HUCK magazine The Handmade Issue (Digital Edition)

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“...people were saying that my portfolio was streets ahead of what university graduates were producing and I think this is because, from day one, you are tackling real briefs...”

Alistair Lorimer, Shillington Graduate and now designer at iris PR

3 months full-time or 1 year part-time World class education needn’t take forever. It should be well planned, continually adapted to the times and presented by passionate professionals. That’s what happens at Shillington College and we have the record to prove it. Our students are taught by outstanding designers and are getting top design jobs. Starting with no prior experience they graduate with a professional portfolio and an in-depth knowledge of the design programs. www.shillingtoncollege.co.uk

Learn Graphic Design Fast.

Tiffany Campbell T HO MA S C A M P BE L L 'S H A NDS .

10 HUCK

info@thechurchoflondon.com

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Published by

SNOW EDITOR

ZOE OKSANEN

Publisher

Vince Medeiros

Special Projects

Steph Pomphrey

deputy Editor

28 40 44 48 52 60 62 68 72 74 78 80 86 92

Shelley Jones

staff writer

The Big Stories

SHANE HERRICK

Creative Director

Rob Longworth

EDITOR-AT-LARGE

T h o m a s C a m pb e ll C r a f ti v is m Jamie Thomas S p o e k M at h a m b o Swoon M o d e r n A r tis a ns Musli m R a p B e r lin I nk W e tsuit E v o luti o n C.R. Stecyk III P o lly Hi g g ins P h o t o c o p y C lub E x t r e m e V e spa s N e w En g l a nd C r a f t

MICHAEL FORDHAM

European Correspondent

Melanie Schönthier

Editorial Director

Matt Bochenski

Translations

Markus Grahlmann

71A CURATOR

Liz Haycroft

Global Editor

Jamie Brisick

Publishing Assistant

alex currie Alex Knost Adam Patterson Andrew Paynter Asia Werbel Ben Armson Chad Riley Conan Fitzpatrick Daniel Rosenthal Dimitri Karakostas Ed Wray George Beattie hans herbig Jamie Heinrich Jamie Thomas Jeanie Finlay Jonny Revill Kealan Shilling Kelie Bowman Liz Seabrook Lori Damiano Lou Mora matthew warder Max & Liz Haraala Hamilton Mike Brodie Nick LaVecchia Oli Gagnon Owen Richards Paul Vickery Pharo Mars richard chivers Robin Mellor Roger Mihalko Ryan Baker Sam Christmas Shem Roose Spencer Murphy Thomas Campbell Tiffany Campbell Tod Seelie

Images

12 13 14 14 16 16 18 19 20 22 24 25 26 26

Hannah El-Boghdady

Latin America Editor

Giuliano Cedroni

DESIGNER

FABRIZIO FESTA

Senior Designer

Alex Denney Alex Knost Chloe Roth Cinnamon Nippard Cyrus Shahrad Ed Wray Jim Cochran Jon Coen Kelie Bowman Kevin Duffel Lori Damiano Mike Brodie Olly Zanetti Rachel Surgeoner Roger Mihalko Shannon Denny Simon Morley Tara McEvoy

Words

MADE BY THE FOLLOWING FOLK.

C o r e y S m it h B l a is e R o s e nt h a l B e n Ric e H a ppily N e v e r A f t e r d av id b e n e d e k W o ll e N y v e lt S o und it o ut S p e nc e r m u r p h y P ink Mist K r istin a R e c o r ds S k at e 5 6 D e g e n e r ati o n S pa c e M a k e r s A g e nc y R e cl a i m P ublic S pa c e

Evan Lelliott

associate Editor

Ed Andrews

Commercial Director

Dean Faulkner

Managing Director

Danny Miller

Advertising Sales Executive

Becks Scurlock

Marketing & Distribution Manager

Anna Hopson

projectL ASSISTANT

ANDY TWEDDLE

EDITOR

Andrea Kurland

Digital Director

Alex Capes

LINK-UPS Curated by Thomas Campbell

ENDNOTES

100 104 106 108 110 112 114

Distributed worldwide by COMAG | Printed by Buxton Press | This publication is PRINTED ON paper from sustainable sources | Huck MAGAZINE is published six times a year.

The articles appearing within this publication reflect the opinions of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the publishers or editorial team. © TCOLondon 2012.

BEYOND S NOW Snowboarding gives you a unique way of looking at the world.

The following pro riders are taking the skills and perspectives they picked up in the mountains and applying them to colourful new projects as filmmakers, publishers, artists and more.

corey smith straight-talking soundbites from the art director of comune, snowboarding’s most avant-garde brand.

COMUNE was born in 2005 to bridge the gap between skate, snow

and go, but personality is timeless. It’s far more compelling than a

and streetwear by bringing a dash of personality back into the mix.

kook that’s doing the hottest shit… We treat our snowboarders with

With ‘Something Better Change’ as a guiding principle, art director

the same regard as our Drop City artist collective because we feel

Corey Smith has cultivated a unique identity – sophisticated minimal

that skateboarding and snowboarding are artistic mediums just like

design with a raw, analogue twist –

anything else and deserve the same

that manifests as a diverse collective

respect and thoughtfulness.”

of artists and musicians (Drop City) as

well

as

countless

#re asonstosmile

exhibitions,

experimental videos, documentaries

“I think snowboarding attracts a lot

and a crew of riders that embody the

of people who want to live outside of

same creative ethos. There are so many

society. When you live in the mountains

things to love about snowboarding,

you are about as far away from the

says Corey, especially the people who

normal

branch out into other worlds.

as possible. I think that in order to

day-to-day

urban

routine

dedicate your life to something as amazing as snowboarding you have

“I think there are several cultures within

to be someone who is willing to think

snowboarding today. Some that are

outside the box. This usually means that

interesting and some that aren’t; some

you look at the world differently than the

that promote, shape and preserve the

average person. I’ve always believed

positive direction of snowboarding

that

culture and some that just exploit

manifestation of creativity. There are

Ke alan Shilling

#thecrappystuff

it. Nobody’s really making money anymore, unless you have a corporate or non-endemic sponsor. The industry seems like it’s really hurting. Riderowned

doesn’t

mean

anything

snowboarding

is

a

physical

countless examples of people from snowboarding culture who have gone on from snowboarding to do a lot of things within the art world, filmmaking, acting, you name it. Just look at Ben

anymore. They can’t compete with the big companies. I think that

Rice in Jamie Heinrich’s new film, Happily Never After, or Blaise

people are starting to understand that all the mainstream attention

Rosenthal. He’s a super interesting character who’s still involved in

and money isn’t really benefiting snowboarding as a whole. It just

snowboarding but is now an abstract painter, too.”

misrepresents what real snowboarding is about and makes it nearly impossible for rider-owned companies to profit.”

The next COMUNE mini-documentary featuring LA photographers the Chavez twins is due out this summer.

# w h y i d o w h at i d o

12 HUCK

“We don’t really support any contest riders… I would much rather

thecomune.com

have a rider on the team that has a personality and style than

highpoweredstreetdrugs.com

someone who’s super good at snowboarding. Tricks and fads come

springbreaksnowboards.com

Blaise

On

Corey

“Corey is one of the most effective at making art that is somehow relevant in the snowboard world and relevant just as art. He does this magical dance between the two. I don't know Chad Ril e y

if I could pull that off. The world of snowboarding can be so anti-art with all the sponsorship and televised contests and quadruple corking and whatever. But Corey will make a weird

Blaise Rosenthal bringing an abstract edge to the hackneyed

snowboard out of plywood, paint it in a retro style and it somehow draws old surfing into snowboarding and into 1970s minimalism, as well.”

world of shred-happy art.

“I'm not a populist and I never have been,” says pro snowboarderturned-fine artist Blaise Rosenthal. “There are certain things you know everyone will like, like a rodeo flip in snowboarding – everyone can understand that. But not everyone can understand a switch backside 180. The same thing is true in my art.”

Corey

on

Blaise

Despite the analogy, and his role as creative director at Artec Snowboards, Blaise sees his art and snowboarding as totally

“Blaise was one of the first to have a

separate threads. “If snowboarding has had an influence on my art,

clean skate style. This was refreshing at

perhaps it’s that abstract human experience that riding helps you

the time because there were so many

access that I try to represent in a painting,” he says.

pros with a flamboyant, arm-waving

If anything, Blaise’s minimalist aesthetic bares the fingerprints of

‘get the job done’ style. The graphics,

artists like Sergej Jensen and Kirk Stoller. “I’m a participant in those

team riders, and overall vibe of the

activities, but I don’t think [my art] is related to anything culturally

brands he rode for were influenced,

specific to action sports. It’s more personal and informed by fine art –

if not directly driven by his vision. His

the things that I see when I travel and visit museums. Just like fans may

artwork is a reflection of his personality

watch skating and snowboarding videos, I consume art in the same

just as his snowboarding was. Much

way. I like to look at it and learn about it.”

of his artwork leans towards more of

Despite taking part in the Looking Sideways exhibition at the

a conceptual abstract style. Blaise's

Wängl Tängl snowboard festival in Mayrhofen, Austria – “the first

humour, thoughtfulness, philosophy,

snowboarding-related art event” he’s ever done – Blaise is keen to

and

dodge the ‘snowboard-artist’ tag. “If you’re making art only for

through his work, as does his ability to

snowboarders, you’ll see cartoonish images like a gorilla holding a

unleash an inner madness.”

contemplative

nature

shows

machine gun riding a fancy motorcycle,” he says about the genre’s hackneyed form. “To me, it’s more interesting if you can say nothing and still get people’s attention. Maybe that's what my paintings have become about – more and more about nothing. In that sense, they exist more autonomously and are not just simply pictures. They are objects.” E d Andr e ws blaiserosenthal.com wearelookingsideways.com

13

h a p p i ly n e v e r a f t e r jamie heinrich’s new zero-budget film is railing against snowboarding’s cookie-cutter mould.

Left to right: Jamie Heinrich and Ryan Baker.

Ben Rice the pro rider and natural-born actor is capturing his lifestyle using any medium he can.

Ben Rice sounds a bit gravelly. It’s a couple of days after his twentysixth birthday and he’s recovering from a bender that took root in a two-month-long snow trip across Europe. “The mountains there are crazy,” he says. “It’s refreshing to explore somewhere different.”

Whether he’s taking 35mm pics on a “pretty simple point-andshoot”, filming and editing video parts with fellow Lake Tahoeraised rider Eric Messier, or “non-acting” in Jamie Heinrich’s Happily Never After (as a troubled, rebellious character that

Pro snowboarder-turned-filmmaker Jamie Heinrich may have spent the nineties

was “written with him in mind”), Ben’s determined to represent

pioneering tricks, but he stumbled upon his true calling in the storytelling world.

snowboarding in a gnarlier way.

Having shot seminal snow and skate movies for Volcom – including Luminous

“Bataleon, COMUNE, Sabre – those brands support my

Llama and Freedom Wig – he moved away from boardsports in 2010 to make

snowboarding, my lifestyle, my ideas and what I believe in,” says

his first feature film, I Like You, about two misfits in Reno, Nevada, for zero bucks.

Ben. “Every snowboarder is an artist, it’s just that [riding] is the

His new film Happily Never After, shot again by talented snow filmer Ryan Baker,

outlet for their art.” With ambitions to work in photojournalism

features a whole cast of non-actor snowboarders such as Ben Rice, Eric Messier and

and shoot in Super8 – alongside the early workings of a pitch for

Jason Carrougher, and looks set to make a name for Heinrich and his dark, stylish

a reality TV show tucked up his sleeve – Ben is constantly looking

indie aesthetic. So, how does a guy who takes inspiration from Larry Clark’s Kids

for new ways to capture his lifestyle and share it with the world. “I’m

find a place for himself between film and snow?

interested in the things that disgust people; things that are raw and

Says Jamie: “My goal is to bring something new to cinema and refresh the

unseen,” he says. “There’s so much more to snowboarding than

industry. I love working with young people, it’s more raw and real. They have

what’s out there right now.” Sh elle y Jones

that prime energy of life, where you’re not afraid of anything. At that age I had so many experiences – travelling the world with snowboarders and skateboarders, I

Look out for Ben Rice's new Bataleon webisode series, out soon.

saw a lot of crazy stuff going down. Every single day was soaked with adrenaline.

Snowboarding gave me a style that’s still a huge part of me, and it’s easy to

bataleon.com

incorporate that into my films.

“But as fun as it is, you can outgrow snowboarding over the years. There’s no story in it. I made my first snowboard movie when I was sixteen and by the time I was twentythree, in 2000, I was pretty burnt on shooting snowboarding. It’s more cookie cutter than it used to be, but it’s still amazing. The fact that you’re just flying down a mountain on snow is still an incredible idea. It’s so creative, people can’t even understand it – it blows their minds! But you can get pretty isolated. There’s more lifestyle with skateboarding, and I think that experience [helps] when you move into other things.

“I’m so passionate about filmmaking and I’ve been like that since I got my first camcorder when I was twelve. I love being able to let people into my imagination.

Films capture a time. They are a piece of your life that you can reflect on. And everyone that was involved, it’s a little piece of their life, too.” Sh e l l e y Jones Happily Never After is now touring the 2012 film festival circuit. Catch it at the New York LES festival at the end of May. facebook.com/9000wolves

14 HUCK

Cu r r e nt S tat e : Snow b oa r ding Now in print.

After many years in the works, David Benedek has finally released his self-published, double-volume book Current State: Snowboarding, through which he explores snowboarding’s past, present and future via interviews with the sport’s most prominent figures, such as recent NoBoarding convert Wolle Nyvelt.

We asked the exhausted pro for a quote about finishing his magnum opus, and he came back with this: “Ha! I am almost too drained to even come up with a useful sentence to describe how much energy this cost me. Maybe that’s the sentence – maybe not. As you see, I am a little crazy now. In all honesty, though, it’s pretty incredible. It’s not necessarily that I am proud of the actual Hans H e rbig

product – which I think I am – but more the fact that I was able to make it through this partially sane!”

Current State: Snowboarding is available now at almostanything.com.

s l i d e way s Introducing Wolle Nyvelt’s vision for the cross-bred shred.

Austrian pro snowboarder Wolle Nyvelt has teamed up with filmmakers Boris Benedek (David's brother) and Scott Sullivan for a new four-part TV show called Slideways. The series explores the symbiotic influence that surfing and snowboarding have had on each other, and plunges nose first into Nyvelt's recently acquired passion for the binding-less ride.

Throughout the series, Nyvelt meets innovators like Gentemstick founder Taro Tamai in Japan, Cali surf shaper Richard Kenvin and the NoBoard crew in Trout Lake, British Columbia.

Having started a workshop with fellow rider Steve Grüber in his hometown of Mayrhofen in late 2006, Nyvelt has been experimenting with his own surf-inspired snow craft.

“We drew up templates [inspired by] surfing. There’re no edges and sidewalls, so you can do anything you like,” says Nyvelt. “It’s not rocket science. Just by using epoxy and wood, and watching YouTube Oli Gagnon

videos, you can figure it out pretty quickly for yourself. And anything really works if the snow is really deep.” E d A n dre ws Slideways is currently airing in German on Servus TV.

16 HUCK

SEBASTIAN ZIETZ surf

Rise above.

JUPITER SQUARED™ in Polished Black with Jade Iridium Lenses

©2012 Oakley, Inc.

|

01727 795791

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uk.oakley.com

Keepin’ It Indie The financial crisis may have burst the music industry bubble but independent shops, labels and collectives are finding new ways to live on.

Je anie Fin l ay

sound it out new film captures Teesside’s last-standing record store.

Across the UK, an independent record shop has closed down

who wants to be buried with his record collection – all of whom are

on average every three days over the last five years. A result of the

united by not just a passion for music but a fondness for the haven

changing face of the high street and the prominence of digital

that the shop provides.

downloads, the record store’s plight also means the loss of a base for culturally rich symposia between local music-lovers.

And it’s this community spirit that propelled Jeanie’s film, which she turned around on a £20,000 budget, donated by 437 members

It’s this alarming trend that spurred on artist-turned-

of the public via crowd-funding platform IndieGoGo. “One of the

filmmaker Jeanie Finlay to capture her beloved local shop, Sound It

people funded my film because she said small shops give us hope. I

Out Records – the last surviving independent music shop in Stockton-

really believe that,” says Jeanie. “I wanted to make a small film to tell

on-Tees, North East England – with her new documentary.

a bigger story: that small shops can help a community. Pressing click

“I wanted to have a go at making something a bit DIY and

in iTunes just doesn’t compare to going into a record shop, having a

ramshackle because it felt like it would fit the shop,” says Jeanie of her

cup of coffee and having a chat with the guy behind the counter and

lo-fi doc, Sound It Out, which took “eighteen months of just hanging

getting something recommended.” E d A n dre ws

around the shop and waiting for things to happen.”

But it was during this period that she met a whole host of random

Sound It Out is now screening across the UK.

characters who frequent the shop, from introverted collectors and young metal-heads, to hardcore dance deejays and a Status Quo fan

18 HUCK

sounditoutdoc.com

independent Spencer Murphy’s record store portraits are fast becoming an archive of the past.

In 2007, when photographer Spencer Murphy and art director Ali Augur began work on the Independent project – a series of portraits capturing the faces behind London’s most iconic vinyl stores – things weren’t looking good for Soho’s record shops. I’d recently finished writing the records section of Time Out’s annual London shopping guide, and had been shocked by the speed with which local haunts were disappearing: Reckless closed while I was researching it; Disque announced its demise as the editor was revising it; and Deal Real called last orders as the books were being stacked on shelves.

Spencer’s photographs were eventually exhibited in a popup record shop in a derelict Soho storefront. With his trademark darkness and ability to draw contemplative looks from his subjects, Spencer managed to capture the sense of uncertainty hanging over the industry – and sure enough, some of those pictured, including Wyld Pytch and Vinyl Junkies, have since closed down. And yet these portraits still resonate today as a celebration of those still holding the fort, and a reminder of the joys of buying records by hand: the standing meditation of flipping through sleeves, one ear cocked for counter conversation and the names of tracks being slipped on the stereo. It’s a part of music appreciation all too often spoken about in the past tense, but one that – for now at least – remains very much part of our present. Cy rus Sh ah r ad spencermurphy.co.uk

19

other uK collectives doing cool shit as recommended by pink mist.

l iz se abro ok

clinic clinicpresents.com

The Clinic guys all graduated from Goldsmiths and are still predominantly based in South East London.

Over the last few years they’ve been hosting great events that combine music, poetry and art. They’ve

pinK mist bedroom record labels are coming together to share their

published a couple of books showcasing the talent in and around their collective, packed full of illustration, photography, paintings, the lot. Genuinely lovely, enthusiastic, creative people – love ‘em.

know-how and stick it to the man. w i l l ko m m e n willkommenrecords.co.uk

The digital music age may be hitting record sales hard, but it’s also

Willkommen is a folky musical collective based out

opening the floodgates for a torrent of new sounds. Among those

of Brighton. They put on their own shows and release

resilient enough to grab opportunity by the horns is East London-

their own records and they all cross-pollinate, kinda

based label collective Pink Mist, whose “obsession with creative,

like musical swinging. They've got some great bands,

independent and more often than not pretty fucking loud music” is

though: Sons Of Noel And Adrian, The Miserable

helping to uncover and promote overlooked talent.

Rich, The Leisure Society to name a few.

“I guess the general idea is unity,” explains Simon Morley of Blood and Biscuits, one of four bedroom labels operating under

blessing force

the Pink Mist banner. “We’ve all come from this UK DIY scene

blessingforce.tumblr.com

which I still feel is oddly under-represented by some of the bigger

Based in Oxford, Blessing Force congregated around

indie labels. I like to think we’re giving it a voice, or at least the acts

bands like Foals and Jonquil. They’re a collective

that we see as outstanding.”

of artists and musicians who’ve formed a bit of a

Having met “through music, nights out at gigs, buying records

geographical alliance. Legend has it that they have

from each other and putting on shows together,” Pink Mist has

a secret handshake and matching tattoos, so they’re

grown “organically, as people like to say”, while staying true to their

kinda like a Masonic musical menagerie. Pink Mist

individual niches. “Financial restrictions can be frustrating,” explains

should definitely get in on the handshake/tattoo

Simon, “but the reason we chose to do this independently is because

thing, too. simon morl e y

we all relish the creative freedom.”

By working together, the four label founders can pool their resources – contacts, distribution channels and general industry savvy – without compromising what makes them each unique. “We like to think we’re selling records to people who still value a physical product,” says Simon.

“And I think as long as we’re making the actual CD or LP look and feel as good possible, then there’ll always be a market for it.” sh an e h e rric k pinkmist.co.uk

20 HUCK

kristina Records helping east London remember why vinyl rules supreme.

Kristina Records’ Five F a v o u r i t e LP s : JuJu and Jordash – J u J u an d J or d ash ( D e k m a n t l e 20 09 )

A sublime double album of deep experimental house music.

B o b b y H a m i lt o n Quintet – Dr e a m Q u e e n ( S u p e r f l y r e - i ss u e 2 012 )

Beautiful reissue of late-night spiritual jazz.

S h u s h a – P e rsian L o v e S on g s an d M y s t ic C han t s ( T a n g e n t 19 71 ) Pure and powerful Persian vox and flutes – a deep listen!

F e l t – B u bbl e g u m P e r f u m e ( C r e a t i o n 19 9 0 ) Compilation of late classics from eighties indie heroes.

Francois K presents: Jah Wobble, the Edge a n d H o lg e r C z u k ay – S na k e C har m e r ( Is l a n d 19 8 3 )

Digital downloads may be killing off the CD, but the

Weird disco collaboration,

tangible nature of vinyl is still a unique selling point for

also features Arthur Russell!

music aficionados. Kristina Records in Dalston, East London, is just one vinyl haven that's still embracing music in the physical form.

While so many independent stores were foreclosing all around them, these guys decided to open their doors in July 2011. So, what makes them believe they can paddle against the flow? “If you want music in a physical format, the nicest way to have it is on a record,” says co-founder Jack Rollo. “It comes in a big sleeve with big artwork. The act of sitting down and putting on a record and listening to it is really pleasurable. […] A lot of people buying records are also involved in making music, whether they’re in bands or putting out their own records, and many live around here. So far, we’ve been pretty successful.” Ed Andr e ws kristinarecords.com

22 HUCK

Search & Reclaim Buildings everywhere are falling into disrepair, but these blue-sky thinkers are looking beyond the rubble and spot ting opportunities for renewal.

A dam Pat t e rson

s k at e 56 an abandoned church in Northern Ireland is healing old wounds through the power of gnar.

Take a stroll past The Belfry, an ornate Catholic Church dating back to 1860, and you’d be forgiven for not assuming that a veritable skate Mecca lies inside its walls. But the clickety-clack soon gives the game away. Skate 56, Northern Ireland’s first indoor skatepark, took root here in 2007. Nestled just off the main street of Newcastle, a sleepy seaside town in County Down, the church lay abandoned for over ten years before it attracted the attention of the Newcastle Community Association, eager to make the most of such an impressive space.

The availability of the church, says park manager Andy Hall, signified a unique opportunity for the wider community, given the context of the region’s troubled past. Despite Newcastle’s reputation as an idyllic coastal resort, the church was once an emblem of the sectarian divide which plagued Northern Ireland, but has now been transformed into a place where young people from all sides of the community can come together to shred.

Seventeen-year-old Donal, a regular face at the park, is enthusiastic about its potential to bring skaters together. “It doesn’t matter what age you are, what religion you are. Everyone here has a common purpose, something to connect over,” he says.

The scene inside the chapel is testament to what can happen when old embraces new. The walls are adorned with the tags of local artists, light from street lamps streams in through vaulted windows, decks lie against fonts that were once filled with holy water. Peter, another local skater, is equally vocal about Skate 56’s virtues: “Having the park here has given me an impetus to skate. Before, all we had was street skating. It’s allowed me to develop my skills.” He pauses, flashes a smile then adds, “And it keeps us out of trouble.”

Skateboarding and religious institutions may make strange bedfellows, but this astounding example of reclaimed public space is helping to heal a community whose wounds are still raw. Ta ra Mc E voy

24 HUCK

A l e x Cur rie

dege n e r ation collective photography project captures Britain’s forgotten corners.

Richard Chiv e rs

Across Britain, crumbling tower blocks and abandoned housing estates speak of a post-war regeneration scheme gone horribly wrong. Over the past three years, photographers Richard Chivers, Simon Carruthers and Alex Currie – working as collective Human

Al e x Currie

Endeavour – have been capturing these desolate landscapes for Degeneration, a group project that cuts to the very core of Britain’s social housing crisis.

“We started looking at why life expectancy in certain areas of the UK differed by up to seventeen years,” explains Alex. “Obviously, there are certain socio-economic differences that affect this, but one thing that we kept coming back to was the issue of housing, more specifically the issue surrounding the Right to Buy scheme implemented by Margaret Thatcher in the early eighties.”

Thatcher’s privatisation scheme gave families the right to buy their council flat or house. While approximately two million homes in the UK were sold in this manner between 1980 and1998, the scheme was flawed: sought-after council housing was removed from circulation, and the plots that didn’t sell became concentrated in undesirable areas, further stigmatising the communities concentrated there. As Degeneration’s manifesto explains, ‘Far from being symbols of hope and egalitarianism, estates became places to avoid.’

“Our project was never intended to have a political slant, and was meant to be more of a sociological study,” explains Alex, “but given the draconian policies of the coalition government, which appear to be far worse than Thatcher’s, it’s hard for it not to be perceived in that way.”

R ac h e l Surgeon e r

Degeneration, the book, is due to be published later this year. humanendeavour.co.uk

25

Th e spac e m a k e r s ag e n c y social entrepreneur Dougald Hine is re-radifying neglected space.

Dougald Hine is the wild-haired brains behind Space Makers Agency, a UKbased people-powered project that turns unloved spaces into creative community

hubs.

In

2009,

they

transformed twenty empty shops in Brixton into a rolling festival of pop-up sights is a disused arcade in the market

reclaim p u b l i c spac e

town of Penrith, where independent

readers respond

stores have all but disappeared. So,

to our radical

what is it that’s driving this resourceful

call to arms.

events and start-up shops. Next in their

Max & L iz H ara al a H amilton

bearded dude?

Says Dougald: “I started organising Space Makers meet-ups in February 2009, because I was interested in why regeneration was mostly so rubbish. I

In The Public Space Issue (HUCK #30), we took

was interested in why it seemed so hard

inspiration from renegade cover star Shepard Fairey

to bring together the amazing energy

and initiated a creative brief that urged readers to go

and DIY spirit of grassroots bottom-up

outside and reclaim a corner of our free-for-all world.

projects with the top-down structures

Twenty-one-year-old surfer and photographer Jonny

that control resources and understand how to navigate systems and get things to happen. I

Revill, based in Milton Keynes, captured the DIY spirit

thought that it might be possible to learn about this by bringing people together from different

with a folio of photos from a camping trip in the woods.

backgrounds who are interested in re-thinking the spaces in which we live, work and play. After a

Says Jonny: “There’s so much out there that can be

couple of months, as a result of these conversations, people were coming to us and asking us for

enjoyed by anyone, at any time and at no cost. I take

advice on how to do this kind of DIY regeneration. So, we thought, ‘Let’s roll up our sleeves and

a camera with me whenever I go out, documenting

have a go, and see if we can put our ideas into practice.’

times that remind me we're making the most of these

“I guess what I’m interested in is the space of possibility when people come together to make

spaces. Sometimes you just need to get out there with

things happen on their own doorstep. Between the different Space Makers projects, we’ve been

your friends, chop some dead trees down and light a

trying to learn how you bring that possibility to life and how you use it to change things; how to do

bonfire in the woods.”

regeneration which isn’t driven primarily by money or the power of top-down structures, but driven by a mixture of the desires of people who live within walking distance of the place.” Ol ly Z a n e t ti

none-other.com

spacemakers.org.uk

For more entries to our creatve brief, visit huckm.ag/spacebrief.

Jonny Re vill

26 HUCK

INTRODUCING The ReVeRB helmeT

ClassIC CyClING sTyle

giro.com

28 HUCK

29

T h oma s C a m p b e ll d oesn ’t like to talk abo ut h i m sel f. W hic h i s o d d , c o n s i d e r i n g h e ’ s t h e m a s t e r o f h i s own language. As a filmmaker, photographer, s u r f e r a n d a r t i s t , h i s h a n d m a d e a e s t h e t i c d efin es everything he doe s . B u t b e y o n d the sketches, stitc he s a nd 1 6 mm s t i l l s, what’s T. m o e s k i r e a l l y t r y i n g t o s a y ? H U C K h e a d s to Bon n y Doon, N ort h e r n C a l i f o r n ia, to take a peek around his whimsical world.

Text Chloe Roth P h o t o g r aph y A n d r e w P a y n t e r

hen I pull into Thomas Campbell’s secluded driveway in Bonny Doon,

Roger Mihalko shows up to scan some film negatives. The Northern

a minimally populated area nestled in the mountains above Santa Cruz,

California skater, known for his barefooted misadventures, is typical of

his greeting sets the tone for the day. I exit my car and crouch down to pet

the creative creed of stylists who have gathered around Thomas over

his Australian Shepherd, Muddy, who bypasses all niceties to give my

the years.

mouth a sloppy lick. “That’s the perfect way to greet her,” says Thomas.

“She loves to make out. Want to see the highlight of the property?”

“Feel free to check out the place while I get Roger set up,” says Thomas. “Try some well water or there’s juice in the fridge.”

Thomas leads me towards the quaint cabin-style house that he shares with his filmmaker wife, Tiffany, whose influential Dear and Yonder (2009) raised the all-female surf movie to an artful place. A few

I've come here today to try and make an

steps away rises a majestic fairy-ring of redwood trees. In the middle is

artist who doesn’t particularly like to talk about his art, talk about

a beautifully designed wooden platform built by Jay Nelson, the artist

his art. “I don’t really think about it” seems to be Thomas Campbell’s

behind the whimsical tree houses and colourful window displays of San

motto. “People are always trying to get me to explain everything,” says

Francisco’s Mollusk Surf Shop. We walk up the steps into the centre of

the forty-two-year-old, “but that kind of ruins it.”

the ring – or, as Thomas calls it, “the redwood cathedral” – and stare up at a gasp of blue sky framed by a sphere of trees.

In many ways this answer is the most telling thing he says. Beneath a mellow exterior and tendency to downplay his celebrity, the wheels of

It’s an idyllic setting – the one place he “most likes to hang out”. But

a multi-coloured, amorphous machine are churning out ideas left and

as we head for the house, a powerful vibration emanates from a cherry

right. And yet, like the sewing machine he uses to piece together his

blossom tree. “They’re psyched,” says Thomas of the thousands of bees

colourful pinwheels, Thomas exudes only a quiet hum.

buzzing above our heads. “It’s kind of scary.” He starts talking through

The Thomas Campbell aesthetic – as captured in film, photography,

his plans for a bee box and chicken coop, at which point his friend

sculpture and fine art – has seeped beyond the barrier that segregates surfing from the world to the point where demands for explanations are pelted from all sides. Art aficionados want to know where his genderless pieces – quilt-like pinwheels, playful bronzes and cartoonish feats of inventive carpentry – draw inspiration from; surfers and skaters want to know more about his roots. It’s hard to please everyone with the same tale, so it’s understandable when he says that he’d sooner plead the fifth, before guiding your eyes back to his multimedia work. Each piece, suggests Thomas without saying a word, should ideally speak for itself.

So, what’s the message? His surf filmography includes a neat trilogy of art-docs – The Seedling (1999), Sprout (2004) and The Present (2009) – which together breached core boundaries to explore waveriding’s every countercultural verge. The trilogy became a creative counterpoint to the punk-versus-jock dualism perpetuated by surf media, leaving an enduring platform for the aesthetic freaks who had always been an essential but marginalised element of Californian surf culture. It was always cool to be a surfer; post-Campbell, it was cooler to be a surfer who also produced art.

His art (a body of work he prefers to keep separate from his surfing life) took root in the 1990s, when curator Aaron Rose drew together a misfit crew – Ed Templeton, Steve Powers and Mike Mills to name a

30 HUCK

“Some people need chaos to get motivated. I’m just naturally motivated.

A l o t o f s t i m u l i j u s t c o n f u s e s m e .”

31

few put on a series of ad-hoc shows at Alleged Gallery in the Lower East

Countless short films show Thomas documenting the moments that

Side, took those outsiders around the world and, in 2008, mythologised

culminate in art, but putting that process into words is another thing.

their work in his Beautiful Losers film. On the West Coast, meanwhile,

Sometimes the best way to understand a person’s story is to wander

Mission School artists like Barry McGee and Chris Johanson were

through the world they’ve created. Thomas’ is more colourful than most.

congregating around galleries like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, creating work that thrived in both public and private spaces. Thomas’s folksy homegrown style slid effortlessly into this niche. “We were just a

Back in the Campbell kitchen, above a

group of friends making different stuff,” he says. “Some were younger

stripped-down wooden table, is a wall of framed art. Alongside a photo by

and less evolved, like Chris Johanson was only a kid back then, but

iconic 1960s surf photographer Ron Stoner are drawings and paintings by

something was slowly... percolating. Were we ‘a scene’? Um... yeah. It

artists Kyle Field, Evan Hecox and Simone Shubuck. Two Jim Marshall

was definitely a movement.”

photographs from 1963 – one of Bob Dylan, the other of legendary pianist

Today, a Thomas Campbell original commands a pretty price tag.

Bill Evans – hang by their side. There’s an Ed Templeton piece and a print

His most recent solo show – Capture and Release at Half Gallery in New

and holiday card from Barry McGee and his late wife, Margaret Kilgallen.

York – brought together his brand new bronzes, recent paintings and

Thomas takes a piece from all of these worlds.

“Are

you

hungry?”

he

asks

walking into the kitchen, finding me staring at the mini museum.

My two-hour window-down drive from San Francisco has spurred an appetite, so we hop in his big white van, outfitted with a bed in the back and covered in stickers, and head down to Bonny Doon’s one-block town. Turned off by the “crowds”, Thomas has a change of heart and we head twenty minutes south to local Santa Cruz favourite, Brazil Café. But it’s a Sunday and this brightly decorated hole in the wall isn’t any less packed. Resigned to the twenty-minute wait, he puts his name on the list and finds a bench outside, away from the throngs of weekend lunchers.

“Living

around

this

area,

people don’t really put off an air of whether they have money or don’t, you can’t really tell,” says Thomas, as we are greeted by a kid hosing down his wetsuit in his front yard. “I really enjoy not having that hiccup of talking to people and them then looking at you like you’re fucking weird or judging you. The acceptance level is high around here.”

It would be easy to typecast Thomas Campbell as laid-back and ‘sewn paper stuff ’, all on offer for $2,500-$30,000. While his ubiquitous

easygoing, but there is a depth to his calm that goes beyond the surfer

style hangs in galleries the world over, at home Thomas does his best to

stereotype. “I came from a very kinetically, energetically, low-frequency

put a shroud of anonymity over a level of fame that, twenty years in the

sleepy beach town, and that’s where I register,” says Thomas, who grew

making, he still finds “startling”.

up skating and surfing in Dana Point, Orange County. Art was not a

“In my life I’ve created a scenario where it doesn’t reflect back to me

huge part of his childhood, but like any kid he dabbled in different

very much, because I don’t want it to,” says Thomas of his stature in the

mediums. The one indicator of his future career was a love for ceramics

art world. “We’re all just trying to find some kind of path that feels good.”

Thomas lives a secluded lifestyle but travels the globe for well-

class, which he took every year throughout high school.

At seventeen, already creating popular fanzines from home, he started

publicised art events, and tries to temper his role of influential artist

shooting for Transworld Skateboarding, and spent the next eleven years

with his desire to achieve “balance and happiness, however that’s

juggling slots at titles like Big Brother and PowerEdge, eventually finding

found”. When asked how he feels about being touted as an influential

himself as photo editor at SkateBoarder Magazine when Tony Hawk was

beacon of surf and skate culture, and a bastion of the DIY aesthetic, he

editor. At nineteen, Thomas left Southern California for Santa Cruz. But

replies simply: “For me it’s about making it. That’s what I’m interested

six months later, in 1989, the 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake hit with an

in. I just do it. I love it.”

epicentre just twelve miles from his home.

32 HUCK

“It was really crazy,” he says, gesturing and making sound effects.

“Cars were bouncing a foot off the ground.” The intensity prompted him to leave the mainland for the surfing mecca of Kauai. But at twenty-one, he realised that the island wasn’t culturally vital enough for, nor conducive to, the things he wanted to see and do.

Keeping Santa Cruz and San Francisco as home bases, Thomas spent the next five years travelling.

He hitchhiked across America, lived for a year in Europe, and timed his travels to match the surf seasons in spots across the globe. “The whole time I was taking photos, I was trying to figure out art. Kind of like a skateboarder approaches a ledge; you don’t always succeed, but you gotta keep going,” says Thomas, who hosted his first solo show in 1994 at Arcanes Gallery, Morocco.

In 1995, he followed a girl to New York City and put on his first show at Alleged Gallery. But the transition from lackadaisical Bay Area to big-city hustle was something of a shock. “It was almost like a moth to the flame and I was the flame,” recalls Thomas, of how New Yorkers treated the novelty of

into an interviewee, we talk about me. But it doesn’t feel like evasion.

his calm energy. But the dog-eat-dog hyperactivity of the city eventually

One question after the other, Thomas asks about my own work, what

got to him and he headed back west to San Diego. “Some people need

kind of music I make and listen to, my childhood spent on Kauai. In

chaos to get motivated,” he explains. “I’m just naturally motivated. A lot

turns encouraging and instructive, he says things like “I’m excited for

of stimuli just confuses me.” In 2000, he moved back to Santa Cruz and

you” and “I’m imparting this to you because I think it will help”.

last year he and his wife bought the property in Bonny Doon. “I didn’t

If you research Thomas, it becomes clear that this curiosity about

understand it at first but when the kinetic energy lowered, then I could

other people’s interests has shaped many lives. When Dane Reynolds

hear myself,” he explains. “It didn’t come to my mind that if I moved out

turns his back on the professional circus to immortalise freesurfing

into the country, I could hear myself all the time. Maybe perceptively

on grainy Polaroids and self-made films; when Kassia Meador throws

I’m influenced more than other people, but it seems like living in the

up a little photo exhibition alongside a longboarding comp; when

country is really grounding.”

Alex Knost channels his wave-sliding roots into another genre-less

Thomas may not wax lyrical about the emotions behind a painting, but that may simply be because he’s too busy contributing to the

band - a nod to Thomas Campbell’s transgressive innovations is never far behind.

zeitgeist. Right now he’s working on a 16mm European skateboard

“Thomas does a million things all the time, it’s so inspiring,”

movie with French Fred Mortagne (“possibly the best skate filmmaker

says Roger Mihalko. “I remember watching Sprout and thinking,

in the world right now”) and preparing for the May launch of Um Yeah

‘Oh you don’t have to ride a regular skateboard!’ I always rode weird

Press, an indie publishing arm that will be a vehicle for his work. “It’s an

boards anyway, but Thomas’ movie made it feel like that was okay.”

opportunity to create all the different books I’ve wanted to make for a

Encouraging people to diversify and embrace their outer-talents is,

while, alone and with different friends,” says Thomas. His first offering,

for Thomas, just the logical thing to do. “All those Beautiful Losers

From Ummm To Der, is an almanac of recent artwork in collaboration

guys, we were all just friends, you know?” he remembers. “Me and Ed

with Gingko Press, while a longer-term project, which he’s excited to

Templeton knew each other because we shot skate photos together.

work on for the next few years, is a series of bi-annual photo-books

One day he showed me a closet full of paintings. He was just shooting

pulled from his prolific surf archives. Each book will “have the same

photos back then and never showed anybody his art. I was like, ‘What

feel and format” but explore different topics and locations with the

the fuck are these doing in your closet? Hang them up, give them away

first instalment, Slide Your Brains Out: Surfing and General 1997-2012,

– do whatever you have to to get them out!’ He would paint on my

setting the tone. “I’ve just got so much stuff from those early days,” says

photos, or Tobin Yelland would shoot something for him to draw on.

Thomas, “and don’t want any of it to go to waste.”

We all just started doing stuff together.”

It is fitting that Beautiful Losers shares its moniker with a Leonard

Over lunch, Thomas dodges questions about his art. Instead, with his gift for subtly turning an interviewer

Cohen novel, for Thomas’s greatest passion projects, outside of art, are musical. Not only has he influenced the careers of countless artists, but with his small twenty-year-old label, Galaxia Records, many

33

34 HUCK

35

musicians as well. Galaxia has become a home for the structureless sounds of Tommy Guerrero and Ray Barbee, skateboarding alumni who both turned to jazz. Later, on my drive home, I will put in a CD Thomas makes for me (“I just like

“we all have darker parts of ourselves.

A c c e ssi n g d a r k s h i t is r e a l l y e a s y . I t ’ s all around you and e v e r y o n e d o e s i t. B u t i t ’ s k i n d a b o r i n g .”

I joke that it’s time to stop tricking me into talking about myself.

I want to understand why he uses 16mm instead of digital, ancient lost-wax bronzing techniques instead of 3D modelling, sewing machines and scissors instead of

to craft these super-slow mixes

laser-cutting. “My creative process

across a bunch of different genres,

definitely came from skateboard-

but I can’t remember what’s on this

ing and being in that culture,” says

one”) and come to the conclusion that his art is just like the obscure

Thomas, who ‘launched’ his first Xeroxed ’zine at the age of thirteen.

jazz on the mix: repeated patterns embellished with improvised depar-

“In the 1980s, when I was growing up, you made fanzines and took pic-

tures. But he’s not quite ready to get into that kind of analysis just yet.

tures and tried to paint. That was just a part of it. I’m not a surf artist.

Our names are finally called, so first we must eat.

I made these kind of influential surf films, so people try to co-opt me

As we look over the menu, the conversation turns to my current

into that culture. Sure, those other things are a part of what I do, but I

(and his past) veganism. “I’m not saying that it’s all true, because history to me is folkloric anyway,” he says, before launching into a ten-

like to keep things separate.”

Back at his studio, Thomas introduces me to several pieces he is

minute recap of the history of mankind’s eating habits, as garnered

working on. Being in his studio is like walking into a stained glass cave,

from a book he read recently about blood-type diets. “Every single

littered with gourds, paint cans, piles of wood, found objects and endless

person is a different chemistry experiment,” he adds – and suddenly

scraps of paper. Revealing his affinity for African art, Thomas lugs out

I feel like he’s not just talking about food. “Anything can be right for

one of his most recent creations. Made from wood, ropes, cardboard,

anyone. It’s dialling into yourself and seeing where you’re at, finding

clay, fibreglass and gourds, then cast and bronzed, ‘Der’ is an eighty-five-

out what feels right. Our culture doesn’t really instruct us how to feel.”

pound sculpture named, in Thomas’ humorous way, in honour of the

After lunch we talk obsessively about music, comparing favourite

expression, ‘Duh!’

records and shows. We both commiserate the years that we snobbishly

He starts to describe the months it took to create the sculpture. Right

listened to one type of music (punk for him, folk for me) before opening

before the patina specialist was going to add the finishing touches,

up to the bounties of other genres. He recounts the time he saw the

Thomas exclaimed, “Holy shit that looks horrible! The communication

Grateful Dead and consciously stayed sober to have an unhindered

sucks. It looks like it’s in pain and I don’t want that.” So he moved the

experience. “It was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen,” he says. He

mouth and added some pimple-like texture to the face. “This one I really

stops at the post office for a moment, pausing in the open door of the

like because it’s almost like this entity, or person, or whatever it is, is

driver’s seat because, when it’s a subject he’s enthusiastic about, he

really communicating,” he says. “It didn’t all come together easy. You’re

just can’t cut a conversation short.

kind of moving with it in a jazz-like way.”

36 HUCK

From his energy to the paint on his fingertips, Thomas’ need to keep making things by hand is palpable. In much the same way that he petted Muddy a few minutes before, he affectionately wipes dust from Der’s expressive face.

to take the time to capture something, I want to honour the scenario, the activity, the people, the emotion, and get the most out of it.”

So, is permanence part of the allure? “Very much so,” he says. “I shoot Super 16mm film because if I’m going to try to honour these things, I want

“I do think I have a romantic aesthetic idea about what I do, an

this reference piece to be around.” The same goes with bronze. “It’s a long

older-world idea of art. Not extremely conceptual, but more generally

journey to get them to be dynamic on a level where there’s an interplay

expressive,” he explains. “I have a language that I’ve developed and I’m

and they function. If you’re going to really go through that process and get

expressing through that language. I work in bronze and sculpture and

somewhere, it’s nice that that thing can stick around.”

traditional painting because I like the aesthetic of those types of things.

He pauses. “[Then again] there’s almost a Mad Max idea to some of

In my photography and movies I only use film because I feel like it has a

the art,” he says. “People worry it’s gonna get messed up, but that’s part

warmth, depth, dimension and a dance in the grains. You can tell when it

of it. I don’t think it’s supposed to last forever.” He goes on to explain how

was made. I understand the applicable aspects of digital photography and

he can work on a painting for seven years, paint over things he doesn’t

filmmaking; I see how it can work. But for me, film is a more viable path,

like, covering up places where it fell and got beat up, or eventually even

and I think a more impactful path. I find digital ephemeral.”

toss it out if he doesn’t like the outcome. You can see this layered aspect

He goes on: “Film is like a dancer. You’re dancing, you’re over here

in much of his work: the three-dimensional objects that juxtapose shape,

and you shoot something, and you dance over to the middle and the film

colour and texture; the tapestries that are stitched, sketched and sewn;

dances. You don’t really know what the film is going to do exactly, but it has

and even the films themselves where clear shots are bled with light from

its own cool dance and you can do your dance and you meet somewhere

analogue process and directionally driven music is threaded through

in the middle. What I find with digital film is that the medium’s dancing

with atmosphere. Thomas’ creative output is a deepening palimpsest in

over there and you have to dance all the way across the room; you have to

constant flux. “I’m not super attached to my work,” he adds. “I don’t need

do big-time dance to get it. I’m not saying you can’t get it to somewhere

to have it around me and be the centre of everything. I like doing it but

interesting, but it doesn’t meet you in the middle of the room. If I’m going

then I like getting away from it as well.”

37

He says he doesn’t get away as much as he used to. In the last six

that mid-thought really interesting. To me it’s the most relatable idea.”

months, trips to New York, Hawaii, Berlin, Chile and New Zealand

Inspired by the customary robes of Morocco called jellabas, the gen-

are all considered “light travel”. For Thomas, working in different

derless humanoids in Thomas’ work are designed, he says, to float

mediums provides a similar release. “They all come in at a different

outside of context – free from the confines of gender and race, and with-

registry on meditative levels,” he says. “The sewing is interesting.

out a backstory – so that they can slip by unnoticed, no questions asked.

Sometimes I’ll go away for a few weeks or a month and a lot of times the first thing I’ll do when I get home is just prepare a bunch of those

“I’ve gone out of my way to stay under the radar,” says Thomas, revealing something of himself in those little human forms.

paper flowers. I’ll just make like ten of them and it’s crazy grounding.

It helps me re-enter and reconnect.”

As our day together draws to a close, Thomas grabs his computer and a couple of blank CDs, and asks me to follow him out to the garage. He starts grabbing colourful scraps of paper from the dishevelled mountains of materials piled around his studio. What follows is probably best imagined as a sped-up time-lapse video, with Thomas cutting, folding and sewing at lightning speed two impeccably crafted covers for the mix CDs he’s just burned for me. Then, with a striking combination of focus and frenzy, he pulls up a chair, crouches over his desk, and starts drawing, stamping and personalising a copy of his book. I spent the day chasing soundbites from a man who refused to bite. But as he works, his reluctance to philosophise is replaced with something real. He is driven, in that frenetic moment, by an indescribable force.

Before I make off with my pile of

handmade

gifts,

something

Thomas says at the opening of Sprout springs to mind: “This is a film about the exploration of the riding of water mountains and mole hills. The idea behind Sprout is to show how many different ways we have to access our ocean’s existence using whatever shape or sized equipment it might take to have a more connected ride.”

Though he was talking about longboards,

shortboards

and

weird logs in between, the same manifesto could apply to his art Known affectionately to his friends and fans as T.muck or T.moeski

– and, for that matter to his life as well. I can’t help but think that,

– signing off emails with T.cam, T.moe and every version in between

by slipping seamlessly between all mediums, from old-world bronzes

– Thomas infuses a sense of humour into everything he does. The

to 16mm film, Thomas is proving that there are endless ways to

landing page of his website frames his work as ‘creative dribble’, ‘art

access our own existence – infinite tools we can use to create a more

faggery’ or simply ‘umm yeah’. It’s a vernacular that pops up in his

connected ride.

paintings, usually alongside semi-human characters who say things like, ‘Fuck yeah’, ‘Yep’ or ‘Ummmm’ in balloon-like speech bubbles.

So, is that the message we should take from his work? “It’s not really about my story,” says Thomas. “It’s about your experience with it.”

“It’s funny, but also has depth if you want it to,” he explains. “I try

And on that final note I walk away from Thomas feeling like he’s

to access more positive references. I think it’s a lot harder. Sure, we all

told me all I need to know. In our interview, he wanted to talk about

have darker parts of ourselves. Accessing dark shit is really easy. It’s all

my experiences. In his art, he wants to talk about yours

around you and everyone does it. But it’s kinda boring. Besides, ‘um’ is probably the most common, repeated term from all people. I find

38 HUCK

thomascampbell-art.com

« Like so many people from our culture, we’ve matured, and so have our interests, taste levels and choices; but the love, passion, appreciation for our rich history has only grown stronger.

From all of this came the concept of creating a collection that embodies these individuals and ideals, all the while inspiring and making a positive impact on our world. » - Johnny Schillereff - Founder -

elementemeraldcollection.com/eu

GSM EUROPE : +33 5 58 700 700

While the sound of protest bellows around the globe, the Craftivist Collective are sewing potent little messages that may well have the power to trigger big change.

Text Shannon Denny

40 HUCK

L i z Se a bro o k

e’re living in noisy times. From Tahrir Square to Wall Street and from student protests to all-out riots, the air’s become filled with fearsome chanting and beating drums. It’s a good thing – a great thing, in fact.

But can a single human voice still lift above the roar?

Outside the Bank of England a gentle breeze stirs. A modest scrap of fabric undulates against the railings, creating not so much as a whisper. Here embroidery thread and cotton have joined forces, and together they silently announce their little message. ‘There is a gap in the clouds of unbridled capitalism,’ they affirm in earnest cross-stitch.

‘Now’s the time to act for justice.’ A label like one you might find in a handmade jumper reads: ‘Love from, Craftivist Collective.’

So who exactly are they? The group got its start when founder Sarah Corbett moved to London. “I joined lots of activist groups and didn’t feel like I fitted in,” she explains. “A lot of them are quite extrovert and like to dress up and chant. A lot are very black and white; you have to be vegan and ride a bike and you can’t like Vogue. And I quite like Vogue. I didn’t enjoy going on marches and shouting things. I felt quite shy and stressed out.”

41

L iz Se a bro o k

Cr aftivis t C olle ct iv e

Tonight some craftivists are at work on mini protest banners, transmitting inspiring quotes, or hard-hitting facts, one cross-stitch at a time. Others are embroidering ‘Don’t Blow It’ handkerchiefs with personal messages to their MPs. The aim, according to their website, is to remind politicians “that you are holding them to account if they go against the demands of their constituents”.

Ever so quietly, she started learning about craftivism. Betsy Greer, who

With its focus on advocacy and awareness-raising projects,

coined the term in 2003, defines this marriage of craft and activism as “a

craftivism offers a softly-softly contrast to hardcore militance. The

way of looking at life where voicing opinions through creativity makes

group’s slogan – ‘A spoonful of craft helps the activism go down’ – sums

your voice stronger, your compassion deeper and your quest for justice

this up in typically upbeat language. “We’re not campaigners,” Sarah

more infinite”. This resonated with Sarah. “So I just started this little

emphasises. “We make it really clear that we provoke people to discuss

blog,” she remembers. “And all of these quiet, creative people started

issues and we hope what comes out of that is a positive thing.”

going, ‘Could I join in? I’m a bit shy. Would you let me?’” It wasn’t long

The work aims to stimulate discussion not just within the walls of a

before Sarah’s blog, A Lonely Craftivist, naturally morphed into a

Stitch-In but out on the street, too. “If something’s small people have to

community hub and, by January 2009, the Craftivist Collective was born.

find it,” says Sarah, “and they’re more likely to go up to it with an open

There’s a steady hum in the foyer of the Royal Festival Hall, where

mind and think, ‘Oh this is special, what does it say?’ Then you hit

the collective holds a Stitch-In once a month. People bring their own

them with something controversial.” Craftivists are encouraged to snap

craftivism projects, or buy a kit they can make on the night. Together,

photos of their work in situ to include in the collective’s website and on

their pieces will contribute to projects designed by core members to

Facebook, but it’s the casual passerby that really helps the message go

address all manner of issues. One project, in collaboration with WI

viral, by sharing photos of craftivist creations via Instagram and Twitter.

group Shoreditch Sisters, sees craftivists creating embroidered vaginas for an awareness-raising campaign targeting female genital cutting.

This nonviolent, subversive approach appeals to Margo Howie, who took refuge in craftivism after becoming disillusioned with the “shouting, screaming, throwing placards” of other activist circles. “I mean, great work can be done, but I was finding the same arguments and I hated a lot of the aggression. There were so many times I was just turned off by a lot of stuff I found in protest movements. What I like about craftivism is the fact that it’s non-confrontational,” she says. “This is totally more my speed: slow, deliberate, forgiving, with cake and sitting down.”

The tactile nature of handcrafted items reaches audiences in a way that oral messages can’t. As many craftivists are keen to point out, the natural inclination when you’re shouted at is to inch backwards, but if you see a handmade badge on a stranger’s jacket, you’re inclined to lean forward for a closer look. And in a world where so much is temporary and virtual, a contribution that is tangible takes on a certain resonance.

42 HUCK

Cr aftivis t Co ll ec t iv e /R o b i n P r ime

“The output makes people think about the issues in a slightly different way from other forms of activism,” explains Erica Carroll. “The fact that you worked on it and took a long time to make it will hopefully make people think about it a little bit more. Hopefully it has a longer lasting effect; it gets to people and it gets them thinking.”

C r a f t iv i st C o lle ct i v e / R o bi n P ri m e

It isn’t only now, nor is it only in Britain, that craft has been used to creatively express political discontent. Sarah points to the women of Chile who, during the Pinochet dictatorship, used handcrafted tapestries called Arpilleras to draw attention to their dire situation. “The Catholic church and NGOs smuggled these Arpilleras out of the country to raise international awareness of the brutality of the Pinochet regime,” she wrote on the British Museum’s blog last year. “Not only that, the craft of these women also encouraged a powerful grassroots political movement by providing them with an opportunity to express and record their grief and

She maintains that craftivism offers a form of catharsis, giving you

emotional turmoil about the death or disappearance of their loved ones,

something physical to do in the face of hugely frustrating and seemingly

something that the regime and the poverty they lived in didn’t allow.”

insurmountable obstacles. And it’s also a useful tool for creating

Carrie Reichardt is a core member of the Craftivist Collective, and a

conversation about tough topics. “For me as a person, I’m very forthright,”

new project she’s designing has taken inspiration from the AIDS Memorial

Carrie says. “I have very strong views. If I were to talk to people I’m likely

Quilt. “It’s the most popular piece of community art that’s ever existed,”

to get into an argument. I know that if I were to set up a stall, the only

she says of the project founded in the earliest years of the epidemic to

people who would come up to talk to me are those people who are already

immortalise victims it seemed history would forget. “It was nominated for

on side. Or you might have someone come up and be rude to you. There

the Nobel Peace Prize. But it’s a bit of sewing!” Since 1987, over 14 million

isn’t much engagement.”

people have visited the quilt at thousands of events worldwide, raising $3

When she mosaicked a car as a tribute to her friend who was executed

million for AIDS service organisations. With 45,000 panels now in the

on death row, she realised her days of setting out stalls were over. “I

quilt, it’s a gripping illustration of the breadth of the disease that many

don’t have to do anything because people come up to me and naturally

people in the 1980s were very keen to ignore. “That was craftivism before

ask me questions. As soon as people start to ask questions, it enables

craftivism was given the term by Betsy Greer.”

that dialogue to happen. The fact that it’s been painstakingly, labour-

Carrie’s cause is death penalty injustice, and she’s creating a moving

intensively mosaicked means that even if people don’t like the style or the

– and moveable – tribute to executed Death Row inmates. With a nod to

image, most people can appreciate the craft,” she says. “I think it makes

the old court tradition of the judge placing a handkerchief on his head

your voice louder; I think it enables people to hear what you’re saying.”

while reading out a death sentence, the Hankie for Hope project invites

There’s a gentle murmur as the circle widens to make room for more

supporters to stitch the name of deceased prisoners on handkerchiefs.

craftivists arriving for the Stitch-In. “When you’re doing it with people

These will be stitched together to create an ephemeral banner, a visual

you feel a part of some community,” says Sarah. “You feel you’re all in it

testimony that can forcefully but silently communicate the humanity of

together. And I really love that it’s a safe space for people of all different

those condemned by the state.

backgrounds. We have some really interesting discussions. You don’t solve them, but it gets people having politics as part of their lifestyle.”

Tonight, much Earl Grey is consumed, the US presidential elections are discussed and new projects are plotted. All the while, these unassuming activists steadily bend wayward threads to their crafty will and weave new strands of political thought into the heart of everyday experience

43

44 HUCK

Are vintage-tinged photography Apps the opposite of handmade craft, or a radical way to share real moments in real time? Jamie Thomas’ Instagram account is as prolific as his career in skate.

So, who better to offer a little insight than a man addicted to the click.

Jamie Thomas’ rolling career is synonymous with the evolution of skateboarding itself. As team manager of Ed Templeton’s Toy Machine, he helped breathe new life into nineties skate culture. But it’s through his own companies – Zero Skateboards (1996) and Fallen Footwear (2003) – that

Interview Shelley Jones

his creative legacy continues to manifest. As owner and president of Black Box Distribution, he’s busier than ever. But

P h o t o g r ap h y Jamie Thomas

take a gander through Jamie’s prolific Instagram (followed by thousands) and you’ll find an intimate, artistic portrait of a life behind the scenes. HUCK caught up with the thirty-seven-year-old skate rat to find out why this digital platform has captured his imagination.

network] with the least bullshit. Instagram, in its purity, is just an update of what your

When did you start using Instagram and

friends, and people that you’re into, are up

why? I started about a year and a half ago. I

to. And you can be artistic – you can express

was always kinda disgruntled about Twitter

yourself. I’ve always been into photography

and begrudgingly started an account, but

on one level or another – it’s a hobby and I

never really liked it. I thought it was really

shot some of the Zero ads a long time ago.

over-dramatising what I was thinking or

Through making skateboarding videos, I

doing and didn’t feel like [my updates]

got a real feel for composition.

were justified as newsworthy. But when I caught wind of Instagram, and saw that

Some purists say Apps like Instagram and

it was the visual version of Twitter, where

Hipstamatic are a cheat’s tool. What would

you shoot a photograph and your caption is

you say to such sceptics? Anyone can take a

second to the actual image, I thought, ‘Well

picture on a camera phone, but if someone

that’s the way it should be!’ It’s the [social

can take a photo that everyone is going to be inspired by, then that’s a different challenge. I try and make every photo that I post on Instagram worth clicking the ‘like’ button. I want to represent myself and the scene well and hopefully show an artistic view of whatever I’m looking at. It’s not rocket science, anybody could do it, but I’ve got a pretty decent following on Instagram somehow, and I don’t want to disappoint those followers. I try to do quality over quantity. If I wouldn’t click the ‘like’ button myself, I don’t put a photo up.

Who do you think engages with your shots and why? I think initially it started off as skateboarders and fans, but I’m into nature

45

more people are creating awesome content and sharing it for free? Especially those pockets of media that still see themselves as ‘dictators of cool’? Yeah, for sure. If people are serious about their Instagram, then it could be their end-all source for putting information out. But people still want to keep [magazines] relevant. The going creed right now is that you can’t post a skate photo from a skate spot when there’s a photographer there. If you do, you’re an asshole, because you’re not leaving any story for them to tell. The only time you see a skate photo on my Instagram is when there’s no skate photographer there, or we don’t have access to their photos, or it’s the and landscapes, too. A lot of the skaters got

warm-up trick or whatever. In China, for

bored like, ‘Too many sunsets!’ But I just

example, I was taking skate photos because

take photos of anything I’m inspired by and

there were no other photographers. I also

try to get a good balance of skate, family

used the same treatment on all my photos

and landscape. I try to make every photo

from that trip so when you flip through my

special and I think if you do that you get a

Instagram you’ll get to that section and

reputation, and people want to follow you.

you’ll know that it’s a mini [contained]

If people are into it that’s cool, and if not

article. I think I’m going to try and do that

then I don’t really care. It’s just what I’m

more – develop a look that really works

seeing, you know? What I’m inspired by.

with the weather and environment of a trip in order to depict a certain mood and

Anyone can get involved with Instagram.

style. The China trip was an experiment. It

Is technology like this a new democratising

was winter in Asia and really overcast and

force? Absolutely. I think that’s where all

cloudy, so I kind of made this moody, dark

the followers come from. If it was an elitist

look – like an old Chinese film!

thing, then it wouldn’t have the community.

It’s like that game Othello [Reversi]: ‘Takes a

As a skateboarder who travels a lot in search

minute to learn how to play, but a lifetime to

of new spots, do you think you see things

master.’ It’s something that anyone can do,

that many people overlook? I think so. Just

but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do it

having Instagram, you’re always looking

as good as the best people doing it. You can

for the hidden treasure in whatever you’re

develop your own style and identity through

encountering, because you want to tell your

your photos. Young teenage kids are doing

friends a story about what you’re doing.

it and I think that’s really cool, because it’s

There are a lot of clichés, so you’re trying

cultivating them having an opinion, having

to look for your own angle. I think there are

a style, thinking about what they’re creating

a lot of hidden treasures out there. I don’t

and getting feedback on that creation. My

know that I see things differently because of

wife thinks that too many things are judged

skateboarding, but I’m showing a different

and need self-reassurance in this day and

side to things because skateboarding’s what

age, but it’s just about that ability to have

I’m into. Our skateboarding journey ends

feedback very rapidly and then change your

up being the story. course of direction. If you want to. If you don’t, you can just stay on course and say, ‘Eff the feedback!’ But I think it’s really cool that it’s so accessible. That’s what makes the community so exciting.

I guess, in that way, it’s a similar process to skateboarding? It is, totally. It really is like skateboarding. Anyone can start doing it and if you wanna be good at it, yeah, you have to devote yourself to the craft, just like anything in this world.

Could a platform like Instagram make official publications a bit redundant, as

46 HUCK

In the fifth episode of your Let The Good Times Roll series, you go through your epic collection of magazines, videos, tees and decks. Why is archiving important to you? I’ve saved everything that’s had value to me at one point in my life that I thought maybe, later on, I’d want to wear, cherish or give away. I don’t know, I’ve always felt that memorabilia and collectibles are taken for granted; people just kind of disregard that stuff. But I always knew that I was building a career and that I would someday wanna look back and reflect on all the stuff that I’d done. So, I tried to save mementos along the way, consistently documenting your travels and the mementos of your life by archiving photographs.

And these photographs will live on; they’ll live in a small space on the web, but they’ll live on. They’re archived. I’m starting a website called ‘Thrill Of It All’, which will be a hub for my Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Let The Good Times Roll videos, as well as a space to share my personal inspirations. I’m going to archive all my old video parts and interviews as well as all my current travels. Thrill Of It All was the name of the first Zero video and it’s also pretty much why we do what we do; it’s all just for the thrill of it all.

In a world that moves so fast, are online archives a way to slow down and reflect? I totally think so. If not, you basically don’t have a road map of where you’ve come from. I think Instagram is a great product of that. Some days I don’t Instagram at all – if I’m hanging out with my family and it feels like it cheapens the moment that I’m living in. But when the timing’s right and a situation presents itself – when it looks like time is standing still for a moment, and I can spare the time to shoot a photo, then I do instagram.heroku.com/users/zero_or_die

picking and choosing what I really wanted to keep. Now I’m filtering through those things and giving them away. I’m opening an eBay account because I’m trying to get a skatepark built in my hometown in Alabama and I’m going to put all of the money from the sales towards that. So people can contribute to that as well as have a piece of my history, or their own skateboard history – original things that influenced them.

Can online archives, like Instagram, ever replace tangible collections? Elements of it are the same, because you’re basically

47

Text Alex Denney Photography Robin Mellor

soweto sounds 48 HUCK

E l e c t r o n i c mu sician S poek Mathamb o mixes influences to create a distinctly South African post-colonial pop.

seemed like the worst fate to stay in this city of mall rats. People were very materialistic, like, the Louis Vuitton store really meant something, you know?”

Spoek’s resentment of this consumerist culture surfaces on ‘Put Some Red On It’, a track on the record co-written with his wife Ana Rab, aka Swedish emcee Gnucci Banana. “That song was about relating the conflict diamond situation to a sense of romance, and the importance that people place on material stuff to solidify relationships... For me personally, the impact of companies like [diamond conglomerate] De Beers is crazy. [The country] has been raped by those companies. My sister works in speech and hearing therapy; she works with a lot of miners with head wounds, and the kind of care that they get, or don’t get – it’s fucked up that all that can happen for the sake of valuing currency or romance.”

Spoek is outspoken about South African culture in general and fights a losing battle to remain diplomatic when drawn on the subject of Die Antwoord, who have attracted criticism for their sensationalised parody of working-class stereotypes. “I’ve known them for a long time,” he says.

“My first tour in Europe was with [frontman] Watkin [Tudor Jones, aka Ninja]. They do what they do, it’s not my kind of music. They’re sending up a certain section of South African society, but to me the music’s halfbaked. They’re acting, and it’s hugely exploitative and fucked up in a lot of ways. But the majority of the population isn’t politically correct, so that’s what their success is based on.”

poek Mathambo puffs out his cheeks and lets the question hang for a

Though he has now relocated to Sweden with his wife, Spoek

second, as if to underline its absurdity. “What am I gonna talk about

believes that travelling to other countries as a young musician helped

otherwise?” he sighs. “Eating pussy? It’s just stuff I think people should

him appreciate the merits of his home. “As a teenager I’d always be

hear, stuff I think I should be doing personally.”

looking snobbishly out of South Africa [for inspiration]. But at one point

We’ve come to London’s South Bank to ask Spoek about Father Creeper, his second album and debut for Sub Pop, which draws on

I realised, ‘Fuck it, there’s always been amazing stuff happening at home that I can proudly keep my head on my shoulders and represent.’”

a magpie’s repertoire of globe-trotting sounds – ghettotech, electro,

That ‘amazing stuff ’ included South Africa’s vibrant dance music

dubstep and rock – to assemble a portrait of his native South Africa in

scene, which took root in Johannesburg when deejays began spinning

which the smell of apocalypse hangs heavy in the air.

slowed-down house music tracks at township clubs in the early nineties,

So we thought we should ask why he uses his songs to address

and became a youth culture force in the post-Apartheid era. “I’d be

politically potent issues, from the country’s exploited natural resources

standing in a club in Shoreditch or Berlin,” he says. “And it would be

to affirmative action policies, which critics would argue have hindered

absolutely shit. No one’s dancing ’cause everyone’s worried about how

rather than helped poor black communities post-Apartheid. But in a

they look, and then you compare that with the vitality back home –

country where history continues to haunt the present in unexpected

there’s a difference in energy I wanted to hone in on.”

ways, it seems the personal is always political.

The result was a sound, aired on 2010 debut Mshini Wam, that Spoek

Born Nthato Mokgata in 1985 in the township district of Soweto,

himself dubbed ‘township tech’, which also included a darkly electric

Johannesburg, Spoek (his stage name translates roughly as ‘ghost of

house reworking of Joy Division’s ‘She’s Lost Control’, plus a delicious

bones’, but Mathambo is also the site of a Zulu massacre) moved in

pair of zombiefied vids for that song and ‘War On Words’. With Father

the mid-nineties to Sandton, a well-heeled suburb that was off limits to

Creeper, however, the plot has thickened once again to keep pace with

black people until the fall of Apartheid. But, from an early age, all Spoek

its author’s genre-vaulting ambition. The result is a thrilling new hybrid

wanted to do was escape the city altogether.

of Afro-futurist, post-colonial pop that sounds like someone trying to

“All the stuff I was into, no one else cared about,” he says of his hip hop-obsessed youth. “Johannesburg has a big mall culture. A lot of stuff moved out of the city centre for my generation; people didn’t want to

master a language that hasn’t been invented yet.

And Spoek, you can’t help thinking, has plenty more inventions bubbling away

go there because they thought it was dingy and full of slums... Property prices were dipping, so [businesses] had to move to secure loans. It just

Father Creeper is out now on Sub Pop.

49

Artwork by Swoon.

52 HUCK

with ink-stained hands. “I would have been like, ‘I have to stay and finish 30,000 paintings after the show opens.’ Now I just think, ‘Please be a human being and stop doing that.’”

It’s a bright, chilly morning in post-gentrified East London, and the hip cognoscenti are still nowhere to be seen.

S woon’ s s t re e t art may be de signe d to f a de a way, but t he t rail it le ave s behind i s far from fle e t ing.

Despite having “stayed up real late to hang out with a buddy”, Caledonia Currie – or Callie, as she’s known to her troubadour band of collaborators and friends – is clearly feeling the benefits of her Irish sojourn. Fresh-faced and chirpy, she free-pours sugar into her coffee and looks the polar opposite of annoyed when she pauses to say, “I wish Abba would die.”

After a series of re-arranged plans, we’ve met for breakfast at an American-style diner that serves Huevos Rancheros and, despite the mini jukeboxes and rockabilly vibes, plays a whole lot of Abba. On a torturous loop.

Text Andrea Kurland POLAROID Greg Funnell PHOTOGRAPHY Tod Seelie

“It reminds me of a café I worked in when I first moved to New York and all they fucking played was Abba,” says Callie, slicing eggs and mushrooms into a forkable mince. “People say, ‘What have you got against Abba? They’re so cheerful!’ But I kinda wanted to go back in time and murder them.”

On paper, this statement is a little misleading. But throw in the schoolgirl giggles and excitable hand gestures (complete with waving knife and fork), and you soon get the picture: Callie was joking. People who hug like an old-school friend don’t really want to murder Abba – no matter how much you wish they would.

Caledonia Dance Currie is learning how to be a human again.

She’s spent the last decade working at a preternatural pace,

Caledonia

so for her thirty-fourth birthday, as a treat to herself, she took

amazingly, the real name of street artist Swoon, as given to

a break from being invincible and went for a walk. “I was so

her by her “non-traditional, wild-child” parents in 1977. Her

busy, I wasn’t sleeping and every time I got off an aeroplane I

childhood home in Daytona Beach, Florida, was a Petri dish

would get the flu,” she says. “I was like, ‘But I’m a superhero,

of countercultural beliefs where the creative chaos of self-

I can do this!’ and my body was like, ‘Actually, you’re thirty-

discovery was always met with praise. Every painting was

four now – stop.’”

deemed “amazing”; every drawing further proof that she could

The Brooklyn-based artist landed in London a month ago with “a ginormous backpack full of bits of paper” and

Dance

Currie

is,

dodge a prescriptive path. So, naturally, she became an artist at the age of ten.

has spent every waking hour crouched over on the floor or

“I was into oil painting, which had all the trappings of

dangling from a ladder, so that she could chisel, hammer,

being very serious and real,” laughs Callie, sprinkling salt

paint and build a walk-in installation at Black Rat Projects,

onto her tomatoes for the gazillionth time. “Everyone used to

featuring lace-like papercuts and a twenty-foot goddess called

say, ‘You can do this!’ So, I was like, ‘That’s it, I’m an artist!’

Thalassa. The cavernous gallery space under the railway

Not too many people have that from that age. A lot of people

arches of Shoreditch has long been a home to street art’s

would have been like, ‘You’re gonna lose your mind and end

elite, and Murmuration – a show that takes its name from a

up on drugs,’ but my parents just said, ‘Well, we already did

flock of starlings, “one of those amazing things that happens

that so you probably won’t.’”

whereby thousands of tiny movements accrue into this large

With the support of her teacher dad and stay-at-home

epic, beautiful mass” – is the culmination of four years of hard

mom, Callie came to understand that “having that amount

slog. So a little downtime, you’d think, would be no big deal.

of self-confidence as a young woman is a tremendous thing”.

“I just did a big hike in Ireland, and previously I would never

But ‘tremendous’, in this context, under-eggs the facts. Today,

have done that,” she says, scooping heavy locks off her face

Swoon’s delicate aesthetic – all expressive line-work and

53

“It was about a dd r e s s i n g that feeling like there’s no place for y o u i n t h e ci t y . I needed to see my life reflected b a c k t o m e .” heartfelt human forms – is a defining thread of street art’s

into graffiti, but Callie couldn’t see herself in the tagging

evolving narrative and her name is dropped, next to Banksy

world. Then lightning struck. “Discovering Revs – having

and Shepard Fairey, everywhere it’s told. Her outdoor work has

friends say, ‘Did you know that he wrote his entire life

been brought inside by influential curators like Jeffrey Deitch,

story on the New York subway system?’ – it blew the top off

with pieces selling for $20,000 or more. She’s done a TED talk;

my understanding of graffiti. It felt more like this constant

her work hangs in MoMA; even your mom could spot a Swoon.

interaction with the city; that feeling of tricksterness, like

But in 1996, aged nineteen, she was just another fine art

something has been implanted in the fabric of the city.”

student at Pratt in New York, struggling to work out where she

Another revelation was Gordon Matta-Clark, whose site-

slotted in. “I remember being in painting class and drawing

specific ‘Anarchitecture’ captured the decay of the American

this deadening blank like, ‘I have nothing to give,’” she says. “I

Dream. “He’d carve abandoned houses in half, turning the

could feel there was something ill-fitting, so I just had to look

city into a sculpture, then leave them to be destroyed,” says

harder and dig deeper to find something that felt meaningful

Callie. “I felt an emotional connection and knew I had to

to me.” That search took her to Eastern Europe and the

make something that embodied those principles.”

Netherlands where she spent her time on exchange immersed

In 1999, combining her classic portraiture skills with papercut

in the library, soaking up the work of Expressionist artists

and printmaking, Callie started pasting intricate figures around

Schiele and Klimt. “When I talk to students I have to explain,

New York, embedding familiar faces into the blank spaces of

‘I grew up before the internet, that’s kind of a big deal,’” she

her world. “It was about addressing that feeling like there’s no

laughs. “All I had were books about Vincent Van Gogh.”

place for you in the city,” says Callie, who prints everything at

Back in Brooklyn, her anarchist art friends were getting

54 HUCK

home by carving into lino-block, pressing the image into paper

that reads, ‘Post-Swoon meet up: Come with your ideas.

No matter how impossible they may seem in your head.’)

In 2004, this belief in mass action manifested as the Toyshop collective, a group Callie founded with her dumpster-diving outsider-artist friends to stage colourful interventions in the name of ‘psychogeography’ – defined

by Marxist theorist Guy Debord as “the effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals”. They pasted kids’ drawings over commercial billboards and paraded down Houston Street in Manhattan, wearing paper tutus and clanging instruments made of junk, like a band of postapocalyptic anarchist faeries. “We weren’t doing anything amazingly new, as the conversation around public space was already intense,” admits Callie, who drew inspiration from the anti-M11 highway protest camps in East London a stone’s throw from where we’re sat eating scrambled eggs – which later grew into Reclaim The Streets. “I remember learning about that and it sparked a curiosity about how people could work together to make change.”

Toyshop became a honeypot for a swarm of outliers – performance artists, musicians and “people who make things” – eager to get their hands dirty and build their own statement. With Callie at the helm (and Jeffrey Deitch stoking the fire) they embarked on a series of progressively ambitious junkyard raft projects starting, in the summer of 2006, with Miss Rockaway Armada – a two-year-long “living experiment in communal life and smaller footprints” that sent a flotilla of dystopian Waterworld-style rafts, built from construction site scraps, down the Mississippi.

“At the time we were going into all these wars and I was like, ‘Who is supporting this presidency? Who are Americans? What the fuck is going on here?’ I felt totally disconnected to the point that I wanted to leave the country,” Caledonia Dance Currie, aka Swoon, hugs collaborator Ben Wolf aboard a raft from Swimming Cities of Serenissima.

says Callie. “I thought, ‘I either can’t be an American in this situation, or I can do what I know, mobilise an art collective, channel the entirety of our culture, and travel with it into the interior. You can’t wage a war for resources by withdrawing from the centre, and only communicating with people in your own city is stifling to the point that it loses all meaning. It was very much about, ‘How do we

by walking on it with bare feet. “I needed to see my life reflected

communicate and learn from America?’ There were these

back to me.” But she wasn’t just planting something for herself.

amazing moments when people spotted the boats and were

As she explains in her TED talk: “By putting a little tiny change

like, ‘What are you?’ It sparked a conversation like, ‘This is

in an environment you can change all those associations people

who we are, this is what we’re doing – who are you?’”

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea brought an aesthetic

have, and create an opportunity for connection.”

Today, these ephemeral silhouettes, usually in varying

lilt to the ‘living experiment’ that was much more distinctly

stages of decay, have left an imprint on cities across the globe;

Swoon. When seven scrapyard vessels came floating down

they are the people that leave an impression on Callie’s life.

the Hudson River in the summer of 2008 – seemingly

“I can work on the expression of a human face for days and

straight out of a Neverland New Orleans – Callie’s alter

days and days,” she says. “I have an infinite patience for

ego revealed herself in the labyrinthine layers of intricate

that.” A week after we share breakfast, Callie will drop by The

woodwork, weathered paint palettes and fantastical

Bank of Ideas – an abandoned UBS office block taken over by

treehouse forms. They were floating, functioning works

Occupy London – to give an impromptu talk to a dozen or so

of art. In 2009, The Swimming Seas of Serenissima sent

protesters. “I’m interested in travelling to places where people

a similar flotilla drifting through Venice. Inspired by raft-

are organising themselves and just kinda figuring out the

builder Poppa Neutrino – who ‘scraprafted’ the Atlantic

daily thing of how to survive,” she’ll say, pointing to a drawing

from New York City to Ireland – they traversed the Adriatic

inspired by the female sewing collectives of Oaxaca, Mexico.

Sea, “always hugging the coast”, eventually dropping

No one quite knows who’s inspiring who. (The following day,

anchor at the Venice Biennale. “We were really quite mixed

an email will circulate among that same group of activists

and everyone’s skills were really important,” she says.

55

56 HUCK

But even in a buoyant Bohemia, consensus is tricky. “That

you somewhere. It’s just about

shit is fucking tiring,” says Callie, to the diverse group of activists at The Bank of Ideas. “But when you have an idea,

trying to figure that shit out.”

Brazil was one of many

and people say you’re going to fail, a lot of times it’s because

field trips Callie regularly un-

they haven’t seen it happen before. And all that means is that

dertakes to places where the

there’s not a precedent for it. It doesn’t really mean it’s not

survival instinct brings people

possible, it just means that there isn’t an understanding for it:

together: from the Umoja Vil-

you need to create that understanding... When you are trying to

lage in Miami (a homeless

do something and people tell you, ‘No,’ it’s not because they’re

settlement founded by Take

gonna stop you, they just don’t wanna be the one who gave

The Land Back) to a group

you permission. As in, ‘I don’t wanna be the one who told you

of bereaved mothers fighting

assholes that you could crash into a fucking bridge.’”

female homicide in Ciudad

Callie balances her collaborative outdoor projects with solo

Juárez, Mexico. “We have to

installations in private spaces, and has spent years coming to

think about how [this epidem-

terms with the code of ethics underpinning both approaches.

ic] is connected to our lives,”

“It’s amazing to bring people together in one place and draw

says tee-total Callie. “In the

dots between different ideas,” she explains. “But when I started

sense that it’s connected to the

to take people up on gallery invitations, I started to dream about

drug trade – just think about

building-out installations in a very complicated way. For that,

how that’s directed towards

you need a very safe, protected space – you need tools and all

the US and Europe and our

these things that being outside, or being on a boat on a river,

consumption. We can be so

doesn’t provide. You need that little bit of preciousness. Working

unaware of what goes into the

inside is like a thought laboratory for me; it’s a really nurturing

things that are brought to us.”

way to grow your ideas whereas when you’re out in the world,

Working alongside the collec-

everything is challenging. It consumes so much of your mind

tive Nuestras Hijas de Regreso

and energy that you lose your ability to have this dreamy delicate

(‘May Our Daughters Return

thought process, and I would be lost without that.”

Home’),

Swoon’s

response

In a world of self-promoting Twitter-heads and carefully

was a portrait of victim Silvia

cultivated images, Callie doesn’t have a website. She is the best

Elena, surrounded by a rabble

type of enigma: everywhere and nowhere all at once. But it’s

of papercut butterflies (sym-

not a conscious thing. “My house is insanely messy,” she says,

bolic of lost souls) and sound-

“everything is broken. There’s only so much time in the day, and

tracked by audio interviews

if you give your mind over to being on the internet as well, you get caught up in the spectacle and lose why you’re doing things.”

with many bereaved mothers.

But Callie’s not one to stand

As a character, Swoon may be a swashbuckling rebel – a Pied

by and take notes. “Portraits

Piper figure to a crew of Lost Boys – but Caledonia Currie (who’s

like that may raise awareness,”

not afraid to tell her Occupy audience that she subsidises her

she says, “but I wanted to make

projects with “really expensive artwork”) has a more tempered

something that has a tangible

take. “I feel uncomfortable saying I’m definitely countercultural,

impact.” In 2010, while study-

because you just immediately become aware of the thousands

ing architecture, she “hatched

of ways in which you’re totally part of the culture,” says Callie,

a plan” with collaborator Ben

pouring more sugar into coffee that’s now turned cold. “Most

Wolf (whose scrapyard struc-

thoughtful people have this constant battle between trying to

tures buttress many of Swoon’s

be happy in simple daily ways – appreciating things like a good

shows) and started the Konbit

meal, clean drinking water and a taxi ride somewhere – while

Shelter project in post-earth-

understanding how something like the disaster in the Gulf and

quake Haiti. Using architect

the oil industry leads back to our way of life. That feeling like

Nader Khalili’s Superadobe

your culture is implicitly, explicitly in every way just ravaging the

domes

earth and every culture that isn’t living like you do.”

‘earthbag’ technique used in

–

a

resource-light

She recently returned from central Brazil, where indigenous

humanitarian housing – they

collectives are protesting the construction of the Belo Monte

helped the local community

hydroelectric dam, a $10bn project that could displace 50,000

construct their own buildings.

people. “There are massive amounts of chemicals being

But as an outsider pro-

dumped into the rivers, their indigenous way of life is at stake;

posing a local solution, the

they’re being suffocated. Knowing that in the city you feel great

learning curve was steeper

because you can turn up the heat – I can’t recognise myself as not

than Callie foresaw. “We had to step back and remember, ‘You’re

participating in that lifestyle but I’m constantly thinking, ‘I have

providing a service,” she says, deep furrows in her brow, “you’re

to find a way to live differently.’ It’s not working yet, I can’t figure

learning something and then giving back. If at any point it feels

it out – it’s like not being able to think outside of this box. I’m

wrong, then you don’t do it.’ Whereas on the river if people

really struggling with it, but I feel like that process maybe leads

said, ‘You’re wrong,’ we were like, ‘Hell no, we can do this.’”

Swimming Cities of Serenissma.

“ T h a t f e e l i n g l i k e y o u r c u l t u r e i s i m p l ici t l y , e x p l ici t l y i n e v e r y w a y j u s t r a v a g i n g t h e e a r t h a n d e v e r y c u lt u r e t h at i s n ’ t l i v i n g l i k e y o u d o .”

57

After erecting a communal space, they embarked on a dome for

things. With Transformazium, it’s a question of, ‘What can

a local woman called Monique, who was living under a tarpaulin

we create in the wreckage of this situation that is beneficial

with her newborn baby. “There are so many dangers with this

to the community?’ The guys who live there full-time are

process,” explains Callie. “It provides jobs and excitement and

pretty amazing in their dedication to create small responses

the local community is really gung-ho, but at the same time it’s

and to really fit and be integral to the community – they are

one house for one person and you have to ask, ‘Is that weird?

the community at this point. Next, we want to talk actively

Will that single her out? And what does that mean about our

to people about their vision for the space. I would like to just

relationship with her?’ There is all this stuff that I feel is quite

start hundreds of conversations and not try to stick to any

unresolved and it can only be resolved through our continued

one thing.”

relationship. Now that we know each other better, we can ask, ‘Do you really like this style of architecture? What should the next step be? And how can it not include us as outsiders?’ In the

Having cleared our plates an hour

end, it’s not really empowering for us to keep doing things – it’s

ago, we decide it’s time to bid Abba farewell. Back at Black

about teaching and giving independence as a solution.”

Rat Projects, a power-dressed art magazine editor stops by

The Konbit Shelter project, Haiti.

58 HUCK

Soon after we meet Callie will return to Haiti to “ask

for a look, while a kid outside shouts something like, ‘Look,

more questions and get real answers”, but she’s also applying

it’s a Swoon!’ Callie rolls up her sleeves, crouches down, and

these lessons closer to home. Before Haiti, she’ll stop in New

starts rolling up giant papercuts on the dust-covered floor.

Orleans to work on a “musical house” in a hurricane-ravaged

For a woman who wants to start hundreds of con-

neighbourhood. And in Braddock, Pennsylvania, she and

versations, Caledonia Currie and her invincible alter ego,

three other artists – “the same women who marched through

Swoon, seem charmingly unaware of the trellis of charged

Manhattan in paper tutus” – have taken over an abandoned

dominoes they leave everywhere they go. “The idea of success

church to start Transformazium, a community arts project

has always been kind of nebulous to me,” she says. “When I

in a poverty-line area that was largely abandoned after the

was young, it seemed so unlikely that it was more freeing to

steel industry collapsed, with the population falling from

not invest in that myth by saying, ‘Do what you want, whatever

15,000 to 5,000 since the 1940s. “I feel like I’m trying to get

happens will happen, and let the things you make be your

a hands-on understanding of how various communities are

thing.’” Days before this article goes to press, an email will pop

struggling for survival,” explains Callie. “The house in New

into my inbox titled, ‘Do, make and create together meet up.’

Orleans is very much about psychological survival – being

The Occupy London activists are planning their next Swoon-

soulfully and spiritually stimulated by music and beautiful

inspired attack. And with that, the latticework grows

Ever since he

was a kid, illustrator Andrew Groves

has been whittling objects from wood. “My dad taught me the basics and the rest I taught myself by having a go,” he says. “I grew up in a household where things were always being made.”

Andrew continued to nurture this love of craft into his adult life, painstakingly shaping his own surf and skateboards, and eventually started making wooden camping tools, inspired by his love for the great outdoors. “Miscellaneous Adventures started quite organically,” he says. “I do a lot of camping and hiking and I found

miscellaneous adventures

myself wanting to make things for my adventures. I started making things like spoons, slingshots and cups for myself, but I ended up making so many that I thought I’d sell them.”

From his barn in West Sussex, where he lives with his wife, Andrew carves each utensil out of locally sourced, sustainable wood. He incorporates illustration into each one-of-a-kind piece, but says his work is a celebration of creativity, not a protest against factory lines.

“I’ve got no real problem with mass-produced goods, as there’s a definite need for them,” he says. “I just love making things and I like the idea that my objects have their own story or special characteristics.”

While Miscellaneous Adventures is still a fresh project, Andrew already has ideas of how he’d like it to grow. “In the future I’d like to run courses so that I can teach people how to make things. I’d like to bring people to the woods, sit around a fire, carve and have a really nice time.” Andy Tweddle

m e e t A canopy of

t h e

m a k e r s

rainbow-coloured polygons hang from the

ceiling of Space Fiftyfour in Shoreditch, London, as the launch night for The Community Kite Project gets underway. Downstairs, kite-making materials like ribbons, string, paper and fabric lie ready for workshops that will take place over a week.

This is the vision of maker/designer Christopher Jarratt – famous for his sustainable furniture company, Sixixis – artist Jo Peel and social designer Tom Tobia. The three creative dudes have come together to create a festival of kite-making and anyone can come and get involved for free. “It’s nice to do something where we can bring all kinds of people together and make something away from computers,” says Jo. “We want to get people using their hands and remind them of how things are made and where they come from.”

But why kites? “It’s just about getting outside, understanding the weather and thinking about things that are bigger than you,” says Jo. “It’s good to walk through the streets looking up for a change.”

Citing the popular kite culture in Afghanistan and India as an inspiration, the trio are working with Sayamimdu Dasgupta from MIT’s Media Lab to deliver a video workshop on Indian fighting kites this coming week.

“Kite flying across the globe is synonymous with freedom, the outdoors, imagination and possibilities,” says Jo, who also helped facilitate special artist collaborations with the likes of Will Barras, Kid Acne and Telegramme. “We hope to bring a slice of this free-spirited pastime to the good people of inner East London.” Shelley Jones

60 HUCK

the community kite project

Living the dream,

sticking it to the man,

walking to the beat of your own drum: the ladies behind sew ‘n sing have it all chalked out – chalked, patterned, scissored and sewn up. Eli and Erika started designing custom surfboard bags almost two years ago, and are now collaborating with shapers and illustrators to glass sew ‘n sing fabric into the surface of boards. Pretty nifty, huh?

But how did surf meet craft in this artistic way? “We’ve always been passionate about surf and fashion,” says Eli, “and when Erika’s boyfriend, Jokin, asked her to make some stylish board bags for all his

sew ‘n sing

different boards, we liked them so much we decided to make more!”

With a lack of distinctive board bags on the market, Eli and Erika saw the opportunity to offer surfers a unique way to customise their shred.

They may not have learnt to sew professionally, but doing things DIY was just second nature to these creative donostiarras, who still call San Sebastian home. “We come from families that sew,” confirms Erika.

“There was always lots of patterned fabrics around the house when we were kids.” Right now, the girls are building on their textile success and working alongside French artist and shaper Benjamin Jeanjean for a collaboration with RVCA. So, is it their self-made lifestyle that fills them with song? “We both sing, but you don’t wanna hear us,” laughs Erika. “We find working with music very inspiring. The Spanish say, ‘Coser y cantar’ (‘Sew and sing’) – it’s a very old expression that means that things are easy when you enjoy them.” Rachel Surgeoner

F a ctories suck. An d perfe c t repli c a s a re bo ri ng. But thanks to the mo d ern - d ay artisan , some o bj e c ts o ut there s ti ll ha ve a uni que ki nk.

Throwing out the

mass-production model and

crafting by hand can open up a myriad of possibilities. Take Holloway, a boutique, Brisbane-based company that makes sunglasses from recycled materials like vintage wine barrels. Holloway was founded in 2011 by Raffaele Persichetti and Martin Gordon Brown, two product designers with a big respect for nature.

But in a world of sweatshops and cheap products, is it tough going against ‘the machine’? “The industry is ten per cent aware of true design ethic and ninety per cent ignorant to keep the machines running,” says Raff. “It’s a mould designed by the business-oriented institutions that teach product design. Marty and I spent a fair degree of our studies seeking external stimuli outside the classroom and I guess we just didn’t get caught up in the race for the next useless product design award.”

holloway

Holloway are committed to hand-wrought craft. “We’ve been in the machine age since the late 1800s,” says Raff. “[But] machines will never be able to produce the finish of handcrafted products or replicate the energy passed from the creator directly into the worked surfaces.”

With frames fashioned out of old electric guitars and a Jaguar timber car dash, the guys are racking up an impressive list of salvaged items. But there’s nothing gimmicky about their resourcefulness. “We are fighters for anyone who is using a localised model, sourcing local materials, local labour and manufacturing to suit the local market first,” says Raff. “It is possible to design for a better future. We’re driven to create essential products that are personal, unique and inspiring.”

Rachel Surgeoner

61

Mohammed Yahya.

62 HUCK

Across Britain, a new generation of outspoken young rappers are interweaving Islam and hip hop to create a lyrical tapestry that’s all their own.

Text Cyrus Shahrad Photography Spencer Murphy

The doors to London’s Central Mosque are open to visitors, but few outsiders cross the threshold to witness Friday prayers. Just around the corner,

the library. Most head out into the stone court, chatting on

tourists queue to have their pictures taken with a costumed

performances – the former including a prolific solo career

Victorian policeman outside the Sherlock Holmes Museum

and collaborative projects like Blind Alphabetz and Native

on Baker Street, oblivious to the muttered greetings of

Sun, and the latter encompassing live slots at major US

Muslims gathering in socked feet beneath the great blue

festivals and clubs across the UK.

phones, embracing friends, catching up on the week’s news and making plans for the week to come. “We don’t drink, so we can’t get together in pubs like most people,” says thirtyone-year-old Mohammed Yahya. “The mosque is a place for social as well as spiritual gathering.”

With his spotless trainers and sleeveless puffa, baseball cap and colourful headphones, Mohammed stands out amid the mostly sober clothing of his peers. It’s a fitting nod to his position as one of the figureheads of a movement of British Muslims channelling their faith in the form of hip hop, and a reminder of his impressive roster of recordings and

dome. As the clock strikes 1pm the first office workers begin

Mohammed wasn’t raised a Muslim. Born in war-torn

filing into local pubs for lunch, unaware of the masses

Mozambique, he spent his early years living as a refugee in a

arranging themselves in rows for the jummah – old beside

crumbling tenement block in the slums of racially segregated

young, waiters beside slick city brokers, foreheads sinking to

Lisbon, a building without electricity in which drug users def-

the carpet while their voices rise in a chorus as old as any of

ecated in elevators and left needles for kids to play doctor with

the capital’s churches.

on stairwells. After repeatedly being passed over for demean-

Their prayers completed, some descend to the basement for a canteen lunch; others slip upstairs to study scripture in

ing jobs on the grounds of his ethnicity, his father finally found work in the UK; Mohammed’s parents separated soon after,

63

and

the

eleven-year-old

followed his dad to London. Feelings of cultural isolation and sadness at the separation were things Mohammed tried to make sense of through poetry – until he discovered hip

“I’d come back from a club in the early hours, and I’d hear the sound of the morning call to prayer, and it occurred to me how beautiful, how balanced everything wa s i n t h i s c u lt u r e . ”

single ‘Change’ was a hit despite its religious overtones (‘Saw a vivid new vision based on balance and peace / Finally adopted one ideology that to me felt complete’), and

hop, at which point his life

the group went on to sup-

changed almost overnight.

port artists as established

“To see rappers like

as Dead Prez, RZA from

Public Enemy, who were

64 HUCK

Luvolution in 2007. Lead

Wu Tang Clan and – more

not only black but celebrating their blackness by wearing

than ten years after Mohammed first felt the power of their

African colours and pendants, that was very affecting and empowering for me,” says Mohammed. We’re chatting over

message – Public Enemy.

Mohammed’s success is testament to how far things have

coffee in the North London flat he shares with his wife, the

developed in the three decades since hip hop first reached

shelves lined with books on Islam, the walls with framed

British shores and the ears of a schoolboy named Rakin Fetu-

quotes from the Qu’ran in calligraphic Arabic script. “Back

ga. Now forty-one, Rakin juggles his career as a rapper with a

then hip hop was about social oppression, and the topics they

day job teaching religious studies in a North London school.

spoke about – poverty, police brutality, racism – those were

Growing up in Ladbroke Grove – the epicentre of the capital’s

things I could relate to. So, when my poetry began to turn into

first hip hop scene – he fell powerfully under the sway of this

lyrics, I found myself heavily influenced by those artists.”

new sound. He formed a breakdance crew, Supreme Rockers,

Mohammed’s was a search for spiritual as well as social

which in time turned into a rap outfit called Cash Crew, and

change. He became a born-again Christian aged thirteen,

from day one he used hip hop as a means of learning more

but left the church after voicing doubts that his pastor wasn’t

about his place in the world.

able to dispel. He then studied several religions before

“The amazing thing about hip hop at that time was that

discovering Islam on a trip to Gambia aged twenty-four, his

it was all about knowledge,” says Rakin, picking at a box of

first reconnection with Africa since his parents’ flight more

grilled chicken in a North London branch of halal fast food

than twenty years earlier.

chain Chicken Cottage. “KRS-One’s tune ‘You Must Learn’

“I went with dreadlocks and an Afrocentric worldview,

sounds strange now, but back then that’s what hip hop was. It

and I came across a very beautiful, very humble Muslim

was about empowering black people, about exploring African

community,” explains Mohammed. “The people were poor

history and the true story of slavery – stuff that wasn’t being

but giving – if you visited a family and they were eating a

taught in schools.”

simple plate of rice and tomato, they would insist on sharing

In keeping with such ideals, Cash Crew would descend

whatever they had with you. Everything worked in perfect

on Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park every Sunday to unleash

harmony: I’d come back from a club in the early hours,

new lyrics on an unsuspecting public. Afterwards they would

and I’d hear the sound of the morning call to prayer, and it

wander between speakers and listen to fragments of speeches

occurred to me how beautiful, how balanced everything was

and sermons, and in doing so they first heard the tenets of

in this culture. I got back to the UK and began reading about

Islam, embarking on a journey that would see all three members

Islam, and once I felt I understood the religion better I cut off

converting in the early nineties. They subsequently started their

my dreadlocks and decided to convert.”

own label, Street Ministry, and began releasing hip hop singles

Mohammed was already signed as a rap artist to the la-

heavily infused with their new beliefs – ‘The Light’, for example,

bel Silent Soundz; on his return he formed Blind Alphabetz

which opens with a Muslim prayer and features Rakin invoking

with Abdul Rahman and began exploring his relationship

the words: ‘There’s no superpower / Only Allah is power / And

with Islam in a series of tracks that grew into the album

all will be revealed in the last hour.’

Rakin Fetuga.

65

Melissa Melodee.

Not that everyone was listening to the lyrics – many were

to save as much as sway listeners – ‘Life After Death’, for

swayed by the beats alone, and tracks like ‘The Provider’ became

example, with its references to the eternal punishment

radio hits thanks to support from deejays like Richie Rich at a

awaiting sinners, and ‘Settle Down’, an ode to the powers

then embryonic Kiss FM. In the Muslim community, however,

of a strong Islamic marriage. Needless to say such messages

Cash Crew’s words were being taken very seriously indeed.

didn’t always sit well with secular listeners, but Rakin rejects

“What we were doing had never been heard of back then,” explains Rakin. “Even America didn’t have openly Muslim

66 HUCK

accusations that he was making religious propaganda, or that hip hop was an unsuitable forum for promoting such ideas.

rappers for another couple of years, and when they did they

“We weren’t setting out to convert non-believers to Islam,”

were members of westernised groups like Nation of Islam.

he says. “Instead we were trying to find those people who

We were orthodox Muslims rapping about orthodox beliefs,

were already questioning conventional wisdom and offering

and we came under a lot of fire from traditionalists saying

them an alternative to a secular way of life – which is nothing

that what we were doing was haram, the devil’s work. It was

more than a belief system in itself, although secularism is

a massive blow.”

promoted in the modern world as the only way of living. To

Rakin eventually took a break from music, only returning

me, that’s propaganda. What we were doing was giving people

on the advice of a Sufi sheikh who insisted that rapping

an alternative: if they wanted to look into it further, then fine.

was his best means of spreading the word of Islam. Rakin

If they weren’t interested, that was fine too. And hip hop is the

formed Mecca2Medina in 1996 with fellow Muslim Ishmael

perfect medium for those messages: it’s always had a spiritual

Lea South, and began recording Islamic hip hop that aimed

undercurrent, it’s always sought to express issues that were

outside the mainstream, to critique conventional ways of

Despite her positive ideas, Melissa has faced criticism

thinking and offer a platform for revolutionary movements.”

from females in the Muslim community, many of whom see

The duo still received criticism from hardliners within the

her as betraying her duty as a Muslim woman. “I often go to

Muslim community – until 9/11, after which they were seen as

the mosque and the sisters will come up and ask if I’m still

diplomats capable of showing another side to a religion being

making music,” explains Melissa. “I’ll say, ‘Yes.’ And they’ll

demonised by the media, and called to perform for young

say, ‘Inshallah you’ll give it up soon, inshallah you’ll pray

people in schools and colleges across the country.

for guidance.’ And I tell them that my mind is made up. I’m

Ten years on, and the playing field is very different. In

spreading a positive message: I’m trying to dispel some of the

the UK a new generation of young Muslim rappers – many of

stereotypes about Islam as a violent religion, when at its heart

whom were children at the time of Mecca2Medina’s post-9/11

Islam promotes a peaceful way of life. There are still problems

schools tour – are repurposing the rugged beats and rapid-fire

with sexism in Islam, but there are also people like Mohammed

vocals of grime music, fusing a love of Allah with an angry

and Rakin trying to move things forward, and I’m helping

disavowal of western capitalism in keeping with the Occupy

encourage that more progressive way of thinking with my

generation they’ve been born into.

music. This is part of my journey as a Muslim, so it’s frustrating

One artist exemplifying that movement is twenty-one-

when I encounter opposition from sisters in the mosque.”

year-old Melissa Melodee, a fiery part-Jamaican, part-Irish

And so it seems that, for all the progress made since Rakin

musician with a background in gospel singing and grime

first encountered opposition to mixing rap with religion, there

emceeing, a weekend job in a club cloakroom and a notebook

is still some way to go. It’s arguably significant that the majority

“hip hop is the perfect medium for those messages: it’s always had a spiritual u n d e r c u r r e n t, i t ’ s a lway s s o u g h t t o e x p r e s s i s s u e s t h a t w e r e o u t s i d e t h e m a i n s t r e a m .”

filled with lyrics on feminism, the struggle for Palestine and

of young Muslim rappers seem to be converts – orthodox Islam

everything in between. Melissa has had flirtations with major

may still be too closed a community to foster aspiring rappers

labels, but refused to be recast in the eyes of record executives.

within its hallowed halls. The doors to the mosque may be open

After converting to Islam three years ago – following a dream

to visitors, but Mohammed Yahya believes that the gatekeepers

from which she says she awoke capable of reciting prayers in

need to do more to encourage cross-pollination with the culture

Arabic – it became all the more important for her to celebrate

that exists outside its walls.

her identity and use her music as an agent for change.

“I’ve been working in clubs for years, and I’m constantly

do with what the media propagates,” explains Mohammed, “but

being told that I should cross over into mainstream dance

I think Muslims are partly to blame for not reaching out, for not

music,” says Melissa, surrounded by framed family photographs

opening up and allowing people to learn more about Islam. A lot

in the East London flat where she’s lived alone since her father

of Muslims, the more religious and self-righteous they become,

passed away from cancer last year. “But there’s no way that kind

the more they want to move away from the outside world and all

of music will deliver the sort of message I’m trying to put across.

that they see as wrong with society. And I don’t think that’s what

I love the fact that hip hop has its roots in the idea of overcoming

Islam is about. The teachings of the Prophet Mohammad were

struggle, and the way it allows you to create such a powerful

about serving the community – not about what you can gain

connection with your audience. I honestly think hip hop can

from society, but what positive input you can give back. And

help educate kids, but they need to be hearing music that isn’t

if people start seeing more positive Muslim role models, then

just about guns and knife crime, about drugs and materialism.”

perhaps Islam as a whole will be seen in a more positive light.”

“There’s still a lot of misrepresentation, and part of that’s to

67

68 HUCK

Body art is going avant-garde, thanks to a new generation of Berlin-based tat t o o i s t s w h o s e e a canvas where others see skin.

Text C i n n a m o n N i p pa r d Photography Daniel Rosenthal

here is a profit-driven logic to our post-industrial age which says that if something can be mass-produced, it probably should be.

Even tattoo culture has fallen prey to the character-sapping machinations of the production line. Thanks to the advent of the tattoo flash – copyrighted stock designs traded between tattooists – thousands of shoulders, arms, legs and backs have no doubt spent years trying to stand out from the crowd by rocking exactly the same ‘one-off ’ piece. Luckily, a new generation of tattoo artists are rescuing skin ink from the clutches of conformity and bringing a unique aesthetic back into the fold.

This new wave is particularly visible in Berlin, where progressive tattoo studios like creative den AKA – which doubles as a gallery space – boast a roster of technicians with diverse artistic backgrounds.

“They don’t come from a tattoo background. They’re artists,” explains AKA co-founder Valentin Plessy. “Madame Chän is a silk-screen printer, Jessica Mach is from graphic design, Sarah B Bolen is from architecture, and all the others studied art in different mediums. It’s through their evolution as an artist that they came to skin as a new medium.”

Valentin’s partner Jon John has dubbed these artists the “new avant-garde”. Yet, at first glance, AKA could be any Berlin gallery.

The front room is an exhibition space where the work of Israeli painter and visual artist Amit Elan is currently on show. But it’s the buzz of tattoo machines that gives the game away.

Off to the side are two smaller rooms where resident artists Sarah B Bolen and Jessica Mach are hard at work. Sarah B came to Berlin from Canada just over a year ago. The daughter of an oil painter, she grew up with a knack for drawing and developed a fascination with tattoos from an early age, getting her first ink at

69

thirteen. Now thirty-two, Sarah has been tattooing for the past ten

I nearly finish the sketch,” says Jessica. “I think, ‘Maybe this

years, during which time she also studied interior architecture and

could be better, or it could be cool to try this.’ So, I scan it in and

was employed by a major design firm in Vancouver and Toronto.

mix it with graphic elements.”

“It’s perfect for me. I do a lot of watercolour and oil painting

A fan of traditional wallpaper patterns and Renaissance art,

but, for whatever reason, skin and me work together best,” she

Jessica has adorned the walls of her studio space with Albrecht

says. “I just understand it after all these years. And I prefer

Dürer’s ‘Young Hare’ – a piece dating from the fifteenth century

tattooing over drawing, for sure.”

– alongside her colourful paintings and sketches. “I love the

An avid antique collector, Sarah has adorned her studio with

mixture,” says Jessica, who combines photorealism and graphic

quirky artefacts, old tattoo sketches and vintage picture frames.

patterns into her illustrations. “I like trying to create harmony

This juxtaposition of the beautiful and kitsch comes through in

by making things fit together, even if they’re not the same style.”

her stylised designs, which she says take influence from Czech Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha’s elaborate drawings. “He has this thin-line-thick-line kind of idea,” explains Sarah. “It has a real graphic sense to it but then it’s so smooth and beautiful and realistic, too. He mastered these organic, beautiful, flowing forms with intense detail.”

One of Sarah’s tattoo sleeve designs features a prim, Victorianera headless family with smoke coming out of their necks. “It’s one of my favourite pieces because it’s this perfect mixture of super traditional, old-school tattooing, like all those old-school roses, which I love,” she explains. “And it’s also kind of like an old family photograph from the 1800s, only without heads.”

Jessica’s work draws inspiration from nature, fairytales, wallpaper and street art, but it’s her interest in ornithology that’s afforded her the nickname, ‘The Bird-Lady’. “I have a big, big book with all the birds of the world in it and I use it to choose a species that most suits the customer,” she explains.

And it’s not just AKA residents that are leading the charge.

German artist Peter Aurisch began tattooing friends in his kitchen three years ago, and now works at the Signs and Wonders tattoo studio in Friedrichshain, Berlin.

Despite having no formal artistic training, Peter developed his own unique style and cites Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele as a big inspiration. Schiele’s figurative works – all bold line work and twisted human forms – are known for their intensity, and Peter’s art delivers a similar punch. Thing is, on paper they don’t look much like tattoos. “I’m just using my drawing skills for tattooing, and that’s why it looks really different,” explains Peter, pointing to a piece that looks like it’s been sketched directly onto the skin, and then accented with splashes of ink or watercolour brushwork.

These experimental turns have left artists like Peter open to criticism from the tattoo old guard. One staid technician even told Peter that what he is doing “is not a tattoo”. Yet the work and the waiting lists for these artists speak for themselves. “Real Sarah B Bolen.

tattooists push and push and push the limits, just like any other art form,” says Sarah, “whether it’s architecture or painting or whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s about continual progression

In the next room, German artist Jessica Mach is working on

and evolution.”

a beautifully realistic Long-tailed Widowbird. After becoming

Valentin Plessy says it’s no surprise that a hybrid space

disillusioned with the world of advertising, Jessica was looking

like AKA, and the creativity it supports, has taken root in this

for another profession to channel her creativity, and began

particular city. For him, “Berlin is a dynamic, artsy El Dorado”.

tattooing three and a half years ago.

And it’s in this creative melting pot that the “new avant-garde”

Like Sarah, Jessica spends a lot of time drawing, often

of ink-on-skin artisans have found their niche

infusing graphic design techniques and experimenting with composition on the computer. “Sometimes I get new ideas when

70 HUCK

akaberlin.com

See this thing right here.

Pretty nice, right? But not as nice as it will look when it’s hanging on your wall. We’ve got two of these beautiful flowers, lovingly handmade

by Thomas Campbell in his Bonny Doon studio, to give away. To be in with a chance of winning one, send a postcard* from your hometown to: AT T : U m m m … | T C O L o n d o n | 7 1 A L e o n a r d S t r e e t | L o n d o n | E C 2 A 4 Q S *All bad and boring postcards will be accepted. Especially those that feature cats. And don’t forget to include your email address, postal address and phone number on the back.

New book on Jack O’Neill’s entrepreneurial path explores the origins of the hand-sewn suit.

stylish kick-outs not only demonstrated surfing prowess and the stylish aesthetic of the times, but were techniques a surfer could use to stay relatively warm and dry.

Then World War II came and changed all that. That twisted silver lining transformed a million things – in surfing it helped speed up the introduction of fibreglass technology and, of course, the wetsuit, which up until that point was still a seedling of an idea yet to manifest in Jack O’Neill’s San Francisco surf shop.

Hugh Bradner, a physicist working at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1940s is widely credited with coming up with the concept central to the success of the wetsuit: namely that it didn’t have to be watertight to keep the wearer warm. Bradner’s research was commissioned by the US Navy who were keen to find a way to keep military divers in the water longer and to keep them fighting fit and flexible.

Bradner realised that by using various types of rubber, PVC and other materials, a suit could achieve thermal insulation from the many tiny bubbles of air trapped in its material. Water could saturate the suit and the bubbles of water would heat up between the swimmer’s skin and the suit’s exterior surface.

When the Navy officially declassified the PVC insulating technology for their divers’ suits in 1951 it led to a flood of experimentation. Jack in particular found himself picking up frogman suits in surplus stores in the pursuit of a warmer surf. “[I started] experimenting with ways to keep warm. One his year, Jack O’Neill and his crew are celebrating sixty years

guy told me that after the five guys on the beach got outfitted,

in the game. And whichever consumer choice you make

I would be out of business,” he says.

when planning your rubber fetish for any given surf season,

Jack quickly realised that a more flexible version of the

you owe a debt of gratitude to the man. Drew Kampion’s

Navy wetsuit would mean more water time for the wearer.

entertaining tome on the life and times of the Navy pilot-

But the real breakthrough came when he discovered an

turned-surf entrepreneur helps explain why.

interesting, rubber-like industrial substance: neoprene. So,

Jack O’Neill: It’s Always Summer on the Inside is a gigantic

he made a bulk order and started experimenting, stitching

archive of first-person narratives and old family-album finds

together long johns, vests, beaver-tail jackets and custom-

that, together, retrace one of surfing’s most transformative

made full-body suits.

leaps. You see, without Jack’s innovative vision – which has

“In the beginning, the neoprene came with two smooth

sustained in a triumphal arc these last six decades – the colder

sides, so getting them on was difficult,” remembers Jack.

watery regions of the world might never have been opened up

“[We would] put talcum powder on ’em. One guy put flour on

for surfing’s elemental creed.

and it stuck. […] Basically, you had to put the wetsuit inside

“We had no protection from the cold – no wetsuits or

out and peel it on, starting from the ankles. But most people

anything, and I never got much out of those wool sweaters,”

who wanted a full suit just got a long john and wore that

remembers Jack of his early surfing days at Kelly’s Cove, San

under a beaver-tail jacket. Those were good sellers. People

Francisco, in the 1950s. “We used to run down the beach to

had never been that warm in the ocean.”

get warm before swimming out.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Thanks to Jack’s pioneering

In the pre-war years surfing in cold water couldn’t have

post-war invention, surfers have been able to tackle even the

been a barrel of laughs. Hardy brethren would huddle around

most frigid of breaks in the four corners of the globe, and stay

a fire, sipping on hits of rum and whisky while gingerly eyeing

out in the water for as long as they like.

up the freezing winter sets, picking the moment with a little

Bravo to that

Dutch courage to pull on their woollen jerseys and thermal pants and run to the shore, knee-paddling out for a quick,

Jack O’Neill: It’s Always Summer on the Inside, by Drew Kampion, is

breathtaking bump and grind. Duck-dives and wipe-outs –

published by Chronicle Books.

anything that kept a body submerged – were to be avoided at all costs. Elegant, dry-haired paddle-outs and nonchalant,

chroniclebooks.com

73

A Prophet

Craig Stecyk is a tall, gangly man of cartoonish proportions. He speaks

Stecyk III boasts bylines aplenty. He co-founded Zephyr Surfboards

in dense prose, as though he’s just memorised an entire countercul-

and Skateboards, co-wrote Dogtown and Z-Boys, and has participated

tural encyclopaedia and is now regurgitating its cryptic text, line for

in over 300 international art shows. But everything to this point comes

line, without a hitch. It’s the voice of a historian. Having spent the

naturally, he says.

best part of four decades documenting the ebb and flow of Californian

“You’re drawing lines when you’re skating,” says Stecyk. “You’re

skate history – as a writer, photographer, filmmaker and artist – C.R.

applying a certain cognitive structure to skating a five-block stretch.

74 HUCK

C.R. Stecyk III has one eye on the future.

And he’s ready for the day the lights go out.

Text Kevin Duffell Photography Lou Mora

You’re constantly redefining what

understand. Hurley has built this theatre just to endow a principle or an

your trajectory will be, redefining

experiment. And I suppose that they benefit as a brand because they get

your goals, and figuring it out all

to see what people are doing. But I wouldn’t see any conflict in that.”

the way through. You’re making conscious

decisions,

and

That ‘experiment’ – a seven-minute opus of minimal plot line and

those

maximum experimentalism – is as convoluted as Stecyk’s tongue. With

are aesthetic decisions. So, I think

a mission statement to ‘investigate artisan garage culture’ and ‘offer

the rest of the art world comes

insights into an assortment of individuals who incorporate traditional

naturally to [skateboarders].”

do-it-yourself garaged methodology into differing pursuits’, FIN sees

As one of skateboarding’s original documentarians, Stecyk helped

Stecyk embarking on vague misadventures with some motorcycle-fixing, board-shaping friends. It’s a ‘day in the life’ of sorts.

chronicle its beginnings, captur-

Tonight, draped in a loose, nondescript jacket topped off with a

ing the antics of pioneers like Stacy

plain baseball cap, the sixty-one-year-old filmmaker looks more like an

Peralta, Tony Alva and Jay Adams

anonymous middle-aged dad stumbling about the crowd, than an icon

in photos and words – known as the

tied to the myth of Dogtown. But that’s just the way he likes it. “You’ve

‘Dogtown Articles’ – for Skateboard-

gotta keep going forward, because it’s impossible to go backwards,” says

er magazine in the mid-to-late 1970s.

Stecyk, about the myriad forms his work has taken since those early skate

His gonzo journalistic style, brutally

days – from commercial collaborations with Roland Sands motorcycles,

honest yet wildly aggressive in spirit

to directing photography on a video documenting MoCA’s recent Art In

and tone, pushed skateboarding

The Streets show. “Appreciating the past and understanding what came

away from its all-American, beach-

up until this point is extremely important. You can learn how things

front roots into a counterculture

didn’t work before – you can incorporate those, draft and go forward. But

that embraced rebellion and danger

trying to replicate the past would be folly. You’re doomed to live in the

– a lifestyle suited to misfits and fuckups. While his contemporaries opted

future, whether you like it or not.”

Growing up in Santa Monica in the 1950s, Stecyk’s skateboarding

for corny Endless Summer beach

initiation set the tone for things to come. “I started skateboarding in

scenes, Stecyk’s board graphics – all

probably 1957-58,” he recalls. “The front of my two-by-four fruit box

skulls and bones and gothic crosses

wooden crate scooter came off, and there I was stuck in that eureka

– cemented an outlaw aesthetic that

moment, going downhill.” Although he makes it clear that he doesn’t

still resonates today. In fact, a surf-

consider anything he does ‘art’, Stecyk says he approaches all his

board hand-shaped and painted by

projects with that same spontaneity – whether he’s creating surfboard

Stecyk himself even resides in the

graphics for Joel Tudor, silk-screening posters for Hurley, or working

Smithsonian’s permanent archive.

in film. “I’m excited by stuff where I have no idea how it’s going to turn

It’s a balmy February eve and we’re

chatting

in

a

out,” he explains. “So, making this film was interesting because I had

peripheral

no idea what the content was, or who the next person involved would

building at Hurley’s headquarters

be. Not knowing where it’s going to go and how it’s going to turn out

in Costa Mesa, California, before

is the interesting part… The best time of my day is when I wake up in

the global premiere of Stecyk’s new

the morning and I don’t know where I am. I’m fascinated, like, ‘Wow,

short film, FIN. The makeshift

what’s this?’ And then you go forward from there.”

theatre is adorned with red plastic

Kustom Kulture hot-rodder Von Dutch, surfboard shaper Tyler

milk crates, some of which hang

Hatzikian and Social Distortion’s energetic frontman Mike Ness all

from the ceiling re-purposed as

pop up in FIN to show us around their self-made worlds, which revolve

chandeliers, with the rest flipped

largely around the home garage. Over the years, the garage has served as

upside down to provide seating of

an improvised studio for creative experimentation. Whether it’s building

questionable comfort. It seems only

custom choppers, crafting punk rock albums, shaping boards, or screen-

fitting that a man who helped build

printing tees, many of America’s most revered art forms can be traced

the West Coast DIY aesthetic will

back to that carbon monoxide-infested space. And while the garage

see his project premiere in a cobbled-together space.

But what does he make of hosting a premiere at a brand’s HQ –

artisans featured in his film come from diverse disciplines, Stecyk sees a commonality in their roots.

presumably the unholy belly of the beast for do-it-alone purists, and

“It’s fun to have to make spontaneous decisions that matter,” he says.

one that will no doubt profit from his sweat? “I’ve never felt particularly

“To a certain extent it’s motivational. Especially if you’ve got a steep

compromised or conflicted,” Stecyk says. “People will offer to support or

learning curve [ahead of you], it inspires you to innovate if there are real

underwrite something like this – how they don’t charge admission, I don’t

consequences involved. Which is one of the reasons why surfing or

75

skateboarding or riding motorcycles or going fast in vehicles – responsibly – is so inspiring. Take the biggest hill in your town: you try to draw a good line on it and you get schooled real quick if you don’t have a good exit strategy. The bottom line is, you can screw yourself up real bad. But it also teaches you to take care of other people, because you have a certain responsibility. You can choose to jump off a cliff, but make sure there’s nobody at the bottom because you might take somebody out through your lack of planning.”

Suddenly

Stecyk’s

phone

rings. He pulls it out, silences it, and then tucks it back into the pocket of his baggy blue jeans. I can’t help but wonder how he engages with technology, especially as Editor-At-Large of Juxtapoz, a leading art magazine championing self-taught talent. Has technology shifted the rules of DIY, by changing how artists get their work out into the world?

“I think the best thing about living now is that the media’s completely controlled by the individual,” he says. “Any person with a phone can make a movie and you can edit it on a tabletop, and you can download it and link to it and several million people can see it in twenty-four hours’ time. This is the only time in history that’s been possible. It used to be the technologically elite who had access to it, but now everybody has an equal playing field. And we all profit because we can participate in these people’s endeavours. Twenty years ago, ten years ago, even twenty months ago, we wouldn’t have known that these guys even existed or were doing that.”

He pauses and then adds: “I like watching that sort of trickle-down effect of technology – seeing all the people who are able to make some sort of amazing post-media, post-network statement. [There are] a lot of unaligned people making great content right now, and that’s the artwork of the moment. It’s not about rethinking Renaissance painting, although that’s an aspect of it. And it’s not about making shiny, large bobbles to sit outside public buildings.”

And what about the future? In 2012, the prophetic year of the Mayan apocalypse, it feels apt to ask: is our obsession with technology destroying our capacity to make real-world stuff? More importantly, will tomorrow’s kids still turn old fruit boxes into something they can skate? “When the big power failure comes we’ll get to adapt and improvise,” Stecyk says cheerfully, as if he’s waiting for the day the lights go out. “That will probably be the peak of western civilisation. I think all the innovation that comes out of re-contextualising, reworking and reimagining [without resources we take for granted] will be the apex of whatever civilisation it is, whether it’s ‘western’ or otherwise.”

And with that Stecyk diligently shakes my hand, before hurriedly shuffling towards the theatre’s backroom. You get the distinct impression that he’s already thinking about what comes next. “Ideally you’re always evolving,” he says before he leaves. “If you’re lucky enough to be around talented people, they raise the bar constantly.

That forces you to progress and go forward. Stewing in your own juices would be a particular kind of hell.”

76 HUCK

“ Tr y i n g t o replicate the past would be f o l l y. Yo u ’ r e d o omed t o l i ve in the future, whether you l i k e i t o r n o t .”

78 HUCK

Lawyer-turnedactivist Polly Higgins has dedicated her life to the most vulnerable client: planet earth.

Text O l ly Z a n n e t i P h o t o g r a ph y Sam Christmas

Of course, it’s not like the environment

it’s always been a small campaign – Polly has

isn’t already protected by law. But Polly sees

only just hired an assistant after seven years

flaws in the existing system, which is based on

– but she has a knack for getting her voice

retrospective permits and fines. She explains:

heard. In 2008, she presented her proposal for

“It’s an end-of-pipe solution; you’re shoring

a Universal Declaration of Planetary Rights

up the mess after it has happened, rather

to the UN Climate Conference.

than going upstream and turning off the tap

And yet, Polly casually refers to her

before it happens.” And that’s assuming that

dealings with the UN in a way others would

offenders get prosecuted at all, which very

mention calling their mum. But surely gaining

often they don’t.

an audience in an institution like that is no

Her proposal is different. For one, it’s

mean feat? “As a lawyer, I can put in a legal

based on a cultural shift, which she believes

expert’s written submission,” explains Polly.

we can only arrive at through law: “We’ve

“I discovered that in the small print. And I

created rules that put profit without cons-

thought, ‘Okay, that’s precisely what I’ll do.’”

equence first. And as much as people may

Though Polly is the legal brain driving

well care, there’s not much you can do if

the campaign, she doesn’t like to see herself

it’s the law that you maximise your profits

as its only face. “We see this as decentralised

over everything else.” As well as moving

campaigning, where we’re spreading the

‘upstream’ and creating laws designed to

message out, pollinating like bees and asking

prevent environmentally unfriendly acts,

others to run with it in whatever way they

Polly’s ecocide legislation would hold people,

want to,” she energetically explains. “We’re

rather than companies, accountable. She

not dictating terms; it’s very much about

explains: “You impose a level of what’s

decentralising the message, passing it out

known in international law as superiority

using the power of networks.”

responsibility on those who are in a position

And yet, when she goes to the UN Earth

of command and control.” In short, if a

Summit in Rio this summer, Polly will have a

company’s actions result in ecocide, the

huge job on her hands. For ecocide to become

was in the Court of Appeal, dealing with a

decision-maker takes the rap. “Surprisingly,

a criminal act, an amendment to the 2002

case. I looked out the window and thought,

many decisions in this world are made by few

Rome Statute is needed, which will require

‘What am I doing here?’” says Polly Higgins,

people, yet they determine the outcome for

agreement from two thirds of 139 signatories.

surrounded by the books and artefacts that fill

the rest of civilisation,” she adds.

Although her proposal makes perfect sense,

her Islington flat. “There was so much going

Polly’s

environmental

consciousness

it’s still a pretty hard concept to grasp –

wrong out there, it seemed to me that what the

traces back to her roots. Born in 1968,

especially for politicians unwilling to take

earth was in need of was a good lawyer.”

she grew up in rural Stirlingshire, on the

risks. Luckily, Polly’s optimism is a force to be

With that, Polly quit her job as a corporate

borders of the Scottish Highlands. Having

reckoned with.

barrister and fled London for Scotland to think

a meteorologist father meant a feel for the

“The way I look at it, we are at a point of

things through. She returned a few weeks later,

environment was practically in her blood.

emergency,” she states. “Now the interesting

decision made: she was ready to become the

In her twenties, she became fascinated by

thing with the word ‘emergency’ is that

earth’s first lawyer. Today, after nearly a decade

Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an Austrian

emergency means ‘a state of emergence’, so

of intense campaigning, news for her client

artist, architect and environmental activist

it’s not necessarily something to fear, but it’s

is looking good. This June, Polly will travel to

who became the subject of her master’s thesis.

a moment in time when we can actually turn

the UN Earth Summit in Rio and put pressure

Yet she went on to train as a lawyer, and for

things around and something new can come

on the world’s leaders to make ecocide the fifth

years corporate law dominated her time. “My

into being. And when you look at it, [all we

crime against peace – alongside Genocide and

mother, who’s an artist, thought I’d sold my

need is the backing of] ninety-three people in

Crimes Against Humanity – policed by the

soul to the conventional world,” she explains.

the world, that’s it. They happen to be heads

International Criminal Court and defined as

“It’s funny. The day I told her that I was

of state, but they’re just people. They hold the

‘the extensive damage to, or loss of ecosystems,

leaving courtroom work to take on another

balance of what happens to our planet in their

of a given territory’.

type of client – the earth – she loved it.”

hands. They hold the outcome for people and

But why does the earth need a lawyer? “You

Once she’d identified the problems with

planet, those ninety-three people. That’s

just need to look at the red list of endangered

existing environmental law and worked out an

nothing. We can make that happen, I see no

and lost species and the increase of greenhouse

alternative, her next step was to get others on

reason why not.”

gases to see that we’re doing something wrong,”

board. Drawing on the success of the human

says Polly. “Clearly, existing environmental law

rights agenda, she began calling for the earth

pollyhiggins.com

is not fit for purpose.”

to be afforded similar rights. Numbers-wise,

eradicatingecocide.com

79

The Photocopy Club is bringing photography down from its pedestal and creating something tangible anyone can keep.

matthew warder

righton-based photographer Matt Martin is in love with the art of stills. As well as shooting pics and publishing ’zines, he spends a lot of time supporting his contemporaries through curated blog WEARELUCKY. His latest project, The Photocopy Club, is a monthly open-submission exhibition that aims to make fine art photography accessible to all.

matter back in the hands of the public”, The

Photographers from all over the world can

Photocopy Club is constantly reaching out

photocopy their work and send it back to

to shooters across the globe and recently

Matt, signed and dated, for a group show

installed post-boxes in art colleges around

where visitors can buy the artwork straight

London where people can drop in their work

off the walls, for just a couple of quid. “I

to be collected for a show. “Basically we want

wanted to set up a platform for young

the show to be like a giant ’zine that everyone

contemporary photographers to show their

can take a page from,” says Matt. “We’ve had

work without the problem of expensive print

work from all over – Australia, Canada, Japan,

costs and the difficulty of getting work into a

Italy, Spain and France to name a few. I can’t

gallery,” says Matt.

believe it’s stretched so far. I got e-mails from

With

an

overarching

desire

to

“get

kids in Brazil asking if I could help them do

photography off the internet and get printed

a Photocopy Club exhibition there. It’s crazy, but people like the idea, so it’s just taken off.”

So, what do photographers make of this affordable art world? HUCK invited Matt to curate the following images, so that you could have something to cut out and keep.

82 HUCK

pharo Mars

ASIA Werbel, 39 Stratford Upon Avon, UK “Over the years the way people encounter photography has changed greatly. It used to be limited to books, galleries or in the living room sharing an album. Now, it's everywhere. At first it would seem that the photograph as cheap commodity would destroy photography as art. But that hasn't happened. In fact, some argue that people now feel more connected to photography, more able to relate... meaning they understand and have a deeper appreciation for truly great works.�

george beattie

83

Dimitri Karakostas, 24 Toronto, Canada “Xerox exhibits just make sense, even if it’s a strictly ‘by photographers and for photographers’ mandate. I think of it like being able to experience the internet in real life. I’d much rather be out shooting and spending cash on gear than toiling over dust on prints for week.”

ben armson

asia werbel

pharo mars

Paul Vickery, 51 London, UK “So much of what you do as a photographer is about working on your own. It’s really inspiring to have your work shown alongside other like-minded people. Having unlimited access to imagery on the internet is something we’ve all got used to, and take for granted, and yet owning a piece of art or a photographic image is still financially out of a lot of people’s reach. Being able to see work up close and actually owning it for next to nothing is a really neat idea.”

Indonesia’s love a f f a i r w i t h Ve s p a scooters has taken a punk-inspired turn, thanks to a renegade faction of extreme DIYers.

Text & photography Ed Wray

86 HUCK

The classic Vespa scooter is a beloved and

The Vespa Ekstrim culture bears the

well-recognised brand in Indonesia’s motoring

hallmarks of punk, sharing its commitment to

history. Some of the first models seen on the

freedom – both of thought and self-expression

streets of the capital, Jakarta, were given by

– as well as a sense of solidarity among

the Indonesian government to peacekeeping

outsiders. The similarity ends there, though;

troops returning from duty in Congo in the

most Vespa Ekstrimists are happy to live a

1960s, and it was one of the first countries

more conventional lifestyle, providing for

outside of Europe to manufacture the brand.

their families and working regular jobs, and

Today, Vespa clubs have sprung up across

choose to express their uniqueness via their

Indonesia,

scooters alone.

with

thousands

of

members

devoting their time and skills to lovingly

But why rehash a cute little Vespa and

restoring old models to their classic form. Then

not some other two-wheeler? For one thing,

there are the ‘Vespa Ekstrimists’ – a renegade

cost is a major factor. Most of the Ekstrimists

faction of clubs that champion mutant forms.

don’t have a lot of income, so the fact that old,

Members of Indonesia’s Vespa Ekstrim

discarded Vespas can be bought for 300,000-

community bend, saw and weld old Vespas

500,000 Rupiah ($33-55, £21-35) makes them

into unique forms never dreamt of by Piaggio.

more appealing than expensive Japanese

Working with a mix of humour, artistry and

bikes. The scooters’ hardy mechanics are also

ingenuity,

cookie-cutter

a factor: everyone in the community talks

classics into modified originals that express the

lovingly of the Vespa’s unfaltering engine.

creator’s attitude and style. Indonesia’s more

But the clearest driving force among all Vespa

strait-laced Vespa societies call these bikes

Ekstrimists is the thirst to be different – the

Vespa Gembel (‘Junk Vespas’), but the builders

desire to stand out from all those other Vespas

prefer to simply call their creations ‘extreme’.

on the road.

they

transform

EKA Eka, twenty-four, works as a mechanic in a motorcycle garage. He designed and built his Vespa from an old model and spare parts last year. He originally had standard handlebars, but added the stang monyet (monkey bars) “just for variation”. Being a mechanic, he especially loves the Vespa engine. He recently took a ride to Bandung, a 150km journey mostly uphill.

“But the Vespa engine is so lively, I had no trouble getting there,” he notes. “Besides, it’s the only motorcycle I can afford and transforming it makes it a lot more fun.”

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JOJO Jojo, twenty-six, who sells phone accessories from his home, met his wife through Vespa Ekstrim. He loves the solidarity among the close-knit community. Once, on a ride to the eastern part of Java Island, he got a flat tyre. Every one of the other riders stopped to help, but no one had a pump, so they all pitched in to find a solution, eventually filling his tyre with grass from a field. When they got to the nearest petrol station, “the garage attendants couldn’t stop laughing”.

Unsurprisingly, Jojo’s motto is: “One Vespa; a million brothers.”

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HENDRIK Hendrik, twenty-two, poses with his thatchroofed Vespa in South Tangerang in Jakarta.

He rode from his home in Bogor (about sixty kilometres from Jakarta) to hang out with his Vespa Ekstrim buddies. After finishing school in 2008, Hendrik is still jobless. He says the bamboo thatch didn’t require a lot of money and he likes the cosy feel it gives to his scooter: “The roof really makes it comfortable and cooler on hot days, and I can always take an extra passenger with me. People always look at us if we are on the road, and that is super cool.”

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SYAFRIZAL Syafrizal, twenty and a welder, loves the open road and regularly takes his Vespa on tour with other Ekstrim owners, even though it often brings encounters with police.

“Sometimes they will cover their noses while making an inspection, and if they don’t like us they will give us punishments like making us walk backwards with our Vespas, or sing a song they like, or do push-ups,” he says.

“I’m used to it, though. It’s very common, but it’s still too bad. It just shows that most people look at us with just one eye, as if we are trash.”

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From the dust-covered workshops of New England, two homegrown board companies are shaping an antidote to our plastic-coated world.

Text Jon coen

t’s funny. We all remember where we were on December 5, 2005 (aka ‘Blank Monday’) when Grubby Clark closed his Laguna Niguel foam factory for the last time. It was a wake-up call. The seventy-two-year-old had supplied the polyurethane foam for a good eighty per cent of the world’s surfboards. But no amount of monopolistic market share could combat the fact that volatile organic compounds were a major catalyst in the decision to shut shop. And rightfully so – because, as soon as the dust settled around old Grubby, we were all reminded that foam and fibreglass are both toxic materials.

For the majority of eco-minded boardriders, it was a reminder that our primary tool is petroleum-based – as are our wetsuits, booties, snowboards, bindings and goggles. If it weren’t for the seven plies of maple we kick around the street, we’d be total assholes. Well, hypocrites at least.

Almost every piece of gear we use to access nature is a detriment to it. And despite our desire to ‘carve a different path’, we sure do resemble the society we aimed to set ourselves apart from – worshipping idols employed to divert our attention away from the fact that most brands, despite the pretty logos, are shifting the same units. It stands to reason that in the Northeast region of the US – the geographical and metaphorical opposite of Southern California where ninetynine per cent of the industry is based – there should exist a pair of companies, PowderJet Snowboards and Grain Surfboards, that are living the freethinking mantra, not just marketing it.

“What we do is give people a choice,” says Brad Anderson, the fifty-one-year old co-owner of Grain Surfboards, whose life resume includes ship captain, land conservation director and wood worker. “If you can live by the values that you feel strongly about and make those present in your product, then it gives all those other surfers out there, who may be inclined that way, a choice to adhere to those values – to get a surfboard that doesn’t make them feel like they’re betraying their beliefs.”

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Brad Anderson, Grain Surfboards, Maine.

N I C K L aV e c c h i a

b l a n k

b e t t e r

a

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NI CK L aV e c c h i a

The stories of Grain Surfboards and PowderJet Snowboards – based in Maine and Vermont, respectively – aren’t just intertwined with New England’s heritage of hand-wrought craft, but also with each other.

Grain founder Mike LaVecchia and PowderJet’s Jesse Loomis met in the early 1990s and both wound up working at Burton’s Burlington HQ. Although it wasn’t until 2005 that the idea of the wooden surfboard took root in Mike’s mind, the next decade played out as an apprenticeship of sorts.

Working right on Lake Champlain, Mike bought and restored a wooden boat, then left Burton in 1995 to spend two months sailing a thirty-eight-foot sailboat to the Florida Keys.

He earned his captain’s license, launched a sailing charter operation and, by 2001, was hired by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum to build a replica of an eighty-eight-foot,

rack. “The first time I called him was out of the blue I had to

1862-class Canal schooner. Jesse, meanwhile, discovered he

look up his name in the white pages. There was no ‘Grain’ yet –

wasn’t a shabby lensman and moved to California to take

he was still in the basement,” recalls Brad. “He was working in

up a photography position at Transworld Snowboarding. But

a cave – no light, a few crappy tools, a couple of boards, aborted

by 1998, he was back on the East Coast honing a new skill.

frame tests, scraps and shit everywhere, all covered with

“My wife and I bought a house in Burlington, and I started

dust. It was like he was a cave-dwelling surf terrorist secretly

learning some basic carpentry in order to fix it up. When we

preparing an attack on an infidel industry who’d gotten away

got preggers in 2000, we decided to move out to the country

with building an evil empire of toxic wave-toys for too long.”

to raise feral children, and I became a full-time carpenter,” he recalls.

By 2006, Brad was a co-owner and a few months later they moved to their current location, a farm just a few miles

In 2005, Mike moved to Maine and built his first wooden

from York Beach, on the southern coast of Maine. Soon they

surfboard. Soon after, spurred by his interest in conservation

were shaping boards, selling ‘Homegrown’ kits to hands-

and craft, Brad Anderson stopped by to check things out.

on surfers and hosting weeklong classes at their shop, all

Like Mike, he’d started surfing later in life and neither was

the while cultivating a worldwide following of surfers and

enamoured with the idea of buying a board straight off the

hobbyists eager to be part of a DIY community.

“There’s just constant motion and always a good feeling at Grain,” explains Jesse, who shaped the odd surf craft from

“It was like he was a cavedwelling surf terrorist secretly preparing an attack o n an i n f i d e l i n d us t r y w ho ’ d gotten away with building an evil empire of toxic w a v e - t o y s f o r t o o l o n g .”

his mountain workshop for Grain. “I thought they had such a great idea. It was eco-sensitive and different from the normal surfboard. It took about two years to say, ‘What the hell? Why don’t I just do this with snowboards?’ It makes so much more sense for me, living in Vermont.”

By January 2009, Jesse was ready to snow-test his first board on the wooded hillside near his home. “I followed the old logging road up into the trees, then stopped for a minute to catch my breath. I was pretty nervous that the board was going to feel wonky, awkward or just wrong. Before I could spend too much time thinking about it, I strapped in, pointed the nose down the logging road and straight-lined it… I couldn't believe it rode exactly the way I’d hoped it would. From that point on it was just laughter – a solitary fool on the hill just laughing.”

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Sh e m Ro os e

Grain’s testing ground is just as quaint. Long Sands, the jewel of Maine’s York Beach, is a two-mile sandy nook on a coastline known for rocky crannies that attracts droves of Massachusetts tourists (affectionately referred to by locals as ‘Massholes’) who battle for blanket space all summer long. Around every corner are lobster rolls, hand-knitted scarves, organic eggs and wood-roasted coffee. Maine does have its secret spots – some guarded by shotgun-toting lobsterman, others just by the stories of such.

Long Sands isn’t one of them, but there is still plenty of room to find a peak.

Today, it’s an unseasonably warm February evening, so we head out to snag waves on wood. Scoring anything in the Northeast – frozen or fluid lines – is like wooing a temperamental lover. The mountains aren’t as dramatic as

Jesse Loomis, PowderJet Snowboards, Vermont.

the west. Snowfall is erratic. Aside from autumn hurricanes, the surf usually depends on short windswell from tempests

and microbrews, folks wander around the workshop to admire

moving off the East Coast. And while winter offers intimate

the boards, including a few that the Vans art department flew

moments of deep passion, it can too often be a long, trying

out from LA to make a week earlier.

relationship that ends in bitter death. But everything about

Mike and Jesse are both bearded and clad in flannels,

New England lends itself to tradition and old-world craft.

woolies and work pants – a functional uniform for the

This is the first place colonists settled in North America, and

New England craftsman, whether building cabinets or

while the architecture may seem pubescent to Europeans, it

snowboards. “I’m always discovering things that are

exudes history by New World standards.

incredible to me from the barns of boat builders tucked

“You go into one antique store in an old barn and you’re

away in little pockets,” says Mike. “There’s one down the

melting from the sense of craftsmanship,” says Brad. “The

road who’s been building boats for thirty-five years. And he

fact that someone built that, with all that joinery, just to put

learned from a guy who built boats for thirty-five years before

his cows in. It’s inspiring.”

him. He’s using tools that are 100 years old, passed on.”

There’s a small get-together at the Grain shop later that

“Many of our personal hand tools are these old antiques

night in aid of Mike’s sister-in-law’s birthday, and Jesse has

that we found in barns and cobbled together to keep alive,”

driven out to the coast to join in. Over homemade cupcakes

Brad interjects. “We’re all inheritors of that aspect of quality craftsmanship and care. Everywhere you look here, you just

S he m R o o s e

feel it.”

It’s a refrain uttered repeatedly. One customer even describes his Grain as having “the warmth of a living being”.

And, as odd as that may sound, there may well be some truth in it. Alongside their commitment to life-cycle analysis – where they “interrupt the waste stream” to repurpose someone else’s trash – Grain are determined to pioneer a greener business model. Wood shavings are carefully collected and used as bedding for the animals on the farm. No employee of Grain commutes more than twenty minutes from the factory.

Hand planes are finished with whey - a by-product of Vermont cheese as an alternative to polyurethane. And lumber off-cuts become ‘Sea Sleds’ or skateboards.

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They recently inked a deal with Fyne Boatworks, who will distribute Homegrown kits in the UK made of Douglas fir, ash, Larch and spruce from managed woodlands in England.

But things, they admit, are far from perfect. Even after carcinogenic foam has been cut out of the surfboard equation,

Islands Surfboards, and energy drink companies have bigger

the wood still has to be wrapped in something, and fibreglass

media budgets than the media?

is still the only option. They may have found an epoxy for their

“It’s not much of a revolution as far as the industry is

glassing process that emits zero volatile organic compounds,

concerned. We don’t have any interest in attacking them or

and a type of bioresin that’s thirty-five per cent organic, but

what they do – we're only interested in offering choices that

in the spirit of transparency, the Grain website discloses each

weren't really there before,” says Brad.

and every sticking point, in the hope that consumers will push them to up their game.

And people, it seems, are making the most of this freedom of choice. Board-riding luminaries, like Portland snow anarchist Scotty Wittlake, are proponents of both companies.

Ocean activist Dave Rastovich enjoyed his 5'10" Grain ‘Waka’ so much that he built a 6'10" ‘Radicle’ pintail on the lawn of

“Human history is rife with examples of people thinkin g a r e s o ur c e w o ul d never r un o ut an d t i m e has always proved that to be a n e r r o r i n j u d g m e n t .”

the Billabong house at Pipeline. Kassia Meador and Mikey DeTemple came up and crafted a few. And seven-time world champ Layne Beachley helped design the 7'0" ‘Pandan’.

Is it possible that the generation of riders who started out building their own ramps, ordering sticks from the local shaper and duct-taping hand-me-down snow gear, are now looking for a way to re-access those roots? “People who are contacting me are into the whole concept of looking away from the Shaun White version of snowboarding – the over-the-top, branded, maniacal sport. The board itself is a pretty aggressive ride, but it’s a lateral move,” says Jesse.

Consumer society has become so dependent on inexpensive plastic shit that we toss anything that has lost its appeal. It’s largely an American trait spread from the US like polyethylene

But if there’s one thing they’re proud of, it’s gotta be the

herpes. Planned obsolescence kills quality. Neither Jet nor

wood. “We are unequivocal about using sustainably harvested

Grain is looking to tear down the establishment. But maybe

wood,” says Brad of the Northern White Cedar from which

in addition to learning to grow our own food, supporting

they assemble the boards. “It’s been over-cut in other areas,

independent record labels, and fixing our own vehicles, more of

but for us, it’s local and renewable. Human history is rife with N I C K L aV e c c h i a ,

examples of people thinking a resource would never run out and time has always proved that to be an error in judgment.”

As midnight passes, the party turns into a cupcake war. Icing-coated revellers teeter homeward, but convening in the quiet office, Brad, Jesse and Mike’s conversation turns toward the bigger picture.

“There’s a certain segment of the boardsports culture that’s going to be attracted to what we do, and what Jet does,” says Brad. “It’s not like it’s going to sweep the culture, sweep the industry or sweep public consciousness. But it’s not a novelty like, say, a coloured condom. There’s something real and meaningful here that a certain type of person is going to be attracted to like fine art, poetry, or anything that [is more than

Mike LaVecchia, Grain Surfboards, Maine.

just] a manufactured plastic product.”

While a demand for hand-shaped surfboards has thrived, snowboarding, as Jesse points out, has been slower to catch

us are looking for a way to reconnect with the most important objects in our lives.

up. It’s only now, after two decades of mass-production, that

“I don’t think what we do has much at all to do with the

pockets of riders are visibly crafting their own sleds. But is the

industry, marketability of surfboards or consumer patterns,”

nature of wooden, handcrafted boards sustainable – in the real-

says Brad. “It’s far more an act of creativity and passion that

world, economic sense of the word? Can ex-Burton employees

we’re involved in, the way a painter cares about creating a

run small businesses in a world where their former employer

piece of art. I’m not saying we’re equivalent to some fine artist

is growing bigger by the day, buying up brands like Channel

or anything, but it’s like that. You could have a hundred ways to decorate the inside of your house – a painting, sculpture, or photograph by someone who’s really trying to express something. That’s kind of what we’ve created: something that comes from the heart.”

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hand-Picked By

T hoM a s c a M P Be ll

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Mike Brodie – aka The Polaroid Kidd – came hurtling out of obscurity in the mid-noughties with a collection of photos that blew the art establishment’s mind. He was just eighteen when he found an old instant camera in his girlfriend’s car and took an overnight freight train out of his Pensacola, Florida, home. the beautiful shots of bohemia that he returned with were like colourful capsules from another planet. His new book, A Period Of Juvenile Prosperity, is an epic collection of his dusty travels. Here, twenty-six-yearold Brodie describes the mysterious train-hopping world and his motivations for capturing it.

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I’m always daydreaming about what I want to photograph in my head. It usually involves being out in nature and away from people, just with my friends, partying and being idiots. I’m constantly daydreaming about new trips, places and scenes I want to see.

Naturally, me and my friends rebel against urban life: living in the city can be depressing. A lot of kids are growing up, myself included, out of touch with nature. Cities are cool, but I want to know more about the world – nature, plants and animals.

Anything old is interesting because it has character: it has a whole story, a whole life. It’s kind of sad when things start to rot, but they become way more interesting. I’m intrigued by abandoned infrastructure and industry and see beauty in those things, but I really like things that work, too. I really like things that are functional. I went to mechanics school and I worked on the railroad full-time for a while, but I quit last year. I wanted to have a trade and a skill that was applicable to other things in life.

Maybe I’ll go back down that path in the future – that skill will always be there.

Growing up riding BMX, I was always doing things illegally, sneaking around and running from security. We were exploring and finding new places to ride, always running, moving, climbing and knowing something might happen at any moment.

So I guess that developed into my curiosity for ►

101

I’m always daydreaming about what I want to photograph in my head. It usually involves being out in nature and away from people, just with my friends, partying and being idiots. I’m constantly daydreaming about new trips, places and scenes I want to see.

Naturally, me and my friends rebel against urban life: living in the city can be depressing. A lot of kids are growing up, myself included, out of touch with nature. Cities are cool, but I want to know more about the world – nature, plants and animals.

Anything old is interesting because it has character: it has a whole story, a whole life. It’s kind of sad when things start to rot, but they become way more interesting. I’m intrigued by abandoned infrastructure and industry and see beauty in those things, but I really like things that work, too. I really like things that are functional. I went to mechanics school and I worked on the railroad full-time for a while, but I quit last year. I wanted to have a trade and a skill that was applicable to other things in life.

Maybe I’ll go back down that path in the future – that skill will always be there.

Growing up riding BMX, I was always doing things illegally, sneaking around and running from security. We were exploring and finding new places to ride, always running, moving, climbing and knowing something might happen at any moment.

So I guess that developed into my curiosity for ► travelling and riding freight trains. I’m just a curious person and it’s fun to go out on adventures and trips. I like that sense of moving and looking at the world around you. Just like in the old country songs.

Hopping trains is dangerous, but I think it’s

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roger Mihalko is a TwenTy-nine-yearold skaTeBoarder froM corraliTos, a sMall farMing Town jusT ouTside sanTa cruz. he's Made waves in The skaTe scene for his fluid, BarefooT shredding – a hangover froM his firsT love, surfing – BuT is currenTly Taking TiMe ouT To sTudy fine arT and now sPends his days screen-PrinTing, shooTing

PicTures

and

creaTing

hockney-insPired collages. here, The indePendenTly Minded dude descriBes soMe insPiring PeoPle and Places froM his hoMeTown.

I knew of Thomas Campbell long before I met him. I grew up surfing as a kid, but lived an hour away from the beach, so I would just watch his movies over and over. I was inspired by his art and the music he likes, too. The Ugly Casanova Sharpen Your Teeth album came out when I was in high school featuring Thomas’ artwork and I just remember thinking, ‘Wow, that’s so cool.’

I first met him at Sunnyvale skatepark, I guess. I just kind of ran into him when he was making his third surf film, The Present, and he ended up making me a little skateboarding part in it. It was like a dream come true. Sprout was one of my favourite movies ever so it was just crazy when The Present came out and I was in it.

I remember watching Sprout and thinking, ‘Oh you don’t have to ride a regular skateboard!’ I always rode weird boards anyway, but Thomas’ movie made it feel like it was okay to do that. There are so many other feelings you can have on different boards. People are like, ‘You’re actually going to use that?!’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah you gotta try it!’ Little kids always want to. They surprise me with all the stuff they come up with.

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Old skateboards are great because you can kinda feel the people who rode them before you. They go through you a little bit somehow. It’s really empowering to feel like you can cut out a piece of wood, use it as a skateboard and express yourself with that. It feels good to make something; when you have an idea in your head and then it comes out. Take digital photography for example: it’s awesome, it’s a great way to get things across, but there’s this physicality to something you can pick up and hold. And that's always been the most exciting thing to me in Thomas’ work.

It’s like, wow, that’s something he made. That’s amazing! How did he do that?

Skateboarding barefoot is kinda the same for me – it’s like surfing without a leash. You’re closer to the feeling of being right there in the moment because you're just thinking about that one thing and you’re more in control.

When I ride my skateboard with shoes on, I’m still thinking about other things.

When I take my shoes off, it feels like summertime. It’s like, ‘Woah I almost really hurt myself right there. Now I feel alive!’ roger Mihalko

Cool Santa Cruz with roger mihalko

Buena Vista Pool The Buena Vista Pool is a classic spot that hasn’t really been skated since the 1970s. I skate there quite a lot. If you don’t have a spot, you make a spot. If a pool’s full of water, you empty it out. If you want to make it happen, you make it happen.

Downtown Farmers’ Market I’ve been working on an organic farm for the last three years; picking flowers, making bouquets and going to farmer’s markets. You can go to a farmers’ market every day of the week in Santa Cruz.

There’s one downtown on a Wednesday and that’s pretty cool. santacruzfarmersmarket.org

Johnny’s Barbershop Johnny’s Barbershop is run by a sweet kid who I know from skateboarding. He’s a really nice guy who puts on shows in the art shop and shows his own work too. It’s a pretty creative spot. You can go in, get a haircut and check out some art at the same time. johnnysbarbershopsantacruz.com

Olin Borgeson Olin is ten, but his art is sweet. He’s a longboard surfer I know through Thomas and when I saw his show at the front of the Barbershop I was like, ‘Fucking A dude, you’re awesome!’ He has a little T-shirt company called Recess. A lot of good art is done at school. recesssantacruz.blogspot.com

Morning Of The Earth This isn’t about Santa Cruz, but it’s an awesome movie that I’ve looked up to for forever. It’s so picturesque. These guys are just waking up every morning, making their own surfboards, having fun in their gardens and surfing. That’s pretty much my life right now. morningoftheearth.com

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Artist and curator Kelie Bowman lives in her own little world. Whether she’s running her gallery, Cinders, with partner Sto in Williamsburg, New York, drawing, painting, making videos and sculptures, building a sailboat or creating installations and performance art with Jessie Rose Vala as feminist duo Light Hits, she’s always carving out a corner to call her own. Because life is best, she suggests, when you interpret things in your own unique way.

We asked Kelie a bunch of questions about what makes her tick, and these two scribbled answers really stole the show.

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As the founder and dreamer behind Swanton Berry Farm, sixty-four-year-old Jim Cochran is pioneering a new kind of agricultural business model. Along the central coast of California, about sixty-five miles south of San Francisco, he is cultivating a radical utopia that provides jobs and food without exploiting people or land. Jim may believe that the global, industrial food system is destroying the rich complexity of farming communities around the world, but he is confident there is another way. And he’s determined to lead by example.

In 1983, when I started experimenting with growing organic strawberries in California, everyone told me that it couldn’t be profitable on a commercial scale. At the time, the pesticide of choice for berry growers was Methyl Bromide, a highly toxic fumigant that can damage the neurological system, lungs and ozone layer. My goal was to prove that it was possible to grow strawberries organically and actually make a living.

I was working for a group of farm worker-owned co-ops in the Salinas area in the late 1970s and we dumped every imaginable chemical on the plants. I got pesticide poisoning a couple of times and so did a number of other workers. It was nuts. I kept trying to convince people that we should do without the chemicals, but they were popular so I decided to go out and do it on my own.

In the beginning, my partner and I rented four acres of land and did a fifty-fifty thing: half organic, half not. We found that the organic yields were lower, but not that much. Eventually, my partner left and I switched to strictly organic. After about six years I was able to drop my second job and support myself entirely from the farm. Now, we’re about fortyfive people working over 200 acres of leased land. We’ve been certified organic for twenty-four years, and we proudly grow twenty acres of strawberries, blackberries, kiwis, artichokes, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, celery, Brussels sprouts, and a few other vegetables.

About fourteen years ago we became the first certified organic farm in the United States to sign a labour contract with the United Farm Workers, founded by Cesar Chavez in the 1960s. Apart from tangible benefits like health and dental insurance, a pension plan and paid holidays, there are significant intangible benefits that come with a union contract; our employees are professionals and have all the rights that come with that status.

About six years ago we started an ‘Employee Stock Ownership Plan’ [a first in production agriculture in the US], where all employees receive bonuses in the form of stock in the company. They own about thirteen per cent of the company now, and their ownership share is increasing by two per cent every year. Our employees participate in major decisions – from production to marketing and personnel policies. A mix of people work here – from Mexican migrants to former college students.

We keep distribution local, within a seventy-five mile radius, at farmers’ markets and Whole Foods stores, and something like fifteen per cent of our business comes from unmonitored cash tills. About $350,000 a year passes through tills at our farm shop where the general public take their own change. It’s really fun to watch the expression on people’s faces when they figure it out. We have a lot of people who come by to hang out; it’s a fun place to be.

Some years we lose money, some years we make money, some years we break even. We have a profit margin of about two or three per cent across sales, so on a $3 basket of strawberries we make about six cents.

The financial crisis hasn’t affected us. The reason we lose money is strictly down to the weather. Last year, we had a lot of rain during the peak season and didn’t have as much fruit to sell.

I believe that there’s something wrong if you’re grossly profitable because you’re either dominating the market or you’re not paying people enough. We aim for long-term, modest profitability. When we first started, we accounted for close to 100 per cent of the organic strawberry market in California, and now we’re just one per cent. So it has definitely caught on. My philosophy is not to try and convince someone to change their business model, but to just go out and do it myself. If people follow, the industry will follow.

My advice to people who want to support this movement would be to ask a lot of questions. Ask your grocer where their fruit and vegetables are grown, and more importantly nowadays, about their labour practices.

Do their employees have health insurance? What sort of benefits do they have? What are their wages?

I’m sixty-four, I’ve been doing this stuff all my life, and I’m pretty worn out. At this point I’m more of a coach and mentor. In a lot of small businesses, the business owner is in the way of people moving upwards, but I’m trying to ease out at a graceful pace. I’m now working on larger national projects like The Food Commons (thefoodcommons. org), which is based on the Mondragon Cooperative system in Spain.

That’s a huge, exciting project.

The general public seem to think that you’re nobody unless you’re a dot-com millionaire or an investment banker. If you’re an ordinary worker, with low wages, you’re not considered to have a worthwhile job.

But I find it quite the contrary; it’s the most dignified job I can think of. I want to change that public perception. My goal is for society to perceive this type of work in a better way, for kids to be proud that their mom and dad work out in the fields. Jim Cochran

swantonberryfarm.com

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music world of

When she’s not using her deft hands to make paintings, ’zines, films, quilts, gardens, miniature sweaters and pies, Lori Damiano, of Portland, Oregon, also finds time to pass on her rad animation skills at the California State Summer School for the Arts.

She has a monthly column – ‘The Learnings Of’ in The Skateboard Mag – and volunteers at the Independent Publishing Resource Center, a nonprofit community project that helps people create their own magazines and art. Here, Lori D introduces us to a character she created that carries a little piece of herself.

This is a character I have been revisiting a lot in the last few years. Her name is Gene and I first saw her at a gun shop/range in Empire, California.

I was there accompanying a National Park Ranger friend who was shopping for a new holster for work. When I first saw her she was in a raised Bronco in the small parking lot in front of the gun shop, doing burnouts by herself while she waited for her son, ex-husband, and current boyfriend to show up.

They were all going to practise in the range together.

I was fascinated and enchanted by Gene because, to me, she represented an exaggerated embodiment of a very specific hybrid version of American femininity and masculinity. Part of the intrigue could also be due to the time I have spent as a little lady participating in the male-dominated realms of skateboarding, motorcycles and artmaking. It could be entertained that she is an alter ego of sorts, but I’d maintain my primary adoration for this character comes from my interest in exploring archetypal characters of my American cultural experience.

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I have been working on a short animated series centred on Gene and her daily trials, and wrote this short synopsis to sum her up.

GENE: LADY OF EMPIRE With hair of pure gold, the voice of a monster truck, and the ability to produce any object of necessity from between her bosoms in times of crisis, Gene is a world-class lady tornado on the perpetual prowl. She is a master of quad vaulting, a sport she invented that involves acrobatics on a four-wheeler in which sinking into quicksand midarabesque is a constant occupational hazard she is willing to accept. Gene is often flanked by a troop of loyal topless male dancers who do her bidding and often help her with escape routes and her general self-esteem issues.

Her favourite things include wheelies, burnouts, leather fringe, baking, press-on nail art, eating chips, pontoon boats, loud and fast things, muscles, roses, diet raspberry iced tea, mermen, snakes, illegally disposing of unwanted furniture in private dumpsters, and partying. Lori Damiano

First st in in SURFING S SU URFING NEWS NEWS First

www.surfersvillage.com Rider: Tim Boal / Photo: Agustin Munoz/Red Bull Photofiles / Design: ID

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as forMer fronTMan of surf Punk Band jaPanese MoTors, 10.

Pro longBoarder alex knosT cuTs an unusual shaPe in The cosTa Mesa line-uP. wheTher he’s Making godard-sTyle surf Movies like 2008’s beACh blAnket burnout burnout,, PuTTing ouT vinTage collecTions wiTh rvca, Making arT, exhiBiTing, or recording wiTh girlfriend chrisTina kee for new Band ToMorrows TuliPs (now signed To ThoMas caMPBell’s galaxia records), alex Brings a sPlash of colour To a MonochroMaTic world. These Pics, caughT on his iPhone, 12.

Provide a sideways gliMPse inTo a life lived off course.

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1. This is Christina, she’s one of my favourite people to take photos of. She is such a wonderful muse; her expressions and colour supply never-ending creative endeavours.

2. A photo of a photo. This one’s of my grandma digging in her purse for her Parliament cigarettes. My first encounter with smoking was stealing packs out of her vast supply left on the washer-dryer at her house. She’s since quit but my childhood always smelled like grandma and Parliaments.

3. I like photos of cars that I would only ever drive in my dreams – or perhaps when I’m old.

4. Another dog in my living room.

5. I love 1970s track homes.

6. I love soft digital images, and I love my friend Jeffrey. Here he is walking uncomfortably in a pair of pants I bought him. I don’t think he’s as comfortable in short pants as I am.

7. This is a 1980s thruster kneeboard that I got at a garage sale for fifty bucks. It’s really hard to ride, but I love the airbrush. It reminds me of the Velvet Underground Loaded record cover.

9. I made this collage from an old perfume ad and pasted it into an old notebook.

10. One of my wonderful friends Robbie Kegal. He’s so amazing.

Here, he tries on my glasses.

11. I love New York because this happens all on its own.

12. A poster from our last tour.

13. A 9’2” I shaped. It looked good, but it didn’t ride great.

8. My friends Sammi and Chiz, they are the best!

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1. Third bi-annual Pica-Post publication featuring ‘Angling Adventures’ from Oi Polloi. oipolloi.com 2. Issue four ‘Quick On

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The Draw’ of pattern-crazy Wrap mag, which encourages you to

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tear spreads out and use as packaging. thewrappaper.com 3. Pick Me Up graphic art fair returns this month with rad collectives like Soho Warriors FC, Peep Show and Print Club London. facebook.

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com/pickmeupfair 4. Safety just got stylish with these sleek Bookman bike lights. bookman.se 5. Photobooth pics of Swoon shot in London when she was exhibiting at Black Rat Projects. blackratprojects.com 6. Amazing air-curing rubber that can fix anything by being mega tough and heat and water resistant.

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Super plasticine! sugru.com 7. Clinic II poetry anthology (recommended by Pink Mist) featuring awesome wordsmiths like

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Ross Sutherland. clinicpresents.com 8. Photographer Guy Martin’s The Missing newspaper featuring some of the 30,000 Libyan men still missing after last year’s conflict and distributed for free on February 17 (the anniversary of the Libyan revolution) to raise

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awareness. guy-martin.co.uk 9. The twelve arms that sit inside this multi-awesome bike tool by Knog will let you DIY the shit out of your whip. knog.com.au 10. A block of parquet flooring that will be laid in our new 71A basement gallery space. In a stroke of

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crazy coincidence, it’s been salvaged from our creative director’s dad’s old school. Serendipitous much? thechurchoflondon.com 11. Kidsonroof make super cool patterned flatpack kits that you can slot together to form awesome scenes like trees, houses and animals. Here’s a lovely dog. kidsonroof.com 12. ‘The Rucksack’

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by Poler – a rad new brand that’s all about outdoor adventure fun. polerstuff.com 13. This gorgeously curated book from C.R. Stecyk’s Juxtapoz features the most amazing handicrafts in the world (at £25 a pop). gingkopress.com 14. Paul Willoughby ‘Octopuses In Sunnies’ tote from SXSW. Shit just got neptunian.

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BACKDOOR ISN’T THE ONLY WAY

spyoptic.com/blackice

/ BOB SOVEN wears the BLACK ICE HELM