EYE SCREAM

  • EYE SCREAM

    HYERES EXPRESS 01 PREVIEW

    - by antoine

    Less than 48 hours before the beginning of the festival, we bring you our first HYERES EXPRESS video, a quick preview with the people who make the Hyères Festival – founder and director Jean-Pierre Blanc, photography director Raphaelle Stopin, and fashion director Maida Gregory-Boina.

    A THE STIMULEYE PRODUCTION
    directed by Antoine Asseraf
    filmed & edited by Thibault Della Gaspera
    interviews Filep Motwary
    coordination Clementine Colson
    sound design Ça Va Chéri

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  • EYE SCREAM

    this hyères : full circle

    - by antoine

    Full circle.
    For its 28th edition, the Hyères International Fashion & Photography Festival made a daring choice.

    As presidents of the fashion and photo juries and guests of honor, they invited 2 young individuals, each recognized in his field, but with one thing in common: they won Hyères.

    Yes, this Hyères, festival graduates Felipe Oliveira Baptista (2002) and Charles Fréger (2001) return, not as young hopeful nominees, but as still-young confirmed professionals, now presiding over the juries.

    Felipe Oliveira Baptista The Stimuleye Hyères 2013

    Hyères 2013 fashion jury president Felipe Oliveira Baptista. Photo by René Habermacher.

    the stimuleye fashion photo gif

    Hyères 2013 preview. Visual by The Stimuleye.

    And the nominees are…

    FASHION SELECTION
    Tomas Berzins & Victoria Feldman, Latvia + Russia
    Henning Jurke, Germany
    Camille Kunz, Switzerland
    Yvonne Poei-Yie Kwok, The Netherlands
    Xénia Lucie Laffely, France – Switzerland
    Satu Maaranen, Finland
    Marion de Raucourt, France
    Damien Ravn, Norway
    Shanshan Ruan, China
    Xing Su, Canada

    PHOTO SELECTION
    Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer, Switzerland
    Emile Barret, France
    Petros Efstathiadis, Greece
    David Favrod, Switzerland
    Dominic Hawgood, United Kingdom
    Grace Kim, USA
    John Mann, USA
    Anna Orlowska, Poland
    Peter Puklus, Hungary
    Eva Stenram, Sweden

    Hyeres 2013 selection
    Fitting Model at the fashionselection at Felipe Oliveira Baptista's headquarters.
    
    Where is JP Blanc there are always flowers.
    
    The fashion selection meeting, with jury members, festival director JP Blanc and blogger Filep Motwary.
    
    Photography selection: Portfolio of Dominic Hawgood, United Kingdom.
    
    The entry of Petros Efstathiadis, Greece.
    
    Prints of Eva Stenram, Sweden.

    Full jury and exhibit lists coming soon, but we’re happy to report that fashion photographer and film maker Pierre Debusschere will be among this year’s exhibitors.

    28th International Fashion & Photography Festival
    Hyères 2013, April 25 -> 29
    at Villa Noailles, Hyères

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  • EYE 2 EYE

    the museum of everything

    - by antoine

    Art. What is it ? Where does it start, and where does it end ?

    In today’s contemporary art “market”, it seems no one bothers asking the question anymore.
    Art, as it would appear, is whatever is made by a self-claimed artist, whatever is recognized by the market.

    Enter The Museum of Everything.
    Premiering in Paris at the new Saint-Germain location Chalet Society after several exhibits in London, this groundbreaking, sprawling, multi-level and multi-layered show changes the game.

    Forget the market.
    For founder James Brett, it’s about special things, made by special people, people who haven’t gone to art school or thought of showing their work, much less of selling it.

    The museum of everything by Antoine Asseraf

    Antoine Asseraf: What started you on The Museum of Everything project ?

    James Brett: I don’t come from a particularly artistic family and my parents never taught me what creativity meant – but as a child I had a lot of it and it always got in the way.

    And so I worked in different industries and was working in film, and I remember meeting a very interesting photographer, the late Bob Richardson. He was the father of Terry Richardson. Terry’s a terrible photographer (sorry!) but Bob was a genius. He was the first person who really told me that “You don’t choose it, it chooses you”.

    In the same way, I can’t really tell you why I started The Museum of Everything. I didn’t set out to do it, I wasn’t interested in art, exhibitions, nothing. But I was working in film and I know film very well, I studied acting, so I’m creatively interested. And in my travels I started to see artworks, first of all by people in the American South, that was just cool and graphic. I always liked graphic novel and comics as a child – and as an adult frankly – and they started speaking to me.

    The artworks were cheap, really like 20-25 bucks, and the more I looked the more I found. I started finding better examples, and realized there was a whole history in America of folk art, African-American art and self-taught art which seemed to come from the individual, it didn’t have the pretension or the words of formally-trained artists, and it was immediate. As a film-maker I loved that, because I’m not really interested in what you are or what you say, I’m interested in the stuff, in what you do.

    As I continued I saw there were some other areas that had a great psychological depth. For example, the work of Henry Darger. I discovered there was a word for it, Art Brut, of which Dubuffet was the proponent. And that also interested me because in my youth, I was fascinated by the mind, how the mind works, and why we make the choices we do, all of this sort of existential philosophy of life.

    Prophet Royal Robertson
    untitled (NO DIVORCE WHORE's ALLOWED), c 1980
    © The Museum of Everything

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  • EYE CANDY

    films of the season: monsieur chypre – a short film with erotokritos

    - by antoine

    The Stimuleye is proud to announce, with the support of Vogue Italia, an “erotic fashion epic” : Monsieur Chypre.

    “HE KNOWS WOMEN, AND WOMEN KNOW HIM”

    Erotokritos, it’s a strange name for a fashion brand.
    It’s an even stranger name for a person.
    And yet, he is truly called Erotokritos Antoniadis, named after the main protagonist of medieval epic poem, a hero “born from the labors of love”.
    For 15 years, his label has been seducing women of all ages, drawn to collections that go back and forth between the sophistication of Paris and the dolce vita of Cyprus…

    Monsieur Chypre - Come and get it

    "come and get it."

    “THEY CALL HIM MONSIEUR CHYPRE”

    France and Cyprus, Paris and Nicosia, it’s a long-distance couple.
    In Monsieur Chypre, by Antoine Asseraf & René Habermacher, they come to life:
    Loan Chabanol, channeling the nostalgia of Marguerite Duras’ The Lover, plays the tormented Parisian woman, cracking at the surface,
    while Constantino Kouyialis, in his first first on-screen role, is a revelation as the seductive eponym hero, a modern day Alexis Zorbas.

    Monsieur Chypre - Octopus

    “AN EROTIC FASHION EPIC” we call it.

    “Erotic,” how could it not be with a name like Erotokritos ?
    “Fashion,” of course: stylist Michaela Dosamantes, fresh from winning Best Fashion Award at La Jolla Fashion Film Festival for La Main Dans Le Sac, mixes the season’s classic looks to capture the heroine’s transformation from “bluesy” in Vuitton to “red-hot” in Valentino.
    And “epic” ? What else do you call a fashion film 10 months in the making, taking place not only in Paris but in numerous locations in Nicosia, in the salt lake facing the Hala Sultan Tekke mosque in Larnaca, in the Almyra and Anassa deluxe hotels, in small taverns by the side of the road, or in the majestic monument carved directed in the stone, the tomb of the Kings in Paphos ?

    Monsieur Chypre - Mosque

    “HIS VOICE IS A SONG”

    All this, to the original soundtrack of Lori Schonberg and Shane Aspegren, members of Ça Va Chéri.
    (Download it here).

    So, now the tough questions.
    Is Cyprus really like this ? A little bit. Not at all. It depends how you look at it.
    It is an island of freedom in the east mediterranean, where couples from Israel and Lebanon come to escape religion. It is the birthplace of Aphrodite. You go, you decide.

    So how can I meet this Mister Cyprus ? We hear that one a lot. From women (and men) of all ages. Maybe he’s real, maybe he’s a figment of our collective imagination, our repressed desires. One thing’s for sure — we can’t give you his number.

    “ATTEMPTING TO CHARM HIM IS USELESS. HE IS THE ONE WHO WILL FIND.”

    Monsieur Chypre
    Film credits
    Fashion credits
    Goodies

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  • EYE SCREAM

    Everything You Need To Know About Hyères 2012 Fashion + Photo Festival

    - by antoine

    Everything you need to know about the
    Hyères International Fashion + Photography Festival 2012.

    April 27-30 2012, Villa Noailles, Hyères, FRANCE.

    Fashion + photo juries, fashion shows, exhibitions by Yohji Yamamoto, Inez Van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, Jason Evans, Chronique Curiosités, Maison Rondini, Matthew Cunnington & John Sanderson, Fabrics Interseason, Lynsey Peisinger & The Stimuleye, Lea Peckre, Celine Meteil, Internationales Fashion + Textile Conferences, The Shoes/TEED/Citizens…

    a film by The Stimuleye,
    with Lynsey Peisinger and François Sagat.

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  • EYE 2 EYE

    Guy Bérubé and his Petite Mort

    - by miguel
    It has been one year now since I moved to Ottawa, Canada. During the past year I’ve come across a few people who are always trying to make the city exciting. Guy Bérubé, a good friend now, is one of them. He owns a gallery – La Petite Mort, a place where taxidermy meets with iconic furniture pieces and fundraising art sales for several charities (including Guy’s own).
    La Petite MortLizard photo: Whitney Lewis-Smith.
    Far from presenting “Hockey art” or Canadian landscapes, in Guy’s gallery you will find work ranging from portraits of the city’s crack addicts by photographer Tony Fouhse, to poems on pieces of cardboard by Crazzy Dave of the Ottawa homeless community.
    With the look and fame of a bad boy, I can only say that Guy is doing a great job for the art community in Canada: making art available and affordable to whoever is interested.
    Portrait of Guy BérubéLegs with severed head (Guy's head, btw) Peter Shmelzer.
    What was the last thing that stimulated you?
    It happened here in Ottawa, it happened to be a lesbian wedding performance by former American prostitute and porn star turned performance artist, Annie Sprinkle, and her partner, hosted by SAWGallery. It was very interesting for me to see. They are already married, but they do an annual wedding with a theme, and this time here in Ottawa it was marriage to nature, and marrying snow. They are eco-sexual; they have sexual feelings about nature (laughs). I hadn’t seen Annie Sprinkle in over 25 years, and I had met her before at a performance in NY where she had a live orgasm on stage.
    So, it happened next door to my gallery at St. Brigid’s (a deconsecrated Church), and a lot of people came, and they saw the look and the aesthetics of a wedding. Everybody wearing white, everything was beautifully decorated, the light was coming through the stained glass… but then the performance started. They rode a pile of snow, exposing themselves by lifting their wedding dresses, and then inserted icicles up their vaginas, as they recited their wedding vows.
    That seems a bit unusual for the city…
    I’m seeing change, slowly but surely, over the 10 years that I have been here. I know that I’ve had some credit for some of the change. I’m seeing a difference in the art that is featured in galleries, even the Municipal galleries are showing things from my artists. It is something positive; Ottawa is a city where there is a possibility of starting from scratch, even though you’ve seen it in other places. Ottawa is a funny little town, very voyeuristic; it’s like the dude at the orgy who complains about the bad drapes and doesn’t jump into the fun.
    What would be a good example of this change coming from your gallery and artists?
    The USER series by Tony Fouhse is a perfect example of what my gallery does, something of which I’m very proud. It was featured in New York Times, Japan Newsweek… people got it, but it was very difficult at the beginning; lots of people in the neighbourhood, politicians, people were very against the work.
    USERMen wrestling: Matthew Dayler / Photo of man laughing: Tony Fouhse.
    Creepy baby head: Robert Farmer.
    What’s the deal with the stuffed animals?
    Before I had the gallery I had the fake tortoiseshell lamp, which I bought in Paris, and then I bought, not knowing why, the baboon. I think I felt sorry for him, it was on the floor of a junk store and people were grossed out by it, so I paid $20. And so, when I got the gallery, a friend of mine asked me if I was going to bring the “creepy animals”. Then people just started bringing their stuffed animals to me, and it became a depository, kind of like an orphanage. You can bring your stuffed animal, but it needs to have a good valid story, like all the other animals there. I’m not online desperately looking for an owl! I don’t buy them.
    Guy's taxidermy collection.
    You must have some good stories…
    A woman once told me she wanted to give me a bison’s head, and I have always loved the look of them.
    So, we had a long conversation, and in the end she told me, “well, it hasn’t been taxidermied yet, it’s just the severed head” (laughs…) it was frozen!!!
    Make sure to check out La Petite Mort
    SLAVA MOGUTIN & BRIAN KENNY
    September 2 – October 2, 2011
    INTERPENETRATION
    Photographs & Drawings
    www.lapetitemortgallery.com
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  • EYE CANDY

    coming soon – CHIARA SKURA

    - by antoine

    Hot on the heels of Marios Schwab’s breakthrough SS12 collection “chiaroscuro”, The Stimuleye is proud to announce “CHIARA SKURA – A Short Film With Marios Schwab” for Vogue Italia, coming September 28th…

    Chiara Skura - A Short Film with Marios Schwab

    Directed by Antoine Asseraf & René Habermacher
    Starring Amy Bailey

    Marios Schwab
    Style.com show pictures and review
    Vogue.it – A Short Film With

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  • EYE 2 EYE

    ATHI-PATRA RUGA: tales of bugchasers, watussi faghags and the afro-womble

    - by rene

    The ascension of young South African artist Athi-Patra Ruga came fast under radar of International attention.

    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.

    X_Homes_Athi-Patra_Ruga.jpg
    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_ADATHI_PATRA_RUGA_ANT_STRACK
    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

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  • EYE 2 EYE

    1136 postcards and a smoking nun…

    - by rene

    One family. One postcard for every day apart. The Butlers’ uncommon journey is told by the postcards from a mother to her daughter.

    Collaborating with Dutch designer Irma Boom, Jennifer Butler has published an innovative book: JAMES JENNIFER GEORGINA, a taxi yellow, 1200 pages volume in limited editions of 999 copies, parted in three sections with a joint spine, telling a unique story through 1136 postcards and 20 dialogues.

    Jennifer travelled the world with her husband James, in an effort to dry him out from his alcoholism, while their daughter Georgina stayed at home with various nannies, but Jennifer sent her daughter 1 postcard per day away –  1136 postcards written from 1989 to 1999.

    205 flights taken, 268,162 miles driven, 2 bullfights.

    A speeding ticket.

    53 unpaid parking tickets.

    13 cancelled flights, 1 bomb scare, and 205 churches visited, politics, wars, rising prices, births, funerals, holidays…

    Yet what comes forward above all is their relationship.

    02-JENNIFER_BUTLER-habermacher
    JAMES, JENNIFER, GEORGINA by Jennifer Butler. The 3 spine design allows to lay the book flat

    We meet at the American Library in Paris, 23 years after the odyssey started.

    As they arrive, Jennifer, a former model, on her side her very British gentleman James, holds a copy of the book in her hands, spiked with post-its of matching yellow. She is in full swing, mentioning another book by Allen Fletcher: “Be aware of wet paint,” he wrote in his beautiful handwriting: ‘I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way’ and it really sums me up: I don’t know ever where I am going, but I have a sense that I am gonna get there!”.

    It was in fact Allen Fletcher’s work, and particularly “The Art of Looking Sideways” that made her look differently at the value of the hundreds of postcards she had kept in boxes after 10 years on the road. When in 1999 the drinking of James stopped, so did the postcards. In 2007, Allen Fletcher was only a few months more to live, so he recommended to Jennifer to work on her project with Dutch designer Irma Boom.

    01-JENNIFER_BUTLER-habermacher
    Jennifer Butler at the American Library Paris

    Behind the book, says Butler, lies a passion “for extending the boundaries of what a book can be. And the knowledge that books have to be more, different than ‘information.’ More than being able to download them from the internet” she says.  According to her, ‘the book’ is not in the ‘up’ – it’s in the ‘down’:

    “The book remains to spread something else: maybe sheer beauty or a much slower, more thought-provoking message” Jennifer expresses in her first correspondence with Irma Boom, sharing the designer’s standpoint on book-making today.

    Despite the highly sophisticated and calculated design, JAMES JENNIFER GEORGINA is an emotional matter: “The book is an extension of the content. Irma would not have designed that way for a book about tennis players, or about architecture, whatever. This book is married to the silk screen yellow that she chose, and the yellow canvas. The book is yellow because its full of light and success! […]”

    “My husband, Georgina’s father, was drinking himself to death. And with one failed marriage behind me I fought to stave off a second.” James was given only two more years to live, so  “to save us I took the difficult decision to leave Georgina at home. We travelled to dry James out and we travelled to shield her from the indignities of drink. Everyday we were apart I wrote to Georgina. If love waits upon a gesture, then my gesture was these postcards. I wanted her to know just who I was and just what I did. They’re a testament to a mother’s love and a sharing of advice, anecdotes, front page news and exotic places” she explains.

    
    Cassette with the Book of 1200 pages, sewn in yellow cloth

    “The post cards were never written for public consumption. They were written because I loved doing them.

    And I did miss Georgina. And I did feel guilty and it was a way, felt like mothering from a distance.”

    For Jennifer, it is actually a very traditional story: “there is a situation, a lot of descriptions with the postcards of a story, there is drama and there are 3 characters. They’re just divided in a very innovative way, because the description and the situation is part 1, the drama is part 2, and the characters are in an album in part  3. Usually when you read about a family or a story or a novel it’s all in one. […] ” She continues, “when people hear the word alcoholism – you know its like a dirty word or somebody survived it. The alcoholism really gave the book its Alfred Hitchcock time element.”

    Jennifer admits that there was certainly a bit of irresponsibility concerning the traveling, looking back on it:

    “The structure was: let’s go. Like Thelma and Louise. And I was so excited having James sober and clean shaven!  He was adorable and generous and he is so knowledgeable about Europe, its history and its wars. It was like being back in university when we were driving! And there was no drink. Because he was so excited being on the road. So it really was not just about keeping him sober. He was sober and I loved the way he was.”

    
    Postcard from Granada, February 10, 1996

    The book is framing this story of longing guilt and salvation for a wider audience in a fresh way. Despite the 210 postcards that are printed full bore in the volume, accompanied by 400 in miniature, most remarkably, the book also features a series of conversations between James, Georgina and Jennifer: “One guideline that Georgina said, and James backed her 100% up was: there would be no editing! […] “

    Irma Boom, according to Jennifer, had approached the book with an enormous integrity and much love for its protagonists had insisted “that we pose the question to Georgina in one of the conversations: what was the sacrifice made by not being there. I said: ‘oh, isn’t this fantastic, Georgina spends every night looking at them.’ My mother said: ‘this is disgusting! my granddaughter is alone a third of her life!’ – of course the people who love you tell you the biggest truths.”

    “It was never ever difficult [to talk about our issues as a family]. We’re all very strong characters and I think the love is so loyal that nobody worried about sacrificing love. It was never difficult to talk about the painful subjects: most of all it’s a love story.”

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