It was a sunny muggy morning, Aya Sekine, well recognized as most swinging, passionate and eclectic Jazz pianist in the region, brought us to her neighborhood, a quiet and hidden district just around the corner from the bustling Orchard Road, where an overnight closed-road runway has appeared most recently with over 150 models to showcase big fashion brands during a fashion festival. In March, Singapore was filled with cultural festivals.
One of the best annual music events in South East Asia, Mosaic Music Festival was also held at Esplanade- Theatres On The Bay, which is Singapore’s national performance arts venue and a non-profit organization. Aya has been invited since its very first year in 2005 and this year she lead her Straight Ahead Quartet including celebrated bassist Christy Smith. Under a slow electric fan, mixed languages spoken in the air as our morning BGM, we had a local Malaysian breakfast Mee Siam, spicy rice vermicelli in curry. Shortly after, in a cafe across the street, we were having a cup of delightfully brewed organic coffee and gluten/wheat-free pancakes with strawberries, bananas and organic raw honey with a scoop of vegan ice-cream.
“Singapore is literally Rojak [a traditional fruit and vegetable salad dish you mix and serve yourself.]” Aya gave us a wink slyly.
Born in Japan, Aya spent half of her childhood in Singapore. She moved to further her study of Jazz piano and improvisation at Berklee College of Music. After spending eight years in New York City, she returned to her second home Singapore with an invitation as the resident pianist of a popular Jazz club around that time. Since then, she has been generating a powerful magnetic field in the live music landscape of Singapore through her performances in various important venues such as INK Club Bar at Fairmont Hotel, Club L’Opera, bar at The Sultan Hotel and especially at Blu Jaz Café where she opened up their music scene through her music project Ayaschool since 2006.
“Blu Jaz Café was the very first place in Singapore where I found Janis Joplin played at that time. I popped in and met Aileen, the owner. After a short while, we had a little meeting and got good vibes immediately enough to go and buy a new drum set the very next day! That’s how it started.”
Aya insists to make a different selection of musicians each time. Even during the sessions, she is opened to welcome potential and motivated young talents. We often witnessed rather interesting mix of audience such as well dressed hotel guests, music lovers, young musicians even students with their instruments gathering all together, getting into the whole ambience, which would rarely happens in big cities these days.“Ayaschool is like an experimental cuisine, making something special out from whatever is in the fridge. So it could be mix of Jazz, Hip hop, Soul, Funk Rock, Brazilian music… We never know how it is going to be, sometimes a great success, sometimes a total disaster… like real life!”
“People tend to compare and complain that we’re rather short of music resources and talents etc… perhaps there’s something to that. But it’s totally nonsense if we start to compare the music scenes here and those in New York City for example. We’re now at the very stage of sowing seeds, nothing is established yet.” A sudden squall came and Aya was radiating her simple, humble, energetic spirit. “I don’t take it as immaturity. Rather ‘Yet’ is good because I believe it’s a great advantage, a great potential and freedom to let something born out of a very simple point.”
AYA SEKINE’S MUST-SEE-PLACES IN SINGAPORE
Real Food (cafe, grocer, books)
“Who are we? We are indie. Real Food is self-run by a team of passionate and stubborn individuals who believe we are what we eat.” 110 Killiney Road Singapore 239549 T: +65 67379516
Blu Jaz Cafe (cafe, live music)
11 Bali Lane Singapore 189848 Tel: +65 62923800
Mystic Masseur Hama-san (massage therapy)
The owner’s “Magic-Hands” never stop inspiring people to fly over from overseas only for the purpose of receiving his therapy based on Shiatsu. His treatments cannot be fixed in a certain sort of menu. Simple and spontaneous, he feels and sees through his clients emotions real time and figures out which body work is in need. #01-89 Lucky Plaza 304 Orchard Road Singapore 238863 Tel: +65 62355911
Ai Mitsuda – Graffiti on the wall by (c) Didier Jaba Mathieu 2012
Born in Antwerp, Belgium, designer Alexandra Verschueren rose to prominence when being awarded Le Grand Prix at Festival d’Hyères in 2010 for her innovative Medium-collection featuring garments of felted and starched wool treated to look like paper. Today, Alexandra’s work is less conceptual but more thought-provoking than ever.
You grew up in the city of The Antwerp Six and many other influential designers, how has that heritage affected you and your work? I started to be aware of it when I was 12 years old, in the 90’s, and I think it definitely influenced me in a way. It always felt kind of weird to have six such great designers, since Belgium is such a small country.
When you studied craftsmanship at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, did the Belgian design tradition have a great influence over your education? Walter Van Beirendonck (The Antwerp Six) was actually one of my teachers in the third year. But we were never allowed to look at other designers in that school, you never ever reference another designer. You’re supposed to find your own voice. In my final year I was working with paper and I had this idea to push garments flat, but my pattern-making teacher just said “Margiela has already done that”.
You were awarded Le Grand Prix at the Hyères festival in 2010, that must have been quite an experience. I’ll never forget that. I graduated in 2009, and I went to New York to work for Derek Lam and Proenza Schouler, but the transition from being in the school’s artistic bubble to being in the commercial reality of fashion in New York was hard, so for me Hyères made the transition smoother. It opened so many doors; suddenly everyone knows your name, even if it’s hard to pronounce (laughs). I even got two letters from the French minister of culture.
And what happened afterwards? I realized that my moment had come; it was the perfect timing to start the label. I still don’t feel completely ready, that’s why I do such small low-key collections. Many people think my work is simpler now, but there’s a more focused idea behind it. It’s about learning how to make a garment people will feel beautiful in. Very often fashion is all about image, making an impression. My collections are not about making disposable images, but to learn how to build a lasting one.
It sounds like you have a profound respect for the actual craftsmanship. Yes, I just want to take my time, and show my respect for the métier. We once had a workshop with Dries Van Noten. He told us that his grandfather had this shop where he turned suits inside out for people. When they were worn out, he just turned them, rebuilt them, and they were like new again. That struck me as something that’s now fading away, but for me it’s very important to understand how a garment is constructed.
How has your working technique evolved since you began designing? The trial process has become important, sometimes I just change a whole garment. Some I’ve redone like 5 or 6 times. I used to be very stuck with ideas of how I wanted it; I thought I was very consequent. Before it was more about the concept, since no one would actually wear the garment anyway. But when I started making wearable clothing I became more free. Now when something’s not working, I try to solve it. It’s more about the process.
How would you describe your current idiom and design? I’m 24, so there’s still a lot to learn and I’m still figuring things out. The quality is very important for me. The sweatshirt fabric I used for my current collection is made with a machine that goes 10 times slower than a mass-production one, there’s no tension on the thread so the shirt stays softer for a much longer time. I like boyish things. In school when I was drawing collections people used to say, “Oh, you’re making a men’s collection…”
What’s behind your universe, what inspires you to create? Words sometimes inspire me, maybe because my parents are linguists. The last collection was called “Shift”. For me, it was a very important word at the time, because it was about a transition, and I had a lot of overlapping details in my clothes. So it was about overlapping and shifting from one thing to another and evolving. I can be inspired by a detail I see on a garment, but never by a designer.
What are your goals for the near future? I hope I can expand the collection, to sell enough to survive. If a job opportunity appeared, I wouldn’t turn it down. I just want to be able to have a nice presentation of my clothes, and I’d be happy to see more people wearing them. I’d love to be based in Paris. I love New York as well, but I’m too European to live in The States, I feel too unpolished.
Independent bookstores are few and far between these days, with online retailers like eBay and Amazon selling canonized works directly to your doorstep for a fraction of the price. So what makes them tick, and how do they manage to stick around? We sat down with Christine Onorati, the founder of WORD, the immensely popular and influential cultural epicenter in Greenpoint, to find out why. We discussed the increasingly diverse role independent retailers have to play in an era when your favorite magazine, op-ed, or piece of literature is just a click away.
WORD opened in March of 2007. How did it begin? I had a bookstore before in Long Island. I closed it and I moved here. It was a little bit smaller used book store called the BOUNDRY bookshop. But the real reason is because we live here. We love it here. My husband and I moved to the neighborhood in 2006, and we moved the store here in 2007. It didn’t come out of nowhere. We had a store, but we just wanted to move it to Brooklyn, where people actually like bookstores. [Laughs]
WORD is nearly as much of a venue as it is a bookshop, and hosts a variety of events atypical for a bookstore. You don’t have all that many traditional readings. How do you go about booking events? [We] brainstorm what we think will be a good event. Our philosophy is that there are so many events happening at any given time in New York City that we always try to make them be a little special. Maybe it’s a conversation, maybe it’s a party, maybe it’s the author being interviewed by somebody interesting. We try to stay away from straightforward, single authors standing on stage and reading fiction.
How do you manage to stay viable with online retailers, such as Amazon, that offer books at a fraction of the price? That’s a good thought―that we do stay viable. [Laughs] It’s hard. We always say we don’t look at Amazon as our competition because we can’t compete with Amazon. They sell books cheaper than what we buy them for. I hate bashing Amazon too much, but they don’t care about books. They use books to get people onto their website to buy other things. Because they sell them as loss leaders, they don’t have any interest in the world of books, so if people are just looking at price, it’s very hard. Books are sold everywhere, and people can get books very easily in many different places. It’s not enough to just have a place where you put books on the shelf―you really have to be a place where you want people to feel a part of it, more of a community of people who like the same stuff.
And WORD curbs to their tastes a little bit more. Yeah, and it takes a while to build that relationship. We’ve been here for five years and we’ve been doing a pretty good job. We want to be a place where the neighborhood wants to come and feel comfortable. We never judge people. We’re happy to order anything. That’s the difference―people want to come here and be part of something. They want to really be part of it. And we want to make people feel very included in the store, as opposed to just ordering something online.
In addition to a successful bookstore, WORD has over the years become a popular community center for people with common interests and desires, literary and otherwise. Was this always your intention? Like I said, you can buy books anywhere, so I really feel like if a neighborhood can’t support a bookstore it really can’t exist. I don’t really look too much for people from a million different towns to come and support us. It ultimately has to be a Greenpoint store. This is where we are, and I think we’ve found a place where people like us. I think we have to be a reflection of the community. The customers are a part of the store, they can come here and ask for anything they need, get their gifts here. I never want to be a kind of book store that makes people feel like they’re not cool enough to shop here.
What are your plans for the future? To keep doing what we’re doing. I have no idea what the future of bookstores will be. It’s really bleak. All I know is that we are growing slowly every year, people like buying books here. I don’t really see a future where people are going to stop wanting books, but some people say that’s the case, and if that’s the case, I guess we won’t be around forever. I just don’t ever see books dying here. People like books too much to give them up.
We met Andrea Pompilio, the forward-looking fashion designer who – after having worked for Prada, YSL and Calvin Klein – founded his new independent line called “A”. We asked four well-chosen questions to this one of the most creative talents of the Italian fashion panorama, who is able to mix traditional textiles, style and tailoring along with “crazy” colours and shapes.
With an open and friendly chat, we entered the vibrant world of Pompilio, which came forward first during the designer’s childhood: “When I was very very young my grandmother had a couple of boutiques in Pesaro and I used to spend most of my time there, playing among clothes and fabrics with my cousins. I loved that, and since I was 8 years old it was clear for me that I wanted to be a fashion designer”.
Interview Monica Lombardi – Video Renzo O. Angelillo
Last week we introduced you to the brilliant and controversial Zefrey Throwell and his Ocularpation: Wall Street. Today we present Lane Koivu’s interview of the provocative artist and master of this “Freudian nightmare.”
When did you start pursuing art as a way of life? I was 19. I was mostly into punk rock—loud noisy music. I was in a couple of bands. We weren’t very good. We were very loud though. [Laughs] I had a girlfriend at the time who was a painter. And I remember going over to her garage and she was painting, and I was drunk. And I was giving her shit about what she was painting. I was like, “I could do better than that!” And I remember I picked up an old toilet seat cover that was laying around in her garage, grabbed some of her paint brushes, and started messing around on it. And it was amazing. I totally loved it.
How’d the idea of Ocularpation: Wall Street get cooked up, and why did it happen when it did? I’m interested in why all of these factors came together down on Wall Street, three years after the crash. The idea came up because my mother was a high school counselor for thirty years—a public servant. She was working hard, putting her money away. She really saved a lot, and then retired. It’s the classic American ideal: work hard, put the money away because nobody is going to take care of you, you take care of yourself, and you’ll be able to enjoy your golden years in Florida, or wherever the hell you want.
So she does this, she follows the law, and was retired for three days when the market crashes and she loses the majority of her life savings. Within a day and a half. It was a massive bleeding. She was stunned at first, then depressed, then really depressed and sad. Not only did she lose all of this money, but she was going to have to come out of retirement. And by this time the place she’d left didn’t want to hire her back, because she’s old, already in her 60s. And other places aren’t looking to hire public counselors in their 60s—they’re looking to hire young people that get paid half as much. So she had a hell of a time getting a job for years. Nobody wanted to hire her, she’d get more and more depressed and would cry over the phone. Which you know, if you’ve ever heard your mother crying over the phone, it’s fucking horrible. Especially when there’s nothing you can do.
So I came up with this project as a way to really re-focus media attention on Wall Street and what was happening down there. It’s hard to imagine now, but before Occupy moved in, and before my performance, no one was talking about Wall Street, right?
Right. Right. And in fact the week before I did this performance, the NY Times wrote an article called “Wall Street’s Got it’s Swagger Back.” It was all about how bonuses were bigger than ever down on Wall Street—bigger than before the crash—and my mother would see things like this and it would driver her insane, because all of her money was gone. It’d been siphoned into this giant money machine. So it was in the context of this massive inequality that was happening that I came up with the project. I wanted to refocus a lot of attention on Wall Street. And it worked like crazy.
It was the most successful piece you’ve ever done? As far as media attention, absolutely. I mean, six months later NY1 is interviewing me, you know? It’s going to be on the news in a couple of days. Still! And it happened back in August.
Do you think the Occupy movement would have happened without Ocularpation? I really can’t say. The interactions I’ve had with people down at Occupy are normal people like you and me. For a large group of strangers in New York—where we tend to talk more about rampant consumerism in our day-to-day lives—to be talking about how they can reshape the government, it’s fucking great.
Tell me about “I’ll Raise You One…” that you did last November at 79 Walker Street. That was a seven day performance. By contrast, Ocularpation was five minutes. This was seven days and we were in there nine hours a day. We were trying to explore different economic models, but to do it in a way that wasn’t stale and boring. Because when we talk about economics, especially in the US, it’s with techniques that have been used since the 60s or before: sit-ins, massive protests, stuff like that. The formats tend to lose their edge because they’re old. And I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in catching people’s attention in a fresh way. So in that brief window when you actually get someone’s attention you can bring your point home, let it germinate, and then it can take on a life of its own.
Through the shock value of nudity? Nudity, or through games like strip poker, where people might think, “Oh, I remember playing that as a teenager.” So we set up a table and had different participants rotating each day. We tried out five different economic models. The first one was capitalism—unregulated wealth, free market. People showed up with however many layers they wanted to bring, which is kind of how life is. People have different amounts of money but have to play by the same rules.
Except people don’t get to choose how much money they start out with in real life. Right, but here people were given simple instructions: Just wear clothes. One guy showed up with like 100 layers on. He had trouble breathing. We had to take some clothes off for him. There was like six inches worth of teachers. And then other people showed up in only a sweater.
You talked about the shock value of using nudity as a means to get people’s attention. Now that you’ve garnered so much publicity for doing these flash projects, are you weary or afraid of being pegged as “the nude artist”? Yes. It already is very much that people have pigeonholed me. You do something a couple of times—not to mention the fact that I’ve done many, many other projects in the meantime. I’ve made a feature-length movie, I’ve done the Midtown games where we had 100 people running a 250-meter relay race in Times Square, everybody with their clothes on. Because people have already associated me with nudity, they try to peg me as a “naked artist”.
How do you feel about that? [Laughs] Well I’m definitely not doing any nudity for a while.
What about your new project? Can you talk about that a bit? It’s called “Entropy Symphony Movement III Los Angeles”. It’s the third part of a continuing symphony I’ve done. And it’s going to be 1,000 car horn symphony in LA played all across the city. Not all bunched together. Some in the south, some in Venice, some in Silver Lake—they’re all over the place. Beeping out a five part symphony. I have big list of all the different horn sounds, and if you have a certain car model you’ll get a certain sound. And from 6pm to 6:05 they’ll get an MP3 with their part on it, and then play along with their horns. Ba bap bap baaa! Unlike most projects, no one can experience this at all until afterwards. It’s what I call “a Fireside Method”, where everyone comes around the campfire and tells the story. And that way it creates the whole.
“The Fireside Method” was also used for Ocuparlation. Everyone had a different take—especially the three people who got arrested. Sure, those guys in particular. Because inside there are some of the largest criminals that have ever walked the earth. Economic thievery of the kind that we have never seen before. The kind that has crushed worlds. Entire nations have been destroyed by what happens in that building. And then three kids take their clothes off in front of it and get arrested while everyone inside gets off scot-free…
There’s the obvious irony, but you seem to look at it with this hilarious, absurd perspective. Not cheeky, but most of your projects take on heavy subjects with a sense of playfulness, almost an innocent rebelliousness to them. And they walk a find line between authority and rebellion. Thank you. My favorite artist is Andy Kaufman. That’s who I try to emulate. His most famous thing was probably…wrestling with women, maybe? Maybe lip-syncing Mighty Mouse? [Laughter]
How important is a sense of humor for you? I try it with everything. If you think of any arty events—museums, galleries, what have you—they’re almost always devoid of humor. And if there’s humor, it’s insular academic humor that’s just so nauseating.
That reminds me of another project of yours, “New York Paints Better Than Me,” which I thought was hilarious. Was that your aim? [Laughs] I got to this point where I was having a real problem painting. I’d painted for years, and it just really seemed to bottom out on me. It just seemed that the things I was making weren’t very good. And then I was walking around one day and I realized that New York is the most diverse city in the world, filled with enclaves of culture, also must have the most diverse trash in the world. So this trash lying everywhere, that’s the most diverse palette in the world. I couldn’t mix those colors up, you know—these colors don’t run! [Laughs]
But if you look out there it’s all piss, it’s all shit, cigarette ash, slurpee, chicken bones. All over. Human skin dust. Everywhere. So this idea of dragging myself as a way to take a swab sample of the free public parks. I’ve only done two so far, and then I kind of hurt my shoulder, which is slowing me down. It’s a continuing project.
I saw a video of you crawling through Washington Square Park and couldn’t help but imagine what these poor pedestrians were thinking! Well the public is very savvy. It’s something I forget, something I think people often discount. The public really knows what the fuck is going on. At first a few people will be like, “Hey buddy, get up! What the fuck are you doing!” And then after a second, “Oh, uh oh, this is some kind of art thing! We’re probably on YouTube right now.” But overall it’s pretty hilarious. I had this one guy who had his dog run on me. That was funny. It’s not ok if I’m standing up, but if I’m laying down the dog can run on me.
What’s the suit look like afterwards? After Union Square it was almost black. Times Square is next, and I think that might be a little dirtier.
How important is that unfiltered public reaction to your work? Well I appreciate the idea that art can be more engaging than what museums and galleries have right now. We’re in a gallery in Chelsea—we’re in the heart of the art world; people from all over the world come to see contemporary art right here. Granted, we’re in a smaller gallery now, but across the street is the second largest gallery in the world. They’ve seen maybe 100 people in the last couple of hours. If you do a project in Union Square there’s thousands of people within minutes.
And they’re not part of that world, either. Right. They’re participating in something. It feels alive to them.
You referenced a John Cage quote that seems to run a fine thread through all of your work: “Comfort is not your friend.” And one of your more recent projects, “Take All of Me, New York,” embodies that completely. Tell me about it. Yeah, I moved every month for a year. To a different neighborhood in a different borough each month.
What were some of the more interesting places you’ve lived in? I lived with a prostitute in Hunt’s Point. I lived on a boat in Sheepshead Bay. I lived with an old, old man in deep Queens who was a total shut-in. He goes to Dunkin’ Donuts once a day. I lived with a Chinese family in Chinatown. They barely spoke any English and certainly didn’t give a flying fuck what kind of project I was doing. They just wanted a check.
Have you ever found yourself in danger? Other than in jail?
It seems like going to jail would be considered a success! Well, if I’m on point then I’m probably running into the law.
You’re very good at getting people to pay attention. But do you ever worry that these tactics get in the way of whatever it is you’re trying to convey? I don’t know. As I said before, I think people are very intuitive and really do know what the deal is. Sure, there are some creeps, [especially with the “I’ll Raise You One…” nude poker piece.] But most people are very excited, stop to take pictures, ask what the deal is.
The craziest part was this man named Corey who would hang out everyday. And at first he was kind of a lurker. But a couple days into it he really took ownership in the project and would explain to people who were seeing the show for the first time. If somebody would start tapping on the window he’d step in and say, “None of that, it’s an art project!” Random man on the street claiming ownership. It was great.
Despite the raw winter weather in Scandinavia, the soulful compositions by Stockholm based guitar player Jimmy Wahlsteen make you feel anything but cold. With his sights zeroed in on acoustic, he delivers evocative and innovative tracks that make us – normally lovers of lyrics – forget that there aren’t any, and soaks us up in the sound!
We caught up with Jimmy at the beginning of the new year to talk about his second album All Time High, the recording process, his relationship to fashion and also found out he has his sights set on a Grammy…
First of all; Happy New Year! Any New Year resolutions? Happy New Year to you too! My only new year resolution is to get back in shape. I haven’t had any time to go to the gym continuously for a while now and I really miss the old me when I see myself in the mirror.
You recently released your second album. Have you done anything differently this time around? This time I had every song finished before I started recording. I wanted to try everything live before I went into the recording process so I could choose the songs that got the best response from my listeners.
I also moved my studio to my country house where I did most of the acoustic guitar recordings. I then finalized the songs with some new co-producers back in Stockholm. I used the same mixing and mastering people as I did on 181st songs (Jimmy’s first album, editors note) though. It sounds just like I wanted it.
You’re using a playing style called hybrid picking, which means you’re using both a plectrum and fingers in the same time. What does it do for your sound?
The hybrid picking technique enables a very fluid way of playing. It effects my sound in terms of song writing and allows me to bring in some of the rock elements that influenced me a lot when I started playing guitar. It’s not really a deliberate choice to play the way I do. It’s just how I always did it and what brings out the best of my abilities.
Do you ever find it challenging to create music that captures the listener without any lyrics?
Song writing is always challenging and I take it extremely seriously. I wouldn’t say it’s more difficult because it’s instrumental, though. It’s always the matter of catching the listeners ear and do what you do best. If I would have been a lyricist I probably wouldn’t have bothered writing instrumental music. I just focus on what I do best.
You’re one of Sweden’s most booked guitarists and been appearing both on television and on tour with international artists. What’s the biggest difference in touring as an instrumental artist as opposed to with a band?
The differences are quite huge I would say. Being alone on stage is much more demanding and I find it very inspiring. I got to a point in my career where I stopped practicing and played it safe when I toured with artists. Now I practice for hours before every solo show and it has had a very positive effect on the work I do as a session player as well. To communicate directly with the audience is a wonderful experience but it’s also challenging and I realize the enormous press the artists I used to tour with have been under. I’m enjoying music and performing more than ever.
Your ultimate, dream gig?
I always set up new goals. It’s very important to keep developing as a musician. I think I reached my dream gig in November 2011 when I performed before a sold out La Cigale in Paris. Now I need to come up with a new goal. The Grammy Awards perhaps…
When do you feel the most inspired? Can you sit down and decide “today I’m gonna write a song” or is your creative process a bit more erratic?
I’d say it’s pretty random. In hotel rooms I usually manage to combine time and inspiration so that’s where most of my ideas pop up. Very few of the riffs I write makes it to the actual recording session but once I come up with stuff I really like I tend to sit with it for hours just to get it perfect.
You have a YouTube channel (which been awarded the “Most viewed award” by YouTube back in 2009!), a Twitter account and a Facebook page. What are your thoughts on the current social media trend?
I really appreciate that all artists today get the opportunity to be heard. Money isn’t all that counts when it comes to marketing nowadays. It’s more about being devoted to your sound and to be creative enough to attract listeners. YouTube has played a huge role in getting me where I am today.
You’re from Stockholm, the home of many prominent, contemporary designers. How is your relation to fashion?
Stockholm is a good place for shopping if you don’t look at the prices. I used to be pretty thorough about what brands I wore but at the moment I find it more fun to find stuff here and there on the few shopping rounds I do. I try to keep an eye open for cool things to wear and lately it’s been a lot of cardigans and scarfs.
Which was the first song you ever learned to play? Is there any song from your younger years that helped shape your style today?
First song I learned really well on an acoustic was the classic “Streets of London”. One song that really shaped my way of composing is “Feelin’ Groovy” by Simon & Garfunkel. Everything Paul Simon does is just great.
Thank you for your time, Jimmy!
It’s been a pleasure.
Lisa Olsson Hjerpe – Image courtesy of Jimmy Wahlsteen & Candyrat Records
Eva Howitz and Frieder Weissbach are the inventive and intriguing fashion designers, who founded – together with their manager, Marcus Pester – Howitzweissbach, the young German label established in Leipzig.
Both the Howitzweissbach creative thinkers are strongly convinced of the importance of being able to go behind the garments, following all the production steps and grasping their ‘soul’. There is always a story, a concept behind their collections. Howitz and Weissbach’s unconventional and unique approach comes from a mix of regional traditions – all the products are realised in the Saxony area – and takes its inspiration mainly from art. Howitzweissbach pieces of clothing are based on quality and paid attention to details like the choice of patterns and fabrics or the use of French sewing, to give suits a pure and clean look, inside and out.
The brand doesn’t follow the trends and keeps aside the fashion industry to create its own style, recognizable thanks to an artistic and unusual taste, which communicates the founders’ values. The designers’ love for fashion and proximity to their audience made them feel the need of building up a second, affordable line named Freund (Friend), which “is not for everybody, it’s especially for friends”. Joining the online project Make your mess – the first experimental move of Howitzweissbach Freund online shop – people can buy a plain white piece and take part in a performance during which it will be splashed with colours. The result will be a one-of-a-kind item that reminds the works by the German contemporary artist Katharina Grosse, one of the members of the ‘Howitzweissbach own cosmos’.
Bouke de Vries had an extended stay in Milan recently while he exhibited in a solo show, Signs (Metamorphsis) at the always on the vanguard Maria Gloria Gallery. De Vries is an artist polymath, his career shifting across mediums and his work always remaining devoid of compromise. His trajectory has taken him from restoration of art to the spotlight of the pop culture art scene, commercial art, jewelry (he released a line in collaboration with Anoushka earlier this year) and on to political activism. His most memorable works are perhaps those which openly criticize chairman Mao Zedong, and . His pieces look like otherworldly pastiches of a hedonistic, ethereal dreamscape, and they showcase flaw to great effect.
“In this flawed world, perfection seems to be an attainable goal… But not-quite-perfection is often easily dismissed and discarded…”
For the occasion of his stay, 2DM’s Matteo Cherubino filmed and interviewed the artist among the eerie, surreal backdrop of his recent sculptural work: surreal cross sections and self-contained worlds of a parallel universe. Or a Cherubs. Butteflies. Cigarettes. Dramatically combined with porcelain. In conversation, the artist reveals inner working of the artist’s mind, his depth of perception, and his extraordinary and unbound working process.
De Vries also presented together with Gloria Maria Gallery at this year’s MiArt, showed at Artissima this year, and often exhibits at his home gallery, London’s Vegas Gallery.
Tag Christof – special thanks to Bouke de Vires & Gloria Maria Gallery
Sam Green is a San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker best known as the man behind The Weather Underground, a widely acclaimed documentary that chronicled the rise, fall, and aftermath of the controversial and highly influential 1970s American anti-war group of the same name. Released in the aftermath of 9/11, the honest portrait resonated with the widespread sentiment of the time, and Green’s film eventually earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 2004.
Through his films Green often displays a fascination with individual characters testing their hard-pressed ideals against inconceivable realities. His 1997 feature-length debut, The Rainbow Man/John 3:16, detailed the downfall of Rollen Stewart, a man who became a nationally known figure in the 1970s simply by appearing in front of cameras at sporting events wearing a rainbow-colored wig. Stewart’s obsession with fame and companionship eventually leads him spiraling into radical religion and isolation, and, in the end, jail. Green’s most recent full-length, Utopia in Four Movements, was a live performance film that used four off-kilter stories from the 20th century to examine the state of hope and optimism and, more importantly, what becomes of it once it meets reality.
We recently spoke with Green, who also teaches part time at the University of San Francisco and the San Francisco Art Institute, about The Universal Language, his new short film chronicling the origins of Esperanto and the surprisingly vibrant worldwide culture that continues to speak it today.
The Weather Underground Documentary by Sam Green
Hello, Sam. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can hear you ok. How are you?
Good. I want to thank you for doing the interview. Sorry to catch you on your way out the door this morning. No, no, no it’s fine. I’m shooting a little film about fog in San Francisco, and what it means is I have to be ready to shoot at any time, and this morning the fog rolled in really thick and I had to go out and do it.
You’re shooting a film about fog? Yeah. It sounds like a short about the weather—the quintessential boring subject, but…I don’t know if you’ve been to San Francisco, but there’s amazing fog here—that’s sort of one of the things that’s at the heart of San Francisco’s identity. You know, fog and foghorns—a truly beautiful phenomenon. It’s just a short film about that.
I’ve been threw there a handful of times. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, on the Kitsap Peninsula, and used to travel through San Francisco as a kid. Tell me about your new film, The Universal Language. What was your initial inspiration? I always sort of knew about Esperanto, and I imagined this idea of a universal language, how everybody speaking the same language would somehow bring about peace. I always thought it was something that was created in the 1950s, kind of a science fiction thing. And then a couple years ago I came across something about Esperanto that said it had been created by a guy in the late 1800s—a Polish guy. And I was really surprised because I didn’t know it was that old of a thing. So then I was curious and I started to read about Esperanto, and I really like the combination of the story and idealism. It’s such a good idea.
But it’s a good idea running up against the reality of a culture. You know, it’s hard to get people to learn the new language, so in some ways it’s a bad idea. And I’ve always sort of liked that sort of intersection or collision between idealism and the constraints of who we are. Also, I liked it because it’s hard to be hopeful these days. And somehow Esperanto—I mean even the very name means ‘one who hopes’—is all about hope, and I like that. That’s what got me going on the project.
This practical approach to bridging long-standing cultural gaps. Yeah, it’s a cool idea. If only it could work.
Exactly. Esperanto people say it does work. There is this pretty vibrant movement of people who speak it. There’s people whose families have spoken it for several generations. Native speakers. For them it does work. They’re not waiting for some utopian movement where everybody learns it. They use it and they communicate with people from all over the world. From their perspective it works.
Was that something that surprised you when you started to get into the production of the film? Did you think the community would be larger, or more miniscule, than it actually was? Yeah, I was surprised, and I think that most people I described the project to are surprised that there still are a lot of people who speak Esperanto. Every summer there’s a World Esperanto Congress and it happens in a different city each year. One was in Florence, Italy, and I once went to one in Yokohama, Japan. Lots of Esperanto speakers from all over the world show up. Because for them the real heart of the experience is talking to other people. There’d be like 3,000 people there from all over the world, which completely surprised me. I was surprised that there still is this movement, but they think it works.
Why do you think that is? Because they’re not framing in terms of having a political agenda? I think there’s two parts to this. One is that speaking the language allows you to talk to people from other countries and other cultures. But I think deep down they do have a political agenda that the world could be more peaceful, that people communicating is good, and allows you to see other people as human beings. It’s political in a subtle way. I think all of them deep down do it out of some idealism. It sort of comes out of a political impulse.
You previously dealt with Esperanto as a movement in your previous film, Utopia. I’m assuming the short film grew out of that. That was more about the idea of utopia—looking at Esperanto as this utopian phenomena. The Universal Language is more of a portrait of the language and the people who speak it. Not necessarily about utopia.
I’m interested in learning about the reasons you chose the examples you did for Utopia. Can you elaborate on that a bit? I wanted to make a film about why we today don’t think a lot about the future. We don’t’ have a lot of imagination about the future or dreams about the future. I think today people feel like the future is kind of just be a worse version of the present. So I was trying to make a movie that sort of mulled that over, but I didn’t want to make a movie that was like a boring PBS documentary where you interview an expert or anything like that. I wanted to do something more poetic, something that elicited more of an emotional response. I had this idea of doing different stories that all evoked the idea of utopia in one way or another, some more directly than others. The part about Esperanto is pretty clearly this utopian project: it sort of works, sort of doesn’t. Then there’s another section about the world’s largest shopping mall. That’s sort of like a capitalist utopia where we all shop and consume all we want. That’s a different kind of utopia—all of these things I hoped fit together in a weird way. The sum of their parts create this set of ideas and feelings about utopia and the utopian impulse. So they’re all something that I just really liked. I come across things and I feel them. I read something about it, or I get a little smitten with the subject. That’s what usually leads to me making a movie about something.
You said in an interview a few years back that you were actively trying to make a more positive movie. Was the utopia project your attempt at giving a positive spin on situations that might be largely perceived as tragic, or at the very least failures? That’s a good question. I sometimes feel as if I make the same movie over and over again. I think everybody who makes movies or writes books, in some ways you’re doing the same thing over and over again. A lot of the movies I’ve made have been about people with big dreams that somehow—things don’t turn out the way they want them to, necessarily. And so I’ve always been trying to do something different to make a movie about total success. Like, ‘God, I have to make a movie about P. Diddy.’ Or ‘I gotta make a movie about Justin Bieber.’
(Laughter) I don’t know if Justin Beiber’s story is going to turn out so well. He may only have a couple of years left. I know, that’s the thing! But it’s got that richness that failure has. It’s sort of even just a joke with myself. Like, ‘god dammit. I have to stop making these failure movies and make a movie that’s about absolute, total success.’ I’m still working on that one.
But like you said, your films are kind of drawn to marginal events and characters involved in them who went for broke. Your first big film was about the rainbow man. There was a preacher I saw years after that happened—I don’t know if this was in your film or not—who saw what the rainbow man did as a huge success. It reminded me of the worldview you present in your films, of finding a glimmer of hope among these ruins. It’s funny; there’s different ways of seeing it. I’m sure there’s some people, or he maybe, may think of it as success. Who knows. Also with a group like the Weather Underground, that’s a complicated thing, and some people say, ‘God, they were total failures.’ But it’s complicated and you never know. The world works in this way of sort of ripples. You never know what the reverberations will be. Something that could be a failure might inspire somebody in vigor to do something else that turns out to be a big success. You can never say 100% ‘That was a failure, that was a success,’ because over time things change. The Weather Underground was certainly a complex thing. In some ways it was a failure, but in some ways just as a project, or a gesture, it was a success. I mean it certainly has inspired people, and that movie resonated with people in a complicated way.
I saw that film while a student at Western Washington University. When you were making that film in the late 90s, did you imagine it ever reaching such a broad audience? Not really. I started it in the late 90s, and the late 90s were such a light time if you look back. The most heavy duty thing that was in the media was Chandra Levy, or the impeachment. At that point the Weather Underground’s story was noteworthy in how radically different it was from the tenor of the times. Like, ‘Oh man, that ancient chapter in history when people were actually protesting something?’ Sure, there was like Seattle [the WTO riots] and stuff, but for the most part it was just a kind of light time. With 9/11 it obviously changed that. I was editing right when 9/11 happened. It changed the context of the movie. You always see something in a context and you connect it to what’s going on in the world at that moment. So it forced me to change in small ways the movie I was making. It also changed how people saw it. It made it much more overtly relevant, and in that sense it got a much wider audience than I had originally thought it would.
In what ways did the film move away from your original intentions? There were some funny, sort or humorous things we had in the movie before 9/11 happened. And afterwards there was much less room to joke. For example, the Weather Underground had this song book. They would take pop songs and change the words and sing them. And they’re really mean: they made up funny, mean songs. Because they were like psyching themselves up to do this shit; they had a little bit of a twisted sensibility. So they’d make up these funny, mean songs, and before 9/11 I had included some of these songs in the rough edit. They were just funny, and sort of ironic, mean humor. Afterwards you couldn’t joke like that. I mean, it was such a serious topic, that to joke was not cool. So that stuff came out.
So what are your plans for The Universal Language? I just finished it and I sort of started off by saying, ‘I want to make a movie that can be distributed all over the world.’ Or, ‘I want to make a movie I can show in Africa.’ I’ve got to make it so that people can understand it. Esperanto speakers everywhere can understand it, but I started to get it translated into other languages, and people in the Esperanto world helped me out. Somebody said, ‘I’ll help you translate this,’ and he sent out a message to all Esperanto speakers. Then these people started translating it. So I got it translated into 19 different languages and I made a DVD with all of these subtitles tracks on it. It’s 19—the world’s record for most languages translated in the DVD. So I’m starting to distribute that, and I think it’s a cool moment in filmmaking where you can really get a movie out really widely—through the internet, through social media. Also, you can download and stream from your own website. Which, in some ways for filmmakers is like the holy grail, because we’ve always had to go through a distribution fee, or TV, or all of these gatekeepers. Again, it’s this weird moment where technology has made it so that you can really powerfully distribute things. I’m gearing up to make a big push to get this film out to all over the world, which I’m excited about. It’s an experiment for me to see what’s possible these days, in terms of distribution. Some filmmakers finish a movie and say, ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with this, I’m on to the next film.’ And I’m somebody who really cares about distribution and getting something out there. I enjoy working on that. I like making films that I also like promoting them and getting them out in the world. So I’m going to spend a little time and energy doing that while I’m starting some new stuff.
That kind of goes against what you did for your last project, where you seemed more concerned about engaging the audience in a very specific way. It almost seemed as if you were wary of the internet and the nonchalant way it allows people to engage with media. What were your intentions with Utopia, where you literally had to show up to the theatre to experience the film, Vs The Universal Language, where you’re trying to get it distributed as widely as possible? That’s a great question. My response would be that different projects lend themselves to different forms of distribution. With Utopia, to me that was a serious film about a serious subject. Who we our today, our relationship with the future—hope, idealism, stuff like that. Those were heavy topics and required some thought, so I wanted to make something and create a form that would hopefully really maximize the attention that people would give to that. For that project live form actually seemed fitting—the only way could see it would be in a context that would hopefully get you to think about it. A theatre is perfect for that because you leave all of your normal day-to-day shit at the door and lose yourself in this theatrical experience. In some ways that’s the best form for living that experience. But with The Universal Language I’m much more interested in a lot of people seeing the movie. So a much more fitting form of distribution is having DVDs all over the place, downloads, and streaming—these very immediate ways people can see it, you know. I’m not judgmental about distribution; I feel like different kinds of films lend themselves to different kinds of distribution.
In a previous interview you said, “As a filmmaker you’re going to have to accept the fact that somebody might be watching your movie while checking their email,” or something along those lines. But you’re also acutely aware of how the internet has leveled the mainstream media’s influence and become a great regulator of resources, where people get to naturally vote what they watch. How do you balance these two opposing forces? Well, the internet is such a complex phenomenon. There’s a lot that’s good to it, and a lot that in my opinion is not. But I am not a Luddite. I am critical of it in some ways, but anytime I go onto Wikipedia, or YouTube, or Flickr—those are such fantastic things. I do so much research on Flickr and YouTube. I love them. Those are powerful, powerful, powerful things and nothing like that has ever existed. At the same time there is a lot that I’m critical of. Like the fact that people are watching things in a much more disposable way. There’s so many movies now, and you just watch things with a lot less patience, with a lot less attention. It’s inevitable. I did this thing a couple of years ago when digital music was becoming new and a friend of mine had a drive with 5,000 songs on it, and I copied them all. And I was so excited to learn about all of these bands I’d heard about but never listened to, and I found myself going through the drive, and I’d give each song five seconds. I’d play it for five seconds, and if I didn’t like it I’d throw it away. And I realized, ‘Damn, when there’s so much out there, you can approach it with less patience.’ It’s so great to be able to get music easily, but at the same time there’s a downside to that, which is that we pay less attention, and we’re less patient. Having to pay attention is important. I’m not gonna say that it’s all good, or it’s all bad.
I’ve found similarities with that. With my job I end up reviewing a lot of albums, and obviously you can get anything for free these days. I find that, at least for me, if I don’t pay for an album, I don’t enjoy it as much. It’s true! And I think that’s a super-important idea, and that’s definitely something I’d keep in mind. That if people don’t pay even a little for something it’s pretty meaningless at this point.
I also wanted to ask: As a teacher, do you think people—and especially our younger generation—these days are more pessimistic, or at least more influenced by negatives, than previous generations? I don’t know. I mean, I’m older myself, so it’s a little hard for me to talk about younger people. But I think the world is a lot scarier than it has been, and is a lot scarier on a lot of fronts: Environmentally, politically, and economically. My heart goes out to young people who are just getting out in the world now, because it’s a tough time. It’s hard to be idealistic when you’re worried about how you can afford not to live at your parents house. So, it’s touch. You’ve got to take care of basic things first, like how you’re gonna live, how you’re gonna support yourself. Then you can move on to other things like making the world a better place and all that. I think people will have very immediate concerns maybe 10 or 20 years ago people didn’t have. That’s a burden. That’s tough. But you deal with the world you get. When you come of age in your early 20s at a certain moment, that’s your moment. You’ve gotta deal with it.
I admire younger people, and I have a lot of hope for younger people. It’s a crazy time right now, and out of that some good things are gonna come. Young people are gonna have to figure their way out of this, and they’re probably not gonna have older templates, or older ways of thinking about the world. They’re gonna have to come up with their own stuff, and that’s great. I think it’s gonna happen and I’m excited about it. Even though it will be something that will probably surprise older people like myself.
You studied with Marlon Briggs in college, and your name is often mentioned alongside his. How did he influence your work and worldview? He was great. I don’t know if you know his stuff, but I went to journalism school and there were a lot of people who wanted to be news people—a pretty straight-laced environment. And Marlon Briggs was great because he had actually gone to that school—the UC Berkeley Journalism School—and he did stuff that was really intellectually rigorous, but he also had a real experimental and artistic sensibility. His work was smart, but it also was poetic, which is rare. Oftentimes stuff that’s smart is dry, and if something’s poetic it’s a little bit dumb or vacuous. He was able to combine those two, and that made a big impression on me. I’ve always tried to combine those two impulses myself. He was a great and a legend, so I’m not putting myself on the same level with him. I just aspire to do what he did.
I went to school, and then decided I had to get a job, so I went to LA and got a job doing TV news—I worked for a news magazine show. I did that for a little while, and it was really stupid. After that I decided, ‘Forget this, I’m just going to do documentary stuff.’ So I then got back into the documentary world. Briggs had passed away by then, but he’s always been an inspiration for me.
What drew you to documentary filmmaking? When I was a kid I was really into the world, just hearing about the world. I got into Bigfoot when I was a kid—I was really into Bigfoot for a couple years. I was just kind of a nerdy guy in terms of that type of stuff. But I also was into art and drawing and stuff like that, and so after a while as an adult I realized that this was the way to combine those two things. Do art, but also be engaged with the world. I also went to art school when I first went to college, but it felt so cut off from the world. Journalism was a way to engage with the world, and documentary film became a way to do both at the same time.
I’ve noticed that you’re drawn to that unique tension between idealism and absurdity—I’m thinking of the short film you did on Meredith Hunter [lot 63, grave c]. It approached his story from an angle that was very interesting, one where you spend a lot of time looking through the lens of the grave keeper. You flipped this major cultural event—something that’s become a catalyst for the end of the idealism of the 60s, and focused instead on the victim, and it ended up being about how he didn’t end up getting a gravestone, which seems completely absurd. That came out of being curious. I just went with a friend out to see what I could learn about that guy. We went to that cemetery, and I had that exact experience, where we talked to the cemetery guy and he said, ‘Let me show you where the guy is buried, you’ll never find it,’ and walked out there. It was a long walk, and on the way I just chatted with him about death, and his job—this weird job—and so we finally got to the place, and he said, ‘Here it is,’ and it was this unmarked grave, and it had a big impact on me. I don’t know, something about that moment, and the idea that this guy is in this unmarked grave kind of lingered with me. So the film became an expression of that. We went back and filmed the exact same thing—the guy walking me out there. I was curious about who this guy was, but in some ways it was also about some bigger idea about death and the way people sort of fade into oblivion and never look back.
Tell me about this new fog documentary since we’re on it. It’s just something I’ve been working on with my friend Andy Black, and we’re doing it together. He’s a great cinematographer and I’ve worked with him on Weather Underground and all the films I’ve done. We’ve been doing it for a couple of years—I mentioned that fog in San Francisco is really spectacular, and also we’re interviewing people who just have interesting connections to fog. In San Francisco there’s these foghorns, these iconic foghorns, and we interviewed the guy at the Golden Gate Bride who turns them on and off. He’s a really funny fellow, and it’s just this weird thing, like ‘Somebody actually turns these on and off.’ It’s a pretty big project, and I thought it actually would be an easy project. It’s super-hard to do filming because you never know when it’s gonna happen or where. It’s been about four days of sunshine with no fog at all, which has been a little heartbreaking. So, suddenly there’s a lot of fog and we’re running out of somebody’s house to just shoot out of her window.
So it’s a fun, weird challenging project. The thing I like about fog is that it’s both visually pretty stunning, but then also deep in some ways. People have very profound feelings about the fog, and at night the fog and the foghorns are this real sort of poetic, existential phenomenon. It’s a cool project, and hopefully we’re gonna finish shooting in the next week or so, and then start putting it together. I think it’ll be like a half-hour long piece that’ll be done next year.
Sam Green.
Just one last thing: when will The Universal Language be released? In about two or three weeks. It’s starting to have screenings here and there. There’s a screening in Berlin later this month. I’m doing one this weekend in San Francisco. It’s not gonna have a six city rollout or anything like that, but it’s definitely getting out there.
Interview Lane Koivu – Images from The Weather Underground film and Sam Green.
“…[poetry] is somewhere between an anchor and a compass…”
The Blogazine had a long, intense conversation with legendary slam poet and hip hop artist Saul Williams in his adopted home of Paris recently. Just before the launch of his drastically different fourth album, Volcanic Sunlight on Columbia / Sony Records – as Vicky Trombetta was shooting him for a recent editorial – we talked poetry, war, and existing as an artist in Paris.
Saul is rare among pop culture figures for his progressive, thoughtful politics and his introspection-driven art, and this conversation is nothing if not introspective and thoughtful…
This short, edited by Daniele Testi, is a rare glimpse into the artist’s vision of the world. And even when not performing, Saul is an incredibly eloquent speaker. Watch the video twice to really take it all in.
Also, don’t miss Vicky’s editorial of the artist in the last issue of Modzik.
