Read Our Interview of Gallerist Jonathan Carver Moore On His Exhibition With Zanele Muholi →

Sanibonani is a Zulu greeting used to welcome or address a group. The word crawls up the wall of the Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery, the title of the current show, featuring Zanele Muholi and various students from their art institute. In Jonathan Carver Moore’s SF Gallery, Sanibonani embodies pride: an unconditional, celebratory welcome. Self-portraits of Black, Queer, South African artists line the walls. Monochromatic San Francisco sun streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows that occupy one wall, matching the grays in the mostly black-and-white images, adding a cool cast to the large, bronze bust of Muholi. Moore’s Gallery is in the Tenderloin, a neighborhood in the world’s first Transgender District. The location makes sense: Moore has a clear passion for highlighting unheard voices and unseen perspectives, and since the gallery’s premier exhibition, The Weight of Souls, with artist Kacy Jung in March, his gallery has developed a reputation for doing just that. I sat down with Moore to talk about his experiences as the first Black, gay, man to own a gallery in the SF Bay Area, the intersection of marginalization and creativity, and the artists with whom he’s worked. Read more.

Read Our Interview Of Film Director Fiona Jane Burgess →

Fiona Jane Burgess, UK-based film director specializing in music videos, commercials, documentaries and fashion films, owes much of her career success to experiencing a number of challenges. Burgess found herself having to rethink her career path at 28, a time when she was also facing the realities of motherhood and the breakup of her band, Woman’s Hour. Fortunately, her natural flare as a director, which she exercised when shooting her own music videos, determined her career segue into film direction. Since delving into the film industry, Burgess has worked on diverse campaigns that span music videos, personal projects, working with the UK’s No.1 Baby Feeding brand, Tommee Tippee and some of fashion’s most recognised names, including Gucci and Burberry. Read more.

Read Our Interview With Papooz On The Occasion Of Their New Video Release

Capture d’écran 2020-07-08 à 18.17.17.png

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.

Read the full interview and ‘The Garden’ here.

Watch The Premiere Of ROMY's New Music Video: Normal Day Directed By Geneva Jacuzzi →

ROMY, known for her all-girl punk band, agender, and for throwing LA's esteemed queer parties, Homocult and Lez Croix releases "Normal Day" off the new record, Celluloid Self, directed by Geneva Jacuzzi with an all female crew. The video also features visuals from JJ Stratford, exploring themes of voyeurism, desire, and the paranormal. Watch the video and click here to read our interview with ROMY and Geneva Jacuzzi on the eve of the video's release.

Hybrid Forms: Read Our Interview Of Artist & Storyteller Christopher Myers →

Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort

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. Click here to read more.

Read Our Interview Of Chris Gentile Director Of Self Discovery For Social Survival On The Occasion Of The LA Premiere →

Surf Discovery for Social Survival is the surf/music feature film born from the collaboration of Chris Gentile from New York-based surf brand Pilgrim Surf + Supply and Keith Abrahmsson from the record label Mexican Summer. Together they started this ambitious project to connect surf, sound and sight and make a film that would satisfy most senses. World-renowned surfers including Stephanie Gilmore, Ryan Burch, Creed McTaggart and Ellis Ericson joined musicians Allah-Las, Peaking Lights, Connan Mockasin and MGMT ’s Andrew VanWyngarden on this surf journey starting from a secret spot in Mexico, to the southern atolls of the Maldive Islands, and ending in the cold waters of Iceland. Click here to read more.

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

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

Read Our Interview Of French 'Gaule Wave' Band Faire & See Them Play Live Tonight @ Madame Siam In Hollywood →

FAIRE are very serious about not taking themselves seriously. Their shows are infused with a raw improvisation that makes every performance a completely unique experience. They just play with the vibe given by the audience and then do their best to push the limits of that relationship. Read more here.

Read Our Interview With Filmmaker Danny Sangra On Working With Metallica For Brioni's New Campaign →

Metallica is a quintessential American band. However, there is nothing American about Brioni (an Italian menswear brand founded in Rome in 1945) and there is nothing American about its new creative director Justin O’Shea (a former womenswear buyer who hails from Toowoomba, Australia). So, its interesting and very bold that O’Shea would ask the heavy metal band if they would be the new face of Brioni, a stale brand that he hopes to reinvigorate with a bit of American cool and muscle car masculinity, mixed with Brioni’s lineage of tailored Italian gentlemanliness. Today – Independence Day – also happens to be the same day that O’Shea is showing the first collection under his direction during Paris Couture Week. Brioni has also released the first of a series of short films directed by a London-based filmmaker Danny Sangra. Most of the films star O’Shea as a caricature of himself, which Sangra has written to perfection. The character could be described as exigent, obtuse, out of touch, and self obsessed – everything that you may expect from someone so entrenched in the fashion world. In Brioni’s standout film – starring James, Lars, Kirk and Robert – O’Shea plays a ditz who has no idea who Metallic is. It’s silly and ridiculous, but fun and Sangra is too talented of a filmmaker to not pull it off. We got a chance to ask Sangra about the new Brioni campaign, collaborating with the brand’s new creative director and what the hell it was like to work with Metallica. Click here to read more. 

The War Back Home: Read Our Interview With Writer of James Franco's Memoria and Creative Polymath Nina Ljeti On Memory, Filmmaking and Ghosts →

Nina Ljeti is prolific. She is a writer, filmmaker, actress, and musician. Just a few of her many projects include: starring in films directed by and alongside James Franco; co-writing and co-directing the feature length film Memoria with Vladmir de Fontenay (which is out in theaters now); performing in her band, Nani; and shooting a biopic about Jerry Garcia. She has the creative output young artists have wet dreams about. But Nina Ljeti is prolific in another sense of the word. She is the daughter of Bosnian immigrants (who came to Canada at the start of the Bosnian Revolution) and a high school punk stoner; a film buff who loves Titanic and Coppola alike. Her richness isn't just in practice; it's in spirit and history as well. We got to ask Ljeti about memory, filmmaking, ghosts, and getting to play Patti Smith. Read it here.

Love Is Something Heavy: Read Our Interview With Multimedia Artist Sara Rahbar Before Her Presentation of New Work During the NADA Art Fair →

Sara Rahbar is an artist who bravely transverses borders and permeates boundaries. Though often labeled an “Iranian American artist” (her family fled Iran in 1982 during the beginning of the Revolution), she prefers to relocate herself in a collective humanity. Transcending genre, her work ranges from photography and paint to textiles and sculpture. Rahbar’s work reflects this permeability, combining seemingly antithetical ideas – American flags sewn together with traditional Persian fabrics, hearts made out of military backpacks – in a beautiful and generative juxtaposition. Click here to read more.