VOL 2 ISSUE 0 SUMMER 2010 FREE
ARTICLE COPY POP CULTURE & URBANISM
2
Volume 2, Issue 0
\
Summer 2010
The Copy Issue
Fatb oy Tim is t he world’s premier Fatb oy Slim DJ imp ers onator. His website assures t hat not only do es he DJ just like Slim, but he lo oks and ac ts like him to o. Tim has b een pursuing t his s emi-lucrative career for t he past ten ye ars and is available to b o ok for children’s par ties. The Tr ibute DJ is a sur re al t houg ht indeed, but one not b e yond b elief. Far more into elec tronic music, I rarely go out to s ee bands any more, prefer r ing t he rep etitive b e ats and aimless shuf f ling delivered by a DJ. Perhaps in my f uture-nost algia I will b e going to s ee S cre am, L o R ankin, Draf t Punk. Perhaps in f uture working men’s clubs as t he generations change, t he stereotyp e of t he met al cover band playing to must achio ed and t atto o ed men will b e replaced by cover DJs, such as Mis car r iage of Justice, Monke y Mobile Dis co, Fiesto, B oy-16-Bit, spinning t heir b e ats to a ro om of sixty-ye ar-old geezers in day g lo, we ar ing nike hi-tops, bumping lines of forgotten w hite p owders. We can only hop e. There will fore ver b e honesty to t he cover ar tist, t he p ers on ent hralled wit h anot her’s cre ativity. The expansive industr y is f ull of ac ts of almost e ver y conceivable p ersuasion, o ccasionally wit h cover bands sur passing t heir forb e arers in ter ms of f inancial success and longe vity. If s omeone els e got it r ig ht b efore, w hy not for feit one’s own cre ative ende avor, and simply copy?
Outside t he-Ford-Mondeo-dr ivingre ading-g lass es-we ar ing-world-ofcomfor t able-living-and-defer red-dre ams emb o died by most cover bands, t he prac tice of copying is of ten met wit h s cor n, denounced as unor iginal, a r ip-of f. Such is t he c ultural emphasis on ide as b eing or iginal, f resh, c utting-edge t hat t heir tr ue quality can b e e asily overlo oked. Howe ver, copying and imit ations are a natural place for any cre ative jour ne y to b egin, come back to, or e ven b e motivated f rom. Of ten we dub t his Inspiration, but f requent ly, t he lines are blur red. This issue is dedicated to C opy.
3
Born & Raised in England.
Men’s and Women’s Clothing, Footwear & Accessories | www.supremebeing.com 4
Volume 2, Issue 0
\
Summer 2010
� 3 Editorial
9 Does it matter? Thomas Heginbotham
Interviews On Copying
18 Between Fake and Fiction: Darko Maver and Elmyr de Hory Lucy Dunn
10 The Designers Republic 13 Norsea Industries 14 Nous Vous 15 TADO
24 Regeneration Duplicated Asa Roast
15 Toro y Mois 17 Manzine 28 The Life Worth Living - Print - Art - Music
26 Alternative Branding - Sheffield Publicity Department - Manchester Modernist Society Alasdair Hiscock
Ben Dunmore, Alasdair Hiscock, Tom Banham, Ivan Rabodzeenko, James Woodcock, Kate Lloyd
50 Live Action Role Play Kate Lloyd Photos James Dodd 38 Fade to Grey: Photocopy Fashion Stylist: Ricoh Aficio
46 Shanson Alex Katsaluhka trans. Ivan Rabodzeenko
56 Mags and Tags: Graffiti and Media Ivan Rabodzeenko 62 Article Ephemera Run Hide Survive Jonny Wan by Ben Dunmore
5
6
Volume 2, Issue 0
Ar ticle is a f re e magazine made in Shef f ield. After 13 issues, this is our f irst in mu ltiple cities. Volume 2, Issue 1 arrives in Oc tob er 2010. Ar ticle Magazine B ank Street Ar ts 32-40 B ank St Shef f ield S1 2DS
\
Summer 2010
This issue of Ar ticle magazine has b een distr ibuted in L eeds, L iver p o ol, Manchester, Notting ham, Shef f ield and L ondon. If you r un a bar, galler y, co ol shop, and t hink you want to sto ck Ar ticle, drop us a line b en@ar ticlemagazine.co.uk S el e c te d Sto ck ists Manchester : Magma, t he D e af Institute, C arhar tt, Kraak Galler y L e e ds: Nor t h B ar, Nation of Shopkeep ers
w w w.ar ticlemagazine.co.uk twitter.com/ar ticlemagazine faceb o ok.com/ar ticlemagazine
L iver p o ol: Milk and Sugar, Tabac, Shipping Forecast
hello@ar ticlemagazine.co.uk
Shef f ield: Site Galler y, Bungalows and B e ars, The Showro om,
Edited, Produced and Designed by Ben Dunmore and Alasdair Hiscock contact@impursuit.com More Design Ivan Rabodzeenko More Writing Kate Lloyd Copy Editing: Kate Buckwell & Kate Lloyd Ad Sales Mike Forrest ads@articlemagazine.co.uk
Notting ham: Sur face Galler y, Spanky Van D y kes
L ondon: The ICA and Magma Clerkenwell Big than k yous to: Nick B ax and Human, Shaun Blo o dwor t h, Club Pony, James O’ Hara, Drop D e ad, Robin B eck, B en Duong, Hannah Tre var t hen, Alex Mor r is, Simon Purchas e, Richard L edger, Kr istine Bias on, Anna Tet as, Emma Fergus on, Tim at Magma, Unit Editions, S ens or ia, Theo Simps on, Manchester Mo der nist S o ciety, Manzine, Tom C ommon, Preston is My Par is, Holly Jennis on and t he Site Galler y cre w. Glen t he photo copier man. 7
8
at what point does taking inspiration become straight up copying? is this sort of thing wrong? does it matter?
Ideas are the commodity in which the creative industries deal. Unlike any other commodity, they exist not outside us, but in the ether, as potentialities. And though fragile, they are a commodity of great value. Without ‘the idea’, the ad campaign becomes mere wallpaper; the film, nothing but noise; the novel, pulp. It’s safe to say that the successful artist, architect, writer, director is the one who has the ideas, but, for all their value, ideas are perhaps the most easily stolen commodity of all. We have only to comprehend an idea to possess it. A quick walk round a gallery and you can make off with a quick dozen. You don’t even have to wear a mask. When one steals an idea, one bypasses weeks, maybe months of creative exploration and work and simply eats the fruit of another’s labour. Hence the outrage we tend to feel when we discover that an idea has been copied. Oh, that dreaded C word. Now, many of you will have seen that new John Lewis TV ad in which follows a woman’s life from childhood through to retirement, at each stage surrounded by lovely, shiny, John-Lewisy things. Shot like a Gondry film and set to a suitably profound, acoustic folk number, this is just the kind of stop-and-stare, relatively artful TV spot you could see picking up awards. But, some weeks later something surfaced that the creative team behind it never wanted you to see: a somewhat obscure ad for Italian lingerie brand, Calzedonia. Also following a woman through life’s stages and set to the exact same song, this ad quickly made its way round the media blogosphere, along with the usual ton of shit hurling. Adam & Eve, the agency behind the ad, of course, denied any allegation of copying, but such a series of events is becoming increasingly familiar. Toshiba sent a chair into space with a camera attached, just like little-known artist Simon Faithfull. Aero had a skateboarder ride
through a bowl of balloons, just like amateur YouTube film-maker ‘davetheknave’. Berocca vitamin supplements had some people do a dance routine on some treadmills, just like OK Go. Olympus had a series of photographs unfurl in line, just like in a stop-motion viral by ‘dokugyunyu’. Each time this story plays out, the same questions are asked. Firstly, at what point does taking inspiration become straight up copying? And secondly, is this sort of thing wrong? Does it matter?
In response to the first question, the answer seems to be that it’s a sliding scale. It’s a question like ‘When does a puddle of water become a pool?’ or ‘How many hairs do I need on my head in order to claim that I’m not bald?’. The boundaries are hazy. If my mind begins as a blank slate (tabula rasa) and is then filled with ideas, language, cultural artifacts of one type or another, it seems that anything I create will take influence from what I have experienced. If I’m any good, I’ll synthesize several disparate elements and form something new, discarding certain elements, retaining others. But the idea of an entirely original creation – something from nothing – seems somewhat mythical. One thing that does seem clear, however, is that now, more than ever, it is possible to seek out and highlight the cultural antecedents of any given creation. They come creeping out of the woodwork, the dark corners of obscurity, like past exes dishing the dirt in a kiss-and-tell-style tale. The growth of the Internet, and YouTube in particular, mean that it’s now possible to root out any old archive image or piece of footage and point out similarities, spot familial resemblances and label things copies, when, in reality, the creator is often blissfully unaware of these often obscure precedents. I mean, what are the chances the team at Adam & Eve had seen that incredibly dull Italian lingerie ad when working on the John Lewis brief? Some suggest that it might have made its way onto the ‘mood board’ or been circling in meetings to illustrate the ‘kind of direction’ they wanted to take the ad – after all, it does make it a lot easier to sell an ad to a client when you can show them something more substantial than a black and white storyboard. But, giving the creative team the benefit of the doubt for a second, it seems highly plausible that the same idea could have stemmed from the John Lewis brand itself. Bearing in mind the female target audience, the ubiquity and durability of the products the idea fits rather well. What’s more is that advertising, art, film, etc. essentially has to reflect the culture in which it exists, in order for it to be both relevant and meaningful to the viewer. If it becomes to far
removed from experience, for originality’s sake, it can cease to be understood or ring true. When humans look at the world and create art, it is inevitable that some wish to express the same things – things that stem from common lived experiences or the zeitgeist. It seems feasible that a lingerie brand and a homeware brand would want to say the same sort of things independently of one another, just as two painters in 1920’s would want to express similar things about technology, speed and progress in their work. That which is produced has to communicate certain truths about its context in order for it to be appreciated. So, the idea of following a woman or couple through life’s stages is by no means an original one – it is, rather, somewhat of an artistic staple – primarily due to the fact that it mirrors familiar, common experience. And if we go further and take mere techniques, such as chain reaction, stop-motion etc. it seems that many things which are labeled ‘copies’ are, at worst, just a little unoriginal or well-worn. But for every unassuming, coincidental look-alike, there does exist a sinister, ruthless, lazy copy. We’re talking about someone finding an idea, then setting out remaking it, verbatim. Is it wrong? I’d say Yes; to steal an idea, add nothing of your own and in no way improve or build upon what already exists is wrong. That said, you can’t own an idea just because you did it first. Just because Fischli & Weiss created art that used a chain reaction, for example, doesn’t mean that no-one else can use chain reactions from now until the end of time. Creative people need as wide a source palette as possible. It’s good for the industries concerned. You can’t copyright recipes, for example. Nor can you copyright jokes. Furniture, magic tricks, clothes, hairdos, databases, tattoo designs, game rules, perfume smells – all have very little copyright protection. And let’s not forget open-source software, which permits users to study, change and improve code that would have otherwise been copyright protected. It is often in those industries with the least copyright protection that we witness the highest quantities of innovation. Being able to take the best parts of something and discard the less useful or effective parts often leads to progression. And when copies proliferate and things start looking similar or trite in whatever industry you wish to consider, those at the creative helm are forced to up their game and explore new paths in the quest for the new. So, whilst copying verbatim should perhaps be condemned, creative synthesis does not seem like the destructive or harmful practice we once assumed. As American painter Robert Henri once said, “Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. All the past can help you.” In other words, don’t fucking straight up copy, you lazy sods. 9
stsiypoc
TDR, department stores are our new cathedrals, 1997
T HE DESIGNERS REPUBLIC
The world’s most copied design company The Designers Republic are one of the world’s most influential graphic design studios. Founded by Ian Anderson in Sheffield in 1986, with early clients such as Warp records, for whom they designed a distinctive logo and numerous covers. Through the next 20 years they produced distinctive work for Playstation games Wipeout and Grand Theft Auto, Coca Cola, Gatecrasher and many others. Their graphic style is informed by a strongly subversive tendency, in which corporate logos, legibility, and the authority of the design itself is undermined. Many works have employed an intense, maximalist style where logos are layered and crushed together, adopting other images in the process. We spoke to Ian Anderson. We want to think of copying as something that’s not a symptom of a lack of originality, but a way of using the work of other people in a genuine way, dealing with a whole world of distant influences that are out there. Being subversive and being totally original aren’t always appropriate how useful is imitation to you in finding a solution, as your work has to have a certain degree of effectiveness if it’s selling something?
10
There is a sliding scale connecting the notions of
inspiration, emulation, pastiche and copying, and generally it’s a question of perception and semantics which dictate where individuals draw the line as to what’s acceptable, both creatively – in terms of the validity of the designer’s auteur-ship and ownership of the IP, and contextually – in terms of the value of the work as a unique and valid solution to the (client’s) brief. For me there’s a significant difference in using something ‘known’, deliberately and transparently, because it is the best way to communicate the message or solution most effectively – where the source being ‘known’ is key, versus using another person’s creatively to fill the vacuum of an individual’s inability to think for themselves, be it conceptually, creatively, or visually. For me, ‘design’ presupposes an idea - if the use of existing work or ideas is integral to the communication or expression of that idea then the ‘copying’ is essentially surface detail to the big picture. It depends whether the issue is with the reproduction of the idea or the expression of it.
The Japanese characters you’ve used in some work are perhaps an example of this - they were there to achieve a certain look, and actually just spelt your name. How frequently have you been asked to imitate yourself? I think the question is really a matter of how frequently one is asked to replicate the solution rather than the creative process. If the question is how many times the brief is essentially to replicate a solution to a different question, the answer is too often - the uneducated client treats commissioning design like buying a shirt, because they don’t have the vision to see design as communication as opposed to dressing to impress. Or maybe, they don’t have the experience to write an ‘enabling-brief’ allowing the right designer to deliver the right solution, or have the self-confidence to let go...everyone’s a designer these days. The best clients, those who provoke the best responses, are those who understand that choosing the right designer, and asking them to be, rather than imitate, themselves is the best decision they
copyists
TDR, power is power, 1999
It has all the gravity and entertainment value of mantras such as We Design the World and Design or Die. However, whichever way you look at it, the modern world would look very different if you erased TDR’s work from the picture, and I’m immensely proud of the fact that the ‘truth’ of a claim such as TDR being ‘the most copied design company in the world’ is really only a question of degree rather than substance.
can make. Clients who see designers as macmonkeys have probably been working with the wrong designer. Could you pinpoint one piece of work that you’ve deliberately done as a copy? In 1995 TDR was commissioned by curator Ronald Jones, then teaching at Yale, to create new work for a three way group show at Artists Gallery in SoHo, NYC called Customised Terror, based on cultural expressions of transmogrification (simply interpreted as the theoretical state at the point of transformation where the entity is no longer what it was but has yet to become what it will be). I decided to explore the idea in the consumerist context of the transformation between what we are told and what we perceive, playing with de-idiomising the ‘idiotproof’ advertising mantras of global brands - from the body of Christ, to the blood of FMCG - as an expression of cultural transmogrification. TDR’s contribution to the show was a series of large format digital ‘banners’ representing the 12 disciples of consumerism, the 12
stations of happily ever after in debt…one of which, let’s call it Judas Iscariot for dramatic effect, focussed on an invisible friend alter-ego of TDR, the Pho-Ku Corporation, whose missionmantra ‘WORK. BUY. CONSUME. DIE’ bullet-pointed ‘the consumers role as a target market’ - all dressed up as the fuck-buddy, faux-pas of Fizzy FMCG and Tokyo Takeaway Heaven in a homage to the rising sun ying-yang of the Nxt Generation...all of which was borne of the PWEI smiley Westinghouse logo from 1987. Otherwise it’s deny deny deny :-) You claim to be the most imitated design company in the world. Why do you think that your work has been copied so much, and what’s the most obnoxious copy? I’ve never claimed TDR is the most ‘copied’ design company in the world – it’s ridiculous, and a contextually pointless claim for anyone to make... especially if it’s true. Which for a time, we were, by the way. The ‘observation’ was made by a design journalist, highlighted by a sub-editor, and headlined by the magazine designer.
The reason TDR has been and remains so copied is that the foundation, the Attitude / Art / Approach, is Brain Aided Design™ borne of a search for ‘truth’, the quest for questions, the desire to communicate - to illicit a reaction, to provoke a response. The result is design that is both form and function, and style and content – where the medium really is the message. It’s logical, it’s contextual and it works, sometimes despite the brief. The seduction is in the thinking, the design is the foreplay (and the invoice is the fuck!) All copies are obnoxious, but without them there would have been a gaping hole at the top of that article. What are your sources of images and inspiration on a day-to-day basis? Honestly – everything. There is no hierarchy of influence. None of us – clients, designers or audience – are cultural islands, and the reason TDR’s work connects effectively is because we tap into everything, without prejudice. People make the mistake of defining the parameters within which a specific design, or visual communication in general, needs to succeed in the blinkered context of business jargon, like ‘return on investment’ or ‘market penetration’. It’s a nobrainer that any creative solution needs to satisfy and amplify all that essential client criteria, but the real success of the communication is where the idea rests, conceptually and visually, in the grand scheme of everything. Anything you would like to copy / should never be copied? Nothing. Everything. Tomorrow’s another day.
11
Unit 11, The Forum, 127/129, Devonshire St, Sheffield, S3 7SB info@ideologyboutique.co.uk +44 (0)114 2723482
OUR BRANDS AW/2010 ACNE APC CHEAP MONDAY COMMON PROJECTS FILIPPA K MAKR LEATHER GOODS NOM DE GUERRE SURFACE TO AIR YMC SNS HERNING S.E.H. KELY OUR LEGACY ALLY CAPELINO
AVAILABLE IN-STORE AND ONLINE WWW.IDEOLOGYBOUTIQUE.CO.UK
NÖRSEA I N D U S T R IE S Menswear label Norsea Industries was founded by designer Stephen Banks in 2008. With an open emphasis on heritage, the clothes they produce are based on the workwear of fishermen and workers from the North of England, frequently using the same fabrics and manufacturing techniques. In this issue, we are thinking about the role of copying in a creative process - perhaps because being original, reactive, subversive is not always appropriate. Do you find that copying is a useful way of finding solutions in design? I don’t think, as a designer, copying alone is ever a good solution to a brief. Systems of how to work are something you can copy and learn from but creativity needs real inspiration as a starting point. A designer doesn’t want to be told to simply copy something. The reference sample or picture you start off with is only the beginning of the process; intangible things, like wisdom, vision, vigour and craft need to be applied before you have a finished product. Given that there’s a historical awareness to your designs, is there a difference to you in the types of influences you have? How do historical pieces of clothing compare to everyday images and items? The best advice I can give is not to go on the net for too much research. Look outside in your own environment and find something more personal you can get passionate about. Our brand Norsea came out of our move back to the Yorkshire coast. It was not something we planned but after a while the surroundings and influences came together and a clear direction and aesthetic appeared. Our references are rooted in the everyday all around us: fishing boats, yacht rigging or debris left on the shoreline. You could never get the same feeling
fall 09 shoot / norsea
of immersion by hitting your keyboard for a couple of hours a day while sitting at your desk in an office somewhere. There’s an idea that the clearer a clothing company’s influences are, the more successful it will be. There’s definitely a trend for this now - as seen in workwear and heritage, historical brands. Do you find this need important, either commercially or artistically? Whether your brand is workwear or sportswear the clearer your message the better. Like people brands have identities, consumers get to know them over time. You align yourself with the brands you feel speak to you. If a brand suddenly changes direction the consumer can end up confused and alienated. Could you pinpoint one piece of work that you’ve deliberately done as a copy? I’ve tried to recreate the old Teddyboy jackets that the
local fishermen used to wear in places like Hull in the 1950’s. My Dad has still got one of the originals, it’s hand tailored and fits like a glove. Is there something you would like to copy / anything that absolutely shouldn’t be copied? I’d like to copy the longevity of someone like Oscar Niemeyer the Brazilian architect and still be enjoying my work when I’m ninety-nine. Have you been copied? I get to see inside the design rooms of quite a few leading brands when I do the odd bit of consultancy. I have noticed quite a few Norsea images appearing on mood boards. It’s great that another designer has found inspiration in what we are doing. But in the end their copy of our one of our pieces only ends up further away from the original concept. Like a photocopy, much of the detail is lost.
13
Installation shot, Tokyo Police Club Album ‘Champ’. 2010
NOUS VOUS
Nous Vous are an illustration and design collective based in Leeds. They have recently completed album cover artwork for Tokyo Police Club, as well as working for many events and organisations in Leeds plus the ICA and others. Their work is primarily illustration based, with a mix of sharp graphic prints combined with more subtle hand drawn work. With the internet in particular, images become much more anonymous and you get a lack of depth of context to them. How do you deal with a continuous stream of sources - do you draw from the images that come to you from various sources like the internet?
14
As a collective, more recently we haven’t been using online sources as a rule, because there’s so much and at this point we’ve identified a language and a tone we like to use, as well as several techniques that we’re consistently practising, and a repertoire of work we’ve created for exploratory and personal interests. This is just an attempt to make things simple for ourselves more than anything, it gets confusing the more visual research you do and the more images you look at and like, putting parameters on it really helps. Like you say about the lack in context and truth of form that the web presents - unless it’s a web specific image - it’s hard to get anything from it. Going to a gallery or an exhibition or actually seeing things in the real world is always better. Even if it simply gives you an idea of scale, technique, what paper someone uses, where it is situated.
Does working as a collective help or allow you to steal ideas, imitate each other in a way that you otherwise couldn’t on your own? Yes definitely, we reference each other a lot but that’s part of what we do as a collective. We’re always attempting to find a unified visual language, but all of us have techniques that are different from one another, techniques that we’re individually more comfortable with. Using different techniques and attempting to master a craft always throws up different problems and solutions, so occasionally our practices will start to move away from one another every now and then. Can you describe something that you have copied outright? When looking at a brief we generally respond as organically as possible to the problem - trying to solve it with ideas, before even thinking about it stylistically. After that point we start looking at our own work to start developing ideas - generally things one of us has done, more exploratory pieces we’ve created. This is why it is good to keep producing work that isn’t necessarily for a commercial purpose, because you can look to your own work, which you are familiar with, to solve problems, rather than looking for a formula that you think works in that context. When you create an abundance of work you can decide what will solve a problem using a method you’re already capable of achieving and that has come from a place
you are personally happy with. Is there something you would like to copy / anything that absolutely shouldn’t be copied? I wouldn’t say that there was something that shouldn’t be copied, it depends what your practice is - some of my artist friends imitate and make homages to work, as a point, that’s what the work is about. In the context of what we do it’s just not necessary. I think maybe the only thing we’d like to imitate is someone’s technique, but then there are a lot of people’s techniques that we admire. Part of the fun of practising, though, is working on your own technique, when you do this your personal way of doing things is always going to be different to someone else, and when you truly invest in your craft you will learn and be directed by that and your personal limitations. Have you been copied? I’d say we’ve been referenced, but not copied. Although there has been times when we’ve seen things that reference a little too closely. Some people need a place to start, to start building a repertoire of methods, techniques etc, and it’s not always a bad thing to imitate something you like, when you don’t have many ideas but an urge to create and learn about how to make. It’s just not good when you present these things as your own work and just consider the lesson in creating it valuable enough. Luckily any one of us always has two other people we admire working with us, who we can reference and discuss ideas with.
Tado Sugoi Poster
TORO Y MOI
TA D O
Tado are Mike and Katie, illustrators based in Sheffield. They have worked on prints, shirts, toys and even cars, for a number of clients. Their work is inspired by Japanese characters, cartoons and toys and is often brightly coloured but not frantic. In terms of getting influences and seeing a wide range of always arriving images - on the internet for example - do you often feel a pressure to adapt and try new things, to perhaps imitate? What are the consequences of this? Of course we’re always trying to push ourselves to do new stuff - you have to really! That’s all part of keeping yourself fresh and excited about work. It can be very hard to be totally original all the time. As long as you have a clear conscience, and you’re fully aware of what else is going on around you, we think its fine to just do your own thing. Of course there’s probably always going to be someone, somewhere in the world, whose work will be similar in some ways - that’s pretty inevitable. Working for commercial clients, and on advertising campaigns for instance, is there a drive to create something that’s been done before because it ‘works’?
We often find the opposite to be honest! Because most of our work is for commercial clients we always have to start from scratch with each new job. If it’s a high-profile piece then the clients usually have an idea of the kind of thing they’d like, but they’re always keen that it should never be compared to anything previous. A lot of your imagery is derived from a Japanese cartoon style of illustration. How do you develop these with or without imitating other work that you’ve seen? Our work is certainly influenced by classic Japanese characters, but also the whole aesthetic of Asia - the whole continent is a visually crazy one! However, we’d say that our work is probably just as much influenced by watching Supergran as kids, action figures, classic American advertising, and British humour. The aesthetic may have traits of Asia but the ideas behind it all come from a huge mash up of influences. We enjoy twisting things up a bit and injecting our own tweaks and humour, which is what probably makes it our own. Is there anything you would admit to having copied outright? Hellno! Some of your t-shirt designs were found to be pirated and sold illegally. Who did it, how accurate were they and what was your response? The t-shirts really are the least of our worries. We find it quite funny actually, and tried to get hold of some of them for ourselves! They came from Bangkok as far as we know, along with a whole host of others, which ripped off various friends of ours. There’s pretty much nothing that can be done!
First championed by highly enthusiastic blogs, Chillwave is gaining a following world wide with its down tempo beats, ethereal lyrics and washing synth sounds, which bloggers too readily refer to as ‘blissed out’. Champion of the genre is solo artist Toro y Moi, whose single ‘Blessa’ caught wide attention early this year, and whose follow up album, Causers of This, gained widespread acclaim. For this issue we are looking at copying as a creative process, perhaps because being original, reactive, and subversive is not always appropriate or possible. Do you find copying is a helpful place to start with music? I think it’s a very helpful way to start and, because things happen in cycles or phases, I think that you, as a songwriter, will eventually move on and create something of your own. For me a lot of my earlier recordings were very similar to artists like Elliott Smith, Animal Collective, and Broken Social Scene. I was, and still am, a big fan of the most recent recording sounds and styles. Chill-wave is frequently used to describe the sound that you share with a few other American musicians. Do you find, being in a newly christened genre, that you guys copy and influence one another? I think we all have similar influences and sounds, but I wouldn’t say we influence each other’s sound. But I would say that we push each other to make something new and a step-up. Musicians often list their ‘influences’. Do you think there is a difference between being influenced and copying? Of course, copying would be when you try to make a template of some sort, and then go by it to create something. But influence is when you take in certain elements of that artist. If there was anything that you could copy, what would it be? I would copy Trey Songz. And if I could rap I’d copy Drake and Lil Weezy. Have you been copied? How does it feel? I’ve heard bands that say they’ve been influenced by this wave of new music and it’s obvious. But I wouldn’t say it’s copying me, because when I listen to it, it doesn’t sound exactly like me.
15
T H ESH IP PINGF O RECA ST LIVERPO O L.CO M 15 Slater Street, Liverpool L1 4BW * 0151 709 6901
M A N Z IN E
Manzine Issue 3
very well and then breaking the rules or subverting them in some way. The point about niche publishing is that almost anyone can do it, so we decide to stop talking about doing it and actually do it.
Manzine is a magazine for men that wants to escape the aspirational, archetypal, male stereotype of the typical men’s magazine. Published occasionally by a small group of writers who work on other men’s mags such as GQ and Esquire, Manzine is a sort of hobby project that talks about real experiences, whilst sending up the over-exaggerated lifestyle claims of glossy magazines. We spoke to Kevin Braddock, editor of Manzine. We’re looking at copying in creativity as something that’s useful. In dealing with the myriad influences you have, being subversive or indeed totally original might not be appropriate. How useful is imitation or copying to you as a way of communicating in the right way? I don’t know how useful it is, but it is certainly inevitable in some ways. All creativity is a product of what it absorbs and reinterprets, it all exists in a lineage or tradition, so in that respect there is probably nothing truly original. What you do with the influences is what counts. Manzine combines a tradition of DIY publishing and the process and formats of established, mainstream magazine production. Those are our two key influences, and the way they react off each other is what makes Manzine unique. Tracing paper, I imagine, is one of the greatest aids to creativity.
There’s quite a knowing, perhaps British sense of humour to Manzine, and it seems to appeal to a readership that know magazines well. From working at bigger, well-known titles how does this ‘zine format compare? On the one hand it’s original, but it also borrows heavily from a world of small, niche publishing. Above all, we want Manzine to be entertaining, rather than an exercise in design. Manzine comments on the modern masculine experience - sorry to sound sociological for a moment - and part of that is the way men experience the world, which is through the media that targets them, hence the references to men’s magazines and the marketing that targets men. Also, part of what we want to do with it is rethink how men’s magazines work, from the assumptions they make about readers in terms of content, to the way they address an audience in terms of how the content is presented. There are plenty of great men’s magazines on the market, and plenty of really bad ones too. So we subvert some of the tropes and category clichés of existing men’s magazines, along with trying to talk to the reader in a new way. Again, it’s inevitable that we are reacting to traditional men’s magazine thinking because Manzine is made mainly by men’s mag professionals and that is what we’ve been schooled in. I guess the thing here is that any originality results from someone learning a craft
Is there a difference to you in the types of influences you have? How does the researched, more historical object compare to the continuous stream of images you might see on a daily basis? We principally think design is over-fetishised now and all too often obscures content. Manzine looks the way it does because we want to differentiate from the full colour, fullbleed, heavily designed category standard. In terms of influence, we have drawn on fanzines, news journals, dada, constructivism, comics, and found artworks, photography and media, as well as established mass market titles. Can you describe something that you have copied outright? We haven’t copied anything outright, though we do parody elements of men’s magazines Is there something you would like to copy / anything that absolutely shouldn’t be copied? No, there are precedents we aspire to match, but not to copy. It’s okay to be influenced by anything, as long as the influence is acknowledged and the copier doesn’t simply attempt to pass off his work as original. Have you been copied? We’ve seen things that look suspiciously similar to Manzine’s aesthetic and editorial line, and usually they are quite poor, but as they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
17
Between Fake and Fiction
Darko Maver and Elmyr de Hory
18
The fine lines between the copy, the fake, the reproduction
months in a Spanish jail. Ultimately, his activities came
and the homage have become the obsession of countless
to a tragic end. De Hory attempted suicide more than
artists in the 20th and 21st centuries. At a basic level,
once, and finally took his own life in 1976. At this point,
themes and motifs have been used over and over again
he knew he was due to be extradited to France and sent
in art since antiquity: no one for instance can claim to be
back to prison, he could no longer make a living from his
the creator of the Madonna and Child motif. Forgery too
forgeries which were increasingly recognisable as he got
has been around a long time, and in the highest spheres.
older, he had no money and even the house he lived in
Michelangelo faked several archaeological ‘discoveries’
was being claimed by one of his exploitative partners who
which he claimed were remnants from ancient Rome but
was threatening to evict him.
which he had in fact made himself. Rubens was known to alter works by other Old Masters in his collection.
Darko Maver was a Serbian artist who came to attention of the art world in 1998, when photographs of his wax
The best hoaxes participate in the machinations of the
sculptures began appearing on the internet. These
art world to the fullest extent, while at the same time
sculptures depicted grotesquely deformed bodies, and
mocking the legitimacy of the self appointed experts and
were noted for their brutal, unflinching realism. As
connoisseurs. Hoaxers themselves are intriguing figures,
Maver’s work became known, mystique around the artist
who often seem to feel a real anguish about what they
grew. He was living and working through the death
are doing and why they think they are doing it, caught
throws of Yugoslavia, when political dissidents faced
between a belief their skill is a great as the masters they
heavy punishment including imprisonment. Then there
copy, and a cynicism towards those who claim to be able
was the nature of his art: as well as the sculptures he
to judge the good from the bad.
would make disturbing public performances, leaving what appeared to be maimed corpses in public spaces for
Elmyr de Hory became notorious in the 1970s, when he
unwitting members of the public to find, and alert the
admitted to forging a great number of works of modern
police. Maver was arrested in 1999 and imprisoned in
masters, including Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Derain,
Podgorica, where he later died. A statement announcing
Renoir, Chagall, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Degas. He had
his death and a photograph of his body were distributed
an astonishing skill for forgery, and ran off many of his
on the internet. By this time, his work had had gained
finest works in under an hour. Despite his talent, de
notoriety and serious appraisal. The Italian pavilion of the
Hory aspired to be a genuine artist, and many times
1999 Venice Biennale was given over to a retrospective of
throughout his life would attempt to make a living from
Maver.
his own work, but found himself unable to sell it and would inevitably return, often reluctantly, to forgery. He
The life of a hoaxer is naturally a shadowy and dangerous
disliked dealing with galleries, and on several occasions
one, and in both cases the level of fakery and deception
entered into partnerships with other fraudsters who
get much more complex.
would sell the work for him. These partnerships however inevitably led to de Hory being paid a relative pittance for
What we know about de Hory and his work is complicated
his work, compared to the sums the dealers and galleries
by his entanglement with his biographer Clifford Irving,
were selling them for. After many years on the run from
who was subsequently discovered to be a forger himself,
Interpol, he was arrested in 1968 and served several
faking the ‘authorised’ biography of Howard Hughes.
19
Maver dead and alive
20
21
In his biography, de Hory claims authorship of over a
which 0100101110101101.org had found online.
thousand works commonly attributed to modern masters. It is not known to what extent this claim is accurate or
Both the creation of Maver and the forgeries of Elmyr de
myth-building. In Orson Welles’ final film F for Fake
Hory challenge common assumptions of authenticity. The
the final tragedy that de Hory’s life became is explored
Matteses’ work prompted a lot of soul-searching about the
poignantly by the magisterial Welles. At the beginning
nature of the internet and how much we know or think
of the film Welles promises that for the next hour,
we know about digital information, drawing attention to
everything he says will be absolutely true. But several
how easily we can think we have checked, researched, and
years later he claimed that everything in the film was fake.
reassured ourselves of the truth. The deception reveals
Who can be certain whether Welles, who plays the role of
the gap that is created when an artwork is translated into
both narrator and magician, was trying to build up myths
different media. At the Venice exhibition, visitors thought
around de Hory, or his own film?
they were looking at photographs of wax sculptures, while in fact they were seeing reproduced photographs of
The story of Darko Maver goes far deeper as well. Due to
unborn babies and human remains.
the many hoaxes he had created in his art practice, many
The lifespan of Darko Maver, from invention to death
people questioned the suspicious nature of his demise,
and Biennale retrospective was less than a year, which
and wondered if it could be a final performance. Had he
showed up the casual way in which media sources repeat
faked his own death? In fact, shortly after the Biennale
what they have heard, authorised by collective wisdom.
retrospective, Eva and Franco Mattes of the art group
Afterwards, Antonio Caronia said, ‘If someone in whom
0100101110101101.org admitted that they had invented
I trust doesn’t certificate the existence and the value of an
the character of Darko Maver entirely. To prove this, they
artist, the artist doesn’t exist’
Due to the many hoaxes he had created in his art practice, many people questioned the suspicious nature of his demise, and wondered if it could be a final performance. Had he faked his own death? released a photograph taken in the same cell where Maver was reported to have died, of the actor playing Maver
But who to trust? De Hory’s forgeries throw doubt on
alive and well, holding a magazine reporting his death.
those figures we would presume we can turn to for verification. With a project like Darko Maver, it is easy
22
The truth is that Darko Maver never existed; he was not
to blame our ‘digitised world’ which removes people so
a hoaxer, but a hoax. The photographs of his ‘sculptures’
far from the ‘genuine article’ that they do not know what
were actually images of genuine aborted foetuses scanned
they are experiencing. Elmyr de Hory, however, created
from medical textbooks. The ‘hoax body’ performances
genuine articles, physical paintings which delighted
were actually terrifying photographs of genuine corpses
viewers and fooled the experts. Apparently, he sometimes
even fooled the artists themselves: Van Dongen was said
One last story, which shows that once you start delving
to have been shown a de Hory imitation of his style and
into the art of fraud and fraud as art, you can find that the
swear that he had painted it himself. De Hory did more
labyrinth is far deeper than expected.
than create skilful reproductions: he created entirely
The duo behind Darko Maver have recently exhibited
new works in uncanny renditions of the artists’ signature
a work called Stolen Pieces: fragments which they
styles. The physical object, as both de Hory and Orson
have chipped away or snapped off from great modern
Welles stress in F for Fake, is the test of the so-called
masterpieces in museums all over the world. They even
expert. Experts, we hope, have proven their knowledge
have a fragment of Duchamp’s Fountain. Except that they
in the chosen subject, and we should expect to be able to
don’t because in a sense Fountain never existed either.
treat them as a trusted authority. In the film, Welles says
As with Maver, the piece was first brought to the world’s
‘this is not the century of the hoax. We fakers have always
attention via a photograph, this one taken by Alfred
been practicing our art. What is new is the expert, who
Steiglitz, then in an editorial by Beatrice Wood called The
speak with the absolute authority of the computer, and
Case of R. Mutt (the name signed on Fountain). At this
we bow down before them. They are god’s own gift to the
point - or perhaps earlier - the ‘real’ object was lost. Every
faker.’
subsequent object known as ‘Fountain’ in a museum has been a reproduction which has come, via the artist’s
Well, perhaps.
authorisation, to stand in for Fountain. Though even if we accept there was such a thing as an ‘original’ Fountain,
Forgers often argue that what they do shows up the
it may not even have been Duchamp’s at all: he did not
pomposity of the self-proclaimed expert, and perhaps to
claim authorship of the work for several years after it first
some extent they can, but the argument is so often made
became famous, and some historians believe that it was
from the perspective of the egotistic forger who feels
actually the work of the eccentric Dada artist Baroness
himself underappreciated by the critics. It is an attitude
Else Freyberg-Loringhoven. Oh, and there are also critics
encountered time and again from de Hory, filmed casually
who claim that Stolen Pieces is itself a faked performance,
saying ‘bye bye Picasso!’ as he burns one of his perfect
which in the last analysis would make the fragment a
fakes, in Clifford Irving, in Wells himself, dressed as a
piece of enamel which falsely claims to be a fragment of
magician.
a copy of a possibly non-existent urinal which Duchamp may have lied about inventing.
Eva and Franco Mattes’ hoax goes so much further, pointing blame at anybody who is in some way interested
Art forgery, whether it done openly, or as a hoax, or as
in either arts or the media. As a joke, the work of Darko
a hoax of an entirely different hoax, has been around
Maver is clever, but is very cruel to the casual visitors
for a long time, and the layers just keep getting deeper.
to the Venice Biennale, for instance, who try to come
Ultimately though, the hoaxers tend to find themselves
to terms with the supposedly brilliant sculptures, only
isolated. There are numerous fake and inferior ‘de Horys’
to later discover that they had been peering at horrific
on the market today, which both add to his myth and
photographs of real murder victims, real aborted foetuses.
discredit his reputation. The master himself was swindled
The justification for using such images because they were
many times over in his lifetime. Eva and Franco Mattes
already ‘freely available on the web’ is shaky at best, and
live continually on the move, at risk of arrest. It is a
damns everyone who uses shared media of any kind,
practice which, once started, can all too swiftly suffocate
which is to say everybody.
the faker under the layers of his own deception.
23
Duplicate Cities
For all the physical transformations that it creates, the urban regeneration that has taken place in nearly every northern city is in essence an economic model. And this model has been moved from place to place to place as a set of numbers and objectives.
There’s an irony at the heart of the economic model that underpins the trend towards nearidentical regenerated city centres that has characterised urban planning in Britain for the last fifteen years or more. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the eerie similarity that characterises the centre of most major British cities came out of the same basic economic model being copied by local authorities across the country. The irony is that this model, which has produced such inflexible, static and placeless urban spaces, was born out of a desire to create flexibility, diversity and dynamism. The plan that was meant to breathe life and activity into our city centres has sealed them off as airtight zones lacking identity, with near duplicate spaces and architectures copied across the UK. The economic model of regeneration, which has been adopted in some shape by virtually every local authority over the last decade or more, emerged as a response to the urban crisis of the early nineties when de-industrialisation suburbanisation threatened to reduce British city centres to de-populated ghost towns. Yet the philosophy behind regeneration has it’s roots firmly in the Thatcherite philosophy of entrepreneurism and deregulation that helped to create the very decline that it was meant to counteract. The mantra of Thatcherite neoliberalism was that bureaucracy was inflexible, prohibitive and static, whilst free market competition was flexible, enabling, and above all, dynamic. So, when city councils in the early nineties were faced with post-industrial stagnation (the emptying of the city centre, rising 24 22
unemployment and falling property prices), they looked to Thatcherite projects for a model that could reinvent urban space as a dynamic, flexible and rejuvenated territory for entrepreneurial capitalism to inhabit. Such a model had transformed the London Docklands from derelict slums in the early eighties into a symbolic beacon of neoliberal capitalism by 1991, but councils in Birmingham and Manchester planned to adopt it on a grander scale. They aimed to remake the very core of these formerly industrial cities as a constantly regenerating urban space, fuelled by property speculation and retail commerce. People would be lured back to the heart of the city to work in new office blocks, shop in new shopping centres, and relax in coffee shops and expansive pedestrianised plazas. The plan was that the city centre could be transformed into a space that was fluid, diverse, flexible and dynamic, powered by the free circulation of capital. The problem was that as this model was emulated by urban authorities across the country, it became clear that, practically, it was profoundly unflexible and undynamic. Councils were eager to demonstrate their commitment to sacrifice their powers in the ‘war on local authorities’ that had been declared under the Tories, so they rapidly gave up their responsibilities to the host of Urban Regeneration Companies (URCs) created around the turn of the millennium. The aim of these companies was to ‘achieve sustainable regeneration, improved industrial competitiveness and economic development in England’. In practical terms this meant a generic
Images: Leeds and Sheffield official promotional magazines; Live It Love It and Made.
set of targets to be met in every city: increased retail space, job creation, increased property prices and the creation of attractive central public spaces. Across the post-industrial cities of the North and Midlands, these URCs took almost identical approaches to achieving these aims. The role played by private companies in these projects grew hugely after the millennium, as they took on contracts to transform the built environment and rushed to fill the vast stretches of retail and office space the new developments created. As the private sector began to re-colonise the city centre, the regenerated urban surroundings came to reflect their commercial priorities. Since the basic engine of regeneration was property speculation and retail, the architecture of the city centre was mobilised to support this engine: the urban environment was re-imagined as an extended retail space, designed to carry out the same functions as a shop front. The regenerated space of our cities is primarily designed to aid and enhance consumption, and as consumption has become standardised – with chain retailers now dominating these areas virtually unchallenged – so have the spaces in which we consume. Urban spaces have been reorganised along the lines of management theory, which emphasises ‘hierarchies of needs’ over traditional city planning models. In this hierarchy notions of ‘place’ and ‘urban identity’ have been transformed into brands that can be used to market the city. The influence of these theories is most clearly
visible in the huge, unnervingly identical shopping centres that now form a key part of regenerated city centres. Buildings like the Manchester Arndale Centre, Liverpool One and Trinity Leeds (when it’s finally finished) are a neat way of ticking the boxes required of URCs – they create jobs (although almost always less than forecast in the long-term), they provide several hundred thousand square feet of retail space, they devolve responsibilities for security and maintenance to private firms, and they boost property prices as symbols of the redeveloped heart of the city. The fact that they all seem so strangely placeless is a direct result of this – they have all been designed to meet a narrow set of management theories and ‘regeneration goals’ which were drawn up with no sense of place, but intended to be easily transplanted from one city to another. Equally important to the URCs are the ‘cultural industries quarters’ that are now apparently ubiquitous in every decently sized town in the country. These areas of ‘design-led regeneration’ provide ample opportunities for re-branding the regenerated city centre as a dynamic and innovative urban environment. The fact that even these spaces – which are supposedly dedicated to creative production and the arts – manage to lose any sense of place beyond crude forms of branding (the recurring, bludgeoning use of cutlery/steel-symbolism in Sheffield or cottonmill-conversion-chic in Manchester) is testimony to how inflexible these regeneration projects are when they are based on criteria that is blandly copied from city to city.
25
Alternative Branding A number of groups are using the language of city brands to promote alternative views on their cities; referencing past attempts to promote Northern places, showcasing their most amazing parts.
Sheffield Publicity Department Sheffield Publicity Department produces free guides to some of the best views in Sheffield, from up high on the hills, across the city. Briefly explain the Sheffield Publicity Department, its purpose and activities. Sheffield Publicity Department is a dream tourist agency for the city. We’re not like a normal tourist information agency. We’re not really interested in what’s hot, what’s on, where to see and be seen. We don’t want to talk about bars and shops and boutique cafes. These are the same in every city.
But more than this, we want to help people experience it for themselves, feel how Sheffield feels. So we’re going to produce maps to the best views, guides to the sweetest terraced streets, postcards of the sunset. We want to show people how this city can amaze and delight, put you at ease, fill up your senses (when it wants to).
In terms of harking back to the 70s, both the logo and the name are re-appropriated from city council projects that existed at the time. The Sheffield Publicity Department produced brochures and films about the city, including the City On The Move film seen at the start of the Full Monty. The S logo was used across loads of different projects in the city, from the Publicity Department itself to Sheffield Cablevision, the city’s dedicated cable TV network. These projects are inspiring for us, not just because they’ve got amazing logos, but because these were civic organisations that were really proud of their city: their tone is much softer, more romantic, than the desperate INVEST IN SHEFFIELD message you hear today.
In actual fact, there’s only two of us, and we haven’t got any money to do it (yet). We’ve produced two maps so far, in six months of trying. We’re not trying to say it all at once. We aren’t aiming to be comprehensive. But it doesn’t matter how fast we go. The stuff we’re talking about isn’t going anywhere.
But equally, we’re not trying to do something kitsch, or backward looking. There are far too many steel city clichés doing the rounds already. We see the logo as our inheritance, something that we can develop, with a different icon for each project we do. And, to be honest, it’s a beautiful logo.
Instead, we want to explain why Sheffield is so special. Tell people about the hills, the amazing views, the pubs in the middle of nowhere that brew the best beer you’ve ever tasted, the weeds that explode every spring.
26
How important is the imagery and branding of this group? It seems to refer back to a period of stronger civic authority, of brave modernism something that was notable in Sheffield in the 60s and 70s.
How do you see this project in relation to the perhaps bland and inoffensive official city branding right now? Could something like this be carried out as part of a city’s brand today? The difference isn’t just what we’re talking about, but how we’re talking about it. The people in charge are doing this weird hybrid of promoting the city to couples looking for a romantic weekend mini-break, and trying to get businesses to invest here. It basically boils down to saying: we’ve got great hotels, and great shopping, and great coffee. We’re doing what every other city is doing, but better! We’re saying something else. We don’t feel like we have to blindly say SHEFFIELD IS AMAZING. Because, to be frank, parts of this city are shit. Our shopping streets are in ruins, and the new hotels are cheap and ugly. But the stuff that is amazing, the nature and the industry and the design and the beer, is absolutely unique. A lot of it is free, too. Creative Sheffield are all about improving our city centre economy, about growth and retail and business trips. What we’re talking about is something you can experience. You probably can’t package up a view, or market
Manchester The Manchester Modernist Society is an organisation that celebrates the twentieth century city of Manchester, in all its fine detail.
Modernist Society
Briefly explain the organisation, its purpose and activities.
Sheffield Publicity Department Guide No. 2
the way the sun hits the tower blocks when it sets. But it takes your breath away. Makes you feel alive. Could the two fit together? Maybe. If we could get some involvement (ie some money) from the official bodies, we could do tonnes more. Imagine creating a series of wooden viewpoints on the hills. Or setting up a Sheffield Tourist Shop that sold maps, beautiful photos of the city, Kelham Island Beer, and every record that’s ever been produced in Sheffield. But it doesn’t hurt to be on the outside. Whatever we’re doing with the Publicity Department, we get back to thinking: would we want to find this in a shop like Syd and Mallorys, if we hadn’t done it? The best thing about Sheffield is that it always creates something independent, with a sense of humour. We’d like to think the Publicity Department is just another example of that. sheffieldpublicitydepartment.blogspot.com
city is no different in this respect and we would be the last to advocate for indiscriminate preservation, but our worry is that the pace of regeneration is so accelerated that we are in danger of losing the post war landscape altogether and with it our shared experiences, memories and sense of place. We can’t help thinking that the city is at its best when it retains some character, some intriguing nooks and crannies that reflect the rich patina of its pasts, not stifling the potential for future developments but rather inspiring and informing outstanding new architecture.
It all began when we decided that our peculiar shared obsession with old telephone boxes, grubby concrete walls, half forgotten water features and the rapid disappearance of postwar municipal buildings and civic squares might make an interesting if obscure project. We were both members of the Twentieth Century Society and wondered whether we could adapt their campaigning intent with a more frivolous playfulness, something less ‘grown up’. The basic idea was simply to raise awareness and appreciation of twentieth century architecture and related Modern art and design in Manchester and the surrounding region. It emerged from the feeling that whilst Manchester is celebrated and marketed very successfully as the ‘Original Modern City’, its version of modernity is invariably based on the nineteenth century stock of Victorian buildings or the post- bomb regeneration of the city, with its corporate 21st century glamour. The actual Modernist city, the one constructed in the twentieth century, has become quite forgotten and neglected. We wanted to reclaim this period, whose buildings provide our everyday backdrop, and remind people of its continuing importance to the contemporary city. Over the past year we have tried to develop and compliment two strands of activity: get-togethers, alongside more long term collaborations. These have included a project based around the everyday life of the Mancunian Way, a public seminar and a publication for the Urbis Research Forum; an interactive map of the twentieth century city, and our recent commissioning of a sound installation based in the classic K6 red telephone box, perhaps the smallest listed structure in the country! You set yourself in contrast to the ‘million dollar revamps’ of the city - do you feel that there is a negative effect to the state of the city through big money redevelopment? Cities by definition grow, change and develop. This is what makes them vibrant and attractive. The modernist period itself is of course the result of a common desire to make its own mark, improve what it regarded as outmoded or undesirable, and reinvent the city to reflect its own aspirations and ambitions. But if the radical reshaping of cities in the sixties (often intimidating in their totality, however well intentioned) has anything to teach us, it is that place is more than neat civic spaces and orderly segregated zones. The contemporary
How important was the imagery and branding of this group? It seems to refer back to a period of stronger civic authority, of brave modernism. I suspect we didn’t consciously set out to deliberately evoke a sense of municipal authority or defend any particular ideology or utopian ideals but it’s true to say that incorporating some of the motifs, visuals and aesthetics of the era seemed natural from the outset, more for our own amusement and mischievousness than any sense of ‘branding’ in the contemporary sense. Modernism inevitably carries a certain amount of cultural baggage and negative associations in the public imagination. Almost as soon as you leave the acceptable face of interior and graphic design and those stylish Scandinavian daybeds and enter the hard Corbusian world of the built environment, with its concrete surfaces and municipal master plans, the reception ranges from mere indifference to actual antipathy. We wanted to interrogate those perceptions and turn them on their heads too, have the debate about Brutalism, tackle the failings, as well as celebrate the innovations, successes and sheer exuberance of modernism. Plus we really just love all that space age/ tomorrow’s world-style imagery and its influence on a whole generation and range of fields – a future more ‘futuristic’ yet more anachronistic than anyone could have possibly envisioned. How is participation/developing peoples’ knowledge and awareness important to you, and who do you try to appeal to? Our intention is to behave like an old style association or group, something that can combine solid, accessible information via the web and modern social networking with low tech real life conviviality, with regular collaborations with other groups or individuals to create new ways of documenting or highlighting our 20th century cities. We maintain a website, a more interactive facebook page where anyone can upload photographs, news, views and ideas and encourage input, and we tweet too, for those who like such things. Anything that’s free or viral actually. The core of the group however remains the monthly meeting, where we find fellow modernists, meet new friends, keep in touch with each other and develop the ongoing inspiration with which to explore, investigate and map the delights of the twentieth century city.
27
28
The Life Worth Living. Urban Interventions Gestalten Books
28
29
Dead Ends www.deadends.info
Dead Ends is a limited edition photo book that chronicles the situation of Britain's job centres through the litter found around them. Photographer Theo Simpson spent eight months in 2009 collecting the job slips that are printed in the job centres with information about vacancies. Many were found away from these places, on pavements, in phone boxes and in salt bins. These were collected and photographed in their original found state, and all together they document a series of accidental personal responses to a much larger issue. As the trio say: "There are currently more people unemployed in the UK than anytime since 1994. If you don't know what these slips are, or you've never been in a jobcentre, you'd better start learning. It won't be long now." The book itself is great object, and has
been put together with extreme care. A cheap transparent plastic cover encases a rough grey card cover, referencing the printed literature of Job Centres. Inside there's a strong introduction by writer Tom Common: "Of course there's no fucking jobs. Or at least, none you'd choose to do. Press one of the screens if you don't believe me... a series of inane post-industrial opportunities in other parts of the country." 16 tightly arranged photos follow, and it's these remnants that express the most personal traces. The slips have all been torn, folded, intricately twisted and then dropped as people leave the Job Centre. Jobless. There's also 2 risograph printed posters enclosed in the back.
which is already in the works. An original, fascinating and affordable photo book that's different to many other photographer's self made monographs.
This is a great first book, and we're looking forward to more from this group, some of
That there is more to graffiti than spray paint, drippy pens and Banksy is, perhaps, an uncontroversial statement. Yet outside the coverage of some geeky blogs and specialist magazines you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. The coverage of new forms of street art around the world has been sporadic at best: a mixture of reports about walls painted by the Bristolian 'street artist' being sold for absurd amounts of money and complaints about tags needing to be cleaned by local councils. Yet over the past few years a vibrant scene of clever street art has emerged internationally. Urban Interventions is the first comprehensive catalogue of the past ten years of this (largely) aerosol free street art, collecting pieces from Leeds to Schiedam, Hamburg to Cleveland, and
everywhere in between. The contents, including installations, paintings, actions and flashmobs, are pieces that can go unnoticed by those not paying attention, that are often gone in an instant, and are almost never in a gallery. Many pieces would be unrecognisable as art in their original contexts, just seeming like garbage or advertising, a joke or a prank. Yet by simply being in the street, not in a gallery, the works are a way of reclaiming the public domain, the same motivation often behind the most juvenile graffiti. One could argue, that the only real difference is, the works catalogued in Urban Interventions carry with them a sense of beauty, and a sense of humour. At nearly three hundred pages, this a beautiful monograph, worthy of more than a cursory flick through.
30
RGB
Reviewing Graphics in Britain Actar Books
Despite its witty title, the book does little to review, preferring to interview subjects and the let the reproduced images of works speak for themselves. Through grouping so many disparate works in one place, RGB achieves what it sets out to do; providing In this country we rarely talk about a British an invaluable index of some of the country's graphic style, such is the reverence towards freshest designers. Put together like this the design legacies of Switzerland, Holland RGB delivers the opportunity to see how the works resemble one another, how current and Germany. It can take an outside perspective to make us realize what we've they all feel, how similar they are. If ever there was a case for there being a specific actually got. British Graphic style, RGB could well be at its heart. From Spanish publisher Actar comes Reviewing Graphics in Britain. A twohundred and eighty odd page soft back art As always with this sort of compendium, the role of the editor is key. And perhaps book, compiling some of the finest British this is just me being based in the North, but graphic design from the past five years. the London centric skew is exaggerated, RGB contains works and interviews from with Universal Everything being the only some of the most cutting edge of British non London based designer represented designers.
Unit Editions Design/Research is a new publishing venture by two highly experienced figures within the graphic design world. Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy got together to produce limited edition publications which features the works, analysis and interviews of specific designers. The project aims to produce affordable specialised publications, and by printing a newspaper they have made the products quite reasonable. The niche, archival aim of the series is clearly informed by blogs and the scope of information that the internet has made available - no old publication has been left undiscovered. This is acknowledged in the introduction, where this is one publication that has "escaped zealous bloggers." This second edition features the archives of the magazine Form, described here as a "misfit artefact" in the history of British publishing, an art magazine that borrowed heavily from the graphic language of German and Swiss modern design. It was founded by Philip Steadman whilst still a
in the whole book. But then maybe this is the outsider perspective trying to tell me something. I was also left scratching my head over RGB's almost complete lack of illustration led graphic design, a trend whose force in the UK over past years which has felt inescapable. Despite these two mild criticisms, RGB is ultimately like all good bits from the last three years of Creative Review piled into one book. RGB provides an in depth and personal snapshot of the level and quality of the British design industry. Be warned though, this is not a book to seek inspiration from. Rather: This is the rule book, now destroy it.
student in Cambridge, and being produced in square format, had the wonderful aim of being produced until a cube was made when the issues were stacked on top of each other. They didn't make it, unfortunately. Form resonates with us at Article, not least for the sheer ambition of it. As students its publishers set out to make a magazine of high quality, fusing together modern architecture, critical essays and contemporary art, in an object that belied its roots. As Steadman says in the extensive interview here: "We didn't know what we were doing. We were young. We were only students." This paper has a huge amount of archive reproductions from all 10 issues of Form, arranged chronologically. There's an incredible range of varied content, and it's interesting to see the rigid design adapt through issues as new forms of artwork and design are introduced. The whole series of Unit Editions will be interesting to see develop, and it sets a promising stall for the world of print in relation to the web. This is something that's worth reading, and the size of the print is enough to provide great detail.
Unit Editions www.uniteditions.com
31
Preston Is My Paris
prestonismyparis. blogspot.com
Preston is My Paris is a Lancastrian, wordless photo-zine. Relying on the zine's title as the only verbal evocation, the subsequent stream of images on its pages create a highly personal and intimate view of a typical English town. Simply photocopied with a proper photograph glued to the front, the Zine's vintage feel is a refreshingly analogue comparison to photographic images so easily consumed on Flickr or blogs. Their website is also well worth a look, where you can purchase copies.
People Places Process Site Gallery
Rounded edges and delicate binding give this book an impression of a well worn travel journal, a deliberate reference. Compiled around the globe over a four year period, People, Places, Process: The Shops Project is the compendium of a project by art duo Frenchmottershead. Displayed as an exhibition, the Shops Project was an artistic experiment, to see what could be revealed, by asking shop owners from different cultures to do the same thing; invite their customers to come and pose for a photo. The book documents the duo's travels to China, Slovenia, Brazil, Romania, Turkey and the UK, looking at how small
shops reveal things about the places they are in and the society and people they serve. With a scrap book form, the PPP has an unexpected amount of text, considering the project is outwardly photo-based. A mixture of interview, monologues, essays and factual reports, PPP provides snapshots of the places it documents.
32
Land2
All over the Place: Drawing Place, Drawing Space Drawing from the LAND2 research group, at the Staney & Audrey Burton Gallery Leeds, June 22nd - October 3rd
Drawing forces you to look at something closely, to actually think about what is in front of you, to spend time and look at the details. The act of drawing is often understood as the most simple of creative acts. All over the Place: Drawing Place, Drawing Space, looks at the way this fundamental artistic starting point can inform the drawers experience of a place and is organized by LAND2, an organization which describe itself as a national network of artists / lecturers and research students with an interest in landscape /place oriented art practice. Started in 2008, the network has held exhibitions and lecture series all over the country. All Over the Place: Drawing Place, Drawing Space exhibition brings together the work of seventeen contemporary artists whose works explore the relationship between the act of drawing and the experience of place.
Evi Tucker
A Horse Walks Into A Bar
A Horse Walks Into A Bar Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
This group exhibition at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester examines the interactions, dependencies, characteristics and representation of animals in contemporary art. A selection of works looks at the relationships between animals and humans, particularly in the context of our confrontation with an uncertain, and changing natural world. The exhibition features work from Leeds based collective Ultimate Holding Company, Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger and more. Pieces that caught our attention were...
Mark Wallinger Dan Staincliffe
Dan Staincliffe Looking at the subtleties of everyday environments, Staincliffe uses photography, audio recording and mechanical structures in a partly random manner to remove some of his control over the mediums. An ongoing work, Fauna Automata, uses a mousetrap-like device made by Staincliffe to allow animals to take pictures of themselves. Used in urban spaces, these images reveal a hidden world. Corey Arnold Arnold went to work in a crab fishery in Alaska's Bering Strait after graduating from the Academy of Art in San Francisco and shows his photographic project Fish Work here. Arnold has a very enviable resume. During the winter he works as a commercial fisherman on a crab vessel in Alaska's Bering Strait. For the past 7 years he's been working on a documentation of this fishing industry, and shows this work here.
33
The Life Worth Living / Art
Haris Epaminonda
Haris Epaminonda, Chronicles Site Gallery, Sheffield. June 11 - August 21
An exhibition of new video works displayed around the gallery in small projections, about the size of a television. The format invites close inspection and contemplation. You are drawn closely into the films' details. Images appear as random moments cut into films, or fleeting pieces of action that occur over a long, drawn out course. There is little variation in speed, with the moments of action or change appearing as variations in the natural conditions - flickering lights, the moving sun, the rippling of trees in the wind. One film features a grainy selection of historical artifacts from different world cultures - small figurines. The nature of time is important to Epaminonda here, and the works are based on a particular conception of an image in time - an idea of history existing as flashes in the present. Images of the past and the present sit next to each other, but unlike a montage of associated parts. All the works on display here have an archival, discovered feel to them, as if they have come from an indeterminate place and time. There's an uncertainty as to whether these have been deliberately made, as if the subjects are too accidental, unimportant to be recorded. It's clear that they have been caught by one person, standing and looking for a long time, and it's this crystallisation of old memories into images that last for a long period that lends this a unique feel. We spoke to Haris Epaminonda as the exhibition was opening.
What period were these films made over? Over the period of the last three to four years. Explain the arrangement and series of films that are on display here. These films are part of 'Chronicles', a series of moving images which I have been working on for the last 3 years, filmed originally with my super 8 camera in different locations. These films, in their majority attempt to document events and encounters I have come across during my travels, meanwhile following and tracing those moments which would otherwise disappear unnoticed and untouched...They are in many ways an investigation and reflection on personal thoughts about life - borrowing what is there already and around me and through imagesincited by the world outside. I try to create atmospheres, or rather an image of a world that exists without defined location or time...these places for me could be anywhere, then or now. In these images, I myself get caught in trying to comprehend aspects of time, stillness, motion, emotion, silence...Like for example, a tree moving with the wind endlessly or a tree dragged by a car in an endless circle, such moments for me are like contemplating planes on which i can
later let my thoughts drift.... At times, I feel as if I'm taking different roles, that of a spectator and/or a director, and it is important that within the specific choices I make on what to film and what becomes part of the frame of the picture, to let things also be led by chance, like the sun appearing and disappearing behind clouds creating sharp or soft shadows, the wind blowing, birds flying, water flowing, people walking by.
Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides' accompanies all four films, working as another type or layer/ image parallel to the visual moving images... The second room is a silent space with a single projection of a film in a circus which I came across three years ago. All that happens there, in this dark interior space, moves, and it moves always within the circular space of the circus ring.
Most of the times the world is observed at a distance, and yet it remains fragmented and isolated. By filming existing forms of life, objects, archaeological sights, nature, landscape, animals, all those things that have been existing before me and continue to exist now and after or might disappear in the future, somehow all these remind me of who I am. It's a personal vision, but for me what speaks is not necessarily what is pictured but perhaps what is animated through movement, light, shadow, sound and stillness.
How has the use of found media informed or helped develop this work, as something that was part of previous pieces you have done?
Regarding the arrangement of these films, I wanted to have them sparsely placed in the room so that they become repetitive and serial, but still that you can look at them individually and reflect on them as such. In one room there are four projections each looping continuously in a different area of the room, and the sound, which has been especially commissioned by 'Part
Perhaps the closest recent work to these films are the 'Polaroid' series which started 2 years ago. For me it is not so important if something is found or created, what matters is that the elements that constitute a work can inform one another and together or in part form other images which in turn evoke movement or a shift of perception. These images, whether found or constructed, share a similar type of texture, light, surface, color, sense and a certain level of abstraction.
34
Carl Slater Filing the Unfiled : Unfiling the Filed Surface Gallery, Nottingham
A solo exhibition of two recent projects by Carl Slater. The first project features an array of business documents from a disused sewing machine factory in the south of France which were selected and rearranged by Slater during a 5 day period at the factory. The second project focuses on a selection of ceramic plates that were destroyed by marksmen. The remnants on display here are shown in detail, representing the act of calculation and destruction upon the objects. A combination of archives and photography is used to present an exhibition that moves perceptions of time in relation to objects. Documentary techniques such as archiving, filing, photography and gallery exhibition are used to create instances where objects are placed under close examination. Material is gathered for the purpose of being inspected in these conditions - a forensic approach acted out through a range of performances.
Cage Mix
The work uses the systematic documentation of objects as a means to trace their history, going through stages of examination and bringing the progression of decay into focus. Slater has used a variety of objects in his work, and this exhibition stage is the final part of a process that has seen them filed, destroyed or transformed in other ways.
The Baltic, Gateshead John Cage's (1912-1992) legacy to music and performance art is enormous, not only inspiring several of the art movements of the sixties and seventies, but also directly challenging our notions of performance and the role of the viewer in works of art. Performed first in 1952, one best known works, 4:33, saw a pianist sit at his instrument, motionless in front of audience for exactly four minutes and thirty three seconds. Cage Mix sees the work of eight artists further explore the revolutionary ideas of John Cage. Utilizing installation, many of the works offer a participatory element to audience and emphasize the role of the viewer as well as including the possibility of chance. The exhibition coincides with a touring retrospective of hundreds of Cage's own visual works.
Graham Gussin Katja Strunz
35
Black Rainbows
Krek Image courtesy of 'Gene Hunt' on Flickr
Carhartt Store, Oldham Street, Manchester
Good fresh street art is hard to find in the galleries these days everything is either conceptual crap or copy of a copy of a copy. To earn a place in the galleries, you first need to get some cred on the street first. And these boys have a hell of a lot of that! A few years ago Krek and Mers got sentenced to 12 and 15 months for painting trains in Manchester and other graffiti-related banter. After a lot of media furore and protests from their friends and family, their sentences were reduced and they were set free at the end of 2007. However that is not the only reason we are excited about this show. These guys are actually good! Doing everything from classic throw-up to complicated styles to cute Japanese-Style characters on the freights and green-telephone-connector boxes, Krek has been painting around the world for years as well as doing more "personal" graphic works and canvases. Others are more underground. So if you happen to be up north this summer, pop down Northern Quarter and see some cool works from a group of Manchester lads - although there will be no flicks of fresh steel - expect sharp graphics, funky letters and colourful canvases.
Northern Futures
The Civic in Barnsley plays host to an exhibition of the work of innovative, Northern artists over the summer. Fine art, 3D design, fashion and film, shortlisted by the Northern Futures Award will be on display from July 28 until September 3 with winners announced in August. The new, esteemed award offers artists, designers and film makers living or working in the north of England the chance to present their work to an international audience. Director of Northern Futures, Patrick Murphy describes how: "The exhibition celebrates and acknowledges creativity in the North of England, a region that has already given the U.K and the world some of its leading artists, designers and filmmakers. It is also counterpoints and compliments more London based art and design awards." Selected by members of the British Fashion Council, BFI Southbank and Baltic, the shortlisted works are certain to be from the best of the North's undiscovered talent, making The Civic worth a little visit over the coming months.
36
Considering just how underground dubstep's roots are, its rise to commercial appropriation has been stunningly swift. The genre's apparent willingness to embrace the more saleable facets of trance (in the case of Skream's omnipresent Florence remix) or the wobble-step that's gradually leaking its way into Radio 1 playlists, has meant that the real boundary pushers can sometimes be forgotten.
SLEIGH BELLS TREATS There is an important difference between influence and copying. In an age where retro is all the rage, the strongest releases have been from those who create new from old, distilling the essence of what's gone before to create hybrids that twist and turn through genre, recognisable only briefly before flitting into the ether. Thus we find Sleigh Bells' debut LP, in which the brutality of NY hardcore combines with deep nasty southern ghetto rap, all glued together by the production values of a 16 year old blogger who doesn't fully understand what the red lines on his mixer are for. While this may seem the most repellent of musical soups, its execution reveals a work of raw, unbridled power tamed with the most delicate of pop sensibilities. Treats is one of the loudest things that you will hear this year. And it's also one of the best.
ITAL TEK MIDNIGHT COLOUR
Midnight Colour, while dubstep in form, is in reality a blend of hip-hop, trip-hop, garage and IDM, all wrapped in the deep subs and chattering percussion that bubbled up from Croydon just over 5 years ago. While not aimed squarely at the dancefloor, iTAL tEK's second LP rewards the headphone listener, and shows that it's dubstep's ability to absorb new influences that will ensure its continued evolution.
BONAPARTE MY HORSE LIKES YOU The second LP from the Swiss-headed international conglomeration known as Bonaparte starts off promisingly enough. Opening tracks are well executed dancerock in a Shitdisco vein, relying more on shouty energy than song-writing finesse, which is perhaps unsurprising from a band numbering upwards of 20 members drawn from Eastern Europe, South America and Northern Africa and whose live shows are famed for the gradual progression from animal costumes to sweaty nudity. Sadly, it all moves downhill rather quickly. Coming in at 14 tracks, My Horse Likes You is a clear demonstration of the value of a strong hand in the editing suite. In attempting to cover Balkan beat, down-tempo chillwave, neo-dub, indie surf-rock and more, Bonaparte step a long, long way out of their comfort zone. Even the hand of Modeselektor on broken beat workout Orangutang fires a blank, a dub-by-numbers backing made even worse by lyrics that make Jilted John seem positively Miltonian. Such verbal awkwardness peppers the entire release; "Do you like MGMT? / I don't know, how do you spell that" would make 5ive cringe, and the stunningly heavy handedness of L'etat C'est Moi's "I'm you in the mirror / But dressed as a monkey" would seem to indicate that lead singer L'Emporeur Bonaparte is yet to fully comprehend metaphors.
THE DRUMS THE DRUMS Disliking a record isn't normally a struggle. However, when a band as universally acclaimed and hotly tipped as The Drums leave you cold, there's a tangible sense of disappointment, quickly followed by confusion as to what exactly it is that you're missing. Three attempts on the Brooklyn foursome's eponymous debut and still I fail to understand even an iota of the hype that surrounds them. Derivative to the point of pastiche, their wholesale appropriation of 80s Manchester is unnervingly accurate, and yet becomes so lost in that which it mimics that it loses any sense of identity. While almost impossible to actively dislike, The Drums are so insipid that they fade immediately into the background, suited only as accompaniments to the touching moments in a BBC3 youth drama.
37
MICHAEL MAYER IMMER 3 A recent poll on Resident Advisor crowned Michael Mayer's original Immer mix, released back in 2002, as the finest DJ compilation of the 00s. Pushing the new deep house sound into the mainstream it brought the melodic techno of Kompakt to a new audience, and paved the way for the likes of Booka Shade and their contemporaries to bring hands in the air tech-house to clubs across the world. While Immer 3 may not be as groundbreaking in its scope, it is breathtaking in its execution. Encompassing just ten tracks in sixty minutes, Mayer lets each record breath and it's testament to his powers of selection that he creates such tonal shifts with a relatively small palette. The lush opening is symphonic in its arrangement, Cortney Tidwell and Closer Musik's pads building ever higher, before breaking down into Tim Paris' Edges of Corrosion, a Kompakt-esque bass workout that sets the tone for a beautifully paced build to the close. Mayer plays not so much with pace and energy as emotion, layering melodies together to move from beats and bass through the soundscapes of Gui Boratto's reimagining of Massive Attack before culminating in Kinky Justice's soul-drenched cover of Round Two's New Day. Immer 3 is a demonstration of the value of selection; by positioning the perfect records in the perfect position, Mayer pushes the music firmly to the foreground, his touches almost imperceptible in their finesse, and in a world of heavily produced 100 track mixes this is a stunning display of what it means to be a DJ.
RATATAT LP 4 Remember that Barclays advert where the guy goes to work down a waterslide? Imagine that you are that guy, but wearing stone washed jeans and strapped into one of those spaceshiplike simulators that used to exist on 90s high streets before it was possible to sue the council for your epileptic fit. Every song on the album builds complex audio landscapes, intertwined with whole range of instrumental sounds you would find on 1994 version of Cubase. We cannot find it in us to dislike an album that features heavy use of harmonised guitars, harpsichord and no words, although after the 7th song they got a rather annoying. This is the perfect substitute for your dad's jazz collection you would listen to while sitting down in his armchair smoking his cigars and drinking his 12 year old whisky. If Urban Splash had made a promotional video for the National Centre for Popular Music this would have been the soundtrack.
SHLOHMO CAMPING EP Rinser-heavy, "you cannot listen to this unless you have taken loads of drugs" dubstep is not cool anymore. Cleverly crafted chilled out post-dubstep is in! Shlohmo is from across the pond, he is not your local-neighbourhood Croydon boy, things are a bit different there. Atmospheric, beautifully sampled, at times heavy and at times smooth as angel dust, this is the perfect disc to play anywhere: in your loft apartment after a hard day of designing graphics or at the house party - stick this on and the only people left in the room after ten minutes will be the ones you actually want to talk to. Or something like that.
FADE TO GREY photocopier deteriorated fashion
A1-A7
Charlotte wears Second Son Oxford Shirt Blue
B1-B5
Charlotte wears Coltesse Mask Tee
C1-C5
Charlotte wears CTRL Paxos Tank
D1-D8
Charlotte wears Coltesse Planet Tee
E1-E8
Claire wears CTRL Wank Girl’s Top
F1&F8
Claire wears CTRL Neo Osaka Pattern Leggings
G1-G7
Katja wears Drop Dead North of England, South of Heaven Tee
H1-H7
Claire wears CTRL Time Out Dress
A4
A7
Models: Claire Gollings, Katja Porohina & Charlotte Tyree Stylist: Ricoh Aficio Post Production: Epson Perfection Photocopier Repair Man: Glenn
A1
A5
A2
A6
A3
B1
C1
B2
C2
B3
C3
B4
C4
B5
C5
39
40
D1
D2
D3
D4
D5
D6
D7
D8
E1
E2
E3
E4
E5
E6
E7
E8
41
F1
42
F8
43
44
G1
G2
G3
H1
H2
H3
G4
G5
G6
H4
H5
H6
45
shanson French Chanson refers to those songs we think of as Parisian taxi music, and are often found on compilation CDs titled Paris Cafe vol.1. The genre’s best known performers include Edith Piaf and Serge Gainsbourg. Born in the drinking establishments of Montmartre, the songs focused on the lives of working people and everyday life. Today there is a rebirth of Chanson, or nouvelle scene francaise, incorporating the intellectual traditions of the past with cubase and marshall stacks. Sharing the French genre’s name, however, is another musical tradition; Shanson Russe, once known as Blatnaya Pesnya or Prison Song. (blat in Russia refers to a complex system of interpersonal relations found in prisons and different to those in the real world). This had roots in the Russian Empire, when the criminal and gulag jingles of prisoners caught the interest of Russian High Society. But even after the Czar had been toppled, Shanson prevailed, proving to be very popular within the Soviet Union. Boasting Joseph Stalin as a fan, Shanson performers were invited to play the Kremlin. Leonid Utesov once performing a song about the flight of two prisoners from a camp near Odessa to Uncle Joe. It was during the 1950’s that Shanson began to gain widespread popularity, with songs written in the two previous decades about the misfortunes of prisoners of the gulags forming the bulk of lyrical content. One such song titled “Vaninsky Port” told the country about life in the camps of the Russian Far East - inside the arctic circle: the travels on the ship from the area next to China towards the ‘dark planet’ of Kolyma, 500km of taiga with no one around but deer and scurvy. Escape from the Gulags was virtually impossible as the places were unfathomably far away from civilisation, and failed escapees were shot on the spot. The song “Vorkuta - Leningrad” describes
46
VOLOGODSKI KONVOI HERE IN THE SKY THERE IS NO SUN OR EXIT, AND THE GROUND UNDERFOOT IS FROZEN DARK CLOUDS HID AWAY THE COLD SUNRISE, AND THE TREES ARE IN CHAINS
ВОЛОГОДСКИЙ КОНВОЙ ЗДЕСЬ НА НЕБЕ НЕТ СОЛНЦА И ВЫХОДА НЕТ, И ЗЕМЛЯ ПОД НОГАМИ ВСЯ СКОВАНА… ТУЧИ МРАЧНЫЕ СКРЫЛИ ХОЛОДНЫЙ РАССВЕТ, И ДЕРЕВЬЯ В ОКОВЫ ЗАКОВАНЫ… В ЭТОМ СЕРОМ СТРОЮ Я ОДИН СРЕДИ ВСЕХ,ДЛЯ ЛЮДЕЙ, КАК ЛОМОТЬ ОТРЕЗАННЫЙ. КАК СОБАЧИЙ ЛАЙ КОНВОИРОВ СМЕХ… НУ ЧТО ВЫ РЖЁТЕ, БЫКИ НЕДОРЕЗАННЫЕ?.. ВОЛОГОДСКИЙ КОНВОЙ - САМЫЙ ЗЛОЙ! ДЕНЬ И НОЧЬ ЗА СПИНОЙ ЧАСОВОЙ. НЕ ПУСКАЕТ ДОМОЙ, НЕ ПУСКАЕТ ДОМОЙ МЕНЯ ЗЛОЙ ВОЛОГОДСКИЙ КОНВОЙ. ИЗОЛЯТОР ШТРАФНОЙ, НУ А ПОД ПОТОЛКОМ СОЛНЦЕ ЗЕКА - ТЮРЕМНАЯ ЛАМПОЧКА… ПО СОВЕТУ ТЮРЬМЫ ПОБЕЖАЛИ ТАЙКОМ МОЛОДЫХ ДВА, ЗЕЛЁНЕНЬКИХ МАЛЬЧИКА… ТОЛЬКО ССУЧЕНЫЙ ВОР ВЕРТУХАЮ ШЕПНУЛ, И СПАЛИЛИ НАС СРАЗУ ЗА ВЫШКОЮ… И ПОЛОМАННЫЙ ВЕСЬ, НА ЦЕМЕНТНОМ ПОЛУ Я ВАЛЯЮСЬ В ШИЗО, ЕЛЕ ДЫШИТСЯ… ЗДЕСЬ НА НЕБЕ НЕТ СОЛНЦА, И ВЫХОДА НЕТ, И ЗЕМЛЯ ПОД НОГАМИ КАЗЁННАЯ… ТУЧИ МРАЧНЫЕ СКРЫЛИ ХОЛОДНЫЙ РАССВЕТ, И СТОЯТ СТРОГО В РЯД ЗАКЛЮЧЁННЫЕ…
IN THIS GREY RANK I AM STANDING ALONE AMONGST OTHERS, FOR PEOPLE LIKE A SLICE OF BREAD. LIKE LAUGHING DOG AND KONVOI LAUGHTER... WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING, BULLS HALF-SLAUGHTERED? VOLOGODKSI KONVOI - THE MOST EVIL! DAY AND NIGHT A WATCHMAN BEHIND THE BACK. DOES’T LET ME GO HOME, DOESN’T LET ME GO HOME THIS EVIL VOLOGODSKI KONVOI. PENALTY ISOLATOR, AND UNDER THE CEILING THE SUN FOR AN INMATE - PRISON LIGHTBULB... AS ADVISED BY PRISON RULES TWO PRISONERS ESCAPED, TWO GREEN ONES... AS ONE BITCHNING THIEF WHISPERED, WE WERE BURNED BEHIND THE TOWER... AND ALL BROKEN DOWN, ON THE CONCRETE FLOOR, I AM LYING STRANGELY, BARELY BREATHING....
HERE IN THE SKY THERE IS NO SUN OR EXIT, AND THE GROUND UNDERFOOT IS SOMEONE ELSE’S DARK CLOUDS HID AWAY THE COLD SUNRISE, AND STANDING IN THE ROW ARE INMATES... A STEP TO THE LEFT, STEP TO THE RIGHT - ESCAPE AND BE SHOT OR A DARK CELL OR A HOLE WITH WATER WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING MY PAINED HEART, ACE OF CLUBS - YOU ARE MY BLACK SUIT
А ШАГ ВЛЕВО, ШАГ ВПРАВО - ПОБЕГ И РАССТРЕЛ, ИЛИ КАРЦЕР, ИЛЬ ЯМА МОЧЁНАЯ… НУ ЗАЧЕМ ТЫ ТАК БОЛЬНО ЗА СЕРДЦЕ ЗАДЕЛ, ТУЗ КРЕСТОВЫЙ - ТЫ МАСТЬ МОЯ ЧЁРНАЯ...
47
one of the escapes, telling about their thirst for freedom and hate for those who guard prisoners. However, Shanson would not enjoy state approval for long. During the consecutive rules of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Shanson was forced underground as it was no longer permitted to be recorded, performed or transmitted on radio. This period of illegal concerts that has been dubbed “The Golden Age of Shanson�. The themes became clearer, and the soulful texts strayed away from obscenities. As Russia changed in the eighties, so did Shanson. The Golden Age was to end, as artistic inclination gave way to songs about criminal life, sung in prison slang. As an increased number of people were convicted and sent to prison, the subjects surrounding prison began to loose much of their stigma. In this atmosphere, demand for hoarse throaty songs about the grim and somewhat romantic reality of prison life increased. As the Soviet Union came to its end, the nation’s value’s were in flux. A mindset of ‘grab what you can’ set in. It was in the troubled landscape of a huge nation in flux that Russian Shanson rose. Suddenly on the television screens, and blasted through the radios were songs that had only before been sung in private and in “places of limited freedom�. Unlike the manufactured pop from the end of the Soviet Union, were performers with faces and voices close to those of the “real people� who sung about “the small ones,� bitching thieves, honest prisoners and bad guards along the back drop of northern natural beauty. Russian Shanson praised the dirty romance of prison freedom and the people accepted it as a part of new russian life. Crime, doing time, bassy voices mixed with a longing for mother, father’s house and broken dreams simple lyrics accompanied by simple music satisfied the taste of the masses. Even today the outdoor markets of large urban centres are shaken with the “bassy nostalgic lyrics and folky sounds.� In 48
smaller towns – there is no other music. The smaller the town, the more “right� are its inhabitants – no free-thinking, long hair, and non-conformist ways. Just the “correct� way of life, precision of behaviour – the rest is crap and gets thoroughly kicked out of people who disagree. Shanson is the yardstick that measure what is important to the “real� guy or girl. The irony, however, is that most current Shanson performers have never actually sat in prisons and lived a rather musically-cultured life, having higher education of sorts. But their unstoppable attraction to the “real people� has dictated to them which musical direction to take.
Shanson star, Stas Baretskii
It’s funny in Russian to read their names (they might not be found to Englishman, but neither is cockney slang translated into French) t ҤӕӚÓ? ;IFLB EFSPHBUJWF WFSTJPO of Eugene ) t ŇžÓŁÓ˘ÓŤÓ ÓšÓ? #VUZSLB PS #VUZSTLB prison in Moscow ) t Ň¨ÓžÓ›ÓŤÓœÓ? ,PMZNB 1SJTPO DBNQ JO Magadan region, North East Russia ) t ŇŠÓ•ÓĄÓžÓ&#x;ÓžÓ‘Ó?Ó› -FTPQPWBM PS -PHHJOH of forest t ŇÓ?ÓŚÓ?Ó?ÓšÓ? 1BDBOLB PS -BEFUUF
t Ň¨Ó Ó•ÓĄÓ˘ÓžÓ‘ÓŤÓ™ Ň°ÓŁÓ— ,SFTUPWZ 5V[ PS Ace of Clubs ) t ŇŹÓĄÓŻ ŇŻÓžÓ›Ó?ÓŚÓ•Ó‘ÓĄÓšÓ˜Ó™ 0TZB Solnecevski t Ň&#x;Ó›Ó?Ó”Ó›Ó•Ó? ŇąÓ”Ó?Ó§Ó? 7MBEOFM 6EBDIB Vladlen Luck ) t ŇžÓ•Ó›ÓžÓœÓžÓ ÓšÓ?Ó?Ó?Ó› #FMPNPS DBOBM B brand of cheapest cigarettes ) As you can see they are mostly names of prisons and thieving tags. Luckily, the lion’s share of performers have their original birth name and do not over-play their roles. With shanson one can trace Russian history of the past century - the themes changed with different governments, telling of the lives of certain underclass who constituted a considerable number of population. Starting as something underground shanson has moved to being synonymous with other side of life
and has recently transformed into almost fake pop with artists being just copies of stereotypes otherwise long dead. Time eroded even mountains and so is the way with music genres - prison song has become pop. In a not too long time Russian shanson gained a negative, stupid, un-cultured and worn-out-youth stigma. Even though any somewhat right thinking Russian hates all this “culture,� the masses always win and outnumber him. In the beginning of 2000s radio with the name “Russian Shanson� became the most popular in the country. And even though the amount of filth spewing out from its rotten mouth has somewhat decreased, prison-songshanson will always have a place in the heart of “real Russians�.
QUALITY DRINKS AT REASONABLE PRICES PLUS DJ'S, BANDS � LIVE SHOWS FROM THE BEST LOCAL ARTISTS
TRAMLINES 2010 at THE BOWERY
AVAILABLE ALL NIGHT SUNDAY - THURSDAY AND TILL 9PM ON FRIDAY AND SATURDAY
OLD SCHOOL NINTENDO AND FREE JUKEBOX
Fri: DARWIN DEEZ Sat: DOORLY Sun: DAVID RODIGAN Plus other acts such as: Heebie Jeebies (Live), Hey Sholay (Live), Sam Grey (Live), Fresh Fruits DJs, Bozz, Andy H, Landslide DJs, Matt Steer, Pipes, Andy Nicholson, Jack Opus and more!
FRIDAY 23rd - SUNDAY 25th JULY
The Bowery (Opposite Vodka Rev), Devonshire Street, Sheffield, S3 7SG. Tel: 0114 272 357749
Live Action Role Play
PHOTOS BY JAMES DODD Striding powerfully through a field of tents and a society of thousands, a man draped in furs and chainmail, swings a sword through the crowds. He lifts his weapon, driving it downwards towards the chest of another. His victim falls, wailing and twitching to his death, before promptly standing up, brushing himself off and walking away. Welcome to Maelstrom, one of a number of Britain’s live action role play events. LARP, as it’s abbreviated, is an interest of millions of people worldwide who’ll spend weekends leading an alternative life as a 6 foot tall dog or a slave to a dragon in an imaginary world.
50
A step up from tabletop role play, like Warhammer, LARP is a form of role playing game in which the participants physically act out their characters’ actions. Re-enacting actions that would normally
by played out on a table or a computer game. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by the real world, while interacting with each other in character. The outcome of player actions is decided by game rules set during the formation of each individual game. Event arrangers called Gamemasters decide the setting and rules to be used and facilitate play. With events priced at anything up to £100 a weekend and costumes costing as much as over £300, the dual life is a costly habit. Yet Maelstrom attracts 1000 players all in the costume of characters that they have invented. Each has their own back story and their own aims within the game, but it seems that their main prerogative is to drink and fight, see the world through a different pair of eyes and meet people with similar interests.
51
Sass What do you do in real life? I’m an English teacher! What’s your character’s name and can you tell us about them? My character, Belladonna, is a sociopath who behaves like a 4 year old. I turn off my internal monologue when I play her.
52
How long have you been LARPing for? I’ve been playing the role for 16 years and got into LARP via my high school boyfriend.
What’s a LARP event like? Lots of subcultures feed into the LARP subculture, Goths, rockers, etc. There didn’t used to be so many women involved, but now there are quite a few. It’s mainly teachers and IT and government workers who come. There are usually 2 LARP events near London and 2 near Birmingham every year and each consist of 900 people in a massive field.
What are your plans for the weekend? I plan to get heavily involved in the drinking culture and have some filthy banter! Can you drink in character? Oh yeah! There is a booze subculture. You can drink as much as you like as long as its from tankards. There are taverns on site where you can buy beer with the in character currency. There’s a currency? Yes, they had a metal currency made up here
but usually they are plastic. There are 4 types of currency, it’s a bit complicated. People sell actual things for in character money! At one site someone ran a real brothel for plastic money, but here its just massage. People also have slaves and paid servants. You can buy skills or pay people to train you or you can even steal things, but there are rules constraining theft and piracy. There’s a fine line between in-game debauchery and cheating.
53
Ash Where are you from and what do you do in real life? I’m from Exeter and I work with computers
Dave Breer Where are you from and what do you do in real life? I’m an ex social worker, but now I’m a master rug maker from Kent. What’s your character’s name and can you tell us about them? My character is Duncan Maclary, a celtic warrior. I was originally a sergeant in an attacking army, attacking the Maclary clan. The officer in charge of my army tried to rape all the women in the clan, but I stopped him. The Maclary clan fought back and killed everyone else in my army, but invited me into the clan as I had helped protect the women.
54
How long have you been LARPing for? I started 1974. I think that I am one of the most experienced players, I met the organiser when he had first started role playing.
Adam Brown Where are you from and what do you do in real life? I’m from Stonehenge and I’m a Royal Engineer What’s your character’s name and can you tell us about them? My character is Gabriel O’Leary of the Raven clan. I’m a sergeant major, on a reccy for the clan. They want to see if they can get decent foothold in New World. How long have you been LARPing for? I’ve been doing it for 20 years, my mum was pregnant with me when she went to her first LARP event. She was friends with the organiser. I have been going on LARP adventures ever since. What do you like about LARP? It gets me laid! No seriously, the women here LOVE it. Get a good costume and get them drunk and it’s happy days.
What’s your character’s name and can you tell us about them? My character is Primus, he’s the angel of a god of the New World. The Old World gods are crazy and dogmatic, the new ones are just crazy, so it’s a fun character to play. How long have you been LARPing for? I’ve been LARPing for 15 years. Why do you think so many people love to LARP? I think that they like it because its deeply silly. It’s like sex: watching from the outside it looks stupid but doing it is very fun! LARPing is worldwide but it is different in different places. In some countries its more about accuracy and story telling where as in others its more like a sport. In Scandinavia they are allowed to use steel weapons. There is a rule that if you get injured and it heals in 5 days you can’t press charges! In America, its more gamey with weapons like those off Gladiators. British LARPing is a happy medium between storytelling and games.
Haris Epaminonda, Untitled 009c/g 2007. Paper collage. Private collection, Istanbul
Haris Epaminonda 11 June - 21 August 2010 New commission
spanktvintage.com Hand Picked Vintage
Talk & film screening with curator Denise Robinson - 24 June, 6pm
Haris Epaminonda, Marabu, 2009, digital transfer from super 8 film
Generously supported by The Elephant Trust
Site Gallery, 1 Brown Street, Sheffield S1 2BS - 0114 2812077 - www.sitegallery.org
55
M a g s a n d Ta g s It’s hard to move around the city without noticing graffiti and its bastard child, street art. They are a colourful and rebellious response to our capitalist society. Taking shape in New York in the early 70s, graffiti was a youth counter-attack to the spread of advertising in the urban landscape. Back then it was just a group of kids writing their names in big colourful letters on walls and subway cars – learning from one another, using DIY techniques and equipment. Now it’s a global culture, consisting of thousands individuals of different generations, and hundreds of companies developing and evolving what we call street culture everyday. How did something at its root illegal and anarchic move from just a past time of inner city kids to what it is now? As with every other field, competition is the driving force of everything. Every artist wants to be better than their peers and predecessors, invent something of their own, and stand out from the rest. But to add something new you need to learn the basics – take some elements from top players at first, copy and practice, and then develop your own style. Back in New York it was watching other people’s work slowly pull up against the platform, now inspiration comes from videos, websites, magazines and street jams. We have asked a few people in the “scene” about how they first encountered graffiti, and their thoughts about impact of media on street art culture, good or bad. They all develop the scene, be it actually producing, photographing or writing about it. But they all have one thing is common - they all started out making graffiti...
S m a s h 1 37 Smash was born in Switzerland and has been writing graffiti for more than 20 years. Respected in the street art and graffiti worlds alike, Smash has earned his stripes on the trains, tracksides and streets of Europe in the 90s. Now he is one of the best known and respected writers, sponsored by Montana cans, frequently painting at international street art and graffiti festivals, and putting on regular gallery exhibitions. With his unique playful and juicy style, he can be called a graffiti expert. We will not ask who your first influences were, but rather how did you first come about them? You started painting almost 20 years ago, right? 56
My very first influence came from
the protective paper I bought to wrap up my schoolbooks. The paper had a “Graffiti” piece on it, and one of the letters was replaced with a character of a spray can with a grimy. I wouldn’t say I was influenced by it because I directly copied it line by line aka straight bite1. One of my teachers, who noticed my interest in graffiti, gave me “Subway Art”2, which became my main influence until I discovered pieces in the flesh around my own city. Where do you get your inspirations now? This is hard to answer. I am looking at inspiring things every day - magazines, websites, TV, people, ads and tags, and throw ups in the street. But I have actually no idea how much of it really
stays in my head and eventually pops up in later works. There are so many styles at the moment, with practically every major city having its own unique “font”, and everyone trying to come up with their unique variation of it. Those different styles do not come from nowhere, but are rather gradual developments of something done previously. How do you think invention of internet and graffiti blogs have moved the evolution of graffiti? Your words remind me of the time before the Internet took over. Since that happened graffiti around the world looks more and more the same. Today in most cases I can’t tell you anymore where a person comes from
(1) - Bite – taking stylistic elements, parts of letters from other writers and using them in your own pieces. (2) - “Subway Art” Seminal book documenting rise and development of New York graffiti with added commentary and introduction into the ins and outs of the scene. First published in 1984. It’s online - look for it!
Barcelona. 2010
(3) - Partially councilsupported festivals usually consisting of a large group gallery show and a series of painting events, where a lot of different artists put their work legally and illegally around town. Some major festivals of the last few years: “Names”, Prague 2008; Backjumps, Berlin 2007; Wallbreakers – (see note 5)
just by looking at his piece, and once I find out I am quite surprised that a writer from the other side of the world can look like he is from my own town. The positive part of the Internet is that writers paint more and it became super easy to get your work seen by a lot of people. There is a lot of graffiti and street art everywhere, yet the “core” of the scene is rather small - everyone seems to know everyone else, there are constantly international festivals3 where different people meet, exchange ideas and produce works together. There does not seem to be any similar cohesion anywhere else. Why do you think this is so and how did this
“globalization” come about? We probably feel this kind of bond because the things we share in common are still not really accepted by a broad public, and so as a writer you feel most comfortable when you don’t have to hide yourself. It used to be important to travel to see new styles, meet new writers, and learn their views. Every city you would travel to was different. Some cities were better and more developed than others. From my point of view what happened in the age of the Internet is that everybody has caught up with the leading cities without remembering, or at worst denying, their own roots.
You now live in Barcelona, right? I moved here a little over a year ago. I always wanted to live close to the beach and in a place where Graffiti is just paint on a wall and not a crime. I found the beach but graffiti is no longer welcome here, and so I paint on canvas during the day in my studio and as soon as it gets dark I do all the rest. www.smash137.net Smash has recently brought a book out “Smash 137 - Smash proof ” exploring the evolution of his style, and presenting lots of new and old pictures of his works. 57
Harlan Levey
Checkpoint Dreamyourtopia, Nevada Desert, 2008
Harlan is the chief editor of Modart magazine, a colourful and innovative publication about street art and everything creative, which has recently gone digital and started a book series. He has also started “No New Enemies”, a non-profit organization created to support and unite new and existing artists by providing them with exhibition spaces, press platform, curators, and event producers - as well as just being a group of friends and people with similar interests and goals. Having spent most of the last decade documenting, supporting, and developing a world-wide street art community, Harlan knows a hell of a lot about the ways in which different media “curates” for us. How and why did you start the magazine?
58
Modart magazine was launched in 2003. At that time, Modart was a grassroots organization aiming to support the creative voices coming out of action sport and activist communities that were scattered
around on boards in the US. Modart was then invited to curate shows at ISPO4 in 2003 and 2004. Excitement for these shows and their catalogues encouraged the creation of a bimonthly print mag.
flavour of undefined community (global and paperless). Events, which target this niche so they can bring it out of the closet so to say, tend to be more interested in definitions than documentation.
How does niche media such as your magazine, online forums and artists’ blogs facilitate and promote international street art festivals like Backjumps, Names and Wallbreakers5? How do they work?
Modart organised Wallbreakers. Can you tell us about how events like that function and what role a media platform such as Modart plays in their execution?
The effect of media on such events has in part just reflected the effect of photography on ephemeral art in general. Media gives the actions broader visibility and reach, a second life so to speak. It involves people who will not be able to experience these happenings first hand. Events like Backjumps come from within the community of artists whose ideas they promote. When this is the case you tend to notice that the organization gives space to the artists and there is a strong
There were two striking things about Wallbreakers for me. The first was that, while to the outside world Modart is often perceived as a ‘large’ organization, Anne-Katrin Scherer who led that project did everything from PR to hand-lettering promotional posters. It was very much DIY action at every step of the way, and our daily struggle mirrors that of many artists. On the other hand - because of the groundwork Modart had been sweating into place, the reach of our parent network, and the broad interest in the artists attached to the project - in some ways it also seemed to promote itself. WallBreakers was
(4) ISPO – Internation fair for sporting good and sporting fashion in Munchen (5) WallBreakers – Number of separate and linked events scattered in and around Germany marking 20th anniversary of collapse of the Berlin Wall. WallBreakers was organized by Modart and its parent company Rebel Art. “The aim of the project was an open format series of diverse events that spoke of the relationship between creative activism, freedom and the falling of the Berlin Wall.” Many different artists collaborated in the project, including Smash 137. Check out the pictures and videos at www.artwallbreakers.com
(6) - Installation created by Dadara at Burning Man 08. dadara.nl
wasted (or maybe that was the four days of no sleep to get it all set up). How did magazines/blogs develop new painting mediums - like painting on freights in the USA, stickers, drips in tags, different paste-up techniques, the use of fire extinguishers etc? an example of an art project that had politics and freedom as topics, but which left artists free to approach this through action and not subject matter. It was a very fun project to be part of, and when the wall got chainsawed and sledgehammered to the ground at Checkpoint Dreamyourtopia6 the energy was potent enough to get you
Mags/blogs shared these techniques and in doing so encouraged more people to play with them…a kid in Mexico City sees artists testing fire extinguishers in Berlin, Brussels or Boston and has an idea. He gets into action. Media tends to do little more than speed up processes by facilitating exchange. In this sense they do the same thing as the mediums they
discuss to a certain point: reveal ideas, emotions, twists to aesthetics and then share them. While the painting receives attention, often media has to call for it. I don’t think magazines or blogs ‘develop’, so much as they push for development in most cases. Most of the time, I feel that when the lead is taken by people who do not practice things become perverted and inevitably weakened. We just try to share our observations and stimulate dialogue. Social cohesion is through communication, education and experiments that have a peaceful violence to them. www.modart.com www.nonewenemies.net
Leo V o ll a n d Leo is one of the 6 members of Via Grafik collective. These guys started as a graffiti crew back in the 90s and have since evolved into an internationally known graphic design company working with people ranging from Carhartt to Nike and MTV. Their unique style and mixture of techniques from opposite sides of the creative field has earned them respect from graffiti lovers, as well as contracts with people who would have never associated themselves with spray-can creativity before. Not afraid to experiment, Via Grafik has been on the forefront of street art culture. “From wall to screen to everything” What makes your work so special and fresh is the merging of graffiti elements - bold colours and punk rules - with the order and precision of graphic design. Where do you find most of your inspirations? In graffiti, and punk of course, lie some of our main roots, but it is probably hard to say what our main influences are by now. I think since the collective consists of six guys there’s a lot of potential in the different approaches and interests of all the guys.
59
In your works you use computers more than anything. How did developments in computer technology help you in what you are doing now? Actually no one of us is really very versed in handling 3d-software. Some of us use 3d-programmes for experiments, rather than for purposeful work. Depending on the project we use scribbles, vector illustrations, models, photoshop moods, or rough 3d-visualisation. But we also sometimes just verbally fix some formal parameters, and then just start building something. We use the different possibilities of visualization, which the programmes offer, a lot and I also think that they help to really elaborate the ideas and prepare the projects. Whereby, all technology surely can’t replace good ideas. Probably taking part in the euphoric riot with the “new” programmes at the end of the 90s and the beginning of the 2000s is also part of our common history. Media has a big place in your work, from interviews and illustrations for different magazines, to showcasing your works online. What influence did media – faster internet / blogs / magazines - have on development in Via Grafik and street art in general? Yes, media played an important role in our development. In the beginning the publication of our works in books and magazines drew more and more interest towards Via Grafik, caused new invitations, and also brought a few commissions. And since not ‘everybody’ was a designer/illustrator when we started it was also relatively new to do illustration-features for magazines or other projects for free – which we often did.
60
Generally the profession of designer and illustrator boomed a lot and many things have changed since we started our studies in the mid-nineties. A
whole market and event-scene has developed in which many design projects get mounted for designers and people with a design affinity – like for example, publishing companies founded by designers, which publish the works of designers and sell them to designers. Often, these projects run under the cloak of ‘art’. The designer/‘artist’ became a sort of a role model of the lifestyle-society, because they seem to have such a self-determined and creative life – their profiles on myspace are always looking very interesting and they know where to get the most fancy bags or sneakers. I think it’s obvious that (new) media played an important role within these changes – but how else do people ever got to know about the activities of others if not by the media or verbal telling? What influence do street art festivals like Names and Graffest have on your work – seeing many artists at the same time, in the same place, producing work together (rather than just showing it, like in group gallery shows)? For us they are a great opportunity to keep alive the things that we started with, and which become less the older and the more professional/serious we (have to) get - analogue working on projects that don’t really have any
‘rational’ purpose other than just doing them, and learning from it. Meeting the other guys of course is also cool, because sometimes it is really good for you to meet someone with a similar palette of values and ethics. What are you guys doing now? There have not been any new updates from you in a long time! Can you talk a bit about you current and latest projects? Last autumn we started working on the development of the new visual identity for a theatre. Meanwhile the first things got printed but there are many things still to do. So I have been working mainly on this, while André and Lars are either joining me, or alternately, going to Hamburg once a month to do the art direction for a magazine about computer games. André did the art direction for some more issues of Trust magazine. Additionally, we are working on the implementation of graphics on walls in a new built museum of natural history, which is a huge job as well. In between we went to London to paint some walls in the entrance hall of a theatre, where a festival of hip hop dance took place, and to Moscow two weeks ago to take part in an exhibition7. So many different things, working like animals; no time to work off the projects and in need of holidays... www.vgrfk.com
(7) - “Faces and Laces” - an annual interactive exhibition dedicated to the latest connections of actual fashion and streetwear, visual communications and alternative contemporary art in Moscow.
SUBSCRIBE Article is a free magazine, and we are gonna keep it that way! But you can subscribe, support independent journalism and guarantee you’ll get every issue. Article Comes out Five times a year. When an issue comes out we’ll post it to you straight away. We also occasionally make stickers and postcards and stuff like that, which we will also post with the issues. £15 Article Gun Tee £12 Five Issues + Jonny Wan Print £20 Five Issues + Article Tee + Jonny Wan Print www.articlemagazine.co.uk
61
ARTICLE EPHEMERA For this issue we’ve collaborated with DJ Run Hide Survive and Illustrator Jonny Wan to create Article Ephemera. Run Hide Survive has done a mix available from the Article website and Jonny Wan has designed us a limited edition print also available from articlemagazine.co.uk Finding his feet in the Sheffield’s house party scene four years ago, Run Hide Survive has since become a stalwart of the Sheffield electronic music scene. In what was a Drum and Bass only environment, RHS’s co-founded night, Club Pony, was the first to start playing French Electro, Disco and Techno Records. It has since spawned numerous imitators in the Steel City, but three years on is still on top. Beyond party throwing, Run Hide Survive has recently been churning out a series of remixes of the likes of Boy-8-Bit and Boy Crisis, with a more to be released this summer.
You’ve had a musical history of virtually every genre of electronic music. When you switch from one is it a conscious move? A clean break, or an evolution? A lot it is just boredom. In terms of what I wanna do with RHS, this is probably gonna sound... I don’t wanna be pinned down as guy who does techno or electro. I think when we started Club Pony and I started DJing in earnest, prior to that I had been playing Garage, Drum and Bass and Breakbeat and that kind of thing. Would you rather forget that? No, I think it’s really important because that was the basis for my early clubbing experience. My formative experience of clubbing was going out to big raves with D’n’B and things. But then I started DJing at house parties and found that the stuff with the sort of 4/4 128bpm was great as it gave you a lot more flexibility. You can go from disco to party music, and you are far less restricted. Every other student house party at the time was playing 170bpm drum and bass to a bunch of stoner hippies and we just felt like there was a potential for more interesting things. With the DJing, I’ve always wanted to play visceral party music irrespective of what sort of genre it is. I mean, there’s a lot of sort of quality music out there. And there’s also a lot of garbage.
Run Hide Survive aka Mike Forrest
Run Hide Survive, what’s in a name? It was on a t-shirt that I had. We were really struggling, it was first used as the name of our band. Partly, it comes from my fixation with nuclear war and civil defence, the protect and survive thing. But yeah, it was a logo on a t-shirt with a picture of a dodo on it that said, don’t go the way of a dodo, run hide survive and it kind of stuck. When you google it, the only thing is an American self published survivalist manual about how to be a fugitive. This obsession with nuclear war and civil defence, where’s this from? I have no idea. When I was a kid I bore the weight of the world on my shoulders, shall we say. I didn’t have a tv and just got sort of into reading a lot. I wrote to the primeminister and asked him why it was that I had no future because there could be a nuclear war at any time. I didn’t get a reply. It was John Major.
62 62
Going to production, you’ve been doing a few records over the past few months, and it’s picking up quite a lot. Yeah, I’m really really bad at finishing music. And it’s a perennial problem, I have a really short attention span for ideas, and about thirty unfinished tunes and about ten unfinished remixes. My time management is absolutely horrific. I think now is a time where its sort of reaching critical mass. The Boy 8-Bit remix that I did has got really good business. And there is something quite gratifying about hearing it getting played in other cities, the youtube videos of it getting posted and played to thousands of people, and you can walk into a club in another city and hear it get dropped and people going for it, that positive reinforcement of what you’re doing, I think it’s really crucial to me getting my shit together and getting my head down and doing some actual work. And it is quite exciting, I feel like I’m suddenly starting to get it.
ARTICLE EPHEMERA
Jonny Wan is one of a wave of Sheffield based illustrators who are individually gathering up some real reputations. His distinctive style uses muted colour palates and repetitive geometric imagery creating images that are at once folky and contemporary. Your illustration style is geometric and utilises a range of textures. What is it influenced by? How was it developed? I see my style as ever evolving depending on themes and images I find visually stimulating at the time. More recently I have been fascinated with ancient cultures and folk art. I love the aesthetics portrayed in these themes and how they presented themselves visually. The basis of my style comes from experimenting with shapes, patterns and colour, so a lot of my time is spent experimenting with combinations of all three until I discover something whether it be a new technique or way of working which I can then apply to commercial briefs. Overall, your style has a style identifiable ‘look’, yet each project has a distinguishable uniqueness. How do you keep one style, and manage to keep work interesting and fresh? I guess it would be a case of trial and error and always being passionate about the next illustration you create. As an illustrator you are a visual communicator and what you need to communicate can vary with each new brief that comes in. That’s why you should always be looking to develop your work and try to illustrate things that are outside your comfort zone so you can adapt to any given job. I think also the key to keeping your work fresh is to stay away from looking too deeply at what other people are creating, by all means be aware of what’s going on in the industry but remember that you have your own voice and your work should speak for you, don’t become a shadow to something that’s already been done. Several of your works feature prominent displays of logos, relevant to street clothing brands, from Adidas and Nike to Carhartt and Lyle and Scott. What kind of influence has this sort of fashion held on your work? Yes, a lot of my early work has included brands, particularly those mentioned above. They still remain to me as some of my dream clients for the future and I very much hope
I get to work with them soon. More recently however I have tried not to include any brands or logos in my work because I find it limiting to what I can explore, for example if I’m illustrating a jumper is too easy to simply slap on a Nike logo or an Adidas logo on and call it a day. Im not interested in that anymore, now I would do my research on jumpers (that’s sound really sad!) and patterns and look ways I can incorporate them into the jumper. Then I know I have complete ownership of what I’ve created and it could lead to me finding a whole new niche to explore. I’ve seen a lot of illustration related to indie music and Jonny Wan risograph print electro. Yet your work, seems to reference more street and for Article urban culture, but without a single reference to a spray can or chubby marker. When you were starting out, did you feel a pressure to go one way other the other? Haha! I think when you start out your still finding your own individual voice and style. You don’t want to stray from your comfort zone and images you have been drawing for years, also you look to what is immediately popular and “on trend” right now, but as well all know like fashion, trends come and go. When I was starting out my key influences at the time were people like KAWS and Grotesk both coming from a street graffiti background with a very big street art following as well as clients like Vogue and Kiehls’s. I discovered that the more I was developing the more I was trying to be like them, which is completely the opposite of what a creative should be doing. Instead I went back to the drawing board free from trends and scenes and just started doodling, what you see now is just a natural progression to how far its come, there’s still a lot more to do. Also I’ve never cared much for scenes and trends anyway… probably because I’ve got rugby player legs and couldn’t get into a pair of skinny jeans to save my life!!
6363
ARTICLE
w w w.ar ticlemagazine.co.u k