Renata & Friends: A Photographic Essay Of Soft Sculpture By Cassandra Bickman

Sally Knows How To Party

Sally Knows How To Party

I was in a deep sleep one night at my great grandmother’s small town midwestern home, when suddenly I heard a loud crash downstairs. I put on her old blue silk robe, and walked down the rickety staircase to her green shag carpet basement with those old vinyl wooden walls, mugged with that dense musty smell midwestern basements have, with a slight scent of cigar smoke lingering in the air. To my surprise, The Versatile Henry Mancini and His Orchestra record was playing, and as I turned the corner, this strange silhouette was hanging from an old crystal chandelier, and another was laughing hysterically as it had crashed into the glass coffee table below. It was the strangest thing, it was 3am, and it appeared that I had walked into the winding down sloppy haze of a midnight soirée! As I further opened my eyes, I realized that it was my very own CLOSET that had come alive!! In awe, I sat down on the pink floral couch next to my favorite green suit whom introduced themselves to me as “Irene and Eileen the inflatable siamese twins”, they were classy yet bizarre, and were telling me an intriguing story about their favorite lizard named Susan and her popsicle stand in the desert.

 
Irene & Eileen, The Inflatable Siamese Twins

Irene & Eileen, The Inflatable Siamese Twins

 

It was Renata hanging from the chandelier, who told me she was my dad’s lady friend, and Maude to my right, who told me she liked to model as she poured me a sparkling glass of champagne. My favorite white leather jacket Sally had a real swagger, and Toby was obsessively puffing away at my grandpa’s old cigars. Then out came stumbling this very unpredictable figure from the bathroom who was Nancy, she was telling us this absurd story about how she was once a nanny who became an assassin. In another corner sat Big Red, who was a bit frozen as he told me he drank some beetle juice and was feeling a bit stunned. I later found my black silk gown sitting on the floor as she had taken a slight dose of acid and was in the midst of an epiphany, her name was Tiffany. I partied with them until just before sunrise, when I passed out on that floral couch with a tantalized smile. 

Maud likes to Model

Maud likes to Model

Toby In His Tuxedo

Toby In His Tuxedo

As I opened my eyes the next morning, I looked around to greet my new friends, yet they had all vanished into deflated empty piles of my very own clothes on the ground. When I told my grandma over coffee the next morning, she oddly just gave me a mischievous smirk when I told her what had happened, as if this wasn’t the first time this sort of thing happened here late at night. She said nothing more, and neither did I. Luckily, there was an old camera lying on the ground that night, and these photos that I snapped are all that I have left to reconcile the daze of this splendid, mysterious evening. 

 
 

Tea Hacic-Vlahovic's Debut Memoir-Cum-Milanese Fever Dream Is Now Available

Tea Hacic is an MDMA-fueled Oscar Wilde with fake eyelashes and this book is a Fear and Loathing for the late Berlusconi-era; a deep walk of shame that tiptoes between a bewildering Bildungsroman and a fever dream of social climbing and social embarrassment. Click here to order now online and in print.

Tao Of Maceo: Read Our Interview Of Multi-Disciplinary Artist & Behavior Economist Maceo Paisley

What does it mean to be a twenty-first century renaissance man? For Maceo Paisley, a wide range of disciplines comes together in a positive feedback loop that supports his indefatigable exploration of human behavior. Using embodied inquiry, he investigates his own identity and presents his findings in performance and film. A prolific writer of prose, he just released his first book Tao of Maceo, which takes inventory of his personal beliefs and aims to define his perspective more acutely. Stepping off the stage, he cultivates community through his Chinatown gallery, Nous Tous and a multi-pronged community practice/social innovation agency called Citizens of Culture. Click here to read more

Preorder Autre's New Summer 2018 Issue

Autre’s rainbow magic Summer 2018 Issue features a 23-page interview of the legendary Los Angeles-based Norwegian-born photographer Torbjørn Rødland who has three major solo exhibitions this summer. One in Los Angeles at David Kordansky gallery, one at Bergen Kunsthall in Norway and one at Fondazione Prada in Milan. The feature includes a double interview with Autre’s editor-in-chief Oliver Maxwell Kupper and one with Serpentine Gallery’s director Hans-Ulrich Obrist. This issue also includes over 40 pages of fashion editorials with LVMH prize finalist Eckhaus Latta and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. Autre also interviews actor Matthew Modine with rare photographs from the set of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, feminist surrealist Penny Slinger, Lisa Immordino Vreeland on the legacy of photographer Cecil Beaton with gorgeous self portraits, Duncan Hannah on living the high life in New York City, Marilyn Minter on her new show at Regen Projects, legendary German New Wave director Wim Wenders, and Herb Alpert. The summer edition also includes an excerpt from Françoise Hardy’s memoirs, interviews with Lauren Halsey about her community-based practice and Koak about the power of comics, and a special photo document from Pierre-Ange Carlotti. Preorder now – the first ten orders receive a previous issue of Autre of your choosing, for free (exempt are issues volume one issue three with John Baldessari and volume two issue one with David Hockney). Only 50 copies left of our Spring 2018 issue featuring Paul Thomas Anderson. 

 

Kate Parfet's Mirror Domme Launch Party @ The Home of Kulapat Yantrasast In Venice

Autre launches Mirror Domme, Kate Parfet’s debut book of poetry. This first collection is strewed buckshot of intimate recollections told in delirious balancing of lyrical phrase and fragmented prose. Inspired by the sudden death of a lover, these poems – as if written in part with invisible ink – illumine for the speaker a new self, one that dares to be visible in the context of loss. photographs by Oliver Kupper

Read An Exclusive Excerpt From D. Foy's New Novel "Patricide"

Suicidal, apt to crumple on a dime in fits, I was flown out to my father’s in his dustbowl town, where nothing was expected, said my father, the place would be all mine, take a job when you’re ready, said my father, or anything you like. I’m looking for my own work, said my father, but we’ll fix you up, and if you need it, said my father, we’ll go find it, that’s what really counts. You’ve only got to get here, said my father, that’s it. We’ll be together then, and together we’ll be good. Click here to read more. 

Courageous Writing For IRL Cowards: Novelist Matt Binder Chats With Novelist Clancy Martin On Making Bad Decisions and The Thin Veil of Fiction

In 2012, shortly before I lost my mind and committed myself to writing fiction, I was sitting at a pal’s apartment in San Diego, waiting on him to shower and ready himself for a night out, when I picked up a copy of the Vice fiction issue. I flipped through the magazine’s pages looking for something of interest. A story titled “Whores I Have Loved” immediately resonated with me. I understood the sentiment completely. I read with ferocious curiosity as the writer sermonized on the dangers of falling in love with prostitutes in locations foreign and remote. Prior to reading the piece, I didn’t think it possible for a work to exist that was so honest, tender, and vulnerable about a subject so fraught with moral pitfalls. Click here to read more. 

Less Than Weirdo: Read Max Barrie's Latest Tale of Relapse and Redemption in Los Angeles

The noise in my head is so loud some nights, only bashing my brains in or a power drill would suffice. Then this Meat Robot called Max would finally know peace. The delusional hemorrhoids of loneliness are consistently painful and at times paralyzing. I’m around clients all day at work; I pass families and doggies as I stroll through Brentwood; I have a great relationship with my therapist who I see four times a week. But at the end of the day, I always go home alone. And there’s no good way to get home. Any route I take, each step is cemented with sadness, as if I’m walking a long plank to my apartment… trying to avoid dog shit on the sidewalk. Click here to read more. 

Creamed His Corn: Read Luke Goebel's Newest Stream Of Lascivious Consciousness In A Short Story About Desire, Fantasy And Wanting a Bigger Everything

photograph by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari

He was a “he,” which meant the dummie knew already that there was only two things in the world that mattered and he wasn’t either of them. Were, were! There was the online world of instagram photos and sexiness. Everything that was young or female and sexy or famous and rich and arching its back in a photo, which he wasn’t and then there was the physical world of problems, such as taking a shit and what was written on the wall, and having to go upstairs to take a shit because someone was already in the bathroom, which was the janitor, probably, and him being on campus, and him being in his office, and his being on campus, and him being a fuckhead professor, which you shouldn’t and couldn’t really even say as a fuckhead who was a professor. Fuckhead. click here to read the full story

Max Barrie Talks About The Vagina of His Dreams In the Latest Installment of A Trendy Tragedy

"...Women in the past, they usually reacted like a dog ate their homework. Of course, I'm referring to the ladies that weren't handing me an invoice after I ejaculated..." Max Barrie talks about the "vagina of his dreams," being in the friend zone and the ultimate torment of both rejection and self realization in the latest installment of his non-fiction short story series A Trendy Tragedy. Read the store here