18/04/2011

The Editorial: Barbapapa / Propaganda

.

The Editorial: Barbapapa / Propaganda

The drug fuelled 1970s was a time of discovery. Western cities dealt with swelling populations, skyrocketing crime and rampant pollution. Oil crises choked infrastructures and caused tension between nations. Recession after recession increased the gap between the richest and the poorest. Fashion rid itself of previous limitations and veered off on never before seen tangents; artistic conventions crumbled. And exactly like today – a decade of unprecedented complexity and extreme uncertainty – the 1970s was a time of discovery and reevaluation. It was and is once again a time in which we must take long, hard looks at ourselves and evaluate our systems, our values, ourselves. Barbapapa, the gorgeously kitcshy, cheaply animated 1970s cartoon did it for us forty years ago.


The amorphous pink blob, grown like a magical potato, is the manifestation of the modern human condition. He has supportive and nurturing friends, Claudine and François, but finds himself fundamentally alone, forced to seek meaning, as so many of us do, in a voyage around the world. Barbapapa is the commensurate self-aware individual, caught between his environment and himself: his awkward shape, size and colour set him apart, but his utility and benevolence endear him to those he is able to help. And although he uses literal and impossible solutions for immediate problems (such as transforming himself into a submarine, staircase or hot-air balloon), he serves as a magical metaphor for the wildly transformative power of imagination.


But forty years later, Barbapapa is as relevant as ever. The cartoon dealt openly with issues of depression, racism, displacement and inequality. And in a roundabout way with issues of homosexuality, gender identity, drug use and marital strife. The show dealt frequently with issues of pollution, environmentalism and animal rights. Barbapapa even tackled the dehumanisation, isolation and misery of anonymous midcentury public housing! Barbouille, the artist offspring, fights for creative freedom. And he and his family (while perhaps a bit unrealistically fond of one another) celebrate their differences, each helping the group along with their talents and sensibilities.

Generations of kids across the world have grown up listening to Barbapapa in a smattering of languages. And mostly none of them realised they were being schooled in tolerance and imagination. Perhaps Barbapapa is progressive propaganda. But the progressive, human values he represents are all too often overlooked in times of uncertainty. And with a future that looks more uncertain than ever, I think exactly what we all need is a little more gorgeously kitschy, cheaply animated 1970s good nature and humanity.

Tag Christof

Share: Facebook,  Twitter  
11/04/2011

The Editorial: iFatigue, iFuture

.

The Editorial: iFatigue, iFuture

The iPad and its more diminutive sibling, the iPhone, are without argument our generation’s defining objects. And they are turning out to be something entirely more revolutionary than any shortwave radio, Polaroid, electric typewriter or Walkman. They are eminently portable. They combine an astounding number of functions on a flexible platform whose functionalities will be multiplied and enriched to the limits of its users imaginations.

Armed with our iDevices, we are the Bionic Man. And Einstein, armed with endless information at the swipe of a finger and the click of a graphic button. And critics. And publishers. And activists. And photographers. A fourth dimension has been opened – full of insight and information – that we access through our magic portals. The illustrious future 2011 once promised from afar is here. We travel through time and space by the use of sleek, smart technology.


But the fact remains that there is something deeply unsatisfying about the supposedly enriched experience these new gadgets bring. While not many would argue with the unprecedented convenience of a phone-camera-library-radio-map-everything, something crucial is missing. Form. Substance. This tablet-shaped enigma’s structure is neither an indicator nor a result of its function. And it’s hard to fall in love with a nondescript, rectangular brick.

The relationships we have built as human beings with our most essential objects is something profound. Hammers. Forks and spoons. Cups. Furniture. Books. And more recently, cameras, telephones, typewriters and other writing devices. These things have forms which remain semiotic constants (the iPhone uses a old-style telephone handset to represent its ‘phone,’ for instance). And when these objects are made with materials each possessing their own smells, weights and textures, they are transformed into something special. But with the iPad, objects are seamlessly subsumed into it and subverted entirely.

So, are we witnessing the death of separate functional objects? How will design grapple with this 4D universe? Is there a middle ground to be found?

With this in mind, and on the eve of 2011’s most important design event, we are thrilled to see what the minds of today’s best designers will astonish us with. As the lines continue to blur between the interfacial and the built worlds, we hope tactility and a real connection between form and function remains intact in some form or another. While we love our iPads and iPhones, we hope for a designed future in which we interact, learn, play and live through something more visceral than a tablet of metal, glass and electrons. Perhaps even our own eyes, ears, noses, hands and feet.

Tag Christof

Share: Facebook,  Twitter  
04/04/2011

The Editorial: Hugh Holland and The Lost Art Of Living

The Editorial: Hugh Holland and The Lost Art Of Living

The world over, cities are crawling with glossy girls and prissy boys whose only aim in life seems to be to perfect their appearance. It’s easy to blame fashion, especially from the outside, but the real culprit is much larger, and the exact opposite of fashion. Blame a well-oiled marketing machine, terribly misguided values (embodied in terribly misguided pop stars), and a fragmented Western culture mostly devoid of nagging discomforts…

We recently came across Hugh Holland’s 1970s photographs of Southern California kids who lived life on the decks of skinny, precarious banana skateboards. They commandeered dry swimming pools, they wore tattered Vans and had suntans. Theirs was a beauty that burst from within. Their exuberance and lust for life was boundless – and captured gorgeously by Holland, who was himself interestingly not a skateboarder. He could see that these kids were alive!

Most striking about Holland’s photos, though, is just how sharply their exuberance and energy contrasts with the pretence of today. Sure, more kids skate now, but it’s only because marketing types seized on the sport’s potential. Endorsements. Video games. And now every suburban kid and pretentious fashion victim worth his salt is somehow a skater, bro.

Going down to the stake park is no longer about the art of skating. It’s about trash talk and showing off your jeans. And the days of the banana board and California sunshine are over: not only do kids no longer roam the streets in search of adventure, they aren’t allowed to venture beyond their front doors without a helmet and fifteen kilos of other protective gear. Is this overprotectiveness the root of the problem? What harm did a healthy scratch do? And in an age of preteen Starbucks patrons, maybe its our inability to be kids – and our inability to let our kids be kids – that keeps us from living openly and exuberantly. Who knows.

So, instead of getting out there and pioneering and exploring in search of something truly new, we only seem to be capable of remixing that which came before. Without a moment’s thought about the lifestyle the look was born of, we dress like skaters. Or strap on a pair of Doc Martens we just bought with daddy’s credit card and claim to be punk. (You’re not punk. Full stop.) Or worse still, we copy something that means absolutely nothing. And we take photos of ourselves on the and post them to Lookbook, hoping desperately that someone will validate our desperation with “hype.” Except those hype points… well, if you say so!

Now, we don’t pretend to have a problem with appearance. On the contrary, in fact. But, shouldn’t a look be the result of a life lived? Of a passion? Of a belief? Your own?

Perhaps our old pal Vivienne Westwood said it best when she proclaimed that ‎”Johnny Rotten and all the others were a bunch of conformists. It’s not green hair that makes you different, it’s your brain, your attitude towards life.”

You’ve got that right, Viv.

Catch Holland’s book, Locals Only, at Ammo Books.

Tag Christof – Images courtesy Ammo Books 

Share: Facebook,  Twitter  
28/03/2011

The Editorial: Let’s Get Lost / Chet Baker

.

The Editorial: Let’s Get Lost / Chet Baker

Bruce Weber’s 1980s documentary on the life of Chet Baker is imperfect and messy and visceral. And brilliant. Chet Baker himself was a glorious disaster. His life was a drug-fuelled tragedy, truly lived. He’s the type of person who most certainly couldn’t be a product of today. Life has become too antiseptic. He’s too unpretentious. The values that were Chet Baker are long dead: he was compulsive, dedicated and straightforward. But he lived. Military tours. A year in an Italian prison. Mountains of drugs. Women. And a creative life lived through brass instruments and a serene voice.

It feels, strangely, that we’ve taken several steps backwards since Baker’s time. This film’s genuine emotion is unmistakable. And although the hip kids of today do a pretty good job of aping its style, the original remains, with its imperfect and unrestrained beauty. All the more so in retrospect. But beyond the patina, there is a substance here. A joie de vivre that you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere nowadays.

Our selves are mishmashes of conflicts, born out by superficial behaviour. Since the beginning of Western civilization we’ve partied and acted posh and copied the dress and manner of halfwit celebrities in a desperate attempt to be… who, exactly? But today, as culture, fashion and art fragments, a creeping sense of genericness is impossible to avoid. The Chinese have dragged American hyper-consumerism to dizzying new heights. They mix age-old pop song formulas with glossy production to make pleasant, one-size-fits-all muzak that lulls listeners into submission. Blithe, unquestioning submission. Nobody fights back.

Even in behind-the-times boutique Italy, we buy everything we eat at crowded, characterless chain supermarkets. Everyone has something to say, but as Twitter’s epic information gathering proves, we all say the same things in the end. Drone. Overload. Fast food. Fast fashion. Perhaps our fatigue stems from the spin media has thrust upon a string of revolt-disaster-war-austerity. Or from sanguine and hollow messages of hope. (Hope for?) And next year is 2012. Tick-tock.

And the gravitation of connoisseur towards the infinitely more human texture of analogue speaks volumes about films like Weber’s. Across mediums, the look and feel of works made way-back-when possess a uniqueness and a truth that is just plain absent today. Light to image to paper by mechanical and chemical process.. Music from instrument to media to ear without digital wizardry. Magic is always lost in electronic translation. Silicone augmentations (of all types) are fake. Silicone chips facilitate fake. And fake is pretty damn unfulfilling.

But, can we bridge the gap between the visceral, unfiltered life of the dark old days with hyper-generic today? LIBYA. TSUNAMI. DRESS €9.99 AT H&M. GAGA. ECONOMIC COLLAPSE. GUCCI. WAR. FAMINE. NUCLEAR DISASTER. Can we get past it? Excess and drugs and the inevitable hangover taught us a lesson or two, but you’d think we’d have emerged with a new lease on life. Not blinders.

When it comes down to it, kids, we really need to get back some of this raw, real life. Experimentation. Fuck ups. Bruises and scars. Life lived in horrifying three dimensions with wind-in-face sunburns and morning hangovers. Let’s get out there. Because there’s nothing more distinguishing than well and truly living.

Tag Christof

Share: Facebook,  Twitter  
« Previous Page