walking, and video evidence strongly showed that when eye contact was made with a person when their path had been interfered with, there was an almost instantaneous forgiveness extended to the transgressor, because of human empathy in the eye contact. But, as is typically the case in driving, there is no eye contact or opportunity for that connection, and anger escalates. We can certainly see the same outcomes on so many blog sites where people are not facing one another in a discussion and the normal presence of social accountability disintegrates into an absolute lack of civility.

The same difficulties arise as we adapt to electronic text as a means of communication.

The computer is adaptable enough, usually, to do what it is told. So, as in all things, it is important to approach it with a certain clarity of message, and take the time to get that message through the medium with as little distortion as possible.

Another measure of that civility is the manner in which language was used in the 1800s.

Looking back to letters written from the battlefields in the Civil War by the average soldier, quite often farm boys, there is a command of English and an evident respect for life that seems far less apparent today. Now, the common use of profanity is not so much for emotional punctuation as it is filler to give the verbally challenged speaker an extra moment to figure out the rest of the sentence they are trying to utter.

How often we are absorbed by the small screen, compelled to experience the world in electronic light, reflections of reflections, each iteration slightly more distorted than the last, diminishing the detail and insulating the experience. Some have argued that we are witnessing the decline of civilization. If we

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a new platform for life, there is an opportunity to apply direction for a social organization that is not subjugated to that technology, but that is driven by direct experience of the world from which it springs.

And though I do not believe that civilization is collapsing, it is simply undergoing another foundational shift that inevitably will tear down certain constructs to make way for the new — good or bad.

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And, so as not to simply be passively swept along by technological developments, it may become more and more important to break the electronically-induced agoraphobic trance, the nightly embalming by the glowing diodes, and return our attention to first hand experience.

Spring will soon be in full bloom. How hollow 8-bit color appears when compared to the full richness of the outer world. If the majority of your daily social contacts and experience are squeezed through the bent periscope of wires, try to reverse that and make face-toface contacts with people. The larger part of communication comes through complex facial expressions (not emoticons) and vocal inflection. There is so much depth and scope and substance in the actual world that will never fit on a screen.

How much of your own uniqueness is expressed in your electronic communications?

There is much you can do to be specific and clear in your words. The convenience of abbreviations and acronyms also have the obverse effect of making messages sound generic and conformingly trendy. There will be (and probably already is) a wake of social destruction that is a natural consequence of this emerging communication technology. And just like Persephone’s reemergence from the death of Winter and the chaotic proliferation of

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Writer Jamie Dance Thunder

There are some things you just don’t read in the media.

One of these things, somewhat ironically, is a critique of what you read in the media.

Sure, there are criticisms of how particular stories are handled, and the occasional vow to cover an issue more, but there’s no systematic look at what is and isn’t reported, how things are reported, and why they’re reported in that way.

At first glance this seems justified – newspapers, after all, are products, and what company would conduct a thorough, public examination of how good what it’s selling really is?

But the media has a unique role in this world of corporations and bottom lines. Unlike Nike, Disney, or Wal-Mart, it’s vital to our understanding what happens around us, to us, and in our name. If something is in the media, it has Happened – that’s why newspapers have to be so careful to report things accurately. If something is not in the media, it’s a non-event for people.

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its basic logic is this: newspapers are owned by corporations, are funded by corporate advertising, rely on government and other ‘official’ sources for much of their news, want to avoid criticism from powerful lobby groups (including the government), and have a particular view of the world to promote.

In the UK, a recent tribunal ruling that former editor of the News of the World (the biggest-selling Sunday paper, owned by Rupert Murdoch) began what became a systematic pattern of bullying of a reporter, eventually leading to an £800,000 payout.

The editor, Andy Coulson, is now the opposition Conservative Party’s Director of Communications.

All of these factors – or filters – then subconsciously feed into a journalist’s writing, leading to a version of the news that at best has double standards. At its most benign, it can affect how individuals are identified – it’s impossible to imagine Bill Clinton being prefaced by ‘controversial former President’, but similar introductions are regularly given to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. At its worst it leads to distortion of the historical record, like the regular news reports claiming weapons inspectors were ‘thrown out’ of Iraq in 1998 when in fact they were pulled out to avoid the impending bombing, or narrowing the parameters of debate (for example, posing the question of whether the war in Afghanistan was ‘justified’ or a ‘miscalculation’ – ignoring the view that it was ‘illegal’).

Certainly an interesting story, especially with an election to be held this year. But it made it only to a single broadsheet in the UK and a couple of trade journals. And that’s just one example.

You might say it’s understandable; why would journalists threaten their possible future employment prospects by slagging off another publication? But again, consider the hold the media has over our knowledge. If the media has such control over what we know, then surely how it operates should be a major part of its reporting?

There have, in fact, been attempts to outline exactly how the media works. Nick Davies’s Flat Earth News, for example, documented the reliance of (mainly British) media on PR, the failure to check sources, and the constraints that impact upon journalists. Possibly because Nick Davies is a renowned investigative journalist for The Guardian (a UK broadsheet newspaper), this analysis received a fair bit of coverage.

Somewhat unfortunately, Herman and Chomsky called their analysis the propaganda model. But it doesn’t claim to be a conspiracy – there’s no suggestion that journalists deliberately and consciously change their writing, but rather that they are decent, wellmeaning people who have internalised the filters. They also give examples of individual articles and reporters who have managed to reject the constraints.

But another, older theory proposed by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman receives almost none. Suggesting that the very structure of the media supports the existing power in society,

In recent years, two men called David (Cromwell and Edwards) have tried to apply

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the theory to British media coverage of the build-up, execution, and aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and have coauthored two books on the topic. Yet a search for ‘propaganda model’ in the online archives of national broadsheets in the UK yields just two results. One is a passing mention of the analysis in a 2001 profile piece on Chomsky in The Guardian. The other, with an irony that the theory’s proponents would surely appreciate, is from an article that states “Chinese media is only just emerging from the propaganda model”.

Or is it more insidious? Is it because journalists understand (at some level) things will be easier for them if they use the version that will get the least flak from their editors, from advertisers, from official sources? The government knows, as the media accurately reported at the time, why weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998, but it won’t attack a newspaper for saying they were forced out.

Contradict an official line, on the other hand, and you’ll be denounced.

With seemingly little left to lose as sales and advertising drop, maybe it’s time for the media to look themselves in the mirror and evaluate just what it is they’re guardians of.

It’s not a conspiracy – but is it a cock-up? At the very least journalists should be aware of these analyses of their profession, but their responses to Edwards and Cromwell have loudly decried any ‘conspiracy theory’. This rather suggests that they’re not very aware of the actual critique.

Some of the errors, such as perhaps the differences in labelling individuals, could be down to bad practice by individual journalists.

And Cromwell and Edwards’ latest book, Newspeak in the 21st Century, includes welcome instances of media organisations (particularly the BBC) correcting articles after such problems were pointed out.

But these sorts of examples are not oneoffs. They’re regular and occur throughout the media, from the tackiest tabloid to the most pompous broadsheet, as Cromwell and Edwards document. The real question is not whether these examples exist, but why.

Until they start making themselves explicitly accountable in their own pages to the public they say they serve, then the issue of media performance will remain that most invisible of things: a non-event.

I certainly don’t agree with all aspects of the propaganda model, particularly the focus on ownership and advertising. But there is a really, really important debate to be had here.

Do the brief examples given above indicate nothing more than stretched, perhaps lazy journalists who don’t have the time to check so go for the uncontentious phrase?

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A New Generation of Warhol “Superstars” --writer Marc Ingber

When Paris Hilton burst into the national consciousness in 2003 on the heels of a low-budget home movie shot in night vision, the overall response to her in America was more or less unanimous – “Why should I care who this person is, much less what she is doing in her recreation time?”

Hilton, who was around 22 at the time, was certainly not the first person to “become famous for being famous.” But she seemed to both inhabit and define that role more successfully than any other “celebrity” before or since. She literally became a household name that year and also represented one of the few things the majority of Americans could agree on in 2004 – the same year slightly more than half the country re-elected George W. Bush to a second term as president.

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thing. Though they are geographically located in the same place, there are two completely different Hollywoods right now.

There is the old-school Hollywood, which continues to produce movies, TV shows and other forms of entertainment I actually enjoy on occasion. And then there is the other side – the OK! Magazine, Kim Kardashian, Octomom, Spencer Pratt, Kate and Jon Gosselin, “let’s find a family with 18 kids and shove cameras in their faces” Hollywood. The difference between the two sides has never been more distinct.

In Hollywood’s golden age, celebrity status was synonymous with a successful acting career. The biggest celebrities were people like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who were popular and critically-acclaimed actors. Nowadays, it almost seems as if the opposite were true.

Take someone like Jon Hamm – the star of AMC’s Mad Men. Though the show is one of the most critically-lauded programs in recent years and has won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series two years in a row, Hamm hasn’t become much of a celebrity himself. Many Americans have never even heard of him.

Contrast his celebrity status with

As divergent as Americans were on politics that year, almost everyone – liberal or conservative, young or old, male or female – could agree that Paris Hilton was somehow bad for the country.

The notion that a rich, not-all-that-bright heiress could become even more rich and famous simply for showing up at nightclubs and red carpets and posing for paparazzi appalled most.

Unsurprisingly, a “Hilton”-ified popular culture landscape didn’t wane as the decade progressed. Paris’ face in the tabloids may have become less frequent in recent years, but there have been plenty of Kardashians, Montags, Snookies and eight-child moms with Triceratops haircuts to take her place.

The concept of becoming famous for just being yourself, whatever that might mean, hasn’t gone out of vogue.

This distresses many, but I am not one of them. It’s not that I am a fan of these people, or even pay attention to them in the “guilty-pleasure” sense. It’s just that the more of them who make their way onto my TV set or supermarket checkout aisle, the less likely I am forced to pay attention to them.

To put it simply, this whole side of Hollywood has become a cottage industry unto itself. The gap between fame and artistic success has never been wider, and I see that as a good

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Lindsay Lohan’s. Few could name more than one or two movies Lohan has starred in, yet even your grandma could probably pick her out of a line-up thanks to her turbulent personal life.

It’s difficult to distinguish when this dramatic shift in celebrity culture occurred in Hollywood’s history. The start of publication for People magazine in 1974, and similar magazines that followed in its wake certainly played a part. The emergence of the Internet in the past 15 years really opened the floodgates into celebrities’ private lives as well, making the “famous-for-being-famous” celebrity seem like a recent phenomenon.

However, Andy Warhol – a predictor of pop culture if there ever was one – had a sense the entertainment industry was heading this way decades ago. Warhol’s most famous quote is, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes,” which gave birth to the term “15 minutes of fame.”

But his grasp on the future of celebrity went far beyond that one line. In the 1960s and ‘70s, Warhol held court and produced art out of what he referred to as his “Factory” in New York. His scene included a collection of underground artists, musicians, actors, drag queens and models – some of whom starred in his avant-garde films and were dubbed “superstars.”

“In the ‘60s, very few people were willing to admit that fame no longer depended on achievement,” Mary Harron wrote in

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her 1980 Melody Maker piece, Pop Art/ Art Pop: The Andy Warhol Connection.

“Warhol was quite happy to admit it, and to play with it. What he did was to take a group of unknown people and turn them into ‘superstars.’”

In addition to his films, Warhol had a tape recorder, which he would use to record himself and his artists talking about various problems they were experiencing in their lives. “The acquisition of my tape recorder really finished whatever emotional life I might have had, but I was glad to see it go,” Warhol told Harron. “Nothing was ever a problem again, because a problem just meant a good tape, and when a problem transforms itself into a good tape it’s not a problem anymore.”

“An interesting problem was an interesting tape,” he continued.

“Everybody knew that and performed for the tape. You couldn’t tell which problems were real and which problems were performed for the tape. Better yet, the people telling you the problems couldn’t decide any more if they were really having the problems or just performing.”

That statement, which Warhol made three decades ago, describes to a “t” the unspoken premise for almost every reality show on the air today. The only difference between his “superstar” projects and much of the 2010 entertainment landscape is now there

A New Gener atio n of Warh ol “Su pe rs tars ”

are dozens of cable channels to beam the problems of today’s “superstar” celebrities into every home in America.

Nevertheless, technology advancements since then have also provided the tools to ignore these people. Thanks to Netflix and my digital video-recorder, I can catch up on past episodes of The Wire and Mad Men and completely avoid keeping up with the Kardashians. I’m sure Kim wouldn’t mind. She already has enough people keeping up with her every move.

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Old to new & new to old --Writer & Photographer Lauren Silva

I’m going to write the Sartorialist and tell him of street fashion’s best kept secret. A city where he can snap photos on any corner and find a gem. The city often referred to as the “Paris of the South”, Buenos Aires has become a vivacious place for fashion and expression in South America. It is here where I had the pleasure of taking my first trip out of the country and here where I discovered a city that has not only preserved their history and rich culture, but also inspires expression through fashion.

Buenos Aires is the largest city in Argentina and has become an affordable hotspot for young travelers. Buenos Aires’s political past, well-preserved architecture and strong sense of culture expressed through food, fashion and art makes for a simply divine adventure.

Fashionable walking shoes are a must! You will be shopping your little heart out.

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”Porteños”, the people of Buenos Aires, crowd the busy streets and do so with style and class. Women look so perfectly imperfect – leggings with oversized shirts, well-crafted leather boots, jackets and purses, long flowing sweaters and hair gently tousled. Men dress to impress in tailored suits, sweaters, and jeans. They are not afraid to wear accessories – leather satchels, bracelets and scarves adorn these attractive gentlemen. Streets are lined with boutiques, all are very unique and boast a personality of their own. Specifically, the areas of Palermo Soho and Palermo Viejo offer some of the most amazing fashion, bars, restaurants and art galleries. Shops filled with character are nestled in old buildings and homes.

Grand doors set the mood as you enter, and shops are inspired by vintage and modern flare. It’s hard to say what was more thrilling – trying on the exquisite clothing or looking at the decor of each boutique.

While there are so many different boutiques to describe, I will share with you a few that were among the favorites: two new and one old. The walls of Bolivia, a popular men’s boutique, are filled with vintage watches, clocks, chandeliers and collectables as the Velvet Underground dances in the air.

Here you will find pea coats, motorcycle jackets, and a wide variety of colorful collared shirts – shy men beware, you must be bold here for the Bolivia man isn’t afraid of patterns; plaid, gingham check, flowers and boldly colored

pinstripes are all the rage. Across the street Chocolate, a boutique for women, offers comfortable yet sexy avant-garde selections of well-tailored dresses, trench coats and fabulous accessories.

While there are now stores around the world, Buenos Aires is the location of the head office and where all designs are created. White walls and teak floors let the clothing speak for themselves like art in a gallery.

While new designers and boutiques flourish in Buenos Aires, there is still a passion for vintage, something that I was incredibly grateful for – vintage makes my heart swoon. Just to be near it, look at it, and touch it is an honor and conjures up wonders of what the people who previously owned them were like – a fairytale if you will. So you can imagine my delight when I visited a vintage store located in the antique mecca of Buenos Aires – San Telmo, a part of town that hosts an open air flea market every Sunday and is lined with stores whose selection of antiques is like no other. My travel book suggested that I visit a boutique called Gil Antiguedades. The window display was filled with old trunks, lace gloves and Victorian dresses. I had no idea that what I was about to enter would be one of the most amazing experiences of my trip: a flashback to flappers, Humphrey Bogart, Twiggy, Audrey Hepburn and June Cleaver.

The owner, Maria Ines Gil, buzzed us in and I immediately knew I was in for

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a magical experience. The main floor was filled with feather pins, riding boots, bakelite jewelry and home collectables. An old spiral staircase took us upstairs where woven ponchos from the pampas, silk napkins and tablecloths from Italian and German immigrants and Spanish lace all lived happily together. But what happened next was something that I will be forever grateful for. Maria suggested I take a trip to the bottom floor. As I walked down the stairs, I was stopped dead in my tracks by what lay before me – the most impeccable vintage collection of everything you could dream of. My eyes swelled with tears of joy as a vintage fashion show beckoned me to come and play. Rows and rows of vintage dresses, suits, fedoras, gloves, silk scarves, fur, crocodile purses, lace undergarments, tweed ties‌ oh I could keep going. She carefully preserved each and every item in garment bags and glass cases.

Vintage YSL, Chanel and Dior all lived happily in her shop.

Maria tirelessly explained the history behind everything I touched, and even graciously let me try on a wedding dress from the 1920s, just for fun. Catherine Deneuve and Ferragamo have graced the aisles,

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even Karl Lagerfeld just a week earlier. Her store has become a place of inspiration for today’s top designers because she has carefully preserved every era. She flipped through magazines showing how the fashions in the photographs were right in front of me. Vintage clothing is very dear to me because there is a story behind it. Maria said that many of the items she collected were from Italian, Spanish and German immigrants who came to Buenos Aires in the 1920s.

Old to new and new to old, fashion is a circle and open for interpretation. I can imagine that Argentines and their designers find inspiration in this vibrant city: incredible and well-preserved architecture, cutting-edge restaurants and a passionate culture can all be seen in the fashions of PorteĂąos.

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Stiina Huhtanen

mitteleuropa Models: Elena @ Pearl Model management, Valerie @ Viva Hair & Make up by Ira Shiwek (www. ira-web.de) Styling by Stiina Huhtanen (www.stiinahuhtanen.com) Photography by Nina pieroth (www.nina pieroth.de) Photographer’s assistAnt: Anne Deppe (www.annedeppe.de)

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PASTELL Photography by Katrin Trautner Styling by Julia Bulla (www.juliabulla.com) Models: Natasa Milojevic (www.seedsmanagement.de), Marika Ernst Hair/Make up by annette kamont (www.annettekamont.de), All clothes designed and made by Julia Bulla Shoes: Stylist’s own (julia bulla)

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adorable models :

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C onverse ,

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Andrea Shear An artist currently based in Los Angeles, CA. She studied Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University in England and at the New York School of Visual Arts. Inspired by everything from nature and everyday life to creepy narratives and interesting characters, Andrea strives to evoke feelings of sentimentality and curiosity through her work. Her art has been shown in galleries and boutiques throughout the US and internationally. She is also a designer for Blood is the New Black and is one half of the art collaboration LittleLift. www.andreashear.com

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Andrea Shear 足足 -----Beds

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Andrea Shear 足足 -----End of Summer

Andrea Shear 足足 -----This Moment

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Andrea Shear 足足 -----Some Beds

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