A Samurai of the Sea: An Interview With Photographer Nolan Hall On Surf Culture and The Mysticism Therein

April 1, 2016

Surf culture has a certain spiritual mysticism that extends beyond the sport and enters the realm of the samurai. There are codes, there are secrets and there are veils split by the curling lip of the tide. Surfers are like samurai warriors of the sea. Growing up in Capistrano Beach, the waves beckoned a young Nolan Hall and so did the clandestine beaches, and secret surf locales and the legends of the sport. And since, surf culture has become a way of life for Hall; not only as a surfer, but also a documentarian. His photographs have taken him on wild adventures – a selection of those images will be shown at his solo exhibition, entitled Peregrines, opening this weekend at Paul Loya Gallery. In the following interview, Autre chatted with Hall about his internship with legendary surf brand RVCA during its halcyon days before it was purchased by Billabong in 2010, his entrance into the Deadbeat Photographers Club that counts the renowned skater and photographer Ed Templeton as a fellow member, and his current stint as the tour manager of the Vans surf club team. What you will learn about Nolan is that he is the ultimate samurai of the sea.

OLIVER KUPPER: What came first, surfing or photography?

NOLAN HALL: Surfing.

KUPPER: How did that come about?

HALL: My dad surfed. He would take me down the beach at a young age. When I was really little, I was super not into it. But my dad was in this surf club, and I met a bunch of kids my age who surfed. We would skate around together. I think once I made solid friends that did the same thing, I got super hyped on it. It just grew from there.

KUPPER: Where did you grow up?

HALL: I grew up in Capistrano Beach.

KUPPER: What was it about surfing that you knew was going to be a part of your life?

HALL: I don’t know. My dad did it, so it was always easy to hop in the car and go surf with him. It felt like summer.

KUPPER: Surfing does have a spiritual aspect to it. It’s like entering into a strange, new religion. It’s not like other sports.

HALL: For sure. It’s dumb in a sense, but it’s one of those things you can’t describe. I’m sure everyone feels it when they’re doing it. I know when I surf before work, or in the morning, I feel better for the rest of the day.

KUPPER: I’ve had friends who are surfers. They say that there’s something about going into the water and coming out – it’s like a life changing experience.

HALL: It’s definitely one of those things where people get hooked. Someone’s friend turns them onto it, and it’s like being let into a whole new world.

KUPPER: Besides your dad, who are some surfers that you look up to?

HALL: When I was younger, my friends and I rode traditional longboards. At the time, that was super uncool. It was the late 90s, the age of the shortboard. Now, you can surf whatever. There are no weird vibes. I grew up longboarding, so we used to watch all these older guys from the 60s – Lance Carson, Skip Frye.

KUPPER: So you’re kind of a renegade to be in with the longboarders?

HALL: I wouldn’t say “renegade.” We were off on our own deal.

KUPPER: How did photography come about?

HALL: My dad had these small Nikon cameras. What got me fired up was the movie The Seedling, filmed by Thomas Campbell. Campbell, Barry McGee, Andy Davis – all these guys were making this really impactful art. That was around when I was fourteen, when I was just hanging out with my friends. We were surfing, skating, getting into these adventures. I wanted to document it.

KUPPER: What did your parents do?

HALL: My mom works in oils, like landscape oils. I never know what to call her. She’s a pleine aire artist. My dad has bartended, hung wallpaper. He hung wallpaper for the majority of when I was younger.

KUPPER: He was also into photography and surfing?

HALL: I think he was into photography the way your average person was. He had the Nikon film camera, but that was the only way to take photos at the time. I wouldn’t say he was a super enthusiast.

KUPPER: Do you shoot mainly with film?

HALL: Yeah.

KUPPER: Are you a film purist?

HALL: I’ve had a digital camera for gigs and promotional work. But people are psyched on film. Primarily, I have a Rangefinder camera that I take black and white in.

KUPPER: Back to surfing, because it’s a big part of your career, what is your theory on why surfing and skating are so intertwined with art? You don’t see basketball or football being explored in the same way.

HALL: Creative people invented those things. Someone, at some point, to break the lull, said, “I’m going to go ride that wave. I’m going to make a board and try to ride that.” That’s some pioneering shit. Skateboarding has the most creative people. Iconic skateboards are insane. They are both art forms in themselves. When you’re skateboarding, you can choose to look a certain way, there are certain lines. When you’re surfing, you have a certain style.

KUPPER: Let’s talk about RVCA. You teamed up with them before they were bought out?

HALL: Yeah. When I was in high school, so before 2003, the Bowers Museum in Orange County was doing a surfing retrospective. RVCA was doing an opening party. We did a catalogue to go with it. KC, my old boss, sent me on a school day to the museum with a terrible digital camera. I get there, and I see Aaron Rose, and I was so nervous and speechless. He was super cool and posed for a photo. Then I just floated around as people were setting up the show, and I loved it.

KUPPER: How did you get started with them?

HALL: I had done things like that, where they would give me assignments. I also worked at the warehouse, doing sample sales. This was before I was officially hired. While I was still going to community college, they offered me a position as KC’s assistant. I was still living with my parents. The first day I showed up in the office, I introduced myself to KC. He was very kind to me, but then he just went back to work. I was sitting there with nothing to do. Eventually, he was like, “Do you need something?” He had no idea.

KUPPER: So he had to invent things for you to do?

HALL: The first thing he had me started on was building the catalogue. The company was so small. I think it was a 20 or 30 page catalogue that I laid out on cork. I had no idea how to use cork. I was trying to figure it out, kind of getting it. We got it printed at Kinko’s, like with a spiral. It was super early. Since I was also into photography, if we needed more images, they would say, “Hey, meet this person in town.” That led to semi-annual trips with people. It blossomed. With RVCA, you meet so many artists.

KUPPER: They were a quintessential brand.

HALL: It’s so different now, but at the time, it was so new. It was such a cool vibe.

KUPPER: I don’t think there are brands like that anymore.

HALL: It’s hard when you become so big. You either stick to your niche and make specific stuff, or you try to make everything and it becomes kind of vanilla.

KUPPER: When did you start ANP Magazine?

HALL: That might have been 2005.

KUPPER: Were you there around the founding of that?

HALL: Yeah.

KUPPER: It’s not around anymore?

HALL: I think it is, but they don’t do quarterly. I think they might only do it once a year now. I don’t know how it seemed from the outside, but we were just scrambling to get it to the printer. Distributing it was insane. We physically drove to places. The East Coast probably got a few boxes sent out, but then we had to physically drop them off everywhere else.

KUPPER: It got serious reach. People experienced it and liked it. That's from my outside perspective, living in LA at that time. There was this motorcycle garage/café called Choked. That’s where I first saw it. I remember loving it. It was super rock n’ roll.

HALL: It was cool because it was all interesting. They weren’t pushing anything. They weren’t trying to sell you anything.

KUPPER: You have worked with Aaron Rose and some other big artists. You must have learned a lot and grown up as an artist through that process.

HALL: Those guys were there working on the mag. I didn’t work extensively for them. I was just the help, for the most part. But it was cool to see it happen. Writing articles, editing down things.

KUPPER: When did Vans come along?

HALL: After RVCA, I was playing in a band. We got a record deal with Vice Records, so we wanted to take it seriously. We did that for two years, touring. Music was different then. There was no social media. We weren’t getting out there, and we weren’t making any money. We just kind of called it. I moved back in with my parents. While I was there, my boss at Vans now hit me up and said, “Hey, I need someone to go to Hawaii during Triple Crown.” So I was like, "Yeah!" I went to do reportage. That was a two month trip, and at the end of it, he offered me an assistantship. Shortly after that, I got hired as the surf team manager.

KUPPER: What does that job involve? You travel a lot.

HALL: It’s similar to a tour manager in a band. Booking, accommodations, flights, setting up trips, coordinating with filmmakers and photographers.

KUPPER: What’s the most recent place you’ve been?

HALL: I was just in Florida for a surfing event that we sponsored. I took a few of the guys up to New York for the 50th anniversary. They did a bunch of parties and events all over.

KUPPER: Throughout all that, you get to be really creative. You get to have the camera out and everything.

HALL: It’s cool. Every now and then, our art director will ask for photos for this or that. It’s not a whole lot of pressure to create images. I’m just out on these trips taking photos.

KUPPER: What is the Deadbeat Photographer’s Club?

HALL: It’s a publishing company by Clint Woodside. He approached a few people when he was first starting it, and that became the core group. Ed Templeton, Devin Briggs, Grant Hatfield, and myself. Those are the core people, and there a bunch of others. It’s just a total nerd club. It’s funny: when we’re all together, we all have our cameras. If something interesting happens, five people rush over to try to take a picture of it. Ed’s been a mentor to me in growing a photo and art career.

KUPPER: And you’re starting to push more towards that career? You have a show coming up. Do you want to start transitioning into a career as an artist?

HALL: It would be awesome. I also think it would be really difficult. If you can be doing what you love, I’m totally for that.

KUPPER: What can we expect from your show coming up?

HALL: It’s all photos from either work trips or just around town. It’s moments in surf culture. The photos are small moments of being in that environment, without being just surf photography. I’ve never been interested in the action shot. There are some action photos in there, but it’s not normally what you see in surf photos. It’s like a backstage photo of a band – something you don’t get to see.

KUPPER: And you’re deep inside of it. You’ve become sort of a documentarian of that lifestyle.

HALL: It has been documentary.

KUPPER: Looking at your work, you can tell that it’s not “surf photography.” It’s documenting surf culture, in a way that’s embedded in the fabric of that lifestyle.

HALL: It’s a study of the culture.

KUPPER: Who are some other photographers that photograph that world? It seems like there aren’t many.

HALL: There are a bunch. Todd Glaser, who is a working staff photographer for SURFER Magazine. He documents everything. He has everything inside and outside of the water, environmental portraiture stuff.

KUPPER: The surfer world right now still seems kind of cult. It seems like a secret, in a way.

HALL: It’s tough. There’s a lot out there, but you have to travel to far places where there is nothing around, at times when there are storms and weird weather patterns. There are also a lot of people that like to keep beaches and waves secret.

KUPPER: What’s the craziest place you’ve ever surfed? Or the most beautiful?

HALL: Byron Bay in Western Australia has some beautiful beaches. The Barton River area is all wine country, so there’s no development on the coast. I surfed in Alaska two or three years ago. It was springtime, so it wasn’t freezing. But it was an awesome experience. It felt like you were breathing good oxygen. You’re out in an area where there’s no one around.

Nolan Hall "Peregrines" opens April 2 at at Paul Loya Gallery in Culver City and runs until May 21, 2016. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Eat Me: An Interview With Remy Bennett and Anna Del Gaizo On Murder, Cannibals, and Female Empowerment

March 31, 2016

At SPRING/BREAK Art Show earlier this month, I stumbled upon 1985 Artists’ booth, Glory Hole. Within that space, was a young woman’s bedroom. It seemed a stereotypically normal woman’s bedroom at first: clothes, underwear, makeup, and fashion magazines. Upon further examination, there were some alarming items contained within said room. There was a wall covered in erect male penises. This woman owned an extensive collection of gore horror films. There were knives and other weapons. Perhaps most nerve-wracking of the items was a shrine to the Los Angeles-based Satanist serial killer, Richard Ramirez. But even then, one doesn’t want to judge. In this art world of ours, we probably all know someone like this, obsessed with horror and listening to Norwegian black metal. Doesn’t mean they are crazy right? RIGHT? In this case, not so much, a TV reveals the whole story. The items belong to a predatory web cam girl, who lures men in through her web cam service only to fuck, murder, and cannibalize these men upon their arrival.

The installation was created by filmmaker Remy (yes, granddaughter of Tony) Bennett and Broadly writer Anna del Gaizo based on their short film shown at the installation, entitled ‘Eat Me.’ The film and subsequent installation are not without themes: desensitization, violence, anonymity, and social isolation among them. But Bennett, who gained indie film notoriety for her Lynchian romance ‘Buttercup Bill’ has been a horror obsessive her entire life, and really just wanted to make a gruesome and gory film. She found her story when she learned of her high school friend del Gaizo’s real life exploits in being a web cam girl. Del Gaizo gets to fictionalize her own experience in her performance in the film, and Bennett gets to create the horror scenario that she has dreamed of since childhood. The pair is still looking for funding to increase the length of the film, but I had to take the time to talk with them about this fascinating project. It was a fun conversation.

ADAM LEHRER: Remy, When did you get interested in horror movies?

REMY BENNET: Since the day I was born (laughs). I was looking at our high school yearbook, and my yearbook page is just a picture of Motel Hell. I started making horror films in the seventh grade. I was obsessed with the slasher drama. I would be running up and down the stairs with a camera in one hand and a knife in the other trying to get a POV, and my dad would have to stop me.

ADAM LEHRER: Was “Eat Me” conceived as a film first or an installation?

BENNETT: A film, which is actually something that I’m still working on to make it longer.

LEHRER: So what made you want to live in this world longer with the SPRING/BREAK installation?

BENNETT: Design is a big part of the film. I’m interested in the stories that objects tell, and how much of the story comes from characters surrounding those objects. We thought there was detailed story to tell with her belongings.

LEHRER: It reminded me a bit of what Elmgreen & Dragset do. They set up these sets, and there are all these clues around, so you find out about who the character is.

BENNETT: I’ve always been a fan of that kind of art, like Sophie Calle. You’re being put in the role of this forensic investigator, and you’re collecting these clues.

LEHRER: Was it interesting to see people interacting with your things?

BENNET: It is our personal belongings. It’s weird. You’re talking about yourself while simultaneously talking about a character. It’s fun!

DEL GAIZO: The character’s style is essentially a curated version of my own. Aside from the cannibalistic serial killer aspect, there’s a lot of me.

LEHRER: That was what was so cool about it. When I saw it, first I’m thinking, “I’ve seen girls like this before. She’s a young girl, she’s into sex, she’s into drugs. She’s snorting coke. Maybe she has a problem.” I didn’t find that there was anything out of the ordinary for a woman of a certain age. But then you find out that she’s a murderer. Was that something you were interested in?

BENNETT: I really set out to make a film about sadism and cannibalism. That was the main goal.

LEHRER: Speaking of, I was also curious what you might think of this movement of these artier high-concept horror films: ‘The Witch,’ ‘It Follows,’ ‘The Babadook,’ and all those. Like I thought ‘The Witch’ had some good ideas, with the joining the witches at the end being the good ending.

BENNETT: Well, I like traditional gore movies like ‘Blood Feast’ and ‘Wizard of Gore’ by Herschell Gordon Lewis. That’s what I wanted to do. Do you listen to Bret Easton Ellis’ podcast?

LEHRER: Yeah, he hates those movies.

BENNET: (laughs) Yeah, I liked his podcast with Eli Roth, and I liked what he said when he was like, “if someone has talent, and ideas, that should be nurtured.”

DEL GAIZO: Then again, Bret Easton Ellis did write ‘The Canyons,’ (laughs).

LEHRER: So part of the film is biographical, because Anna did some webcamming?

DEL GAIZO:. I thought I would probably turn it into some long-form essay or some sort of investigative journalism. I’ve always been interested in subtleties of human sexuality. If I’m going to research something, I’d rather just do it. In college, I got stuck in this class that I needed to graduate. It was a class about maids in popular culture, which is the most specific class ever. One week, we studied the eroticization of maids, so I went to work as a fantasy maid.

LEHRER: So you just like to immerse yourself?

DEL GAIZO: Yeah, it was a personal experiment. It’s kind of harrowing and soul-crushing. You have to be kind of a sociopath to be fine with it. I would just take these screenshots once in a while of the dialogue, like the shit these guys would say. It was hilarious and weird. One guy just paid me before I was even naked to give him the finger. Some guys just want to smoke pot with you.

LEHRER: Lonely dudes?

DEL GAIZO: Well, what also surprised me was that there were young, totally normal, cute guys.

LEHRER: I guess I imagine loneliness because if I really wanted to see a naked girl, there is so much pornography I could watch. So the live aspect seems like something else.

DEL GAIZO: Intimacy. That’s part of what’s really intriguing about it. It is virtual and hollow. Ultimately, I would just hang out in my room with a computer. It doesn’t actually feel real. But there is this intimacy. One guy just wanted someone to hang out and talk to. I was like his virtual girlfriend for a while. It wasn’t even overtly sexual. I talked to this kid for three hours because he didn’t know if he was gay or not and wanted to talk to a therapist

BENNETT: There were a lot of sweet people too.

DEL GAIZO: A lot of mega creeps too. A lot of daddy requests and little girl stuff. Things you would expect.

BENNET: I was a little bit tentative at first. I’m a fictional filmmaker. I was like, would you feel comfortable if I adapted your experience into fiction. She was like, of course!

DEL GAIZO: I was excited. It gave me a reason for doing it. I wasn’t just being a deviant anymore.

BENNETT: I always wanted to make a Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer-esque kind of film. It’s a cold portrayal of this guy’s life, when he happens to be a serial killer.

LEHRER: Henry is a stone-cold killer, but the film give him an empathetic portrayal. We’re not exactly seeing an empathetic portrayal in this film, so what was appealing about Richard Ramirez?

BENNETT: She looks up to Ramirez like he’s a rock star. She’s also a Satanist. But I would definitely not compare her to a Dahmer, or even a Bundy. She’s much more like a stone cold psychopath.

LEHRER: Ramirez targeted women, he was sadistic. He would take anyone down.

BENNETT: He had a weird, but horrible, sense of humor. And the Satanist thing is such a statement. It’s such a teenage silliness. It’s like walking around wearing all black and listening to AC/DC like, “If you want blood, come and get it.” He was shameless.

DEL GAIZO: From my perspective, the fact that Richard Ramirez is physically attractive resonates. I saw the character as someone shallow and narcissistic; really into aesthetics and fashion – all that crap. This is terrible to say, but there is a reason why he had fans girls in the courtroom. He has the looks.

LEHRER: The piece also plays with perception so much. I know certain girls who might be into Black Metal bands like Darkthrone and serial killers who are not psychos. But that’s my age. Maybe a sixty-year-old woman, right when he sees the pot or the coke, is going to think something different about the character even before the sadism.

BENNETT: That was interesting to observe people’s thought processes. People were speaking out loud, which was so interesting. People would see the bloody sneakers and go, “Oh, shit. She’s coming for me!”

LEHRER: My girlfriend thought it was badass. She works in the corporate world. In order to define herself as a woman in that space, she has to go through all these back channels. Whereas this girl is establishing her aggression and herself in this totally overt way.

DEL GAIZO: These webcam customers are inviting this girl over to their homes. And that would happen. When I did this stuff, I was lying. I said I was living in LA. Guys were giving me their addresses in LA and saying, “Why don’t you just come over?” It’s very presumptuous to assume that I’m not a psychopath. That’s what we wanted to toy with. And she is this complete psychopath – this isn’t a rape revenge story.

BENNETT: The guy that we cast is a beautiful person who would express this deep loneliness in such a poignant way. Neither him nor Anna is a professional actor, but they’re really intuitive. He’s expressing so much love for this person because he’s so lonely. It was actually a beautiful thing, and she ends up killing him and eating him.

LEHRER: The killing was crazy enough, but when you see the eating, I was like, what?

DEL GAIZO: She makes protein shakes with the dudes!

BENNETT: Yeah, it has some humor to it. It’s not completely earnest, of course.

LEHRER: How much longer is the movie going to be than what we saw?

BENNETT: I’m going to aim for fifteen minutes. I just need to raise some money to finish it. It’s a total fucking B movie that we just threw together at first. But we’ve cared about it so much and researched it for so long that I just need to finish it. The rest of the film is going to be real emails that Anna has compiled, and we’ll have voiceovers that will be integrated into the film. You see the scenario play out with the voiceover.

LEHRER: I read in an interview before your first film came out with Bedford and Bowery, you said, “I’m not interested in making anything that doesn’t have to do with sex.”

BENNETT: That was taken out of context. It was extracted in a way that was weird. I think sex is such a basic component of art.

LEHRER: Is there anything in culture anymore that doesn’t have to do with sex?

DEL GAIZO: It’s so intertwined with every aspect of human nature. But when we were filming, we weren’t trying to make it sexy.

BENNETT: That wasn’t our goal. It’s about a sexual thing, but there was a conscious effort to resist eroticizing it.

DEL GAIZO: It’s for money, like most sex-related jobs.

LEHRER: It’s almost like it’s in direct opposition to the themes in your first movie, which was more about intimacy and jealousy.

BENNETT: I would say that film was a lot more earnest, in certain ways, about relationships and growing pains and childhood. I am a filmmaker who is much more interested in genre film – specifically horror – and how you can tell a story through those tropes. I like extremes. I think that sex can be like horror – it can be taken to the extreme, dosing it with humor and style.

LEHRER: Technology has entwined sex and violence more than it ever has, simply by the images you’re subjected to, that seems to be a theme explored in the film.

BENNETT: Sex has always been debauched, it’s just on the surface now.

LEHRER: Pornography is great in small doses, but a 13-year-old kid who starts watching hardcore porn is going to be fucked up by the time he’s 18 and has sex with someone.

DEL GAIZO: Definitely. He’s going to be confused that his girlfriend isn’t acting like a porn star. If I was fourteen and watching porn, I’d be like, “I want to deep throat a cock like that. That’s what works? I’ll do that.”

BENNET: Do I have to live up to it, or will I rebel against it?

DEL GAIZO: I feel like most people will try to live up to it rather than rebel.

LEHRER: Did you feel empowered at all doing the webcam stuff?

DEL GAIZO: Totally. You get a lot of compliments. [Laughs.] It’s a dichotomy. Even though no one had physically touched me, I would need to take a shower afterwards.

BENNETT: You’re technically in control, but you still have to navigate the levels of their control over you.

DEL GAIZO: It’s such a trick. I’ve always felt that you could use being objectified into something empowering. That’s always interested me as a concept.

BENNETT: We got so many unsolicited dick pics sent to us. Dudes, what are you thinking?

LEHRER: If you do that, you might end up in an art installation (laughs).

DEL GAIZO: It’s alarming how desensitized I became to seeing them.

BENNETT: Anna is a highly intelligent human being, a writer, a fully formed member of society. The minute this girl is on the webcam, the way that they communicate is so infantilizing.

DEL GAIZO: A lot of the guys would be like, “You’re actually really smart. Why are you doing this?”

LEHRER: Misogyny, much?

DEL GAIZO: People think that someone who willingly objectifies herself doesn’t deserve to get treated with respect. I understand the psychology.

BENNETT: Cops don’t investigate the murders of prostitutes the same way. They’re dehumanized. The character does the opposite. She is in control.

LEHRER: Is murder, in the metaphorical sense, empowering?

BENNETT: Totally.

DEL GAIZO: Do you know how many times I’ve fantasized about murdering guys?

BENNETT: The amount of times you’ve been disrespected, condescended to, dehumanized – you just want to flip out. Making this movie was therapeutic.

Click here to watch Remy Bennett and Anna del Gaizo's EAT ME. Text, interview and photographs by Adam Lehrer. Follow Autre on INSTAGRAM: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Calamity Serenity: An Interview with Preston Douglas and Harry Patterson

March 29, 2016

Walking around New York Fashion Week: Men’s, you are likely to befriend other dudes that are as obsessed with fashion as you are. It makes you feel like a bit less of a weirdo. One such friend I made at this last round was Preston Douglas Boyer, a guy who looked a bit like a cross between a Hesher longhair and a teenage Supreme worshipper that was actually a Houston-based fashion designer who just released his first collection of motocross inspired and geometric printed line of garments back in February.

Boyer is something of a Hypebeast. You can watch videos of him on YouTube as a 14-year old giving his informed opinion on the latest drops of Jordan’s and luxury brand sneakers. That taste for luxury sneakers later translated towards clothes, and Boyer initially worked as a stylist for Houston and international musicians that would come from the city. Last year he took the plunge and started designing clothes that he wanted to wear, all while studying marketing at the University of Houston.

Also interesting is that his partner and brand equal is Harry Patterson, who is in charge of production for the brand. The guys are equally invested into the garments as they are into the production of the brand, indicative of kids who grew up in an era where image was everything and everywhere. Designers like Boyer are going to start appearing more in the industry. As opposed to the designers before them that found themselves influenced by Rei Kawakubo, Le Corbusier and Joy Division, we are about to see a lot of kids that have been mainlining Supreme and Nike for as long as they can remember. Read on for my conversation with the guys.

ADAM LEHRER: So yesterday you told me that you started the brand because you felt something was missing from fashion. What was that thing that you felt was missing?

PRESTON DOUGLAS: I really felt like functionality within luxury menswear was missing. You buy a jacket for $1,500, you buy a pair of jeans for $1,500, and you can have that for the rest of your life and as far as functionality goes our jacket has three jackets in one. You can style it 20 different ways. You can’t style a Saint Laurent bomber jacket like that.

LEHRER: You can’t even put it on unless you weigh less than 140 pounds (laughs).

PRESTON DOUGLAS: I want to change up the patterns. I love geometric patterns.

LEHRER: Yeah.

PRESTON DOUGLAS: Being a consumer for so long, starting with sneakers, I have an appreciation for color that I feel like a lot of menswear lacks. When I buy a piece and spend a thousand dollars on a jacket, I want that to be a piece that when I go out people are like, “What is that? Where did you get that? Who made that?” And then you tell them, "Preston Douglas."

LEHRER: So you feel that men’s fashion for a while now has been black, black, dark colors. So you want a larger pallet?

PRESTON DOUGLAS: Black is my favorite color but I want a larger palette… but tasteful. I love prints but if you’re just doing all black and all whites and grays and then you just put together some print shirts, I don’t like that as much as incorporating said print into a variety of pieces.

LEHRER: You mentioned you wanted Harry to tell the stories. What were the stories with these first few designs you came up with?

PRESTON DOUGLAS: Basically the collection’s called Calamity Serenity. The past two years of my life have been polar opposites. My life about two years ago was complete despair and chaos, I was lost. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself. I didn’t know how to function. So that’s the calamity, the black represents that chaos.

Then before I knew it I hit this point in my life where everything started to change. My life the year after is serenity. It’s a complete antithesis to calamity and you can see that in the colors. I feel like everyone has a point in their life where they’ve been through some really dark times - when you are ready to give up. I hope my story can help someone else.

LEHRER: Growing up, what designers made you think about apparel more than footwear for a brand?

PRESTON DOUGLAS: Christophe Decarnin. I remember looking at his look books. Really I got into luxury menswear because of luxury sneakers. Kris Van Assche for example. Ann Demeulemeester. Rick Owens. All these people had amazing sneakers. It’s all out there now with social media and Hypebeast and Highsnobiety.

LEHRER: Then socially too it’s become more accepted for dudes to be into fashion.

PRESTON DOUGLAS: Yeah! 8th, 9th grade when I started to get into sneakers and started my YouTube channel, I’d get called faggot or gay. Every single day all the time. I got major bullied for wearing colorful shoes, colorful Nikes. But I went to a private school so the only thing I could express myself with in terms of fashion were my shoes.

LEHRER: Exactly.

PRESTON DOUGLAS: I kind of created my own friend group and found my own path through creativity manifesting itself in a lot of different forms. First being sneakers; I had a sneaker resell business. I started a photography business. I started styling rappers and interviewing people when they came into Houston. Then with fashion, I felt like I’d been a consumer and seen enough to where I saw myself being able to fill a gap.

LEHRER: So you’ve always been entrepreneurial?

PRESTON DOUGLAS: Yeah I’m an entrepreneur first because nothing can happen without it.

LEHRER: As far as growth goes, what are your highest hopes for what the brand could be in a couple years?

PRESTON DOUGLAS: In a year I’d like to be showing in New York, possibly LA. I haven’t really been out there enough yet to see if my aesthetic and my brand fits with that culture and that lifestyle. There’s a lot of people in LA I look up to with regards to the fashion industry. So keeping it within the United States first and growing my local recognition and name and getting my manufacturing down.

LEHRER: So Harry, what’s your end of the brand?

HARRY PATTERSON: I was a production designer, I started out designing stages for concerts. Mainly live music, that’s what I thought I wanted to do for a while. I’ve done a lot of stuff making music or art. But while Preston is designing the clothing I want to be designing the set.

LEHRER: So it’s not just a one-man designing type thing? You guys are working in unison to bring two different ideas into one setting?

HARRY PATTERSON: Yeah I think that’s really important. This time he hit me up when the line was done and wanted me to DJ. I got him to take photos at one of my shows in Houston and he was like “I’ll give you a deal if you DJ my fashion show.” In December I called him to catch up and I ended up doing the production for it. I was skeptical at first, I had never worked in the fashion industry before but it worked out really well.

LEHRER: Were you interested in fashion or have you just gotten more into it now working with him?

HARRY PATTERSON: A little bit. Not as much as I am now. I never thought I’d be working in the fashion industry.

LEHRER: I feel like a lot of creative people just happen to end up in it in one way or another.

PRESTON DOUGLAS: Yeah! But the show in Houston was a really cool opportunity. I’m really glad Harry was involved because there was talk of moving Houston Fashion Week to the next level.

HARRY PATTERSON: I actually thought that was what fashion week would be like when I went. I was like “ehh I’ve seen this in the galleria before,” this is going to be a bunch of clothes I’d wear to church. So it surprised me. In the past three days I’ve met more people in the fashion industry than I know in the music industry. It’s nice it’s smaller because it’s more of a collaborative feel.

LEHRER: Yeah I get that.

HARRY PATTERSON: It’s harder to get that vibe with people in music.

Shop the Preston Douglas Calamity/Serenity collection here. Text and interview by Adam Lehrer. Photographs by Clay Rodriguez. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

A Fashion Renegade Makes His Mark: An Interview With Designer Charles Elliot Harbison

March 25, 2016

Growing up near the Appalachian Mountains in his home state of North Carolina, New York-based fashion designer Charles Elliot Harbison was disconnected from the glitz, grunge, and all things in-between of New York fashion. Nevertheless, he still managed to find his way to aesthetics. Though it might seem surprising to the average New York cool kid, Harbison learned about style at the church. “There was propriety in it,” he says. “There was personal exhibition. There was worship. It was never thoughtless. I remember white shirts, blue blazer, bowtie, some suede bucks. That’s when I became acquainted with style.”

New York Fashion Week has solidified its position as the most commercial of all the Fashion Week’s. But as New York commerciality has reached its apex, a crop of young radical designers have emerged displaying awareness of contemporary art and pop culture and shining light back on American fashion: Eckhaus-Latta, Moses Gauntlett Cheng, Vejas, and Harbison.

But Harbison still stands out as something of a renegade even amongst this crop of wildly exciting fashion design talent. Though Harbison comes from a fine art background, having studied fine arts and painting at North Carolina State, he does not shy away from things traditionally “chic,” inspired by the luxurious approach to sportswear his mother employed when he was a child. He has leaned towards the subversive since he started his brand three years ago, employing a gender-neutral approach to his garments far before the industry jumped on the trend. But even with that, it’s not hard to imagine Park Avenue women loving to wear his modernist, color-blocked, and astoundingly beautiful clothes, allowing him a customer far wider in demographics that some of his contemporaries could ever conceive of reaching. “I don’t think [subversiveness] has to be relegated to just casual wear or crude construction,” says Harbison. “I want to do it through the filter of elegance, expense, and aspiration.”

Harbison also has some serious fashion education. Having learned about textiles and fabrics in Central Asia, studied fashion as a post-grad at Parsons, and worked for Michael Kors, Billy Reid, and Luca Luca, he has a leg up on his contemporaries with flat-out knowledge over the construction of garments. How would you describe those garments? This writer would say, “subtly striking.” They aren’t unwearable pieces of clothing architecture or tattered to shreds in the name of art. Harbison creates a form-flattering silhouette and then applies blocks of vibrant color to make the statement. They are the types of clothes that you find yourself staring at without realizing it. “Color, texture, embellishment, contrast, valence, proportion,” says Harbison. “I just wanted to be true to that when I started Harbison.”

He also has the ability to tell stories without grandiose displays of conceptual creation. Everything that Harbison presents in his shows, he sells. Much like Dries Van Noten, or even Yves Saint Laurent (minus the couture), he adheres to the tenets of ready-to-wear. And yet, he still conveys strong and discernible ideas. Patti Smith is the brand’s muse, and Harbison has also told stories centered around Erykah Badu, Aaliyah, and Nica Rothschild. The strong and cultured women that breathe in his garments has attracted the attention of Beyoncé, who wore custom Harbison to Kanye’s Yeezy Season 1 presentation (and Solangé wore the same in Paris some weeks later) and brought massive attention to the brand. “What the muse does is allow me to work them into my stories,” says Harbison.

When I meet Harbison in his small, clothes-filled office near Manhattan’s City Hall, he is in great spirits despite a busy morning. Though his brand sat out the last NYFW, he is still moving forward. His next collection will be the first “gender-neutral” collection where the clothes are cut in ways to fit a man and a woman’s body. He laughs a lot, and has an ease in explaining his ideas that is absent in a lot of creatives. We spoke at length about his history and the direction of the brand.

LEHRER: Are you still religious now?

HARBISON: I have a spiritual practice. I go to church in Harlem. It feeds me culturally as well as spiritually. It’s nice to have this whisper of my early life an hour away. [I live] in Bushwick. Every Sunday, I get to be around black people from the South.

LEHRER: Does it ever rub you the wrong way that something you’ve been doing for a while, gender-neutral collections, is now a trend and being done by like, Burberry?

HARBISON: It completely bothers me. When I launched [the brand] in 2013 it was inconceivable for the buyer to understand a man in a womenswear lookbook. They couldn’t understand seeing one coat on her and the same coat on him. From a market point of view, this is a women’s collection. But the cuts are neutral. This is how my friends and I live. When I was at Michael Kors, I would wear women’s samples as a dude. I never felt like my masculinity was compromised. Of course, I’m queer, but I saw straight guys and girls doing the same thing. By and large, America is slow to this idea. You have Selfridges with their gender-neutral merchandising.

LEHRER: They had a gender-neutral section in their store. Like, Hood by Air and J.W. Anderson.

HARBISON: Fully. You have Gucci putting dudes in pussy bow blouses. You have Jayden Smith as the face of Louis Vuitton womenswear. I feel like a lot of that gets filtered through novelty, comedy, and trend. But for me, it’s just a way of dressing that makes sense. I want to do it from a slick point of view. It makes me a better designer and marketer.

LEHRER: A lot of brands will throw dudes in a women’s lookbook or a show for a statement. You’re thinking about it in terms of the products.

HARBISON: The pant cut, we fit on a guy and a girl. The tunic cut, we do it in a way that works well on him, but it gives her tailoring options if she wants to do something more waisted. The transformability of the clothes allows them to become whatever you want them to become. It’s not just a visual statement. The shit feels good. There are a lot of clothes that are “exclusively for women,” but even that’s not true. Like, dude, it’s your life. If he wants to wear a dress, I don’t care. I just want to make cool ass shit that makes people happy.

LEHRER: Do you feel like buyers are starting to have a bigger say in what the collection is?

HARBISON: Store buyers, often, now see themselves as the end-all-be-all. It removes a lot of the excitement from the shopping and dressing process. What if someone had done that to McQueen? What if someone had done that to Galliano?

LEHRER: I shudder to think of the buyer telling Alexander McQueen what to do.

HARBISON: In the beginning, McQueen and Galliano were making crude but interesting stuff. There were problems with construction, but there was an idea there, and it was supported by the industry. It wasn’t until they got money that you saw their actual genius. Their processes were supported.

LEHRER: Color is a big part of your collections. Your brand came out three years ago, and at the time, the big predominant thing was street goth, ninja goth. Were you put off by the excessive use of black?

HARBISON: No, not put off. But I did want to offer something different. I design through the filter of art and modernism. The beginning of my arts education was in fine arts and painting. I love fine arts first.

LEHRER: When did you decide to transition from art to fashion?

HARBISON: In undergrad, I ended up weaving seventeen yards of this beautiful fabric. For me, it was like speaking to my Native American heritage. It didn’t feel right to wrap it on a canvas. So I thought to make some garments. That moment in undergrad, my junior year, was when I decided to figure this shit out.

LEHRER: You went to central Asia to study textiles. What did you learn over there?

HARBISON: I studied in Turkmenistan in undergrad – indigenous fabric construction. When I graduated, an opportunity came up to go back to the region for a year. I hadn’t found a job, so I thought, why not? I wanted to understand more about myself. There was so much mystery around that area. It’s an area that no one has really claimed. It’s former Soviet territory, but the population is South Asian, and they look East Asian in language and food. It’s influenced by the Middle East. It was also my first time out of the country, and it was the best decision I made. Fell in love with the fabrics. Spent time with students in their villages, and saw how they lived so casually amongst beautiful things.

LEHRER: And then you started working so you went to Parsons for some post-grad work, and then went to work?

HARBISON: I cut my teeth at Michael Kors Collection.

LEHRER: Your designs are much more radical than Michael Kors. What did you learn from him?

HARBISON: I learned so much: quality, detail, fabric, merchandising, selling, and how to dress people. Michael knows his way around client connection in a really amazing way. There’s an approach to his fashion that is really respectful of the genre. Though I approach novelty and art, I wanted [my clothes] to be rooted in shapes that are classic. I don’t make a lot of conceptual pieces. I love sportswear, so being with Michael was the best place for me.

LEHRER: You said you started your own brand by accident. What was that accident?

HARBISON: I burnt out. I was at Billy Reid and walked away. I started traveling. I had an Eat Pray Love experience. It was awesome. I read Patti Smith’s Just Kids, and that changed my life. She and Robert [Mapplethorpe] were the muses for my first capsule. I came back to New York from St. Croix. I had an interview at some collection, and when I walked in I thought, “I’ll be damned if I can do that.” Fashion week was coming up, and I didn’t want to skip a season. So I just made my own samples and shot some thing myself. Those images fell in the hands of Mark Holgate at Vogue and Virginie Smith. They said, “Do you want this to be a thing? We’ll feature you.” It’s been a hella crazy ride since.

LEHRER: I want to ask you about Patti Smith. You said she was the brand’s muse. What is it about her that you find so inspiring? Aside from, well, everything.

HARBISON: Beside everything she’s ever done? Patti walks this modern line of femininity, which I think is amazing. In her relationship with Robert, she was the stronger entity. He was the more fragile of the two. The relationship was beautiful and modern in that way. I find Patti’s lack of self-consciousness aspirational. She and Robert were vehemently sure of what they wanted in New York. That reminded me to take the risk. I was also able to touch this late ‘60s world that I love. In my mind, I feel I would have really done well in that time period touching on the modernist artists that I love.

LEHRER: You’ve done collections based on Sade, Aaliyah, Erykah Badu. Do you always design with a specific woman in mind?

HARBISON: For example, last spring I imagined Erykah Badu singing in a Zen garden carrying a Bryce Marden painting. This story allowed me to imagine seemingly contradicting things and bring them together. That’s a challenge that I like. I want to offer things you’ve never seen before.

LEHRER: New York has gotten known of being the most commercial of the fashion weeks, but there is a whole crop of designers and brands coming on the scene who are making innovative things. Why do you think this is happening now? Has the commercialization hit a tipping point that is being rebelled against?

HARBISON: Completely. You see the evidence in the industry itself. The commerciality is no longer commercial.

LEHRER: The biggest brands are all struggling too.

HARBISON: Exactly. For younger designers, there’s no desire to make something you already see in the world. Design based on replication doesn’t feel responsible. Also, with a global market, we’re comparing ourselves to everything around the world, even things that aren’t “high fashion.” Everything becomes a reference point. Everything influences what we find fresh, new, artful, and relevant.

LEHRER: You said you don’t want to be Ralph Lauren overnight. Would you ever want to be that big?

HARBISON: Yeah. [Laughs.] I love designing things. I feel like I have a dialogue for cars, homes, architecture. I love aesthetics. I would love to have the opportunity to configure aesthetics in different areas. As far as how big Ralph is, that is something that I think I’m still grappling with. For me, what is most valuable is having a lot of product for people to opt into. I want a lot of product in the world.

LEHRER: You sat out this fashion week. People talk about the speed of the industry – Raf leaving Dior, etc. Is that something you struggle with or not?

HARBISON: Yeah. The speed of the industry has brought me to my knees before. I think it can compromise design integrity. For me, skipping out this show season, I needed it from the business standpoint. I needed to figure out how to approach these marketing events in a way that’s more thoughtful of the business revenue. How do I give all these eyes access to the collection? You can opt out of [the traditional fashion schedule]. You don’t have to make four collections a year. You can make one. You can do this thing however you want to do it. That’s why I have so much respect for Raf and him walking away [from Dior]. It no longer worked for him, and that’s wonderful.

LEHRER: He’s supposed to be this radical, punk designer. Dior was weighing on him for a number of years. It was like he said, “Fuck that.”

HARBISON: Exactly. To be happy. How modern is that?

LEHRER: Did you have designers or artists that you looked up to when you first got into this?

HARBISON: Yeah, Dries [Van Noten] and Azzedine [Alaia].

LEHRER: I was thinking about Dries when you were saying everything comes down to product. Dries has a way of telling a story only using pieces that he will sell on the racks. That’s definitely what I see with you.

HARBISON: Thank you. That’s the goal. Dries has created a world that’s wholly his. His client base is totally devoted. My favorite pieces to wear are all Dries. I want to make that the case for Harbison. “I’m always going to go back to Harbison because it makes me happy.” I want my customers to say that

Visit Charles Harbison's website to see current collections. Text, interview and photographs by Adam Lehrer. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

A Cartographer's Pastel Dream: An Interview With Artist and Photographer Ward Roberts

March 24, 2016

The pastel color palette is so unforgiving, because it connotes a sense of false security. It is a palette that is rare in nature, but bathed in artificial nostalgia. It is a painterly color that harkens the horror of the Easter bunny and super market birthday cake. This is where New York-based artist and photographer Ward Roberts, who has two shows of separate series opening concurrently this evening in Los Angeles and Dallas, comes startlingly into the picture with a splash of postmodern angst. In his ‘Courts’ series, muted pastel portraits of lonely and seemingly deserted tennis and basketball courts are like archives of lost civilizations that give the sense of a mass extinction. Not a single soul in sight – just looming apartment blocks, labrynthian stairways, and a beautiful forever, and nowhere, extending miles from the periphery of the photograph’s frame. In his Cartography series, Roberts’ faded pastel chiaroscuro portraits of people seem like the last photographic proof of those lost inhabitants. Perhaps Ward Roberts is trying to tell us something. Ward, who grew up partly in Hong Kong, spent much of early childhood on the very same courts he would photograph later in later in life. And it was on those courts that Autre snapped a few portraits of the artist for this interview. Not only does Ward have two solo shows opening tonight, he is also busy finalizing the second book featuring his Courts series – it is scheduled to debut this June to coincide with the US open. In the following interview, we chat with Roberts about the meaning of life, growing up in Hong Kong and his fondness for synchronized swimming.

Autre: Your work very much deals with the finiteness, ephemerality, loneliness – does this reflect your personality or are making a statement about present existence in general?

Ward Roberts: I’m simply interested in the state of loneliness - or how reacts to being alone - so I only shoot what feels pure. I’m interested in exploring how increasingly emotionally detached we are and how we experience emotion through technology.

Autre: You use words like excavation and catalyst to describe your cartography series; do you look at photography like a scientific or anthropological experiment rather than an artistic medium?

Roberts: There are so many components to my process in shooting film. I don’t view myself as a photographer. While the medium itself offers me elements of spontaneity, nothing I create is accidental. I’d say I’m in interested in sociology, human interactions and reactions.

Autre: What was it like growing up in Hong Kong and how did it inspire your work?

Roberts: Hong Kong made me curious. Curiosity is at the core of everything I do. I was rushed out of Hong Kong quickly due to a family separation so returning to the courts I loved as a child was somewhat healing. Through reconnecting with that part of my childhood I suddenly found new appreciation for the stillness and aesthetic beauty of them.

Autre: When you were younger, did you remember wanting to capture the courts you were playing on, or did the concept for the series come later?

Roberts: I left Hong Kong when I was 8 years old so the desire to capture courts came later in life. I definitely remember the thrill of connecting to the first court I photographed – a court in Hong Kong. It just felt right.

Autre: Who were some of your photographic inspirations – were your parents’ artists and did you have access to art museums or galleries growing up?

Roberts: Massimo Vitali and Joseph Schulz. My parents are very cultured, well-traveled people. We rarely spoke directly about art. My father was a pilot and documented his travels with photography extensively and my mother was really open to me trying everything from hockey and tennis to horse riding, gymnastics and I think she even suggested ballet at one stage. There was a huge emphasis on sport every Saturday.

Autre: You have traveled all over the world capturing various courts, what country has the most beautiful and for what sport?

Roberts: Basketball courts in Hong Kong, most definitely.

Autre: Do you play sports or would you consider yourself athletic – an art jock?

Roberts: I don’t play sport as much as I’d like to. In NYC sport is a bit of a luxury - you require a health club pass or to be on a team. I ride everywhere on my bike however so I guess that keeps me fit.

Autre: Your courts display a sort of a feeling of modern isolation, but the pastel colors and hue are actually quite happy – obviously there are a lot of bland courts out there (typical asphalt and green), do you spend a lot of time seeking the most colorful?

Roberts: I've been shooting courts since 2007 so at this point I've amassed a tightly curated selection and am currently reviewing a larger archive of unreleased courts with the thought of including some in an upcoming book project and limited-edition poster series launching in June in the U.S. Some of the unreleased courts aren’t particularly vibrant or happy. I do aesthetically favor the more colorful courts, but I’ve invested a greater amount of time seeking out and capturing more courts that I suppose you could say are somewhat dull.

Autre: Are there any countries you haven’t visited yet, but have heard have beautiful courts – do people tip you off?

Roberts: Nobody tips me off - yet - but I’ve seen some images of Singapore courts that look incredible.

Autre: Is there any particular itinerary or preparedness before you venture off to shoot and do you shoot alone or with a team?

Roberts: In the early days it was always very impromptu: I’d have my camera and literally play MTR (train system) lucky dip in Hong Kong. Over the years I’ve had to become more strategic with my time however so I usually venture out alone to explore or on occasion a friend will accompany me.

Autre: A lot of artists find their color, but you have sort of found a family of colors under the pastel umbrella – did this journey take you a long time?

Roberts: All of my work is connected through color and you could say that’s essentially what I’m seeking when I shoot but I wouldn’t say I’ve found anything concrete or a particular color way that is integral to having me photograph a location or space. Courts are public spaces, so there is always an element of no control in some respect.

On the other hand, with Cartography, a separate body of work I’ve been developing over the past years, I really enjoy creating saturated neon colors for each of the portraits so you could say through that I’m definitely evolving my pastel palette. In a way the Courts palette has transcended to saturated and monochromatic in Cartography.

Autre: What is your favorite sport?

Synchronized swimming is always interesting to watch. To play however, I like Tennis.

Ward Roberts 'Cartography' series will be debut tonight at Ten Over Six, 8425 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA. His 'Courts' series will be on view for eight weeks starting tonight at Ten Over Six at the Joule Hotel, 1530, Main Street, Dallas, Texas. Roberts will also be a part of the Saatchi Fresh Faces exhibition, which will be on view from March 24 to May 13 at 1655 26th Street, Los Angeles, California. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. photographs by Jason Capobianco

Dancing With The Devil: An Interview With Conceptual Artist Erika Blair

March 21, 2016

text and interview by Jill Di Donato

Last February marked conceptual artist Erika Blair’s debut solo show, entitled This Is Only A Test, which took on ideas of surveillance, the art of cruelty, trauma, subjugation, sex, and oppression. Blair, who holds BFA in printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art lives in Bushwick, and is the type of artist who’s always making art, even when not directly engaged in the process.

Is she an Instagram girl? I’m not sure I like what that term means, but yes; her Instagram is sexy as fuck. She’s got an artistic and seductive feed, and that’s important because it so seems social media like Instagram help artists and viewers connect on messages of aesthetics. The images in Blair’s feed are morbid, literary, witchy, erotic, nostalgic and give vibes of its curator: part pin-up girl, part tech-nerd, part La Femme Nikita. The type of woman to listen to 1960s California surf on a Hi-Fi and Bad Brains in a cassette player. She calls herself a feminist, but fiction is her favorite “F” word. “This Is Only A Test,” anti-authoritarian work by a female artist isn’t necessarily an outwardly feminist exhibition but rather a statement about more universal schemes of oppression.

Let’s just say Blair likes to dance with the devil.

Jill Di Donato: Since you’re a conceptual artist, what’s the concept behind “This Is Only A Test”?

Erika Blair: “This Is Only A Test” was a site-specific performance at Rope in Baltimore, Maryland. For this solo exhibition, I sat in the unfinished basement beneath the gallery’s floor and watched a live feed of gallery attendants in the space above. The gallery was left barren except for a wireless printer, three surveillance cameras and two large speakers that were blaring audio that I’d ripped from a 1990s Chicago Emergency Broadcast test. I looped this audio for three hours, the duration of the performance. The cameras sent a video feed to my laptop, which I took screenshots of, then printed upstairs every five minutes. The printed images would fall directly onto the gallery floor. In reference to use of LRAD technology against protesters, I asked the gallery for the volume of the audio to reach the highest potential decibel level that we could, “without the cops being called.”

I don’t particularly like authority.

Donato: Immediately, your concept makes me think of Michel Foucault’s idea of panopticism, derived from the late eighteenth century philosopher, Jeremy Benthem, who designed the Panopticon. This was a new type of prison, circular in design, with a “watchman” at the core. Because it was impossible for a guard to check in on all prisoners all of the time, the Panopticon by design, would leave the inmates thinking that at any moment, they could be under surveillance. Foucault uses the Panopticon as a metaphor to explain social power relations.

Blair: And also I think of the architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux who, after the French Revolution built this structure, the Arc-et-Senans for the people as a utopian city, a place to exchange innovative ideas about progressive social economic living. It became known as the Salt Works, though was closed in 1926. Everything can be spun. Decades and decades later, the Nazis used it as a gypsy concentration camp. Ledoux’s structure was constructed with one ideology, and it was used for the complete opposite purpose. The devil is in deception.

Di Donato: Since we’re on the subject, this reminds me of Marx’s statement about capitalism, and that its greatest evil is the mask it wears. But seriously, all of this just seems so relevant given high-profile acts of oppression of late in our world.

Blair: I do have an interest in surveillance capitalism and its potential to strip agency from the complacent user. I wanted to bring the context of current political events—such as the documented police murders of unarmed African American citizens, the work of whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, and the increase in corporate data mining—to a small scale durational performance. My goal was to distill these themes down to a set of temporary artist-made conditions. As a conceptual artist, I used discomfort as a tool in the sterile setting of a gallery. Viewers are aware that there is an end. At any point, the viewer can walk out of the space, flip the record, change the channel. In other settings, in our social world, the participant is not awarded the luxury of choice.

I’m also interested in the coaxing language used by government agencies in emergency situations. Words seeped in Pathos. Phrases that would not seem out of place in the dark between lovers. Control tactics. In order to prepare for this show, I read Maggie Nelson’s, The Art of Cruelty and reread an old favorite of mine, Don DeLillo’s, White Noise.

Di Donato: Nelson seems to dance with the devil, or toe the line between fascination and revulsion with cruelty. Such an interesting read. I see you doing much of the same in your work. There’s a “look/don’t look” tension that makes viewers squirm a bit.

Blair: Yes. We are both uncomfortable, suspended in pain, and yet we continue in our roles. A symbiotic relationship forms between myself and the viewer. The show must go on.

Di Donato: So let’s talk about a modern-day panopticism. How has the internet and Instagram helped shape your work?

Blair: I’m known for my performative online work and social media presence, which employs varying degrees of the real, pop cultural references, and my physical body. This show also references 1970s performance art, such as Vito Acconci’s, “Seedbed” (1972). When I use my body, I typically use it in formats that are critical of the stereotypical male gaze and male ego in art.

Di Donato: What do you think of the term GIRL GAZE?

Blair: I was unfamiliar with the term until now. I assume it means the resulting work when women are the acting agents in their practice, rather than being tethered to the archetypical role of, “muse.” I like Leah Schrager’s term, “Man Hands.” Can my small, feminine hands have one hand on a knife and one hand seductively on my lower lip? Ask me about the scars covering my hands.

Di Donato: What’s up with the scars on your hands?

Blair: I have tiny scars all over my hands because my twin brother, who has special needs, had motor skill and sensory issues as a child and would scratch the tops of my hands because he couldn’t feel things as well and wanted a reaction.

Di Donato: So it’s fair to say you grew up keenly aware to the sensory awareness of others. I can see that as a through-line through “This Is Only a Test.” There’s also an urgency to the show’s title—even though “only a test” seems to imply we’re on the brink of something apocalyptic, like those horrible emergency broadcasts. This goes back to dancing with the devil. Care to elaborate on the implication of exigency in the show’s title?

Blair: I wanted the experience of the show to be both repulsive and seductive. I watched a lot of viewers stay right in front of the printer for long periods of time. It seemed as if they grew to enjoy being watched. They also seemed interested in who I would “focus on” via the images I chose to print. As if they could take part in the voyeurism, themselves. I got a sense of, “Well, at least the cameras aren’t pointed at me for this run of prints.” I also wanted to invoke a sense of panic, which I think was accomplished with the high volume of the looping emergency broadcast.

Di Donato: Who and what inspires you?

Blair: I’m inspired by fighters, whores, and punks. The type of women that were burned at a stake for their ideas. The very women that I share a bloodline with, and my peers. In the art world, those who don’t fake it. The ones who recognize and comment on repeated trends in our collective history. One long record, continually skipping. People that are unashamed to reveal their frailty. Also, book people, people who feel most comfortable around books. I recently had a one-night stand and grabbed the person’s copy of Salinger’s “Nine Stories” and slept with it next to me on the bedside table, as if it could protect me and make me feel some semblance of intimacy in this stranger’s bed. Short list: Richard Prince, Hannah Wilke, Tracey Emin, Renata Adler, Richard Brautigan, Bettie Page, Martin Kippenberger, Russ Meyer, Sophie Calle, and Elvis Presley. Lenny Bruce was the world’s greatest performance artist. I collect rare books, punk albums, vintage smut, and 1950s Red Scare propaganda.

Di Donato: Free association game: In your mind, what’s one incident that connects sex/death/trauma/art?

Blair: The plane that killed Ricky Nelson remains dangling from a ceiling at a tourist trap somewhere in Texas. He was allegedly overheard reciting lines from, “To Have and Have Not” as the plane went down.

Di Donato: What’s your process?

Blair: It varies by the series that I’m working on but I’m always watching and absorbing cultural information. I’m a receptionist by day, so I’m constantly reading and I watch at least two films every night. I tend to focus on one facet of either my personal history, or American history to delve into per body of work. It usually involves collecting original ephemera from that event, and pairing it with words and images that are already in my mind, or collection. Some results of my note taking are visible on my Instagram. I use that as a marker. When resources and funds are available, I have things fabricated. My running joke is that I’ll keep making unseen solo shows until they overrun my apartment and smother me to death.

Di Donato: What’s next for Blair?

Blair: I’m trying to write every day, and currently working on finding funding to publish an artist book titled, “Miss November Nineteen Sixty-Three.” I have also recently finished a new series titled, “Ursula.” Both projects pair American pop-cultural artifacts with personal mythology and tragedy. I think my next self-portrait should be an image of Jayne Mansfield’s car.

You can stay up to date with Erika Blair's work by visiting her website or following her on Instagram. Text and interview by Jill Di Donato. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

The Rockabilly Art Fag Speaks: An Interview With Dan Sartain On His Dark Musical Departure

March 18, 2016

There is something sinister in the Southern air. Dan Sartain’s newest album, Century Plaza, which was released last month on the One Little Indian label, is a departure for the Alabama-based musician who has been steadily putting out albums since the early 2000s and garnering the attention of musical kindred spirits like Jack White. In fact, Jack White asked Sartain personally if he would open for the White Stripes on a 2007 tour. While his earlier music reflected his Southern roots – with tinges of country and rockabilly – Sartain’s new album is darker, more malevolent and has an electro beat that harkens early Suicide and British synth-pop wave, like Depeche Mode. What you hear in the music sounds like an artist on the verge of burning down his house and hitting the open road in a black Cadillac, cigarette burning in hand. His music video for the track Walk Among The Cobras illustrates the album perfectly: it opens with Sartain driving, black and bloodied eyes (which the press release states is very much real), and goes into an erotic carnival scene that seems like a scene from a lost Cronenberg film. In the following interview, we got a chance to ask Sartain about his music departure, dressing up as Alan Vega for Halloween, and what it’s like to be an untalented rockabilly art fag.

Autre: You’re from Alabama? What was it like growing up there?

Dan Sartain: Everybody I went to school with loved football and Bone Thugs N’ Harmony. It was bullshit. I hated it. I still live there and I still hate it. Birmingham is the city I’m from, and there seems to be a lot of pride about it now. We have some nice clubs and things now, but it’s mostly the same bands from the last ten or twenty years. I’ve been around for twenty years. Young people should be doing things I don’t understand and don’t like, and they are! Everything is right on schedule.

Autre: How did you get into music?

Sartain: I just heard it one day and it was pretty good.

Autre: What kinds of artists were you listening to in Alabama that influenced your musical style?

Sartain: You had to make friends with whoever was around. So that meant any kind of musician was a friend. You’d have to play with Christian ska bands, white blues guys, cock rockers, math rockers, Pop punks, crust kids with their blast beats, fake Fugazi bands, fake Cure bands, literally ANYONE. We all had to be friends, or at least fake friends, to make anything happen.

Autre: You have toured as an opening act for The White Stripes and the Hives. What was that like?

Sartain: It was nice being a part of something bigger. I suppose that’s what will go on my headstone. It’s also a thing I have a chip on my shoulder about too. When you go around with a chip on your shoulder people want to knock it off. Then some time goes by and you just kind of realize you were a dumbass. It’s vicious. I love it. Its nice work if you can get it. I started at clubs and I’m back at clubs now. I feel that’s where I do my best work, but if the opportunity comes to play arenas again, I’ll be ready.

"There was a lot of talent going around but it was all misguided. So I basically thought I could save this genre by being an untalented rockabilly art fag. It totally worked, you’re welcome."

Autre: Your newest album, Century Plaza came out recently. What was the inspiration for this album?

Sartain: I just wanted to make an album as much like Depeche Mode as I could. I just pretended Depeche Mode called me on the phone and asked me to write them an album.

Autre: Your previous albums are a mixture of blues, rockabilly, and punk rock, while Century Plaza is pop/electronic music. Why was this album different than the ones you worked on before?

Sartain: Seeing the names “blues, rockabilly, and punk rock” in print like that sounds really horrible. There’s lots of music that sounds like those three things together… and it all sounds bad. That is not to say there isn’t a lot of rockabilly and punk albums that I love, but it just has this cheesy stigma. I think what I was trying to do early on was to restore the image of the good things about those styles of music you mentioned. I’m not sure I was the right guy for the job, but I was trying to convey some of those things with taste. I basically came around in the late nineties- early two thousands. It was a horrible time. People were swing dancing and wearing flaming bowling shirts. That Dick Dale song was everywhere. It was really just corny and not moody or weird or artsy at all. The late nineties were to rockabilly guys as the late eighties were to metal guys. There was a lot of talent going around but it was all misguided. So I basically thought I could save this genre by being an untalented rockabilly art fag. It totally worked, you’re welcome.

But to answer your question, I just work with what is at my disposal. Electronic music sounded the best to me right now.

Autre: You originally recorded “Walk Among the Cobras” in 2005. Why remake the song?

Sartain: Actually, I recorded that song in 2001. It’s one of my oldest and best songs. I feel like its kinda my anthem. It’s the first song I wrote where I felt like I could compete in the world of music. I wanted to keep playing it. Even if my musical brand faced a complete overhaul stylistically.

Autre: The video for “Walk Among the Cobras” is really amazing. What was the inspiration for the video?

Sartain: We didn't really plan on making a video. We went to Panama City Beach, Florida, which is a very neon place. We went there to shoot photos for album art and such. We went into a laser mirror maze for children and tourists and it just looked amazing. I figured it looked like a million bucks and people would never guess where we filmed it. Families and children keep coming through, stumbling into their own reflections, past us filming guerrilla style while I’m dancing with my shirt off. That footage just looked awesome so we expanded from there. We went to a haunted campground in Georgia where they filmed a Friday the 13th movie. We fogged up the woods and brought lasers and lights and things. It was pretty creepy. We heard footsteps, which we later found out, is one of the things one of the resident ghosts is said to do. I don’t believe in ghosts and I’m not saying we saw one but it was totally a ghost and we saw one.

Autre: How do you see film and music coming together?

Sartain: At the same time.

Autre: Is film something you’re interested in?

You mean as a viewer? Or as a participant? Yes to both

Click here to purchase and download Dan Sartain's newest record Century Plaza. Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Interview by Keely Shinners. Photography by Haley Grimes. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

The FOMO Is Real: An Interview With Photographer and Filmmaker Yulia Zinshtein

March 17, 2016

Yulia Zinshtein is a photographer, filmmaker and poet living in New York City. In the FOMO (fear of missing out) generation, she paints a portrait of her friends through a sardonic lens that leaves the viewer wondering if she is poking fun or being completely serious. It's a deadpan type of humor that only the keen, or members of her generation, will understand. In her short film, entitled Girls Going Wild, inspired by early-naughts reality TV and late night infomercials, she brings to life what it means not to be the life of the party. She says, "Girls Going Wild is about searching for the best party. This video aims to show how awkward that search can be...and that the very process becomes the best party you could ever find." We got a chance to ask Zinshtein about her work and her new short film, which Autre has exclusively premiered.

Autre: Where are you from and why were you in Miami?

Yulia Zinshtein: I was born in Philly and raised in Moscow. I shot the video while in Miami for Art Basel! It was my first time at that art fair and it really affected me, something about Basel brings out the worst in people! But Miami is the best, one of the most inspiring places for my work.

Autre: Where did the inspiration for this short film come from?

Zinshtein: We had extreme FOMO the whole time we were at Art Basel...worse than general New York FOMO! Where was the “real” party at? Were we on the list? Could we sneak in? Are we having fun? Will there be free drinks? Am I cool enough? Do my parents love me?! The 13 year old inside me was inspired by the old school video camera...filming my friends doing nonsense and acting for the sake of it really brought up how it all started for me.

Autre: This work has a reality tv feel to it, only it feels a lot more real. Was that your intention, and are you a fan of reality tv?

Zinshtein: Oh definitely! It's between Girls Gone Wild and The Real World. But the message is the exact opposite of what Girls Gone Wild represents: girls not getting wild enough!
I actually find contemporary reality TV extremely boring, I can never get through an episode of the Kardashians (and I've tried many many times...like oysters, I never got a feel for it). I love watching old Real World episodes but mostly for aesthetic reasons.

Autre: In addition to your video work, you're also known for your photography and poetry. Which medium did you start with first, and where do you feel most comfortable?

Photography was my gateway drug into video work and poetry. I feel comfortable in all mediums, they trigger different satisfactions. However I am most confident in photography, because I am more educated in it and have been doing it longer.

What's next?

Next, I have a trip planned to a private ranch in south Texas, somewhere I've never been! I'm really excited to see the outcome. In the summer I'm planning to go to Moscow (my parents still live there) and make work about them and my old life. Mostly, I want an excuse to annoy my Mom by following her around with a camera! I can see her yelling at me already, it'll be great!

Click here to watch Yulia Zinshtein's new short film Girls Going Wild. Visit Zinshtein's website to see her photography. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Viva Africa: Five Questions For Legendary Photographer Malick Sidibé On The Occasion Of His Collaboration With Designer Zainab Sumu

March 16, 2016

In a way, you could say that Malick Sidibé was the ultimate nightlife and street life photographer. His images of a postcolonial Africa – namely in Bamako (the capital of Mali) – captured a zeitgeist full of joie de vivre and desperate to reclaim its identity after French rule. Some of his most iconic images were taken at concerts and youth clubs, like the Christmas Eve, Happy Club. It was in this club where one his most famous images was taken: a couple dressed to the nines, dancing barefoot under the night sky. Indeed, his images ooze with a delicious sense of style and swagger. At eighty years of age, Sidibé has put his camera down, but has recently teamed up with Boston-based designer Zainab Sumu for a limited edition mens and womens t-shirt collection. It is the photographer’s first ever collaboration. Sumu, who started her brand Primitive Modern just last fall, has chosen four photographs from Sidibé’s extensive archive from the 60s and 70s to place on t-shirts printed with designs using indigenous Malian printing techniques. The collection of tees, in an edition of 140, is a natural evolution from the designer’s capsule collection of silk scarves inspired by artisanal Northern and West African dyeing techniques. Autre was lucky enough to ask the legendary Malick Sidibé some questions, through his son Karim, about his collaboration with Zainab Sumu and what the photographer’s archive says about the future of Africa.

How did you team up with Zainab Sumu?

We have always been on the lookout for interesting partners who first and foremost appreciate the work of my father. In Zainab we found someone not only passionate about his work aesthetic (which of course is so important), but we especially appreciated this quest she’s on in regards to helping strengthen the economic situation for us in Mali. She’s all about a positive representation of Africa and that was a vital part of my Dad’s legacy.

What was the collaboration process like?

The collaboration was most definitely a collaborative effort between Mody (my older brother) and Zainab. When we initially discussed the project she had very clearly pinpointed select images from the archive that reflected my Dad’s sense of fun and beauty and style, you could say. I remember Zainab making a lot of notes when she visited the studio in Bamako in 2015.

You are a major representative for Africa, and you have become a major part of dissolving a lot of myths about Africa's place in the world, what is the current atmosphere like and what would you like people to know about Africa in the 21st century?

Dad’s photographs were taken in post-colonial Mali, when self-expression was vital and raw and fresh, a response to the political regime. So most certainly Dad was lucky to have captured images during such a pivotal time in our country’s history. When many people think of African portraiture they immediately think of Malick Sidibé. His work was always about embracing individuality and essentially, during that time young people had a reason to be rebellious.

What do your father’s images say about the future of Mali and Africa?

In a way those images from his archive all represent hope for a better day. Today the people of Africa continue to be hopeful yet there is an overwhelming sense of disillusionment among our communities. We’re trying to change that.

Do you want to continue collaborating with younger artists?

We try to stay open-minded but it’s very much an instinctive connection for us and we try to guard our father’s legacy with great care. By producing these t-shirts with my father’s photographs, it is way for everyone have to access to art. Importantly, also, it’s about presenting these works as a kind of object d’art, therefore my father’s work can be seen not just on the walls of museum’s or galleries but also on the bodies of many from the next generation.

Visit Zainab Sumu's website to purchase t-shirts from the Malick Sidibé collection. Click here to get a rare glimpse inside Sidibé's studio and click here to check out Sume's photographic travel diary through Mali. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Double Layers: An Interview with Ariana Papademetropoulos Before Her Solo Exhibition In Los Angeles

March 11, 2016

After her solo show opening this weekend at MAMA gallery in Los Angeles, artist Ariana Papademetropoulos might make a film about killer mushrooms that murder young punk kids. This should give you an idea of her creativity – it's a boundless creativity that bursts with schizophrenic, hallucinatory imaginativeness. Her paintings literally split at the imaginary seams, tearing into new images – half hidden sadomasochistic scenes are obscured by foggy veils, and midcentury living rooms peel into wood paneled dens where shadows portend dark and dangerous things. There is a Freudian element - her paintings feel like repressed memories, places where we were abused and aroused, places where we learned about our sexuality; places where past lives lived, made love and died under unknown suns. In her work, the hippocampus unfurls like a beautiful prismatic flower and drips with vibrant eroticism. It's truly electrifying. You can see many new works this weekend at one her first major solo exhibitions in Los Angeles – a small house will be built that will make her paintings come to life. We got a chance to visit Papademetropoulos in her studio to discuss her work, her life growing up in Los Angeles, and her new show, Wonderland Avenue.

OLIVER KUPPER: Did growing up in Los Angeles inspire your work?

ARIANA PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Yeah, in a way, I guess without me really wanting it to. It kind of seeped in. I’m from here. I kind of grew up in Pasadena. My dad lived in Venice. I moved back and forth between those two worlds.

KUPPER: It’s hard not to be fascinated by Los Angeles

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: There are so many strange things that keep popping up. When I was younger, I was in Pasadena, but then I learned about Jack Parsons and Majorie Cameron and that whole realm. There are always these undertones. Even in upper class neighborhoods, there are always strange things happening.

KUPPER: There’s always something dark going on. Even in Beverly Hills.

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Totally. Everywhere.

KUPPER: When did you know that you wanted to become an artist? I read somewhere that your parents encouraged you at an early age. Was there a defining moment?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Not really. I think it was just the only thing I ever did, since I was literally a kid, which sounds cheesy.

KUPPER: Was there a moment when you knew that you were going to do it for the rest of your life, or was it natural?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: That was just the only thing I did.

KUPPER: And your parents encouraged it?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Yeah. My dad is an architect. Everyone on my mom’s side of the family is an architect. I just wasn’t really good at anything else.

KUPPER: So you were around a lot of creativity?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Yeah. It was very natural.

KUPPER: Did you know it was going to be painting, or were you ever working with other mediums?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: I think it was always painting. I would love to do other mediums as well. I would love to move into installation. I’d like the works to get bigger and bigger – to envelop you in a sense.

KUPPER: To take on a life of their own?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Yeah.

KUPPER: And your parents never wanted you to do architecture?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: No. They actually told me not to do architecture. You actually don’t get to be that creative, unless you’re very very very successful. Working for an architecture firm would mean me painting pictures of people’s cats for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t get to do what I want. Unless you get up there. But I would love to do architecture.

KUPPER: You’re part of this really exciting art scene in LA that has started to grow, especially among female artists. Do you find strength in this collective energy?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: No. I feel like most of my friends aren’t artists. Most of my friends are musicians. I don’t feel like I really exist. I don’t have a core group of artist friends.

KUPPER: Do you feel like there’s a creative energy in LA going on that’s stronger than it’s been in the past?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Totally. Everyone is moving here. I just don’t exist in any realm. There’s a lot of cool stuff going on. It’s a good time to be in LA.

KUPPER: When did you start developing your style?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: I’ve been painting in a similar way since I was like fourteen. I was really into the style of vintage clothes. There was this one dress that had airbrushed flowers and patterns on it. One of the backgrounds of my painting, I copied the fabric from the airbrushed dress that I wore. That started off the whole thing. A lot of people think my paintings are airbrushed.

KUPPER: But it is brush work?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Yeah, it’s all brush work.

KUPPER: Amazing. Do you start with the image and work backwards towards obscuring distorting it?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: I create the image first and then distort.

KUPPER: So the image is underneath it the whole time?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Yeah. It’s almost as if it’s collage, in a sense. I’m just photographing them in the in-between state. I work with a lot of these vintage erotic, nude postcards.

KUPPER: I wonder why erotica is not like that anymore. Maybe it was the Internet. Maybe it was the times.

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: There’s no mystery. There is, but not really. Everything is kind of disgusting.

KUPPER: What is the symbolism behind the distortion of the work?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: In a sense, I’m interested in creating images that trigger the viewer’s sense of psychology. All images do this. I think when images are in limbo, they can be perceived in more than one way. That, to me, is more interesting to me than giving it to you all at once. I try to make things to inspire the view to use their own imagination.

KUPPER: It seems like an alternate reality. You could peel the surface off to reveal something more.

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: I’m really into that. I think most of my paintings have a layer of separation. There’s a double layer. This makes the images seem more tangible to me. The thing on the other side might be real, because there’s a barrier that’s separating our reality from that one.

KUPPER: It brings to mind Magritte’s philosophy of the treachery of the image. Ceci n’est pas une pipe. The image is something else entirely. That deals a lot with psychology. It’s interesting related to the time period of the images you’re working with. In mid-century film, you would have these split images, and your whole perception of things is skewed.

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Yeah. When you’re watching a film, you are in the film. Similar things have been coming up a lot in my work.

KUPPER: Do you spend a lot of time sourcing your images? You probably dig deep to find them.

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: I do. I think half the time is making the images, and half the time is actually executing it. I do spend a lot of time figuring out what to make first.

KUPPER: How long does this process take?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: It depends on what kind of deadline I’m under. I’ve done this whole show since January, which is kind of nuts. I haven’t left my studio. I work like 16-hour days, just going nuts.

KUPPER: Is that ideal? Do you like that pressure?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: I’d like to have a little bit of room. But this is how I always seem to work, always at the last moment. I’m used to it.

KUPPER: It’s an interesting juxtaposition – to be rushed, but also to have to be so meticulous.

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Yeah. That’s something I’ve learned – to never rush. If I rush, it will take me longer, in the end. But if I just zone in and do it right, it’s fine. I never try to rush. I just get lost in it.

KUPPER: Do you apply any practical theory to your work? Classical training?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: No, not really. I just use turpenoid. I don’t know how to use anything else. I’m really into rabbit skin glue. That’s what I put on the canvas. It’s literally pulverized rabbits. You have to get the powder and put it in the pot and boil it. They’ve been doing it since the Middle Ages. The rabbit’s skin glue is clear, but it’s sparkly. It’s magical.

KUPPER: Where do you get rabbit’s skin glue?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Just at the art store. I like the idea that pulverized rabbits make sparkly glue.

KUPPER: Your upcoming show, “Wonderland Avenue,” was the title based off those murders from the 80s?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Yeah, but it embodied all my ideas about Los Angeles, in a sense. I wasn’t super keen about it being about the Laurel Canyon murders. But it made sense in my ideas about spaces, how they change over time. For example, that house where the murders occurred, the Wonderland Gang lived there. But before that, Paul Revere and the Raiders lived there, a psychedelic band. That street was 60s, with the Doors and this band and that band. It was this magical utopia. And the name itself – “Wonderland Avenue.” In Los Angeles, especially in Laurel Canyon, we have all of these street names that are like Disneyland. I’m interested in how Los Angeles becomes itself. The newspaper would say, “Oh, LA, where all the movie stars go!” even though there was nothing here. So people came with this idea, and then it was created. History intertwines itself. Fact and fiction interplay.

KUPPER: It’s very manufactured. That name sums up a lot. It’s a great title for a show.

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: My work is kind of magical, in a sense. I don’t want to say that, but the palette has a magical quality to it. It’s both light and dark.

KUPPER: And you’re creating a fantasy, just as LA is creating a fantasy.

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Yeah.

KUPPER: There’s an erotic element to your work. Erotica is something that you seem interested in.

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: I think it’s a natural thing. Women are the most beautiful things. Of course I’m going to want to paint them. I strayed away from painting people for a long time, because I felt like I had to get away from portrait. But I like putting them in these different situations, like the woman with the plastic on top.

KUPPER: Oh, yeah. I guess it’s erotically charged in the sense that they’re naked.

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: When a woman has panties on, or stockings, how is that more sexy than being completely nude? These accessories that cover you up actually make you sexier. I think my painting do that, in a way. They’re only giving you a little bit. Whether they’re erotic or not, I’m not sure. Like, I have a piece that’s a picture from Poltergeist. When you only get a little bit of something, it draws you in more. I’m using that idea of eroticism with all my paintings.

KUPPER: What’s next after this?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: I don’t know yet. There are a couple of art fairs that I’m supposed to do. I’m probably going to take a break. I’ve been talking about making this film for four years, and I’m finally doing it.

KUPPER: Can you talk about the film at all?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: It’s kind of hilarious. It might not be a film; it might be more like a picture book. The movie is about a killer mushroom who murders all these young punks. It’s all my friends, and everyone has a role that’s exactly for them. One of my friends delivers the boys to the mushroom in exchange for snacks. She doesn’t understand that the mushroom is killing these people. But the mushroom isn’t killing them; she’s just turning them into plants.

KUPPER: Is it going to be a feature or a short?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: Short.

KUPPER: Are you shooting it on film?

PAPADEMETROPOULOS: I’m still wanting to make a book out of it instead, a bunch of photographs telling a story. Kind of in the same way of a comic book. It’s like a graphic novel but with photographs. All my friends are like, “You have to make a movie.” I might try to do both.

Wonderland Avenue opens March 12, 2016 and runs until April 23, at MAMA Gallery in Los Angeles. Click here to see a tour of Ariana Papademetropoulos' studio. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Romantic Funk: An Interview of Harriet Brown by Astronauts, Etc.'s Anthony Ferraro

March 9, 2016

Ahead of their national tour, which kicks off tomorrow night at Club Bahia in Los Angeles, Autre has exclusively premiered Harriet Brown's cover of the Astronauts, Etc. track "I Know." Helmed by Oakland-based musician and songwriter Anthony Ferraro, Astronauts, Etc. was a bedroom project that blossomed and found him playing in places like Tokyo and Australia. Ferraro also found himself in the role as touring keyboardist for Toro y Moi and is close friends with singer Chazwick Bundick. The track covered by Harriet Brown, an up-and-coming Los Angeles based musical artist, can be found on Astronauts, Etc.'s latest album Mind Out Wandering on the Hit City U.S.A imprint. In the following short interview Anthony Ferraro talks to Harriet Brown about the unique rendition of his song, the responsibility of music, Sade and more.

Anthony Ferraro: Can you give us a brief description of the parallel universe that you pulled this cover out of?

Harriet Brown: A glass of red wine. Late, quiet nights on the beach in southern Mexico, ocean waves accompanied by the muted thump of bass drifting in the air from the half-empty reggaeton clubs down the shore.

Ferraro: What is one responsibility of your music?

Brown: Sending a transmission out to beings and places (geographical/emotional/spiritual) I might not otherwise be able to reach, and hopefully in the process communicating at least little bits of truth with which others can resonate.

Ferraro: Would it be at all accurate to say that Harriet Brown represents your anima?

Brown: Sure, in some way, but Harriet Brown is also just me, subconscious or not. Although I guess my anima has never been very closeted to begin with.

Ferraro: Who is your biggest woman hero?

Brown: Sade.

Ferraro: We met in music class around four years ago and were both making very different music back then. On a scale from free will to determinism, how much agency would you say you’ve had over the direction your music has taken? I.e. how inevitable was it that Harriet Brown would become what Harriet Brown now is?

Brown: I think it was 100% inevitable, but still up to myself to undo the latch and allow Harriet Brown to emerge in full. The seed had been planted as a boy, but I had at one point become ashamed of the desire to express myself with such bold, deliberate, passionate, careful intention. That time has passed, and I’ve never felt more true and natural about making music, and really just about myself as a person, than I do now.

Ferraro: What is the main reason you have to be optimistic about the future of music?

Brown: Humans love music — it’s everywhere you go, even in the most sterile of places. The industry is always changing, always with both pros and cons, but regardless, we humans continue to desire music, and I don’t think that desire will ever die.

Click here to purchase tickets to see Harriet Brown and Astronauts, Etc. at Club Bahia. Click here to listen to the cover of I Know. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Searching For Light And Color: An Interview With Tamuna Sirbiladze On The Event Of Her Untimely Passing

March 4, 2016

During my career interviewing and writing about artists, musicians, and designers, I have come to the understanding that creative people don't always have personalities that match their artistic outputs. Hermann Nitsch, in opposition to the violent imagery he depicts, is a quiet and cerebral old man in conversation. David Lynch infamously projects a mid-western "aw shucks" attitude that seems perfectly out of sync with the nightmarish dreamscapes that define his films. But last summer I ventured to Half Gallery to view the first U.S. solo show of Georgian painter Tamuna Sirbiladze. Unlike the previous examples, when I talked to Sirbiladze I met a woman who seemed exactly like the paintings that she so beautifully rendered: warm, embracing, and emanating a powerful and transfixing spirit.

I am utterly torn up to hear of Sirbiladze's passing today at the age of 45, due to Cancer-related complications. During the short conversation that I had with her, I already felt connected to her. She had a way of making you feel like you've always known her, and that more than anything, she wanted to be known. She wanted to know the world. She seemed full of curiosity and wonder. Of the many artists I've gotten to know, she was one of the few to drop me a line on Facebook or Instagram. It might sound vain to say, but I can't believe that I will no longer be seeing those notifications.

It seems criminal that Sirbiladze is no longer with us just at the moment that she was starting to gain recognition for her paintings. Her paintings, which veered between the abstract and the figurative, had remarkable beauty to them. They filled me with nostalgia: gazing into those vague figures highlighted by muted shades of bright colors always made me think of my childhood, spent by the beaches of Cape Cod or swimming in ponds buried deep in nature. Her paintings were full of love but never soft. There was pain in them, but also a sense of hope. She seemed to feel life very deeply, and her art will be lasting testament to that fact.

Adam Lehrer: Have you been to New York before?

Tamuna Sirbiladze: Many times, but this is the first time for my show.

Lehrer: How did you and Bill get together to put the show together?

Sirbiladze: It was when I was here last night. A friend of mine helped make the contact. Bill and I then exchanged emails. And then it just sort of came together.

Lehrer: Is there anything in particular that attracted you to Half Gallery?

Sirbiladze: I loved it because it’s such a domestic feeling place. It’s like home. And my works are so expressive and not at all domestic. It proved to be a nice contrast.

Lehrer: It seems like with a lot of art dealers, business is the bottom line. But with Bill, he’s a real art lover.

"...Searching for color and light is my main engagement."

Sirbiladze: Yes, he really loves art!

Lehrer: So how has putting together this show compared to others that you’ve been involved with?

Sirbiladze: Well, Bill really knew my work. For example there was this wool painting. Bill was kind of shocked at first, but then he loved. So, I see how he is very in tune with art. Not only with thinking and knowing, but also with intuition. He has strong visual knowledge.

Lehrer: Talking about the art itself, it’s different than much of the art I’ve seen recently. It’s a little abstract. How did you first get involved with art, and when did you start painting?

Sirbiladze: I was 13 when I started.

Lehrer: And you’re from Georgia?

Sirbiladze: Yes, and my father was a painter. And I knew at age 13 that I would be an artist. I started doing still lives. The first time I put a brush in my hand I knew that was what I’d do.

Lehrer: And you studied art in school?

Sirbiladze: Yes, I was fascinated by art. But I had to learn about it through books. In Georgia, there were no museums. But to see original art in books was my favorite thing.

Lehrer: Who were some of the painters that left an early impression on you?

Sirbiladze: I loved Rembrandt, Goya, and the impressionists.

Lehrer: Bill mentioned something to me about pomegranate, and that it’s a symbol used by a film director?

Sirbiladze: Yes, Sergei Parajanov. The pomegranate is a symbol of the country of Georgia, because there are some many pomegranate trees there. Many artists use it as a symbol. I had to sneak it in there.

Lehrer: So it’s like your homage to your country?

Sirbiladze: Yes, it’s like a subject itself. I didn’t want to make it as an art statement; I wanted it to exist as itself.

Lehrer: Does your home country filter much into your ideas?

Sirbiladze: You know, it works itself into the ideas.

Lehrer: Your color palette is quite beautiful, blues and red always on white background. Do you have a special relationship with color?

Sirbiladze: Yes, color is the reason that I started painting. Searching for color and light is my main engagement.

Tamuna Sirbiladze's work is currently involved in a group exhibition, entitled Imagine, at Brand New Gallery in Milan until April 2. You can also view our coverage of her debut solo show in the United States here. Text, interview and photographs by Adam Lehrer.

Get Your Strength Through Oi: An Interview With Punktrepreneur Toby Mott

March 4, 2016

text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Toby Mott owns one of the largest collections of skinhead and punk ephemera from the halcyon days of anarchy in the UK. A punk himself, Mott has turned his youth in revolt into an enterprise with the Mott Collection, which recently was released in the street edition of Skinhead: An Archive. Punk historian or punktrepreneur, Mott is intent of preserving the legacy of one of the most misunderstood subcultures. Skinheads, although some had nationalist or Nazi leanings, were not all rabid and racist xenophobes. Some, in fact, were gay. Some were Jewish. Some were jocks. Some were women. In fact, the skinheads were the working class alternative to a posh Swinging 60s London, with Cockney and Jamaican roots. Mott acquired much of his archive in real time, collecting posters, patches, posters, zines and more. In the 70s, he was the founder of the Anarchist Street Army, which tried to toss over the establishment in the Pimlico area of London. In he 80s, he lived in squat with the likes of boy George and made appearances in films by Derek Jarman, and was included in Gilbert and George's 'Existers' series. Mott was also the founder of Grey, an anarchist art collective that would vandalize areas of London, spraying grey paint on windows. His involvement in that group got him arrested and banned from the U.K. Today, Mott is more a gentleman than a punk, but a punk at heart. He has shed his leather for a clean, crisp dress shirt and a sharp blazer. We met up with Mott one sunny day by the beach during his recent trip to Lost Angeles to discuss skinheads, his collection and what it means to be punk in the digital age.

OLIVER KUPPER: Skinheads have this association to neo-Nazi culture. Putting out something related to skinheads, people might think that it’s related to Nazi culture. How do you clear up this confusion?

TOBY MOTT: People jump to the conclusion that I am, or I was, a skinhead. But this is a neutral overview of a culture. Most people more readily associate skinheads with fascist, neo-Nazi culture. But one of the reasons for doing the book is to show that it’s much more diverse. There are all different kinds of skinheads. In London, now, if you saw a skinhead, most people would assume that they’re gay. So you’ve gone from a threatening, aggressive, neo-fascist to gay culture. Apart from that, there’s the whole S.H.A.R.P. (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) thing, which came from America. It was pretty multi-ethnic in the UK, with The Specials and the whole 2-tone thing. I think it’s the same with most things. The most aggressive aspects get the most press, because they’re newsworthy. But it’s certainly not the dominant element of skinhead culture.

KUPPER: There are multiple subcultures within skinhead culture.

MOTT: Yeah. Within skinhead culture, you get into scooter skins, skinhead girls. When skinhead culture mutates and travels abroad, say, in Eastern Europe, it’s must more militaristic and nationalist. It’s kind of evolved from the original British skinhead. It’s become more uniform. In Russia, there’s a big skinhead culture, but it’s more nationalist.

KUPPER: Were you part of this culture?

MOTT: No. I was a punk. I was actually a victim of skinheads. Skinheads, initially, were born in the late 60s, early 70s. It turned into something called “suedeheads” and then “bootboys,” with the whole football violence, football hooligan thing. The fashion changed and evolved. They were into glam rock, and the reggae thing kind of brought it out. But then when punk came out - say, in ‘76, and the high point in ’77 – there were bands like Sham 69 who were called “street punk.” Somehow, that initiated a skinhead revival. As a sort of look, this was much more developed than the original skinheads. That’s where the uniform evolved and became fetishized – the Fred Perry, stuff like that. They would also attend the same kinds of gigs I was at. Often, at any random point, they would just attack you. That happened to me – which I write about in the book – at a Sham 69 gig. There was just a general level of intimidation between the punks and the skinheads. It wasn’t a happy unity, although we shared the same music. This was before the white power thing. Around ‘78/’79, Sham 69, Cock Sparrer, Cockney Rejects and other punk bands were adopted by skinheads. But punks would also be at the gig. There was an uneasy tension.

KUPPER: What do you think was in the atmosphere during that time that was creating these subcultures?

MOTT: At the time, there was a recession. It was pre-Thatcher; Thatcher was elected in ’79. There was the Cold War. The Labor Party was Left Wing. There was a kind of crisis, especially for young people. There wasn’t really an economic future. That has often fueled youth cultures in Britain, which are often political, not just fashion or music things. Everyone, pretty much, was a part of some kind of subculture. You had goths, punks, skinheads – the whole flamboyant, romantic thing. And then you had football hooligans. But there was never really a passive kid. You always had to be something or other.

KUPPER: Who were the football hooligans?

MOTT: They were the white working class. They got their thrills out of violence. They still exist. But that’s all across Europe. They fight each other. The police have really come down and sent people to prison, but it’s still big. It’s a subculture.

KUPPER: It seemed like punk had a soundtrack, with a lot of bands coming out. With the skinheads, it seems looser. It seems way more personal.

MOTT: Well, there are all different types of skinheads. The white nationalist skinheads would go for things like Screwdriver, No Remorse. There’s a whole culture with these bands – Rock-o-Rama Records. They have a record label, a whole culture, a whole identity. Putting that aside, we also had the whole 2-tone thing, with The Specials and Selector, which are multi-cultural, anti-racist. The look was less aggressive. Later on, in the 80s, you got bands like Bronski Beat, which appealed to the gay identity of skinheads. Then there was the street punk thing, which was referred to as “Oi!” So there’s no one musical influence. Whichever type of skinhead you were, you had your music. Then, you have a sentimental figure like Nicky Crane, who was on the cover of “Strength through Oi!” album. He was a prominent neo-Nazi, but he had a whole secret gay life. He was to die of AIDS later. In a way, he symbolizes the whole story, the whole contradiction within these cultures and identities.

KUPPER: Where does Bruce LaBruce tie in?

MOTT: Bruce LaBruce obviously fetishizes the whole skinhead thing. He’s from Canada. He’s interested because he sexualized it. In a way, if you look at those so-called neo-Nazi skinheads, it’s very homoerotic. The mosh pit thing…

KUPPER: Taking your shirt off, lots of fluids…

MOTT: Yeah. And then to find that some of the most celebrated heroes of that actually have this whole gay, secret life – it’s kind of obvious, right? At the time, though, it was big news. It was in the newspapers. But LaBruce adopted the skinhead look. I’m not quite sure how it’s viewed. Some of the original skinheads don’t appreciate this imagery, I’m sure. They write to me about my book, “How fucking dare you?” They don’t even want to acknowledge it.

KUPPER: When did you start collecting this material?

MOTT: I collected punk stuff as a punk. I was always fascinated by the skinhead element that was around me. I always collected the political pamphlets, from the both the Left and the Right, which were being circulated. The skinheads were the people circulating the extreme Right Wing stuff. It just added to my punk collection. Then later, in my discussion with the publisher, I stripped out the skinhead part of my punk collection, and it made the book.

KUPPER: Was there a Penthouse article that explores this material? What was that about?

MOTT: Weirdly enough, that features Nicky Crane. I think the media has always been fascinated with skinheads because they are violent. Although, as I’ve said, they weren’t all violent. The one the media concentrates on are the violent ones. American Penthouse did an article about British skinhead culture. But they don’t really have a say. In opposition, there are all these anti-fascist groups. But that story isn’t always as newsworthy.

KUPPER: You had a confrontation with skinheads at a venue. Were there any other terrifying moments in your experience?

MOTT: In my foreword to the book, I write about being surrounded by skinheads. There were some notable events. There was this thing called “Rock Against Racism” in 1978, to combat the rise of fascism. They very cleverly had bands like The Clash and Sham 69 to play these concerts. Everyone would go. On the way to one of these events, we were cornered on the top of a double decker bus. I was with my two sisters, who were punks. Because they fancied my sisters, the skinheads, we got by. It was another close shave. The interaction with the skinheads was aggressive. That was their mode of communication. Punks are much more articulate. Skinheads were never adopted by middle class kids like punk was. Punk was pretty much all-inclusive – race, class, whatever. The skinheads were always working-class. Not always white, but the majority were.

KUPPER: I don’t think a lot of people realize that punk was more temperate than skinhead.

MOTT: Skinhead was rigid. The uniform was rigid. Punk was inventive and creative.

KUPPER: Like hippies with mohawks.

MOTT: Skinhead was all-formulaic – these clothes, this haircut. It was militaristic, like a uniform.

KUPPER: That was all new at that point. Now, we have this completely different perspective of what punk is, just because it’s been commercialized and sexualized. Is it an attitude?

MOTT: Yeah, punk’s an attitude.

KUPPER: You don’t need to dress like that. You can be a punk in the way you look at work, at life.

MOTT: I think the book fair is punk, because it’s got that whole DIY thing. It’s not punk to look like a punk from the ‘70s or ‘80s. That’s not punk; that’s retro. I think the book encapsulates the whole ethos of do-it-yourself. The Internet is a gateway to that. But the Internet might be too easy. It depends on how you use it. What is punk today? Punk is an attitude. A creative attitude.

KUPPER: Going back a little bit, to the idea of skinheads shaving their head – what do you think the symbolism behind that was?

MOTT: I think the main thing about skinheads even from the late ‘60s was they would lose the identity of being working class. The manual labor was being lost with the rise of technology. By the late ‘80s when it was revived I think it was a safe place if you were lost, white, working class, and your whole future was being eroded. They fetishized the workman’s uniform. I think that’s what happened.

Also, some people like a code, like wearing black. That appealed to some people. Then they also had the camaraderie and the whole homoerotic thing.

KUPPER: I had always heard that the shaved head had to do with lice from working class individuals living and working where they were getting scabies and lice – that it was just an easy way to avoid that.

MOTT: A utilitarian thing. It also means you weren’t a hippie. The thing about the ‘60s skinheads is that their hair wasn’t as short as the later skinheads when what you wear became much more defined. There’s that book – The Skinhead Bible – which maps that out. But yeah it comes from working on a building site.

KUPPER: In terms of outsider culture going on today, do you notice any prominent subcultures that are making an impact?

MOTT: There’s always elements in hip hop culture. In the UK we have a thing called Grime, which is an underground thing. Then there’s the trans culture, sexual identity thing that is very outsider. It’s hard because now everything comes to the floor so quickly, nothing has time to become anything before it’s either exposed or picked up by a celebrity. I think for people who don’t find their place in the world how it is, they gravitate towards each other.

KUPPER: It’s interesting what’s going on in terms of the trans community and the gay community. Especially with fashion.

MOTT: I come from a world where gender is very clearly defined with expectations, but now it’s much more fluid.

KUPPER: Where did you grow up?

MOTT: I grew up in Central London.

KUPPER: What did your parents do?

MOTT: My father was a professor, my mother was a social worker. I was a middle-class punk. My parents met at art school so I came from a bohemian or what’s called the intelligentsia background. My emersion in punk was from making fan zines and that whole creative area, I went to art school.

What I find really fascinating about skinhead culture is that none of that culture was created by people I meet. A lot of what punk is supposed to be about is the kind of clothes, which came from these deprived backgrounds, whereas in fact it came from art schools. Skinhead culture is not from art schools. None of them went to art school, hardly any of them went to school. So it’s amazing there’s these artifacts. It’s less informed than punk. People who were involved in punk are informed about Dada and stuff like that; skinheads aren’t. It’s got a raw uniqueness to it. Some of this stuff comes from towns in Scotland and fucking nowhere. Deprived places.

KUPPER: Yeah, industrial towns.

MOTT: Yeah.

KUPPER: Where does Joy Division fit into all of that? It seems like they’re in this in-between place.

MOTT: Joy Division is from Manchester but they’re not related to skinhead culture. They’re too sensitive. They’re articulate and sensitive but they’re also from the same kind of background so they could have been skinheads. There were always kids who were more into music and girls than football and violence; they became punks like Joy Division. If those weren’t choices, then you became a skinhead.

KUPPER: So just fate?

MOTT: It was kind of predetermined. If your family members go to prison, you’re going to be a skinhead. If your family members go to art school, you’ll probably be a punk. I think in America it’s different so I can only talk about the British experience.

KUPPER: Americans seem very inspired, though, by the British.

MOTT: I get the idea that some of the people I’ve met here that were in skinhead gangs could possibly be from middle-class backgrounds. That really didn’t happen in the UK. There is a class structure there, and even in the subcultures it powers through. Apart from punk where everyone goes. But like I said, that was the more creative and rebellious kids.

KUPPER: I think that the white power thing in skinhead culture is a very American thing. It’s very difficult to find non-racist skinheads in the US.

MOTT: I think they just get more attention. And they’ve murdered a few more people. There’s always psychos right? But also they’re organized like the whole Tom Metzger thing and get more press. In Britain we have white power skinheads aligned fringe Neo-Nazi groups.

KUPPER: In terms of where the book is going – there’s a second edition that’s out now. Will there be a third edition?

MOTT: There probably will be a third. What’s interesting is that we always add something new. Who knows!

KUPPER: We live in such a digital age now, how do we collect this ephemera that’s alive today? What’s your advice?

MOTT: A lot of it is in the music world. I don’t know because I’m not sure how information circulates now. In my day you would be informed of a gig or an event on a piece of paper. Now it’d probably be on a PDF. Who wants to collect PDFs?

KUPPER: Who wants to print a PDF? (Laughs.)

MOTT: I don’t know, it’s just something else. Luckily for me most of my projects end with facture in ’90 or ’91. That’s the beginning of rave and the whole dance, hip-hop scene. Once it goes digital and online it’s different.

KUPPER: But now with the book fair it seems like zine culture is very much alive.

MOTT: Yeah there’s this whole analogue culture driven by the internet. It’s very exciting.

KUPPER: It is very exciting; we’re trying to explore that right now.

MOTT: I’m very pleased to be a part of that. I think it’s very important that things have an actuality rather than just an online presence. The book fair is amazing, it’s not even a retro thing. It’s real.

KUPPER: It is. I don’t think people are using it in a derivative way where they’re trying to recreate something from the past. It’s definitely very new, and I love what Printed Matter is doing.

MOTT: And it’s global. It’s all over Europe. These books are also beautiful objects, it’s not like buying a book on Amazon. It’s almost like some sort of art thing.

KUPPER: There’s a lot of freedom in DIY, you’re not really censored by anything specific.

MOTT: And it’s not economically driven. It’s not a money thing.

KUPPER: No one’s making money.

MOTT: No one’s making money, and everyone knows there’s no money to make so it’s kinda cool. (Laughs.) There’s a few people in it who want to make money, but that’s why I always say to them that there’s no money to make. So do something else. In a way it’s kind of pure; the fact that there’s no money other than being able to cover the cost of doing the project.

KUPPER: That’s why you have your day job. What do you think about magazines like Richardson magazine outside of the scope of everything else?

MOTT: Andrew [Richardson] is a good friend of mine. I don’t know if it’s a parody of a porn magazine or if it’s a way of being a porn magazine for a new audience.

KUPPER: Interesting. Because he doesn’t really say it’s porn, it’s a sex magazine. It’s not a porn magazine even though there’s only porn stars on the covers of every issue.

MOTT: I think to do that kind of thing it’s got to be away from the male gaze. I don’t know enough about porn, it’s a massive culture. It’s the biggest thing. He plays around with that but he’s really created a clothing brand.

KUPPER: That seems very punk in and of itself what he’s doing.

MOTT: Yeah I guess so. He’s taken something that most people find offensive and some people find acceptable, but not all people do. It’s a fine line.

You can follow Toby Mott on Instagram here. Purchase the "street edition" of Skinhead: An Archive on Ditto Press Text, interview and photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Portrait of A Young Filmmaker: An Interview With CAMGIRL Director Dana Boulos

February 29, 2016

Dana Boulos is the talented director behind a new short film, entitled Cam Girl, that Autre has premiered exclusively online. Written by Jesy Odio, Cam Girl explores the vague border between our private lives and our proposed private lives. With the rise of adult webcam sites, where people can disrobe for a select viewing public in exchange for tips, Cam Girl is a prescient look at a humanity’s bifurcated persona; the erotic online persona and the persona of the girl who calls you up to tell you she just got her period, or the girl who calls you up to hang out. Cam Girl also reconnoiters our need to constantly communicate and digitally catalogue our lives. Autre caught up with Dana Boulos at home in Hollywood to ask a few questions about her inspirations, her love of film, her involvement in Petra Collins' all girl art collective Ardorous, and CAM GIRL, which can be viewed here.

Autre: Where did you grow up and did you always know that you wanted to enter the creative fields?

Dana Boulos: I grew up in Hampstead, London and moved to LA when I was 10 years old. As a child I wanted to be an artist. I knew I would fall into a creative field I just didn't know which one.

Autre: Who were some artists that first inspired you?

oulos: As a 5 year old I was obessed with Monet, I found his work so so soft and dreamy. I also look up to the works of Nadie Labaki, David Hamilton, Sarah Moon, Richard Avedon, and Larry Clark.

Autre: You have a big love of fashion - where did this love come from?

Boulos: It definitely came from my Family, especially my grandma. She was a model in Lebanon in the 60s'.

Autre: Can you talk a little bit about your production company?

oulos: I don't have a clothing label, but I do have a film production company called Cherry Runaway Films. My idea behind the Cherry Runaway Films is to also empower people into making films by discovering new up and coming directors, artists, and writers to produce their work.

Autre: You are a part of an all girl art collective called Ardorous - how did that come about and is it still active?

oulos: Yes Petra Collins and I became friends over the internet in 2009. She was forming all girl collective of artists from all around the world and I was one of the first to be asked me to be apart of it. We were all excited to be apart of an all girl collective that shared the same interests in art and understood each other. I had never met any girls in my city in LA that were into the type of art I was making at the time. I had become best friend with some of the girls I had met in IRL when they were visiting in LA. At the time we didn't realize how big it would get online and how many people clicked on the site. We all got amazing opportunities working with big publishing houses and having art shows around the world. The Ardorous was just the beginning and definitely inspired a lot of female artists out there on producing work. I feel really honored to have been apart of it.

Autre: Cam Girl is your first foray into film, where did the idea for this short film come from?

Boulos: I was at the right place at the right time. I had been hired by Oyster Magazine to photograph stills for a film they were doing a feature on and I had just met Jesy Odio who was working on set. She got my number called me the next day for a meeting she had just written her first short called CamGirl and wanted me to direct it. I read the script and instantly loved it.

Autre: What do you want young women to learn from watching cam girl - are there any defining messages?

Boulos: CAMGIRL, written by Jesy Odio explores what goes on in front of a computer screen and how it differs from what goes on in our bedroom IRL. The way we type with strangers online is not exactly the same way we talk with our friends when we got out. Although our main character is alone in her room she never takes a break from being in touch with others especially the constant digital cataloguing. I want to see more Women young or old in the film industry. Before meeting Jesy, I was studying cinematography and knew I wanted to pursue film making for 2015 and thats exactly what I did. I'm a strong believer in the laws of attraction. Anything you set your mind to you can accomplish.

Autre: What's next?

Boulos: I'm currently working on my next film 'CRIMSON ROSE', which I've been working on the script with Jesy since the summer of 2015. I'm looking forward to be working with some amazing people on this film, I cant talk about what its going to be about but definitely look out for a killer sound track to the film as well as mini book.

You can watch CAM GIRL here. Stay up to date with Dana Boulos by visiting her website or following her on Instagram. Photographs by Kevin Hayeland. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Through The Peep Hole: An Interview With Vanessa Prager

February 25, 2016

Vanessa Prager comes from a very talented and creative family. Most people know her sister, Alex Prager, and her larger than life cinematic portraits of people and crowds in surrealistic situations. However, the younger Prager is making a name for herself with her figurative oil paintings that verge on abstract sculptures. Faces, in a swirling, kinetic puzzle of colors and gashes of paint, seem less abstract as you pull away from the canvas. Prager’s work is currently on view as part of her first solo exhibition in New York – or outside of of Los Angeles – the Hole Gallery. The opening night of the exhibition was hosted by actor and comedian Fred Armisen, who counts himself as a fan of Prager’s work. The show, entitled "Voyeur," is interesting in that some of the works can only be viewed through a peep hole. The concept came from the artist’s thoughts about privacy, or lack thereof, in a hyper-digital world. Nonetheless, it is an interesting concept for showing figurative art in a century that has mostly abandoned the canvas as a relic of yesterday’s artists. Last Sunday, we got a chance to visit Prager’s studio in Downtown Los Angeles. As you walk through the door, the smell of oil paint is overwhelming and intoxicating. In the following conversation, we talk about her influences as an artist, her process and how Fred Armisen fits into the picture.

OLIVER KUPPER: How did you know you wanted to become an artist? Was it partly inspired by your sister’s pursuits?

VANESSA PRAGER: Well, it was weird. I went to boarding school when I was a teenager, for high school. When I was there, I started drawing. Those were the first signs of it. Weirdly, at the same time, she was down here starting to do photography. But you know, coming back to LA after I graduated, that was when I decided I wanted to do something in the arts. There were a few parts of that. One, I realized you had to get a job in LA and have a career, which wasn’t really something I thought about before then. Also, I had learned enough about myself that I was not really conducive to taking orders, doing nine to five. At the same time, my sister started having art shows. I think I went to her first one when I was seventeen. A bunch of our friends around that time were artists and photographers.

KUPPER: There was an energy going on.

PRAGER: Yeah. It was a really real thing. It wasn’t like we were all in Paris smoking and talking about art. I saw that there was this thing that you could do. It was a job for them. I don’t remember making a conscious decision after one specific thing. Around that time, after school, you wonder, what kind of job am I going to get?

KUPPER: So were your parents artists? Were they creative?

PRAGER: They were creative in their spirit. They’re not professional artists. My mom has been getting more into it. She's starting this vegan chocolate company. I consider a lot of things art. They definitely have the artistic mindset. That was definitely instilled into us. Art was a valuable thing for us growing up, more than objects. We didn’t have a lot of money, but ideas were important. That was one of the better things they could have given to us. It was always encouraged. When I started drawing, my mom was like, “Hey, you could sell these.”

KUPPER: So it seemed like a reality?

PRAGER: Yeah, it seemed like a reality. Alex is five years older than me, so she was already doing stuff when I was seventeen. I’m pretty active; when I get an idea I do something about it. But how you go about doing something like showing art – I know a lot of people wonder and never find out. To me, it was just looking at a lot of other people doing it.

KUPPER: Are there any other painters that you’re inspired by?

PRAGER: It’s hard, because I’m a painter, to view art without a critical eye. I definitely enjoy art, but ever since I was seventeen, I always look at art like – how did they do that? What’s going on there? You’re dissecting the thing. It’s hard for me to just purely enjoy things. Of course, I do. Whenever I see Lucian Freud for example, I’m in awe. I love somebody who can paint well. I love paintings. I’m just drawn into them.

KUPPER: Figurative art is relatively rare these days. It’s more conceptual. People aren’t sitting in front of a canvas as much anymore.

PRAGER: No. For a few years prior to doing this series, I was like, what am I doing? It really was a breakdown. I’m doing a really old-school thing in modern times, but I don’t feel old-school. I feel super modern in my being. I had to think about that. I think that’s how I came about this series. People would pose the question, “Why painting in 2016?” Why paint? Why paint with oil? There are so many things against the medium that don’t work in modern times. But then I realized my real love for it. I really took it apart. There’s something about it that I just love. That’s when I broke into this whole new thing. And I don’t paint in a classical way. I use the figure, which people do time and time again. But I do it in a way in which I feel I’m using it now.

KUPPER: Do you have any rituals before you start working?

PRAGER: I like to clean up and make the space my own. I really liked moving to this studio because it’s containable. I had a really big studio in Glendale that I shared before. It was always kind of hard to get each nook mine. Here, I like to water my plants. I get really bad when I’m in show. Things die. At the end of the month, I re-gather. I like throwing things away and cleaning out. I really like not having crap around. I’m a big fan of the trashcan.

"Life isn’t perfect. Things shouldn’t be perfect. I don’t like perfection. What is perfection anyway? History is a part of life, a part of now. The layering was a change for me to put everything together and have it all still be a part of the thing."

KUPPER: No clutter.

PRAGER: Yeah, no clutter. But there are little nooks. If I’m okay with them, then it’s okay. If I get into certain weird head space, I’ll do certain things. I’ll go walking or hiking. If I obsess over one stroke, and the rest of the painting isn’t working, I have to destroy what I’m attached to. Sometimes, it’ll pin me to a spot. Sometimes I end up making something that I love. But most of the time, I have to roll with it all and destroy it.

KUPPER: So you’ll start over completely if you feel something isn’t going in the direction you want it to go in?

PRAGER: For sure. Or I’ll just change it in a really dramatic way. If a face is going a certain direction and it’s just not working, oftentimes, I’ll turn the canvas over and do it on another thing. I always say that it’s telling me at the same time that I’m telling it what it’s going to be. I think that’s important for this kind of work. I never painted abstract before, but it totally borders on that. I can’t do it alone. It has to be an organic, flowy thing. There has to be something in the pure substances that tell me what needs to be there.

KUPPER: Your work started off much more realistic, and it became more abstract. Was that evolution natural?

PRAGER: Like I said, right before I started doing this series, I sat back and was like, why am I painting? What is that I like about it? How will it fulfill the thing that I want to get out into this world? This world, the one that we live in now, not the 1600s or the 1950s. Will it be able to interact with people? Essentially, that’s the purpose - for it to interact with people. In thinking about all that, it changed. It wasn’t quite there for it before. The style I was painting in before didn't make sense for all of those questions.

KUPPER: Your first solo shows have been happening recently. It looks like you’re just getting ready to explore that.

PRAGER: Totally. Had I gone to college, I probably wouldn’t have shown until last year. I started doing pop ups, little things here and there, in stores for one night only. While I was doing that, everyone got to see it. Good, bad, ugly, whatever - it just was. Had I been in school during that time, people wouldn’t have seen the work.

KUPPER: Or only students would have seen it.

PRAGER: Yeah, and they would have tore it to shreds, and I would have cried. [Laughs.] I equate it to that because that’s what makes sense to me. This is the work that I’m really proud of. There is a difference to me. I was still learning then. It’s a matter of figuring out how to release your feeling. Until you do that, you’re always reaching for that. I think I’ll always be exploring new ways to do stuff. That’s the job of an artist.

KUPPER: Part of that process seems like a layering. That seems to be a distinct style of yours. Is that accidental or is that part of it?

PRAGER: It’s part of it. It’s a big part of it. Life isn’t perfect. Things shouldn’t be perfect. I don’t like perfection. What is perfection anyway? History is a part of life, a part of now. The layering was a chance for me to put everything together and have it all still be a part of the thing. That’s how I see layering. I don’t use it in the classical oil-painting, glazing sense, which I’m sure some painters think is really annoying. I use it more in a sculptural sense. Topography and maps, even looking at mountains and rocks and stuff, is really inspiring to me. I use that a lot in the layering process. I enjoy painting with the skylight because it has those shadows. You see it in different lights, and everything changes.

KUPPER: Do you see yourself getting into sculpture?

PRAGER: I may. I really like sculpture. It’s just a matter of how. It’s learning another medium or hiring out. The way I envision it is kind of big. I think this is a good way of getting into that. I do like sculpture. I like the idea of it coming into three dimensions.

KUPPER: I want to talk about fans of your work. Fred Armisen is a big fan of your work.

PRAGER: He’s a pal. He’s a big fan of painting and art in general. He’s super cool and supportive. When we met, we just hit it off and chatted about art. He came over to my studio. Now, he’s hosting my show. It’s great because I think he’s so cool, and I love crossing over to new areas of art. I’m from LA, so the way that I envision having an art show isn’t necessarily classic. We have the movie industry here. Of course, I think it should be integrated. The art world shouldn’t be a separate, special area. I love anything that crosses over and opens it up to other groups of people.

KUPPER: The Hole is a great place for that. They’re really experimental in how they show their shows. And Kathy [Grayson] is a great curator.

PRAGER: She’s amazing. It was a really good fit. I’ve known her for years. She loves painting - she is a painter - but she tends to show the super conceptual work. She shows the picture of a painting, work that’s based on the pure idea. She shows less of the classic oil paintings. It was going to be interesting to see how that crossed over. But she loves oil painting. I thought it was a really good match, in the end. She brought a lot of conceptual stuff to it. The idea for “Voyeur” - we totally vibed on that.

KUPPER: Talk about that. That’s a really interesting way to present the work. A lot of the work, you can only view through a peep hole, right?

PRAGER: One of them you literally cannot get to. It’s an eight-foot painting behind a wall. You can only see it through the peep hole. Some of them you look through peep holes. Walls are set up. It’s in a maze-like fashion. In the end, you get to a painting. It has a definite flow. The idea of “Voyeur” was seeing things that you shouldn’t see. It’s messing with the fact that we have so much information these days. People can find out everything about other people before they even meet them.

KUPPER: What’s next after this series?

PRAGER: I don’t know. The show is still up. I always take a moment to relax and regroup after an opening. That was my first time showing in New York, so I had no idea what was going to happen. I just put everything into it for months. I’m going to have an empty studio. It will be a good place to start. I’ll just start making stuff. I’ll see where the next vibe takes me.

Vanessa Prager's exhibition Voyeur is on view until February 28, 2016 at The Hole NYC, 312 Bowery, New York. Text and photographs by Oliver Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Agency, Anal and Attitude: An Interview with Aiden Starr

February 23, 2016

Aiden Starr has the most magnificent rack I’ve ever come in contact with. Aside from her undeniably pronounced assets, Aiden is articulate and knowledgeable about what she does and has nothing to hide because of it. She is one of the most accomplished women in porn, exposed and giving no apologies. Straight forward and cutting; she tells it like it is and that is what I cherish about her as a friend and a colleague. She calls bullshit, she celebrates the good, she treats sex work with care and consideration. For her, porn is a humanist pursuit as she acts as a matchmaker between client and provider on all levels of the industry. I caught up with the 4’11” blonde bombshell and her sweet porn chum, Daisy Ducati, at the Beverly Center in mid-January after an Evil Angel shoot. I hung around while they shopped for their dresses for the 2016 AVNs and XBIZ awards while asking questions about her career and the porn industry at large, and learned more about her impressive roster of porn films, both as a performer and a director, past and upcoming and other untouchable arenas: agency, anal, and attitude. Some men seemed to recognize both of the girls as we walked through the mall, but I remained the invisible pervert.

Audra Wist: My interest in you has always been about you being super professional and somebody who has successfully crossed over hardcore porn and femdom and also somebody is who both a performer and a director. I am not so involved in the porn industry to know how common that is, but it doesn’t seem—

Aiden Starr: It’s not. Male performers and directors are way more common than female performer/directors.

Wist: So, was that a part of your trajectory when you started out… like you said, okay, I’m going to perform and I definitely want to get to directing eventually, this is something I’m interested in technically... or was it more or less I’m going to get into this and see how I do and play it by ear?

Starr: My first sex worker job was a phone girl in a dungeon. What a phone girl means is the girl who picks up the phone, who books the sessions for the other girls and who preps the equipment in the room and who keeps the time. And working on the magazine that the dungeon put out at the time cause this was the 90s.

Wist: And this was in New York?

Starr: Yeah, New York. And also working on the website, updating. But most of what I did and what I was really good at was managing the clients. I really liked submissive girls - that’s why I started working there. My buddy was a bottom and we played together and she started working there and she asked me to work there with her because she wanted me to work on her shifts, be the phone girl, and book all of her sessions. Get her guys that she liked and make good matches for her. So, my initial interest in the adult industry was making good matches between clients and providers to make the job enjoyable - to make the experience enjoyable for not only the clients, but also for the providers. Not only was a monetary exchange, but an exchange of a good time and a good energy.

Wist: Right, that’s what it’s about.

Starr: I didn’t start working in that kind of adult film until I was working in the dungeon for a couple of years and then I only did it with women who were my lovers in real life. Before I graduated high school, I thought about applying to Tisch [School of the Arts, at NYU] and had prepared an application, so I was familiar with video medium and had directed stuff before. In fact, the very first thing I directed, I was a twelve-year old and I directed a mockumentary on date rape.

Wist: Really? That’s great! Wait, so did you-

Starr: It was a dramatization. It was a girl and a guy going back and forth, talking about their experiences, like a he said/she said reenactment of it with a party scene: people drinking too much and the concept of date rape. She didn’t know why they were going into the bedroom because she’s young and didn’t have the experience... and he didn’t understand that she didn’t know why they were going into the bedroom because why would she go into the bedroom if she didn’t want to be there? That kind of scene. I wrote these scripts out for my friends, who were twelve, and I made them do it.

Wist: [laughs] Oh, you “made” them do it - that is your career in a nutshell.

Starr: And it was also kind of a porn, a soft-core porn. Now, my version of this was them getting under the covers and moving under the sheets because when you’re twelve you think that’s what sex is. You just pull the sheets over your head and move around.

Wist: That is so funny.

Starr: But that, theoretically, is a soft core porn. So, I guess if you look back early enough, I was always going to end up where I ended up but that’s not what initially sparked my wanting to be a sex worker. It’s like a spa, going to see a provider. It’s beautiful and it’s fantasy and it’s like watching one of those movies from the 80s like Legend or Labyrinth where everybody is amazing and is in a castle and there’s a princess. And to me, it was helping people with their castle fantasy.

Wist: You see a smattering of people in the adult industry, or maybe this is any industry, but you have people who are the real deal and people who are eh, what are you doing here.

Starr: Tourists.

Wist: Right, tourists. And I feel so much of what’s going on, all this shit about sex positivity and feminism, it’s all just internet chatter and no real showing up. Show up and do something. For you, it’s like here I am: a director for a huge porn company. Here I am: performing in porn. Here I am: a mainstay in porn and have been for a long time. What do you think about all the stuff that’s being thrown around on the internet online… I’m trying to think of an example…

Starr: Oh, you can think of an example. Just try real hard.

Wist: What are you thinking of?

Starr: The James Deen thing.

Wist: Oh, yes! Of course. I honestly did not even think of that when I was thinking of these questions but that is perfect. We should talk about that.

Starr: That’s a great example of sex workers espousing feminism in social media. The fact that, to these women, you always take the side of a woman whenever she claims to have been raped, that is part of their perceived definition of feminism. Which is interesting, because for me rape is not a gender-based issue. I know just as many men, or trans, or otherwise gendered people, who are sexually assaulted as I do women. So, I don’t see rape culture as a feminist issue. I see it as a humanist issue. And it’s interesting because it’s being ascribed to a feminist issue. People claiming “women get raped, women get raped, women get raped.” People get raped. Human beings get raped. And I think that’s kind of getting lost while people are espousing the idea of rape culture and the knowledge that this does exist. A man was trying to convince me the other day that rape culture doesn’t exist and I said “God bless you that you don’t know that that exists.”

Wist: Damn.

Starr: Seriously, bless your existence and that you don’t act that way towards people. Bless your parents for not fucking you up the way that a lot of other people are fucked up. It’s a thing, it’s a real thing. But I don’t think that it has to be under the feminist banner and I think that it is being ascribed to the feminist banner by sex workers or sex positive people in social media. It’s interesting to see the dynamic of where feminism was in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and today. Today it’s all about preventing victimization and I feel like many many years ago it was about empowerment and equality. I’m not sure how that happened.

Wist: Preventing of victimization. So, do you think that there’s an alternative to that view? Not that this is a say-all-end-all my-little-constitution of feminism or whatever, but is there anything we can do? Or is it just being somebody who is doing the work and not being “I’m gonna go on the internet and say what I think about this thing that I have no first-hand knowledge of whatsoever!”

Starr: I think for me feminism, at it’s core, is about equality. It’s about people being equal to people. You obviously could go into the history of it and it’s present-day application and the issue, be they American, Central American, South American, African, European, Australian, Asian, whatever pocket of the world, and how feminism plays out in certain area, but for me, it’s about everybody being equal to each other.

Wist: Straight forward, straight up.

Starr: That’s kind of how I’ve always seen it. Everybody deserves common human rights.

Wist: Yeah, there was a gal [Laurie Penny] who wrote a piece for TIME and it was this call to arms, like we have to do something about this, isn’t this horrible and I thought yes, of course rape is horrible—

Starr: Yes! No one is arguing that! No one has ever been like this is totally fucking fine. Only the idiots are saying “she asked for it” and no one listens to them. They’re idiots and we all know they are idiots. Feminism has definitely become more anti-male. Feminism looks closer to female supremacy than it does feminism.

Wist: Right, it does! I wrote down one time “I am a female supremacist but I don’t devalue men,” and I could not for the life of me figure out what that meant. But now, hearing you say that, maybe I was trying to ascribe to a particular brand of contemporary feminism while wanting to break away or find some alternative that felt right. I looked at that sentence a lot. Do you think that that’s why there’s been a rise in femdom porn? I don’t know the numbers, but do you think there’s been a significant spike?

Starr: Why there’s been a rise in femdom porn is such an interesting fucking question. It’s one of my favorite subjects to talk about. When I talk to clients about porn and why they watch it, I always pick their brains and it’s so interesting to see that side where subs have no control and they like having no control. Whereas, if you play with a girl and it’s a girl/girl situation, the girls like “you can do this to me, you can do that to me, but I don’t like that and I don’t like this, period.” Whereas, guys just want to be this rock bottom. It’s so different between the two genders and their perception of being submissive. It’s fascinating! I have no fucking idea why except that money is so important in today’s society that I’m sure it has something to do with the burden that men are supposed to be the primary breadwinners.

Wist: Yes, I was thinking the same thing. It has something to do with money as it’s so closely related to power.

Starr: Yeah, findom [financial domination] is huge.

Wist: I think it’s also that because of money, people acquiring large sums of it, people are too comfortable and they really seriously do not know what to do with all of it. And then it gets mixed in with desire or their dick or—

Starr: It’s burning a hole in their pocket.

Wist: Right.

Starr: I think men also feel like the pressure is on them in social situations to engage women and do they like the sexually aggressive archetype because it takes the pressure off of them. So, why I think that any kind of porn rises, any kind of art rises, any kind of entertainment rises, at all in any medium, is culture. The pervasive language of the culture directly affects femdom. What that language is is debatable but definitely male responsibility and that they feel burdened by society in some way, shape, or form to still be the sexual aggressor or monetary provider affects femdom. And going back to feminism, maybe that’s why all these girls are angry on the internet because their realities are not pleasing to them.

"IT'S LIKE A SPA, GOING TO SEE A PROVIDER. IT'S BEAUTIFUL AND IT'S FANTASY AND IT'S LIKE WATCHING ONE OF THOSE MOVIES FROM THE 80s, LIKE LEGEND OR LABYRINTH, WHERE EVERYBODY IS AMAZING AND IS IN A CASTLE AND THERE'S A PRINCESS. AND TO ME, IT WAS HELPING PEOPLE WITH THEIR CASTLE FANTASY."

Wist: Yeah, this is the whole put a ribbon on your car situation, right? Support our troops? Did that. I bought my ribbon and put it on my car. Done. It’s a whitewashing culture. Maybe something that folds into that too… I was really into your Marshmallow Girls series for Evil Angel. I remember thinking damn, this is in the fucking mainstream! This is so crazy and why not? And to put it out there under those circumstances and to really capitalize on a previously thought of as “niche” market is bold! With that and femdom porn too, I think we really have to acknowledge and reckon with the fact that people want different things and have different needs. And look - you put it out there and people buy it. That’s the best part.

Starr: They buy it! People buy the shit out of my porn. I make money and I can pay you. Yeah, people buy the shit out of my weird crap.

Wist: I’m wondering about the back end of that, too. Does porn still dictate what’s on the cusp of happening in technology? Is the porn industry experiencing the same thing that magazines and the print media are right now then?

Starr: Yeah, obsolescence. Our medium is experiencing a trend towards obsolescence because of the drop in capital because of all of the free porn on the internet. It’s fucking us super badly.

Wist: What do you do to counteract that?

Starr: What you have to do is make something that they would pay for even if they could get it for free. You have to make the air smell so good that people will come over to your post to sniff the air even though there’s air everywhere for free. It’s really fucking hard. Selling something for free is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It is possible, but you just have to think about it. When I make movies, all of my cast is hand-picked. The movie we just shot Lesbian Anal Sex Slaves Volume 2—

Wist: Repeat the name for me?

Starr: Lesbian Anal Sex Slaves Volume 2. Daisy [Ducati] and I were doing a shot together, fleshing out ideas of how we were already interacting and then figured out as other characters, figuring out our dynamics, props. It’s a more complicated process now. You can’t just put anal porn on the internet now and expect to make money.

Wist: Do you guys storyboard?

Starr: I don’t storyboard… we were talking about it during sex. We were inspired by each other. I talked to her, proposed an idea afterward. She’s in a lot of my stuff anyway and I like picking performers who like to be involved in the creative process or are blank canvases. Typically, I like to pair those types together in a scene. Daisy has been in a lot of my stuff and she is a part of the creative process and then I pick a blank canvas, or two, and give them to her and it goes from there. Does that make sense? I just compared it to painting.

Wist: Makes sense to me.

Starr: I have active participants in a scene and passive participants. And I participate only if the passive participants are unable to complete the tasks at hands. So, today for example, the girl was having trouble with anal. I saw her having trouble with anal so I told her to get on her back and have the other gal lick her butthole. I had to change the situation because she was not comfortable. Otherwise, I would’ve just let them do what they were going to do. I only interject if I feel like I need to as a director.

Wist: Does that happen that often that people [directors] step in and say okay, you are clearly having trouble with your butthole today—

Starr: You just do something else. It’s okay! For me, it’s about the happiness and safety of all the performers. No one has to die. I don’t make snuff movies.

Wist: What’s that like for you to work with fresh eighteen year-olds in the industry? Do you feel like you’re mama bear?

Starr: I don’t usually hire young girls.

Wist: You don’t?

Starr: I don’t. I’m 36 and I’m not really attracted to people half my age. It’s just not a thing for me. This girl was special. She has a special energy and I wanted her to have good experiences with us doing rough stuff. She had fun today. And because of it, she’s going to be a more comfortable sex worker because of it.

Wist: Right, she didn’t feel bad about it and that’s so important! So many people have bad one-off experiences.

Starr: You can really give yourself serious psychological damage with bad experiences.

Wist: Yeah, I think about this with clients. They have these bad first experiences with dommes, and these are grown men, and they are traumatized. And I feel bad. That fucking blows. They paid to have a traumatic experience.

Starr: It’s intense. A lot of pro dommes are really bad. Really bad where I’m like what the fuck am I looking at right now?

Wist: Well, I have my own are-you-for-real bullshit detector thing that I do or observe, but do you have that too?

Starr: Yes, absolutely. If you are a pro domme and I see you do a scene with no aftercare, you suck. Period. If you are too fucking cool to get them a glass of water… if you are too fucking good to realize that you’re playing with a human being, I don’t like you. We’re not cut from the same fabric.

Wist: Yep. And it’s all too common.

Starr: And you know what it is? It stems from insecurity because cruelty stems from insecurity and that’s what that is. That’s not BDSM, that’s cruelty. It’s true, man. And girls think it makes them look like a badass.

Wist: It’s a bummer. So, you guys are preparing for the awards show this week?

Starr: Yeah, I’ve been working my balls off. XBIZ awards are this week and then the AVNs are the following week.

Wist : Did you ever read David Foster Wallace’s essay on his experience at the AVNs?

Starr: No.

Wist: He opens it up with this horrendous story about men jerking off so much, so furiously, that they just can’t handle it anymore and they chop that shit right off.

Starr: Sweet, wow. Wait a minute… first of all, the AVNs are not that much fun. Okay, if Satan were involved, I would be much more excited about not being able to work the entire time while being there. I would be much more excited if anybody even just masturbated until their dick fell off much less cut off! If there was any masturbation at all, that would be amazing. There’s really nothing. We get dressed up, sign shit, talk to people, they stare at us, we do radio shows—

Wist: What’s that like, getting the mesmerizing stare? What are their faces like?

Starr: Here’s the weirdest shit the world: everybody knows your name and you don’t know any of their names. And you don’t know who they are… or if you do. I just try to be nice to everybody. That’s my plan for AVNs.

Wist: Do they say weird shit to you during a meet and greet?

Starr: Sometimes. Like, “Every time I masturbate, I cry,” and shit like that. I love that though. I want people to scare the other girls standing around — that’s how weird I want it to be. If it’s not weird, it’s just like, “Hi, nice to meet you, goodbye.” I like weird shit. One dude during an independent signing at a store, he came in and said, “You have really big breasts.” and I’m like, “yeeeeep!” and he goes, “I bet your mother had really big breasts, too.” and I said, “She does.” and then he comes back with, “I bet your grandmother has big breasts.” and I’m like, “As a matter of fact, she does.” And he was older; he started asking what my grandmother looked like...

Wist: Oh, god.

Starr: And at the end of the conversation he asked me if I would tell my grandmother that he said hello and I was like, “Sure will, buddy.”

Wist: Shit. [laughs] By the way, I do have to say, your tits are amazing. That was one of the things I had wrote down to say. It’s not a question, but I needed to say it.

Starr: Then you’re going to love the dress I’m wearing to AVN. It’s red latex over the boobies, over the cleavage and it’s really not my size, total smashville.

Wist: Another question I had for you because I still haven’t figured this out for myself, was about negotiating yourself into your work. I struggle with this. So, you have your government self and then you have this performer you’ve created, another part of you, which is still very much you and not something false. I was also thinking about David Bowie since he passed the other day, and I thought wow, porn is like David Bowie. Is there a relationship there?

Starr: Porn is like David Bowie but porn is more like football.

Wist: Porn is like football? Explain.

Starr: So, you’re a football player, right? You eat well, you’re in shape, you work out and train, you look good, you’re a football player. But then, when you put on your uniform, you tackle people. You wouldn’t tackle people in real life, but you do when you’re in uniform because it’s your job and it’s okay. So, porn is like football.

Wist: Ohhhh, I see. So, porn is like football and not like David Bowie?

Starr: Porn is like David Bowie because David Bowie was majestic and sexual and fantastic. And tight shiny clothing and shoes you can’t really walk in. David Bowie is like porn because of the sexuality that is so raw and potent that it makes people nervous. The most popular comment on all of the stories on my Facebook feed about David Bowie on Facebook were “speechless.” He renders people speechless. Porn renders people speechless. When guys come up to us at AVN, they often cannot articulate themselves. You’re activating the part of your brain that does not recognize language as a form of communication, the animal or primal part of your brain that is activated by symbolism, colors, tarot cards, crosses, shit like that. That is how porn is like David Bowie.

Wist: You knocked it out of the park.

You can follow Aiden Starr on Twitter here. Text and interview by Audra Wist. Photographs by . Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Nine Morbid Songs About Dying: An Interview With New Zealand Soul Singer Marlon Williams

February 19, 2016

Marlon Williams, the New Zealand born soul crooner whose self-titled breakout album drops today, isn’t just a throw back. Sure, his slicked back hair, tight fitting Brando style tees and general ruggedness may suggest a yearning for 1950s Americana, but this vocal prodigy from the Southern Hemisphere is merely singing from the heart, which can transcend time and space and musical genres. In his voice and vocal style, there are also strains of religious spirituals that can be tied to his family’s Maori upbringing (his father was a Maori punk singer) and singing in church choirs. Already selling out concerts and becoming a household name in his native New Zealand, Marlon Williams’ self-titled album will surely see the young musical artist gain international recognition, especially in the United States with multiple tour dates sets, including a spot at SXSW with his backing band The Yarra Benders, in March. We got a chance to speak with Williams about his Maori roots, soul music and his new album.

Autre: Can you talk a little bit about your upbringing in New Zealand...I read somewhere that your roots go far back to a native Maori tribe, is that right?

Marlon Williams: That's right. My dad's half Maori, my mum's quarter so I'm some ratio too. I was brought up in a port town outside of Christchurch in the South Island. It was a classic small town upbringing, a lot of freedom to kick around the streets as a kid

Autre: And your dad was a Maori punk singer...that is very different than the music you make - do you have memories of seeing him play - what was the name of his band?

Williams: He kinda stopped playing by the time I was around but he played in a band called the Boneshakers. New wave punk from the rural North Island.

Autre: What was your earliest exposure to music - how did you gain access to music that influenced and inspired you?

Williams: My dad always introduced me to new stuff, pretty steadily throughout my childhood and into my teenage years. It started off with Elvis and the Beatles and eventually lead into The Band and Gram Parsons.

Autre: Who are some of your folk and blues heroes?

Williams: Dave Van Ronk, Peggy Seeger, Vashti Bunyan, Robbie Basho, Blind Willie McTell, Lightnin Hopkins, Bob Carpenter. This list won't ever end.

Autre: Does New Zealand have a strong folk scene?

Williams: It really does. A lot of really great underground stuff and some more well known. Aldous Harding, Delaney Davidson, Nadia Reid, Eb and Sparrow. All good friends, all great musicians.

Autre: You have accomplished a lot in a short amount of time, and you've won a lot of awards, were you surprised at your success as a musician or is this something you've always wanted?

Williams: It's all I've ever really known so it's hard considering alternative paths, but it's certainly a nice feeling to be appreciated. As long as I can do it how I want I'm happy.

Autre: You are being hailed as "the new Elvis" is this something you balk at or embrace?

Williams: Neither. It'd be a dick move to react too strongly to that one either way

Autre: What is your ideally suited environment to write music...do you have a ritual or does it come to you at all times?

Williams: I have no ritual. It just happens when it does. It's a very frustrating way to write music, especially when it doesn't hit you for a while. I need to get disciplined

Autre: Your music video for the track Hello Miss Lonesome is very intense – where did the idea for the music video come about?

Williams: That came from the director, Damien Shatford, who's a good old pal of mine. He's made a couple of videos for me and they both feature me getting smashed up. You'd have to ask him why. Maybe I did something to him I don't know about

Autre: Your new album is self-titled and it almost seems like a “break out” album – whatever that means – do you feel like you want to reach a much wider, global audience with the record?

Williams: Who doesn't? The more people I can get to hear my music the better. It means the Kiwis and Australians get a break from me for a while

Autre: You are planning to tour in some major cities in the US – is this your first time touring in states and do you have any apprehensions?

Williams: This is my first headline tour in the states, yeah. Not particularly. I only ever worry about survival and love

Autre: What can people expect from the new album?

Williams: 9 morbid songs about dying

Autre: What do your parents think of your success as a musician...have they supported you all along?

Williams: My mothers a painter and dad the singer so they'd be hypocritical to condemn me. They've always been behind me 100%.

Autre: Where do you want to go with your music after this album…any grand, surprising plans?

Williams: I'm not completely sure yet but it'll be really, really good

Marlon Williams' self-titled album on Dead Oceans records is available here. Watch the music video for highlight single Strange Things below. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Photograph by Justyn Strother. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Mad About The Boy: An Interview With SHOWStudio Editor Lou Stoppard

February 18, 2016

With the massive outpour of round the clock fashion coverage and inundation, SHOWStudio editor’s Lou Stoppard still firmly stands out. As a writer, broadcaster, and curator, Stoppard offers both a conceptual understanding of fashion as well as an open-mindedness to the changes in the industry that allows her work a warm resonance that rings true throughout the media. As SHOWstudio editor, Stoppard has picked the brains of designers ranging from Nasir Mazhar, Gosha Rubchinskiy, Public School, Cottweiler, and many more. Perhaps most infamously, Stoppard was granted a two-hour interview with Kanye West following his Yeezy Season 2 presentation. In all her interviews, Stoppard manages to ask thoughtful and conceptual questions while still putting her subjects emotionally at ease. As a result, her video interviews offer true portals into the inner-workings of designers’ brains.

Lou Stoppard’s exhibition Mad About the Boy will be showing at Fashion Space Gallery London until April 2. Stoppard curated the exhibition as an exploration of the concept of youth in the fashion industry, specifically how the idea of the teenage boy is constructed through fashion collections and images. The exhibition combines the contributions of designers such as Raf Simons, Hedi Slimane, Gosha, Jun Takahashi, JW Anderson and others with those of artists and image makers like Larry Clark, Nick Knight, Judy Blame, Mark Leckey and others to construct and break down the fantasy of the teenage boy.

Stoppard took the time to answer some questions we had about the exhibition.

Adam Lehrer: Do you think that the ideas presented by designers such as Raf have been positive in shifting ideals of masculinity at large?

Stoppard: I think it’s definitely becoming easier for men to say they are interested in “fashion.” Alex Bilmes, editor of Esquire, talked about this when I interviewed him for SHOWstudio’s In Fashion series. He mentioned that for a long time men felt comfortable saying they were interested in “style” but not “fashion.” [The idea of fashion] felt fey or niche. I think that has changed. Partly this is due to the spotlight on menswear and with the way that designers are speaking to men. Designers like Raf often draw on obsessions or ideas that tap into a collective consciousness: certain musical genres, films, and books (you saw that particularly with the David Lynch tribute at his [Fall-Winter 2016 show). I think menswear designers of late often explore rites of passage and themes of growing up that tap into men’s sense of their own masculinity. There’s also a wide range of different views of ‘manhood’ presented in menswear- much wider than the vision of femininity presented by womenswear.

"I do think that part of the thing people are obsessed with to do with youth is this idea of freedom: freedom to create, freedom to reinvent, freedom of indemnity. And part of that is the notion of experimentation that people tie to youth."

Lehrer: Do you find that there is ever disconnect between how male teenagers are presented in fashion and how actual teenagers in real life dress and what they are interested in?

Stoppard: Of course. Though I think certain rites of passage or events and ideas all people connected with as a youth – sex, space, social groups etc – crop up again and again in fashion’s depiction of the boy.

Lehrer: What is it about youth that you think so fascinates fashion?

Stoppard: That’s sort of what I’m trying to explore with the exhibition. I think to some extent it’s aesthetic: fashion loves a slim and lithe body. On the other hand it’s more abstract: youth is fleeting which appeals to an industry that is all about change.

Lehrer: You've said there is an element of nostalgia in the ideas of youth in fashion, can that ever be stunting to a creative process?

Stoppard: I think nostalgia is, to a degree, inevitable. Designers tirelessly reference their obsessions, which do tend to be formed during formative, youthful years. They often reference the things that first got them interested in fashion and style; bands, icons, clubs and so on. To a degree it’s about looking back but it’s also about reinventing. They make things the way they wanted them to be, or create characters they wished they could have been. You see that a lot in the work of people like Jun Takahashi and Hedi Slimane.

Lehrer: I know you quite like wearing certain menswear brands, do you think the explorations of youth in menswear has led to this gender fluidity in the products sold by high fashion brands?

Stoppard: I do think that part of the thing people are obsessed with to do with youth is this idea of freedom: freedom to create, freedom to reinvent, freedom of indemnity. And part of that is the notion of experimentation that people tie to youth. There is a whole section of the exhibition about gender fluidity. When you look at the way someone like Alessandro Michele at Gucci looks at gender it is very much tied to the freedom of the kid.

Lehrer: Was there anything particular about the work of Tony Hornecker that you thought he could add to the overall feel of the exhibition?

Stoppard: Well Tony did the set for all those original Meadham Kirchhoff presentations and shows, and I knew that I wanted to restage a bit of their SS 13 menswear presentation, which is one of the most beautiful and intelligent fashion displays I’ve ever seen, so working with Tony just felt so apt. Ben Kirchhoff also suggested Tony as being perfect to handle the restaging, so obviously it felt respectful.

Lehrer: I know the exhibition explores different ways that the male youth has been portrayed in fashion, but is there any singular idea throughout the various images that you feel could sum up the entire idea of the exhibition?

Stoppard: It’s about cycles and tropes, in a way, I suppose.

Lehrer: Do you believe youth in fashion will always be a concept heavily explored, or will we move on at some point?

Stoppard: Almost every designer draws on their own life and formative influences, so I think youth will always be there in fashion, even if it’s only due to creatives reflecting.

Mad About The Boy, curated by Lou Stoppard, will be on view until April 2 at Fashion Space Gallery at the London College of Fashion, 20 John Princes Street. Text and interview by Adam Lehrer. Photograph by Flo Kohl. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

The Naked Word: A Conversation Between Lydia Lunch and Thurston Moore at the The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

February 16, 2016

A condensed version of this conversation between Lydia Lunch and Thurston Moore, held at the Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics on July 15th, 2015 in Boulder, Colorado, can be found in Autre's current LOVE Issue. Recording by Max Davies and Ambrose Bye. Moderation by Bil Brown.

LYDIA LUNCH: I did my first spoken word show with Thurston Moore. Do you remember?

THURSTON MOORE: I remember, yes. It was in New York City. You decided you would do something without the necessitation of these annoying guitars, amps, and drums. Let’s just get rid of that craphole, huh? You had some ideas of this dialogue you had written. And you roped me into it.

LUNCH: I remember inviting Thurston to take a walk with me. We didn’t know each other, but we lived a block away from each other. We would spot each other on the subway. This was the early 80s?

MOORE: I saw you in the late 70s. I lived on 13th Street.

LUNCH: I was on 12th.

MOORE: I would see you on the corner of 12th and A.

LUNCH: Cowboy boots, spiked skirts.

MOORE: Ring in nose. I would see you sometimes in the subway, on the L train.

LUNCH: I remember thinking, “Who is this tall boy? Why is he so shy?”

MOORE: I knew who you were because you had a reputation. You were in a band called Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was something kind of crazy.

LUNCH: But we didn’t meet each other. We would just spot each other.

MOORE: You knew all these people. I was a loner.

LUNCH: But then I left, and I came back to New York. That’s when we met. I don’t know what came first, the spoken word or “In Limbo.” By the way, somebody is asking me to answer questions about that period, and I don’t have any fucking answers. I don’t remember. But, I came back to do spoken word. I don’t remember how we met, or how we got introduced, but I invited Thurston to go on a walk with me. I started telling him this terrible story – it wasn’t a true story, most of my stories are true – and his reaction was so, “Oh my God. You’re kidding me. I can’t believe it. Really?” I was kinda like, “Yeah.” I don’t know if this involves the “urinating in the doorway” story or not. Was that the same incident?

MOORE: That was the same time period, yes.

LUNCH: So I said, “We’re doing this tomorrow night. We’re doing this performance. You’re just going to be the straight man.” I don’t even think we used mics. I think we did like a Chinese whisper circle. We were just walking around talking, and people could only hear snatches. That was my first spoken word show. And that was my first show with him. My second one was called “Daddy Dearest.” Actually, some people from my class saw us do “North Six.” Years later, well, Thurston, we did the first spoken word show together. Get on the bill! He was like, “Can I have a collaborator?” I’m like, “No. You, your guitar, and your poetry.” We did a few shows. Those were great.

MOORE: I don’t think even at that time the word “spoken word” was being used.

LUNCH: No.

MOORE: It was whatever was being used. Some kind of performance. I recall that. We were introduced through Richard Edson, one of the earliest drummers of Sonic Youth.

LUNCH: He lived across the street from me. He lived one block away from you.

MOORE: Yeah. And when you came back into New York after spending time in London, or wherever you were…

LUNCH: I went to LA for two years, and then I went to London for two years to work with The Birthday Party. I moved back to New York to around ’84 with Thirlwell.

MOORE: I met you through Richard Edson because he was involved with doing the soundtrack music to a film that Seth B and Beth B were doing. It was called “Vortex.” It was their first major film. It was a bigger film, and Lydia was the lead.

LUNCH: Angel Palmers, a detective.

MOORE: Yeah, you played Angel Palmers, detective.

LUNCH: Who takes a bubble bath.

MOORE: There was a very interesting bubble bath scene. Anyway, Richard Edson said to me, “Hey, I’m doing music for this film. I want you to play bass. Lydia Lunch is in it. We’re going to get together and circulate some ideas.” I was very intrigued. He took me over to where Lydia was staying, on Rivington Street at John Duffy’s apartment.

LUNCH: Thirlwell wasn’t there then.

MOORE: Thirlwell hadn’t come into the scene.

LUNCH: I came back to New York, I don’t know how. I was staying at somebody’s apartment.

MOORE: You were staying at this apartment, and that’s how we met. We were sort of hanging out. That’s about it. One thing lead to the other…

LUNCH: [Laughs.] Remind me, how did I approach the “In Limbo” session? That’s what the guy who is writing the book about you wants to know, and I can’t remember.

MOORE: We had done this music for Vortex. It never really came to anything. The soundtrack for “Vortex” – I’m not even on that. It sort of happened very quickly. Richard did what he did. You and I remained in touch. You reached out to me to see if I would be interested in playing for some songs that you were working on. I said sure.

LUNCH: I think I wanted to make the slowest record ever made. Really depressing.

MOORE: It was the slowest record in the world. And this was at the time when I was really engaged in listening to the fastest music being made.

LUNCH: [Laughs.] As contrarian.

MOORE: I’m listening to Minor Threat and Black Flag.

LUNCH: And I wanted to do sludge rock. I want to do the most tortuously, painfully slow. I was very depressed. Part of me was very depressed. I just wanted to write a record that was morose. Actually, we do “Still Burning” from that live still.

MOORE: They were great songs.

LUNCH: They were very poetic.

MOORE: I felt like they were really musical.

LUNCH: You played bass. Jim Sclavunos played sax.

MOORE: We would meet at Bradley Field’s basement studio.

LUNCH: He was the drummer of Teenage Jesus.

MOORE: He had this basement rehearsal space on Grand Street. He let us use this space. Sonic Youth was rehearsing there. I think Lydia was kicking upstairs.

LUNCH: Yeah, that was my loft.

MOORE: It was literally two blocks from where I was living on Eldridge Street. I would go there, and Lydia would hone to me what she wanted. I would play on the bass. Richard Edson was going to play.

LUNCH: You told me something about a slow dance. I’m not sure.

MOORE: The first rehearsal was pretty much, you know…

LUNCH: A seduction.

MOORE: Yeah. Lydia said, “Can we dance?” I said, “I don’t dance. I don’t even know you.”

LUNCH: [Laughs.] “Shall we dance?” I didn’t mean disco or go go. Well, I thought we had to get to know each other. I had to see if you could dance slow enough. It was a slow dance.

MOORE: She was trying to slow me down.

LUNCH: That was true. Did I?

MOORE: I knew she was just trying to slow me down, but it’s just like…

LUNCH: A volcano was trying to slow a tornado down.

MOORE: It just made my heart beat faster, honestly. Anyway, we started doing these songs. Edson was playing drums. You called in Sclavunos to play the saxophone. And Pat Place played the guitar. Then, we started rehearsing at Michael Gira’s place on Sixth Street.

LUNCH: I have no recollection of that.

MOORE: The real rehearsals started happening because there wasn’t enough room at Bradley’s.

LUNCH: Then, we recorded at Donny Christenson’s. Did we?

MOORE: We might have.

LUNCH: Where else would we have done it?

MOORE: We did. I think I remember going to Donny Christenson’s.

LUNCH: We did record. The record exists. It’s called “In Limbo.”

MOORE: That was the first time I remember meeting Donny Christenson.

LUNCH: Who was in the Contortions and the Raybeats.

MOORE: For me, it was great. Donny, Pat, Jim, and Lydia were playing in bands that I would go see and I was really intrigued by. They were very informative for Sonic Youth. My scene, at that time, was my band and then Mike Gira’s band Swans. There were a couple of other outlining bands. A lot of that, the bands that existed a couple years before us – such as Contortions – they had all broken up. Everybody was going to different places. Lydia left, and then she was back.

LUNCH: To start doing spoken word. To start collaborating with other people.

MOORE: She started employing me into what she was doing. Subsequently, these other musicians from that time period came in. I got to meet Sclavunos, who started playing drums for Sonic Youth. He played on the “Confusion is Sex” album.

LUNCH: And he played in Teenage Jesus, 8 Eyed Spy, Shotgun Wedding Live. Then, he went on with Sonic Youth. Then he went on with Nick Cave.

MOORE: It was super exciting. Jim O’Rourke came over. Nick Cave came over. The birthday parties for shows in New York – we were all there hanging out and having dinner at Susan Martin’s house. There was this whole crew of new music that was happening. This was ’81, ’82. We all connected. Lydia was sort of the one who threw everybody together. When I think about it, that’s kind of how it happened.

LUNCH: I think the instinctual genius – I don’t know how I even conceived of it at that point – was that I took Teenage Jesus to the UK in 1978. I was one of the first people to decide, with no money at all, that this had to go to Europe. To play there, and to find other people there. A lot of bands didn’t get to Europe at that point. I just jumped myself there and jumped myself to Berlin. I moved to London, and then the collection of people came together naturally that way, through this connective tissue of this corralling thing that I naturally do. I was always more mobile than everybody because that’s my addiction. My addiction is moving. I don’t collect people, but I kind of cattle prod people into coming together.

MOORE: To your credit, the people who resonated with you were these people who were doing interesting things.

LUNCH: I would have a lot of dinner parties at my house. I would cook for everybody.

MOORE: There’s a little bit of the dinner party thing that really brought everything into place. I don’t know if that happens anymore.

LUNCH: It happens in Spain, but they’re a food culture. I would always throw Sunday parties. Who else was throwing dinner parties? I had the space. That was an important thing. We were all poor. We needed to eat. We would just do that. And just to have a place where you can hang out that’s comfortable… Often, it was on Sundays. It was the Sunday brunch get-together, when everybody needed reparation.

MOORE: Lydia found this great place in this really wild area of Brooklyn.

LUNCH: I was living up in Spanish Harlem. By the way, on the bus one day, when Thurston was going up to visit me (not many people liked to visit me in Spanish Harlem, which was why I liked it), that’s where we wrote “Death Valley 69.” On a bus on the way up to Spanish Harlem. But then a very rainy day, a torrential because I needed more space, I saw this ad in the Village Voice for a loft. I ran down there and convinced the landlord to give it to me. It was a 2,000 square foot loft in Dumbo. Nobody lived there then. Hence, Thirlwell is still there.

MOORE: It was incredible. It was a huge space.

LUNCH: Instinctually, I just had to go for that ad. I just had to go and convince them that I was the one who should have it. I already convinced somebody in Tribeca to give me a building that was abandoned for six months when I was eighteen. That was next to Donny and Jodie’s, where we recorded. I’m very good with landlords that way, until I go on a rent strike. They love me.

BILL BROWN: It’s an interesting thing. Up until the last three years, downtown LA was completely a fucking wasteland. There were a lot of artists who went into the warehouse district on the other side of the river. They would get these huge warehouse spaces. They all shared the rent. They become these creative epicenters. Talking about “Death Valley 69,” didn’t Richard Kern do that video?

MOORE: It was.

LUNCH: Which I’m not even really in.

BROWN: It’s amazing, the artistic community that was surrounding you guys at the time. Who exactly coined the phrase, “spoken word?”

LUNCH: It’s what I’ve always called it. I always called it “spoken word” because I was not a performance artist. I was not doing poetry. I don’t know who invented it. I like it because it’s unglamorized. I don’t know if anybody invented spoken word. That’s what I always called it when I was curating.

BROWN: There was something interesting that you [Moore] said, “We’re not punk. We’re not hippies.” That specific thing hit me. An old friend of mine that was around your community at the time had always said, “We were the generation that screamed the loudest because we were the most ignored.” He said, “We weren’t punks. We weren’t hippies. We were in-between. We weren’t Gen X or millennials.”

LUNCH: I screamed the loudest because I was the most fucking hateful. That’s the bottom line. I wanted to be ignored. It was not a rallying call for attention. The less the better. “Less Is More” was one of my first songs. “Popularity Is Boring” is another one. Those are the first lyrics I came up with.

MOORE: Everybody likes to be in bands because they like to be in gangs. There’s a certain aesthetic of the gang – there’s a pleasure in that. It’s you and us against the world. It’s nice to have a sobriquet that you appreciate – no-wave, new-wave, punk, hippie. At the same time, you don’t want to be strapped into something, so you liberate yourself from everything. You’re free to be who you are.

LUNCH: I was saying to my class the other day, I’m a conceptualist. First, I have the concept of music. I never think about who I’d like to work with. That’s not how I work. The concept of the music comes first, and whomever suits the concept comes next. I’ve never sat down and said, “I want to work with that person.” If you asked me, I would say, “I want to work with nobody or everybody.” It’s who suits the musical concepts. For me, when I collaborate – and I think this is why I’m so successful, and I continue to work with so many different kinds of people – it’s the sacred zone. All bullshit is left out of there. Maybe I’ve just been lucky with the people I’ve chosen. Except for maybe one or two people, in the history of everyone I’ve ever worked with, it’s been a totally blissful experience. The only reason it might not have been, in the end of two of those instances, is that they’re both completely insecure men who have macho problems. Anybody who isn’t macho, which is most of the people I work with (Thurston, Thirlwell), they never have problems with me. The two macho assholes were the only ones who ever had problems with me. When I go into a collaborative relationship, this is the sacred ground. I want everyone to feel as good as possible. I’m there because I fucking adore what you do. I think you’re a genius. I’m not calling you into the circle unless you’re the perfect person for this sacred marriage, to take it somewhere else. I really am the cattle prodder and the cheerleader. My job is to make people feel as good as they can doing what they do. That’s what I do. I don’t need feedback. I don’t need the reciprocation. That’s why I love spoken word. I’m not waiting for the applause. I can’t stand when people applaud after a fucking song.

BROWN: The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics was founded on poetics. As the general public that knows who you are, they won’t think of you as literally. Thurston is doing literary press. Lydia was writing poetry in the 90s and publishing as well. Lydia has spoken word. The word “poet” was completely removed from that for a long time.

LUNCH: It’s the first thing that brought us together, the spoken word. Which is interesting.

MOORE: To me, I felt like I had more direct engagement with writing. Early on, I was enamored with forms of poetry. I was enamored with studying poetry for my own studies. I would read and read. When I went to New York, I was aware that there was a poetry scene, but I didn’t think I was going to get involved with it. I didn’t think of myself as a poet. I thought I was going to be a writer. Playing music, I felt like I didn’t have any established skills as a musician. I knew how to do some stuff. I still don’t know how to play real guitar. In a way, it didn’t really matter. The music I liked allowed me to be free with the guitar. I knew I was into composition the same way that I’m into the composition of like minds on the page. That’s how I looked at music – as a composition. Same thing with being free, writing free verse. It’s the same thing as playing free improvisation. I equated them. They were just different variables of discipline. One was words on paper, and one was playing an instrument and making sound. It was composing sound the way you would compose language.

LUNCH: I never thought of myself as a musician. I always thought of myself as a journalist, as a historian. I went to New York to write. The music was merely the machine to back up the words, even when half the music was instrumental. Even when all the music was instrumental, the titles were what were most important. To me, it’s just a vehicle. The music exists to offset the words. I do all kinds of music. I still consider myself a writer, a journalist, a historian. That’s what I do. The naked word is the most important to me. I love doing music, but that wasn’t the priority. I was what allowed me to facilitate getting the word out. The format for it didn’t really exist at that point.

BROWN: Thomas Sayers Ellis was talking about Go-Go today. Why was he talking about Go-Go in the context of a poetics panel? There were only a few words spoken in one of those pieces he played at the panel, but it seemed like the music was the word.

LUNCH: Exactly. That’s what divided it from hip hop, which was manufactured nana, studio nonsense. So here we are.

MOORE: Coming to Jack Kerouac’s School of Disembodied Poetics, to me, the challenge was to come here and teach poetry, as opposed to coming here as a rock and roll musician. I don’t want students to think I’m going to bring out my guitar and write songs. That’s the last thing I want to do. I have no interest in doing that. It’s a very personal thing for me, to write music. I feel like I can share it. I do teach, sometimes, in different music schools. I talk about the experience of playing music and what I do personally. We can work together from that. I’m more interested in writing where I can talk about what that is as an art form. I want to talk about the history of poetry, especially post-World War contemporary poetry, which is where my focus is. I’m not going to go in there and talk about Victorian English poetry. I’m not that learned in it. I’m not going to do Lionel Trilling at Columbia University or something like that. I have an awareness of how poetry exists as a community – that lineage of writing, people sharing ideas about how words appear on a page. There’s the visual, the idea of the confessional, the idea of the experimental. Those things work together, and they also work apart. They can keep their own ground. They can play with each other and inform each other. That was really interesting to me. I was really interested in Acconci, who really agonized over how to take these words off the page and put them in these other spheres. He becomes a visual, conceptual artist, but he’s a poet doing it. Someone like Ted Berrigan, coming out of Frank O’Hara, writing this conversational poem, but keeping a certain economy to it, and still having it be an expression of his mind in the moment. Or you look at language poetry, where it’s all about this data that’s on a page and what that means, the idea of stripping emotion from the work. How far can you take that? Bernadette Mayer and Vito Acconci were really into that. They were doing 0 to 9 in the magazines in the 60s. They wanted to strip all the drama, confession, and emotion from the poem. They go towards this crystallized heart to see what is there – just putting a number on a page. Aram Saroyan puts one letter on the page. What is that? Is that bullshit? He was given a grant to make poetry, and he put one word on a page. He wrote, “Lighght.” When you look at it, it’s surrealist. It’s loaded. There are all kinds of movement in that. There are all kinds of ideas. It’s playful. It’s wonderful. It’s a great poem. And it was completely contentious. It polarized the entire poetry community, that this is what he delivered.

BROWN: Both of you mentioned Dada today.

MOORE: Lady Dada? [Laughs.]

BROWN: Lydia did too. I have a weird theory that there is a particular strain that has continued all the way through the 20th and into the 21st century. We’re carrying that along. We’re saying that if we don’t keep this going, as it ebbs and flows…

LUNCH: It’s the Pranksterism that keeps us alive. From Dada, and forward from that. Going into the Merry Pranksters. We need rebellion with pleasure, because otherwise, we’re sunk. There is a sense of Pranksterism in a lot of who we are naturally attracted to.

BROWN: He’s more attracted to concrete and experimental poetry…

MOORE: To me, it’s sort of a pantheon of this lineage of writing that goes on in the culture. I’m curious about it. I’m interested in it. It excites me. It’s very artful. You can come from any angle to it. To me, Dada is important because it’s a reclamation of being an artist. Everything has to be honored by the academy and the system in society. In a way, that’s okay. That creates a place of learning. That history is great, but anybody who can suss that, who can glean that information and reclaim it, incinerate it, reform it – those are the people who are doing the work that breaks into the new ground. That was interesting to me. I read about the advent of people coming out of William Carlos Williams. These 20 year olds out of Columbia University, particularly Allen Ginsberg, that passion and desire.

BROWN: That time was searching out the Bob Dylan, searching out the rock stars of the time.

MOORE: But his glory was in poverty. He made a lot of money, and he decided not to keep that money. He knew that if he kept that money, money would be taxed, and that money would go to a military complex. He decided to create a foundation called Committee of Poetry where all the money would go through, nonprofit. In the 60s, he was so primary in founding all the underground press that was existent.

BROWN: He would have people coming to him, and he would write them a check.

MOORE: Small presses, starving poets and artists. He was just like, take it. All I need is milk and my shitty little refrigerator.

LUNCH: I say give me a car ad. I have people I’d like to pay all the time. I’m not against it. I want the enemy’s money. I want the fucking enemy’s money. The only people who ever give me money are usually my friends. I give my friends money. That’s why they’re in my fucking bands. However, that is the recycling of the family funds. I want the fucking enemy’s money. My biggest regret in life is that I didn’t invest in fucking Wackenhut when I was talking about prisons under Bill Clinton for two years. I could have retired and had my own poetic institute, instead of them supporting me. My biggest disappointment. I didn’t invest in the military industrial complex. There’s still time, motherfucker. Give me the money, and I will. I want the money. They ain’t going to shut me up. Do I look like I’ve been droned? Well I have, but that’s how I usually look. That’s enough for me, now. Choke it off like a chicken.

Listen to the full audio of the conversation between Thurston Moore and Lydia Lunch below. You can click here to purchase Autre's LOVE issue, which is available through select Ace Hotels. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Art From The Dark Heart of Europe: An Interview With Harlan Levey

February 10, 2016

I had the great fortune of meeting Brussels-based curator, Harlan Levey, while he was in Burlington, Vermont last October as part of Burlington City Arts' visiting critic program. The curator of that institution, DJ Hellerman, facilitated a meeting that quickly evolved into a lively discussion, not necessarily about local art, but about contemporary art in general, the nature of the art market, and the rewarding challenges that come with conceptually rigorous exhibitions. I was struck by Levey's genuine passion for the artists who comprise his program at Harlan Levey Projects and the integrity with which he works. And just like that, he was back on a plane to Brussels, having reinvigorated Burlington's quiet contemporary art scene.

Harlan Levey Projects Gallery is located in Brussels at the heart of the European capital's gallery district, representing a small, distinctive roster of international artists including TR Ericsson, Jeroen Jongeleen, Abner Preis, Zoe Strauss, Marcin Dudek, and more. We caught up with Levey last week to discuss the storied path that lead him to found Harlan Levey Projects, one that includes professional soccer and literary studies at the European Graduate School, as well as what guides him as curator and informs both the artists he works with and the exhibitions he organizes.

Abbey Meaker: You’re an expat from Cleveland living in Brussels and you’ve been there for how long?

Harlan Levey: I’ve been in Brussels since the turn of the century. 15 years longer than I ever imagined.

Meaker: I read that it was soccer that prompted the move?

Levey: Soccer was so important to me growing up. It introduced me to people with all different backgrounds and offered me the opportunity to travel from a young age. I love the game and everything it brought me off the field. After college, I harbored dreams of earning a living playing in the Netherlands, but this didn’t work out at all.

Meaker: How did you go from sports and literary studies to a career in the arts?

If I go back to the late 90s, I was over here in the Benelux, not getting paid to play and in need of a job. I found one at the Center for European Studies (CES) at the University of Maastricht teaching a comparative literature course to study abroad students. It was a right place, right time situation, which was great, but not so straightforward, because I had no working papers and the semester was starting. CES found a solution by offering to enroll me in an MA program, pay my housing, expenses and a modest living stipend. I was registered as a student, and as an American was thrilled about the opportunity to study anything and get paid for it. The MA wasn’t in literature. It was in a program called ESST, which stands for European Science, Society and Technology studies. If we skip all that, writing, all kinds of writing, framing and illustrating are things a literature study prepares you for. To return to your question, sports and literature were part of a life journey. My subsequent studies, jobs, and experiences all had a role in leading me towards working in the arts.

Meaker: Does literature inform your curatorial practice?

Levey: Yes. Absolutely. Literature has always informed my life. I am more of a narrator than a curator and am excited by the potential of curating as a form of expanded literary practice. The gallery’s program has been dominated with narrative driven exhibitions until now.

When I was writing, I never thought about the audience. With the gallery, building audiences and educating clients is a core task. You need to develop audiences for artists, ideas, and the gallery itself. In considering who this audience is, I find myself nodding along with how Fitzgerald told it when he said: “An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.” Via the work of the gallery, I try to ‘write’ with this same approach. Literature definitely has its role.

Meaker: Did you work for other galleries before starting one?

Levey: No. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I knew little about running a gallery when I started one. I had very limited knowledge of the actual business and nearly no capital. I was a total outsider with a history of working with outsider art, and the learning curve has been huge. I had no idea what I was up against. What I did have was a lot of experience working with artists and communicating their ideas. I’d spent 5 years as the Editor in Chief of Modart magazine and director of a non-profit I co-founded with Ruggero Lala called the No New Enemies network, which assisted artists working in public space.

Meaker: Does No New Enemies still exist?

Levey: Yes. NNE just won an open call from the city and region of Brussels to develop six installations in the tunnels near the local skatepark over the next four years.

Meaker: Do you recall a particular artist or artwork that inspired you to become a gallerist?

Levey: I opened the gallery when Modart magazine went to ground. Of the artists we were featuring there some clear patterns of professional success. For one, there always seemed to be somebody who innovated, who made rather brave work and was followed by somebody this work had inspired who knew how to cash in. The second artist, the one most people have actually heard of, considered commercial translation from the start. This commercial translation often contradicted the essence of what made a work interesting to begin with. I have a great deal of empathy and interest in artists I thought were doing ground-breaking relevant work and were not able (or not interested) to think about commercial strategies. This included artists like Hans Reuschl, Jeroen Jongeleen and Abner Preis. I come from Cleveland. I’ve always been attracted to hard working underdogs.

Meaker: What is the mission of Harlan Levey Projects?

Levey: David Foster Wallace once said something about his belief that good fiction should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. Our mission is to make money for our artists and business by doing exactly that.

Meaker: What has been the most challenging exhibition and why?

Levey: “Saved by an Unseen Crack,” a solo exhibition by Marcin Dudek. It was the first exhibition in our new space and came with unprecedented investment, challenges, and risk. The opportunity to move into a larger venue was unexpected. Everything happened very quickly. We had about two months to plan and build the interior of the new space. At the same time, we were preparing for two art fairs in April. Marcin’s opening was scheduled right between them. Marcin was involved in both of those events and was also preparing for a solo exhibition in London with our partner Edel Assanti Gallery shortly thereafter. We were all overwhelmed with a lot on the line. Everything needed to go perfectly. It was a very tense moment.

Meaker: But it all worked out. You had great success in Dallas.

Levey: Yes. In Dallas we were very fortunate to place all of the works that we brought in excellent collections and develop several new relationships. Then came the opening of Marcin’s show, which was also met with a tremendous response.

"He said that if you want to be an artist or a writer, accept suicide as the only viable pension plan."

Meaker: What did you show in Dallas?

Levey: The unspoken booth concept was the ‘greatest country song never written,’ and it featured works from TR Ericsson and Marcin Dudek. This year, we’ll present new works in a similar format.

Meaker: How did you start working with these guys? In general, how do you find new artists?

Levey: This really varies. For example, I met Abner Preis through mutual friends at a punk concert and exhibition I organized in 2006. Haseeb Ahmed and I were both invited by the European Commission to work on a common project. A high school friend introduced me to a dealer in Cleveland who drove me out to meet Tom. I met Jeroen through Abner though I was already a big fan of his work for several years at that point. Marcin and Amelie got in touch with me when they moved to Brussels after reading an article in the free local culture mag. We had dinner together 5 or 6 times before I ever looked at their work. Emmanuel and I met when I was invited to give a lecture and do studio visits at a post-graduate residency program. That all said, I visit studios on a regular basis, have worked on several selection committees, and continue to write for art oriented publications occasionally. I also get introduced to artists through relationships with other galleries and presence at fairs and other events.

Meaker: I am a big fan of gallery artist TR Ericsson. Can you talk about the exhibition All My Love, Always No Matter What, shown in September and October of last year?

Levey: With pleasure! I’m also a big fan of TR Ericsson. His work stops the music of the market. It flattens the hype. Live. Dream. Die. Loop. That’s how it goes, reinterpreting intimate histories with skillful and considered conceptual, contextual and material interventions. The subject matter isn’t easy, and even when there’s direct aesthetic appeal in the images he makes, there’s usually some troubling element embedded within them. Tom’s the real deal and currently one of the most underrated artists of my generation. He came over with his wife Rose, daughter Susie, brother Mikey and two assistants, Matthew Rowe and Connor Elder. It was a special moment. At the end of the vernissage, we held the European premiere of his film “Crackle & Drag.” About a quarter of the room was in tears by the time it was over. We followed that up with a performance from Joy Wellboy who had been given texts and images from Tom’s archives and wrote several songs with this material. By the time they were done, more than a quarter of the Ericsson entourage was wet eyed too. I’ve never seen so many people crying in the gallery. At the same time, the whole event was incredibly joyful.

Meaker: Did this important exhibition influence the direction of HLP thereafter?

Levey: All of our core artists influence our direction. In many ways, they are our direction. We’re maturing our practices together. Tom has become a big part of this. He didn’t change the programming or attitudes of the gallery, but he fit right in with our team and I’ve learned so much from working with him. I’d say the same for everybody else. Our artists reach out to each other with encouragement, criticism and questions. Everybody who feasibly can, shows up at every opening, and while sometimes there’s a bit of ego jousting and skepticism towards new artists in the program, eventually there’s a great respect and admiration from and for everybody. At HLP we’ve cultivated a great team spirit.

Meaker: What can we expect from you—shows, events, fairs, etc.?

Levey: Up next outside of the gallery are fairs in Rotterdam, Dallas and then Brussels. In the gallery we have upcoming group and solo shows. The first is titled “Do You Speak Synergy” and features two artists we represent, Haseeb Ahmed and Emmanuel Van der Auwera, as well as Ella Littwitz and Benjamin Verhoeven who I met along with Emmanuel when working as a guest lecturer at the HISK in Ghent. This is the first show I’ve worked closely on with our new associate curator Denis Maksimov. Denis is a brilliant and passionate guy. He’s made a very welcome addition to the team and we expect great things from him in the future.

The following show in the gallery is “Eat, Shit, Smile” by Abner Preis. Our last show with Abner was an incredible success on many levels, and for better or worse, there won’t be another show like it during the madness of Art Brussels week. I can’t wait.

Meaker: Is there anywhere outside of Brussels to see the work you’re facilitating?

Levey: Right now there’s Instagram, the Art Fairs I mentioned and all of our artists present work internationally. On our website you can sign up for our newsletter to keep posted on events outside of Brussels.

Meaker: Do you ever partner with other institutions?

Levey: Absolutely. In soccer you’d say, “Let the ball work for you.” We play a passing game. Our attitude is that when you’re growing a small business, all forms of partnership are important. We can always do more with others than trying to make a one in a million run on our own. Knowledge, resource and competency exchanges have been a big part of how we’ve managed to grow the business.

Meaker: What about Brussels? Recently the NY Times called it the “New Berlin.” Do you think this is accurate?

Levey: Berlin has had the reputation of a creative hotbed and Brussels is happy to rightly be described the same way, but Brussels isn’t the new anything. Brussels is beautiful, dysfunctional and surrealistic Brussels. Not so long ago, Berlin represented cheap studio space and living costs along with a vibrant creative community and arts sector. Brussels has the same offer.

Brussels also has per-capita diversity comparable to New York City, and a history of outstanding artistic production from the Flemish Primitives through Marcel Broodthaers to Michael Borremans, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Walter Van Beirendonck, Stromae or Wim Delvoye. If we talk about fashion, dance, film, music, architecture, comics, painting, contemporary art, whatever, there has always been high quality here. There’s also a strong appetite for it. Then there’s private and public sector support of it. The city’s location is another perk. 3 hours to Amsterdam. 2.2 to London or Cologne. 1.2 to Paris. Brussels has been a crossroads for centuries.

The reason for the sudden interest in Brussels has to do with other things as well. For example, Belgium has the EU’s highest taxes on income and labor, but inherited wealth isn’t taxed at all. When Francois Hollande became President of France in 2012, something like 30,000 Parisians bought property in Brussels. This led to an influx of Parisian galleries that have added to an already exciting local scene.

Meaker: Are you looking forward to Art Brussels?

Levey: Always. It’s an outstanding fair. Katrina Gregos has done a wonderful job developing it over the last few years and I’m proud to be one of two galleries (together with Super Dakota) from Belgium that’s been selected for the Discovery section this year. The fair’s outstanding reputation has been cemented by a flux of new satellite fairs including Independent, Y.I.A., Unpainted and Poppositions. Brussels can’t handle the dozens of satellite fairs that Miami does, but the emergence of all these new events testifies to the strength of the landscape here. If I wasn’t jamming in my Art Brussels booth, I’d visit every one of them.

Meaker: What advice might you give young artists?

Levey: I wouldn’t, but I do appreciate a piece of advice philosopher Wolfgang Schirmacher once gave me. He said that if you want to be an artist or a writer, accept suicide as the only viable pension plan. You have to be ready to tighten your belt, committed to staying sharp and true to things you might have forgotten.

Meaker: Young curators?

Levey: Find topics that you are passionate about and go deep instead of broad. Ask yourself what help a curator can provide in every project and whom this service benefits. Art can be useless. A curator has to prove that it isn't.

You can visit Harlan Levey Projects' booth at Art Rotterdam 2016, which features artist Emmanuel Van der Auwera's Video Sculpture series. The VIP opening is tonight and the fair opens to the public on February 11 and runs until February 14. Interview and text by Abbey Meaker, co-director of Overnight Projects in Vermont. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

ART / FASHION/ CULTURE / MUSIC / FILM

Daily Journal

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about a day ago

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Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate our DESIRE issue in Paris with @miakhalifa and @sicknethi Special thanks to the @doverstreetmarketparis and @hotelsamourparis teams 📸 @thecobrasnake #hotelgrandamour #paris

@rickowensonline highly personal SS26 men’s collection is an ode to the “glamour and sleaze” that Owens was searching for on Hollywood Boulevard. Named after his major retrospective, Temple Of Love, which opens at @palaisgallieramuseedelamode the collection reflected a sense of “finality and decline” with a track by Klaus Nomi. #rickowens #parisfashionweek

Tonight in Paris ❤️ Mia Khalifa with Michèle Lamy and more friends/fans A queue snaked around Rei Kawakubo’s transportive forest installation all the way to the streets of Le Marais for @miakhalifa and @sicknethi at @doverstreetmarketparis who signed their cover of Autre’s SS25 DESIRE Issue. Special thanks to the entire team at DSMP and all who waited in line #doverstreetmarketparis #miakhalifa #nicksethi

This is the central question of our SS25 Desire Issue: is desire our most defiant form of resistance? Out now on better newsstands. Sold out online. #autre #desire

Join us, @miakhalifa and photographer @sicknethi for a special signing and launch of Autre’s SS25 Desire Issue at @doverstreetmarketparis Tuesday June 24th, 6-8pm , open to ALL 🚨🚨 #doverstreetmarketparis #miakhalfia #parisfashionweek

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin ! See you in Paris… #berlin

Vaginal Davis, Peaches, Slava Mogutin, and more friends, last night in Berlin to celebrate Autre SS25 The Desire Issue at @goldenphoenixberlin inside @provocateurberlin see more on autre.love #berlin #night #decadent

Nick Sethi with his @miakhalifa cover for AUTRE Desire SS25. Get your copy signed by both, in person, June 24 at @doverstreetmarketparis . Save the date 🚨 #miakhalifa #nicksethi #desire

“Brian Wilson hated the ocean; its darkness and power terrified him. Everyday he heard loud terrifying screams inside his head. The only way to drown out the screams was to write happy songs.” Adam Curtis in “It Felt Like A Kiss” #rip #brianwilson

We are vehemently against the ICE raids in Los Angeles, The National Guard, the Marines on standby. The immigrant community in Los Angeles is a part of its fabric and always has been - some have been here for generations. Visit @odilia_yego and @mycielo_org for the incredible work they are doing and learn more about where you can donate and help. #noiceinla

BERLIN ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨🚨🚨 The legendary @vaginaldavis_official will be present to sign her cover of AUTRE DESIRE by photographer @dielamb next Wednesday 18.6 at @voostore 17:30-19:00 early arrival encouraged . Swipe for invite Desire Is A Form Of Resistance #vaginaldavis #voostore #berlin

As the shadow of fascism falls over Los Angeles, few exhibitions feel as chillingly timely as POLICE STATE by Nadya Tolokonnikova (@pussyriot), now on view at @moca’s warehouse space—just steps from where the Trump administration has deployed armed forces against civilians. Tolokonnikova, who served time in a Russian prison for the same defense of freedom, has reconstructed her former cell here. It’s a claustrophobic monument to resistance, its walls lined with artwork by political prisoners, its air filled with haunting Russian lullabies and ambient soundscapes. A small monitor flickers with smuggled footage from inside a real Russia penal colony. The effect is visceral, poetic, and pointed: a stark reminder that freedom is fragile—and must be defended. On view through June 14. #policestate #nadyatolokonnikova #pussyriot #ice #protest #losangeles

ℙ𝕒𝕦𝕝 𝕄𝕔ℂ𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕙𝕪 last night with his cover of AUTRE Desire featuring a work, Santa with Butt Plug Bronze, recovered from the Eaton Fires. Cover photograph @joshuawhitephotography

“Thank God, I have a sense of humor about how ridiculous I can be.” @bjork in conversation with @hansulrichobrist for AUTRE Desire. 10 page Juergen archive document in a 60 page dossier. Out now. Special thanks @doviledrizyte #bjork #juergenteller

DARK MOUNTAIN 🌵In Autre’s SS25 Desire Issue, read an interview of geographer and political ecologist Jared Marguiles who explores the intimate links between desire and extinction through the global trade in rare cacti—where beauty, obsession and loss converge 🔗 in bio #extinction #anthropocene #jaredmarguiles #cactus