Fashion As A Soft Power: An Interview Of Lindsay Jones

November 19, 2020

Mused SS 2021 Protect Your Mother, Love One Another upcycled collection

Two fashion insiders discuss the fashion industry’s pivot, and why fashion need not be considered frivolous, especially in ugly times.

Lindsay Jones is the founder, creative director, and head designer for MÚSED. The label’s latest collection, “Protect The Mother, Love One Another” 2021, featuring upcycled and gender fluid clothing is out now. As an activist Jones sits on the board of Equality New York and works with the Ackerman Institute’s The Gender Family Project.

Jill Di Donato is a fashion and beauty writer and professor who teaches communications and sociology at such schools as The Fashion Institute of Technology and Barnard College, where her class Is Fashion Frivolous? explores the political and social experiences of getting dressed.

JILL DI DONATO: Does it feel weird talking about fashion when the world is coming apart at the seams? There’s so much profound ugliness happening, how do you justify being concerned with things like clothes?

LINDSAY JONES: No! Fashion is a way of communicating with people. I’m reminded of les Incroyables during the French Revolution who were so punk rock and revolutionary, wearing eccentric clothing mixed with high-end jewelry from royalty who had been executed when they were redistributing the wealth. Clothing can be worn to bring people together during a revolutionary movement. It’s a soft power. Bring what you believe into all of the arts and design.

DI DONATO: I was working on a story that profiled photographer Dario Calmese who talked about fashion with a lowercase F as being “on the ground” as opposed to the fashion industry or the fashion system. When you think of fashion on the ground, it frees you up to see aesthetics as an immediate expression of identity. When fashion gets dismissed as frivolous, there’s often sexism, racism, or classism at the root, many times. Though of course in America, where much of the economy is based on racialized capitalism, and so much of fashion is based on cultural appropriation, there’s a tension that exists if you’re not discerning.

LINDSAY JONES: It can feel frivolous because not everyone understands the relevance of the period and how it shows symbols and values. People need to express themselves in these moments and use storytelling now more than ever. That tension you were talking about, it’s the old school magazines and model casting that’s not inclusive and tied up in aspirational luxury that’s out of touch. But there’s also the new vanguard.

DI DONATO : It’s helpful to remember that people make up institutions, which is where that kind of storytelling comes in. I’ve definitely uncovered some of my biases when it comes to storytelling, especially as a white journalist. Even though there are times at work when I don’t necessarily feel my power, like if I’m answering to an editor or department chair or bound by word count and can’t always print everything a source says. I’m not intentionally trying to silence voices, although from the source’s point of view, I can see how they might think that. I’ve been working on stepping outside of my point of view and trying to be as up front about what the process entails as possible. Also, admitting when I make mistakes. How are you navigating this terrain as a white designer?

LINDSAY JONES: During a summer of protests, we had to be quiet and we needed to listen. I'm still learning more about what I can do through listening and having humility and awareness about where my help is needed.

DI DONATO : The ability to listen is so powerful, and such an impactful skill. So much of my work as a journalist hinges on listening, almost more so than writing if that makes sense.

LINDSAY JONES: It does. And then given the pandemic, that’s sort of all we could do for a while. In New York we were forced to go inside and we didn’t know when we could come back out and that’s when I began to hand sew these pieces using recycled fabrics. It was personally cathartic and how I mentally got through that time.

DI DONATO : My creativity came in waves. There were moments when I felt an urgency to be part of these liminal spaces of the pandemic where everything had such charged meaning, and then there were times when I was overwrought with anger and sadness and hopelessness. Being a parent, though, it comes with a whole other set of challenges—it really prevented me from stewing in the voids of those days. Figuring a way forward was always on the forefront of my mind and I’m so grateful for that. When you think about activism in a time of crisis, it’s almost more essential that it happens and people find a way to connect.

LINDSAY JONES: In my experience, I’ve found that organized advocacy is highly effective. If you find a group you like and you like what they do, take classes and courses and trainings through them. They can help you volunteer and learn more about how to get involved. You will meet really impactful people.

DI DONATO : There’s so much good stuff going down on Zoom right now. Not to minimize these types of trainings and the type of commitment you’re talking about, and this is something different, but there were some days when having a training on while in quarantine kept up that forward momentum. More listening can never be a bad thing, right? Along those lines, do you feel like it’s okay to take joy in aesthetics right now?

LINDSAY JONES: Yes. In order for us to build motivation and energy self-care is essential. Wellness is an important part of activism. Enjoying art and film is important. We need time to receive in order to give more.

DI DONATO : You’re one of like five people I’ve seen in the past seven months. I remember the first time I walked to “town,” aka Abbot Kinney, when we met for smoothies and samples of Le Labo over the summer. It was a culture shock to me after so many weeks of isolation at the beach. I went home and cried afterwards. The feeling was a mixture of relief, I guess from the heaviness of everything, and being jolted into this life where treating myself was permissible.

LINDSAY JONES: People need to come together to take a break from the heaviness.

DI DONATO : The pandemic has completely shifted how I take care of myself, and in many ways, I feel like these shifts are for the better, stepping out of the frivolous stuff we were talking about earlier and into a deeper understanding of aesthetics and self-care. What are some things that are giving you joy?

LINDSAY JONES: Nature.

DI DONATO : Trails I used to take for granted have become sacred to me these days. I try to find some new flower or critter to wonder at. In that way, boredom drives creativity.

LINDSAY JONES: Yes! The mountains, and the ocean. Meditation. Baths. Tea. Special flower arrangements. I’m very into playlists. Playing music and practicing. Draping gowns [with Zac Posen in Central Park] and making art in nature, sculpting, cooking, gardening. Helping others gives me a sense of purpose. New Yorkers are happy to have a moment with each other right now. Most of the tourists are gone. People are sitting on the street again.

Click here to explore the collection.

Art Of The Divine: A Conversation Between Rikkí Wright & Kilo Kish

November 10, 2020

Film still from A Song About Love by Rikkí Wright — Film still from *A Song About Love* by Rikkí Wright

Rikkí Wright and Kilo Kish are two of the eight artists exhibiting in this year’s edition of Womxn in Windows, a socially distant group show that clearly presaged the conditions of our current moment in its first edition last year. Visitors are invited to walk along the storefronts of Chung King Road in Chinatown and watch short films through each window with scores that can be accessed via QR code. Founded and curated by Zehra Ahmed, this year’s artists were invited to exhibit work that examines the intertwined relationships between culture, religion, and society. These films remind us how womxn have relied on faith and on each other as well as on a desire for equality, understanding, and the power to make the right choices for ourselves. In both Wright and Kish’s films one observes an intimate relationship with the spiritual, however from highly contrasting perspectives and with completely unique aesthetics. Wright is a photographer who makes films and ceramics, and whose practice includes explorations of gender and faith in the Black community. Her film, A Song About Love is a spiritual reckoning on the different forms of love in this world, from human to divine. It is a moving collage that combines interviews of Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and bell hooks with the soul and gospel stylings of D.J. Rogers and more. Most notable is the way that she delicately stitches these intellectual and emotional anchors with a personal thread of vulnerable, self love that manifests directly in the undressed body of the artist as it moves languidly to the music. Kish is a singer-songwriter and visual artist who makes films and music videos. Her film, Blessed Assurance: a dream that I had, is presented as a multi-room installation that takes on a new life as six individual visual pieces, each framed in their own windows. It’s a captivating mix of recorded video overlaid with punchy, low-fi graphics, and an animated church reminiscent of a two-bit video game that transports the viewer to their own physical and spiritual dimension, somewhere between the space Kish imagines and the sky above. These varied approaches to understanding the relationship between art and the divine are reflective of their very different backgrounds and core disciplines. The following conversation is an in-depth look at the role of the body in self-portraiture, the effects of the pandemic, uprisings and election that have dominated this year, and the value of tapping into your intuition.

KILO KISH: Do you think it’s possible to fully find yourself as an artist, or is it an ever-fleeting thing?

RIKKI WRIGHT: I think the latter. I came to photography initially, and then filmmaking. It was kind of by way of exploring and trying to understand who I am and where I came from. My mother passed away when I was two years old, and I didn’t grow up having that figure in my life. I think that once I got to a certain age, I was trying to find parts of my feminine self or the parts of womanhood that a mother gives to her child that I was lacking. But, in the midst of trying to look for photos of my mom and my childhood home, I wasn’t able to find a lot because I think the mother is the person that keeps all of these heirlooms together. That’s what brought me to wanting to create images and knowing how to make tangible evidence of something that happened in a way that just proves that that time existed. So, my work really revolves around trying to fill in that gap, around my family, and the Black family, and there are so many conversations and things that I’m trying to understand in my work constantly. It’s just ever-flowing.

KISH: Yeah. I kind of felt that after watching your piece. It had that nostalgic quality of opening up a scrapbook, like an old scrapbook at your grandma’s house and being like, “Oh, this is Uncle Joe!” And I agree; I don’t know if you ever fully find yourself as an artist, and if you do, you just kind of move on to the next thing that’s exciting for you. If you do find something–and I attribute this more to making albums–it’s like you’re asking questions and trying to find parts of yourself that you want to explore further, and by the time you actually put the album out, you’re already onto the next thing.

WRIGHT: That’s what’s so amazing about being an artist and having the ability to express yourself in however you do that—being able to have these conversations through your work, or just working through and processing the questions that you have. Toni Morrison talks about that a lot. All of her books start with a question, and she’s pretty much trying to answer that for herself, and strongly going, I make this work for myself first, and whoever comes to it to connect with it and is able to explore that question within the work, that’s an amazing added bonus.

KISH: Totally. I was thinking about that a lot recently, because I was nervous in general about social media—it just doesn’t leave that space for questions. You’re presenting yourself in a way that is who this person is, but sometimes that’s tough because we are portraying, and we’re using our bodies, and we’re using figures of ourselves to play a role or explore ideas that we don’t know the answer to yet, and I think a lot of times artists get stuck in this spot where they’re like, that’s who you are! No, I was just using my body in a space.

WRIGHT: Yeah, yeah, I mean that’s my approach in the self portraiture within my work, and also in the film, I present it as: that body is my body, but not me. It’s a form for all of the Black women who are experiencing, or have experienced this stuff with their sexuality or their spirituality, the suppression or oppression of it. So, I’m using my body to speak on behalf of others sometimes, or to create a character that represents something I’m trying to express. Maybe not even an actual person, just a being.

KISH: Or even an idea, or a question.

WRIGHT: Yeah, that is interesting. And also with being on Instagram and social media and having to present yourself as an artist. I started out as a photographer. I always see myself as a storyteller, a visual storyteller. I’m a visual learner. I grew up in a very religious household, so most of the music I know that’s not Catholic music is from watching films. That’s when I realized I want to say more with the images that I’m making. I feel like the moving image could add to what I’m actually trying to say, and I tried not to transition into filmmaker. I feel like there was also a resistance in conversations I was having with people trying to hire me for jobs. They were asking, “So, are you a photographer, or are you a filmmaker?” I do a lot of pottery as well, ceramics, so I’m trying to figure out how to merge all selves as an artist. I feel like sometimes, social media doesn’t allow you to do that.

KISH: I agree. It’s a very daunting space because it’s centered around branding. What do you do? What is your thing? If you find your thing and just keep doing more of that thing, people will like it and share it, and I think when you’re exploring, it’s difficult. You’re like this is my music, but we’re also having this art show that’s going on right now. Do my fans of my music care about my art show? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m sure someone does, but is that this audience? Having gone to art school, and then jumping into the music industry, it’s such a difference. We’re selling a product in the music industry; we’re not selling art. As much as you want to think about it like, oh this is my art, the people in charge of it do not think of it that way. They’re thinking, okay, there’s nothing fine about this. We’re selling songs, let them be catchy, and that’s that. That’s not my doctrine at all, so it’s very difficult to try and merge the different parts of yourself, and I think now, after doing it for nine or ten years, just making art and trying to support myself off of the things that I make, I learned that I have to accept the output and stop trying to make myself fit into what people expect.

WRIGHT: I’ve been reading this book by Saidiya Hartman, called Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, and it’s about Black women right after the Reconstruction period. Black women moving over from the South to New York and trying to break out of this role of servitude that’s put forth, like Black women can’t do anything but be in the kitchen. But I think it speaks to the fear and anxiety of trying to do all of these things, or trying to incorporate different mediums into my practice, because I’m trying to tell the same message. I just know that I have different modes, or my body wants to do this instead of take a photo, so I feel like that has really empowered me. People are receptive; there’s an audience for each thing that you do.

KISH: Yeah, totally. How do you know what to work on from day to day? Do you just feel it?

WRIGHT: In the past eight months–how long have we been in quarantine? I feel like I was trying to stay on this roll of I need to be doing this, or I need to be doing that. Recently, I’ve been shooting a lot more, feeling inspired to connect with other people and shoot, but I also feel like I’ve just been sitting. I’ve been reading a lot. I’ve been trying to wrap my ideas around the one project that I do want to finish. It’s a documentary I’ve been shooting for the past two years with my grandmother in Alabama, telling the story of the American food race and how certain foods came here. It’s about memory as well. My grandmother is going through the early stages of dementia and what we shared growing up was being in the kitchen together. I could call her, and she could tell me a recipe on the drop of a dime, but that is diminishing slowly, and I’m feeling compelled to document this and to have conversations about intergenerational relationships. In the midst of me prepping for that, I’ve been working on so much self work, so much work within my family, having more open conversations, and relationship growth. I’ve been nurturing the relationships I do have. It’s been beautiful that my work brings me to that type of place because it’s all self work as well. I’m going home to Alabama for a month in December, and I’ll be finishing filming with my grandmother and staying on the farm out there. That work feels good, especially for the moment. It’s me connecting with my family, and that’s so important right now during this pandemic. Things are so unknown–the future, this election coming up.

Self-portrait by Rikkí Wright

KISH: Yeah, I just want to get through this election, and I’ve been having similar things, just working on my relationships here and figuring out where I’m at creatively because this is the longest I’ve sat in one spot, but I’d been burnt out and it feels good to be able to slow down and just be like, so why am I doing this again? I feel like it’s so easy to get in those patterns of getting things done, and you’re working on autopilot, and then you’re like, do I actually feel for this work right now? Is this still a question for me? Because sometimes life just answers questions when you’re in the middle of a work process. That whole problem was just answered by me sitting down for two months. I was working on an album, and it was about American themes, and I got bogged down with this entire quarantine. It was so intense, and I was just like, I don’t know if I really want to...I’m already over it.

WRIGHT: The priorities shifted as well. There’s an importance for certain work to be out right now and to be seen, and certain conversations to be had. Sometimes it’s time to put that on pause and have it for a different space. I’ve really enjoyed connecting with my family because they’ve shifted into a wider awareness—a wider political awareness as well. Connecting more with the stories and lives of people in my family, it’s like, oh, this is happening because of this larger systemic thing that’s going on. That’s why I love experimental filmmaking: because it allows the freedom to be as open as possible and just put whatever you’re feeling out there. I feel like right now, I’m really into having conversations with people in my life and sitting with that idea of reimagining what our future can look like if we look at what’s been going on.

KISH: I feel like it would need to be an entire reimagining of the United States, just an entire reimagining of the whole way that it runs. The whole quarantine has helped to reconnect me with a lot of social issues and things that are going on within our community. I tend to isolate in general. I stay home, I do a lot of things alone, I like to live in my own world. I don’t watch that much. If everyone’s in love with a show, I generally don’t watch it. Being forced through a really fucked up thing and then jumping into life with everyone else again, it felt crazy in that moment when we were doing all the protests, and volunteering, and doing petitions, and doing all this work. In a way, I felt more connected to people than I have in a really, really long time.

WRIGHT: For sure, because there was a collective consciousness, and I feel a shift in the strength that it had. I feel like right now, everything has been put out in the open, so people are more receptive to actually having the conversation. Because actually turning away from things is so frowned upon in this moment, and hopefully forever. I’ve been having conversations with some of my very close friends that I’ve never had before, and I’m just like, wow, very interesting to know this is your experience. That also informs the type of work I want to create. Experimental film is not commercial or high commodity, but I feel like that’s resistance as well. I feel connected to the work that has always been fighting for change. That’s why Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Maya Angelou are people that appear in my piece. They have been guides. It’s very important to make sure that I’m addressing that in the things that I create. Not that it’s my responsibility, because it’s been addressed many times over.

KISH: I agree. Just being able to see all the different industries and all these different Black artists saying how they’ve been affected. In your own self-centered version of your life, you feel like you’re the only one that these things are happening to, and I think that’s part of the divisiveness of the whole thing. You’re supposed to feel like you’re alone in it. Having seen everybody with their different versions of the same story, which was really depressing, I was able to realize that everybody has the same idea of what I’m making—not that it’s necessarily my responsibility, but I feel the need to share these different views and perspectives of what Blackness can be, and about what family can be, or what these different parts of connectedness are. I’ve been doing that, but I didn’t realize I was doing it until this whole thing happened. I feel like there’s all kinds of Black girls, and I want to make alternative music, so I’m just going to do that the whole time. When people were like, “You should only make rap music, always”, I was like, “No, I’m going to keep doing this other stuff.” So, I think there’s always been that rebelliousness when people try to put you in a box of what you’re able to achieve. It also comes down to what you were saying before with wanting to do experimental filmmaking, whereas someone might tell you that you should just direct music videos, or something.

Kilo Kish. Photo courtesy of Andrew Arthur

WRIGHT: Exactly. Yeah. And starting in this space of experimental filmmaking, when I am approached for any type of job, people are open and knowing this is what they could possibly get from me based on what they’ve seen, and usually people are only coming to me if they’re open to being on the same page as me, which I’m really grateful for.

KISH: It’s nice to be strong enough to–and I think it does take mental fortitude and grit to be that vulnerable with the different practices, because your film from the show was super vulnerable. It’s very powerful in that the body itself is so powerful. What you’re willing to share is a statement in itself. I was going to ask you: how do you not talk yourself out of doing things that you know might be scary for you creatively?

WRIGHT: The way that I grew up, I always had this need to protect myself. I was just out in the world. Whoever could watch me and my sister would, or we were bounced around from different family members, and so there were a lot of different opinions. I was just like, I’m going to go crazy if I have to adhere or just be what you want me to be. I’m just going to do me, and don’t ask permission, ask forgiveness, and do it. I think I kind of lived by that, and it inevitably is a part of the way I come to art. You have that fear, but in my experience, even having that one person, a friend, or somebody from your family give a critique, that helps me in a way. It was worth it for me to just do it.

KISH: I feel the same way. I feel like the curiosity of what could happen outweighs the fear that you might have about it. I just want to see what happens, even if it doesn’t do well by other people’s standards. What is the role that spirituality plays with you now because you said that you had a very spiritual upbringing, but I wonder, now, after having grown up in the Church and all that, how do you feel about it?

WRIGHT: Organized religion is not necessarily where I think I can connect spiritually. I have the experience of losing my mother at the age of two, and in 2017 my father passed away on my birthday, so the people who brought me into this physical life are both in a spiritual realm, and I’ve just felt a spiritual connection, a motherly connection, since I was a child. I have always felt like there’s guardian angels, or I definitely feel connected to my ancestors. That’s just something that’s not even by choice. I know that even in some of the work that I create, it feels like somebody needed that to be done. I don’t know if it was my grandma, or who. So, in that sense, I really am big on remembering our ancestors and making sure that I have altars on my mom’s birthday. Images are also huge for me. Sometimes I can just be transformed or taken back to a place, and that feels almost spiritual as well. There’s a scripture, Do this in remembrance of me (1 Corinthians 11:24), and I think about that often. We’d do communion every first Sunday where everybody drinks the wine and takes a little piece of the cracker in remembrance of Christ’s blood and body. It’s kind of intense actually, but we do it so casually. It’s a very honoring ceremony, remembering Christ’s sacrifice, and I think that’s how I approach remembering my ancestors, and remembering the fight of just being here in this country, or just making it; our survival.

KISH: Yeah, wow. It’s like a weaving of your experiences and your life, and all the little bits that inform your life. I had a strange upbringing where I was the only Black person in my whole school and I was in a gifted program. I was this little Black girl who was moved around all these different classes, and if I think of my younger self, it definitely informs the way that I approach work now. It’s very in my own world, and it’s in my own space. I have friends in fashion, but I’m not a fashion girl. I do music, but I’m not a music girl. I do art, but I’m not an art girl. I’m always this separate thing that’s in the Venn diagram overlapping everything else. I think everybody’s experiences create how they make work, and I guess spiritually, I believe similarly to what you said–there are things guiding and protecting and moving you in the right path, and if you’re able to tap into intuition, or whatever you want to call it, you kind of know: that doesn’t really feel right for me, I don’t know why, but I’m going to sidestep. I always feel that with all the projects that I do, and I think during COVID, I’ve just not really heard that voice as much. I’ve kind of just been sitting down.

WRIGHT: I think that the uncertainty of the world has an effect where you feel like you don’t have much control, and that’s why sometimes I’m like I have to stop. I have to get off social media, I have to sit with myself and listen to my own thoughts. There’s so much being thrown at us all day long. It’s really a lot, and I really do think that affects being able to hear yourself. I haven’t done this yet, but a lot of my friends have taken social media breaks for a couple of months during the pandemic and are just working on their own thing, and it’s been great.

This year’s exhibition of Womxn in Windows is on view through November 15 in Chinatown Los Angeles on Chung King Road, as well as New York in partnership with the Wallplay Network - 321 Canal Street, Chinatown London in partnership with Protein Studios - 31 New Inn Yard, and Hackney Shanghai in partnership with Bitter - Jing’an District. Additional films can be viewed by Christine Yuan, Everlane Moraes, Ja’Tovia Gary, Kya Lou, Rémie Akl, and Sylvie Weber—artists whose backgrounds span the United States, Brazil, Lebanon, Taiwan, the Dominican Republic and Germany. Follow @womxninwindows, @rikkwright and @kilokish on instagram.

Touching Everything & Holding Nothing: An Interview of Artist, Abolitionist & Facilitator Brianna Mims

October 21, 2020

interview and portraits by Summer Bowie

Brianna Mims is a polymath if I’ve ever seen one. Along with a lifetime of training in myriad dance forms and becoming a multidisciplinary movement artist, she can likely be found speaking publicly on the role of the NAACP and transformational justice in the abolitionist movement, or walking runway at any number of fashion weeks, or developing curriculum for children to feel safe in moving and communicating freely. Then again, she might just be researching the efficacy of our local welfare system, or brushing up on her Arabic. When she’s done with all of it, she takes a step back and acts as a facilitator who intricately creates a neural network of every last disparate interest by assigning it to the appropriate person within her community. She is currently an organizer-in-residence at the Women’s Center For Creative Work, and her current project, Letters from the Etui is an amalgam of art, abolition, education, and support. It is a tender space where the carceral state can be felt, both at home and abroad.

SUMMER BOWIE: You describe yourself as an artist, facilitator, and abolitionist. Do you feel like the order of those labels matters at all, or are you equally all of them?

BRIANNA MIMS: The order of the labels do not matter. They all feed one another.

BOWIE: You don’t seem to compartmentalize your work at all. Can you talk about the way that you prioritize the balance between art and policy reform?

MIMS: The art that I make that’s overtly political is cultural work. It’s about shifting culture alongside policy so that we are creating sustainable change. Most of the work includes a direct call to action on a policy level. However, it is important to me to create various access points to the conversations because the work isn't merely political. It's personal, interpersonal, cultural, and spiritual.

BOWIE: How did you personally become connected to the work that you do? On the artistic and political sides?

MIMS: Artistically, when I joined the Justice-LA Creative Action team. I learned how to marry both sides of myself and I had the chance to learn from and build with people while doing so. My work in the policy realm is simply a result of my understanding for the need for change on the policy level. What happens on a policy level and within the abolition theory/scholar space really informs my art.

BOWIE: What is the Sarah’s Foundation?

MIMS: It is a program I started at the Salvation Army in Jacksonville, FL when I was in high school. I used to volunteer at the center with my mom and one day I noticed a lot of new residents that were children. I offered to teach a dance class to the children on Saturdays and it grew into a program that included dance, tutoring, and mentoring. The program continued for a couple of years when I left FL and moved to LA. The dance class that I was teaching developed over time into a movement and self-reflection class; It became a bit more rooted in somatics and conversation. I have taught this class for various time frames in Philadelphia for Resources for Human Development and in LA at Union Rescue Mission, Malabar Elementary, Crete Academy, and Santa Fe Springs Correctional Facility.

BOWIE: That really speaks to your emphasis on creating various access points. There’s a phrase you seem to resonate with about touching everything and holding nothing. Can you explain what that means to you?

MIMS: Yes! Many people have recently been asking me about that exact phrase!!! The quote came from the book Instinct by TD Jakes. I read it when I was in high school and was really moved by it. I attended a talk he had about and he began talking about the keys to his success. If you don’t know, TD Jakes is typically known as a pastor, however, he wears many hats that expand across many different fields and has built an empire. He said the key to his success was his ability to juggle in a multitude of jungles. He said in order for him to do that he had to “touch everything, and hold nothing.” At that time in my life, I only considered myself a dancer and I was defined by what that meant, by what my career was supposed to look like...dance company..or commercial route. When reading the book I began to acknowledge there were parts of myself that I wasn’t nourishing: gifts, skills, talents. So when hearing that quote I committed to not being defined by being a dancer and to nurturing all of my skills, gifts, and talents. At that time, I didn't even know if I had other gifts. For me, that quote has layered meanings. My relationship to it changes by the season. I love to continuously unpack it. Right now, it is a reminder to listen and honor the wisdom of my instincts. It is also a reminder to listen for when to let go. This can be physically letting go of something, but it's also about not holding on to the idea of what I think something is supposed to be; especially in regards to the work I create, or this idea of who I am, or what I’m capable of doing. I often say a lot of the time my work evolves outside of me because once I let what needs to come through me flow, the project is outside of me and I have to let it go and be what it is supposed to be.

BOWIE: Speaking of projects, what is the #jailbeddrop series, and how did you get involved?

MIMS: #jailbeddrop was started by Patrisse Cullors and Cecilia Sweet-Coll through Justice-LA. It began as an art series to support the initiatives of the organization. The first one happened in September of 2017. They put 100 jail beds in front of the LA Board of Supervisors office. For the second major drop, fifty artists were given a jail bed. We all created pieces of various mediums and the day before Christmas in 2017 at the same time, we activated different cities within Los Angeles County. I was in Manhattan Beach with my collaborator Jullian Grandberry and we shared a movement meditation piece. After those major drops, there were several smaller drops and I was unconsciously building upon ideas that would later turn into the performance and installation that has been touring LA. For my senior project at USC, I wanted to expand on the movement piece that I had shared in 2017, so I put out an artist call at the university. I knew that I wanted to work with architecture students so I had a friend reach out to them separately. That's how Minh-Han, Georgina, Bindhu, and Adam joined the project. I knew I wanted the architectural installation to be interactive. However, I didn’t know exactly what that looked like… and I think this is where the concept of “touching everything, holding nothing” comes back into play in the way I led. I had to trust all of my collaborators' individual knowledge and skill sets to really contribute what they were supposed to, not merely what I imagined them to do… It’s always interesting to find that balance between letting go of my idea of what I think they are supposed to do and guiding them so that the work is aligned. The first year we did the project we supported Measure R, it was our call to action. The work has grown so much since the first iteration at CAAM and we have shared the work at many places in LA. I’m very grateful.

BOWIE: How was the Letters from the Etui project originally conceived?

MIMS: The last #jailbeddrop, which was the first time the project had an entire gallery space, included a series of workshops. A professor at Cal State LA attended one of the talks and reached out to me afterwards about a video series he curated with his students. The animated shorts that are featured in Letters From the Etui are from a collaboration Professor Kamran Afary led with his students at Lancaster State Prison and animation students at Cal State LA. The videos were supposed to be displayed in a gallery at Cal State LA, but due to COVID, it could no longer happen. So, he handed the videos over to us to present. I didn't know how to present them, so I had them for a while before the concept developed.

Then, Mandy Harris Williams from the Women's Center for Creative Work reached out to me about an organizer in residency program. She asked if I had any ideas around anything I wanted to create/organize and I had a couple, however, they could only facilitate things that were happening online; so the video series was my only option. Mandy said that we could present them on their own website and that some sort of programming should also happen. Those were my starting points. Once I began to organize the workshops and get the bios from the folks inside, it started to move on its own. It was really hard for us to come up with the name. We sat on the phone for hours brainstorming and nothing was coming up. It wasn’t until I had the idea to create merch to raise money for folks that are currently incarcerated that things began to make sense to me.

As I was thinking about what we could sell, I was opposed to creating t-shirts and tote bags. We ended up deciding to create and sell envelopes in a very beautiful way. I was thinking about things that were relevant right now and I started thinking about the things people hoarded at the beginning of quarantine and the whole vote by mail drama that was happening. I had a lot of very bizarre ideas like selling eyelashes! After talking with my team, envelopes stuck. I asked Han to draw some sketches for an envelope series and she suggested I reach out to one of the #jailbeddrop artists we’ve worked with in the past. I called Chris and he loved the idea. He told me that when he was incarcerated he used to draw on his envelopes and the folks on the outside would sell the envelopes and send the money back to him. Once the prison found out he was making money this way, they banned him from being able to send out envelopes with drawings on them. That was the moment of confirmation for me. We further discussed the significance of letter writing for incarcerated folks. I took this information back to my team for our name brainstorming process. We finally came across the word Etui via Hans' roommate. An etui is a small box where you keep very small and precious items. The word is derived from its old french root word ‘estui’ which means prison. Again, the work was moving on its own. It gets even better, Dr. Afary referred me to one of his family members to do a workshop, Frieda Afary. She does a lot of abolition work in North Africa and the Middle East. When I got on the phone with her she mentioned that she had been translating letters from Iranian political prisoners into English. As we talked more about the concept of the project and the significance of letter writing to system impacted folks, we thought the letters would bring a very important layer to the conversation of letter writing apropos system impacted folks.

BOWIE: We often talk about the effects of incarceration on the incarcerated, but what does it mean to be system impacted?

MIMS: I define system impacted people as folks who are currently incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and the loved ones of those who are or have been incarcerated.

BOWIE: When you talk about creating a safe and tender space, I can really feel that in the way that tenderness plays a role in the act of letter writing. What is it about this form of communication that is so important?

MIMS: Yes, what you witness in Letters From the Etui is the various ways letter writing is used: to connect with loved ones, to self reflect, to advocate for yourself or others, etc. For incarcerated folks, for a long time, this was their main form of communication. For many folks inside, it still is their main form of communication. It holds a different kind of significance when you have been away from folks for so long and you don’t know when you’ll be able to see them again. For me, letter writing is very precious because you can really take your time and be intentional with your words, it's also easier to communicate hard things because you are not in a live conversation and seeing the other person's immediate reaction, and it is something that you can keep forever.

BOWIE: The workshop series component to the project also encompasses a lot of different topics, from current propositions on the ballot related to prison reform (J, 17, 20), to #metoo behind bars, to somatics and wellness. On a personal level, which of the workshops are you looking forward to the most, and why?

MIMS: I am personally looking forward to Prentis Hemphill’s workshop and Frieda Afary’s workshop. I am obsessed with Prentis’ work and I have never attended any of their workshops so I am excited to learn from them firsthand. In regards to Frieda’s workshop, I am super excited to learn about the abolition work that is happening in North Africa and the Middle East. In my studies around the carceral state in the US, I have learned about the connections to the carceral system here and the occupation in Palestine. I have been studying the occupation and learning Arabic. I began learning Arabic before I learned about the connections between the systems and have continued to do so. I love finding the cultural, historical, and present through lines between the regions in my studies.

BOWIE: It seems like the disciplines you explore are limitless. It’s like a kaleidoscopic constellation of connections that you make. Who are some of the artists and activists who inspire the work that you do?

MIMS: d. Sabela Grimes, Patrisse Cullors, Maytha Al Hassen, Jade Curtis, Moncell Durden, Jessica Litwak…these are the people that first come to mind.

BOWIE: From your vantage point, what are the strengths of the artistic communities within Los Angeles?

MIMS: The fact that a lot of the artistic communities that I am a part of are very communal in the way in which they work. I have and have watched so many other artists get things done with very little resources. The artists here really work as a family. However, artists need funding!!!

BOWIE: Yes! This is essential if we want to keep germinating more ideas and more culture. Are there any other future projects you can talk about in the works?

MIMS: Yes, I have so many ideas right now!! I am finishing up a film that I have been working on with Giselle Bonilla. This project is very different from my previous works. It is really just me doing whatever I want. It’s an experimental film. However, for me, it doesn’t seem disconnected from my work because I really believe we have to include the conversation of play and pleasure into our abolitionist frameworks. Play and pleasure as a guide for strategy… play being the highest form of research. Play and pleasure as a personal guide. I read Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown recently and she talks about the knowledge and guidance that comes from leaning into our desires and the erotic. We also have to prioritize play and pleasure as things that are essential to our well-being and not something we have to work tirelessly to deserve. And this film is just me playing and leaning into desires that bring me joy...like setting my tits on fire.

Follow Brianna Mims on instagram @bj_mims and go to lettersfromtheetui.com to learn more about the project. Sign up for their online workshop series: Oct 22, Nov 5, & Nov 21

Romancing A Wound: An Interview of Estefania Puerta

October 9, 2020

portrait and interview by Abbey Meaker

Estefania Puerta is a Colombian immigrant womxn whose interdisciplinary art practice transcends genre. Experiential installations featuring sculpture, video, scent, writing, and performance are steeped in layers of psychoanalytic theory, mythology, and profound insights into language, memory, ritual, and time.

In early fall, after months of trying to connect, Estefania and I caught up on my back porch, listening to the trees, watching the light change. The pandemic made it challenging to get together, but she was also busy in her studio preparing for her upcoming solo exhibition Womb Wound, opening this Sunday, October 11th at Situations in New York.

Hearing her describe this new body of work and the ideas investigated within it, I knew we had to sit down more formally—a perfect reason to delve more deeply into its transporting complexity. Her work evokes one’s own process of recollection which condenses, displaces, and plummets us abruptly into the forgotten (or misplaced) recesses of our past.

ABBEY MEAKER: You’ve titled this body of work and your upcoming exhibition Womb Wound. You explained in a recent interview with Rachel Jones that this title represents an extended investigation of healing, of birthing something, being the holder and nurturer that then becomes wounded. This is definitely a universal paradigm: what does it mean to be rejected by a society that relies on those who have been cast out to sustain itself? And what happens when the rejected refuse the parasite?

ESTEFANIA PUERTA: I’m glad you brought up the extended metaphors of wombs and birth. I am not thinking of the womb as an organ attached to a cis female but rather the womb as a place we all have within us, a place of making selves, of nurture, of “the animal within the animal,” and very much about a holding place and how that slippery sense of “holding” can become a place of containment, detainment, of being trapped. The wound aspect of it is that piece around finding a healing place within the wound and not an escape or sutured repression from it.

“Enrejada” photograph courtesy Lindsey Flicker and Estefania Puerta.

MEAKER: Healing is an ongoing and sometimes unpredictable process, but ‘being healed’ of something implies a fixed state, yet all life forms are in a constant state of becoming. What value do you see in the act of nursing a wound, or ‘romancing a wound’ as you poetically put it, if it can never fully recover but instead continually evolves?

PUERTA: Many of the ways in which I describe what I’m thinking about in the work just ends up feeling web-like instead of linear. Even thinking about the idea of romancing the wound—what does it mean to ease pain in a way that’s not healing it but enticing it into submission. I think healing is a constant state of becoming empowered in all the complexities that a wound offers, whether it be rage, sadness, pain, forgiveness, empathy, resentment, trauma, acceptance, etc. If healing is a portal into these complicated states then the wound is this fountain, a source, an opening and a flowing sting that keeps us in the simultaneity of being animals and highly conscientious beings. I find that the wounds that I carry have also become what nurses me; they offer me a space to be truthful in the complexity of my experience being alive. The value I see in romancing a wound is thinking of it as taming a wild beast and knowing how to slow dance with it instead of trying to fight it away.

MEAKER: You have said that this work is very personal, especially with regard to the family history and mythologies you’re mining. Even within this personal thread, the feeling of disconnect from family and the attempt to piece together fragments of an unknowable history is something I deeply connect with, albeit for very different reasons.

PUERTA: Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, I feel like it's something that many of us, if not all of us, can relate to: the erasure of our own history and these glimpses we may have: moments of vulnerable truth that are obscured by a murky mystery. In my family there are moments of clarity that I have about the ways in which we exist—the characters in my family and the mystery about who they are, who they were. These histories get erased but manifest in other ways. I romance around these murky mysteries and create different signifiers to dwell with a bit.

MEAKER: It’s interesting, the function of remembering. Memory has so much to do with one’s sense of self and the forging of their history. If we can’t remember, we create stories, stand-ins.

PUERTA: Yes, for sure. But I think that’s the thing about the self referential vs the identity politics around it all. That is definitely a part of it and inevitable because we are all political bodies in this society. But I realized a lot of what I was dealing with was a personal, familial connection and the way that has been impacted by politics, but getting more into the heaviness around it. In some ways I feel like dealing with the political was my way of avoiding the familial and realizing that it’s something I actually want to deeply understand. I wanted to find a soothing place within that unknown. I’m always thinking about a family member and each of the pieces I make become homages to them and reflections in this really subtle way. There is a correspondence that I feel like I have with my family. In that they do become these mythological creatures to me that hold powers and different codes to a family history that then becomes a world.

MEAKER: Kind of a way to commune with ancestors.

PUERTA: Yes, but they are usually people that I have known or know. But they do still feel like ancestors to me because of that moment of unknowing them. There’s something about, especially older family members, that feel like they are both here and in some deep past that I don’t have access to.

Detail of “Mija” photograph courtesy Lindsey Flicker and Estefania Puerta.

MEAKER: This familiar/unfamiliar quality imbues your work with a sense of the uncanny. The sculpture titled Mija is particularly reminiscent of a body. It has an interior architecture, a bone structure. It has the qualities of an organism in that it’s alive and dying. It has a vibrancy and vitality but also shows signs of decline: dying plants against glowing water, soft and fleshy material edged by muddy mop-heads. Can you talk about these provocative, paradoxical qualities?

PUERTA: Thinking of the too-muchness of all these materials, the excess in both ways of fleshy softness and the raggedy edges. I think of the mop heads as a filter, both in their material, cultured significance and also as a proposal and simulacra of cilia and other filters that exist in nature. My dad was a janitor for the majority of my life and I have a lot of love and fond connections to this material; riding on the floor buffing machine that felt like a giant, gentle beast as my dad was its tamer, guiding it across the floor. At the same time, I feel that sharpness in how immigrant labor can be almost fetishized in the U.S, how immigrants are seen as the filters, the holders, the purifiers of what others do not want to deal with. How these mops literally hold the muck and grime and how I think of them as tendrils protecting the soft interior of this sculpture. The guiding term I was thinking about for this piece was “creature comfort” and thinking of bodies that need regeneration, that are not just beat down and exhausted but are actually resting, re-generating, feeding themselves, finding comfort. Some referential inspirations are the feminine grotesque and the goddess of fertility, Artemis.

“Mija” photograph courtesy Lindsey Flicker and Estefania Puerta.

MEAKER: I’m thinking about flowers: they are prized for their external beauty and arousing scent (how they satisfy us); yet once picked, the flower wilts, browns, drops its pedals, leaving only a rotting, stinking tuft that is hastily discarded by its once devoted admirer.

PUERTA: We remember a beautiful flower but not the decaying flower. I’ve been thinking about the idea of a fruiting body. Fungus as a fruiting body, flowers as a fruiting body, the body having its own potential to fruit in these dark places. The operation of nature within all of that. Not just the appearance of it but what does it actually do and mean and how do we identify with these processes.

MEAKER: Your sculpture Enrejada is similarly dichotomous. Spilling out of a grid-like structure lined with ears made of wax, are tendrils of pink fabric, hair, and a coiled umbilical cord. This feels like a raw, traumatic memory. Bits and pieces disconnected and out of place, trying to find each other. The burden of remembering and forgetting.

Detail of “Enrejada” photograph courtesy Lindsey Flicker and Estefania Puerta.

PUERTA: Hmm interesting, yeah, as you know, I am really interested in psychoanalysis and its poetic and very real history as it relates to hysteria and women’s experiences. Trauma is described as this type of repetition, a loop that you play over and over again but can never find the ending to it. I do think this piece plays with that notion of repetition, the over emphasis of something that cannot be forgotten. But perhaps for me, the pain attached to trauma isn’t as present for me, I was thinking more of familial lineages (there is a spice blend in the sacks that my mother uses) and also what it means to be a sentient being. I made the ears during a time when I was in deep turmoil and a creative block. A friend read my tarot and saw an image of a tongue licking flowers and instructed me to get out of my head. I was talking myself in loops and what I needed to do was be present, to listen to the earth around me in a much more embodied way. As she read my tarot, I had this material in my hand with no purpose and instinctively started making ears, they felt beautiful and cathartic in my hands, they felt right and that just led me to other ideas of these pieces typically being seen as their primary sense of existence. We talk a lot about the gaze in a visual way, but what if a sculpture can hear you? What does it mean to have empowerment through another sense? To have auditory sentience and being-ness in the room and offer the act of listening to the “talker,” instead of the “viewer.” In that way, this piece actually feels really therapeutic or healing to me.

MEAKER: What has it been like making this work during a time of incredible tumult, fear, sickness, unknown, radical uprising? So much of what has been hidden has now come to light.

PUERTA: It has been both my refuge and sanctuary, as well as the sharpest mirror reflecting the darkest parts of my soul. The part I may not have been ready to deal with. Making art always feels like you’re putting your hands into a void and hoping that whatever you’re holding onto or making gives something back to you that is nurturing. It was a hard, weird time to try to define what would be nurturing and whether it was even something worthwhile to define in this moment. And then coming back to the romantic and true feeling around art being its own space that, for better or worse, can keep us grounded in a different reality that isn’t always a hyper-politicized and materially cruel place. I realized that I am a valid person and that I am worthy of existence and expressing my existence. In that aspect, I feel so grateful I had this show to work towards; to have a mirror I had to constantly face, to ask the hard questions and get to the other side of it, where I feel more empowered than before.

Womb Wound is on view from October 11 - November 15 with a reception on Sunday, October 11, 12-7 PM @ Situations in New York

Omer Arbel and Kulapat Yantrasast Dream Of Biological Concrete 

September 16, 2020

The Vancouver-based designer and founder of Bocci, and LA-based Thai starchitect discuss the violence of architecture, sustainability and evolving in the age of material technology. 

Kulapat Yantrasast: Are you focusing on more installations these days?

 Omer Arbel: I love lighting, but in addition to an installation-based practice, where we do one-offs and very, very large monstrous, gigantic works that mostly have to do with light, I have returned to the architectural practice after a ten-year hiatus. What I am trying to do is cross all the disciplines and knit together a way of working where it doesn’t matter if it’s a commercial item, or a one-off, or a piece of architecture. There is a philosophy that unites all the work. And that is the idea, that a material and its intrinsic properties, chemistry, the mechanics and the physics of a material, are the generating impetus for form.

Yantrasast: So, a form flows from material kind of thing?  

Arbel: No, I just kind of tease or encourage the materials to get formed.  

Yantrasast: Isn’t that what Louis Kahn says, “You say to a brick, 'What do you want, brick?’”

Arbel: Yeah, exactly, but it’s already a brick. But we have to take a step back and think about clay. Or I try to find this transformation on a molecular level, and then try to see if I could allow that transformation to express...  

Yantrasast: Kind of like cooking almost? 

Arbel: Yes, exactly. I am very comfortable with that. Like cooking.  

Yantrasast: So, is concrete a protein?  

Arbel: I read the other day that concrete is the most abundant material on the planet other than water. That is kind of depressing. I have always loved concrete, concrete is the most amazing material, but it’s problematic because it produces almost ten percent of the carbon in the atmosphere. We should all stop using it, we should stop building things out of concrete, but my love for it is too great to stop.  

Yantrasast: Concrete needs a new binding agent.

Arbel: The only thing evil about it is cement. We just need to find replacements for cement. And there are, there are all these companies now using other kinds of binders. I even heard the other day that there is a biological one, like a bacteria, that replaces the cement. Imagine, so your concrete is kind of alive, you have to feed it, water it. (laughs)  

 Yantrasast: Yeah, like some kind of mushroom.

Arbel: It’s super great. We’ll see, but yes, I love concrete. I am finding ways to work with it differently. I have always been depressed by the fact that concrete’s liquidity or plasticity is not expressed in most constructions that you see. Everything is rectangular, and I think that’s dishonest in the highest order to the material’s nature, on the one hand, but also super wasteful, and expensive. So, we have worked with four or five different ways of trying to do that, developing a method of forming that allows the concrete to sort of express itself. And I want to keep going, especially with this whole idea of thinking of it as an animal instead of a liquid stone, a living organism in some sense. Then, what are the formal implications of that?

Yantrasast: It is a very classic ingredient, from Roman times even, but we haven’t evolved much from that in an age when you are 3D-printing buildings. When I saw your house, you seem to long for concrete to collaborate better with other materials. Can you talk about that?

 Arbel: So, the starting point, called 75, is this idea of trying to develop another way of forming concrete. And the thought we had was to pour it into fabrics instead of a wood framework, because fabrics stretch, and it responds to the weight of the material. In the experiments we also discovered that just naturally, because of the way a fabric stretches, it swells in exactly the places that you need it to be thicker from a structural perspective. So there is kind of an intrinsic efficiency. We developed a series of, what we call, the lily pads or the reverse trumpet forms. It is essentially a series of geotextiles, which is a woven tarp stretched between plywood ribs. Everything is organized in a radial pattern that flute up, in some instances as high as 30 ft. tall. Our approach to that architecture is to think of it almost as if they were found objects. As if I had arrived at the site and discovered these ruins of archeological remains that are sort of aggressive.   

Yantrasast: Yeah, in the last ten years, you know, people have dealt with quite a bit of that, because at the end of the day, you need a cavity, and you need the concrete to define that cavity. 

Arbel: The house is on an agricultural field. I was always moved by this Edward Hopper painting, where the field came right up to the edge of the house. So, we thought of the agricultural field almost as if it were a carpet draped over this archeological site.   

Yantrasast: You are known as a lighting designer. Is light material, and if so, what is the DNA of light?

 Arbel: This is a theme that I keep returning to, which is the idea of thickening an atmosphere. When you go to Mexico City, or a city that is very polluted, you see that the sunbeams have to go through so much particulate on the way to your eye. It’s depressing, but it’s also the most beautiful thing, and it captures the nuance of light and texture. And I think that is something I try to do in the architectural projects, but also in my lighting practice. And in the installation work, is this idea of thickening the atmosphere, almost thinking of light as if it were liquid, and trying to place many things in its way. I was thinking of the rooms as if there were giant sponges sucking in light as if it were a liquid. That might come from a childhood spent in the desert environment, where sun was abundant and syrupy, not like here where it is very crisp, a much dustier sort of light.   

Yantrasast: I remember a long time ago, I took Toyo Ito, who is a good friend and someone I admire, I met him in Japan, but we went to Thailand together, he loved Thailand. He was so fascinated by Thai rivers. In Japan, the water is so clear, almost like sake, and maybe because it’s a mountainous country, the river is flowing quite fast to go to the ocean. Whereas in Thailand it is almost like a very thick soup. It is kind of an alluvial plain and we don’t have a lot of mountains. The water is flowing very slowly to the ocean. Because of the soil and everything, it is very brownish, sticky. And, he was blown away by the fact that even water is so different. Even though his work was sort of all about transparency and clarity, he liked that water can thicken. That also makes us human, that makes us more organic. Of course, you are making something very humane, something that people can live in.

Arbel: Because architecture is violent, I think, when it’s good architecture it has a kind of violence to it.  

Yantrasast: Yeah. 

Arbel: And to start to think of the idea of domesticity, or even the idea of coziness. These things are at odds with the violence of architecture. The best architecture is able to make the violence comfortable. 

Yantrasast: I thought a lot about that too, which comes back to the subject of order and chaos. I think the art of architecture needs to have a sense of clarity. It is monumental, it is inhumane in scale, and it has to be a manifesto of something that is not alive itself, even though it grew out of life. It has to be surreal. Look at the results of modernism, whether it is Chandigarh or Brasilia. Like you say, it is so violent, it is so out of human sentiment and logic that it’s hostile.  

Arbel: Yes.  

Yantrasast: What are some of your design principles? 

Arbel: It has been to find form in an intrinsic material quality. Like you mentioned, you can 3D print with concrete, you can 3D print with anything. It is true that in the next decade, or next two decades, we will be at a point where anything that can be imagined we will be able to create and produce in perfect fidelity, printed in any kind of material. So, imagine a world where we can make anything. What is worthwhile? What should we make? It becomes a really hard problem and so, for me, the forms on some level are born of a very specific chemical reaction, or mechanical action.

Yantrasast: So, let’s talk about sustainability. It’s a big word. 

Arbel: Yeah, there are two ways to talk about it. One thing that I think about is if we have buildings, or objects, that have a cultural relevance, that are purely made to delight people, then it is less likely to be demolished or replaced. That is the most basic sustainability principle for architecture. The second thing is the trench warfare of being involved in making anything where you have to constantly be aware. I love concrete so much but learned that concrete is just this toxic and evil material that is dumping all this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. What is the answer? Stop using concrete? No, you need to find ways to work with concrete, find out who is working with new kinds of concrete. We did an analysis on the fabric forming method and found that there is forty percent less embodied energy in these forms. Because fabric is just easier to stretch than wood would be to nail together. Way less materials, they are not thrown away after.  

Yantrasast: I think, when you look at the history of concrete, people were actually efficient before. If you look at someone like Anton García-Abril, who made that chapel, he put the hay in there and he put the concrete over the hay and when it was done he sent a cow to eat the hay. A lot of this really depends on these specific locations. But I love your idea of how we evolve in the age of material technology. What about your new space in Berlin? Is it like a showroom?  

Arbel: No, it’s like an old foundry. It’s enormous; it’s like five buildings. We have been active in Berlin for eight years and at the moment we occupy a courthouse. It was a derelict courthouse when we found it; 150 years old. It has been renovated and it has been, up to now, our showroom where we have been able to exhibit things. I was always thinking of it more as a library for old ideas. All our experiments end up there. We generally don’t respond to opportunities, we just produce work. And then when opportunities come we sort of match the idea to the opportunity. It served as an archive of ideas, and also as a laboratory to explore new pieces before they were ready. 

Yantrasast: Most of the objects are being made in Vancouver?  

Arbel: Yes, everything is made in Vancouver. We have a few small collaborations with glass shops in the Czech Republic, the bohemian glass region of the Czech republic. But most of the work is made in our studio. 

Yantrasast: We just announced a very big opera house in Russia, in which we have a big glass chandelier. I do like the idea of how light is not explored enough in architectural thinking. It’s always an afterthought. I was reading a book this morning about the Light and Space artists in LA. You have someone like James Turrell, you have Peter Alexander, and you have the Venice School. It did not talk about the theory; it did not talk about the execution of it. So, how has the art of Light and Space, which is so prominent in Southern California, never penetrated beyond the surface? A lot of people are now bringing music, bringing colors, and perceptions, and smells, into this fundamental art form. And I feel like that is fundamental, it is architecture. I want light to come in and, like you mentioned, the space would be like a sponge. And how is this sponge absorbing light, not just passively reacting to it? It feels like the art form of the future. Any thoughts on that?   

Arbel: It just sounds great. (laughs)

Yantrasast: Because as an architect you make space, you make objects and material. But as a lighting designer you create objects that illuminate.

Arbel: An object occupies the space. It perhaps has architectural ramifications, but in general is surrounded by empty space. But as an architect you create the outlines of the empty space. So it’s kind of the opposite approach. And I always think that architects make great sculptors or industrial designers but it does not really work the other way around. Industrial designers do a terrible, terrible job when they try to make space. And I think it is because you can’t think of a building as just a big object.

Yantrasast: Yeah, you are absolutely right. Even someone like Sottsass, who had really set a strong language, but when I see some of his houses, I’m like, “Hmmm.” But I think, as you say, this art of space and form as an architect, in a way, we are making space, but we are also making form. The Europeans tend to be better at space because they don’t have a lot of forms to build. The whole thing was already built. The Asians tend to be more form-based because there are a lot of places to build. There is almost a kind of dichotomy. But, more and more, people find difficulty with space, space is not real for most people anymore, because of digital media. Now you zoom in, you zoom out on the computer, and the scale of it is completely odd. You can’t put yourself into it. It is troubling in a sense, but it also gives you a sense of freedom.

This interview was published in Autre’s Spring/Summer 2020 “Edge Of Chaos” issue. Omer Arbel will present a new solo exhibition of architectural works in progress at Aedes Architekturforum in Berlin. From 28th August until 22nd October, 2020, the show 75, 86, 91, 94 will document a series of major innovations within Arbel’s ongoing experimental practice. Kulapat Yantrasast is a founding partner and Creative Director of wHY. He and his team are working on multiple current projects.

It's Not About Me: A Conversation Between Photographer Greg Gorman and Patricia Lanza

August 10, 2020

Andy Warhol, Los Angeles, 1986, copyright Greg Gorman

“For me a photograph is most successful when it doesn’t answer all the questions and it leaves something to be desired. I like each picture that I take to be a testament to the individual character of my subject.”–Gorman

Greg Gorman is an iconic Hollywood photographer and master of portraiture. Over his fifty-year career, he has photographed the most recognizable faces from the entertainment industry and music world. This retrospective book, It’s Not About Me, published by teNues, showcases many images never before published, and is a tribute to his long successful career of photographing the famous and the notorious with a distinctive approach and style. From Kirk Douglas, Eartha Kitt, Robert Redford, Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, and Al Pacino to Viggo Mortensen, Diane Lane, Iggy Pop, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, and Liza Minnelli, as well as Mark Wahlberg, Halle Berry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sharon Stone, Michael Jackson, Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro and Marina Abramović – to name just a few

Patricia Lanza: This will be your 12th book publication. What was the impetus for making this retrospective book, It’s Not About Me.?

Greg Gorman: I felt that I had a lot of work that had never really been explored. I think one of the interesting things, being seventy-one, and having shot portraits for the better part of 50 years, is going back and looking at the work with a different eye, a different point of view. I think it's been quite challenging looking at work that I may have dismissed many years ago and finding pictures that I wouldn't expect. What I was looking for was a comprehensive overview of my career, revisiting and publishing pictures that have never been seen before, including color imagery for the first time.

Lanza: What is the time period for this book and how many images did you edit from your archive?

Gorman: The book covers 50 years of my career. It took me three and a half years to create the book. I did a solid year of editing. I'm an intense person when I start on something- I go full tilt. I had 160 large boxes in cold storage where I probably belonged, and I would bring them home one or two at a time. I set up an editing bay at my desk in my bedroom where I have a beautiful view overlooking the city. I didn’t want to edit in my office. I moved everything upstairs with a light box, slide pages, contact sheets and a grease pencil- something the younger generation are probably not familiar with. I spent the better part of a year working feverishly. When I was in town, I was definitely editing.

Lanza: What was the editing process? How many images did you review?

Gorman: Thousands upon thousands of images at the very least! I narrowed it down to roughly a thousand images; scanning the balance of what I didn't have already scanned That was the film, just looking at my analogue work, not even any of my digital work, which began around the year 2000. For the film work, I settled on about a thousand pictures. I edited for a solid year; taking the next year off thinking about where I wanted to go with this project.

So it was about three and a half years, almost four years before the publication of the book. I really took my time with it. Then it became a question of which images made sense. The irony was that much of the early work showed me how my career had evolved. I reviewed a lot of the early work and regrettably saw a lot of pictures of major players which were not lit in the style for which I became known , however that is the evolution of an artist’s work.

My style began to change around the time of my shoot with Tom Waits in the late 1970’s. My signature style focused more on the relationship between my highlights and shadows. Thanks to my brilliant art director, Gary Johns, we were able to incorporate some of the overly lit early works into creative, interesting photographs by positioning and cropping . He has been a friend of mine since the seventies. He's done a lot of my books, including the campaign for l.a.Eyeworks.

Lanza: Your book has many portrait pairings. How did you arrive at this?

Gorman: That's the genius again of Gary Johns. I think that he did such a beautiful job editing and of putting pictures together.

In fact, sometimes from a humorous point of view, sometimes from a logistical point of view they paired well together. But I think the pairings make our book kind of fun. Normally you would not see them together, like pairing Barry White and Betty White for example. However many of the portrait pairings have meaning and poignancy. Some of the portraits needed to stand on their own on- deserving a double page.

Lanza: What are some of the most defining moments in your career? What would you say were the big breaks?

Gorman: Certainly early on, getting the likes of Dustin Hoffman on the movie, Tootsie, as the special photographer, was a big break. Barbra Streisand calling me up one day when she was recast in a film called All Night Long at Universal. Knowing that I was the special photographer on set, she wanted to know how I was planning on photographing her. The sign of a true professional. Having these big names in my portfolio early on in my career certainly didn’t hurt. Having David Bowie and Bette Midler, by my side added more credibility as well.

They thought, Oh he's shooting David Bowie… he must be a pretty damn good photographer. I was just lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time. And certainly a big defining moment in my career. In another arena, my editorial days with Interview Magazine, was a big plus . I think that was a breakout for a lot of photographers that were working around that time. During the period of Robert

Hayes, as the editor in chief of Interview, this was a significant moment. Another defining moment in showcasing my signature lighting style, was the l.a.Eyeworks works campaign. .

For the l.a.Eyeworks campaign I created some of my most iconic portraits. And for sure, my most famous picture of Andy Warhol. He called me up one day after signing a deal with Ford models and asked me if he would be a good candidate for one of their advertisements, since the adverts appeared monthly in Interview Magazine. Shooting the campaign became a challenge for me because this was before celebrities realized the value of a personal endorsement.

David Bowie, Los Angeles, 1987, copyright Greg Gorman

Lanza: You have degrees in photojournalism and fine art cinematography. When did your work evolve to portraiture?

Gorman: I have an undergraduate degree in photojournalism and a Master of Fine Arts in filmmaking from the University of Southern California.

I started my career in photography when I borrowed a friend’s camera to shoot a Jimi Hendrix concert. I fell in love with photography and enrolled in a course at the University of Kansas. The only photography course they offered was a course in Photojournalism. My passion has always been people. I went through the School of Photojournalism at K.U., but then moved to California to finish my degree in film. However, when I graduated from film school, I realized that I would enjoy a career more in still photography than as a film maker in the movie business. I always cherished more that one on one relationship with people.

Lanza: How did your education in cinematography or filmmaking affect the development of your still photographic style?

Gorman: That's a great question. And you know, no one's ever really asked me that during an interview. My career in lighting has come full circle. And the answer is when I got out of film school I suddenly didn't have the money to be able to afford buying strobes (electronic flash). So when I first started shooting I used, one K quartz lights and two K quartz soft boxes.

I started out with those continuous lights, but once my career took off, I realized that I needed more power to capture my imagery. I turned to electronic flash which I used for most of my career. You know, I was shooting a lot, and I eventually bought a Six K HMI Arri light, with a ballast for a very modest price of $30,000. It was very heavy and on a huge stand.. So today I've come full circle, and I shoot with LED Rotolights, including the new Titan X2, my favorite light. I like it because not only are the skin tones stunning, but there is enough power to back it up.

In 2000, I started shooting digital. I couldn't believe how well digital saw light in low luminance. BUT you have to understand that at the beginning of digital, I was still shooting with a Hasselblad because digital cameras, were represented by a three–megapixel camera. I turned to digital, and shot with the Canon EOS 35mm cameras, when the file size became larger and the technology became more sophisticated.

Lanza: What is happening with you now, having this long career in photography?

Gorman: In the last nine years, my passion for shooting commercial assignments started to diminish. I have been focusing more on teaching and education. However, just recently my excitement for shooting re-emerged. Not being a fan of medium format since the Hasselblad days ,I always preferred the 35mm digital cameras. 35mm was always a good fit because of how I shoot, with a little bit more spontaneity, and with a high ISO, which you need with the LED lighting. The higher ISO gives you a more film–like quality. Then I started watching NOBECHI Creative Live series online, of which I am a lecturer. I heard about the medium format Fuji GFX100, a 100–megapixel camera. A week ago I was sent the camera to try out. I printed and read the 350–page manual. Justin Stailey of Fuji said that I was probably the first person he knew, that ever read a camera manual. When you have a multitude of choices and settings, I thought it best to read the manual and understand how the camera works before starting to shoot.

Frankly when I started shooting with this camera, I was blown away. The camera, which looks imposing because of its size was not heavy, and with all the controls at your fingertips it was a great match for me! The Fuji lenses are great. I am very excited, as I have a couple of special projects in mind with big prints and back to my classic black and white style. AGAIN, I have come full circle with my camera of choice and gone back to shooting medium format with the Fuji GFX 100 and the Rotolight TITAN X2 by my side! The perfect combination for studio portraiture!!

Lanza: Of all the famous people that are in the book, It’s Not About Me. Who was the most surprising in a photo session? What was one of the most interesting stories?

Gorman: Certainly meeting David Bowie was a big moment. Of course I was anxiety ridden because he was such a hero of mine. He possessed a wicked sense of humor and consequently was fun on set.

Bowie was so smart and sophisticated. He basically knew that photography was a necessary evil as part of the marketing program. When Bowie would have a project coming out, he would call, and we would shoot for two or three days. We made sure we covered all the magazines and press media releases, to help him avoid other photo sessions with other photographers.

Those times have really changed. For example, I shot Tom Waits, for the first time for an album cover for three days in the late 1970’s. I'd start at about seven or eight o'clock in the morning picking him up at the Tropicana Hotel on Santa Monica Blvd. We often shot till midnight–something you would never see today. The last time I shot Tom Waits was well over 10 years ago. He gave me 30 minutes at a Chinese restaurant in Santa Rosa. I took him out back where there was a railroad track to get the pictures for the required pages for the London Sunday Times. Today with digital, everything's a rush. In some ways, digital has been fantastic, but in other ways, it's been a demise because everybody knows it can happen as quickly as we speak.

Lanza: Let's talk about the book what is happening this year in that regard?

Gorman: The book, published by teNeus, It’s Not About Me, is coming out in July in Europe and August in the States. I have a show coming up this fall with the Fahey/Klein gallery – the actual dates are dependent on the current situation. Most of my European dates orchestrated by Anke Degenhard have been put on hold until we know better the current state of affairs. However my press for the book has been diligently moving forward thanks to my brilliant Press Agent Nadine Dinter. Many of the photographs in this book, stem from original assignments, advertising campaigns, personal shoots and work associated with the motion picture industry.

Often after these assignments, we would separately make our own set of pictures. Our more private moments. Most of the color and black and white images featured in this publication came from that body of work. I put all my energy into the talent and tried to take a back seat, putting their imagery front and center and thus, the title, ‘It’s Not About Me’.

Throughout Greg Gorman’s star-studded portfolio entitled, It's Not About Me, you'll find the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp at the beginning of their careers, as well as the iconic posters Gorman created for films such as Scarface and Tootsie, record covers for David Bowie, and magazine covers for Andy Warhol. Foreword by Sir Elton John. Afterword by John Waters. Preorder here.

Patricia Lanza began her career at the National Geographic Society — first as a photo researcher, then as a photography editor, followed by eight years as a contract photographer. She began working for the Annenberg Foundation in 2005, researching an idea and writing an initiative on the uses of photography. In 2009, the Annenberg Space for Photography opened. As the Director of Talent & Content, Lanza is responsible for creating and carrying out Wallis Annenberg’s vision through themed programming and photographic exhibitions.

Elizabeth Taylor, Los Angeles, 1989, copyright Greg Gorman

Forbidden Fruit: An Interview Of French Duo Papooz On The Occasion Of Their New Video Release

July 8, 2020

interview and photographs

by Agathe Pinard

The Parisian duo Papooz became well known in France thanks to their summer 2016 melody Ann Wants To Dance with its sensually whimsical music video directed by artist Soko. They released their second album, Night Sketches in 2019, which encapsulates the essence of France’s warm summer nights: sipping white wine after spending the whole day being sun-kissed on the beaches of Cap Ferret (where Papooz recorded their first album), or enjoying the freshness of an ice-cold drink on a terrace with friends after suffocating in the streets of Paris all day.

This year’s summer plan might not be as sandy and salty as we’d once imagined, but we can only hope for more sexy new tracks and clips like Papooz’s latest sumptuous release. Straight from the garden of Eden, this forbidden fruit was directed by Victoria Lafaurie & Hector Albouker “in the year of Covid-19” and features goddess-like Klara Kristin, who made her film debut in Gaspard Noe’s Love. Papooz’s Armand Penicaut and Ulysse Cottin quarantined with their musical crew at La Ferme Records to prepare the new album, yet to be announced. I sat down with Papooz a couple months ago, before their show at the Moroccan Lounge in Los Angeles, before the world went into quarantine.

Tell me about your upbringing, did you grow up in a musical family?

Armand: Kind of, my dad’s family is made of mostly classical musicians. They all studied classical piano and went to the Conservatoire de Paris. And my grandma, on my mom’s side is a piano player as well.

I believe you both met through mutual friends and started playing together mostly with guitar…

We had some friends in common and he’s a bit younger than me. He was seventeen, I was twenty years old. Basically we used to meet up and smoke joints at this place in Paris, called Le Jardin du Luxembourg. We just started hanging out together and it was the beginning of his musical career because he had just started to learn how to play the guitar. He really dived into it for three years and we started recording songs together at each other’s house just via Garageband, you know, the software. There was no career plan, just hanging out with your mate and then it evolved from that.

You started music as a lo-fi band and Night Sketches is therefore your first studio album. How was the transition?

It’s our second studio album in the sense that the first album we made was made in a house, Ulysse’s parents’ beach house in Cap Ferret. It’s equipped with professional studio gear so we recorded music in pretty much the same way as we would have in a “normal” studio. It’s the same process. It was a bit more lo-fi but the second one we went in a really old, amazing studio near Paris called La Frette (Marianne Faithfull, Arctic Monkeys and Nick Cave also recorded at the Manor/Studios.) The transition was kind of the same, the goal is just to have a good time playing music with your friends. You’re trying to catch a moment, like photography. It’s the same process whether you’re in a little room in front of your computer or a massive studio. It’s the same way of building music, the same layers of tracks…

I’ve read that you spent a lot of time conceptualizing your album Night Sketches. What was the idea behind it?

At the beginning, we were working at night and long sessions, just Ulysse and me. At some point, all the songs that we’d been working on sounded a bit dark, disco-ish. So, we kind of achieved something musically before adding lyrics with the same kind of vibe and ambiance about relationships and night life and appetite for destruction, that kind of stuff. It’s like a fake concept album. We didn’t sit down thinking, let’s make an album about night life. At some point we found out that was a nice direction that we could go in. It’s a fun album. I like the vibe of it.

That was going to be my next question, you said that you start with the music first, is that what your usual creative process looks like, music first then lyrics?

Kind of. We wrote only two tracks together for this album. Normally our style of songwriting is: I get up in the morning, take a guitar or a keyboard, and I try to write a song. He does the same thing and then we show the songs to each other. There has to be some lyrics for me to show him something because I really believe that songs need to have a powerful meaning. This is why people can hum to them and chant them.

So, you both work separately and then come together…

Yeah. Normally I write a song, go to his house to show him the song, and if he likes it, we work on it.

The video clip for You & I is inspired by the Ramen Western Tampopo, but also references Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface. Can you talk about how you conceptualize this kind of video? Are you the ones behind the making of the videos?

Yes, we’re behind every video we make. I really try to write the script with whoever we’re working. We’ve been mostly working with the same person, which is my girlfriend, Victoria Lafaurie. We just have a chat while listening to the tune and sometimes we even have an idea before recording the song. She came up with this idea of duality for this video. We could each have a twin, which was easy for me because I do have a twin brother. Finding a twin for Ulysse was going to be kind of a drag so we had this idea of little demons and angels like you can see in Tex Avery or Tintin. We just fucked around with that concept and wrote it together, and then she shot it with a friend of ours, Leo Schrepel, a really great cinematographer in Paris.

Did you watch Tampopo right before?

No, but all of us are big movie geeks and everything we do is based on something that’s already been done. For Tampopo, the scene with the egg, we thought it was so romantic. There was also a scene with an oyster but it was a drag to try to do it. The lights warm up the oysters and it gets disgusting. It was more like an homage.

In how many takes did you get the egg scene?

I think only two because we shot on film. We try to do every clip now on film because it looks so much better, in my opinion, so you cannot redo anything. So everything was shot in one take or maybe two since our budget is pretty tight.

You shot with a Super 8?

No, that was a Super 16.

I know it’s your first time doing a US tour. That’s an interesting time to be touring here, right in the middle of the Democratic primaries. Do you keep up with American politics? Any thoughts on that? (The interview was conducted in March, a couple days before super Tuesday)

We don’t understand American politics. We understand what it means for the people of the world to have some kind of symbol. Obama was a better symbol than Donald Trump. It’s hard to understand how the system works here with the Electoral College. I do keep an eye on it though, it’s all over the press.

I think whoever becomes the next American President is impactful for the rest of the world in some way.

Yeah, but I haven’t seen the world change that much since Trump was elected, from Paris I mean. It’s the same.

You’ve been playing on the East Coast, Canada, then Portland and San Francisco, and you’ll be heading to Mexico next. What was your favorite city to play so far?

We did a whole buckle of the States. Every city has been fun to discover. San Francisco has this kind of vibe you know, when you’ve never been there. When you see it for the first time, it’s quite amazing. California, I have to say, after going to Canada where it’s freezing, feels great.

I know you’re big fans of jazz, have you been to any famous jazz bars yet?

We went to a blues bar in Chicago. House of Blues. The tourist thing, you know, but I enjoyed doing that. We won’t have the time in LA because we’re leaving tomorrow morning.

I was wondering if you could ever see yourselves working somewhere other than Paris, or if it holds too much of the inspiration you need in a city?

I mean, I’d love to live in LA because it’s so soothing and the lifestyle is so different than living in Paris. But you know, you live where your love is, or where your friends are. America is so expensive as well.

Are there any projects you’re going to take on once the tour ends and you go back to Paris?

Yes, we’re in the process of recording. We just released a song but we’re in the process of recording an entire new album in the spring. If everything goes well, we might be back in America before the end of the year with a new album.

Angelic Bodies: Hans Ulrich Obrist Interviews Genesis Breyer P-Orridge

March 28, 2020

According to Neitzche, everything returns to the wheel of the cosmic process. At the beginning again, and again, you will find “every pain and every pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more.” In this eternal cycle, great subversive seers and mystics, like Genesis Breyer P’Orridge, come around rarely. Her pain and her pleasure is a shared agony and ecstasy, which P-Orridge has ameliorated with her epiphany of the pandrogyne, from which the artist has escaped the bounds of either/or binaries into a more angelic, divine gender. Part shaman punk and part hermaphroditic angel, P-Orridge has been led by a series of these outer body visions. From the founding of COUM Transmissions, which challenged British society with blood-soaked performances and general anarchic disruption, to Throbbing Gristle, which brought industrial music into the modern lexicon, to the acid house of Psychic TV, to finally finding love in a dominatrix named Lady Jaye. On the occasion of her first solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist visits Genesis at home in New York, where she is fighting stage IV leukemia, to discuss her many life-altering epiphanies.

HANS ULRICH OBRIST How is your archive organized?

P-ORRIDGE Just over two years ago, I had complete kidney failure. My fiancé [Susana Atkins] is Spanish. She came here with a multiple-visit visa and I got sick just after we met. She looked after me because I had to have somebody with me all the time. The last time she came to New York, she organized all the photographs and put several thousands into sections, subjects, and separate little boxes and drawers. Now I can ring her up in Spain and say, “Where are the pics of Lady Jaye peeing in the street,” and she’s like, “Box #6 in the drawer on the left.” She knows where everything is, she has a totally photographic memory.

OBRIST Is your archive digitized?

P-ORRIDGE No, I don’t have any money to digitize. I don’t take grants; I have no income because I can’t do concerts.

OBRIST Can you tell me about some of your recent gallery shows?

P-ORRIDGE I had a show open last recently in Miami at the Nina Johnson Gallery that’s called Closer As Love. I don’t really take any notice to be honest, I’m more concerned with staying alive. I mean, it’s great that there’s interest. It reminds me of Derek Jarman when he was diagnosed with HIV. He said to me one day when we were sitting in his flat, “You know Gen, once they know you’ve got some kind of terminal illness, they’ll suddenly say they appreciate what you do.” And he said, “I’ve never had offers of money to make films like I’ve had since they knew I was dying.”

And then of course, as soon as everybody heard that I was potentially terminally ill, I get exhibitions and people suddenly say they appreciate my body of work, and I sort of think, “Well, thanks for telling me that forty years too late.”

OBRIST Well, I sort of think there’s some other reason. It has something to do with you anticipating what’s happening now in the world?

P-ORRIDGE [laughs] Yeah, of course. I’m being deliberately cynical. I just thought what Derek said was interesting. When I came back from the hospital last time, my editor—because I’m writing my autobiography, he said, “You’ll never believe this. While you were in the hospital I got a phone call from the New York Times wanting a quote for their obituary.” And I went, “Really?” He said, “Yeah it’s a bit weird, isn’t it? It’s already written and they’re just updating it whenever you’re sick to make it seem current.” So, they’re all waiting. There’s all these vultures waiting to go, “Oh, what a shame Gen died.” [laughs] It’s strange isn’t it?

OBRIST When did you have the pandrogyny epiphany?

P-ORRIDGE Apparently, in the ‘70s. Jarret [Earnest], who curated the show in Miami, found an old interview where I was talking about panthropology in the ‘70s, so it’s always been there in my mind as an ultimate theme. It was more about logic, observation, and considering human behavior. There seems to be what has sometimes been called original sin. There seems to be a flaw in human behavior. For example, how could there ever be a Second World War? We’ve maimed each other, killed people we love, destroyed things we like. Why would we do that? We could never do it again. That was stupid! But we do it again and again.

OBRIST It’s like Nietzsche’s eternal return.

P-ORRIDGE And so, I wanted to think, how could we change that? If there’s no either/or, there can’t be the other, and that can’t become the enemy because there is no other anymore. So, if the two become one there’s this divine unity.

OBRIST So, then you will have peace?

P-ORRIDGE Yeah.

OBRIST So, it was actually a peace movement in a way?

P-ORRIDGE Sure, I’m a child of the ‘60s.

OBRIST And how did you begin? Because last time we spoke, you told me that it kind of all began when you were fifteen, discovering Max Ernst.

P-ORRIDGE [laughs] Oh that was just the collages, really. The idea that you could take images of so-called “reality,” and then create one that never existed. This was an incredibly powerful aspect of creativity that sometimes is buried in commerce now. In fact, to me, art has always been spiritual. Always. And ultimately the art that really matters has to lead us towards the salvation of the species, otherwise what’s it telling us?

OBRIST How to fight extinction?

P-ORRIDGE Yeah, so I’m seeing these threads unfold more and more. I can remember when I was about eight or nine, watching my mother brush my sister’s long hair, and thinking, how come I can’t have long hair? And the answer was, because you’re a boy. So, at that point I saw that there was some misfiring in the logic. It was just an inherited, conditioned concept that didn’t make sense. And of course, as the ‘60s unfolded more and more, things that didn’t make sense, that were negative, were revealed and exposed for the insanity that they are. I’ve never changed my utopian view—that we have to work towards the species becoming one organism. No nations. No countries. No tribes. No either/or. No binary. We’re all human beings.

OBRIST So, it’s a very holistic idea?

P-ORRIDGE Absolutely. We truly are an artist who doesn’t just say that life and art are the same. From the very beginning, there has been no separation. That’s why I kept everything. That’s why I have an archive.

OBRIST Besides your autobiography, what books are you doing?

P-ORRIDGE We did a book on Brion Gysin that just came out.

OBRIST Brion Gysin brings things to your beginnings as well, because the other thing that seems so relevant in terms of your practice is this fluidity—painting, poetry, drawing, art, performance, music—you have so many dimensions. Poetry, as you told me last time we spoke, is quite at the beginning. And there are, of course, these two key influences, [William] Burroughs and Brion Gysin in validation of your entire creative and cultural engineering practice. How did you come to poetry, and why Burroughs and Gysin?

P-ORRIDGE I was at one of those horrible English private schools, I had a scholarship. It was called Solihull School. One day in English class, my English teacher said, “Stay behind after class.” And I thought, oh no. What have I done wrong? I must’ve got a bad mark on my essay. Then, he had this piece of paper, and he scribbled on it, “On The Road, Jack Kerouac,” and he said, “I really think you’ll appreciate this book. Try to find it.” My father used to travel a lot with his job, so I said to him, “Could you try and find this book when you’re driving around?” And one day he came home and he had a copy. He found it in a bargain bin on the motorway. And that changed everything again.

OBRIST On The Road was a bestseller then.

P-ORRIDGE It changed a lot of people I know from that era. But when I was reading it, what fascinated me about it was that it’s about real people. Although it’s written almost like a fiction, it’s real people. Who is Dean Moriarty? Who is Old Bull Lee? Who are they? I found out that one of them was William Burroughs. So then, I hitchhiked to London and went around all the old shops. I couldn’t find anything by William Burroughs back in ’65, ‘66. And then, I went to Soho, to the porno shops, and I remember I got Jean Genet and Henry Miller, because they were considered dirty books. And lo and behold they had Naked Lunch, since it had been prosecuted for being obscene. So, I bought the only copy, well actually I stole the only copy that they had. I read that and thought, wow, it’s a bit like Max Ernst. This is someone changing reality again. Reality isn’t linear. Time isn’t linear. It’s in a state of flux and chaos and again, the creative being has the ability, the right, and the opportunity to change reality. And that’s what I want to do because the reality I’m in isn’t one I enjoy. So, it’s a second liberation. For me, art is always about the big questions.

OBRIST Gerhard Richter says, “Art is the highest form of hope.” What would be your definition?

P-ORRIDGE Did he? Wow. I don’t have one because it’s always changing. I don’t think I’m on record as calling myself an artist or a musician. I have said I’m a writer, and I love to write, but it’s shamanic to me. I always say this to people at lectures, “What’s the first book of the Bible? Genesis. But what’s the other title of that book? The Book of Creation. What does that mean?” The first thing god does is create. That means creation is holy work. So, to be an artist or creator is to be using divine systems to get closer to a purer reality, and a divine perception of existence to go as deep as you can.

OBRIST It’s interesting, your first mentioned public appearance starts with Throbbing Gristle, but you did things long before.

P-ORRIDGE Oh, fuck yeah.

OBRIST So, when was the first public appearance of your work?

P-ORRIGE 1965. It was a street performance. I’m a great believer in not just sitting and complaining, but taking action. So, at this private school, we came up with this idea—I’d discovered Japanese haiku. We wrote lots of different words on cards by hand, and then on a Saturday, with two or three friends, we went around the town, which was a really horrible, sterile, suburban place, and we left them in the gutters, ashtrays, waste bins, just on the floor. We made this beautiful litter, and the idea was that people picked it up thinking, what’s this? They were accidentally writing a poem. It was written about in the local paper, then it got mentioned on BBC radio, and then I was asked to give talks at the local church.

OBRIST It’s interesting that you then became part of collectives of groups. How did COUM begin?

P-ORRIDGE We’d left the Exploding Galaxy, David Medalla’s project, and decided to hitchhike around London. So, I went and saw my parents. They moved to a town near Wales named Shrewsbury and they just started their own business. I said I’d help in the office typing invoices and stuff, and one day I went with them for a drive through Wales. I was in the back of the car and it was a sunny day. I had my head on the window of the car, I closed my eyes, and then all of a sudden, I was next to the car. My consciousness was flying along next to the car. But, it was passing through the hedges, nothing actually blocked me, I could penetrate the physical world. That happened for about twenty minutes, or so. All the while, I was hearing voices, seeing images and symbols, and one of them was ‘Cosmic Organicism of the Universal Molecular,’ and ‘transmission.’ COUM Transmissions. When I got home, I wrote everything I could remember down.

OBRIST These were all written as text?

P-ORRIDGE Scribbled in notebooks. Some of them still exist. One of the words we received was cosmosis.

OBRIST Like cosmos and osmosis.

P-ORRIDGE Exactly, and it was the positive transfer of energy from one being into another, like in a plant, but between beings. That the whole universe was smaller, and smaller, and smaller particles until there were no particles. In a way, it was a precursor to quantum physics, though I didn’t know anything about quantum physics. And so, I felt that not only was it this true epiphany, but that it was my lifelong task, my mission, to proselytize the core ideas of that for the rest of my life.

OBRIST It was like a manifesto?

P-ORRIDGE Yeah.

OBRIST What was the epiphany of Throbbing Gristle?

P-ORRIDGE Oh, there wasn’t one. That was just logic, and observation, and deduction. I was looking at music and thinking, god I haven’t bought any records for two or three years, and why haven’t I? Because it’s not satisfying. It’s not teaching me something I didn’t know. So what am I gonna do? I guess I have to make music that does satisfy me. Because that’s the COUM approach: if it’s not there, then make it.

With music it was: What is music? Music is sounds. There’s no good or bad sounds, there’s just sounds. What is a rhythm? Something that happens at least twice. That’s it, that’s all it is. What do we got that we can make sounds with? We looked around our basement and we had a broken bass guitar, an old violin, and an old drum kit. We bought a guitar from Woolworth’s for 15 pounds, and Cosey said, “It’s too heavy.” So, we sawed off the extra wood and asked, “How’s that?” and she said, “Much better.” Chris Carter built his own synthesizers, Sleazy was totally into tape recorder experiments à la Burroughs, and I was really into writing lyrics that were based on love stories and rhythm and blues, American rock, and so on. Something that was English and about my experience in post-war Manchester. By process of reduction, you end up with what’s left and go, that’s what we have.

OBRIST The best producer is a reducer.

P-ORRIDGE Yes, of course. When I was once asked to remix “Test Dept,” because they were having real problems, I went and erased all but three tracks and it was fine. Throbbing Gristle was very much conceived in the same structural way. Then, I thought it has to have a name that has nothing to do with the history of rock music. I thought factory because of Andy Warhol, but that’s too obvious. I was talking to my friend Monty and he goes, “Gen you keep saying the word industrial. You keep saying industrial this, and industrial that.”

OBRIST It’s a very Manchester word.

P-ORRIDGE Yeah, of course. I was talking about the factories in Manchester and all the steam trains being cut up when they were obsolete. So, I went, oh yeah, it’s industrial music. That was September 3, 1975. Then, it was a matter of convincing the rest of the world that what we were doing was a really good idea. [laughs]

OBRIST There was another epiphany in ’81, and that’s Psychic TV.

P-ORRIDGE Yeah, that was towards the end of COUM Transmissions. I’d started having, for lack of a better term, shamanic, out-of-body experiences. I’d been speaking in tongues. I’d been having astral travel where I’d lose my body completely, and I was in other dimensions; as if I’d taken psychedelics, but I hadn’t. It had gotten so intense that I thought, I can’t do this in public anymore, but I do still want to explore this. So, I started to explore those rituals in private.

OBRIST Rituals are important because Tarkovsky said, “We live in a time bereft of rituals and we need to reintroduce rituals,” and you’ve done that a lot.

P-ORRIDGE Absolutely. They’re always there in my life. From ‘75, when we started Throbbing Gristle, COUM was still going on, but in private. By ‘81, I didn’t want to do Throbbing Gristle anymore and we stopped. I thought we saw it out, proved we could invent a genre of music, and convinced the fucking world that it’s a good idea. So, why do it anymore? What else is there to do? Our fans are really into Throbbing Gristle, and they dress like us, and they write to us, share stories about their life. What would happen if a group took that as raw material? Thinking, we’re like you too, what can we do together? Through conversations with Monte Cazzaza and Sleazy, we developed my idea of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.

OBRIST Yeah, that’s very relevant because Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth is of course a hybrid. It’s a fan club, a ritual, a cult. Bodily fluids played a role, didn’t they?

P-ORRIDGE [Laughs] Well, we sat there—myself and Sleazy—and said, “We need a ritual.” Through my exploration of Austin Osman Spare and other rituals I’d been doing, I knew that the orgasm was the key. That at the moment of orgasm, all the different layers of consciousness are all linked up for a moment. The juice of orgasm, whether it’s male or female. And then hair. We liked the idea that those are all the things that, normally in magic, you’re not supposed to let anyone else have. So, we got people to send them to us as an act of trust.

OBRIST You also recently went from 2D to 3D. Can you tell me about your shoe sculptures?

P-ORRIDGE Oh, the shoes. Yeah, I love making shoe sculptures. We were making them just for fun. All the shoes belonged to sex workers, strippers, dominatrices, hookers, and topless go-go dancers. In those black boxes are a lot of little materials—we keep them sometimes for twenty years before they have a purpose. The crystals are from the chandelier of Lady Jaye’s grandmother who died. Everything is connected to life.

OBRIST Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of Lady Jaye’s passing. How did you meet?

P-ORRIDGE We met in a dungeon. A friend of mine, Terrence Sellers, had a dungeon on 23rd Street and a little apartment off to one side. When we came to New York, we would stay there. So, I’d been out with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein at this club called Jackie 60, and I’d done a load of ecstasy. Those were the days when it was still legal, still pure. It was three in the morning and I didn’t want to wake up Terrence, so I went in the dungeon, put a sheet over me, and went to sleep. That’s what Lady Jaye saw when she came to work. She was a dominatrix there. She thought I went back to sleep but I didn’t. I was in the dark. I was watching this doorway and the other room was lit, and she was walking back and forth in what we knew straightaway was a real 60’s outfit and a Brian Jones bob. Then she started to get undressed and put on fetish clothing. Out loud I said, and I felt embarrassed saying it because it so was not like me, but I said, “Dear Universe, if I can be with that woman that’s all I want for the rest of my life.”

OBRIST Oh wow, you knew immediately. She was a nurse too, right?

P-ORRIDGE Yeah, she was a nurse as well. She was fascinated with the human body, it’s limitations, and the fact that it’s really just a lump of meat, of material. She said, “It’s a cheap suitcase that carries around our consciousness.” One of her other great sayings was, “See a cliff, jump off.” She was truly fearless. We’ve never met anyone so truly fearless about everything and anything.

OBRIST When did you decide on the idea of your bodies becoming one? Because it’s so important now, how did this epiphany happen?

P-ORRIDGE It turns out that it began in the ‘80s, in terms of the theory. It’s the same problem of the either/or, a universe that has an either/or is malfunctioning. And it seems very likely that the whole point of existence is to return to unification, divine union, a realization of similarity. The first thing Lady Jaye did before she took me out was dress me in her clothes, put makeup on me, and decorate my hair with jewels. We said to each other, “I wish I could consume you. I wish I could just literally hold you, and we would melt into each other, and become one.” It was that true, unconditional, infinite desire that is inexplicable but incredible. We thought about why we feel that way, why we’re so desperately in need of becoming each other, or at least becoming one more? We thought of Burroughs and Gysin, as always, and The Third Mind. When they wrote and did cut-ups together, they weren’t by William or Brion, but the product of a third mind, this other being. We thought, what if we cut ourselves up, and became one new being? And that’s the pandrogyne.

OBRIST Lady Jaye had surgery on the chin to match you?

P-ORRIDGE And the nose and under her eyes.

OBRIST And you took hormones but it didn’t work out?

P-ORRIDGE Yeah. She took male hormones and it made her aggressive, and we took female hormones and it made me cry all the time. [Laughs] We said, “At least we can say now to some degree we do understand the monthly effect of the hormones shifting.” It’s really odd when you suddenly cry over nothing, and feel shattered and upset. So, what we did was shave off all our body hair, so we were newborn babies, and for the first part of that day we wore diapers as well. Hair contains time, and people can take a piece of hair and figure out what drugs you’ve had, and certain things that have happened to you. We wanted to start fresh, so we became babies.

OBRIST Twins.

P-ORRIDGE Little twins, yes. Then we started looking for confirmation in the myths and cultures of the world.

OBRIST Because hormones didn’t work, you went into ketamine? Why did ketamine work better than hormones?

P-ORRIDGE Who knows why it worked for us? Different things work for different people. But over two years, we did it every day. In fact, we would load a needle up and put it at each side of the bed, and whoever woke up first would inject you while you were still asleep, so you would wake up high on ketamine. We would do it all day and we learned how to navigate it. We didn’t do huge amounts so we were completely lost...

OBRIST Do you have any unrealized projects? Dreams?

P-ORRIDGE Yes. We’d really like to set up a COUM collective. Not a commune, but where each person who’s deeply involved has their own yurt, or whatever, and then a main building that’s a resource for archives and technology, workshops and so on. It’s a think tank for alternatives.

OBRIST And what’s your advice to a young artist?

P-ORRIDGE Don’t try to have a career. Be creative. Be a creator.

OBRIST The exhibition in Los Angeles was called Pandrogyny 1 and 2?

P-ORRIDGE For two locations. One at Tom of Finland, and the other at Lethal Amounts. At the Tom of Finland house, they keep it as it was when he lived there. When you do an exhibition, what you put there goes amongst all his things, so that one is mainly sculptures. It has things like “Tongue Kiss,” which is two wolf heads, and the tongues have been replaced with knife blades.

OBRIST It’s crazy that this was your first show in LA. What’s your relationship to the city?

P-ORRIDGE I never had one really. I would never live there. To me, it has a strange atmosphere. It’s like it has a big cave underneath, with a dark energy in it that you can fall into by mistake. It doesn’t suit me at all. Mainly the art world has tried to ignore us for years. It’s really important for young artists to step away from that and look at examples of mail art and chapbooks.

OBRIST Generosity?

P-ORRIDGE And generosity. Sharing. Roxy who was just here, a young artist and musician, she said that she’s always amazed how by generous I am, giving things away. And I say, “Well, what am I supposed to do with it, hoard it? To what end?”

OBRIST That’s a very important motto for the new decade.

P-ORRIDGE Sharing and generosity. Absolutely.

A Conversation Between Maurizio Cattelan and Sasha Grey

March 24, 2020

SASHA GREY I first met you on a desert island in the Mediterranean where cell phones only worked at any one of the three restaurants on the island, and the group we were with did everything together. There was no daily plan, we followed only the rhythm of the island, and the house we were in (yours) was minimal to the bone. No Internet, no TV, no modern distractions and the common area was outside, or on the stairs leading to the kitchen. A few friends seemed assaulted by the setup. I guess you could call it a tech detox; it was like hitting a reset button. It really forced people to socialize in a way that used to be normal, only a decade ago. Do you see this as a social experiment?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN Yes. I arrived in Filicudi 30 years ago. There were only donkeys back then, on the island. There was no water, electricity, phone lines or cars. Things started improving 15 years ago when water and electricity finally arrived. This made a huge impact. The island though, was resistant to change. Cellphone reception is still sparse and not easily accessible. Every summer, I wonder why I itch to go back. The sea is all there is. There are no attractions and only a handful of local restaurants and bars. There is no structure on this island. It is deserted and very quiet. The silence is what I like. It slows everything down. It helps me pay attention to the little things. Simplicity runs this island. It sends me back to my childhood, when everything was new and amazing.

SASHA GREY You left instagram with a final post encouraging people to create something wonderful outside of social media. Much of what you do is a satirical statement to get people to think and reflect, and we are all aware that social media is not always the best tool for that. Did you feel you had a responsibility to step away?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN I started "The Single Post Instagram" page to feature a new story every day, keeping it to just one post on my feed at all times. I don't like the idea of saving posts. It is distracting and it makes me feel vulnerable. I was active for a year and a half. It was not easy but it was fun. I enjoyed engagement through my captions and photos. It was great until I stopped learning from it. That was my end. I prefer to fill my existential anxiety with other things like meeting friends, reading, working and visiting galleries. At this point, I would rather sit and watch a construction site. It is more exciting to me than scrolling through Instagram.

SASHA GREY That being said, Toilet Paper, the magazine you co-founded does have a social media presence and it undoubtedly feels like you. How closely does the Toilet Paper crew work together on each issue?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN Toilet Paper is my extended family. The magazine is a collaboration with Pierpaolo Ferrari and a very large number of people with many different skill sets. We never know what we are getting into. It is always a surprise. We are like parasites, hunting for anything we can suck on with nothing precise in mind. It is truly magic.

SASHA GREY Economics have always dictated art in one way or another, and tend to follow class structures. What advice would you give to young artists that don’t come from the top of the hierarchy who struggle with equal representation within these social structures, especially when many young artists struggle to pay the rent?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN I came late into the art world. I had many jobs that taught me how to survive. I had no experience or professional training. It is all about believing in yourself, working and obsessively learning. Do what pleases you and stick to it. My advice is to be humble and generous with your ideas. There is something to learn from everyone/everything. Go out and see as many shows of all types. Good luck will come to you if you are good-hearted and positive. Lastly, never make the same mistake twice, make it five of six times...just to be certain.

SASHA GREY How do you deal with doubt?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN I doubt myself all the time. I consider it a friend of mine. It grounds me and I question myself a lot. In the end, I always go with my gut. I move forward even when I feel like I am skating on thin ice. I have come to find: the thinner the ice, the less I doubt myself.

SASHA GREY Of course, we'd like to know the physical and conceptual process of how “Comedian” came into existence on a wall at Art Basel Miami. I heard that it was something that you have been thinking about for a while, but was installing the sculpture at the fair or using fresh produce impromptu?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN Up until a certain point. My first attempt was with an eggplant. As you know, it did not work out. This piece took a year. It became an obsession. I produced many replicas, out of different materials. Nothing captures the essence of a banana like a real banana. It’s easier to forge money, I promise you.

SASHA GREY Were you surprised by the frenzy or do you consider the frenzy part of the art? Is there a relational aesthetic component to the sculpture?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN Once a piece is presented, the artist is no longer in charge. It has to talk directly to the public. It has to charm and defend itself. Sometimes there are events that make a piece more interesting. “America” is the perfect example. A fully functional toilet made out of 18-karat solid gold. It attracted thousands of visitors at the Guggenheim and it made an appearance at the White House. It was last seen at the Blenheim Palace, stolen on the opening night of my show. Sort of like an unwritten surreal heist movie.

SASHA GREY The banana is rife with a lot of symbolism, is there a sociopolitical undertone to sculpture?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN All ideologies have symbols. An elephant, a donkey, a hammer and sickle…. Perhaps it is now time for the banana to find its own republic.

SASHA GREY Someone ate the sculpture as part of a "performance," the gallery seemed visibly upset by this, but were you?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN No, not at all. It was the right time. The banana was going bad and needed to be replaced.

SASHA GREY What are your feelings about art fairs?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN Unless to be killed, never take a cow to the slaughter house.

SASHA GREY Autre's new issue deals with some of the prevalent themes of the past decade including the magnified impact of influence in the digital age—whether that's social influence or political influence—how do you think this has affected art and the way that artists approach their work, whether personally or in general?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN I always wonder what the Renaissance would have been like with the existence of Photoshop and social media. Would The Pieta and Mona Lisa be the same pieces we know today? Each age has its own tools and obsessions. The success of an artist used to be validated by gallery shows and museum appearances. Today the most interesting artists engage directly with the audience. Like selfie-driven installations. Things that are easy to post and understand. Readily available to fill the growing demand of content for the media. I think aesthetics play a huge role when it comes to art. Like any successful model, it’s important to be photogenic, attractive and easily reproducible.

Click here to purchase this interview in print! Comes with a special peel-able banana sticker.

Geneva Jacuzzi Directs Romy's New Music Video For "Normal Day"

January 24, 2020

interview by Summer Bowie

Touching yourself with the same fingers you use to text might be the new double dipping. We don’t have to talk about it, but we can assume it’s happening, and who wants to be the uptight straight guy at the queer party? Speaking of queer parties, did you see the new ROMY music video directed by Geneva Jacuzzi? It’s a delicious dalliance of solicitous sex—one where the Avon lady calls, and there’s more than one lonely woman on the block in need of new rouge. In the following conversation, I had the chance to get ROMY and Geneva Jacuzzi together to discuss their early roots as artists and songwriters, their serendipitous collaboration for this video, and the significance of LA’s queer underground scene.

AUTRE: On writing your first song.

ROMY: I think I was 14 when I wrote my first proper song. I recorded it onto a 4-track that I got around that time. It was just me and an acoustic guitar. The song was about being heartbroken by a friend. It was sad and earnest. All my songs around then were. I still remember this line from it: 'the puzzle's ruined cuz it doesn't fit/we're missing the last piece, but I stole it." Not a bad line for a 14-year-old.

JACUZZI: Mine was 4-track too, but I was a late bloomer at 20 or 21. I don't think the first songs had lyrics. They were these weird instrumentals and they were very silly little dance-y ditties that could maybe possibly, but probably not really sound anything like early Depeche Mode.

ROMY: That sounds sweet. Early Depeche Mode! My first songs were more lo-fi punk/indy rock. It was '95, so it was the golden era for that stuff. But, I started making multi-layered synth compositions, no lyrics, on a Kawai K5000 shortly thereafter. I think later in life, when I get old, I'll just make instrumental music.

AUTRE: How did the Geneva x ROMY collaboration come about?

ROMY: I knew I wanted to make a video for this song, and that I wanted to work with you, eventually. I'm a huge fan of your music, your performance art and your videos, and I thought you'd be perfect for this song. I love getting to work with people whose work I love. I let directors have full reign over directing my videos. I like to be directed within my own work. It lets me curl and crawl into corners and crevices of a song that I wouldn't otherwise get to do. You are such a great director! As you put it, you direct like Ed Wood would!

JACUZZI: The entire video popped into my head immediately after hearing it. When that happens, I see it as a green light. Meant to be. I've had people send me songs and no matter how much I like the person or the music, if I don't get the visual flood, I can't take on the project. Sure enough, everything fell into place. It was so much fun. The video basically made itself.

ROMY: I had just rewatched Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23, que du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles that week, which was uncanny, and the video has tinges of that, mixed with Cronenberg. And you made it all happen in no time, with the best crew. All girls. Your sister Courtney, and Christina Acevedo, and it was all just so effortless and easy.

AUTRE: What was the genesis of your band agender?

ROMY: I started agender in Melbourne in 2013. I wrote, recorded, mixed and played all the instruments on the first agender record, self (en)titled in 2013. I then formed a band so I could play the songs live. It was a 3-piece band in the early stages. Always all-girls only. The first record was super lo-fi, unhinged punk. We made a record, Fixations in 2014. We toured, I moved to LA, and decided to focus on my solo project for the next couple of years. I then reassembled a new LA incarnation of the band. We're a 4-piece now. I love my band. I love this project. I need punk rock in my life. It's a nice balance to my solo project. We have a record coming out this Spring/Summer.

AUTRE: Art institutions vs. queer underground scene.

ROMY: They both serve a purpose. Geneva, you probably know how to answer this better than me, because I don't deal with the art world so much, but obviously you have a bigger platform working in bigger institutions. I think it's important for the underground to leak out into the mainstream world, for our work to be seen and our voices to be heard by bigger audiences. That's how you change the world—from within the system.

JACUZZI: I have worked with several art institutions, but aside from having to deal with fire marshals, budgets and a gazillion emails, it's not much different than playing a warehouse party. It's always a shit show. I'm kidding. As far as the the scene goes, I think of it as an LA thing. This city is a really cool place to be right now and it's so much easier to cross over. Things are a little more laid back and open so art, music, video, performance, fashion, people...they all kind melt into each other.

ROMY: I agree. It's a very exciting time to be in LA. There's something special happening here, art-wise. Magical people and magical energy.

AUTRE: What defines LA’s queer party scene?

ROMY: There's a lot going on in the LA queer party scene. There are warehouse parties, after hours parties, big parties in decent-sized venues, parties in small bars. Each party has its own brand and sound. I think most of the time you can be sure to find good queer DJs. Being a party promoter and running parties in the LA queer scene, I can say that making sure parties are all-inclusive, represent an array of queer artists and that the space is safe, are all the top priorities.

JACUZZI: I've been lucky enough to perform at some incredible queer parties over the years, and wow! So fun!! As far as what "defines" LA's queer party scene? I don't know. Fabulous. Better dance music. [laughs]

ROMY: That's true. Better dance music for sure. To be honest, I barely go out to straight bars and parties, so queer ones are all I know. But on the odd occasion that I'm out at a straight night or in a straight space, I feel it immediately, which proves that it's still so important that queer spaces exist.

AUTRE: DIY vs. professional studio recording.

ROMY: DIY there's less pressure. DIY is just usually me, alone, recording everything, demo-ing things. There's a spirit to it that you can never recreate. And then, when I get into a proper studio, I want it to sound slicker and better but then I always end up missing something about the DIY spirit and energy. In which case, I usually do vocals in one take and it captures something, an urgent, raw, imperfect energy. And then, by the time I get into a proper studio, I overthink it too much. I feel more pressure to make something perfect. It's way more conscious and aware. I'm always trying to recreate something that the demo had. That original, organic, initial detonation.

JACUZZI: To be honest, I only prefer DIY because I get nervous writing and recording in front of other people. I'm very self conscious in that department. Hopefully I'll get over that one day.

AUTRE: Stage vs. studio.

ROMY: I like how stage exists in the moment. It's there and then it's gone. It evaporates. It’s impermanent. Where as in the studio, I'm aware that I'm recording something permanent; that exists as not just art, but artifact. The studio is painful, honestly. The stage sheds pain.

JACUZZI: I think the studio asks the question and the stage answers it.

ROMY: I love that. That's perfectly put.

AUTRE: On-stage persona vs. Off-stage persona.

ROMY: My on-stage persona is wild, it's my north-node in Leo. The Leo in my chart comes out on stage. My off-stage persona is my Virgo sun, Pisces rising. But I guess my on-stage persona is my Pisces rising too. But I feel like all the Leo in my chart comes out when I'm on stage. Something is unleashed, for sure. The on-stage Romy comes more from my unconscious self. Off-stage Romy is my conscious self.

JACUZZI: Wow! So similar. I'm a Leo, Venus and North node in Leo, and I swear, the only time that comes out is on stage. It's funny because people assume I'm outgoing and flamboyant and radical but my personal life is quite the opposite. I'm kind of a hermit. Don't go out much. Love all that cozy basic shit, ya know?

ROMY: You are very different in real life. A lot more quiet. The first time I saw you perform, it was jaw-dropping. You performed in a giant clear ball. You were like some goth punk queen in a crystal ball! I thought you'd be like Nina Hagen or something, more wild in real life. But you like hanging out with your bird in your room and don't go out much. An energy conservationist. Oh! And my Venus is in Leo too, which I love. I think it's a great placement. And it's very interesting to me that my North node, my life's purpose and direction, is in Leo, which means I'm meant to perform, and so are you, and we're demanding lovers who want to be adored!

AUTRE: Music videos in the post-MTV era.

ROMY: Do people have attention spans for videos anymore? I hope so. It seems like there aren't as many platforms for videos. It seems like the new music video is the fans' interpretation of a song. A fan dancing and lip-synching to a song. That's a new form of music video, I think. That's what Tik-tok is, isn't it? I miss the old world.

JACUZZI: I can't lie. I miss MTV in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I also admit that I'm one of those people who skims through a youtube video. I don't think it has anything to do with attention. It's choice. With MTV, you didn't really have much of a choice. You just watched it because it was MTV. A lot of those videos sucked too, but you love them now because they remind you of when videos were "new." I could talk about this all day but there's only one thing I know for sure: "Ashes to Ashes" is probably the best video ever made. It changed my life. So, I hope humans continue making music videos ‘til the end of time.

ROMY: True. “Ashes To Ashes” is such a great video. I miss the music video channels. Watching MTV, and RAGE, which is an Australian music video show that's still going to this day. You wanted to know what was coming on next. You had no control. It was a mixed bag. And not controlled by an algorithm. Someone was programming it! Also, I joke that the phrase used to be “15 minutes of fame,” now it's really “15 seconds of fame.” It's all about the 15-second instagram story. Who has 15 minutes of attention to give anyone!?

AUTRE: The timelessness of dancing vs. the relative youth of electronica.

ROMY: One day, electronic music will feel like it existed since the beginning of time. In fact, I think that for young millennials, dance music has always existed.

JACUZZI: I totally agree. It's funny. One of the first songs I wrote was a dance song called, "The Oldest Known Song." It's pretty much about the synesthesia of time and color, and fire, and dancing.

ROMY: Wow! I'd love to hear it. I think I feel some sense of synesthesia when I listen to Kraftwerk. It's like a whiff and clang of metal, strawberry, glitter, tar, cloud, twinkle, cog, carousel, greasy candy. The soundtrack to someone dancing through timelessness. Kraftwerk makes things like airports and train stations feel like they're alive and dancing.

Hybrid Forms: An Interview Of Artist & Storyteller Christopher Myers

January 19, 2020

Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort

interview by Summer Bowie

How does a country like Vietnam, absent of a black community, develop a rich brass band tradition with roots in the American South? How did the British flag inspire a Ghanaian tradition in textiles that is steeped in magical superstition? What do Aimé Césaire, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Emma Goldman all have in common? To find the answers to any of these questions you’d have to ask none other than the multi-disciplinary, head honcho of hybridity, artist Christopher Myers. His practice is as much about connecting the mythologies of ancient Egypt and Greece with those of Judeo-Christian scripture, as it is about connecting the migrations of syncratic practices across the globe and throughout history. His most recent solo exhibition, Drapetomania, at Fort Gansevoort in Los Angeles primarily features hand-sewn flags depicting a wide array of syncratic allegories that in many ways define the globalized, contemporary psyche. These are the mythologies that form the foundation of our collective truth (though we know them to be fiction), and the forgotten legacies that have silently burrowed themselves deep into our cultural fabric. These narratives that inform us and define us find their way to us via oral traditions, dramatic performance, visual art and the printed page, and within all of these disciplines you will find Christopher Myers, obsessively studying the origins of every fiber, the intricacies of every pattern, and the channels of commerce that facilitate it all.

SUMMER BOWIE: Your new show, Drapetomania, at Fort Gansevoort LA features primarily quilted tapestries fabricated in Luxor, Egypt. How did you find these artisans, and why textiles?

CHRISTOPHER MYERS: I was doing research for theater design. I worked with a collaborator, Kaneza Schaal, on a piece about the Egyptian Book of the Dead in 2014. And as part of the research for that book, I went to the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. That trip was a gift of a trip. Luxor is a place that has been alive for generations and generations with culture, with religion, with spirituality, with all of the things that we all care about and love. And, while I was there, I ran into these fabric workers who work in the tourist trade. Because, the language that I speak most fluently is the language of speaking to other artists about making things, we quickly got into those conversations: what is the work you’re making, the years of training that go into hands that can sew so deftly, and the ways in which the tourist works aren’t really satisfying to them. So, we started to work together on work that is basic craft, but can speak to not only the traditions that I come from—traditions that are often relegated to poor people, or to women, or to people of color—but also to the other history that I’ve now encountered: from contemporary thinking and performance art, to work in other countries that I think this work is in dialogue with.

I’m thinking especially of Asafo flags, which are a hybrid form in Ghana. The Ghanaian people, when they were colonized by the British, they saw the British parading with their flags and they saw these flags as a kind of magic that was used to exert power over them, and they thought, “we know how to make this magic. We can sew our own.” So, they made flags for parading, for teaching about their own specific identities. And, I love all of that work. Work that takes what the West has given us and then transforms it into art that speaks to the entire world.

BOWIE: In regard to those identities, it seems like you explore a lot of narratives and mythologies that are shared between several different cultures. So, a lot of the stories you are telling with these flags are stories that your fabricators are already familiar with as well. This is such a shared language.

MYERS: Absolutely. If you travel to places in which the pathways of tourism are less trod, you’ll find that the things that overlap in the venn diagrams of our identities end up being these larger myths, these bigger stories about what it means to be human, about ways of talking, about our relationship with the Divine, or our relationship with nature, or our relationship with the mass of humanity, and I think those are the overlaps that I’m particularly interested in. If you grow up like me: Catholic, but super involved in some super syncratic practices, you realize there’s a relationship between a god like Horus in ancient Egypt and the baby Jesus. I’m interested in the syncratic impulse and the mixing of mythologies.

BOWIE: Your sculptures explore the roles that men of African origins have played at various points in history. Can you talk a bit about the generational lineage and its relationship to labor and bondage that you’re referencing in these pieces?

MYERS: One of the things is that there are obviously syncratic impulses that people understand. You see images of God across cultures. But then, there are ways in which our cultural migration, our cultural instinct shows itself. So much of the iron work of the Old South was derivative of the West African iron workers who were forced to migrate here and were enslaved as highly skilled labor in the States. So, the techniques of iron work—the patterning of the wrought iron rails of New Orleans that we associate with upper class housing—are actually patterns that are borrowed from West Africa. I’m interested in those cultural mixings. For example, a collar that is filled with candles; I think a lot about the idea that so many of the people who were actually making shackles during the slavery period in the United States were West African imports. Black people who did the labor of building shackles—we were forced to build shackles for our brothers and sisters. I’m also fascinated by the idea that we did that, but there had to be moments of resistance, even if they were just symbolic. Moments of telling another story, and that is what’s most exciting. Similarly, I’m always interested in the way that no change is ever simple. No bondage is ever without complication.

BOWIE: The rat cage mask—with its reference to vaudevillian sideshows, the bondage of both the human and animal performers involved—it feels like it really calls into question the opportunity for resistance.

MYERS: And what’s interesting to me is that those stories are complicated, always. The 1980s were some of the last vestiges of that kind of performance. There was a guy who had some kind of bone deficiency in which his limbs were severely compromised, and he displayed himself as The Frog Man throughout Texas, and at some point a human rights group got wind of this and sponsored a very strident protest to this practice—without ever having consulted the guy. And the guy said, “If it hadn’t been for my life as a performer, I would still be selling pencils from a moving cart in Texas, but instead I’ve seen the world.” And, I think that we have to look at all of these stories and complicate them. To understand that nobody is that perfect victim that we want them to be.

BOWIE: You started illustrating your father’s children’s books in the ‘90s. Did you initially learn the art of storytelling through him?

MYERS: My first storytelling coach would’ve been my grandfather, who didn’t read a word of English, but was the best storyteller that I’ve ever known. He didn’t read at all, he didn’t read a word of English, he didn’t read anything but he was a great storyteller. That is part of what I mean by coming from a tradition of artists, makers, and creators who may not be recognized by any kind of mainstream world. Of course, my father was a writer. Him being a writer, he was taking some of those things he learned from his father and translating them into a form that could be read, that was legible to others as an art form. But make no mistake, we were all very clear that the chief storyteller in my family was my grandfather, and that we’ve all just been trickling down from his talents.

Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort

BOWIE: You pull references from all over the world and across time. Your wide array of disciplines is just as disparate. Is there a common thread at all?

MYERS: I love making things. I have a slight addiction, maybe it’s a problem, I’m sure it would be diagnosable if someone had a word for it. I believe that stories really do change the world. Today, I was in a classroom in Queens, a place called Central Queens Academy Charter School. In that room, 50 or 60 children whose families have come from all over the world, from Tibet, Nepal, Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and China, and every one of them is a hero, they are their own Odysseus. I live in this world in which there are stories around me, there are stories that can change the world, and my job is to find the form, and to usher these stories into the world in a kind of public way. At this moment, I’m preparing for a play that will be produced off Broadway next week that I’ve written about migrations, Cartography. It’s a theater piece for young people thinking about the challenges of migration. The thing that is central is this idea of trying to fight the tide of forgetting that is so often imposed on all of our stories of migration.

BOWIE: In 2016, you presented work alongside Pollock, Warhol and Billie Holiday at Cooper Gallery in a show that explored the intersection between jazz music and visual art. Can you talk about the genesis of that piece?

MYERS: I think that one of the things that is interesting about being African American is the idea that we are some of the original hybridized people. We are some of the first people in the world to kind of have defined identities on that hyphen between two cultures. And jazz is absolutely the central exemplar of that hybridity of mixing European instruments with tonal patterns and rhythms that are from the continent. That being said, that specific set of pieces is a piece that was born in Vietnam.

So, I was living in Vietnam, and early in the morning you hear jazz music kind of wandering through the streets. Like, yo man, where’s this jazz music coming up to my apartment from the street? I ran outside and what I found was a brass band tradition that intersected with other brass band traditions like New Orleans jazz, but it’s used for funerals. So, in the morning you see all these funeral marches and jazz bands, and there were moments of recognition because the form is so indebted to African Americans. So, I began to make a series of uniforms and instruments for this funeral march that would go from Saigon to New Orleans. What was shown at the Cooper Gallery was a piece of that series of instruments that I built with instrument makers that were from Vietnam. It was subsequently made into a film via my friends who were called The Propeller Group, a Vietnamese-American art collective. We were very excited to take this work that is centered on levels and levels of hybridity and cultural movement, and to literalize some of that hybridity, to make almost mythical beings of the instruments, chimera and hydra of trumpets, French horns, and cymbals. That was the center of that piece. And, for real, I think that when you look at so much of the work that we love, it comes from cultural collision.

BOWIE: How exactly did jazz make its way to Vietnam if there’s not a black community existing there?

MYERS: Right, that would be an obvious question for me. What I found was that it comes from the French. James Reese Europe was an African-American bandleader for the military during World War I. He brought jazz to Europe, he brought it specifically to France, so the French took up this brass band tradition in their colonization of Vietnam, who then picked up this tradition that’s been handed down, and handed down, and handed down. What was fascinating was asking the musicians in Vietnam, “Where did you get this tradition from?” And they said, “We don’t know!” This is what I’m talking about in terms of the currency of forgetting, the tide of forgetting, and I’m hoping in some small way can help to stem that tide.

Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort

BOWIE: How did your appreciation for Vaslav Nijinsky come about?

MYERS: I’m interested in histories of colonialism. So, Nijinsky as a young Polish talent was taken up into the Russian system and his kind of cultural mix, having been colonized. There’s this thing called drain theory that happens as a result of colonial powers. They take the great talents from the people they are colonizing, and those people become these hybrid figures, people like Nijinsky or Aimé Césaire, or Senghor. So many great poets and intellectual figures are hybrid figures that have been educated in the West, but have come back home and tried to find ways to resurrect their own traditions. Nijinsky is so different, especially because at some point he kind of succumbs to the mental stress and was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was thirty, and never danced again after having revolutionized the world of dance. But, when you read his journal—he kept a meticulous journal—for six weeks just as he was turning the corner of mental health, and when you read that journal you can see how so much of what was affecting him were the cultural pressures of his time; the split and hybridized identity. At one point he writes, “I’m a Negro. I’m a Chinese. I’m a Red Indian. I’m a White.” And he has kind of lost himself, and lost his own sense of his identity. Not only the colonial experience he’s undergoing, but also the ways in which he is replicating the colonial gaze as a dancer. He also dances as other ethnicities. He dances as a Thai, or as an Indian, and that kind of hybridity, and revealing in his journals was and continues to be very inspiring to me.

BOWIE: Do you think the art world would dance more [socially] if they worked more with dancers?

MYERS: Well, the first thing I would like to say is I very much appreciate your recognition that the art world is abysmal when it comes to dance. So, I think that firstly, the art world has some of the worst parties because of this dance aversion. And I also feel like the art world needs to start to back up their imagination of themselves as being global by getting out of their houses, and I mean that both metaphorically and literally. More and more they’re realizing you see the same people in seven cities. I’m not particularly interested in that party. I wish that more of them would come to some of the events that I continually gather. I’m interested in experiencing things and places that could touch you and change the way you see the world. Hopefully, that’s what the work is doing too.

Drapetomania is on view through February 8 at Fort Gansevoort Los Angeles, 4859 Fountain Avenue. Follow Christopher Myers on Instagram @kalyban

Hear With A Feeling Ear, Feel With A Hearing Hand: An Interview Of Multidisciplinary Artist Jónsi

December 3, 2019

Jónsi
Í blóma (In bloom) 2019

Jónsi
Svartalda (Dark wave) 2019

Interview By Agathe Pinard
Photographs By Jeff Mclane Courtesy Of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Vocalist, guitarist and interdisciplinary artist Jónsi has entertained a fascination for sound for most of his life, his more well-known output being the Icelandic, experimental band Sigur Rós. The indelible contribution that this band has had on the world of contemporary music is undeniable. The release of their 1999’s album Ágætis byrjun changed the landscape and the very definition of ambient music. Jonsi’s intentions have remained the same since his first experiments with sounds; “changing the way people think about music.” For his first exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Jónsi plays on multiple senses with a series of immersive installations where visitors can individually experience smell, hearing and sight in a public setting. I had the chance to ask Jónsi a few questions about his show and his personal relationship to sound.

Agathe Pinard: Walking into the main room of the gallery, you are immersed into a white room with sterile light reminiscent of Kubrick’s last scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey while hidden speakers emanate sounds. I know you also hosted a couple of ‘Luminal’ sound baths. Where does your interest in making sound baths originate from ?

Jónsi: For the entirety of my career I have been interested in sound, sonic experiences and what it means. In every iteration of my artistic practice I have explored sound, what it feels like and what sensations it brings to the surface.

Pinard: With what idea in mind did you create the sound projected in the white room and the one in the dark room ?

Jónsi: Each of these works has a different impetus, but they share so many common threads, which I believe run through the entire show and throughout my work in general. These are sound- based installations, but they activate the senses in more than one way-- using sound of course, but also sight, scent, and even the air moving through the room. Each of these works references the natural world on multiple levels, and functions as an abstract representation of our relation to nature. At the end, the sensorial is what inevitably connects us to the natural world.

Pinard: Could you describe the smell you decided to associate with each room and why?

Jónsi: In Hvítblinda (Whiteout) I was thinking about the idea of a whiteout as it occurs in nature-- a situation where the earth and the sky blend into each other to the point that the horizon disappears. The odor component in the room is ozone, which occurs in nature right before the rain begins. Svartalda (Dark wave) references the ocean: the ceiling panels move like a wave and part of the sound installation includes a recitation of an Icelandic poem about the sea. Here there is a seaweed scent which is an odorous reference to the sea.

Pinard: How does being submerged in a brightly lit white room as opposed to a dark pitched one affect a person?
Jónsi: Obviously each lighting situation affects the viewer differently. The sound component of each space enhances the experience of the space, together with the smell. But I think that in all the works in the show it there is an overall effect that goes beyond the visual.

Pinard: Your first solo show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is meant to be challenging to the senses – sight, sound, touch. It’s sort of a meditative, solo experience where the visitor is encouraged to focus on its senses while also sharing this experience with other people in the room. How do you want people to experience your work?

Jónsi: Sight, sound, smell are all intangible things that are part of the communal realm. While each of us experiences them individually, and maybe differently, these are things we cannot touch, or quantify, or have be entirely ours. The works in the show allow the viewer to have a very intimate and personal experience which is set in a public surrounding. It opens up ways to experience the distinctly personal together with other people.

Pinard: Your whole work of art is filled with vocal and instrumental approaches, from playing in your band Sigur Rós to creating movie scores to this show. How would you describe your own relationship to sound?

Jónsi: I think it is fascinating to work with something so intangible and invisible as sound but at the same time it moves you in some inexplicable and unexplainable way. Thats why sound is magical.

Pinard: Can you talk about the concept behind Í blóma ?

Jónsi: This work, like the others, is rooted in sound and in my ongoing exploration of it. The shape of the piece resembles the foxglove flower which is toxic but can also be used for healing and that’s a dichotomy I find interesting. Here there are field recordings of the actual flowers, and these recordings are layered with different recordings of my own voice. In the show there is a certain negotiation with the world we live in through sound, through nature, through the senses. It goes back and forth between the works and the viewer.

Pinard: Butt plugs are present in different sculptures in the show either made of glass or chrome-plated, why did you choose to incorporate this particular object into your work?

Jónsi: The human body is part of nature and throughout the show there are references to the body and to its physicality, in various degrees. The sexual body is a sensual organism, and bringing this idea forth is a large part of the exhibition.

Jónsi’s exhibition is on view through through January 9, 2020 at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery 1010 N Highland Ave, Los Angeles

Cerulean City: Larry Bell In Conversation With Helen Pashgian

November 14, 2019

Helen Pashgian sanding a polyester disc during her artist residency at Caltech circa 1971. © Helen Pashgian

The light in Los Angeles is an ephemeral commodity. Crystal clear and warmly cerulean on a good day, a hazy blue-gray on an overcast day, and miraculous at sunset as the crepuscular rays filter through the smog. The light in Southern California has inspired a century of movie making and nostalgic fantasies of paradise. This preternatural illumination has also inspired a group of artists known as the Light and Space movement. At the apex of the technological and aerospace industries of the 1960s, these artists experimented with new forms and new materials. They worked with like glass, neon, cast acrylic, fluorescence, and reactive chemicals to create a new wave of California Minimalism. For the following conversation, we paired two legends of this movement, Helen Pashgian and Larry Bell, to discuss their practice.

Helen Pashgian: Vis-a-vis our work at the very beginning, I was very much in awe of what you were doing. When I became aware of you, I thought our work was very different. But now, both of us are dealing with color in a new way, and in a much more focused way than in the past. I want to know how you feel about this, regarding your big pieces like the ones at Hauser that you showed two years ago: the big pale pink piece and the clear piece. I was really blown away by those.

Larry Bell: Well, I definitely tried to stay away from anything other than interference colors for a long time. In the last few years, I’ve been working with saturated color. There’s a different sense about color.

Pashgian: My current works have disappearing edges, and with yours, the color dissipates to nothing inside the pieces. So, it’s very different, but it’s very similar. For example, there was one corner of the room where you could stand and actually look through all of them. The way the colors meshed was incredible.

Bell: Yeah, it’s one box that surrounds a colored piece and diffuses the lighting.

Pashgian: I remember that they were diffused towards the center, and then they got very pale and disappeared, which was pretty wonderful.

Bell: Wow. Thank you. Yeah.

Pashgian: I feel this affinity with our work at the moment that I didn’t feel in the past. Also, you have always worked with glass, and I have always worked with various resins and casts. So, the techniques were different, but now some of the results seem to be very much akin to each other, although each one is still quite different.

Bell: I would agree with that. I always liked glass because you could buy it anywhere, it was relatively inexpensive, and it did three things that I really liked: it transmitted light, reflected light, and absorbed light all at the same time. By playing around with the surface, or to change any one of those qualities, it affected all of them, and in ways that you couldn’t really predict. So, I get off on looking at things for the first time, and then seeing what happens with the combination of the frosted things, and the colored things, and so on. It’s all part of one piece. These are pieces of evidence from various experiments.

Pashgian: Well, when you’re talking about experiments, it leads me to think that we were all experimenting in the early days. We never thought that anyone would pay any attention to this work. I began as an art historian, and I was artist-in-residence with Peter Alexander for two years at Caltech. It wasn’t a very successful program, but it was all about experimentation. In the past, were you involved with Disney as an animator? Is that correct?

Bell: No, I went to art school after high school because I didn’t really have any credits for anything. The only thing I remember enjoying in high school was drawing cartoons. So, I figured if I went to a school that taught animation, maybe I could get a job with Disney. And so I went to Chouinard, but it didn’t take very long before I dropped out of the quest for employment with Disney and joined the team of painters there. I liked their sense of humor better than anybody else. [Robert] Irwin was my teacher, and his first semester as a teacher was my first semester as a student at Chouinard. I was quite young then, so I didn’t last even two years at art school.

Pashgian: So, that’s how you met?

Bell: Yeah. I was quite unhappy with my accomplishments, and Irwin said, “Look, this is a commercial school. Why get so depressed? You can just go out and get a studio and see what it’s like out there. And then, you can always come back and just pay your tuition.” So, that’s what I did. I just left school and I never went back. The first real studio I had was this long room, and the only thing that was really dramatic were the right angles that made up the corners. So, I started working with things that related to the space in the room, and the paintings that I did were the feelings of the shadows of the space. And then, those paintings became more geometric and started to represent a two-dimensional tessera, or diagram of a three-dimensional shape. And then, one day I just decided to make the shapes instead of making paintings of the shapes.

Untitled, 2018, Cast epoxy, Lens: 25 1/2 inches (64.8 cm) in diameter, Overall: 77 1/2 x 25 1/2 x 5 inches © Helen Pashgian; photo by Joshua White, courtesy the artist and Vito Schnabel Gallery

Pashgian: What’s your take on the light in Los Angeles? Mine is that the light is not more intense than anywhere else, but it’s quite different. For example, I think that the light here is a very harsh kind of a blue light. They always talk about California being the Golden State, and the golden light here, but I don’t think it’s golden at all. I think the real golden light is in the South of France and places on the Mediterranean, where the whole landscape and the seascape is very softly lit. It’s different here because we have so many buildings that are white, with metal, with cars, with freeways. The light itself feels different. Even when you’re on the coast, the light is intense and tends to be cold. But because it’s warm here, we don’t think of it as a cold, bluish light. How do you feel about that and do you think it’s had any effect on your work?

Bell: Given the chance to do something in a room that didn’t require electric lights, I would prefer to work with daylight. But I’ve found that most of my sculptural pieces appreciate natural light better than when I have to go around and light up a room. I don’t have any feelings regarding the natural light here or anywhere else.

Pashgian: I remember once, around ’70 and ’71, there were a lot of shows all over the country. Light and space was becoming known, but particularly right here in Southern California there were fifty or sixty shows, at least. One was at CalArts, and I remember somebody came up to me at the opening and said, you know, all you light people, you’re all doing the same thing. You can’t distinguish one from the other. I’ve thought about that a lot. I think they’re all very different. But they’re different in a subtle way. And I’m reminded of the words of Kirk Varnedoe: “In the Los Angeles aesthetic, reduction does not lead toward pragmatic concreteness, as it does in East Coast minimalism. Instead, it pushes toward a dissolution and disembodiment of experience…it is not an optical style, it is an actual optical experience. It points toward uncertainty, as opposed to anything essential or concrete. West Coast minimalism is all about ambiguity.” 1

Bell: There’s some truth in that.

Pashgian: But in 1969 or 1971, Irwin, Laddie [John Dill], and I all had shows in New York, Jack Brogan came back and mounted the shows, and everyone hated them. The New York Times, or another publication, said, “This is nothing. It’s just atmosphere. There’s nothing there.” And they went on to say a number of disparaging things, like, “they’ve all been in the sun too much, and baked their brains, and too many drugs.”

Bell: I don’t know how to address that at all.

Pashgian: Well, except that things have changed now. They’re paying attention.

Bell: Yeah well, we got older, Helen.

Pashgian: But we’re still doing what we like to do, and it’s still related to what we did way back then.

Bell: I think so. Everything I do now, all the new kinds of activities in the studio are a byproduct of where I came from. The variations over time really are variations of the first corners that I saw in my studio.

Pashgian: I feel exactly the same. The echoes of the very early work are present in everything we’re doing today. We have all played with different materials over the years, and I think one of the most interesting hybrids of what you did was that great fashion show at 72 Market Street. You had models in the dresses that were made with your paintings on them. They were very beautiful, minimal dresses, usually floor length.

Bell: Yeah. They shifted interference colors too, depending on the angle.

Pashgian: And how they moved in them.

Bell: Right. Snakey. Those girls were snakey.

Pashgian: I think, very simply, that Los Angeles is becoming the epicenter. Almost all the major galleries in the world are moving here and the Pacific Rim is extremely important. I would say that the focus of major institutions, like LACMA, has been on countries that border the Pacific Rim. Michael Govan has discussed this a bit, LA is becoming vibrant in a new way.. How do you feel about that, Larry?

Bell: I have almost no feelings about the art world at all. I go to Venice to work in my studio about every three weeks or so, and then I come back to New Mexico and prepare materials to take out there. I got lucky and fell into working with the Hauser & Wirth, and they’ve been so supportive that I’ve been able to do just about everything that I’ve ever wanted. That’s my scene. I have very little feelings about the arts scene of LA because I don’t really live there. I live in a hotel near my studio, and I spend every day in the studio. Going out is the drive from the house in New Mexico to Venice Beach. It takes fifteen hours in my Suburban. I go with my assistant and my dog, we check into the hotel, and then we go into the studio, unload everything, and then we go right to work.

Pashgian: Do you still have Pinkie or do you have a new Pinkie?

Bell: No, Pinkie’s right here next to me and she’s all of sixteen.

Pashgian: Oh great, well give her my best.

Bell: All right, you’ve got it.

1. Kirk Varnedoe, Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock (New York: Princeton University Press, 2006), 114

Correction: In our print edition, we attributed the aforementioned referenced quote to Kurt von Meier when it is actually Kirk Varnedoe

Interview published in Autre Volume 2 Issue 8. September 2019

Larry Bell Standing between glass installation, Venice Studio, Photo by Ron Cooper

Rebel Debutante: An Interview of Chelsea Mak On Her New Collection Inspired By The Sunlit Sexuality Of Los Angeles

October 25, 2019

Chelsea Mak is very much a Los Angeles clothing label. It is imbued with the intricate contradictions of a city that is impossible to replicate: diverse and homogeneous, rebellious and formal, old and new money. It’s a city with invasive palm trees and an image invented by outsiders; a glamour perpetrated by movies and popular songs. But only a native Angeleno could dream up a clothing label that plays with these stereotypes. Last week, Chelsea Mak premiered a video, entitled Lost Spirit, for the new SS20 collection at Zebulon in Los Angeles. Inspired by a gorgeously composed song by Paul Dally, and based on the mood of the collection, the video is an idiosyncratic 8mm love letter to a city permanently bathed in a kind of blurring, dissociative sunlight that shines over crystalline swimming pools and wide lane boulevards. We got a chance to ask Chelsea a few questions about her new collection and label.

Autre: What was the impetus for starting the Chelsea Mak label?

Chelsea Mak: It was the need for creative expression and having my own voice. It was honestly also the result of a mental breakdown. I was at a point in my life when I was being pulled into all these different directions professionally and personally that resulted in me hitting the life-reset button hard. I didn't know why at the moment, but there was something 'missing' in my life, and I guess it was this.

Autre: What did you do before fashion?

Mak: I always did fashion! I had a small stint in fashion PR before doing design, but for the most part I was a designer. I spent the most formative years of my career at Band of Outsiders with Scott Sternberg, who very much shaped who I am as a designer. I also designed for other LA brands, like Current Elliott, Raquel Allegra and Entireworld before Chelsea Mak.

Autre: Chelsea Mak has really interesting silhouettes in its collections - pattern-wise, how would you define the look of the brand?

Mak: Forgiving and versatile. So much of womenswear out there is so overtly sexy and form fitting, nipped, tucked and uptight. Or it goes the other way and you're wearing a sack. The silhouettes speak to the brand’s message, which says you can be elegant/cool, revealing/tasteful, laid back/proper all at the same time.

Autre: Can you describe the inspiration or mood behind the new collection?

Mak: I was inspired by a few different things, in no particular order: Los Angeles, Sarah Morris’ film 'Abu Dhabi', the 80s, sex, spirituality, and Joel Chen of JF Chen's Instagram.

Because the brand is based here I really wanted to tie the collection back to LA. I always get such a sense of Los Angeles when driving through Hancock Park and that sorta led me into an obsession with the community and houses there.

I also watched this amazing film by Sarah Morris called 'Abu Dhabi' while visiting White Cube gallery in Hong Kong last fall. It's very political and I am in no way inspired by that, but the colors in the film are amazing. There's a lot of driving through the arid deserts of Abu Dhabi - dusty blues, sand tones, the ocean, and then pops of bright colors from commercialism. That piece very much informed the color palette of the collection.

The 80's — I'm always inspired by the 80's. I like to describe the brand’s muse as if Norma Kamali skipped cotillion and went to a punk show. Then the next day had to have dim sum with her godfather before going to an internship in her 80's power suit.

Sex / Spirituality – Everyone seems to be really into spirituality right now — seeking higher meanings, deeper connectivity, finding self. Maybe it’s LA, or maybe it’s just me, but this year has involved a lot of diving in and doing work on myself. I feel like I've only scratched the surface. Spirituality, love, sex, self is all one for me.

Autre: You utilize some really interesting fabrics, where do you go to source the materials for your collections?

Mak: Most of the collection is made from deadstock silks that I find in the local fabric markets in Shanghai. No one uses silk taffeta and silk shantung nowadays because it seems so dated and old lady but I'm very drawn to it.

Autre: The video you made for the new collection is fantastic, it’s a paean to Los Angeles but also to Hancock Park - is it the architecture, the beauty, the people?

Mak: Yes! The architecture. I follow JF Chen's Instagram who is a family friend on Instagram and he's always posting these amazing homes in Hancock Park while he goes on neighborhood strolls. Something stuck to me and inspired me. Also low key obsessed with the people — I'm not sure it's kosher to say I'm obsessed with the Hassidic Jewish community but I'm just fascinated because it's a community I'm not apart of. It feels secret and mystical.

Autre: You mentioned that each piece in the collection is named after a street in Hancock Park.

Mak: Yes! Each piece is named after a street in Hancock Park. I always name my styles something funny. Last season all the pieces were named after famous Chinese movie stars from the 80's. It's whatever I want to tie the collection back to.

Autre: The song in the video is great, was it composed exclusively for the video?

Mak: Yes, 'Lost Spirit' was written and composed by Paul Dally exclusively for the collection. I discovered Paul Dally through Reverberation Radio earlier this year and listened to his album New American on repeat during the inception of this season. It's very somber and heart wrenching and spoke to me so much, so that I knew I needed to get in touch with the artist and see if he would do a piece together.

Autre: How did you and Paul Dally communicate the mood for the video?

Mak: After a brief intro via DM on Instagram, I emailed Paul with the mood board and described this 'journey' I was feeling for the muse, which was the search for love through spirituality. But in doing so, ultimately surrendering and finding herself. I wanted the song and the film to feel like an emotional wash more than anything and I was really specific about that.

There was a sense of simpatico right off the bat. He asked me a bunch of questions in return but before I got a chance to answer them he sent a song over and it really hit the nail on the head. The first song he sent me was a 'go’ and the only big edit we really did was to make it more upbeat for the film so the viewer wouldn’t get too sad. The original edit is pretty melancholy.

Autre: You are a native Angeleno, how does the city reflect in the label?

Mak: I grew up in San Marino, a stone’s throw from LA proper with landmarks like the Huntington Library and the Norton Simon Museum in my backyard so there’s that sort of Old LA, old world, buttoned up style that you can really feel in Chelsea Mak.

My mom and I were in this mother/daughter organization called National Charity League. It’s funny because while this meant we had “made it” into this part of Pasadena society, we were still one of the two Chinese American families and we were very much outsiders. I remember almost missing my debutante tea because I got too stoned the night before and slept in at my boyfriend’s house. My parents had sent my best friend (one of the cinematographers of “‘Lost Spirit’) to get me the morning of. I remember her speeding down the 110 freeway to get me to the Biltmore Hotel downtown. It’s not a proud moment but informs this rebel debutante vibe that’s very brand, that and being Chinese.

I’m also always super inspired by how all the kids dress at shows like at the Echoplex or warehouse parties when I used to go to them. And all the skaters you see on the Eastside, maybe more influential in attitude than anything. So there’s really a lot of LA in a lot of different ways.

Autre: Who are some of your ultimate style icons?

Oh man, this is hard. Sometimes I wish I could dress more like a man than a woman — Pablo Picasso, Bernard Sumner in the 80s, all the ladies who lunch.

Autre: What kind of advice would you give to young designers starting out in a rapidly evolving retail economy?

Mak: I think the advice I would give is...be authentic to your vision, stay humble and don't be afraid to ask for help. No matter how much you think you know or think you can do yourself, there's always someone else with more experience, connections or even just more time. And when it's your turn don't forget to pay it forward.

Click here to shop Chelsea Mak

Tokyo Los Angeles: An Interview of Darren Romanelli On The Creative Alchemy of Sushi

September 26, 2019

Darren Romanelli on limited edition chairs, part of Richard Prince’s cannabis brand,Joan Katz and John Dogg, on view soon at MedMen in Los Angeles

interview by Emilien Crespo
photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

For the last twenty years, Darren Romanelli, or DRx, has been alchemizing his disparate interests through experiments with fashion and art, through his agency Street Virus, and through his brand Dr. Romanelli. It’s a laboratory of sorts where he has dreamed up collaborations with the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Black Sabbath, Nike, Coca Cola, and artist Richard Prince. Art is the foundation of everything and art is everywhere in his agency’s office. With the upcoming 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Romanelli has been thinking a lot about Japanese culture and his countless visits there. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of his agency, Romanelli and Tortoise Agency will be hosting a unique one-night invitation-only Japanese street market called Darren San’s Sushi at LA’s premiere fish distributor, Art & Fish. Complete with sushi flown in fresh from Tokyo and a number of craft beer brands that are appearing in the US market for the first time, Darren San’s Sushi is an evolution of Romanelli’s community driven effort Pancake Epidemic, which he hosted at his mid-Wilshire office above IHOP and became a staple on many a creative’s social calendar in Los Angeles. We caught up with Romanelli at his office to discuss Space Jam, sushi and the power of community.

EMILIEN CRESPO: Next Friday in Downtown LA, there’s this event called Darren San’s Sushi. Can you tell us what it is?

DARREN ROMANELLI: It’s the second Darren San’s Sushi event at Art & Fish, which is an incredible sushi hub run by my friend Taka. Taka provides sushi and distributes fresh fish to a lot of the most amazing establishments in Los Angeles. We decided to come together on this concept, which would give people an opportunity to experience the same electricity that I feel in Tokyo, specifically inspired by Tsukiji market. The relationship I developed with fish at Tsukiji market over the years and the ability to overnight that fish, have it arrive at LAX, and go all the way to Darren San’s Sushi, giving our guests a chance to see the fish come off the truck, select their fish in real time, and have it made in the kitchen. I think that’s one experience that we’re excited about refining with these experimental sushi gatherings, which are going to be periodic. And then, we decided to also create a Tokyo Cat Street vibe, which is the idea of cramming in a bunch of brands, whether it’s a noodle brand, a green tea brand, a curry brand, a Japanese stationary company. In Tokyo, real estate is a lot more sacred, so things are a lot smaller. We want to squeeze in authentic Japanese community, riding off the freezer. That’s what Darren San’s Sushi is—a little bit of Tokyo in Downtown LA.

CRESPO: Los Angeles has a lot of creative people, but one thing that I think has been a common thread through your career is collaboration and bringing people together. You had this practice, for instance, in this very office, the Pancake Epidemic that was so much in your DNA?

ROMANELLI: Our offices are above IHOP, and I love coffee, so I decided to combine these two things. The early days were literally pancakes from IHOP and Stumptown Coffee. We would have a barista on hand, a La Marzocco, and Stumptown would ship us beans from Oregon because they weren’t in California at the time. So, this was the only place for a couple of years where you could drink Stumptown Coffee, and I decided to create this Friday morning event where we would send out a bunch of emails to different creatives and invite them by to have pancakes and coffee. It became this staple of everybody’s week, but then I started to think about having something other than pancakes. So, we started bringing chefs in, and we’d theme the Friday mornings out, and I’d have new art in the office. The offices slowly became showrooms and then it became a full-scale think tank. We opened cafés in South Korea, we did a pop-up at the MOCA Geffen. We really used coffee, and our relationship to coffee as connective tissue with our clients, and potential future clients, and friends, artists, other creatives, curators. It really became a safe environment to break bread and exchange ideas.

CRESPO: So you went from pancakes and coffee, to sushi from Tsukiji Market…

ROMANELLI: Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about 2020. For me Tokyo 2020, the Olympics have always been something I look forward to. I moved to LA in 1984 from San Francisco. We moved to what I thought was Coca-Cola land, because they were the title sponsor for the Olympics. I started collecting Coke pins and Coke swag, and I did a project with Coke, five or six years ago and I got to celebrate those memories, bring those back, flip them a bit as I tend to do with Dr. Romanelli. At the same time that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics are happening, the stadium’s opening in Downtown Inglewood, and my agency has been working on the retail development for the last few years. So, my job specifically is culturally curating the retail development. Thinking about how to bring in interesting anchors to differentiate the developments from other developments.

CRESPO: 2020 is also the twentieth anniversary of your fashion label and your agency.

ROMANELLI: There’s a lot coming together on this year, but I also feel like I’ve been a brand for twenty years so I’m more confident in what I can offer, how I can add value. These puzzle pieces seem to organically be connecting together, which is exciting because I’ve been going back to Japan for the first time in a while, and I just did an installation there, and I’m thinking about how I can create a larger bridge between Tokyo and LA. Tokyo is so great and I end up travelling there a few times a year, but it’s getting more difficult with kids now, so I want to bring an authentic Tokyo to LA, but I want it to come here with the right anchors, the right brands, and the right people.

CRESPO: Your history with Japan started a long time ago, because I think that one of your first clients was Beams.

ROMANELLI: Yes of course, well, they saw my Nike jacket at Maxfield, they bought the jacket, and I did seven collections with Beams. At that time, streetwear was just really starting out, so early 2000s. There was definitely a movement, but it felt DIY.

CRESPO: What did you learn in Japan?

ROMANELLI: I learned the meticulous craftsmanship that goes into production out there is on a whole other level. I understood what it meant to be a brand, and this is before smartphones so everything was magazines, it was really important to go to Sawtelle, to go to the Japanese bookstore to buy the magazines, a lot of clippings, a lot of mood boards with magazines. But also thinking about how I could contribute to the movement in Tokyo, and I was lucky enough to have that relationship with Beams. Then I had a relationship with this store called Celux, which is a members-only boutique on top of Louis Vuitton Omotesando. I did a bunch of projects with them. Then I went to Loveless, and then tons of work with Poggy and United Arrows, and then of course different consultancies on a lot a of projects out there. I would always look at doing my best work for Tokyo because it meant the most for me, the consumer and the market is the most critical there on details, on quality control and hardware. I would always think about Tokyo first, and that’s how I’d set the bar.

CRESPO: Back to your Los Angeles community, we talked about fashion, we talked about food, we talked about art and music, what is the common thread among your community?

ROMANELLI: I think the common thread we share as a community is that we all want to be inspired, we all want secret things. The same need and want to connect on imagery and distribute imagery. To share it creatively.

CRESPO: What do you want to bring to Los Angeles with your upcoming projects?

ROMANELLI: I think something that lacks here compared to other places is authentic community and being able to really connect with a group of people that share the same interests other than the gallery opening, or the institution opening, or the house party. But to really have a network of creatives that can share this common want of connecting is something that I think LA is lacking and has lacked.

CRESPO: Is there any specific project you can talk about to bring the community together?

ROMANELLI: Yeah, well I’ve been working on a project as you guys know in Inglewood the last couple years. So, one dialogue that I’ve been paying attention to is how to create something unique that can pass the test of time. It needs to be relevant for the next decade. I’ve been experimenting over the last year or so at the Brixton market in London, which they’re calling Brixton Village now. We’re building a recording studio above the market, and we’ve been acquiring a bunch of great emerging contemporary works that we’ll house inside the studio. We have the ability to take those works and experiment in the market when the vendors are in between leases—sometimes these storefronts will go up for a month—and highjack those with the work that we have, and then it energizes the market and make a space feel more approachable.

CRESPO: I think one thing that’s always fascinating about your various projects is that it’s kind of always unexpected. You worked with Nike, you worked with Coke, with Mick Jagger, with Kanye West, with Disney, with Felix the Cat, there’s so many unexpected crazy things. Very few creatives in the world have touched so many different universes, and mixed and remixed them, even if you may not like the term remix, but I think I read in an interview that your dad also worked on Space Jam?

ROMANELLI: Yeah he started Warner Brothers consumer products in the 1980s.

CRESPO: When you explained that he took you to Nike to meet Michael Jordan, I thought maybe that was part of the explanation. Because suddenly it was like a guy in a room said, “you know what? Bugs Bunny, Michael Jordan and Nike, let’s do it.” That’s kind of what you’ve been doing ever since in a way.

ROMANELLI: Yeah it’s interesting because that trip to Nike was super important in my deciding where I went to college, plus I saw the Grateful Dead at Autzen Stadium. I went to college in Oregon for four years because of that experience. Primarily that weekend of meeting Jordan and seeing Jerry at Autzen was like a dream. My obsession with the brand, with the swoosh really was over four years being at school in Eugene, Oregon, where Nike was born. And thrifting. I came back after four years with incredible vintage Nike. Not knowing what I was going to do with it—just collecting them. Growing up, I was always collecting. Whether it was Swatch watches, or Jordan shoes, Stussy shirts, whatever it was at the time, Coca-Cola gear, Polo gear…. Whatever I was collecting, I was just collecting it to have it. So, I didn’t know that I was going to be reconstructing these vintage Nike pieces.

CRESPO: To end on Darren San’s Sushi, this feels like a celebration of this community, of this energy, but it’s also almost like a teaser for what’s ahead.

ROMANELLI: There’s definitely something unique happening now. It’s incredible, we did one on June 13th and it was really unique to feel authentic Japanese energy in Downtown. I know we have to perfect it, and this is the second one, but you’ll come experience it, hopefully some of the readers can come experience it. For me, more than anything similar to how the Epidemic events were back in the day, was more that authenticity, the organic connectivity between like-minded individuals exchanging ideas, and the power of that to me is ten-fold with this event because it’s coming with 2020. So I don’t know, come and see.

Soft Power: An Interview Of Nathaniel Mary Quinn

September 12, 2019

text and interview by Adam Lehrer
portrait by Kyle Dorosz

In the late artist Mike Kelley’s 1993 essay on visualizations of Freud’s “uncanny,” a term referring to the feeling of confronting something simultaneously alien and yet familiar, he connected manifestations of the sensation to memory. “This sensation is tied to the act of remembering,” wrote Kelley. But Kelley also made the claim that the uncanny sensation is typically one of dread or muted horror. And to be sure, many of the art works that Kelley wrote about in regards to the uncanny and showed in the exhibition he curated based on his text; Hans Bellmer’s anatomical dolls, Cindy Sherman’s photographs of fetish dolls (partially influenced by Bellmer’s constructions), Ron Mueck’s hyper-realist figurative sculpture of a teenage girl in a black swimsuit, etc; are connected by horror. But is it possible for an object, or an art object more specifically, to evoke the uncanny in a positive light? Can an uncanny artwork actually uplift the viewer or make him/her aware of his/her alterity and connection to the universe at the same time? Historically, I would have said no. But that was before I came to know and love the work of New York-based artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn.

Quinn’s work, renderings of bold and psychologically dense painted and drawn portraits, often look like collages upon one-dimensional viewing. Quinn depicts the human face with a network of symbols that often illustrate the humanities and complexities of his subjects infinitely more than a realistic rendering of facial attributes ever could. It is upon closer inspection that these fragmented faces are actually created with oil and pastel paint applied through a highly skillful technique of using certain oils to prevent the component parts of the portrait from bleeding into one another. The result is a very peculiarly uncanny image.

From one perspective, the fragmentations and symbolizations of human faces can feel strange and disorienting. But Quinn’s work is also deeply humanitarian. He himself has lived an incredibly painful life, having lost his mother and been abandoned by his father at a young age, and has emerged at the other end as one of the most important artists of his generation. It’s not that his work suggests anything close to the neoliberal dictum of “pick yourself up by your bootstraps,” on the contrary, it suggests that all humans are connected by our traumas, our sadness, and our pain. But this notion in Quinn’s work isn’t horrific in the sense that the uncanny is usually understood to be. Going back to Kelley’s essay, Quinn’s work does evoke troubling memories but it also addresses the fact that we all are haunted by uncomfortable memories and finds beauty in the universal nature of trauma. Quinn’s work is an uncanny that makes you feel more connected to the world than isolated from it. Perhaps this emotional resonance is what has pushed Quinn’s work beyond the confines of art world insularity and into the spotlight of mass recognition and, evidently, major collector interest. “Even when people look at something that might be alien to them, or even disgusting, abject, uncomfortable to look at,” says Quinn. “They know they are looking at something with a real emotional resonance to it.”

When I last spent time with Quinn in 2017, he was on the cusp of major art world success. And now, after having been signed to Gagosian Gallery in April and about to be the subject of his first Gagosian solo show in Beverly Hills, that success has undeniably arrived. Over the last two years, Quinn has been pushing his practice deeper into an inner psychological space. The work that will be on display at Gagosian plumbs the depths of his psyche. More and more, his work seeks to render his own insecurities and difficult remembrances. The kernels of self-doubt that are omnipresent but often left unspoken are filtered into Quinn’s pictorial space. The aesthetic of the works that will be shown at Gagosian hue closer to abstraction than works made by Quinn in the past, generating a space of empathy and consciousness raising for both artist and viewer alike. “What does it look like to make a work that renders an insecurity?” asks Quinn. “I would say this: empathy and vulnerability are tools in my practice as important as charcoal and pastels. This is what I’m pursuing.”

Quinn’s first Gagosian solo show, Hollow and Cut, will feature thirty-six works ranging from 16x13 inches to 96x48 inches. Talking to Quinn by telephone, he is equally excited and restless. This is a monumental point in his career: his first solo show with the world’s most profitable gallery. He understands what the weight of a show at Gagosian, a gallery subject to praise and criticism in equal measure, holds for his future. But he also is filled with an immense sense of pride, and he has earned it: Quinn has emerged as one of the most important contemporary painters in the world. “You want to make sure you come out strong,” he says of the impending opening. “But you can't think about the public when making your work. Your concern has to be your practice and creating.”

ADAM LEHRER: So, last time we were together you were on the cusp of success. Now you're on your first solo show with Gagosian.

NATHANIEL MARY QUINN: The good thing about Gagosian is you can create the bedrock of a career that you want. They have the resources to materialize that for you. Larry, c’mon man, he has relationships with all the museums, the directors, even if they have somewhat of a...

LEHRER: Weary relationship...

QUINN: Yeah, they have to deal with him. He's like the emperor. Gagosian generates up to a billion dollars every year in art sales. David Zwirner is number two and they earn 500 million dollars. I was in a different place the last time we met, I was growing. Now, here we are again, man, with Gagosian Gallery. I can't believe it.

NATHANIEL MARY QUINN
*C'mo' And Walk With Me,* 2019
Black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel, oil pastel on Coventry Vellum Paper
50 x 38 inches / 127 x 96.5 cm
© Nathaniel Mary Quinn
Photo: Rob McKeever
Courtesy Gagosian

LEHRER: What is the psychological impact of knowing that you are at the top of the art world food chain, so to speak? Is it pressure-inducing or is it freeing to know that so many more people are going to be seeing your work?

QUINN:It is freeing on one hand because of the gallery’s resources. As of five years ago, I had to pack all my own work. I remember [my wife] Donna and I used to ship it all out ourselves. We don't do that shit anymore. That's exciting.

In regards to the pressure, I think it would be fair to say that I feel some pressure. Any time you're making art in the public sphere it will present some pressure. If you're the kind of artist like myself, engaged in the exploration of the self, or finding ways to lay your wounds and memories bare and trying to make that visual, it presents pressure. But that is then coupled with the fact that it's Gagosian Gallery! Now, there are collectors interested in the work for any number of reasons. You start to think, “What would happen if someone finally places my work on public auction?" But you can't worry about it. Some collector is always going to be seduced by the alluring nature of generating a large profit off the work.

With that, I'll tell you, I'm very excited. For me, it's a big deal man. I think it's quite an achievement.

LEHRER: I'm psyched for you. Given these last few years, your work has obviously evolved a bit. What would you say distinguishes the works in this show compared to works of the past?

QUINN: This [show] is very personal. It’s called Hollow and Cut. When you remove whatever you've been taught to believe in, when you have cut and hollowed out all the exterior layers, what remains? This show is a courageous pursuit of excavating my internal self. I have deeply rooted insecurities. I don't talk about it much, but I don't feel worthy sometimes. These works are reflections of my fears and doubts. I did a piece called “How Come Not Me.” It's a small work on paper. When I was in high school, we had a thing called Parents’ Weekend. At that point my family was gone from my life. And I'd think "How Come Not me?” Until this day I struggle with that.

These ideas, these insecurities about my life or my looks, are tied into the actual creation of the work. I'm constantly pushing my practice. For this show I knew that I had to move to that next level in my work, so I used a more abstract approach. Even doing that was very challenging because you go through high school, college, grad school and you are making art the whole way through and then you find yourself making art a certain kind of way. That doesn't mean the work you are making is a real reflection or what you can do; it just means you've been trained or conditioned to make art in a certain way. But to make work that is closer to where you are emotionally in and of itself requires a lot of courage and doggedness. You have to go for it. l.

LEHRER: Yes, this reminds me of that quote by the great pessimist philosopher Emil Cioran "Chaos is rejecting all you have learned. Chaos is being yourself." In a sense you are tapping into this inner turmoil, or chaos, to boldly visualize your psyche, and push yourself further into the art making process.

QUINN: Yes, that’s perfectly placed. For example, normally in my work I would draw an eye, or a nose would represent a nose, but if I'm trying to articulate these deeply embedded insecurities within me, my fears and my doubts and a sense of unworthiness, then what I am trying to articulate is not actually definitive. It's not a real figure. It's an affectation. How do you visualize that? I'm not saying I achieved that in the show, but I've made progress from work one to work thirty-five. By the time I got to the 35th work, it began to take on the kind of abstraction I had been aiming for. It feels much more palpable to me, much more honest, much more real. Much more free. Most people don't want to be free. They want to comply. And fall in line. Freedom requires real courage. You have to fight to be free.

LEHRER: Despite the often uncanny aesthetic in your work, you have broken out to a mass audience. What do you think it is that enables people who aren’t so versed in the avant-garde to connect with your work?

QUINN: Let’s go to Beyoncé. I love Beyoncé. She makes great songs. She’s a superstar. We all know this. Then you got Mary J. Blige and she can't sing anywhere near as well as Beyoncé. And, although she can't sing that well, she's good! She's not Beyoncé, or Aretha, but what she does is real. Potent. Visceral. You know what she's saying and how she's saying it is honest and pure. But when you present something real, people believe it.

LEHRER: Is this bravery, this courage to find freedom, something you are constantly looking for in art across all media?

QUINN: I think it's important to understand that you can't grasp the scope of humanity within one tradition of art. You have to look at all of it: comedy, film, poetry, reading essays and books. Public speaking. Not just art but all forms of work and all traditions of creation must be dealt with and confronted or perused at the very least. So I'll look at a Dave Chapelle; this guy works very hard to be free. Because this guy's fighting for his right to speak his mind as a comedian, his first job is to be funny. And in addition to being funny, he's a cultural critic. He observes the culture, and criticizes it, and tries to portray it in a different light.

I look at the works of artists like Yue Minjun, Adrian Gheni, or Neo Rauch because they have a certain freedom in their work. So many artists are afraid to confront who they are. They continue to feel empty in the face of their achievements. Why is that? [Art] isn’t just technique, skill and rendering, it is an activity in which empathy and vulnerability are necessities. I'm not just moving the needle in my work; I'm moving the needle in me. I'm not a walking Instagram page. I'm not putting up a highlight reel. This is real life. No one is happy all the time. It's impossible. I want to use the work to push back on this era’s values. An era where people are ashamed to be real.

LEHRER: In your portraits you often shun direct representations in favor of symbolic representations. But these symbols seem to illustrate the depths of you and your subjects’ complexities infinitely more than a direct rendering of physical attributes ever could. Your ability to use symbols to pierce the symbolic order and address the...

QUINN: Make no mistake, I like to think that every artwork I make has some representational element. But there's still evidence [in this show] of me taking that courageous step forward to push beyond traditional forms of representation. We should shoot for a higher ground. A higher level. The first comedians would walk down the street and slip on a banana peel, and that was funny. That's surface comedy. But deep human comedy is where the fragility of men and women are brought to the surface. That's deep comedy, the kind that Dave Chapelle engages in. That Pryor engaged in. I wanted to make art like that.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn “Hollow And Cut” will be on view until October 19, 2019 at Gagosian Beverly Hills. 456 North Camden Drive Beverly Hills, ca 90210

NATHANIEL MARY QUINN
*Jekyll and Hyde,* 2019
Oil paint, paint stick, gouache, soft pastel on linen canvas, diptych
14 x 22 inches
35.6 x 55.9 cm
© Nathaniel Mary Quinn
Photo: Rob McKeever
Courtesy Gagosian

Pacing Around My Desire: An Interview Of Carmen Winant

August 23, 2019

Honey Lee Cottrell Papers, #7822. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library

interview by Abbey Meaker

In her new book titled Notes on Fundamental Joy; seeking the elimination of oppression through the social and political transformation of the patriarchy that otherwise threatens to bury us, Carmen Winant offers a poignant question: Does hope have an aesthetic? If it does, you may find it within the pages of this provocative book.

Designed by Jena Myung and published by Printed Matter Inc., the book is both an artist’s project and an historic collection of found images, photographs whose function was not only to document women-only communities formed in the 1980s across the Pacific Northwest, but also to subvert the pervasive dynamic in photography of man as subject, woman as object. Through these photographs of an almost unfathomable utopia of feminist & lesbian separatists, we can contemplate a world that exists outside of patriarchy. A safe, inclusive, fantastical space in which art is central to community making, connection, experimentation, and purpose.

Meaker: Can you talk a little bit about the title and how you feel like it was relevant at the time the photos were made and how it’s relevant now?

Winant: Part of the reason that I gravitated towards this material in the first place is because it held such promise and joy. I’ve known photography to occupy a space that can be more severe or competitive. The women photographers I idolized as a student, people like Francesca Woodman and Diane Arbus, all killed themselves. It wasn’t just that I felt that it was difficult to be a woman in the world. I also understood photography as entangled with that problem, that it was violent and incurred violence onto bodies, and onto the photographers themselves. And when I encountered these images, I felt inside them a whole new kind of promise—something that was bound up in the word joy, as well as world-building in this case of stepping outside of patriarchy altogether, and using photography as a new way to see the world. That felt really powerful. I was starting to do this research during the presidential campaign. It’s not a far reach to understand why I felt I needed to move towards not subverting the patriarchy from the inside, but instead looking at people who had just left it all behind. I understand that now that that impulse came from being confronted with the ugliest parts of our patriarchy. For me, the project is tethered to that moment in historical time.

Meaker: Looking at these images and thinking about these communities in the ‘70s and ‘80s, is it discouraging to know where we are now, and see that it failed in a way? Or did it?

Winant: Yes and no. When I first encountered the images, I had the same binary logic around it. But the longer that I researched, I started to feel that there was more nuance in this question of what it means to succeed and fail. There were so many thousands of women that cycled through these women’s lands, and even if the community ended up dissolving, that consciousness still permeated into those bodies, and that sort of changed the way they lived their lives, how they moved through space, how they related to other people, how they engaged with politics, community, relationships, child rearing, and so forth. This is what coalition building is. It’s messy, it’s difficult, people get pissed off and leave, and it’s not built to last. But that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t succeeded.

Meaker: Totally. When looking through the book, I felt that it was a fiction. It’s so hard for me to imagine existing in such a utopic place, free of the critical eye of white cis men. Man-as-subject, woman-as-object is such a pervasive dynamic in photography. Why do you think that photographs were central to these communities, and do you think it served as a medium of documentation as well as a kind of rebuttal?

Winant: Definitely. And let me address the first thing you said too, which is the fantasy element of it. So much of my own relationship to this material is really romantic, and I brush off the things that don’t feed my fantasy, like the conflicts that happened, and the wars they lost with the landowners, and the bank, and the disabled women who left because there wasn’t space for them to survive in the country. Not to mention how few non-white women there were, and non-middle class women. It took me some time to come to this, but I realized that this is a part of the project, to follow the discordances. The way I teach feminism is as the prospect of world-building, and the imperative of a feminist is to imagine that a different world is possible. Without that imagination, we have nothing. We have no values, we have no politics, and we have no essential selves if we can’t imagine something outside of the world that we’re living in, or living under. And so, I think it’s really important to think about my own feminist politics as kind of revolving around that promise.

A lot of the different women’s lands built wet darkrooms, although the book in fact revolves around the ovulars, which are these photographic workshops that were offered on one particular women’s land, which was called Rootworks, in Oregon. An ovular is a take-off on seminar, which means the spreading of semen, etymologically. So, they instead called them ovulars, and the women who took them were called the ovulators. It was a new way to see themselves, and each other; to reframe desire, and kinship, and affinity and self, and sight, and insight, but also to stand as evidence. When so many of these women came out as gay, they were kicked out or they were left with nothing. Some of them had their children taken away from them. They had no evidence of their lives, in some sense. So it existed beyond the metaphoric idea of needing to reframe the way we see, and into something quite tangible, about how to make new evidence of our lives in this state of being reborn.

Honey Lee Cottrell, courtesy of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library

Meaker: Knowing that it was probably finite.

Winant: It depends. When you read their accounts, some women feel as though it will last forever. And others that are far more skeptical are dipping in and out. So, I think there’s quite a big range.

Meaker: Did the women teaching the workshops come in as photographers, or did that come from being a part of the community?

Winant: So far as I know, there were six different organizer midwives that cycled in and out. They all went on to become pretty serious, and I think they were pretty serious already. They still remained on the margin, but they were dedicated photographers. The ovulars ranged from technical workshops to making lesbian erotica, or how to make photographs about love and sex.

Meaker: I love that art making was such a central activity.

Winant: It really is difficult to live in the country, particularly when you are arriving with no skill about how to irrigate, how to you know plant food in the ground, or how to build structures. The fact that they carved out the space for this kind of production feels really critical.

Meaker: How did you happen upon this work, and when did you know you wanted to do something with it?

Winant: Years ago, I read an article in the New Yorker by Ariel Levy, and it was about the Van Dykes, who were a separatist community. I just remember feeling so amazed by the prospect of this. My work has been about looking for another world, and trying to imagine a world outside of patriarchy, so to come across this felt revelatory. I started to get deeper into it and I discovered this vast photography archive, and I was amazed. They felt like such important historical documents, and were also incredibly striking photographs. The project is an homage to these communities, as well as a platform to make the photographs exist in a public space together.

Meaker: These women were unknown, and you were naming them and crediting them. So many women artists are subsumed by their male contemporaries, so this was exciting to me. In your last book, My Birth, many of the photos are anonymous.

Winant: Yeah, all of them, in fact. That was really different in this project. Normally, the way that I work is I gather the images that I want, I remove them from their sources, I re-contextualize them, and I call it fair use. That was never going to be an okay way to work here for a couple reasons. It wasn’t possible administratively, but it also wasn’t possible to do in good conscience. These are art objects. We got the copyright for every image, we paid the artist for the image if they were alive, and we got permission to reproduce. To be honest, I’ll probably never work this way again because it was so time-prohibitive. Sometimes I spent days just trying to get a single image.

Meaker: And did you always imagine it as a book?

Winant: No. At first I thought it could be an exhibition. But as I was thinking through possibilities, Printed Matter reached out to ask if I wanted to make a book. I thought that that could be an interesting way for those photographs to come together. I’m delighted it’s in the form that it’s in, in part because in the archive, many of the photographic objects exist in some sort of magazine or pamphlet. It doesn’t exist as a conventional photographic archive, and so a book really made sense.

Meaker: It feels so intimate too. It’s nice to hold it and touch as an object.

Winant: I’m so glad you say that. We spent a lot of time talking about that.

Meaker: What attracted you to such era-specific imagery from the ‘70s?

Winant: I think there are a couple ways to answer the question, the first being that that era is where so much printed matter lives. There is an enormous glut of books that are published from the late ‘60s through the early ‘80s as a certain personal-is-political kind of feminism comes to bear. Those books are replete with photographs. That doesn’t exist in the same way anymore. But it’s more than that, of course. So much of my interest, conceptually and politically, as a person and an artist, is about working to understand the feminism that begot my feminism, the history that begot my history, and the space between us. I look at the feminism that belonged to my mother’s generation, and it feels, in some ways, so foreclosed. My work has always been about trying to reach backwards and understand what it means to inherit a memory, what it means to reckon with the idea of women’s liberation fifty years later.

Meaker: And how do you think it changed?

Winant: It changed in so many ways. Regarding the name “women’s liberation,” I don’t think that we, for the most part, believe in the idea of liberation anymore. We don’t belong to radical feminism anymore, and we can understand that by looking at these photographs and understanding that they look like a fantasy to us. There are so many different qualities that have shifted, that have made it more progressive, and more inclusive, and at the same time, I mourn the loss of those things that I mentioned.

Meaker: The photographs in the book are of naked women, and their bodies all look similar. The world that is depicted in the book feels inclusive and safe, but the images of the women aren’t. How did that sit with you when you were bringing together these photographs?

Winant: There’s another scholar who’s done some research into the ovulars. His name is Andy Campbell, and he’s a professor at USC. He's said in a talk that I noted, “To leave everything behind can be a privilege.” I think, in some cases, he’s right. There’s one African-American woman who appears over and over in the ovulars. Her name is Lynne Reynolds, she lived in Brooklyn at the time. I’m always so struck by her presence in that place; she stands out as the only nonwhite participant, as far as I can see. It reminds an onlooker that there is an issue of who has the ability to participate in the first place. The ovulars were absolutely incredible for their radical inventiveness, for the creatively, for their dedicated feminism. I admire them from deep down. And they also make me wonder: who has the ability to leave it all behind?

Meaker: To me, your broad practice has recurring themes relating to origins, materiality, the fecund body, and also, a drive to subvert the notion that the pregnant body is the ultimate representation of abstraction. In your book My Birth, the photographs are really aggressive and they demand to be seen. At the same time there is desensitization in the repetition of the images. What are your thoughts on that?

Winant: After I gave birth the first time, I was amazed, horrified, delighted, and terrified at what that experience had been. So much of how I relate to my experience is to try to make it intelligible through photographs, and it became very clear to me very quickly after giving birth that I couldn’t do that. It’s not that there were no photographs of birth, but there were vacuums. I didn’t recognize it anywhere in contemporary art, for instance, with very limited pockets of examples. I think some of the work was intended to fill up that space. But in a larger way, I understood that there was not going to be any photograph that would be able to account for that experience as fully as I wanted it to, for all of its sensate abjection. Part of the repetition was about working to insist on that image over and over, so it could be seen and knowable, and at the same time, doing so with the distinct understanding that it was a failed premise.

Meaker: And where do you think the new work fits in with that?

Winant: It was an incredibly agitating experience to look at bodies opening up and pouring out. I needed to look at something that felt unabashedly joyful. It was important for me to find images to live with that occupied a different experience, a parallel experience.

Meaker: You pose a question in the book, which is, is there an aesthetic to hope? And I wonder if this project has offered an answer to you.

Winant: At the beginning of this project, I wrote a single note that I put above my studio desk: what does a free body look like? And I think there are a lot of different questions in that question. Do pictures look different when women make them? In that sense, do women have a different photographic aesthetic? Do lesbians? Do feminists? What does joy look like? How do we see it? How do we frame it? I’m really interested in the relationship between politics and aesthetics. These photographs feel so distinct, yet they have such deep echoes of one another that I have to ask, how has this experience actually changed the way that they see?

Meaker: Maybe it’s more a feeling than an aesthetic.

Winant: Definitely. That can be a really difficult thing to account for. As an artist, how do you come to learn and occupy a photographic feeling?

Meaker: I think maybe it is an innate ability, because not all photographs have that.

Winant: I agree. It is innate to a person, but also to a place and a moment in shared historical time.

Concept 005: An Interview Of Nordstrom Men’s Sam Lobban And Union Los Angeles Founder Chris Gibbs

August 2, 2019

Founded in 1989, Union’s history first started in New York’s Soho with the gracious ambition of giving a space to young, local designers on their way to recognition. The Los Angeles shop followed a few years later and strived to maintain the same principle born thirty years ago: embracing the creativity of fresh designers within the city while being inspired by trends coming from Japan and the UK. Union Los Angeles has now become one of LA’s prime destinations for men's contemporary fashion and streetwear. Earlier this month, Chris Gibbs, who used to work at the original NYC shop and is now the owner and operator behind Union LA, announced Union’s first ever collaboration with a national retailer: Nordstrom.

Concept 005: Union & Company features over 170 exclusive pieces across clothing, accessories and shoes from a roster of 13 brands curated by Chris Gibbs and Sam Lobban, Nordstrom’s vice president of men’s fashion. We had the opportunity to speak to both of them about their recent collaboration, but mostly about streetwear, its evolution, and its relationship to high fashion.

AUTRE: How did the two of you meet?

SAM LOBBAN: Chris and I were introduced by a mutual friend, and then we would bump into each other in showrooms during Fashion Week market around the world and talk shop. We always seemed to have a similar vibe on product and brands, which I for one found interesting and pretty cool given our very different professional backgrounds.

CHRIS GIBBS: Sam seems to remember us meeting in Tokyo…but I don’t remember that specifically. I just know that over the course of the men’s fashion gauntlet: Tokyo, Paris, Italy, NYC…I would often see Sam in the usual haunts, and over time, recognized that we shared a lot of sensibilities and we formed a friendship.

AUTRE: In collaboration on this concept project, what were some of the first conversations you had about what you wanted this pop-up to look like, and which brands you wanted to include?

SAM LOBBAN: From the start, the Union & Company concept was about giving Chris and the team a platform to tell the Union story to our customers. It was important to us that we convey what Union is all about, but at the same time have its own unique spin as a pop-up concept, hence the thirteen brand, 170-piece exclusive capsule collection featuring all but two brands which Union usually carries. For the additional two - Cactus Plant Flea Market and No Vacancy Inn - both Chris and I are fans of what each brand does, and thought they would add an interesting addition to the concept as a whole.

AUTRE: Were there any particular inspirations that you both found to be the driving force behind this pop-up? Whether it be a different concept store, another city, or even a style of design?

SAM LOBBAN: From my perspective the major inspirations would be the ideas behind Union and what they stand for: great product, an open and inclusive environment and representing a diverse range of brands and ideas across price points. I think it would be fair to say that the campaign and overall aesthetic feels pretty rooted in LA style too!

AUTRE: Are there any brands that you think are ushering in a new wave of streetwear design?

SAM LOBBAN: I think what Cactus Plant Flea Market is doing is super cool, along with the Camp High guys...I like their super interesting take on color, graphic and print placement & technique on jersey, sweat weights and shapes.

AUTRE: Do you think these kinds of pop-ups risk putting cult streetwear at risk of becoming too mainstream?

CHRIS GIBBS: I do think there is a narrative where that can happen… And some brands might succumb to the glitz and glamour of it all by overdoing it. But we (Union) have a thirty-year track record of ‘keeping it real’ and by that I guess I mean playing the long game and never overexposing any one brand or trend. The core of our business has, for some time now been Japanese street wear and three of the four brands we started with over fourteen years ago are still the leading brands in our store (Neighborhood, Wtaps and Visvim). My feeling has always been as long as you keep true to your brand ethos and don’t start doing things and making product that isn’t really true to the brand, then you don’t run the risk of saturation. This project is the perfect example. It’s a two-month pop up with a highly curated edit of brands and styles in only ten doors in the world. That isn’t mainstream.

AUTRE: Do you think streetwear has become less accessible to consumers due to the influx of luxury brands tailoring their aesthetics?

SAM LOBBAN: Personally I think the opposite; aside from the ambiguity of what ‘streetwear’ as a term really means - which seems to be a catchall for anything cool that’s going on in menswear at this point - I’d argue that more customers than ever can and want to buy into streetwear because of the range of price points available. At Nordstrom we have Union tees for $42 to Dior tees for $560, and everything in between.

AUTRE: Do you think streetwear has evolved along with high fashion brands as they have adapted to their collections to appeal to more trend-oriented customers?

CHRIS GIBBS: Sam kind of spoke to the “catchall-ness” of the term streetwear. So this is kind of tough to answer. My job as a curator, for lack of a better term, is to try and sift through everything and bring the best to our customers. Not to sound repetitive but again I would lean on our thirsty+ year history of being Los Angeles’s best kept secret. Correct me if I am wrong, but Autre is a LA-based magazine who has covered many brands we sell, designers we offer, artists we support and this might be the first article about us. And I kind of like that. There is something kind of cool and mysterious about what and how Union exists. Guess I digressed there, sorry. Ok, so the question was has streetwear evolved to be more trendy? Some parts of it have for sure…some of streetwear’s most respected and longstanding brands are now household names, that said, others are still wildly successful, yet still super niche and underground. Streetwear is very pluralistic in that way.

AUTRE: Has the ethos behind streetwear as a cultural concept been diminished by high fashion?

CHRIS GIBBS: I will admit, I do think high fashion brands are doing their best to use the ‘streetwear’ playbook and unlike most streetwear brands, high-fashion brands have multimillion dollar ad campaigns and marketing teams behind them. And I will go a step further and say some are doing a really good job at it. I suppose for me we have always been a niche store and have largely enjoyed support from the customer who really gets it. The guys and girls who want honest, organic and holistic take on fashion. In those people we will always have support and they aren’t as easily lured away as most. There are some high fashion brands that for sure are using streetwear’s new found popularity to keep themselves relevant, while others are working with, not against streetwear in a more collaborative way that I think is healthier.

AUTRE: Do either of you think that there is any single city that consistently ignites global streetwear trends?

SAM LOBBAN: I think by its very nature a number of major cities add their own trends to the global streetwear conversation, rather than any single one. I think there are lines which you could draw back to New York, LA, Tokyo, London and beyond.

AUTRE: Would you consider Los Angeles to be a city of a trend-starters or of trend-followers?

CHRIS GIBBS: What I would say is this, I am a firm believer that streetwear was born in NYC, but at some point during the early ought’s it seemed to migrate west or at the very least become bicoastal. So there is a very strong, very dope LA version of streetwear, which is a community that I think is really dope. The Japanese streetwear that we introduced to the US, for example was really done from LA and that is a huge part of streetwear. And for Union we wouldn’t be here today without the support and patronage of some really dope trend setters in Los Angeles.

AUTRE: How would you describe the fashion aesthetic of this generation?

CHRIS GIBBS: My wet dream. A truly free and democratic mix of all genres and subgenres of fashion - high, low, vintage, contemporary, hippie, cross dressing, you name it.

AUTRE: Do either of you have any trend forecast predictions for the near future of streetwear?

CHRIS GIBBS: As high fashion willingly blurs the lines, the pendulum can swing both ways…streetwear will start using their playbook, but through a younger more innovative lens.

The pop-up shops will be available July 11 through September 1 at select Nordstrom stores and Nordstrom.com/NewConcepts.

Getting Off: Brad Phillips Interviews Author Erica Garza About Her Journey Through Sex & Porn Addiction

July 29, 2019

In the following interview, Brad Phillips speaks to author, Erica Garza about their mutual experience with sex and porn addiction. In Getting Off: One Woman's Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction, Garza challenges the stereotype that sexual addiction is within a man’s nature, and for a woman, the result of sexual trauma. Recounting a life of “revolting” fantasies both imagined and realized, she lays out a lifetime of orgasmic pressure begging to be released, and courageously retraces her road to recovery. Throughout the conversation, Phillips and Garza share their experiences of responding to fans who look to them for guidance, the benefits of being triggered, and the sexual taboos that continue to plague our sense of moral authority.

BRAD PHILLIPS: I wanted first to say how happy I felt to discover your book. Having written about sex addiction myself, it felt valuable to read about a woman’s experience with participating and recovering from the same addiction. Particularly in that you wrote about it without nostalgia or redemption. What motivated you to write the book? Was there a sense that this was something you wrote in an attempt to process your experiences, or was it more of a desire to share with other people; make them feel less alone?

ERICA GARZA: It was a bit of both. I've always turned to writing as a source of comfort—a way to get troubling thoughts and memories out of my head and body, and onto the page. When I started writing about sex addiction, I did so in an essay online for Salon. I'd already been experimenting with telling my story in therapy and 12-step, but this was a more public telling. The response I received was overwhelming. So many people reached out and thanked me, and they were from all walks of life. I felt then that I could serve others by continuing to write about this. We aren't often presented the opportunity to help a wide range of people, and this was my chance.

PHILLIPS: Sometimes there's trouble in writing about personal subjects that are taboo, in that readers develop projections about you, and a sense of attachment. Have you had any response from people who felt like they were connected to you in a way that felt creepy? I also was curious if men reached out to you, ignoring the aspects of shame and recovery you write about, and simply saw you as someone “into sex,” and approached you that way. Has that happened?

GARZA: Several men (and a few women) have reached out to me because they see me as someone “into sex.” This ranges from unsolicited dick pics, to requests to meet up, to full-blown erotic stories they want me to read. I usually block them immediately, or if I have the energy, I tell them they’ve crossed a boundary and we have a discussion. But I receive more messages from people looking for help because they’re dealing with sex/porn addiction. I always try to acknowledge and address these messages because I know how isolating addiction can be. I usually direct them to 12-step meetings because they can offer connection and community, but sometimes this isn’t enough for them. Some people reach out to me as if I’m a therapist, as if I have the magic solution to their pain, and this can feel overwhelming. I am not a counselor. I’m just a person who shared my story as honestly as I could. They have access to this honesty too. The best I can do for those who put me on this pedestal is to bring myself down to eye level. To remind them that I’m just as vulnerable as they are. The biggest difference is that I’ve come out of the shadows—maybe they should too.

PHILLIPS: It’s interesting and disappointing that people might read your book and completely miss all the shame and intense pain you discuss; things which go hand-in-hand with addiction. You mention other people coming out of the shadows. I think that there are certain people who find the shadows themselves sexual. I feel like on some level there would be very little new information to discover about men coming out of the shadows, which again is why I think your book is important. You’ve done mainstream press, and mentioned to me that you were told there were certain words you couldn’t use, or certain parts of the book better left not discussed, because they could ‘trigger’ someone. How do you feel about this climate, where we’re told we need to prevent triggering strangers?

GARZA: I tend to disagree with the sentiment that there’d be nothing new to discover by men coming out of the shadows. I think the act of telling can help the addict discover a world of new information about who they are or what they want. And other people can be positively affected by hearing these confessions, because they too can confess without fear of judgment or criticism. As far as people being triggered by stories of addiction and sexual language, I’m sick of it. It reeks of Puritanism. We can watch zombies eat off people’s faces on prime-time television but we can’t see breasts. What does that tell us about what we fear as a culture? Our own animalistic primal nature? Our complicated desires? Our grip on control? When I’m triggered, instead of acting out or shutting down, I become curious. Why am I being triggered? What is being reflected to me? By asking questions like these, I learn more about myself.

PHILLIPS: Censorship and the aversion to natural female bodies on Instagram is insane to me. Curious is a good word my therapist uses, it helps take the shame out of self-reflection. I think the complication of desire can feel scary to express because really, we’ve never seen it done. When you say animalistic, do you think it’s elemental to our fear of expressing all the ways we’re still animals?

GARZA: Maybe being reminded of our bodily functions and the natural impulses we share with animals only reminds us of the other most natural physical experience we fear most—death. If we stick with our intellect, we can form elevated ideas about what’s right or wrong, and we can let religion and the media tell us how to desire and how to express that desire in the same way that religion and media tells us that we don’t have to die. But I think all of that is a distraction from being present in our mortal bodies, accepting and indulging our natural impulses.

PHILLIPS: Having once been close to death I’m no longer afraid of it. That hasn’t helped in managing my daily unease though. I recently read, for a radio show, the entire list of paraphilias from the DSM-5. What shocked me was that the only two paraphilias classified as mental illnesses were sadism and masochism. I’ve seen it be particularly shaming for masochists, especially women, to be told that what they like in bed makes them ‘wrong’ in multiple ways. There is a lot of very quiet research around the idea pedophilia is an innate sexual preference in the same way that homosexuality is. The recidivism rate for pedophiles offenders is above 99 percent. But these are the pedophiles that offend. There are far more that don’t, and by default are repressed. Sympathy for the pedophile isn’t something people want to get behind. Maybe you could tell me how you think these more ‘extreme’ sexual predilections could be managed, or re-evaluated.

GARZA: I think the fear of things like child sex dolls and cartoons for pedophiles mirrors the fear that some have about tolerance to porn, not just the most extreme kind. If you see images repeatedly, those images might lose their charge and so you’ll need more extreme images to feel something again. Pedophilia is one of those subjects that upsets people because the trauma can be devastating and I understand why people shy away from the subject because they are trying to prevent any more harm being inflicted upon those who’ve suffered. They want, justifiably, compassion to be directed to the victims. But I do think that there is value in trying to understand the pedophile’s motives, by conducting more research, and by including them in the discussion. As difficult as it may be to hear their stories and understand the why of what they do, the better equipped we are to prevent future incidents of harm. I think when something has been deemed socially unacceptable and there’s so much fear around the thing that we won’t even talk about it, then it’s a good indication that we MUST talk about it. Silence eventually implodes and the aftermath is rarely pretty.

PHILLIPS: Long ago Susan Sontag predicted ‘image fatigue,’ which she related to the Vietnam War photographs being relayed back to American viewers, and how they would eventually lose their impact. That same thinking can definitely be extended to pornography and the absolute nadir it exists at in 2019. I agree with you and have tried myself to address the idea that if things are uncomfortable or difficult to talk about, then it does mean we should. There is difficulty in seeing both the victim of a crime and the perpetrator as two separate people involved in a scenario from which information could be gleaned.

Erica Garza’s book, Getting Off: One Woman’s Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction, published by Simon and Schuster, is available through Amazon, Google Play Books, Barnes & Noble, and likely your local bookstore.

Follow Erica via Twitter and Instagram - @ericadgarza

The Decorator's Home: An Interview Of Marco Castillo On Cuba's Incomplete Aesthetic Revolution

July 2, 2019

Interview by Oliver Kupper
Portrait by Summer Bowie
Install images courtesy of UTA Artist Space

Marco A. Castillo’s The Decorator’s Home – his first solo exhibition in the United States after 26 years in Los Carpinteros collective – is a microcosm of the dichotomies and failures of modernism’s utopian ideals. Amid a raging Cold War that extended far beyond the US and the USSR, modernism infused a tinge of fascism disguised as national pride in the name of aesthetics, whether it be the folksy arts and crafts dreams of Frank Loyd Wright, or the concrete and rosewood pavilions of Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasilia. Cuban Modernism offered the same sense of freedom and hope in an embargoed state of isolationism and Marxist fervor. Needless to say, the movement didn’t last long – it sputtered out in the tropical miasma of communism’s last island holdouts. In A Decorator’s Home, Castillo captures this fervor: the dreams of space travel, the dreams of high-minded aesthetics, razor sharp lines, rich wood, and rare materials. All of this is imbued with the paranoia of a global race to the cosmos, and the coded languages of spies trading secrets while their Cuba Libre’s sweat into hotel coasters. In the back of the exhibition, a solemn and heartbreaking film, called Generation, is a symbolic six-minute epitaph for Cuban Modernism’s ambitions, it’s lonely siren songs of paradise, and youth crashed on the shores of their aspirations. In the end, Cuban Modernism’s shipwreck wasn’t due to lack of demand or desire. It was the sense of control that the architect’s of The Revolution – namely Fidel Castro and Che Guevara – needed in order to legitimize their violence and delusions of grandeur. As the movement died, many of the buildings were converted to hospitals, schools, and public works facilities. We got a chance to speak to Castillo about his exhibition, curated by Neville Wakefield, and about his own take on Cuban Modernism’s successes and failures.

OLIVER KUPPER: Where did the name for the show, The Decorator’s Home, come from?

MARCO CASTILLO: I had been doing research on Cuban Modernity, and there was this generation of designers at the beginning of the revolution that got involved in creating a new static for these people that were going to be the future of this country and the future of the world, because Cuba thought that they would convince the rest of the world to become communist. This needed to have an aesthetic.

KUPPER: It’s funny how revolutions need an aesthetic.

CASTILLO: This generation designed most of the objects we were supposed to use, like furniture, and also interior design for the spaces, for the workers, for the buses, for the hotels, and for the farmers. But at a certain point, the government stopped being interested in that.

KUPPER: Was it too ambitious?

CASTILLO: I think it was the mood of Fidel Castro. He got radicalized, he got very into Soviet politics, and he militarized the country. And so the static artists became an enemy because they were the creative people.

KUPPER: Yeah, a little utopian.

CASTILLO: Yes, too liberal. In the seventies, there was censorship for writers. The government destroyed the movement, the design, and the taste.

KUPPER: How many years was that?

CASTILLO: Twenty years, I would say. In Cuba you have Art Deco, Art Nouveau, but I’m fonder of this utopic moment. People were importing resources from the human past. For the colonial time, they were based on identity and they mixed it with the high-quality design from the northern country.

KUPPER: The northern influence is in your pieces, too.

CASTILLO: Yes, what I’m doing here is basically because this movement was interrupted. This stirred a frustration in all of us; we couldn’t have a complete aesthetic revolution. I behaved like an interior designer at the time, creating my own objects. They are not furniture, and they are not art. They are something in between.

KUPPER: Object-art.

CASTILLO: Yes, this creates a lot of influence in them. They look like decoration.

KUPPER: At times it reminds me of Brasília.

CASTILLO: Yes, except the Brazilians use rosewood, and we use mahogany. Cuba has the most beautiful mahogany. It’s darker than the rest. Also, we have a little bit of the Soviet influence over furniture—more practical. The Brazilians were more like peacocks, more exaggerated at times.

(walking over to another piece)

KUPPER: What’s that?

CASTILLO: This is the type of wood people use to make cabinets. It smells so good.

KUPPER: When did you start using caning?

CASTILLO: It was after the Cuban movement. I realized they were using this old material to do things that were very modern. Also, they were doing a lot of screens. There was a very tropical feeling in every piece of furniture—very delicate—you couldn’t really read it immediately. For example, they use a combination of mahogany and white surfaces. It would remind you of a coconut. I did the same here (walks towards screen). I designed the outside of it. I made it white, so it looks a little bit like pieces of coconut. A screen in a very important place called Salon de Protocolo El Laguito, the Protocol Room of El Laguito, inspired this. There is a huge screen that reminds me of this one, but it doesn’t have the alphabet. I added an alphabet because it was sort of an addiction of the Cold War.

KUPPER: Coding…

CASTILLO: Yeah, people really wanted to know these codes; there was lots of paranoia. (laughs) What are they saying? It became almost like art.

KUPPER: Would you consider there to be a Brutalist element to any of these pieces as well?

CASTILLO: You know when you’re dealing with this socialist element, Brutalism is always there. This (pointing to a caning piece with stars) reminds me of our monuments. This is pure Brutalism.

KUPPER: This is very symbolic.

CASTILLO: It represents a little bit of the revolution. I come from a country that had a lot of fun—a beautiful, turbulent country. Cuba was very rich in the beginning, but not after the revolution. I represent that as a circle. Simple, beautiful, perfect. It turns into a star, which is a very complex, geometric figure. At the same time, it reminds me of the back or the bottom of a chair.

KUPPER: What about the rifles?

CASTILLO: The whole exhibition evolves from more abstract work to the more committed, symbolic, and engaged with the later alternative reality. It’s easy for me to imagine that an artist or a designer could have made a poster creating optical art with rifles as a monument, as a creative item. It never happened, and I never saw it, so I made it.

KUPPER: Was it a military aesthetic?

CASTILLO: There was a moment of militarization. I had to start learning shooting when I was thirteen, and I got these preparations every year until I was eighteen.

KUPPER: You weren’t going to join the army?

CASTILLO: No, it was not for me. (laughs) I don’t even like weapons. It just fascinated me—the shape of the rifle when you buy it creates a completely different object; it turns into something else. This is an American gun. I think it’s the Springfield.

KUPPER: It’s a pretty common rifle.

CASTILLO: My grandfather had it. It’s the rifle I always saw when I was a child. He was a hunter. You know what we hunt in Cuba? Guinea chicken.

KUPPER: What’s a Guinea chicken?

CASTILLO: It’s a beautiful animal.

KUPPER: Not like a Guinea pig?

CASTILLO: No (laughs), it’s a chicken, but it’s so beautiful. It’s a very strange animal. It looks like it’s from a patisserie.

KUPPER: Interesting.

KUPPER: (gesturing towards the sculptures across the room) These definitely remind me of the Cold War shapes—space-age shapes.

CASTILLO: Totally, because all these amazing designs started in that era.

KUPPER: It was the beginning of these explorations with satellites and this idea of our future in space.

CASTILLO: The future would be space, the future would be socialist, the future would be capitalist, which there was a big doubt about—there was a fight about it.

The Decorator’s Home is on view through July 13 at UTA Artist Space 403 Foothill Rd. Beverly Hills, CA 90210

CATEGORIES: ART / CULTURE / MUSIC / FILM PROSE / DESIGN / FASHION

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interview and portraits by Summer Bowie

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interview by Summer Bowie

Interview By Agathe PinardPhotographs By Jeff Mclane Courtesy Of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

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text and interview by Adam Lehrerportrait by Kyle Dorosz

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Interview by Oliver KupperPortrait by Summer BowieInstall images courtesy of UTA Artist Space

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Photographs By Jeff Mclane Courtesy Of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

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photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

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portrait by Kyle Dorosz

Interview by Oliver Kupper
Portrait by Summer Bowie
Install images courtesy of UTA Artist Space