New York-based Italian artist Davide Balliano had a conversation with me about his artistic trajectory, his work, rock climbing, his influences, his love of intervention and his first show in Paris at the Galerie Michel Rein. 

Davide Balliano
UNTITLED_Woman V
Ink on book page
21x26,8 Cm
2013

Courtesy: Michel Rein Gallery, Paris

Lynsey Peisinger: Tell me a bit about your life and your path as an artist.

Davide Balliano: I was born and grew up in Torino, in the northwest of Italy. I was there until I was 18 and then I started in high school studying advertising and graphic design. It was a very peculiar school, a very specific school, which had a lot of elements that are still useful for me now. Especially the graphic design elements, the study of the image, the history of the image, art history. All of that is still informing my work today.

After that, I moved to Milan where I studied photography at Bauer, which is a fabulous school of photography. It is probably the last public school of photography that is left in Italy. What I liked of the school was the approach that they had, that I think they still have now, where rather than teaching “photography as a job”, they tried to raise us as artists working in the medium of photography. They train you as an artist who used the tool of photography. Then what you do with that tool is your choice.

Two years after school, I went to Fabrica, which is a large artist residence in Treviso, in the north east of Italy, a half hour from Venice. It is a beautiful place. A huge building built by Tadao Ando and there are usually approximately 40 artists in residence. It was very commercial-based. There is not much interest in pure artistic research. It’s more applied art. It was a very good experience–they pay you be there, they give you studio, they pay for all of your materials, they give you an apartment. You don’t have to worry about anything.  But, even if it was great, it sort of crushed my relationship with photography. Fabrica had a very strong way of shaping the people that were there, so they were not making it a mystery that they couldn’t care less about the kind of photography that I was doing! I was very young, I was 21.

After Fabrica, I stayed one more year in Milano, then I got badly bored of staying in Italy. So I moved to NY in 2006. And it is in the early time in NY that I started to do other stuff. I felt that this move to NY was sort of giving me a clean cut from everything that I did until then. I sort of put photography a bit on the side and I started to draw and to intervene, but still on photographic images. I assume that because of my background in photography, I always have a difficult time starting anything from a blank background, you know from a white slate. For me, it has always been terrifying!

Davide Balliano
UNTITLED_Barbaro
Watercolor and acrylic on book page
18x25 Cm
2012

Courtesy: Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Berlin

LP: How did you start to move into the mediums you are working with now?

DB: So I started to print out images, mainly from the internet at that time. I still collect a lot images just for my inspiration. And I started to draw freehand on them, mainly abstract geometrical mess! Abstract scribbles, nothing with a precise meaning. Pretty soon, it sort of got clear that the issues that I had with photography were still there–even if I am intervening on top, I still had to take care very much of the meaning of the background image.

There are some images that you can just use for their mood, but there are other images that have a precise meaning that carries responsibilities. I think that this is something that you can use but you need to be conscious about it.

I always hate any kind of work in any kind of medium that just takes strong images and slams them there without standing by it. I always find that it’s a very cheap shortcut.  It is something that I always hate.

So, then I started to draw on art history images because I felt that they left me more freedom somehow because there is already a big gap. You are more free to relate with the feeling of the image rather than with historical facts. The facts are there and I agree that I should deal with that, but there is a distance so there is a larger filter. So if I make a drawing on top of a portrait of a king, I should probably do research about who it is etc, but I don’t. And most people wouldn’t say “why did you make a drawing on this king and not on another one?”.

If you do the same kind of thing in photography, it is difficult because photography is such a young medium that almost any photographic image is in a historical context.  So from there, the intervention grew more and more precise and became more and more essential. So if you take a drawing of four or five years ago, which was abstract and geometrical, but still messy and not so calculated, they sort of condensed somehow and at some point, it felt a need to take this intervention that I was doing on paper and put it on other mediums.

I burned that town just to see your eyes shine
Wood and glass
137x48x48 Cm
2012

Courtesy: Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Berlin
Photo: Nikki Brendson

LP: Tell me a bit about the medium of performance.

DB: Performance, which I do although rarely, is a different thing although I feel that it is strongly connected to….photography. It is interesting, I feel that performance is strongly connected to photography because I still feel it as the production of an image. An image that is locked by a location and by a time. I am very fascinated by the potential of making a legend with performance, not necessarily mine. Sometimes you see performances that are unrepeatable–the original work is born in one place at a specific time and if you were there, there is nothing that can repeat that moment. And it gives you something that is so unique, it sort of makes you part of the history of the work, much more than in other mediums.

Most of the time in other mediums, the work is done by an artist and then is shown. And the artwork has a life and it will be the same life for the next many many years. But a performance is in a place and in a moment and if you were there, you had the privilege of being part of it and then nothing will take that away. I find it fascinating. And I relate to it as the creation of an image, practically speaking.

LP: It sounds like performance gives you an opportunity to experience being an artist in a different way.

DB: Exactly. And also seeing what it means for other artists. It has been great because I am completely incapable of doing it in any other medium. I am sort of a control freak for anything else that I do. I know that in performance, I very much enjoy opening up to collaboration and seeing what it brings.

LP: At which point in your life did you realize that you wanted to be making art? Was it from childhood? Did you go to that graphic design school because you knew that already about yourself?

DB: Well, I will say that it depends. I always, since when I was a kid, felt an extreme need for creative expression. So I always had no doubt that I would be doing something creative in life. But, the decision to make exclusively art research sort of developed over the years. It felt like everything else just dropped and it stayed there. For all of my school time, I had the idea that it was impossible to only do that.

I always thought “I need to do something else on the side”. For example, I thought I could do graphic design while doing other work. Also with photography, but photography was even closer to making pure artwork. But it was an idealistic idea that I could be an artist but also make commercial stuff. I needed to take a decision between the two things. And I think that especially when you are young, people want one or the other.

Another thing that I understood–I sound like an old grandfather saying “when I was young…etc”! — When I was in high school I was doing a lot of rock climbing and at a certain point I had a trainer and was training five days a week. I loved it, but I liked to go out and go to concerts too. I had my social life which was very important to me. Everyone else there was like a monk about it. Just training, training, training. They ate only certain food, they were constantly on a diet. Complete dedication. I understood that I couldn’t at all put in that type of dedication and I couldn’t compete with people that were that dedicated to it. And later, I felt the same way with photography.

If you are trying to do something good, you should consider that most likely there is somebody else that is trying to do it and he is going to be very good at it and he is going to put all his energy into it, he is going to make tons of sacrifices and he is going to go through hell to achieve it. So if you are not up for that, you are in for a competition that will never bring you anywhere. So photography for me was sort of like that. 

I was in Milano therefore everything was about fashion photography. I mean, fashion photography was fun! I would go to a set, with models and people and music. It’s all fun. But if you are trying to do it, you are in competition with 500 kids obsessed with their freaking portfolios who are putting their money into making fashion photography. I’m like “hell no”! I have to be paid to make fashion photography, not the other way around. People would tell me that I had to put together a fashion photography portfolio and then when people look at you because of that, you bring in your art research. But for me, I knew I would not have the energy to do that because I was already putting all my energy into my research. And I sort of became clear that it wouldn’t work. I had to push on thing or the other.

So I decided only to concentrate on art. I assisted for many years. I wanted to learn from an artist. I wanted to learn about art-making and also the practical side of it.

Davide Balliano
UNTITLED_Grid27
Acrylic on linen
120x180 Cm
2012

LP: When you came to NY, you assisted Marina Abramovic for four years. How did that experience influence your work and how did it prepare you for your own path as an artist? 

DB: For me, Marina was like my own private university. She taught me everything that I know about surviving as an artist.

Independently of the love that I have of her work–I approached her because I always had an extreme fascination with her work– the privilege that I had when working with her was that I was in contact with the private side of her. And what I gained from the private relationship is to see how she is completely dedicated to her work. Marina is all work. And there is an insane amount of energy and dedication that she puts into it. Her work is her life, there is no separation, there is no in between.

The personal investment that she makes in her work, I assume gives her this concentration that comes out so clearly in the work. And, other than that, she is such a big artists that if you work with her for four years, afterwards you can truly do anything. I came out of that experience being practically scared of nothing.

Marina works at such a level of intensity that there is really nothing that you can’t do after that. It is like boot camp. You are so used to working under pressure –good pressure, but pressure–daily. Everyday was the same amount of concentration and speed and pressure. The responsibilities are always big. There is never a day that you go and pick up flowers! Every day is something big, something important, something that you can’t mess up. When you do that every day for four years, you come out and truly its like those American movies about Marines. You can really do anything!

LP: You seem to have an approach to your work that is extremely organized and structured. It seems to me that are an artist who approaches your work like one might approach any business in terms of how you structure and use your time and also how you interact with and deal with people. I wonder if working with Marina influenced that or if you were always someone who could self-motivate and give order to your life. 

DB: Definitely working with Marina, and my other assistant jobs, gave me that structure. Marina is naturally 80 percent of it, but everything contributed. Assisting fashion photographers meant being efficient and fast. There are a lot of responsibilities and you have to work under pressure, so you get used to needing to maintain focus. Keeping your concentration on the work itself under all the pressure seems to me to be the secret that all of these big guys shared.

There are tons of different kinds of artists and I know fabulous artists that work in complete chaos and it’s fine for them. Their art can come out of that. They can do nothing for weeks and then disappear and work day and night for a month and then come out like drained zombies, but the resulting work is marvelous.

But that’s not for me. The less I do, the more in pain I feel.

Davide Balliano
PICATRIX, installation view

Courtesy: Michel Rein Gallery, Paris

LP: Tell me about that show in Paris.

DB: The show in Paris started with an invitation from Eugenio Viola, a wonderful curator that I worked with last January. He invited me to have this little show and he set the theme of the show. He asked me to work with the concepts of alchemy and symbolism and sort of esoteric feelings, which is something that is present in my work even if I don’t always relate to those things in my life.

There are four works on paper, two paintings on board and one sculpture. We see a combination of different mediums and the dialogue that they have with each other, which is very important for me. I never make a show that deals with only one medium because it feels like a small part of what I do. I feel like I can’t say what I want to say with one medium, I have to put them together.

In the past Alchemy was called “the great work” and I love it. I like the utopic idea that through my work, and the elements given to me, I can control these elements and have a higher understanding of who I am and a higher consciousness.

Eugenio asked me to consider these things and to put together a little show that gives my view on these topics, so I did.

LP: What is the last thing that stimulated you?

DB: The film The Turin Horse by Bela Tarr. It is really stuck in my mind and I keep on thinking about it. It was very very strong for me. And not because I am from Turin! Its strict and minimal and powerful and its a complete tragedy. There is no space for hope, no space for light, like a classic tragedy. Everything is rotting and closing in on you. Sometimes I feel that tragedy might be more inspiring than happy thoughts. Happy thoughts are private while tragedy can be shared and if you recognize the suffering in someone else, it can make you feel less alone in your own troubles. That is probably why all of the work that I strongly admire has a heavy portion of tragedy and weight.

PICATRIX at Galerie Michel Rein, curated by Eugenio Viola
http://michelrein.com/
http://www.davideballiano.com/

10 young design-ers, eye-popping exhibitions dedicated to furniture and industrial design, a special focus on the art brought back by the Noailles’ African expeditions in the 30’s, and already a spin-off event, Tapis Parade (Carpet Parade).

Design Parade 7.

«Dege» Mask, Dogon, collected at Opti, Mali, in 1931, 'bois de tage', Musée du quai Branly.

TAPIS PARADE - Anémones Jekyll, François Dumas, La Chance.

Daedaleas, Fanny Dora © Charles Negre, ECAL 2011.

Grillage, fauteuil, François Azambourg, Ligne Roset © Jean-Pierre Lemoine.

Design Parade 7
Opening Friday June 29th
Until September 30th.
Villa Noailles, Hyères
Var – France.

With François one never knows who pulls the strings. It is him who invokes the sentiment for a story to become alive. Yet he hands himself over unconditionally to his collaborators, like an “instrument to be played”, as he likes to call it.

Film director Christopher Honoré once expressed that François Sagat “redefines the notion of masculinity”.  François, the humble boy from Cognac has moulded himself to unattainable iconic status. Gilded with his blue inked crane, he is to conquer his righteous spot in the pantheon of pop culture…

"François Sagat with Apple" Exhibition SPECTRE, Hyères 2010. Photography by René Habermacher

René Habermacher : you recently played alongside Chiara Mastroianni in HOMME AU BAIN by Christophe Honoré, and as well the lead in Bruce LaBruce L.A. ZOMBIE – how were your experiences?

François Sagat: L.A ZOMBIE was an experience which had very little to do with HOMME AU BAIN… The shoot for LA ZOMBIE was like a real porno shoot, scene by scene, it was mostly fucking, except that of course the porno version was censored for festivals…Beyond the sex scenes, LA ZOMBIE was a chaotic shoot, without a script, hasardous… but I’m still to this day satisfied with this participation and collaboration with Bruce LaBruce, from whom I still have much to learn, and who possesses a huge cinema and litterary culture… Despite what his critics say, I think Bruce has a real style.

During the shoot I really tested my capacity to resist “obstacles”, it was at times very difficult, I didn’t know where I was going, no direction, it was like being thrown in the lion’s den.
There was no script, the storytelling was weak and the whole plan was turned on its head by last minute changes and many cancelations, but that can be said about a lot of “cinema” projects.

L'HOMME AU BAIN by Christophe Honoré, starring Chiara Mastroianni and François Sagat.

Regarding  HOMME AU BAIN, the shooting was a lot more structured, but energetic nevertheless. It’s on this project that I realized that my abilities as an actor were limited, weak even, and felt like I was a big challenge for Christophe Honoré because of my “heavy” image, of the luggage I was carrying.
There were moments when I thought I terrified him, being everything except malleable. The project was constantly evolving due to the fact that we had planned it as a short, and that a lot of questions arose towards the end of shooting. It was finally released as a full feature film, and I have the feeling it wasn’t the right place for the film.

It was an intimate project which to me, with hindsight, would have had a strong impact as a short. But I am neither director nor the creator of my own character.  Rather than control the situation, I felt the blowback. But surely the imperfection of the final result  makes it a real film, that can be remarked and criticized. I chose to shoot it and live the collaboration for the moment rather than think of the finished product.

François Sagat for QVEST magazine. Photography by René Habermacher.

What is the difference to you between acting in a porn movie or a feature film?

The difference ? Of course there are differences.

When you’re a porno actor, you’re in constant control of your carnal envelope and your physical aspect, whether you learn it or you have it from the start.

I didn’t know it as first but I am someone who has that ability. Porn is often an activity for people who are shy orally.

As a performer, you never really have to carry the more or less artistic responsabilities of a porn film, because there is no artistic issue to start with. You just have to be a good soldier fitting what the consumer desires to watch and what the production has decided, and that’s it.

I think also that I am someone who’s very sexual and exhibitiionist, but that’s not really giving you a scoop. Porn is like military service, it’s “my way or the highway”, and in my case, I’ve been and continue to be a good soldier.

The main difference is that you need a capacity to adapt and to lose who you really are, physically as well as morally. I created for myself a character in porn as in life, it’s difficult to let it go.

Video still from PILORI installation by Lynsey Peisinger & The Stimuleye. Villa Noailles, Hyères 2012.

Do you find your excursion into conventional acting is being made difficult by the public perception of you as a porn actor?

It’s a fact: I think I have the syndrome of the porn star/whore as others do, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. To get into porn, even with what I built around it, was one boundary too many to cross, and I think that morality have not evolved at all and that they won’t evolve. There are so many things I could have done if I hadn’t been this “porn actor” which I am described as, and which I present myself as when asked what I “do”.  The separation between mainstream and underground is still the same, and more solid than ever.

I think I’m doomed to be on the sidelines, but I think I knew it, even when I was 25 when I did this.
There’s no harm in it.

To direct myself is my only option to go beyond this situation, but it doesn’t interest me that much either. Life is not a race to permanent justification, and in case of failure I don’t complain, I’d rather move on to something else.  I’ve been very lucky in my experiences with the handicaps I created by giving in to this “giving of yourself”.

François Sagat in Yamamoto. Photography by René Habermacher.

For a while we have witnessed your short films on the web, where it seems you explore other territories like performance etc. what were your thoughts behind these?

It’s just masturbation, wanking on my own image, nothing more nothing less.

I think I had reached a stage where I was really pissed off at my American porn production company who was locking me into a persona which was only 50% of myself in order to sell at all costs..

An ass and a dick, ok, but also a character too simplified, too masculine and too stereotyped in a virility which satisfied only the viewers, but which didn’t satisfy me at all. To have the image of an ultra-virile guy, and only that, didn’t fit me, and it wasn’t what I was looking for 2 years after starting this pornographic activity.

It’s because it’s not who I am, I don’t find myself very masculine.

Many of the actors have the same reflexes I have – sooner or later, the desire to stand out or to claim who you really are comes out, and you can deal with it to different degrees, which leads to a certain level of depression in the end. I’m really like a lot of my colleagues, I’m not the only one.

“The animated figures stand adorning every public street
And seem to breathe in stone, or 
move their marble feet.”
Pindar, Olympian Ode, 476–75 BC

Returning to porn, you have produced “Incubus” with Titan, also in the function of the director. It seems you sort of combine and integrate influences from your “homemade” shorts with the genre.What is it all about? and how is this “shift” being perceived ?

It’s has part of me in it, yes and no… I wrote all the scenes one by one, and I really supervised the art direction, the inspirations, except I didn’t fully measure all the limitations of a shoot that’s porn and only porn.

You can’t do everything, especially  if you have to respect the deal you made with the production company and the demands of the project.

Because in the end this particular project is only interesting if it sold and consumed.

You are very affiliated to fashion, from collaborations with Bernhard Willhelm to Giambattista Valli, and starring in many shoots from Terry Richardson to Pierre et Gilles.  What is your relationship with fashion?

Those moments are very rare… I have a friendly relationship with Valli, beyond his activity or mine. I run into Pierre et Gilles and we chat happily. I’ve worked with some real people, to whom I had things to say, like you René, beyond what they do.

Even after doing a fashion school at the end of the 90’s, I still feel outside all of that.

I think the idea of “fashion” is completely “has been”, it’s a new era, and it’s definitely not a fashion era. But of course human beings remain interesting, even in the universe of fashion. So i’m split.

In some way you “hand” yourself over to photographers and other creatives. How do you see yourself in this collaborations?

My god… I try not to ask myself that many questions anymore ! I see myself as an inspiring subject ? That’s what people are looking for when they call me.

I am there, a body that is moved from point A to point B, it’s in the can, immortalized. There are so many things I regret, that were really useless and which leave traces. With internet, mistakes are harder to get rid of. (laughs)

I think of myself as an instrument, not really ideal for all projects, but able nonetheless. But less and less as time goes by, I feel. I want to make less projects of this kind, but of better quality. I find no interest in it, especially for pictures, it has to remain occasional.

KiSS AND DON'T TELL. Photography by René Habermacher.

You once told me reading your mom’s magazines when you were a kid- who were the people that influenced you back then?

Yeah my sister and my mother, bringing me Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair US and Vogue US. So I got into it, and unfortunately I was 11/12 years old when Freedom and then Too Funky came out – I was a goner.

It was fascinating for someone from the province to discover that. I was a very visual boy. I discovered very soon who Nick Knight was, with Jil Sander back then, and that led to many other things, like picture of Sigourney Weaver by Helmut Newton, or Cicciolina by Lagerfeld.

What are your very personal fetishes?

I don’t think I really have any. Sexual or not. It doesn’t really belong to the way I behave, unless they’re unconscious. I’m a thinker, but not about the essential things.

What are you up to next?

I regularly go abroad to pay my bills and compromise myself  by doing very commercial things with my body…. I’m joking. I’m not forced to do anything.

I’m goint to Mexico to do a workshop with a famous singer (hint: previously interviewed on The Stimuleye) and a growing French stylist, the idea is strong, still in preparation, and not fashion.

It’s mostly about meeting different people. There are other projects I can’t talk about that have to do with art and video, and payed…

ΣΑΓΑΤ: SAGAT. Photography by René Habermacher.

If you’d were able to arrange an intimate soiree with guests of your preference, dead or alive, who would you invite to converse with each other?

I would love to see my grandmother on my mom’s side, who died when I was 4 years old. According to my mom she was very intelligent, subtle and funny. I would have loved to forge a deeper relationship and learn who she was.

No celebrities, I don’t care. At all. No one else comes to mind, but my friends are enough to make for some very interesting reunions.

What was the last thing (you heard, saw or experienced) that stimulated you?

Nothing stimulates me anymore, except playing with my pussy Nathalie…

I had a head-on shock when I saw Lars Von Trier’s  MELANCHOLIA … SLAP IN THE FACE: a terrifying subject, on my fears, my realities and aspirations in life, and those of the human being in general when confronted to a fatality to which he has no real perception and zero control.

François Sagats latest music project with the late Helmut Newton muse Sylvia Gobbel is now available on iTunes. For more information and a conversation between the collaborators and our partner Filep Motwary visit un nouveau ideal

Télé-Hyères
A The Stimuleye Production
Directed by Antoine Asseraf
Filmed by Thibault Della Gaspera & Jason Last
Postproduction by Clément Roncier
Interviews by Filep Motwary
Music by Ça Va Chéri

The Théatre Royal, under construction.

Installation by Ethan Hayes-Chute.

Right, Carson Chan, co-curator, and left, Vanessa Bronson, biennale founder.

Aleksandra Domanovic's "Monument to Revolution" and the al-Ghiwane singers, 
performing turner-prize nominee Roger Hiorn's untitled performance.

Guy Maddin’s new project at Centre Pompidou, featuring Ariane Labed and other stars such as Mathieu Amalric, Amira Casar, Udo Kier and Charlotte Rampling, has all the right ingredients, and best of all, is open for all to see.

Collage by Galen Johnson for SPIRITISMES.

Cult Canadian film-maker Guy Maddin invites anyone in Paris or with an internet connection to follow him and his actors live as they meditate and then shoot lost, unreleased or unfinished films by the likes of Hitchcock and Eric von Stroheim…

More info on the Pompidou Center website.

Follow the shoot live with 3 cameras on the Nouveau Festival / Spiritismes website.

A marathon performance at MoMa, another retrospective in Moscow, on the cover of POP magazine, hosting a star studded event at Jeffrey Deitch’s MOCA in LA and an exhibition at The Serpentine Gallery slated for 2012, the HBO documentary “The Artist is Present” just screened at Sundance. An ever growing list of projects that is taking her across continents…

Exclusive long form of interview first published in POP magazine FW2012

Marina Abramović with her "Mini Me". Photography by René Habermacher for POP magazine

Marina Abramović is everywhere lately. She has emerged from what was considered an alternative section of contemporary art, Performance Art, to finally occupy an untouchable position in the Pantheon of Pop.
A marathon performance at the MoMa, another retrospective in Moscow scheduled, and an exhibition at The Serpentine Gallery slated for 2012, day and night filming of an HBO documentary and an ever growing list of projects. Marina is known for her works in which she tests and pushes her emotional,mental and physical strength, but her schedule takes its toll: Marina is exhausted.
Broad recognition has come comparably late for Abramović, who was often categorized as some sort of Exotic Serbian Vixen. Nevertheless, she has shaped a significant slice of art history like no other.
Today, less considered for her public sexual identity, and more appreciated for her timelessness and her bravery, one could unarguably call Marina “the diva of contemporary art”, were she not so grounded.

Freja Beha Erichsen with her "Mini Me". A collaboration by Marina Abramović for POP magazine
Photography by René Habermacher

Our conversation takes place just after Marina’s return to New York from Manchester, England where she spent six weeks collaborating with Robert Wilson on a new biography, “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović”. The play was staged with accompanied music written and conducted by Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) and narrated by a ferocious Willem Dafoe.
The audience witnessed him meticulously rummaging through the details of her life chronologically. Marina has been clear about her lack of appreciation for theatre as a concept and this play marks a sharp departure from her concept of herself as a performance artist.

She participates in what she used to essentially despise: “To be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre. Theatre is fake: there is a black box, you pay for a ticket, and you sit in the dark and see somebody playing somebody else’s life. The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real. It’s a very different concept. It’s about true reality.”

Death mask of Marina Abramović. Photography by René Habermacher

René Habermacher: With this piece you staged something that you call artificial theatre. It lacks the realness that is central to your work. How was this experience for you?

Marina Abramović: I am his material. I completely gave all the control to Bob (Robert Wilson). That is the only way to really be material for someone else, which is very interesting, because its just absolutely the opposite of what I do. This is first time that i have this really radical approach with Bob – he absolutely refused anything to do with performance. This was an amazing experience for me and very difficult, because his approach to rehearsal is like mine to performance, – but yet it’s just rehearsal! Just be there for hours and hours in order for him to fix the light. I lose my reason, I need the public, I need another kind of dialogue. This was a huge discipline not to kill him!

RH: How did this project with Bob come together?

MA: Oh, I know Bob Wilson since the 70s. He came to ex-Yugoslavia in 1971, when I was a student, and performed. What I like about him is his relationship to architecture, to theatre, to light, to time, to slow motion. All of these elements are very close to my work. We didn’t find any difficulties to connect.

RH: What was the initial spark to collaborate for this?

MA: You know, its because I wanted to include death – to do life AND death.  And there was something about this idea of life and death in the connection with Bob Wilson’s kind of work. I think he is the only one who can actually edit it in the way that he did.

"Mini Me" in the grip of Daisy the boa. Photography by René Habermacher

RH: It is very interesting to have this forward look to your own death and play with his idea. Is there any relation with your orthodox upbringing, the kind of philosophy where the walk of life is transcending into the eternal?

MA: Yes, you are completely right, absolutely! Yes. Because, you know, thats the point. It was definitely the idea – my grandmother used to have her clothes ready for the funeral since 40 years. She lived to the age of 103, and every time the fashion would change, she would change the clothes [for her funeral].

So the presence of death in my daily life was always there, which I think is a very important eastern approach. You never know when the day will come. It is so different from the western culture. When I am here in America, the whole idea of death is removed, you never actually see that. And also there is somehow this idea of “forever young” which is completely unrealistic. The only way to really appreciate life, is to accept death as the final stage. This is the reason, getting 65 this year, I have to include death in my biography.

RH: I find your language as an artist to be very honest in its aim and blunt in its depiction. There were always traces of your upbringing and background. But, lately it seems you refer more often to your heritage as a Balkan child.

MA: That’s totally true. In the beginning of my life, when I started working in Yugoslavia, there were so many obstacles and all I wanted was to leave and get as far as I can go. The older I grow and the more I get distance with now almost 40 years of not living there, the less I want to do that. I have now sort of a big picture where I come from and what its all about. It’s an interesting thing going backwards, looking to the past and revisiting my memory and start understanding connections, which I couldn’t do when I was young. In fact, at the moment I am working with the government to of Montenegro to start a performing arts center which shows the connection of where I am from, and what I have done since.

Freja Beha Erichsen with "Mini Me" of Marina. Photography by René Habermacher

RH: Though your work is very conceptual, there is also a very strong spiritual aspect…

MA: You know I’ve become Buddhist almost 30 years ago. To me spirituality is really the core of my existence. I am not religious, I don’t like religion per se, because religion for me is institutionalized and mostly corrupted. It’s so much more interesting to learn, to actually think about spirituality and what it means. And every good work of art has a spiritual element to it. It is not always the main one, but it is always there, underlining it, and to me its absolutely important to my work.

RH: The art world is very male-dominated, as a woman was that a challenge for you? Is it still?

MA: No. I never felt the differences between men and women; i am not a feminist because of the same reason. I feel that women, by feeling vulnerable and not equal, create this kind of energy and they are perceived that way. For me art doesn’t have any gender… in America, everybody is obsessed with percentage: ‘how many percentage male, female, gay..’  I don’t give a shit about this. It’s good or bad art and who is making it is really not important. I never felt restricted because I always took my position, so I don’t have this kind of feeling. Actually everything that I ever wanted to do takes years, but I did it. i don’t have reason to complain.

RH: So you don’t think it is important to have a sexual identity in your work ?

MA: I don’t care. You know, I am not busy with this. If this comes because its natural and because I am a woman, ok. But I really don’t see this as anything important. It is so funny thinking about this… many other people deal with this much more than I am.

RH: You left your very specific background and moved from Belgrade to Amsterdam in 1974, this must have felt like a very liberating moment…

MA: Yeah, it was a huge jump for me to go to Amsterdam. It was free and everyone was completely liberated, all which I strived for. One interesting thing back in Yugoslavia at that time, socialist time, was that there were clear restrictions on what you can do and you can’t do. You could go for years to prison for something. So you know you take this risk. There I had a lot of reasons to be an artist, I was rebelling against the system. Coming to Amsterdam, i lost reason because nobody cared if I am naked on the street or whatever. So I had to create an entire set of my own restrictions in order to be able to deal with that. It was quite interesting to rearrange my own life.

RH: If you compare today to the 70s that were all about liberation, we live now in a world after the triumph of capitalism where every other ideology has kind of capitulated…

MA: Yeah, that’s absolutely something else. It’s all together different.  […]

And now especially in America, I think that the democracy is so perverse – here, it looks like things are free but actually they’re not. It’s a freedom that is in many ways fake. So it’s a completely other set of restrictions.

RH: Broad recognition of your work has come comparably late. It seems you became part of the pop culture, almost mainstream…

MA: [laughs] Yeah, that’s quite interesting. It took me so long to create this situation where performance became mainstream. That was my aim from the beginning, and it really finally starts happening.

It’s quite interesting how people take the stuff and recycle it. […] God, its just very very different. I’m wondering if I lost control, because I set up these rules for people to re-perform my pieces. But now it became like open, everybody just re-performs without asking permission nor pay royalties. So it’s a completely crazy situation.

AN ARTIST SHOULD NOT MAKE HIMSELF INTO AN IDOL. Marina Abramović and Freja Beha Erichsen.
Photography by Ren'e Habermacher

RH: What is the challenge of the re-performance for you?

MA: You know its really a different story, as performance, first of all its like a child, you have to let it go. There are so many people of my generation who would never give permission to somebody to perform their work because they feel ‘its mine and nobody else’s’. I think that this is a very egoistic point of view because you don’t let your child grow! It think performance is a time based live form of art. If you make a performance once when you are 30 and then you never perform it again, it will just be a dusty image in a book or a bad video and you never have the chance that this work lives. You have to get away from your ego and say ok, even if this is changed, even if this is not the exact same as my work because it is the charisma of the other performer, even if the performer brings his new ideas and things are different, it is still better than it never being re-performed at all. That is my point of view.

RH: Performance is considered an alternative art form because you don’t produce an object that has a price tag on it. So in the “business” of art, your work doesn’t really have a position. Unlike some of your peers, you never made objects or installations for the market.

MA: No, no. It’s really special my position. If you look at my generation of artists and the enormous amount of money they are making and how little I generate – take Damien Hirst, who is like half age of me, not half but much younger, you are talking millions. My maximum price for photographs is much less and the galleries take 50%. So my image and my price are  completely disproportionate. It’s always been like this and now I stop worrying about it. I am not attached to money – for me money is something to get somewhere and make new work.

But I really want to find funding for my foundation. I have to see how I can sell my work in a different way, or create some kind of market that can be able to give this kind of donation to my foundation.

RH: What are the specific directions and the goals of this institute?

MA: There are two things that I will be working to establish for the next 10 years.

One is in Hudson, where i want to do the Marina Abramović Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art.

It’s really for long-durational performance work. I want to make a unique place just for that, that doesn’t yet exist. Its about the idea that only long-durational work can transform the performer and the viewer in a way that no other form of art can do. After 40 years of performance, I have come to this conclusion.

And the other is this huge fridge factory in Cetinje, Montenegro where 8000 people used to produce fridges for eastern europe. It will be like a production tank, where I want the work to be produced.

The government of Montenegro has supported me by asking me o create the concept for it to become a production place for pieces of opera, dance, theatre and film. Not mainstream and not bullshit, but really with content.

I have to go to the office now and then taking a car and going to the countryside…

Ok Baby, kiss – i am running!

June 13-15, The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, Theater Basel, Basel
June  22-24, The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, Carre Theater, Amsterdam
June 28-30, The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, DeSingel, Antwerp

The POP covers of FW2012. Marina and Freja wearing Giorgio Armani. Photography by René Habermacher

Rene Habermacher – Photographer
Isabelle Kontoure – Fashion Editor/Stylist

NY CREW
Hair Stylist: Peter Gray , Makeup Artist: Romy Soleimani, Manicurist: Tracylee , Casting: Angus Munro, Photography Assistance : Cesar Rebollar, Fashion Assistance : Jodie Latham, Stephanie Waknine, Rebecca Sammon & Michaela Dosamantes, Digital Technician: Dilek Isildak, Digital Remastering: The Stimuleye, Set Design: Anne Koch, Production: John Engstrom, Studio: Eagles Nest Daylight Studios NYC

UK CREW
Hair Stylist: Chi Wong, Makeup Artist: Yannis Siskos, Photography Assistance: Jonathan Flanders & Hannan Jones, Digital Remasterin: The Stimuley, Production: Lynsey Peisinger for The Stimuleye, Snake Wrangler: David Steward for Creature Feature

Photo by 2010 photo winner Yann Gross, look by 2011 fashion winner Léa Peckre.

Design duo Viktor & Rolf ? Stills photographer and Ricard award finalist Erwan Frotin ? Mugler men’s designer Romain Kremer ? Fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø ? ANDAM 2011 prize winner Anthony Vaccarello ? Lacoste designer Felipe Oliveira Baptista ? All these people have one thing in common – their work was all launched into the spotlight through the Hyères fashion and photography festival, which is now going into its 27th edition.

As a contestant, you must register by November 26th and send your application package by December 5, 2011. Your work will then be reviewed by a jury of fashion, art and photography professionals (including in the past Azzedine Alaia, Nan Goldin, Riccardo Tisci, Peter Knap, Karl Lagerfeld, Viviane Sassen, Dries Van Noten, Tim Walker, Christian Lacroix…).

If you make it past the first rounds of selection, you’ll be given production help for your collection, flown to the Hyères,  given the chance to meet and talk with the 2012 juries, and have the famous Hyères team produce a gallery show of your pictures or a fashion show of your collection, in or around the unique setting of the avant-garde Villa Noailles, once vacation home to the likes of Dali and Cocteau…

And of course, the best part: my little finger tells me this year there will be even more prizes…

In case that wasn’t enough, here’s everything you need to know about Hyères in 2 minutes 6 seconds.

Villa Noailles
2012 Contest guidelines & registration
Registration deadline: November 26th, 2011
Submission deadline: December 5th, 2011

Lizard photo: Whitney Lewis-Smith.

Legs with severed head (Guy's head, btw) Peter Shmelzer.

Men wrestling: Matthew Dayler / Photo of man laughing: Tony Fouhse.

Creepy baby head: Robert Farmer.

Guy's taxidermy collection.

Marc Turlan: protest board 1 and 2, a collaboration with british photographer Timur Celikdag.
Courtesy gal Anne de Villepoix

Marc Turlan: Statement Carpets. Courtesy gal Anne de Villepoix

Left: Marc Turlan's "Star Rack", and right: the artist himself

The first room of EXO STAR with "Home Star-Gym". Courtesy Gallery Anne de Villepoix

The collage sonore / sound collage installation in room 2. Courtesy Gallery Anne de Villepoix

Object in room 3 at Gallery Anne de Villepoix

“An artist should avoid going to the studio every day”

STUDIO
Last night was the last performance in Manchester.

Everyone in the cast and crew will soon be returning to their “normal” life, wherever it may be around the globe, to their city, their apartment, their studio.

Over the last week, seven exhausting nights, the play is ending.
It has been seen by Viktor & Rolf, Riccardo Tisci, the director of the MoMA and many others.

But fear not, it will return, soon, somewhere else around the globe.

“An artist should be erotic”

Marina's 6th commandment. Photo by René Habermacher.

DICK
This is not a dick.
It’s a strap-on.
It’s strapped on a man, Andy.

In the play, Andy masturbates while wearing a mask of Marina, as she flirts with him.

Tonight is the last night to see this, as it is the last night the play is performed in Manchester.

Four more days to go until the premiere. The rehearsals proceed until late at night with great concentration. After four weeks of work, the cast, creative team and crew are almost ready for the first preview tonight. Bob Wilson, Marina Abramovic, Willem Dafoe and Antony Hegarty. An ensemble this beautiful doesn’t happen very often, perhaps just once in a lifetime.

The premiere is just hours away. Bob is orchestrating his cast and crew and the multi chromatic illumination of the play. Antony continues to conduct the music, snapping the tempo for the band while singing on stage. Willem recites his text in an endless mantra, a flood of whispers. His face and body moving through their various expressions. There is tension under the roof of the Lyric Theatre at the Lowry in Manchester. There have been troubles and tears and there have been shiny moments of camaraderie and playfulness, all in an effort to tell you a story. The story of Marina’s life. It is a story that will carve out a space for her in your heart forever…

Now, we go into our last rehearsal before the preview. The vultures are flying, Marina is slipping into her red, feathered dress and Bob….well, Bob is setting light cues.

Robert Wilson instructs Wilem Dafoe in Gunplays. Photo by René Habermacher


How Willem plays the gun. Photography by René Habermacher


And finally on stage: "Bruno" as Marina calls him is the new Horse that replaces "Stiffy".
So here Bruno, Willem and Marina. Photography by René Habermacher

“An artist should have friends that lift their spirits”

Marina's commandment I . Picture by Lynsey Peisinger.

STIFFY
The first three weeks of rehearsals were held in a rehearsal space where we used temporary props and stand-in animals.

Stiffy (aptly named by Willem Dafoe) was Marina’s stand in horse. We miss Stiffy now that we are at the theatre and the “real” horse has arrived.

He had a very wide body and Marina had to walk like a cowboy after sitting on him for too long.
But he was good to Marina for those weeks.

Life And Death Of Marina Abramovic
at Manchester International Festival
July 9 – 16, 2011.

He has a bum fetish, just like everyone else.

BIKE by Justin Anderson, for Armani Jeans. Still by René Habermacher.

Antoine Asseraf: What is the last thing that stimulated you ?
Justin Anderson: On Friday night – I watched a film by Jean Pierre Melville – ARMY OF SHADOWS.

It had a big effect on me.  It is brutal but very paired down without any melodrama. None of the actors either particularly young or good looking, the direction is tight and  the subject really tough. It is about the French resistance to German occupation – it is about death, betrayal and torture.

The film was gripping was absolutely masterful. What I love is that I discovered this film because I loved the way Alain Delon looked in LE FLIC in his raincoat – which then led me to such a film. I feel very lucky to live in a time in which it is so easy to discover these kinds of gems and I love the fluid way you can to move from one to the other.

So, which would you say are you main influences in film-making – classic films such as the ones you just mentioned, or more experimental fare ?
All kinds of image making influence me particularly fine art – which is how I trained. I would say the paintings of Fontana, Morandi, Barnett Newman, Stella, Ryman, the sculptures of Brancusi, Donald Judd artist like Walter de Maria. Dan Graham, Bruce Nauman were particular influence to me. These have all impacted on my filmmaking as much or more so than other film makers because that is what I studied for years. I suppose my taste currently in film making are as you say classics. I was hugely influenced by Buñuel when I was introduced to it as a 14 year old boy by a very good art teacher at school – he knew exactly how to stimulate a 14 year old boy.

Currently I working my way through the classic European film makers of the last century, Bergman, Antonioni, Chabrol, Renoir and recently Melville. Having not studied film I feel like I have a lot to catch up on.

UNTITLED VIDEO STILL by Justin Anderson. Courtesy of Gerwerbe Karl Marx Gallery, Berlin.

So how did you transition from fine art – painting if I’m correct – to video ?
I started working in video quite along time ago whilst still studying at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. The work was structuralist and minimal – I chewed gum live on television for 5 minutes, made a video in NYC where I drew the lines of a huge tennis court across midtown Manhattan and the dove them with a camera attached to the roof of a car. The video camera was moved through space like making a drawing – instead of leaving a marking on the space you were recording what is there.

I made a video of a guy dressed in protective sports gear standing against a wall and shouting “Just do it” in German whilst I served tennis balls at him as hard as I could. It was quite violent (our friendship ended soon after!).

At the time I was making very large paintings of  the lines on parts of sports courts- it all seemed to flow from one to another- the video camera was just another from of mark making. The videos had virtually no editing and certainly no close ups or variants in the shots.

Was it a long time between the time you started working with video and your first commercial video job?
Also it’s interesting that you had no editing at first because it seems that now it’s one of your strengths…
No I was very lucky – I came back to London from Amsterdam and a friend hooked me up with a guy who worked in an ad agency (called BBH, I had never heard of it) to help cut my videos into some kind of showreel. He was very kind and we spent the night sitting in a little room that smelt of boys and pizza. The next day he called me up and asked me if I would like to make something for Levi’s. I started editing straight away on this job – I have always felt that editing is quite like painting – it is question of throwing on image on top of another, sometimes very gently other times not gently at all.

And after that did you continue making videos in a fine-art context ?
I did but less so – the focus was less and less on the art context. The gallery thing became less important – I drifted away from the art world.  I made some shorts showed in experimental film nights, Raindance festival, that kind of thing. When I look at some of my peers from art school like Martin Creed or Michael Raedecker, I feel very pleased that some people carried on in that context and made a real success of it but I drifted away from the career artist and what that means in terms of the art world.

I think my approach to editing is somewhat unschooled and a bit brutal – I don’t really think of it as knowledge, sometimes I feel like I am hitting the timeline with a big stick. But I think it probably affects my relationship with a DOP because as editor and director I sit either side of the DOP in the process and it is like being two people.

MORANTE DE LA PUEBLA by Justin Anderson. Courtesy of Photographers' Gallery, London.

Do you ever do the filming yourself, without a DoP ?
I certainly have done – my framing is quite specific, I shoot stills and know a little about lighting. However I would always prefer to use a DOP – filmmaking is so much about team work and I would rather have a good team.

Art direction is a job I found most difficult to delegate- my idea is very specific and haven’t yet figure out how to explain it instead of just doing it myself. I hope in time that will come and I will be able to work with people who bring unexpected and interesting things that I could never think of.

After that Levi’s experience, did you do anything fashion related before House of Flora, which (correct me if I’m wrong) was your first fashion film ?
I did quite a lot of work for Levi’s in the end and also some work for Ferragamo – at one point I almost convinced them to let me shoot their catwalk show in 16mm film – they were convinced by the idea – my pitch was that all catwalk shows were shot in exactly the same way and we could make something really fantastic that would stand out. The reason they didn’t end up doing it was because they didn’t know what they would do the following season. At the time they had Ray Charles playing live at the show so I don’t think budget was the problem, it might have just been too early for the fashion film.

Why fashion ?
On a personal level I have always loved fashion – as a very small child I spayed my building blocks silver and cellotaped to the bottoms of my shoes to make them into platforms. As a filmaker I love the opportunity fashion allows – its extremity, its humour, its craft and formalism, its sensuality and irreverence and its absolute and unashamed pursuit of beauty.

I think we are in a very lucky time, to be filmakers at the birth of such a thing.
My ambition is to push it as far as I can whilst (just) staying on the right side of pretentious!

LEVIS' RED TAB / LOS ANGELES by Justin Anderson for Levis'. Agency BBH.

So actually you had done quite a few fashion – related things before House of Flora – why do you think the pace has picked up since that film which was what, 2008 ?
Many things. Clearly a large part of it technology driven – the ability to stream quality moving image and therefore websites becoming like moving magazines. Cheaper cameras and editing equipment has meant the entry level is much lower rather film making being the preserve of the super big budgets. The price of catwalk shows though I am not sure it will ever replace these and because it’s fashion… It is a thing, it is fashionable and a fantastic way to show clothes, accessories shoes etc etc.

It is really the perfect medium- the real surprise is why it has taken so long. They are a  few beautiful older ones the YSL films in Marrakech and obviously an innovator like Hussien Chalayan has been at it for quite some time but for the most it is as you know just a few years old.  What will be interesting is how all these megabites of fashion content flying around will effect the industry – it is becoming the new MTV…. maybe the next generation will be talking about Chalayan instead of Jay-Z?

I think Lady Gaga is on to something – her fashion is a lot more interesting than the music. The same argument could be said of Madonna but I think the music and the fashion went closer hand in hand.

(smily face)

I agree that right now, music videos are probably the best things to compare to fashion film to better understand them.

For example music videos started as just recordings of live performances, just as fashion film started as recordings of fashion shows, and in both cases we don’t expect the live event to go anywhere soon…

Fashion film is in its infancy right now so i think it’s exciting because it could still go in a lot of different directions, there are very few imposed rules. But do you have any rules you impose on yourself when you make a (fashion) film ?
I agree there are very few rules and that is fantastic but the lack of structure can cause it’s own set of possible problems. My personal fear is that my work would be pretentious or boring, so that is probably my self-imposed rule. The lack of structure makes it much too easy to fall into this trap and the line between interesting/strange and dull/ pretentious can be very thin. Sometimes I use humour to try and keep things moving in the right direction – this I think comes right out of the Bunuelian tradition.

Dadaists and Surrealists used humour to subvert the establishment after the horrors of the first World War – that’s me being pretentious!

LEVIS' RED TAB / LOS ANGELES by Justin Anderson for Levis'. Agency BBH.

Certainly there seems to be a lot of less than exciting fashion films out there – why do think that is ?
Do you think with fashion film we’ll see a return of humour in fashion ?
I think there are just a lot of fashion films out there and whether they are exciting or not I am not sure – what I do know is that I would gladly never sit though another dream sequence.

As for humour I think there is a lot of it and has always been there.  Giles deacon a designer I would love to work with has a lot of humour – Marc Jacobs LV show was hilarious in a really fantastic way.

Hookers, chambermaids, wives and mistresses in luxury clothes in a hotel.

BIKE by Justin Anderson, for Armani Jeans. The Stimuleye project.

Regarding humour I’ve noticed indeed that you are often quite cheeky – both figuratively and literally… let’s be frank now, do you have a bum fetish ?
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to have a quick look if they see a great arse walking down the street. I count everyone man/ woman/ gay/ straight/ bi. I think I am just exploring that with the camera frame in which there is nowhere to hide from that fact that you are staring at somebody’s butt! However I don’t want to be stuck with one part of the body though… There is lots more to explore.

(smily face)

So do you think fashion films are going to need to be more careful about plot devices or narrative — are we going to see fashion film scriptwriters ?
Because it doesn’t seem music videos ever developed that – and yet saying that I can’t remember a video since Thriller that has used the dream sequence…
We should be careful about taking the music video analogy too literally as most songs already have a story attached – I think as fashion films grow there will inevitable be developments but not necessarily plot as such but an idea always goes along way. Weirdly at the moment some of the most interesting work I think is still coming from a fairly traditional ad campaign idea WE ARE ANIMALS, by Wrangler – the idea is strong so you can throw somebody out of  a window- set fire to them- stick them in a swamp, it all seems to work pretty well.

But I feel like something like this is very “advertising”, concept-driven. For print at least, fashion (and high fashion especially) has tried to stay away from such concepts (with the notable exception of Diesel of course), as if ideas were the enemy of beauty, trying to stay in purely visual moods… you don’t think they can sustain that with film ?

In print the editorial story has provided a great frame work for ideas.  I am thinking about the “nunhead” story for POP a few years ago and Klein’s Vogue Italia rehab shoot that certainly stick out. A film can certainly be sustained on purely strong visual moods but I count those as ideas too. What I am not sure is enough is a beautiful girl or guy – beautiful clothes and beautiful lighting.

DRESS NUMBER ONE by Justin Anderson, for House Of Flora. Part of SHOWstudio Futuretense series.

Let’s move on to the first film of yours which I saw, The House of Flora film which was part of SHOWstudio’s Future Tense series.
The first House of Flora project came about through chance, friendship and sublet. I was subletting part of a studio for painting which was where House of Flora was. They were drilling plastic, designing dresses whilst I was making abstract paintings- I didn’t want to share a studio with another painter I thought it would be more interesting to converse across another discipline.

Alex Fury at Showstudio had asked HOF to submit a film so the project evolved from a conversation that went something like. “Do you want to make a film?” ” Yes.”

This film was called Dress No 1 and was something of a success.  It was shot with natural light- the sun shone all day and the shoot was one of those one where everything goes  just right. Luck I think.

The next season we decided to make Dress number 2 and I started to try different things with lighting and using two locations. We shot half in an office of an Architect Will Alsop- in fact the stationary cupboard and half in the printing workshop at Middlesex University. I also started to work very closely with music and sound design. I work with the same guy and have done so since dress No 1- Pete Diggens- the process is often hard and sometimes even torturous- (for him not me), because describing sound can be very difficult but I think some of the best results have come form some very hard tough work. The collaboration element here is very important for me – going forward my wish is build relationships with DOP’s, Art directors etc in the same way.

DRESS NUMBER TWO - LETTERHEAD by Justin Anderson, for House Of Flora.

I remember being impressed by Dress Number 2 – Dress 1 was striking in its framing, editing and sound, but Dress Number 2 had an intensity to it, maybe due to the image quality ?? Anyway, then you had a big success with Chore, which was launched on Vogue UK…
Chore was a very important step for me – we shot it with what I would call a full size crew –  about 25 people and this makes everything entirety different. Much slower but also more precise and considered – the slowness means that you cannot shoot as much but it also allows you time to work with the shapes- which is something I really like. We shot on 16mm in two days and I made sure I had a large female element to the crew. I didn’t want the film to feel like a whole load of boys perving at a girl’s butt, It was very important to be girl sexy not just some cheap male fantasy.

Also the subject Lingerie is full of cliché- so I was very determined to try and approach this subject in an original way. I all wanted to be sexy but not seedy so I have to tread a very careful line between perversion and perversion. Humour was an important element to keeping this film light on it’s feet whilst indulging the long very obvious butt shots!

When Chore launched it moved very fast- almost crashing the vogue site, got to 48,000 hits on you tube very quickly before someone in the US decided it was too hot.. And has now had over 1 million hits – which I great for a film that was never seeded. I am however not naive enough to think  that this is just because of my filmmaking genius!

CHORE by Justin Anderson, for Damaris.

I thought you did a brilliant job of taking the lingerie genre, turning it on its head, while still giving the audience what they came for… I thought also the humour was well managed, because it sex and humour can be a very strange mix — how do you feel about Benny Hill by the way ?
When I first left Art School I worked for an artist who had a studio in Teddington – just outside London. Benny Hill lived just around the corner and we always used to joke that we might see him walking down the street with a string of Sausages on the way back from the butcher followed by a pack of Dachshunds. Of course we never saw him but the image was always there.

I do love humour and maybe there is something of the Bunuelian in Benny Hill too.

A POEM FOR A, by Justin Anderson, part of ASVOFF Light Series.

Nice.

But then, soon after Chore, is when I approached you with the Light Series brief, for which you did “A Poem For A” – a completely different universe. How did the idea of the poem come about ?
War played its part.

The brief was tough – because all film is about light.  I started to think about making  a dark film with cracks of light, that kind of white light you have creeping through when you try and keep a room cool a hot climate. I used a dress by Roksanda Ilincic which I really loved and cast a very beautiful black girl to also contrast the light colour of the fabric. The dress reminded me of 70’s YSL and then I stumbled on a poem that was written in Paris is 1974.

It was written by Harold Pinter about his then lover and subsequent wife Lady Antonia Fraser. I was never a huge fan of Harold Pinter really because I didn’t know him until I saw him give a speech in Hyde Park on an anti-Gulf war march. His speech was one of those great moments, he had so much fire and fury in his belly that it still burns for me.

‘The United States  is a monster out of control. Unless we challenge it with absolute determination  American barbarism will destroy the world. The country is run by a bunch  of criminal lunatics, with Blair as their hired Christian thug…’

Since that moment I followed Pinters politics and then sadly  his ‘progess’ with cancer.  this Poem I saw read by  a bunch of actors at a tribute to him after his death. I found it quite moving because it was a love Poem by a man who had be famed for being very caustic. Again the opposite. A tender moment from the firey old bastard.

That film had 2 elements which I particularly liked.  First, as for Chore, the sound design seemed less music noise and more like “sculpted noise” which worked really well.

Then, I thought it was refreshing to have graphic and textual elements in film, to contrast with the image…
Sound is really important- I work very closely with a guy called Pete Diggens. His approach to sound is very close to the graphic textual elements you are talking about.  We spend a lot of time using adjectives like scratchy, squelchy, sucking, rasping, empty, ticklish… Or…  it sounds like something is happening next door … In fact often the real challenge is find the language to describe the sound.

As for the visual side – my challenge to myself is to push the image in a graphic way- the female form has such fantastic shapes it is great to be able to play with then in this way.

Moving on to the Armani trilogy, I think it’s kind of interesting actually how different facets of you work came across the 3 different films: in the Jeans film, we can see the “fantastic female shapes” you were just mentioning, in the EA7 sports film the graphic element is very strong, and in the Emporio film, it’s the sensuality… three very different ways of developing the theme of the Chase.

The Armani trilogy was an entirely new challenge. To begin with there were parameters set – two of the films had to be shot outside, we had to include at least five characters and the films had to work across quite different platforms- online and on massive store screens. The different clothing ranges were entirely different and for logistical constraints we had to use the same five models. Therefore I know I would have to give each film its own strong identity. The Jeans Bike film is probably the most tongue-in-cheek film of the three and was meant to be quite light hearted.

(As a footnote – I have just been reading some online comments about it and it has been posted by some fixed wheel bike forums. As we are all much more obsessed by negative criticism I have been reading some hilarious comments by bike forums who seem to take their mode of transport as well as themselves rather seriously. I still get a lot of comments about Chore also – most are very complimentary but occasionally I get negative, interestingly from men who take offence on behalf of womankind.)

GARDEN by Justin Anderson, for Emporio Armani. The Stimuleye project.

Most of these films involve models, but when shooting this trilogy in Athens, I could feel a slight difference in attitude coming from Theoharis Ionnidis, the male character in the Emporio film, who is an actor rather than model. Was it just me or did you notice that too ? How do you feel about models vs actors in the nascent genre of fashion film ?
Your question about models is quite pertinent as fashion film, in its infancy, is having to address this issue. When casting models – it can be a bit of pot luck. I have a lot of respect for models- I think it is a pretty tough job – they are often very young and have had no formal training – they have grown up knowing and being told they are beautiful (which created its own complications) and then have entered a job in which they spend most of the time being rejected after 3 minutes on how they look.

When we cast them – our primary criteria is do “they look right for the part” but have very little time to find out how they will be able to act on the day. During the Armani casting some of the models had a fabulous physique and looked amazing but when we asked them to run their gait was surprisingly uncoordinated and awkward. I think the point about Theoharis is that as an actor – he probably has had formal training- he is used to taking direction and above all he has stamina. Making films is tough- the more beautiful and effortless they look, the more tough they were to make. Standing in cocktail dress outside in the cold and making love to the camera is no picnic!

CHASE, by Justin Anderson, for EA7. The Stimuleye project.

Things are really moving forward for you these days, can you talk a bit more about that ? What are your current and upcoming projects ?
As for upcoming projects I have two very exciting projects I am currently working on that I am afraid at this time I am not allowed to mention. I have just teamed up with a new producer and working with a new production company Epoch London. This is an international company and with them I am hoping to move forward securing the kinds of budgets that have traditionally been handed out to stills campaigns to make some (hopefully) interesting and groundbreaking films.

Poster of SAVE TOKYO CREATION by ENLIGHTMENT. Photography by Yasuyuki Takaki

The 18 designers produced special pieces for the project to be auctioned for donation. Among the designers showing, is much beloved Jun Takahashi for UNDERCOVER, YOSHIKO CREATION, famous for her unique pieces to Lady Gaga, TOGA, N.HOOLYWOOD and emerging designer JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN, among others as ANREALAGE, G.V.G.V., KEITA MARUYAMA TOKYO PARIS, MAME, MINTDESIGNS, SACAI, SOMARTA, KOLOR, PHENOMENON, TAKAHIROMIYASHITATHESOLOIST, ISVIM, WHITE MOUNTAINEERING and YOSHIO KUBO.

SAVE TOKYO CREATION Photography by Keiichi Nitta

The designers AW 2010 designs were picked up by Photographers and lensed especially for that show: Akira Kitajima, Chikashi Kasai, Tajima Kazunali, Keiichi Nitta, Leslie Kee & Ryan Chan, Masahiro Shoda, By P.M. Ken, Yasumasa Yonehara and Yasuyuki Takaki.

The Stimuleye spoke with Takafumi Kawasaki

SAVE TOKYO CREATION Photography by Leslie Kee & Ryan Chan

RENÉ HABERMACHER: What was your intention with this exhibit?
TAKAFUMI KAWASAKI: SAVE TOKYO CREATION supported by NARS is a big feature of Japanese fashion designers, most of whom lost a chance to exhibit their 2011AW collection because of the earthquake impact.
It’s a charity but not a money-donated oriented.
I wanted to provide Japanese fashion designers a chance to show their 2011AW collection that could not be shown on catwalk because of the earthquake.
As a fashion director & stylist, I believe it is a form of charity that only I can produce to provide those designers with the opportunity to present their creation in public.

SAVE TOKYO CREATION Left: Photography by Kazunali Tajima. Right: Akira Kitajimat

How did the earthquake and its aftermath affect you personally?
The earthquake made me find the huge scepticism about Japanese government and the power of citizens. I would say I feel my approach to fashion and my styling works became more clearer and straight forward.
It may sound a little funny but I became more optimistic about the life. What already happened, happened, even if it’s a massive tragedy, there is no way to change or dismiss it. I feel there is no point to keep crying over that. But what we should do now, is to step forward.

SAVE TOKYO CREATION Photography by Yasumasa Yonehara

Do you feel there is a different mood now among japanese society? I am asking as Japanese people expressing in the past to feeling alienated to their fellow countrymen…
Yes, “alienation” is a serious issue after the quake. Japanese people appear to be longing for the tightly-bound feeling.
Not only real communication and society, but also they are keen to make bonds with others in virtual community, such as Facebook, Twitter and other numerous social media networks. Some people are obsessed about that too much.

Generally speaking, however, I think the Japanese people have found what is important and what is less in life. I believe this is a great chance to reform the typical Japanese convenience-oriented life.They appear to have started making their lives a little slower and calmer, too.
It’s really a big shift of the country.

SAVE TOKYO CREATION Photography by Chikashi Kasai

What is the last thing that stimulated you?
I would say THE EARTHQUAKE in Japan.

The exhibition is held from May 27th to 29th at EYE OF GYRE, Omotesando, Tokyo.

SAVE TOKYO CREATION Photography by Masahiro Shoda

His work, that is often characterized by a dislocated humor, is transcending the divides between fashion, performance and photography and interrogates the body in relation to society, ideology and politics, subverting the western ‘art library’ as he calls it.

The Stimuleye talks to charming Athi-Patra, who was recently featured in the Phaidon book ‘Younger Than Jesus’, a directory of the world’s best artists under the age of 33, about his work and influences.

Athi Patra Ruga’s intervention for the X-Homes Hillbrow project with the character of ILUWANE.
Photography by Nadine Hutton

RENÉ HABERMACHER: Where are you right now?

ATHI-PATRA RUGA: I’m in my Cape Town studio editing my latest tapestry series and fighting my cats… simultaneously. [laughs] I’m big on cat competitions… my two Russian blues Azange and Shadofax will be taking part so we have been grooming them like crazy… with a few scratches to prove it… hehe.

You’ve just came back from a break – have you got an idea already on what to work on?

At the moment I will be spending the next year creating quietly an extensive body of work revolving around a series of portraits that I will be rendering in tapestry. I have been doing a lot of sittings with various people and doing preliminary sketches. I am editing those now to get started in the next month. I was thinking of titles to name this body or the final exhibition etc: What do you think of :…the do’s and dont’s of bodyworship [laughs]

I am very interested in the power-relations involved in portraiture… especially in response to the ethnographic history involved. I am always concerned with who or what element in the image takes more precedents/importance… the technique or the seater or the artists ego. That argument in my head leads to some lovely renderings.

Your work is known to straddle the divides between fashion, performance and many more disciplines. What is your ultimate goal?

Transcending all boundaries that have been put on who and what one should create.

Athi-Patra Ruga's monogram and portrait photographed by Ant Strack

The monogram you use ‘AP’, seems to be derived from Albrecht Dürer?

Nice spotting, yes Dürer is the reference. A big part of the work is appropriation and ultimately subverting the “western art library”. In this case I am always interested in this “I am the one and only”, self-centric way of creating or rather I am totally disturbed by it. The logo is for Athi-Patra Ruga and studios cc. The name of my company and studio. The “and studio” part alludes to the idea that collaboration forms a big part of my practice. I would like to continue with this point.

Does Athi-Patra mean anything specific?

No, it’s a brand like others. And a brand is the highest promise of good quality and superior concept.

It’s two nicknames of my birth name. I’ve been called those names all my life really. It’s as old as I can remember.

So where does the “evil little boy”, as you called yourself come from?

Well I don’t know… I embrace my evils and vices I suppose. As to where it comes from, let’s just say there are a lot of boys and girls think so… at some points I tend to believe it. [laughs]

I was born in a Bantustan, which is a puppet state created by the apartheid government, a dictatorship. In March 1984, on my 13th birthday, Biggie Smalls died. My mom was a midwife, my dad a sports journalist. My parents were gone for long stretches of time and I had to defend myself. It seemed natural, it was one big ball of trauma. I grew up in the townships and during the strikes and boycotts. Many kids [or rather young adults] used to brutalise us for going to suburban/private schools. I spent most of my time indoors as many kids could not cope with me: I was violent in a violent time. Both at home and outside, the country was going through a revolution.

Athi-Patra Ruga: "Idol Death Mask Series" 2009, Modeled Paper, Approx. 27cm x 23cm each
Image courtesy of the artist and whatiftheworld gallery

How does your family perceive your work as an artist?

Amused. However one would expect, from many conversations, that they would have problems, but I grew up in a very art-sensitive home. They have been very supportive with the rising to actually making my own money. That investment is certainly paying back for them. Proud would be the one word.

It’s said we primarily derive our topics and reflections from childhood experiences- (I admit it sounds very freudian) do you feel the same? what do you remember having left an important mark in your consciousness?

There are so many. I think the ones that have filtered to my image-making a probably those that have been a wake up call as to realising my identity. For example the first moment I was ever called a Kaffir/Faggot/Hood-Rat. I came out at 12 year old. So I had to deal with it.

In a way, I also feel that this resistance to my identity validates me.

However, in my work I try to be graceful and answer or make sense as to why people can so label others with such vitriol. This leads me to one explanation, of which the history and the effects of popular image making become a little formula I use to understand and convey in turn healing these early memories we are speaking about.

When you left home- what did you go for?

I left home at 17. I had just graduated from a liberal arts highs school and moved to Johannesburg to study Haute Couture.

Tell me what is your flirt with fashion about?

I don’t flirt with fashion – I’ve seen what heroine did to my friends and yep…! I think it’s my addiction to the idea/s of perception and the result of that in relation to my life and art.

Fashion is like being part of a SAW Trilogy movie or something.

Don’t get me wrong I love my Raf and shit but I have my issues with it. I cannot play around or even fuck with anything that lacks a political backbone and is transient.

Left: Athi-Patra Ruga, "Castrato as [the] Revolution" 2010
Wool and tapestry thread on Tapestry Canvas, 80cm x 125cm

Right: Athi-Patra Ruga, Votive portrait (umthondo Wesizwe) 2009
Thread on tapestry canvas 74x 94cm. Images courtesy of the artist and whatiftheworld gallery

Is there a connection with your most recent work, the tapestries?

In 2005 after leaving Haute Couture school, I wanted a little hobby to keep that “petite main” discipline going on. It some how led to me picking up readymade tapestries, of which I then felt I could continue also my interventions by actually carrying these said interventions on the canvas – a DADA thing I always say, but it alludes to the point earlier of my obsession with how we receive and act upon imagery. Most of the time the images are very faux naive. However, by the time I am done re-owning them… they are totally different stories. I find that act to be triumphant and a fat middle finger to those ignorant image makers out there.

How much does the backdrop of South Africa form your identity and your work?

Well, to begin with I am Athi.

Then along the way we can add many a labels. South African being one of them. However as much as this is something I do not cling to so much in my work, I do not want to give the impression that the South African Dynamic is nothing I do not interrogate in my work. There is a rich mythology and language that is influenced by the mixes in languages and nuances in this country that lead to a visceral rendering in different design/art elements in my work. I would think it a sin to make or render my practice into a “Poster Boy for South Africa” Sometimes I tend to be very anti-South Africa, that’s part of it, I suppose.

The collective consciousness in the global sense is my concern , as I feel that I have been born into a world that already has so many issues that intermingle through colonialism/christianity/commerce. This hybrid of problems is not only a South African thing. It would be silly to think that MTV and the internet have not had a role to play in this continent and the african diaspora. I travel extensively and I feel that it is a big goal of mine to understand every culture today and to communicate to them. I shy away from art that separates me from the global collective experience by churning art that auto-exoticises me.

[…] If I would have to leave the country, I would like to move to Kinshasa. It’s indescribable!

The history of the place, the music, the culture of physical fitness, the sex, and how in a world that has nothing, people create the most optimistic environments for themselves. This is a place I consider a spiritual home for me, there is a newness in how a society can be resilient and form its own modes of beauty that absolutely blows my mind. And I would love to be part of this newness.

Hypothetically the move would be like many that I have made, simply a new chapter with new concerns and struggles and obviously this will translate in my work as I am a firm believer in the relationship between acting and art making.

Athi Patra Ruga: "Untitled" (X Homes Hillbrow). Photography by Nadine Hutton

Can you tell me more on who is the character of AFRO-WOMBLE and the story behind?

The Afro-Womble character came after my seminal character of Miss Congo. In 2007 I was invited to do a show in Switzerland after a three month residency. I had created an outfit made of a loooot of afro wigs, a poetic stab at the performance-driven christmas parties in lilly-white corporate settings. And also I was going through a phase of translating brutalist / Le Corbusier manifestos into clothes as an exercise.

So the story begins when I was coming out of a Bern club and I see this poster of two white sheep kicking a black sheep of the Swiss Confederation flag, rendered in very cutesy manner that would make Murakami weep. On being told what it was all about and then after just freaking out about its xenophobic connotations, I decided to do a series of performances on a fast-melting glacier, a sheep farm in Lucerne, and an intervention in Zurich during election Day. The way in which the material and many memories clash, and the results that come out is a leading thing in unraveling the work.

I enjoyed Switzerland… I was in Bern with a very cool circle of friends who were all expats from Europe Africa and America. I took speed for the first time there.

How did the Swiss react to your street performance?

It’s interesting that they could identify the schwarze schafe [sic]. The immigrants felt I was poking fun at something they were in the thick of. That made me want to take responsibility for their pain… however I am merely an artist, not an activist you see. I seek engagement, I solicite engagement – Not a confrontation, that gets us nowhere.

Top Left: Swiss People's Party (SVP) "Create safety" poster
for the abduction of criminal foreigners in Switzerland

Following: Athi-Patra Ruga's reaction with the character of Afrowomble:
"Even I Exist in Embo: Jaundiced Tales of Counterpenetration", 2008. Photography by Oliver Neubert.

How you felt being in Switzerland?

I felt unchallenged…

In the “international” art circuit African artists are comparably underrepresented. So are women. What are your thoughts on current racial and gender segregation issues in the art world?

They [THE SO CALLED INTERNATIONAL] do not even enter my headspace. I feel that would be pandering to others codes of acceptance. Integrity and a good work ethic gets you to the places you wanna be at. And also I feel that us as women/gays/blacks/non-christians/lepers/tax evaders etc. have the responsibilities of owning our destiny. That is very important to me.

In your performances you use your own body as a tool- part of this is altering, dislocating and manipulating your physique and with this challenge the perception of classic gender roles.

For me it is a way of returning to a sense of embodiment, simply. I cannot comment on fashion’s apolitical and transient nature without physically mirroring and in turn subverting it’s patriarchal elements of shape shifting and engineering a woman’s body. This leads to a certain amount of disembodiment, non?

This translates in my performances in the sense that when I perform, my preparation is to hire a personal trainer to mould my body. Like the skinny fag designers do – with me being in charge of course. For MISS CONGO I could fit into a size 34, for BEIRUTH too. Later on when I decide to kill Beiruth [for the print series…”THE DEATH OF BEIRUTH”] I decided to gain 20 kg’s. Now with the latest character Ilulwane, I want to have this amazon-like musculature, all in the name of conveying ides around the body-politik.

Athi-Patra Ruga: "The Death of Beiruth" #1 & #2, 2009, Lightjet Print, 74 x 107 cm, Edition of 5 + 2AP
Images courtesy of the artist and whatiftheworld gallery

One of your recent exhibit is called ‘…OF BUGCHASERS AND WATUSSI FAGHAGS’, I love this title! What’s the story behind it?

‘…OF BUGCHASERS AND WATUSSI FAGHAGS’ was the first solo exhibition of Athi-Patra Ruga’s to be held in Johannesburg. The exhibition revolves around the principal character of the “bugchaser”, Beiruth, and his ‘tales of counter-penetration’, realised through craft-mediations and performances undertaken in various urban centers around South Africa and abroad.

This body of work is an interrogation of my interest in the history of image-making, and of displacement – both of people and images. The title of the show is double-edged: it refers to the sexual practice of ‘bug-chasing’ (the act of contracting the H.I. virus intentionally) – with it’s seemingly altruistic motivation; while also referring to the history of the ‘Watussi’, a colonial mis-pronouncement of the Tutsi people of the Burundi-Ruanda nation. The Watussi myth is further explored in the “Pixilated Arcadia” series of tapestries, referencing paintings done by Irma Stern during her 1943 and 1946 expeditions to central Africa depicting the “Watussi”. Stern’s works are re-narrated through irreverent subversion, with the aim of focusing attention on the implicit ethnographic and propagandistic undertones of the work. The “Watussi women” meditations find their retort in the “… WATUSSI MONEYSHOT” (2008) tapestry – a parody on the historical and the contemporary hoochie-mamma…

Athi-Patra Ruga: "the naivety of Beiruth", 2008, lightjet print on fuji crystal archive paper, 40 x 60cm.
Photo by Chris Saunders. Images courtesy of the artist and whatiftheworld gallery

There is this work I did with BEIRUTH….a quick background:

In 2008 , a young lady was physically beaten up in Johannesburg for wearing a mini-skirt[ yes]. it sparked an outcry from us more enlightened people…it is the event that gave rise to Beiruth. as you see Beiruth is this hyper feminine creature who is what people probably found threatening with that young girls honing of her “sexualness”. It’s has a lot to do with putting people civilisation to the test by means of mirroring it…reflecting it.

Beiruth’s name is derived from a pun around the middle-eastern city of Beirut and Ruth, one of the two books in the christian bible authored by a woman…or the only two that were allowed in the bible. – a play on the theme of Orientalism; but more importantly it is the illusive figure that qualifies the autonomous body against that of the sovereign state. The BEIRUTH debut is in a video work title: “…after he left” (2008), the BEIRUTH is documented undertaking various journeys: catching a taxi to the Cape Town township of Atlantis, a place that is a far cry from its legendary namesake; Beiruth seeking a sensual ideal in the form of the increasingly-popular evangelical churches. The video is accompanied by a series of performative stills “…the naivety of Beiruth” (2008), which documents Beiruth’s interactions with various spaces of the inner-city, including Johannesburg Central Police Station (formerly John Voster Square- notorious for deaths in detention during the apartheid).

South African society still suffers from a lot of fractions….

South Africa was built and was sustained for 300 plus years on separation. It’s all we know. The other validates you as a body not you validate yourself…. I believe the whole world has that syndrome.

South Africa is too young a country. The population is starting to engage with race and gender issues now in relation to reconciliation maybe.

Is it that wearing a “miniskirt” or being openly gay becomes a statement, more than just taking your freedom…

….and if it’s a simple statement, you must be neutralised. Unless you fight tooth and nail to retain it. That is the legacy of this country on my generation: WE FIGHT. Coz freedom is all we know….and would give up a lot to retain that personal freedom.

All you have to do is check out skattie. That is the little group we live and express our selves in… against maybe 70 percent of the country. And we fight to retain it. we are having crazy fun down here!

Hope i’ll have the chance sometime to check it out myself!

From your lips to god’s ears….

Athi Patra Ruga: "Deadboyz Auto Exotica Series" 1, 74 x 107 cm, Edition of 5 +2 AP, Photographer: Oliver Kruger
Image courtesy of the artist

What is up next?

I have just come out of a crazy year of gallery exhibitions which started with one in London’s FRED LTD. ,and include a solo here in Cape Town [“Teeth are the only bones that show.”] , a series of performances and now the solo that happened at The VOLTA NY Fair in March. I have also been selected to present a work at the PERFORMA biennale in New York so I shall be travelling that side a lot for pre production for the final performance to take place in November. Performance will take the fore this year clearly as i find that it is usually the basic canon and starting for projects in my other media.

I’m very excited about the PERFORMA piece and how it is developing right now:

Most of the performance works that I make revolve around the interventionist execution, where I am firstly influence by a space along with its myths and history , for this work I will finally be doing what i call an “opera sans mots” inspired by the visual works of my long time heroes David Worjnarowicz and Alvin Baltrop with the latter being the icon of the work. Manhattans West Side Piers forms the backdrop of the space.

Athi-Patra Ruga is represented by the whatiftheworld gallery

On the secluded terrasse in front of us, Raf Simons, the President of this year’s jury, sits in the shade of an umbrella having conversations with numerous journalists, while simultaneously the crowds gather and mingle: headhunters, designers, buyers…
Christopher Kane is here, teamed up with Carla Sozzani of Vogue Italia, Jack and Lazaro of Proenza Schouler came in from NY to have a look at the 10 designers’ work.

Its Hyères-storic.

All Photographs by René Habermacher

ODA PAUSMA
Netherlands

“It’s very much about contrast: My work is always focused around the vulnerability of women. I play with it, I try to hide it or extend, to show it or protect it. This collection is really about my most vulnerable moment because I ended love after nine years of relationship. I thought I should speak about this in my own language which is fashion. In the beginning it was all black. But later on in the process I was getting better and was seeing the good things about my situation:

Life goes on and there is so much in the world, so I said to myself don’t worry so much! The world is sad enough, so bring some light!

So I brought that into the collection by using white and Swarovski elements and my favorite materials silks and leathers, to work the contrast between fluidity and the protective. The silhouette is very tall from the waist on, so it looks a little surreal and dramatic.”

“The last thing that stimulated me was just my surroundings I guess. I am having a lot of fun lately and I am really enjoying this festival: it gives me energy and I want to move on and work and do something with this feeling of being selected and being a little proud to be so. It’s a good feeling, so why not do something with it.”

www.odapausma.com

JULIETTE ALLEAUME & MARIE VIAL
France

“We always help each other on our own collections, but this is our first official collaboration.

We met in high school while studying for our baccalaureate in applied arts. After that we pursued fashion design in different schools–I was at Duperre and Juliette was at Chardon Savard. We lived one year apart and then moved in together in order work together. In fact, the collection that we are presenting in Hyères, is a collection that we made during the time that we shared an apartment.

As for the collection…our starting point was a scarecrow. Using the image of the scarecrow we started to explore the feminine silhouette. Eventually we turned this silhouette upside-down and reworked all of the different facets of it. We were also inspired by cubism so, in the collection, there is the idea of a double body–like one body superimposed on another. For example the shoulders have large proportions and are backwards, the skirts are divided in two and are skewed –so all of the body parts are somehow decontextualized. And we see the real body underneath or in the back, usually highlighted with bright colors. All of this creates disproportional, unhinged silhouettes. Plus, the wooden shoes for the collection create a strange walk”.

“The last thing that stimulated us — Well…the festival! And getting the chance to show our first collaboration. Since we were at different schools, we never had the chance to realize a project together and it is the energy of our duo that motivated us”.

www.artifactcollection.tumblr.com

MADS DINESEN
Denmark

“I try to make a spirit army with no nations and no faces. My collection is a lot about shame and pride and the feeling of guilt.

It’s also about how to use the past in the present and the future and learn from it. This is my graduation collection. At the university in Berlin we do one each semester but this is the biggest one and the first with so many pieces. Though it’s a men’s collection, I showed it on women as well in the past.”

“The last thing that stimulated me was the film HOLY MOUNTAIN. That’s one of my favorite films. But right now I am looking a lot at Easter bunnies because I saw DONNIE DARKO. I use a lot of film and music in my work and literature.

Holy Mountain was part of the inspiration for this collection but mostly the colonial history of my home country Denmark. Because when I moved to Germany I found out I didn’t know anything about it, so the research for the collection started in Iceland. I went for a residency to Reykjavik and collected pieces of each culture that was under Denmark. It’s more like a typology of cultural pieces that I tried to put together.”

www.madsdinesen.com

LEA PECKRE
France

“The collection that I am presenting is the collection that I presented for my graduation at Lacambre last year. It’s called CEMETERIES ARE FIELDS OF FLOWERS. I am using a lot elements from cemeteries that interest me like wood, tombstones, mausoleums, bouquets of flowers, the contrast between wrought iron structures and the landscape. These elements, reworked in the materials used for the collection, provided me with really organic shapes–somewhat like trees that climb stones in the cemetery for example. There is a lot of embroidery in the collection as well.

Here in Hyères the defilés are much more structured then at Lacambre. But actually, my show at Lacambre was one of the more simple, subdued shows, so the Hyères show fits really well for me. I like when it is rather simple.”

“The last thing that stimulated me last: I want to finish my collection for Hyères! I am developing new pieces reworking some of the existing pieces and I think it will add a lot to the collection and that it will be better.”

www.leapeckre.tumblr.com


JANOSCH MALLWITZ
Germany

“The collection is called GRADUATION and is based on this time of growing up around graduation, when clothing becomes or is really important to feel superior and inferior towards each other. That’s where I started my research and found certain typologies of clothing that represent sorts of strength like a bomber or a kabana. I tried to rework them and see what is necessary for them to communicate strength, take away or add and stylize certain things. It’s basically between the athletic and grunge, working on clichés that are very pop cultural, of american high school and images from TV or music. I’ve worked  primarily with wool and nylon. In general the collection is in between about being visionary and very optimistic towards the future in a very naive way but then also being scared and a little bit pessimistic.

“The last thing that stimulated me is a book by Victor Pelewin thats called “Empire V” — thats really stimulating!”

www.last-service.de

ORIANE LECLERCQ
Belgium

“This work is a mix of two different influences: the first I call “fake” which using a synthetic, plastic, smooth surfaces. The other is a “rock n roll” influence–I used Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth’s front woman, as my muse. She is a pure rock n’roll force.

The collection reflects a mix of those two things. Part of the “fake” influence were masks that I created for the collection. But the masks won’t be in the show. It was a last minute creative choice when I decided to take them out of the collection.”

“The last thing that stimulated me… That is a very large question!  It’s in general music and cinema — that stimulates and inspires me the most.”

www.orianeleclercq.com

CELINE METEIL
France

“My Collection is called “Plié Backstage”. I worked for Galliano and for Felipe Oliveira Baptista, but I was in the second atelier, not in the design studio. At Balanciaga, I was also in the second atelier. Then I did a first collection for the Galliera museum. Now I am reworking that collection for Hyères. But I haven’t had a lot of visibility yet as a designer.

The jaconas material was used for the prototypes and I decided that I wanted to use this material in the show — again the idea of showing something that is usually used only behind the scenes. The “Plié” corresponds to the construction of the garments.

Jaconas is usually only used for prototypes. It is a test material used to work on the construction and the draping of a garment. Its not a ” finished” material. And I would like to start to commercialize this material.”

“The last thing that stimulated me is my daughter Rose. She is 10 months old.”

www.celinemeteil.com

MICHAEL KAMPE
Germany

“It’s a men’s collection called EXPLODED VIEW of originally 8 silhouettes which I lowered down to seven. It started from the EXPLODED VIEW drawings from engineers and product designers mixed with modern art and how you can transform sculpture, modern architecture and deconstructed architect theories into clothes and mix it up, mess it up with the rules of menswear.”

“The last thing that stimulated me was foam sculptures of a girl called Barbara who cut the foam you used to mold up walls in between. She dip dyed them into color and hung them as big sculptures. This was very close to my first inspiration of the collection at starting point, which were cardboard installations which looked in a way very similar but in a different technique.”

www.michaelkampe.com

EMILIE MELDEM
Switzerland

“It was through working on my other collections that I developed a manifesto: so this collection is based on the manifesto I wrote that describes my values and my aesthetic, such as minimal eccentricity and other things—there are rules, 8 of them. The manifesto is based on Switzerland, a little country that is a little bit lost in the middle of mountains that started to develop its own ritual around nature and the other surrounding elements. For example they have a carnival that celebrates the end of winter where they dress up in costumes that look like objects found in nature. They also have sports rituals and events, such as cross-country skiing, nudist hiking, Swiss wrestling, which takes place outdoors and they wear short with cuffs. Also, the people have a thing with animals–they live with animals and they are friends, but at the same time, they eat them! ”

It is all of these different relationships with nature that inspired me. Also, in Switzerland, the people have a very authoritative and creative character, which makes them really strong in areas like graphic design and technology. I am inspired by this rigidity and authoritativeness mixed with their relationship with nature. ”

The last stimulating thing: “Manger des sushis!”

www.emiliemeldem.com

MARYAM KORDBACHEH
Netherlands

“I am presenting the collection which is named FRAGILE FORMATION. My inspiration i took from the elements of nature and organic shapes. I like to make big sculptures and shape around the body.

At the same time keeping it really fragile, I did all clothes moulded from a single length of fabric on a dummy. The coloring of the fabrics is also hand dyed. They’re really fragile pieces: if you touch or wear them you feel they are precious and to be taken good care of.”

“The last thing that stimulated me were some events in my family.”

www.maryamkordabacheh.com

ALEXANDRA WERSCHUEREN
Belgium

Alexandra Verschueren is the winner of last Hyères, 2010. The stimuleye met up with her to talk about her experience.

ANTOINE ASSERAF: How was it since last year?
ALEXANDRA WERSCHUEREN: Good! Well, it was very hard to be honest: I was pushing myself a lot! Like, How can I make something thats better… but once I started to let go from that feeling it became easier.

So you wanted more sexy?
I actually just wanted more easy. Something that I would want to wear myself because its easier as a student to make something very conceptual. This time for me it was really more about change. For me its easy to think a lot — on the contrary it’s not easy to turn my brain off. So I really wanted a change. The collection is called SHIFT and was made especially for Hyères with the aim of hoping to sell it from September on.

Do you think that in fashion now is kind of a need to turn your brain off a bit?

Yeah, I don’t mind, I think it’s important! But I believe the collection is not an empty one either because I wanted to change again and be more fun. So the song I am using for the presentation is also quite fun! It’s very unlike me actually: when I had my phone call with Maida I thought ‘they’re going to think I’ve gone crazy!’ but they liked it.

Sometimes you win but then after you go home you’re like: “what am I going to do now?”…
It was a bit like that. And also I got some weird advice from people, important ones that tried to get me to do something that was not really me I think. And the pressure you know: am I really good enough?

It seems like 15 000 euro was a lot of money a couple of years ago but now…
I feel bad about that actually, because it went out so quickly, it was like “pouf pouf” okay it’s gone — damn! daddy…!

Hyères helped me a lot. Thats also I didn’t wanted to make something that’s not produceable.

The last thing that stimulated me was my last meeting with Maida!

www.alexandraverschueren.com

That’s the impression you get from Matt Pyke’s new show at Gaîté Lyrique, Paris’ brand new digital creation center. Mutating monsters, illuminated silences, evolving creatures, disintegrating dancers, glowing trees… Pyke and his friends from the studio Universal Everything use every corner of new-old parisian theater to make your head swirl. Literally.

Meet Matt Pyke. Photo by René Habermacher

ANTOINE ASSERAF: I noticed everything is looping, there is no beginning and no end. What as your intention with that?

MATT PYKE: One of the reasons for the looping is we’re really interested in the idea of infinity and how it creates video artworks which don’t really have a narrative story to them.

We’re creating almost a video sculpture, a state of mind or a trance-like situation: for example where dancers that are continually struggling up the wall to get to the sound or the giant walking monster in TRANSFIGURATION which is walking forever and nobody knows where he is going.

It’s that idea of foreverness and how you can use video to do that as an artwork that never stops: everything is almost like a machine that is going and going…

Matt Pyke & Friends : Super-Computer-Romantics

Sometimes you have some very un-digital elements like drawing.

I studied drawing and painting at art school and still find it very important to have a pencil as well as a computer. All of the artworks were based on drawings originally. The archive of the Gaîté Lyrique has a collection with all the working drawings from all the artpieces.

In the exhibition, the one called SEVENTY SIX SEEDS was entirely created through drawing but influenced by the more recent years where i’ve been working with people who use codes. The drawings are very much influenced by digital processes and the shapes that code make.

We’ve made an iPhone application that gave me kind of genetic instructions of what type of seed what type of plant to draw every morning- so it’s a way of using technology to control me, control my pencil.

Works in Progress: left Matt Pykes drawings for SEVENTY SIX SEEDS inspired after an iPhone application.
Images Courtesy of Matt Pyke

Do you code and program yourself or are you trying to bring that kind of “old school” thinking into that?

I intentionally do not code and program myself. I tried to learn and found it did not suit me, so I focus on the conceptual side of things and the visual side of things in terms of art direction and creative direction and come up with the initial seed idea and then work with programmers who are genuinely experts or super talent in their field.

I think one important thing is, by me not understanding code, that my ideas are not restricted to what is possible.

How did you first started playing around with this digital universe?

One of my first influences was partly due to my brother learning to write electronic music when he was very young, so we got interested in music technology. It was just before the Mac really arrived in the 80’s – he got his first sampler when he was around 10 and twas trying to make beats.

I’ve always been interested in the forefront of something: the forefront of music or the one of science. Technology is always been ahead in terms of CGI in Hollywood films and using the power of a laptop to create digital music or animation. I think I just get excited by these new tools emerging. Every year there seems to be a new, more powerful tool that Steven Spielberg or James Cameron work with and we can use a few days later. (laughs)

Matt Pyke by Matt Pyke.

I feel like in the 90’s the people were very excited about the future and the digital arts and things like this, but then it had kind of taken a back seat in the last decade were people were more looking backwards.It seems now people are looking more ahead again and say: what can we do that has not been done?

That is something we’ve talked about a lot recently is how there is obviously a lot of negativity in the world at the moment about with what is happening in Libya or Syria or the economy and the environments. Naturally bad news is what sells papers but I think on the other side of that we see technology as something very playful and something you can use to create very positive, utopian experiences and it’s really something that can save mankind. That is something I really wanted to explore in our work is how you can create this super positive energy and use it to hopefully influence the people who visit the exhibition. Because it’s kind of celebrating how technology can enhance your life.

Going back to the vote against technology: there is a big movement of paper-craft design and all these — because I studied painting and drawing originally, my heart still lies in handmade and analogue processes. My studio is in the nature in the North of England, is very much part of me and what I see — I don’t live in a big design city kind of environment.

But I think there is always action and reaction. At the moment we see it as “let’s try and do something which is in reaction to this kind of organic and analogue approach and try to do something with technology that excites people and does not feel it’s about closed-circuit TV and surveillance and all this kind of negative things.”

Poster for "Matt Pyke and Friends" exhibition.

Do you know the work of Nick Cave- not the singer but the other Nick Cave- the artist?

Yeah I saw it recently — it’s amazing! really really nice!

What is its called? SOUNDSUITS! I tell you where I got the idea from for TRANSFIGURATION:

Originally it was used for MTV, but the idea came from searching on Google images for “fur”, CGI-fur, and I found one image which is some random test from some crazy tech-forum image of a guy who got a stick man and wrapped some fur around him. Just this really tiny CGI test and we thought lets take that small experiment or test and turn it into this kind of bold living thing for MTV. From that we took the part which is the most popular across the web and turn that into more a story of evolution for the gallery. But recently I saw on twitter someone mentioning Nick Caves SOUNDSUITS- and I was like: Ahhh interesting parallel! What I really like about that is the fact that two people have come to a similar direction, his is analog and ours is digital. But it’s very very hard to make something completely original and unique these days;

It’s great because they are almost the same thing but because they are in a different medium they don’t give out the same vibe at all.

Yeah i’d love to see them- I know he is based in Chicago. I’ve seen the films and images on the web. It’s just nice to see these parallels…

CHANEL invited Universal Everything to create a series of video artworks in response to the 5 codes of Mademoiselle Chanel.

Do you actually have things that actually function interactive? I mean there is some interaction in the sound room system…

That is a good question the interactive one, because people have asked us a lot is, as we’re in a digital gallery, if we’re making interactive works, and I think I would not really call myself an interactive artist or a designer. There are certain things we’ve done with real time video mirrors and things like that but generally I prefer the word “participation” where you can involve the audience in some way even if that is them just standing there in a trance watching it or dancing to it in the Petite Salle or the Chambre Sonore…

I actually started posing…

Yeah — it’s great! That is what we predicted what people would do. It’s a subtle way of creating some interactions.

But I would prefer to leave the interactive design to the super talented interactive designers out there and us to focus more  on the video-sculpture and audio-reactive kind of world that we live in.

There always seems to be a big expectation for digital things to be interactive and I quite like the idea, personally as a member of the audience, that you don’t have too work hard.

Some of your pieces have an intelligence to them, they do react but they react with each other…

They interact with themselves! Yeah they are more self absorbed! (laughs)

MATT PYKE & FRIENDS
Until May 27, 2011
La Gaîté Lyrique
3 rue Papin, 75003 Paris
Curated by Charlotte Léouzon

Matt Pyke / Universal Everything / Everyone Forever

“25 Hyères” premiered on POP, where you can also read an exclusive interview.

THE STIMULEYE presents
25 Hyères
2010 Hyères International Fashion + Photography Festival

Video and interview on THE POP.COM

A film by Antoine Asseraf

Music by
Lori Schonberg

Voice-over by
Géraldine Frainais
James Deeny

Filmed by
Antoine Asseraf
Jason Last
Yoann Lemoine

Edited by
Antoine Asseraf
NEUE / Axelle Zecevic
Yoann Lemoine

Interviews by
Antoine Asseraf
Jason Last
Diane Pernet