Jocks & Nerds Issue 21, Winter 2016

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WINTER 2016

THE SECOND SONS

First interview with the band who might just save rock’n’roll

ROBERT FRANK

J O C K S & N E R D S

The reclusive photographer steps in front of the camera

CHARLES ATLAS How dance met video with the artist who changed ballet forever

JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON

The Blade Runner 2049 composer talks Björk Brian Eno and sound art

AMASUNZU

Rwanda’s arresting haircut comes back

Hans Ulrich Obrist Jeremy Deller and Glenn Lowry on the

MUSEUMS OF TOMORROW

JOHN LEGEND PLUS Northern Disco Lights / Shirley Collins / NBA Mexico City / Frank Carter / Eric Elms / Yoko Ono Michael Smith / Mark Mahoney / Boxing on Film Wolfgang Tillmans / Max Brown / John D. Green Penny Reel / Winter Fashion in the Swiss Alps

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Cover Star John Legend Photographed by Gavin Bond; Styled by Mark Anthony Bradley Jacket by Kenzo; trousers by Burberry; top by Sunspel Editor-in-Chief & Creative Director Marcus Agerman Ross marcus@jocksandnerds.com Art Director Shazia Chaudhry shaziachaudhry.co.uk

Commercial Director Tom Lake tom.lake@jocksandnerds.com

Fashion Director Mark Anthony Bradley mark@jocksandnerds.com

Deputy Editor Tom Banham tom.banham@jocksandnerds.com

Fashion Editor Chris Tang tang@jocksandnerds.com

Editorial Assistant Edward Moore edward@jocksandnerds.com

Advertising Manager Fiona Wallace fiona@jocksandnerds.com

Junior Sales Executive Farnaz Ari farnaz@jocksandnerds.com

Project Manager, Tack Studio Elizabeth Jones elizabeth@tack-press.com

Contributing Fashion Editors Salim Ahmed-Kashmirwala, Harris Elliott, Karen Mason, Richard Simpson Senior Staff Writer Chris May

Subeditor Rosie Spencer

Staff Writers Paolo Hewitt, Joe Lloyd, Andy Thomas, Mark Webster New York Editor Janette Beckman janette@jocksandnerds.com

Music Events Programmer Stuart Patterson stuart@jocksandnerds.com

Photographers Vanni Bassetti, Sandra Blow, Gavin Bond, Dean Chalkley, Rodrigo Chapa, Kevin Davies, Joe Fuda, Orlando Gili David Goldman, Rob Low, Ruben Marquez, Mark Mattock, Jon Mortimer, Mattias Pettersson, Tom Skipp Klaus Thymann, Ross Trevail, Simon Way, Paul Vickery Fashion Adam Howe, Giulia Querenghi

Words Paul Bradshaw, Hamish MacBain Stockist Enquiries Boutique Mags boutiquemags.com

Distribution White Circ Ltd whitecirc.com Printing Park Communications Ltd parkcom.co.uk

Annual Subscriptions jocksandnerds.com/subscribe

Retouching and Colour Management Complete completeltd.com

Special Thanks Maxy Neil Bianco, Sandra Haselhach at Eskimos, Saas-Fee, Switzerland eskimos.ch, Raphael Herzog at The Capra, Switzerland, Jackie King, The Kings Arms, London thekingsarmslondon.co.uk, Mitzi Lorenz, Tupac Martir, Ayub Sheriff at the Courthouse Hotel, London shoreditch.courthouse-hotel.com, Yorgo Tloupas, Sacha von Schulthess Publisher Marcus Agerman Ross Finance Sharon Williams accounts@tack-press.com

Head of Editorial, Tack Press Oli Stratford oliver@disegnomagazine.com

Designer, Tack Press Anna Holden anna@tack-press.com

Contact Jocks&Nerds Magazine, Tack Press Limited, Unit 7, Ability Plaza, Arbutus Street, London E8 4DT +44 20 7249 1155 info@jocksandnerds.com jocksandnerds.com

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Copyright All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without the written permission of the publisher. The opinions expressed in the magazine are that of the respective contributors and are not necessarily shared by the magazine or its staff.

Tack Press Limited is the parent company of Jocks&Nerds and Disegno magazine, as well as the creative services agency Tack Studio.

Tack Press Limited Š 2016

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Panorama Amasunzu Photographs Tom Skipp 14 / Brief Warming culture for this winter 23 / Locker The Capra Photographs Klaus Thymann 48 / Metropolitan Mexico City 176 / Expo Steel Horses Photographs Paul Vickery 184 / Edit Kensal Rise Photographs Mark Mattock; Styling Karen Mason 190 / People Frank Carter, Shirley Collins, Eric Elms, Dan Goldwater, Peter Mitchell, Penny Reel, Amané Suganami 196 / Icon Overalls 206

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Museums in the Digital Age 58 / John Legend 64 Charles Atlas 82 / Boxing on Film 88 / The Second Sons 94 Robert Frank 106 / Rivington School 122 / Jóhann Jóhannsson 130 Michael Smith 154 / Basketball Goes Global 160

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Street Scene Photographs Jon Mortimer; Styling Mark Anthony Bradley 72 / Mark Mahoney Photographs Gavin Bond; Styling Mark Anthony Bradley 112 Richard Sawdon Smith Photographs Ross Trevail; Styling Adam Howe 134 / Saas-Fee Photographs Klaus Thymann; Styling Chris Tang 142 / Max Brown Photographs David Goldman; Styling Mark Anthony Bradley 168

R E FI N E D TO ON E

T H E S I G N AT U R E C R A F T S M A N M A D E F R O M O N E P I E C E O F P R E M I U M L E AT H E R , B Y H A N D ,

BY R . M . W I L L I A M S M AST E R C R A F TS M E N I N A D E L A I D E , S O U T H AU ST R A L I A

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P a n o r a m a Niyonshuti Anderson, bus conductor

AMASUNZU Photographs Tom Skipp Words Chris May Production Ngabonziza Bonfils

Wamazina Hassan Harby, writer

Hairstyles don’t get more spectacularly sculptural than the traditional Rwandan cut known as the amasunzu. In recent months, early 20th-century photographs of Rwandans with the haircut have circulated widely on the web and rippled through the Rwandan diaspora in Belgium, the country’s one-time colonial ruler.

Tom Skipp is the first photographer to travel to Rwanda to investigate the

amasunzu since its emergence as an internet meme. Skipp – who previously lived in Rwanda for eight months art-directing Ni Nyampinga, a charity magazine aimed at improving the lives of girls and young women – visited Kigali, the Rwandan capital, where he hooked up with Wamazina Hassan Harby, a youthful septuagenarian who sports the style. Guided by Harby, Skipp discovered a reviving interest in the amasunzu, which,

along with so much other indigenous African culture, has been in decline, a victim of the widespread post-colonial adoption of European style and social mores. The hegemonic impact of European culture has been intensified in Rwanda by the civil war in 1994 between the country’s Hutu and Tutsi peoples, when between 800,000 and a million Rwandans were slaughtered.

In efforts to cement ethnic reconciliation, J &

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it is now illegal in Rwanda to say the words Hutu and Tutsi. Traditional Rwandan customs may come, understandably, with newly acquired baggage.

After decades of moving around, living in several different East African countries as well as the UK, France and Saudi Arabia, Harby adopted the amasunzu in 2003.

He explained why in an interview with the Rwandan English-language newspaper, The New Times, in 2012. “I decided to revisit my roots by changing my hairstyle,” said Harby. “I did so after consulting my mother and a 103-year-old widow on the best style.

Amasunzu wasn’t the only style [in precolonial Rwanda] – there was also the ingobeke, impagarike, intambike, imbwirenga and igisuguri, to mention a few.

Today, no one questions my origin because of my unique Rwandan hairstyle […]

Everyone in Africa has something in their culture that makes them unique. The problem is people have been influenced too much by the west and would rather go for hairstyles they see in movies and music videos […] The white people I meet tend to like my hairstyle because they know Africans have a uniqueness to them. The sad part is that some Africans think this is only for old people […] We should treasure our culture because it defines us.”

“He’s a dandy and an eccentric,” says Skipp of Harby. “He’s also extraordinarily tall, around six foot seven. He’s very proud of how

Janet Kayitesi Kabuci, child carer J &

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he looks. He’s a fascinating man. He’s written two books about his life, The Whispering Odyssey and The Street Prince, which he’s trying to find a publisher for. Because the amasunzu is so uncommon today, I think he enjoys the attention it gets. A lot of Rwandans don’t seem to notice the camera – it doesn’t make them shy, there seems to be no realisation that the camera is there.

But Wamazina is an extrovert and he was very aware of my camera. He definitely basks in the sunlight of attention. The Street Prince is a really good name for him. He lives in a single room about eight feet by four feet with a hessian mattress and all his clothes hung up from a line around it. There’s no lavatory or washroom. But when he turns out in the street you’d think he lived in a palace. There are no photographs in the room apart from one of the president, Paul Kagame. Wamazina is also a devout Muslim. He’s respected in the community and as we walked around Kigali everyone said hello to him.

“He wasn’t in the country during the genocide. A million people were killed in a month and if you lived through that it is going to affect you differently than it will affect people who were somewhere else.

If you’d seen those things, you probably wouldn’t be able to speak about it in the free way that Wamazina did. He was also the only person I spoke to who mentioned the words Hutu and Tutsi.”

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P a n o r a m a Wamazina Hassan Harby

Janet Kayitesi Kabuci Another subject of Skipp’s portraits is Janet Kayitesi Kabuci. “She’s only 18 years old, so she wasn’t around during the genocide either,” says Skipp. “She told me that when she started wearing the style, her family told her she was mad. Because it’s not prevalent, it’s not something young people in general are taking on as a statement yet.

When we were standing at a bus shelter, for instance, people were staring at her and laughing at her. They know what the amasunzu is, but they laughed to see her wearing it, possibly because she is young.

And I think it also takes people by surprise when they see women express themselves so boldly – even though it’s a fairly matriarchal society, to look so different is shocking.

“Janet wears it because she wants to be different. At the same time, a lot of her friends don’t know she’s got the haircut.

She works for a Muslim family, though she’s not Muslim herself, and so her hair is covered a lot of the time, either with a wig or a hijab.

It’s only her close friends who know about it. She told me she didn’t often wear it out in the street, so it’s more a personal thing than a public statement.”

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BRIEF SPARROW COME BACK HOME Sparrow Come Back Home is an exhibition chronicling the life and work of the Mighty Sparrow, probably the world’s greatest living calypsonian. At its centre is a collection of 228 ceramic tiles, which represent the front and back covers of around half of Sparrow’s albums from 1957 to date, the work of calypso scholars Mark Harris and Carmel Buckley. Harris first became entranced by calypso as a teenager, listening to his Trinidadian mother’s record collection.

His previous ventures into art shows include the Wellcome Collection’s 2011 exhibition High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture, which traced the fetishisation and demonisation of psychoactive drugs. Harris was shown on Album artwork decaled on ceramic tile Courtesy of Carmel Buckley and Mark Harris a two-screen video reading the poetry of recompensed, yet they were the ones who were Charles Baudelaire to cannabis plants. “I think Sparrow driving the revenue-generating machine at Carnival. is the most lyrically fascinating calypso singer and the When Sparrow and Lord Melody withdrew that one with the greatest verbal dexterity,” says Harris. Be it really did change things for the better. Sparrow flagrantly ribald or socially radical, Sparrow’s wordplay also set up his own record label and was the is remarkable, even by calypso’s advanced standards. first calypsonian to release a solo album, Calypso Sparrow was from the start also financially astute, and Carnival, in 1958. And he was the first calypsonian his campaigning resulted in calypso singers being better to have a book published – he was highly inventive rewarded. In 1956, he boycotted the Trinidad and Tobago when it came to self-promotion.”

Carnival in protest at the paucity of prize money on offer.

Sparrow Come Back Home features around half On winning the Carnival’s Calypso King title that year of Sparrow’s total output. Harris and Buckley with ‘Yankees Gone’, a song celebrating the departure of have rendered his entire oeuvre on ceramic tiles, US troops from Trinidad, Sparrow had been given $40. but such was his work ethic that there is insufficient The winner of the Carnival Queen beauty contest, by space to display it all. Also included is an archive contrast, received Album artwork decaled on ceramic tile Courtesy of Carmel Buckley and Mark Harris of calypso-related literature, memorabilia and $7,500. Sparrow ephemera from the early 1950s onwards. refused to officially Why does Harris think calypso lags so far participate in the behind other Caribbean styles such as reggae contest for three and salsa in global popularity? “The best calypso years, until the addresses specific local issues in a language that prize money for is very creative and imaginative,” he say. “But it calypsonians can be hard to understand if you’re not from was increased. the Caribbean.”

“He was WORDS CHRIS MAY inspirational in that regard,” says Harris. “Calypso singers were not being properly

Sparrow Come Back Home is at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London until 5 February ica.org.uk J &

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B r i e f WEAVING SHIBUSA “My first Japanese jeans were a pair of Dry Bones Red-Ds, bought from [US specialist denim store] Self Edge,” says Devin Leisher, director of a new documentary about the country’s artisanal denim makers. “Every now and then I still take them out and look at the detail on them. Then through forums like Superfuture I began to learn more about Japanese denim and what made it so good.” Weaving Shibusa follows Leisher’s previous film on American denim, Weft and Weave. “Actually Weaving Shibusa was the film I wanted to make from the beginning but I really didn’t know where to Indigo dyeing in begin,” he says.

Weaving Shibusa “But I was just fascinated by Japanese denim especially as there was so much speculation about the history.”

The Japanese fell in love with denim thanks to US GIs, stationed in the country after the Second World War, who gave old jeans to prostitutes in lieu of cash. The women then sold them in Tokyo, where stores specialising in vintage Americana had sprung up. Soldiers soon cut out the middle women, but their cast-offs couldn’t feed a booming interest in US denim. A company called Maruo, which until then had made school uniforms, stepped in. It crafted the first domestic jeans from scraps of cast-off denim, which it bought in from American mills.

In 1967 Maruo rebranded as the western-sounding Big John and became the biggest denim brand in Japan, followed by competitors such as Edwin and John Bull. The demand for denim soon outstripped Etsuko Satou, proprietor supply, so Big John responded to the of Shinya Mills, Kojima drought by working with a local textile Photograph Erik Motta mill on the first domestic denim, called KD-8, in 1972. To feed the demand, the old cotton mills, indigo-dying factories and sewing operations of towns such as Okayama and Hiroshima were revitalised.

But none of this diluted the love of vintage, worn denim from the US. “I am in love with 501. Inside me there is 501 somewhere,” says Kazuhiko Hanzawa, in Weaving Shibusa. The owner of Marvin’s Vintage Shop, a denim mecca in Tokyo’s Harajuku district, recalls the first time he saw Levi’s 501s on one 24

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of his teachers. “I have never forgotten the shock of seeing the button fly, or the fact that the teacher had bought them in America. That was when I first met 501.” He opened the shop in 1991, after shopping trips across the States in search of original American denim. He shares an obsessive attention to detail with the other denim experts featured in Weaving Shibusa: Yutaka Fujihara, director of another Harajuku vintage store, BerBerJin, who can recognise the era of a denim by the way it fades, and Kazuhiko Hanzawa, who knows the trade of the wearer by the hue of his jeans.

It was this attention to detail that a new wave of Japanese denim makers brought to their craft in the 1990s. Studio D’Artisan, Denime, Evisu, Full Count, and Warehouse, together known as the Osaka Five, laid the foundations for the other brands we meet in Weaving Shibusa.

“When I was on sites like Superfuture I kept hearing about these people called the Osaka Five and I started to wonder who they were,” says Leisher. “All these brands have their own identities but they all really respect each other and it was a really neat thing to learn about how much they have helped each other.”

As Masayoshi Kobayashi, who founded Flat Head in Nagano in 1996, explains, these denim obsessives used ancient artisan traditions to create their folk-based clothing: “Craftmanship

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B r i e f backwards. And as a major was a technique used for noblemen and royal retrospective of his work families,” he says. “Japanese takumi is when opens this February at the people who make the products consider London’s Tate Modern, the people that will be using them. The idea his message of unity is of takumi is to make products that last through more important than ever. the next generation.”

Born in 1968 in Remscheid, The founder of Full Count, Mikiharu Tsujita, Germany, Tillmans came to explains how denim is revered for much more prominence in the late 1980s than its aesthetic value. “The jeans themselves and early 1990s with his have history. When they get torn, I think you photographs of the German will feel something,” he says. “By wearing and British club scene and them everyday, having them when going out shots of the people he danced somewhere, travelling, dating girls, the jeans alongside. His absorption will eventually become part of your life.” in club culture would see The makers of these Japanese brands worship Astro Crusto, 2012 Photograph © Wolfgang Tillmans him DJ at venues such as the goods as much as the wearers. From the Berlin’s Möbel-Olfe, photograph the Berlin skilled craftsmen who work the old vintage looms in Love Parade, and have his pictures adorn the Okayama, to the specific sewing machines used on walls of the city’s most famous clubs, Berghain Iron Heart’s rough denim, through to Momotaro’s and Panorama Bar. experimentations with indigo and Full Count’s search It was a culture he was drawn to in his for cotton in Zimbabwe, Weaving Shibusa is a fascinating mid-teens when he visited London as an glimpse into the craft and cult of Japanese denim. “What exchange student. Shortly after, in his last year I really wanted to show was that these jeans have a heart at school, he began to experiment with a camera and soul,” says Leisher. “In my mind, these garments are and Xerox machine, inspired by the photo kind of like an organism in themselves.” paintings of Gerhard Richter and cut-ups of WORDS ANDY THOMAS Kurt Schwitters. He had his first exhibition in Hamburg at the Café Gnosa in 1988 and it was Weaving Shibusa is available online from January during the subsequent ‘Second Summer of Love’ weavingshibusa.com that he submerged himself deeper into the club WOLFGANG TILLMANS scene, capturing the sweaty euphoria of his In the spring of 2016, Wolfgang Tillmans designed a fellow dancers through a series of intimate set of posters backing the EU Remain campaign. “The photographs that captured the scene’s blend of reasons why I felt compelled to get involved in the UK EU optimism and hedonism. His first pictures of the referendum are personal,” he said, in a statement on his club scene were published in small Hamburgwebsite. “My love for the UK and its culture, music and based photography and lifestyle magazines, people, my career’s groundedness in Britain and the always before he got his big break when he sent a warm welcome I felt here selection of prints to i-D magazine in London. as a German.”

His relationship with i-D solidified when he The artist has redefined went to Bournemouth and Poole College of photography through Art in 1990 and then settled in London. his intimate portraits of His work for i-D blurred the lines between human life and the beauty fashion photography and documentary of the everyday. As a reportage, through intimate portraits of his German living between friends and fellow clubbers, the most famous Berlin and London, whose of which were a series of photographs of his pictures have always friends Lutz and Alex. It is easy to see their suggested what he calls influence in modern fashion campaigns, which a “utopian ideal of celebrate the familar and the personal over togetherness”, he was glamour. Even when working with celebrities, all too aware of the dark he shot the likes of Jarvis Cocker and Kate Moss Collum, 2011 forces dragging Europe in ways that punctured the aura of fame.

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B r i e f producer Mathias Stubø]. We started throwing Although he is best known for his portraits, Tillmans other ideas around that got increasingly has always been as interested in objects as people and far-fetched, the last of which was making a film became increasingly known for his unconventional still about Norwegian dance music. And they jumped life photographs. Pictures such as Still Life, New York, at it.” The result is Northern Disco Lights, which which juxtaposes sharply focused fruit and vegetables tells the story of Nordic electronica over the last on the window ledge of his hotel with the blurred NYC three decades. cabs on the street below, helped cement his reputation as In the mid-1980s, Tromsø was culturally as more than a pop culture photographer. He then moved into more abstract works, such as the Blushes and Freischwimmer well as geographically isolated. A town of 70,000, it is around 1,000 miles from the capital, Oslo, series from 2000 and 2004, which drew on his early and a four-hour drive from the nearest other darkroom accidents. town. But in spite of this isolation, or perhaps Shortly after his first abstractions, Tillmans won the because of it, a group of teenage friends created Turner Prize, the first photographer – and the first a DIY movement that would have wide-reaching non-English person – to do so. His installation, which repercussions. “We could displayed hundreds of his just sit up here and monitor Polaroids, photocopies, the world […] and watch inkjet and cibachrome what the rest of the humans prints, pinned to the wall of were up to,” says Per Tate Britain in London, also Martinsen [aka producer demonstrated his interest Mental Overdrive] in in playing with exhibition Northern Disco Lights. methods. Coupled with his In the 1980s, Tromsø’s budding music career – his youth had few ways to track ‘Device Control’ was discover new music, and sampled on Frank Ocean’s Iguazu, 2010 Photograph © Wolfgang Tillmans scoured the music press 2016 LP Endless – Tillmans’ for information as they forthcoming show will exchanged tapes with each other. But when doubtless excite yet another new audience. licences were granted for local radio stations, WORDS ANDY THOMAS their world expanded. At Beatservice, DJs Vidar Hanssen and Nick Johannesen played The Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition opens at Tate Modern, an alternative soundtrack for the long dark Bankside, London, SE1, on 15 February winters – from European electronic body music tate.org.uk to Chicago acid and Detroit techno.

NORTHERN DISCO LIGHTS Inspired by the Beatservice show, Martinsen’s Norway doesn’t seem like disco’s natural habitat. Especially friend Bjørn Torske started his own show, on the considering how little that sound has in common with the Brygga radio station, as a DIY scene took root. country’s main musical export, black metal. But in the town “They let us do anything,” says Rune Lindbæk, of Tromsø, where in winter the sun drops and doesn’t rise one of the first producers to break through. again for two months, a small band of musicians created a “We could just play Detroit techno on drive time Norwegian spin on a sound forged in New York’s heat and hours in the afternoon.” In Northern Disco Lights, sweat, then sent it around the world. he recalls the first time he saw a synthesiser, at Manchester’s Paper Recordings was instrumental the home of influential electronic producer Geir in exposing the Nordic scene to a wider audience.

Jenssen (aka Biosphere). Alongside Mental They released the first 12-inch from the group Those Overdrive, Biosphere was the first of the Tromsø Norwegians, The Kilpisjärvi EP, in 1997. Almost 20 years producers to make a name outside of Norway. on, co-founders Ben Davis and Pete Jenkinson have made Biosphere’s cold, sparse sound would later their cinematic debut with Northern Disco Lights, about the be named “arctic ambient” and was a huge scene that continues to inspire them. “We had a meeting inspiration to future bedroom producers across with [ministry of culture organisation] Music Norway about Norway. “Nobody is going to eclipse what four years ago,” says Davis, “trying to get funding for an Biosphere has done,” says Prins Thomas, one album we were putting out by Proviant Audio [Norwegian of the originators of the space disco sound that 28

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is now Annie’ was the first release Kvaløya, Norway Photograph Ben Davis © Paper Vision 2015 synonymous on the new label Telle set with Norway’s up. But it was a record Erot electronic scene. recorded with his girlfriend Pål Nyhus, a Annie, a catchy electronic national radio disco pop seven-inch called DJ, had first ‘The Greatest Hit’, that heard disco on a made the UK music press cassette tape of sit up.

Kiss FM shows Telle followed it up from New York with the first releases and was blown

by Röyksopp (featuring away. “I was very Torbjørn Brundtland from far from Paradise Those Norwegians), which Garage,” he says expanded Norway’s in Northern Disco electronic music scene Lights. “But it well beyond the small kind of created an imaginary sense of what towns of Bergen and Tromsø. What journalists called the New York was like. It was just like a pure fantasy.

‘Bergen Wave’ saw an interchange between the UK and Musically I felt what I was playing was a bit Norway, as DJs such as Idjut Boys became regular visitors strange and exotic.” His Saturday disco show to parties there. An Oslo venue called Skansen became the on NRK Radio, which started in 1997, had a most mythologised of all Norway’s clubs. “That’s when huge influence on the future sound of Norway.

Norway captured my imagination and stories were coming Shortly after releasing his first tracks under the over of this amazing club in a toilet in Oslo,” says Ben name Alegria on the SSR Records label, Bjørn Davis. “My knowledge of Norway was zero back then so Torske had moved to Bergen with Per Martinsen. my imagination filled in the blanks until we got there.

In this picturesque town on Norway’s west coast, It coincided with the fantastic early Tellė releases and Torske became known as the godfather of 10-inches on the Svek label from Bjørn – very left-field Norway’s electronic music scene. One of the men and kind of bonkers but very accessible at the same time.” he inspired, Mikal Telle, owned a shop called Shortly after Kroknes died, the Norwegian electronic Primitive Records, which became a major hang music scene blew up thanks to groups such as Röyksopp. out for Torske and the new wave of producers, In the following years, Davis and Jenkinson continued such as Telle’s best friend Tore Kroknes, to make links to Norway. “We built on this creative and who made music as Erot. Torske and Erot’s cultural relationship, putting on Norwegian DJs at our double-sided seven-inch, ‘In Disco/Song for parties in the UK and garnered a reputation for being an underground home for Norwegian house Bjørn Torske, Mount Fløya, Norway music,” says Jenkinson. Today, Norway Still courtesy of Ben Davis © Paper Vision 2015 is best known for the progressive space disco sound that came out of Oslo, pioneered by artists such as Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas. “That is the sound now, without question,” says Conrad McDonnell, from Idjut Boys, in Northern Disco Lights. In their wake came a new generation of producers, such as Todd Terje, who took the music to a global audience, now inspiring kids in New York to hone their own takes on Nordic disco.

WORDS ANDY THOMAS Northern Disco Lights is out in 2017 northerndiscolights.com J &

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THE BIG BOOK OF BIRDS OF BRITAIN John D. Green’s Birds of Britain is the kind of photo book that wouldn’t get published today. For one, there’s the title, which refers more to anthropology than ornithology and, in these enlightened times, would have Twitter sharpening its pitchforks. Then there’s the subjects, the great and good of the swinging sixties, all of whom appeared unpaid in whichever unexpected pose – suspended by their ankles, perhaps, or topless and drenched in motor oil – their photographer suggested. When it was released in 1967, it caused a sensation.

“The book was unique at the time,” says Green. “In the ’60s, many girls had their first taste of liberation and they weren’t used to publicity in the same way that we are today, which is what made the book so different. In today’s society, every girl wants to be a celebrity and some will go to extreme lengths to do so. Today marks a different time with different goal posts. Generally speaking, many of today’s girls are liberated, everybody’s a photographer and everyone has Julie Christie, Weymouth, hundreds of Dorset, 1966 Photograph pictures of John D. Green/Ormond themselves Yard Press in every pose under the sun.”

At the time, Green was a successful advertising photographer, well known in the industry but anonymous outside it. So he decided to parlay his connections into a coffee table book that, he hoped, would place him alongside photo giants Terence Donovan and David Bailey in the public consciousness.

The first shoot was with Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon, an it girl whose father and grandfather were motor racing obsessives. To make the link, Green nipped into a garage up the street for a can of oil. “It started out with just a smear on the face,” he says. “But it didn’t look like much, so we went on to cover her all over.” That image set the tone for the next 12 months of shooting: actress Charlotte Rampling appeared topless, bar a judiciously positioned set of stamps; socialite Victoria Mills played cards in an equal state of 30

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undress; model Pat Booth was wrapped in sticky tape then had a pillow full of feathers dumped over her.

“The height of fashion of the time was the miniskirt and no bras,” Green recalls.

“It didn’t take a lot of persuasion.”

Though he stresses that his Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon, John D. models were more Green’s studio, London, 1966 Photograph John D. Green/Ormond than happy with their pictures – “All Yard Press of the girls were invited to come to the studio and see the contacts after the shoot if they so wished” – some of their parents were less pleased. Many of Green’s models had aristocratic blood, and saw Birds of Britain as a chance to escape a sheltered upbringing. “There was no such thing as the stereotypical ‘celebrity’ which we have today. In those days, many of the girls were hungry for publicity and they wanted their pictures to stand out in the book.”

Though its success was immediate – the book sold 20 times Green’s original print run and he and his models appeared on US TV on the Ed Sullivan show – it has been out of print for half a century.

Vicki Hodge, John D. Green’s studio, London 1966 Photograph John D. Green/ Ormond Yard Press

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B r i e f But then Guy White, owner of London’s Snap Galleries, convinced Green to finally exhibit his images in October this year. “He thought it very important to show the public these pictures, especially as the book is very difficult to obtain and very expensive to purchase. It really was, and is, very rare and iconic.” From February, it will be rather easier to track down.

The reissue, which features a host of images that never made the original, encapsulates a time when London was the one of the most vibrant cities on earth.

WORDS TOM BANHAM

the American Civil War. That the KKK actually spent most of its time terrorising and murdering African Americans was a reality Griffith chose to ignore. By the early 1870s, the KKK had pretty much died out, but Griffith’s movie was a key factor in its revival and it was used by the reborn organisation as a recruiting tool. African Americans demonstrated against its release and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) tried to have it banned, but their protests were ignored.

The Big Book of Birds of Britain is out in February “Griffith’s film relied heavily on racist snapgalleries.com propaganda to evoke fear and desperation as a tool to solidify white supremacy,” says Parker.

THE BIRTH OF A NATION “Not only did it motivate the massive resurgence D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, released in 1915, of the Ku Klux Klan and the carnage exacted is among the most controversial movies in cinema history. against people of African descent, it served as the Though a dramatic and technical masterpiece, it is foundation of the film industry we know today. I’ve spiritually ugly. He always denied it, reclaimed the title but Griffith’s film was a fan letter to the and repurposed Ku Klux Klan. it as a tool to Even in a remake-obsessed challenge racism Hollywood, it is not a film ripe for and white revival. And the film that shares its supremacy name, released in the UK in January, in America, to Still courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures is most certainly not a reboot. Rather, inspire a riotous © 2016 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

All Rights Reserved it is an attempt by the African American disposition actor and director Nate Parker to toward any and confront his country’s continuing racial divide. And he is all injustice in this country, and abroad, and to using Griffith’s title “ironically, but very much by design”. promote the kind of honest confrontation that will Parker’s feature-length directorial debut, The Birth of a Nation galvanise our society toward healing and sustained tells the story of Nat Turner, played by Parker, who led a systemic change.” slave uprising in Virginia during the summer of 1831.

Little is known about Turner’s early life: as a When the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, slave, he was in white society’s eyes a non-person. it won an Audience Award and a Grand Jury Award.

His rebellion was crushed within months and Viewed through Griffith’s lens, the Ku Klux Klan was a Turner was captured, given a speedy trial and heroic resistance movement fighting for the rights of the hanged beside 57 of his followers. For his film, defeated southern states in the years immediately following Parker has imagined Turner’s formative experiences and also referred to Still courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. © 2016 Twentieth Thomas Gray’s contemporaneous Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved book, The Confessions of Nat Turner, which was supposedly based on jailhouse conversations Gray had with Turner before his trial. A century on from Griffith’s propaganda piece, Parker’s The Birth of a Nation finally reclaims the title.

WORDS CHRIS MAY The Birth of a Nation is out in UK cinemas on 20 January foxsearchlight.com 32

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fall/winter 2016 wesc.com @wesc_uk @wesc1999 facebook.com/superlativeconspiracy

edwin-europe.com

B r i e f REBEL REBEL: HOW MAVERICKS MADE THE MODERN WORLD When Chris Sullivan surveys the world, he is unimpressed. “We’ve had the age of innocence, now we’re in the age of greed,” he says. “It’s the century of kowtow. The century where everyone is told what to do and they follow orders. You see very little individuality coming up any more. I don’t see anyone breaking new ground.”

He has poured these frustrations into a new book, Rebel Rebel: How Mavericks Made the Modern World, which recounts the lives (and often the deaths) of 45 iconoclasts, from musicians such as David Bowie and James Brown, to artists such as Egon Schiele and Man Ray, to objects such as the T-shirt and the pork pie hat. “People who created popular culture have always been mavericks,” he says.

“When they read this book, maybe people will realise that they don’t have to play the game. You don’t have to follow the rules to not only be successful, but to create something that matters.”

It helps, of course, that Zoot suit by Chris Sullivan those who bend the rules are invariably the most interesting. “They’re also just really nice people,” says Sullivan, on his encounters with Bowie and Mickey Rourke, Iggy Pop and Daniel Day-Lewis. “The ones who aren’t so nice are the ones who are sadly insufficient. I feel they need to bolster their meagre intelligence by being aresholes. But the genuinely talented I’ve always found are the most interesting and the most giving in interview.”

It is a book that Sullivan is uniquely qualified for.

As well as bylines everywhere from The Face to The Times, he has spent time as a musician, in the band Blue Rondo à la Turk, and in 1982 he launched the Wag Club, a den of iniquity even in what was then London’s most iniquitous district. “When I first started the Wag Club, Soho was a total red-light area,” says Sullivan.

“You had soldiers and stag nights, prostitutes and pimps and drug dealers.

We went there, we were allowed there, because very few people actually wanted to go there and the rents were cheap.”

It soon became the hang out for Boy George and Bowie (who filmed the video for ‘Blue Jean’ on its dancefloor), a club that always tacked Orson Welles by Chris Sullivan against the mainstream and played funk to new romantics and Kraftwerk to punks. It broke hip-hop and house in London. But, says Sullivan, it would never be possible today: “The people who owned the Wag were able to take a chance and get a 23-year-old to come and do what I did. Now, they’d have to make so much money that they haven’t got the leeway to allow that happen.”

In the wake of famed London club Fabric’s closure, of the soaring rents and rates that are converting the capital’s pubs and venues into chains (what was once the Wag is now an Irish theme pub, with a nod to its history carved into the facade), Sullivan believes the city has sold its creative energy. But he hopes that these problems stir up a new group of rebels, who will continue the legacy of those in his book.

“I’m always optimistic,” he says.

“In the ’70s, there was huge unemployment and out came punk rock. In the ’80s, Thatcher’s Britain, out came our whole scene, the clubbing generation. Sometimes out of the fire comes the feeling.” Here’s hoping Rebel Rebel sparks the flame.

WORDS TOM BANHAM Rebel Rebel: How Mavericks Made the Modern World is out in February unbound.com thesullivan.co.uk J &

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LA PAZ

B r i e f YOKO ONO Perhaps understandably, Yoko Ono’s music career has always suffered comparisons.

But a new series of reissues, by the Secretly Canadian label, hopes to shine new light on one of the most underappreciated artists of the 20th century.

The series begins with Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, her first LP with John Lennon, recorded at his Kenwood home in spring 1968. The pair had met 18 months earlier, when the Japanese fluxus artist was staging one of her conceptual exhibitions, Unfinished Paintings and Objects, in Mayfair, London.

“I didn’t have to have much knowledge about avant-garde or underground art, but the humour got me straight away,” Lennon told Jann S. Wenner, for a famous interview in Rolling Stone. One of the installations was a stepladder that led to a framed black panel, which revealed the word ‘Yes’ written on a tiny scrap of paper when viewed through a spyglass. “Well, all the so-called avant-garde art at the time, and everything that was supposedly interesting, was all negative,” Lennon told Playboy journalist David Sheff in 1980. “And just that ‘Yes’ made me stay.”

The Yes painting was one of a series of her Yoko Ono, 1960s “instructional pieces”, Photograph including her most famous Iain Macmillan © Yoko Ono work, Cut Piece, from 1964, which invited audience members to take a pair of scissors to the artist’s clothing. Thanks to exhibitions such as Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2015, she is now widely recognised as one of the leading artists of the avant-garde. But at the time, if she wasn’t slandered as the woman accused of

breaking up the Beatles, she was ignored. Lennon once called her “the world’s most famous unknown artist, everyone knows her name, but no one knows what she actually does”.

Just over a year after they met, they were having an affair. Two Virgins is the sound of their intense love blossoming as they attempted to weird each other out.

Lennon was already deep into studio experimentation with the Beatles and in Ono he found the perfect partner to explore his avant-garde leanings. In the early 1960s, she had created her own vocal style, which mixed visceral screeching with a technique from Japanese kabuki theatre called hetai – in which a singer strains their voice to convey deep emotion – to project her stream of consciousness.

Her interest in the intersections of sound and art had resulted in one of her earliest pieces, the 1961 work Voice Piece for Soprano, inspired by her great mentor John Cage.

“Scream 1.

Against the wind.

2. Against the wall. 3. Against the sky”, read the text on one side of a wall, with microphones and speakers installed to project the resultant noise.

On Two Virgins, her ad lib screams are looped and stretched by Lennon, along with snatches of conversations, laugher, footsteps, whistling, and the discordant sounds of various tape effects as Lennon bashes on a piano or hits a drum.

As he recounted to Sheff, the pair had taken acid then recorded the album in one night, on the tapes Lennon used to record loops for the Beatles. “She was doing her funny voices and I was pushing all different buttons J &

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B r i e f was encouraged, on my tape recorder and getting and both were sound effects.” later suppressed The pair’s second LP, 1969’s

by Stalin, who Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the considered them Lions, began with a half-hour suite dangerously of improvised music recorded at libertarian. Stalin the University of Cambridge’s Lady instead sponsored Mitchell Hall. On side two, they the rigidly expanded on their idea that “life propagandist and our love is our art – every nitty, and relentlessly gritty part of it”. It was recorded optimistic socialist at London’s Queen Charlotte’s realism school, a Hospital, where Ono was admitted key weapon in the for a pregnancy complication and cult of personality ultimately lost a child. As well as surrounding his ‘Baby’s Heartbeat’ and ‘Two Minutes leadership of the of Silence’, this latest reissue includes Soviet Union the haunting folk of Ono’s composition following Lenin’s ‘Song for John’. death in 1924.

Recorded in 1970, and the last in this But the iconoclasm, first batch of reissues, her solo debut Memorial to Fallen Leaders, 1927 Artwork Gustav Klutsis, radical crosswas almost conventional compared to courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of fertilisation and the Unfinished Music LPs. Yoko Ono/ the Judith Rothschild Foundation. © 2016 / Artists Rights sense of urgency Plastic Ono Band was recorded at Abbey Society (ARS), New York within suprematism and constructivism Road studios and released on the same day as John went on to wield an influence on art that still Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Both LPs featured Ringo Starr reverberates. MoMA’s exhibition brings together on drums and Klaus Voormann on bass and shared the leading practitioners of both movements. an almost identical cover. But unlike Lennon’s LP, Superficially similar in their use of geometric which was widely praised at the time, Ono’s avant-garde shapes, suprematism and constructivism were rock opus was, unsurprisingly, ridiculed. Nearly 40 years separate movements with conflicting on, it is regarded as being years ahead of its time and philosophies. Suprematism, founded by Kazimir tracks such as ‘Why’ and ‘Why Not’ (featuring Ono’s Malevich, was an abstract incredible hetai vocals) still sound like style built around the future. rectangles, triangles and WORDS ANDY THOMAS squares – “the supreme square” as Malevich put Reissues of Unfinished Music No. 1 it – and championed “art for and No. 2, and Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono art’s sake”. Philosophically Band, are out now. Further reissues aligned with Italian are due in 2017 futurism, constructivism, secretlycanadian.com by contrast, believed that A REVOLUTIONARY IMPULSE art should directly reflect As Russia prepares to mark the the real world. centennial of the 1917 Revolution, The term “construction two of the era’s art movements, art” was first used by suprematism and constructivism, Malevich in 1917, as a are celebrated by New York’s dismissive description of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). the work of the artist and Record, 1926 Photograph El Lissitzky, courtesy of Both flourished in the years photographer Alexander the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of immediately after the Revolution, Thomas Walther. © 2016 / Artists Rights Society Rodchenko. In his (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn when experimentation in all the arts influential treatise on 38

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B r i e f abstract art, The Non-Objective World, Malevich wrote: “In the year 1913, trying desperately to free art from the dead weight of the real world, I took refuge in the form of the square.” With collaborators such as the musician Mikhail Matyushin, and the poet Aleksei Kruchenykh, Malevich wrote a manifesto calling for the rejection of rational thought and for Orphans of the Storm, London, 1954 Photograph the embrace of the © Ken Russell/Topfoto subconscious – ideas that were antithetical to Rodchenko and his followers. Rodchenko wrote that suprematism and indeed almost every other existing approach to painting created “redundant, exclusive art, and cannot be any use to the masses”.

Constructivism’s sympathies with the post-Lenin Soviet state did not save it from official persecution, and constructivist and suprematist artists were harassed with equal vigour by Stalin in the 1920s and 1930s. Natalia Goncharova self-exiled to Paris in 1921 to avoid arrest, as did Aleksandra Ekster in 1924. Vladimir Mayakovsky, worn down by threats and censorship, committed suicide in 1930. Much of Malevich’s work was confiscated and he was banned from exhibiting any new paintings in the suprematist style. In 1931, Rodchenko was expelled from the state sponsored October Circle of artists, charged with “formalism” and encouraging “bourgeois” values.

Malevich – whose seminal The Black Square, an oil painting of a black square on a pale background, was shown at Tate Modern in 2014 in the exhibition Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art – is featured in the new exhibition alongside Rodchenko, Goncharova, Ekster and Mayakovsky.

WORDS CHRIS MAY A Revolutionary Impulse: the Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde is at the Museum of Modern Art, New York until 12 March moma.org 40

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KEN RUSSELL: REALITY IS A DIRTY WORD As a filmmaker across six decades, Ken Russell earned his reputation as the wild man of British cinema. This was certainly evident in his art documentaries about classical musicans and performers such as Edward Elgar, Claude Debussy and Isadora Duncan (as a young man, Russell had harboured ambitions to be a ballet dancer, but went on to join the merchant navy). But he was also capable of applying his unique skills to more marketable ends, with films such as Billion Dollar Brain, Women in Love, The Devils, The Boy Friend, Tommy and Altered States – each its own creature, but all joined in the way they straddle the artful and the commercial.

But it all began for Russell as a postwar photographer for Illustrated Magazine and Picture Post, and it is that period of his career that the Proud Chelsea gallery in London’s Kings Road is focusing on in a new retrospective exhibition. The show, which focuses on postwar London, features a series of images that are at once quirky or bizarre, but also ordinary and mundane; a body of work that includes his best known project, published in 1955 in Picture Post, ‘The Last of the Teddy Girls’.

Allow Me, London, 1955 Photograph © Ken Russell/Topfoto

'Harry Stedman and the Cunard Yanks’ an Exhibition The Shipping Forecast Liverpool L1 4BW Thursday 13th October 6-10pm RSVP: RLEE@HARRYSTEDMAN.COM

B r i e f “In a way I was making still films,” Russell once said of his formative years. “Some were catch-as-catch-can, but I learnt the value of the perfect composition.”

WORDS MARK WEBSTER Reality is a Dirty Word: Photographs by Ken Russell is at Proud Chelsea, 161 Kings Road, London SW3 until 15 January proudonline.co.uk Teyonah Parris as Lysistrata Courtesy of Vertigo Releasing

CHI-RAQ Since 2001, around 5,000 US citizens have been killed in Chicago – more than in either Iraq or Afghanistan in the same time period. The gun violence has been so focused on the city’s south and west sides that its residents have christened the area ‘Chi-Raq’. This in turn inspired Spike Lee’s new musical satire, Chi-Raq, a modern take on the ancient Greek play, Lysistrata. As in the Aristophanes comedy, it centres on a group of women who withhold sex from their husbands until they end the violence that is killing their sons. Unlike the source material, it explores race and sexuality in the US with Lee’s typical exuberance and wit.

Chi-Raq is also the nickname of the film’s male lead, actor and rapper Nick Cannon. Demetrius ‘Chi-Raq’ Dupree, as well as leading the purple-clad Spartan gang, is a low-level hip-hop artist with big-time aspirations. In him, rap braggadocio meets real-life horror. In one scene, Dupree raps onstage about being ready to shoot down rivals, when a gunman from rival gang the Trojans – led

by Sean ‘Cyclops’ Andrews (played by Wesley Snipes) – attempts to shoot him but strikes another member of the group instead.

At home, Dupree’s girlfriend Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) is unnerved by the way he flaunts firearms. Inspired by an online video of the Liberian female activist Leymah Gbowee, Lysistrata speaks to her neighbour, the intellectual Miss Helen – a bereaved mother whose daughter was shot down decades ago – to devise a plan to organise a sex strike until Chicago’s young black men abandon their guns. Also starring Samuel L. Jackson, John Cusack and Jennifer Hudson, Lee’s Chi-Raq proves that masculinity is in no better shape now than it was two millennia ago.

WORDS EDWARD MOORE Chi-Raq, by Spike Lee, is out now vertigofilms.com

NO SLEEP: NYC NIGHTLIFE FLYERS 1988-1999 There have been a number of books on UK rave posters over the years, but No Sleep is the first time someone has collated and published similar material from the same period in New York. That someone is Adrian Bartos, better known as DJ Stretch Armstrong. Produced with the help of hip-hop historian Evan Auerbach, the book follows his 2015 film with fellow DJ Bobbito Garcia, Radio That Changed Lives, and is set to become just as eagerly devoured by those interested in American dance culture.

One of those who collected flyers was British DJ and musician Mark Ronson, who has contributed an introduction to the new book.

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B r i e f manifestation of the evolution of New York’s downtown scene,” he writes.

“The artwork could look born from a Basquiat 12-inch record sleeve: hand drawn, collagist, and gorgeous. Or it could be as playful and eye-catching as Warhol’s pop art.”

It’s not just the artwork or graphics that are of interest but the stories behind them. And this is where the book stands out, as it talks about their importance to DJs, dancers and promoters. Ronson recalls his name first appearing on a flyer under that of DJ Stretch Armstrong. “I can’t overstate the importance of this; there, on a glossy piece of card was my name,” he says. “Those flyers went everywhere. They were handed out by the hundreds on 14th Street and sat by the doors of Phat Farm, Supreme, and Union. But still, it wasn’t the ego-stroke of ‘now the world will know my name!’ It was the fact that it made it real. Before the internet, there weren’t many ways to prove your status unless you were legitimately famous.”

Todd Terry tells a similar story about his name first appearing on a flyer at the World. “Man, it was crazy seeing my name on that flyer for the first time. DJing in a club in Manhattan? I thought I had really made it big time, and getting paid a few hundred bucks, too?! It was a big

deal for me to DJ at the World – in Manhattan!

So, from that to having my name on a flyer? I showed that off to my whole neighbourhood.

I was the shit!”

In the days before the internet these DIY flyers were a vital promotional tool. “Invites back then were our only way of marketing. Pre-digital and pre-social media, they were critical,” says Peter Gatien, owner of clubs Palladium, Limelight, Tunnel and Club USA. “We were doing 17 nights a week between the four clubs and often two or three different parties within the same night, so we were doing at least 30 invites a week.”

From Louie Vega talking about his early days playing Latin freestyle at the Devil’s Nest, to Fab 5 Freddy recalling the last golden days of New York hip-hop, the book also serves as a lament for a lost Manhattan.

“Looking through old flyers is to walk through a ghost town buried under high-rise condos, Starbucks and CVS stores, and remarkably anonymous 21st-century architecture,” says writer Nelson George. “Buried beneath them are clubs and parties that spoke for a wilder, more reckless and innovative city than the one we live in now.”

WORDS ANDY THOMAS No Sleep: NYC Nightlife Flyers 1988-1999 is out now powerhousebooks.com

GIMME DANGER Jim Jarmusch has created some of cinema’s most iconic images. But in his latest project, which explores the earliest years of Iggy Pop and the Stooges, he was hamstrung by a lack of film material by other people. Like Neil Young, the subject of his 1997 documentary Year of the Horse, the Stooges emerged in the late 1960s. Unlike Young, they were rarely filmed during their heyday, a big problem for J &

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B r i e f a documentary project.

At a press conference which announced Gimme Danger at the Cannes Film Festival last May, Jarmusch and Iggy Pop explained that one of the challenges facing the production had been the limited amount of historical footage of the band. But fortunately, said Pop, he had been able to call in favours from “old drug dealers, bootleggers and strange followers”, who made available previously unseen 8mm footage. Jarmusch has also woven in TV commercials, industrial footage and old newsreels from the 1950s and 1960s to provide a broad contemporary context for the reminiscences of Pop and original Stooges Ron and Scott Asheton. “It’s kind of a collage,” said Jarmusch. “We wanted to make something somehow close to the Stooges’ music, which is not easy to do with film.”

Another veteran of the era featured in the movie is the writer and Elektra Records executive Danny Fields [interviewed in the previous issue of Jocks & Nerds], who told me about the shock and awe he felt when he first heard the Stooges. “Journalists I knew who’d gone to cover the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, where there were a lot of street demonstrations, told me about the MC5, who played as part of the protests,” said Fields. “So I flew to Detroit to hear them, this Iggy Pop and the Stooges at Max’s Kansas City, New York, 1973 Photograph Danny Fields c/o Gillian McCain, courtesy of Amazon Studios/Magnolia Pictures

Scott Asheton, Iggy Pop, Ron Asheton and Dave Alexander Photograph © Frank Pettis, courtesy of Amazon Studios/ Magnolia Pictures

rebellious rock’n’roll band living in a commune.

‘Rock’n’roll and fucking in the streets’ was their mantra. Signing them was a no-brainer.

Wayne Kramer [guitarist with the MC5] said to me the night after I’d heard them, ‘If you like us, you’re really going to like our baby brother band, the Stooges. They’re playing this afternoon right across the street.’ I heard them before I saw them, as I was coming into the building. And I thought, ‘This is it, this is the Wagner of rock’n’roll music.’ And then I got in the auditorium and saw Iggy.” In an enthusiastic phone call to Elektra boss Jac Holzman in New York, Fields famously persuaded him to offer the band a deal there and then.

WORDS CHRIS MAY Gimme Danger is out on DVD on 16 January dogwoof.com gimmedanger.co.uk

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B&O PLAY H9 HEADPHONES The newest incarnation of the B&O Play H headphone series, the H9, draws on the range’s existing technological advances, with active noise cancellation, leather and anodised aluminium details, 14 hours of wireless battery and a touch interface.

Out now

Photographs Klaus Thymann Styling Edward Moore and Chris Tang Words Tom Banham and Edward Moore Photographic Assistant Grace Lines

THE CAPRA

The Capra is a new, five-star lodge in the Swiss resort of Saas-Fee. A former barn, it features a library, spa and a restaurant helmed by two Michelin-starred chef Oliver Glowig. Amongst the series of events at the hotel, on 21 January the resort hosts the Ice Climbing World Cup, in which climbers race to scale a 10-storey wall of ice. capra.ch

TIMBERLAND ‘MADE IN THE US’ EIGHT-INCH CLASSIC YELLOW BOOT Timberland’s Yellow Boot is the jewel in its crown. The American outdoor brand, a pioneer of waterproof leather since 1972, reintroduces the eight-inch version, made with the high-performance materials that are a hallmark of the brand’s rugged ethos.

Out now 48

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SUNSPEL X GLOVERALL DUFFLE COAT Gloverall has made duffle coats for over half a century; such is their popularity that the Gloverall name is virtually synonymous with this classic garment. Sunspel has taken a late ’80s shape, shortened the overall length and added details including buffalo horn toggles.

Out now J &

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ABSOLUT FACET Over the past four decades, Swedish vodka brand Absolut has utilised a stylised take on its bottle and name in a range of memorable advertising campaigns. Further playing with the form and perception of the simple, pure bottle shape, Absolut releases a limited edition design, Facet, which disguises the usually round surface with an asymmetric style that creates a sparkling effect reminiscent of gem stones.

Out in early January

C.P. COMPANY P.LASTIC Forever pushing the boundaries of manufacture and fabric technology, C.P. Company’s latest innovation, P.Lastic, ditches scissors and thread, creating a range that is laser cut and sonically welded. The jackets, which are lightweight and waterproof, can be thrown into luggage without fear of creasing.

Out in spring 2017

BALLY X ANDRÉ André Saraiva is a French graffiti artist and hospitality entrepreneur, best known for his character Mr A: a top hat-wearing stickman. He has worked with a range of brands including Chanel and Nike, and served as creative director of L’Officiel Hommes magazine until last year. His latest collaboration is a collection with Bally that includes boots, wallets and a range of accessories.

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VILEBREQUIN WINTER SUNS French beachwear company Vilebrequin has created three different shorts for fathers and sons, each with a seasonal-themed motif print that acknowledges not every Christmas wonderland is wintry.

Out now ORLEBAR BROWN X RICHARD HAINES Renowned New York-based illustrator Richard Haines’ work has previously been used by the like of Prada and Patrick Ervell. The latest brand to call upon his witty, painterly imagery is British leisurewear brand Orlebar Brown.

Together they have created a collection, Jump Off the Jetty, inspired by the great Canadian outdoors.

Out now

SANDQVIST LUCID The Sanqvist Lucid collection is the Swedish bag company’s first collection to solely use ecologically conscious materials.

The range, which includes rucksacks and washbags made from recycled polyster, is fully waterproof.

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HOMME PLISSÉ ISSEY MIYAKE SPRING SERIES Shunga is a traditional Japanese art form famed for its (often humorous) erotic scenes.

During the Edo period it was banned for being too risqué, which only increased its popularity.

Issey Miyake has taken some of the most famous images, printing them on a series of haori jackets and garment linings.

Out now

TURNBULL & ASSER X LARKE Jermyn Street stalwart Turnbull & Asser has partnered with its neighbour Larke, one of the few eyewear brands that still manufactures in London. Inspired by Turnbull & Asser’s bold and eccentric style, Larke has created a range of frames using deadstock acetates, which play on fictional literary characters.

Out in spring 2017

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PAUL & SHARK X CHRIS FALLOWS South African biologist and photographer Chris Fallows has dedicated much of his work to challenging negative perceptions of sharks and fighting for better protection for a species that is integral to ocean ecosystems. To mark its 40th anniversary, Italian yachting brand Paul & Shark has reworked one of Fallows’ shark photographs into a camo print, which has been applied to jackets, bags and even a surfboard.

Out on 14 February A new Paul & Shark shop opens at 20 St James Market, Regent Street, London SW1 in January

PORTS 1961 X EVERLAST May 1965, and a young Muhammad Ali stands over a floored Sonny Liston, in the first round of their famous second meeting. The ‘V’ of his right arm is both the result of a knockout punch and a victory sign; beneath it, his shorts, emblazoned with the Everlast logo. Taking inspiration from Ali’s boxing attire, Ports 1961’s creative director, Milan Vukmirovic, has reworked key pieces from Everlast’s past, including the ‘Rocky’ hoodie, adding prints and logos.

Out now

FARAH HOPSACK CAPSULE COLLECTION With their slim silhouette and sharp, pressed fronts, Farah’s trousers were synonymous with the various subcultures jostling and joshing on Britain’s streets in the final decades of the previous century – the original ‘Hopsack’ was a true favourite, particularly amongst the ’ 80s casuals.

And it is that staple which is the inspiration for Farah’s new collection, which brings together tops and jackets alongside the trousers.

Out now

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BREMONT BOEING 100 To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Britain’s most famous aircraft manufacturer, Boeing, Bremont has created a limited edition of 300 watches manufactured using Boeing’s aviation-grade titanium. Each watch also features a piece of carbon fibre composite from the Boeing Dreamliner testbed aircraft, the ZA004, integrated into its crown.

Out now BELL & ROSS MARINE INSTRUMENTS Watchmaker Bell & Ross traditionally finds inspiration in aviation cockpits and their instruments. So this collection, which takes ideas from the first truly successful marine instruments of the 18th century, is a surprising step away from its usually skyward-looking dials.

Out now

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ROSSIGNOL PADDLE TENNIS SET Despite being over 100 years old, paddle tennis, first conceived in New York by one Frank Peer Beal, still operates as a ‘fringe’ sport, which is perhaps the appeal for its fans.

As French skiwear brand Rossignol continues to develop its range of apparel, the game has been a key influence for the latest collection.

Out on 17 March

NUDIE JEANS DUDE DAN The Swedish denim brand’s Dude Dan is its love letter to the home of the humble coverall (jeans).

Sourcing organic cotton from Texas, the jeans are dyed with indigo from Tennessee before being manufactured into a classic regular rise, straight-leg cut.

Out in January

KENT & CURWEN Launched in 1926 by Eric Kent and Dorothy Curwen, the British brand began as military outfitters. When national sports teams came knocking, it was natural to emblazon “three lions on a shirt” from the Kent family heraldry.

For the brand’s relaunch, it is fitting that ex-footballer David Beckham is working with designer Daniel Kearns in a creative capacity.

Out now

MICHIKO KOSHINO YEN JEANS Michiko Koshino was part of a band of independent British labels that thrived in the ’90s; in the spirit of the time, her shop on Covent Garden’s Neal Street famously housed a DJ. Koshino was one of the first ‘designer’ labels to create a denim line, Yen Jeans, which was made with premium Japanese denim.

The range is being revived with the same attention to detail and quality for 2017.

Out soon

A CHILD OF THE JAGO X JUSTIN DEAKIN Joe Corré’s rakish label, A Child of the Jago, has teamed up with luxury footwear designer Justin Deakin to create a 18th century boot-inspired trainer that they have branded the ‘Highpad’, the contemporary term for a horse-mounted highwayman.

Out on 15 December

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GANT GEAR UP Gant started life in the early part of the last century as a shirt brand in New Haven, in the heart of east coast America Wasp country, and is a true pioneer of preppy fashion. Bringing this enduring style into today’s lifestyle, the brand has developed a range of classic pieces, such as shirts and blazers, that cycling commuters can adjust to fit the ever-changing city weather.

Out in February 2017

KODAK EKTRA SMARTPHONE When Kodak went bankrupt in 2012, it seemed to mark the final nail in the coffin for analogue photography. Kodak, which was started by George Eastman in 1888, created some of the most important cameras and film, many of which have been coveted by the world’s greatest photographers. The brand is still synonymous with excellence and trust and Kodak has worked hard to capitalise on its rich past with products relevant to an age of digital photography. Its latest is a smartphone, the Kodak Ektra, which combines technical knowhow with an understanding of the needs and desires of today’s consumer.

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KENNETH COLE MANKIND HERO In the early ’80s Kenneth Cole, whose father owned his own shoe manufacturing company, started an eponymous footwear label and sold 40,000 pairs of his first collection. It has grown to add clothing and accessories, making it one of America’s most-established brands. The first fragrance launched in 2001; the latest incarnation is the Mankind Hero range, which incorporates an after-shave balm and hair and body wash.

Out on now

PRETTY GREEN BLACK LABEL COLLABORATIONS Liam Gallagher’s Pretty Green is famed for references to music and subculture fashion, such as the Beatles and mod style. Its Black Label line offers that aesthetic in premium fabrics. Inspired by Manchester’s late ’80s and early ’90s music scene, it has collaborated with two traditional British labels, knitwear brand John Smedley and hat makers Christys’.

Out in January LARDINI MILAN STORE Since 1978 Lardini has made ready-to-wear tailoring in its factories on Italy’s east coast. In recent years it has grown its range, most notably with the RVR line, which utilises technical fabrics for reversible outerwear.

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On 1 July 2016, over 1,000 volunteers appeared around the UK in First World War uniforms to mark the Battle of the Somme’s centenary. Each proffered a card naming a soldier who died, with the hashtag #wearehere. The work, We’re Here Because We’re Here, was created by Jeremy Deller in collaboration with National Theatre director Rufus Norris.

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Digital culture has permeated every aspect of modern existence, for good and for bad. But what effect is it having on our arts institutions, and on cultural output itself? We spoke to three major players in the art and museum worlds – Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, New York’s Museum of Modern Art director Glenn Lowry, and London’s Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist – to find out.

Words Chris May

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ow seen as symbols of egalitarianism, making great art and ancestral treasures accessible to all, the first museums and art galleries were private collections with strict door policies. Aristocrats, clerics and scholars were granted access; less elevated members of society were not. During the Victorian age and the half century leading up to it, when some of the ‘wonder rooms’ and ‘cabinets of curiosities’ became outward-facing philanthropic institutions, and new museums and art galleries were founded, visitor restrictions were retained. When London’s British Museum opened to the public in 1759, it was feared that admitting the lower classes would lead to the objects on display being damaged. Visitors had to apply in advance, in writing, for tickets. Revolutionary France was the first European country to establish a national museum open to all. The Louvre Museum in Paris, opened in 1793, allowed free entry to the former French royal collections to all citizens. In Britain, most of today’s national museums and art galleries were established in the century following the opening of the Louvre. London’s National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Natural History Museum and National Portrait Gallery were founded between 1824 and 1896.

The Science Museum opened in 1909.

Until the digital age, if you wanted to view the objects on display in these museums, the only way to do it, aside from buying books of miniaturised reproductions, was by physically visiting the buildings themselves. But today, most important art and many archaeological artefacts are immediately and remotely accessible by a tap on an iPad or smartphone. As a result, some commentators are questioning the continued need for bricks-and-mortar institutions. They ask whether people still have the hunger, or even the need, to visit museums. Museums, they suggest, are analogue-age relics whose time is up.

The evidence for this is inconclusive. Some museums have increasing visitor numbers, others have seen decreases, and long-term trends are hard to nail down. During 2015, reports the UK’s Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, attendances at the British Museum reached a record-breaking 6.8 million, an increase of 100,000 on the previous year. Numbers at the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum were also up. But attendances at the National Gallery and Tate Modern were down, with the Tate losing a million visitors (a 19 per cent fall, which looks like being reversed now the Switch House extension is open). Are these variations in performance, in both directions, linked in any way to digital culture? Will digitally enabled virtual visits ultimately replace physical visits?

Or can modern communications technology enhance the museum going experience?

Jeremy Deller believes that, far from being threatened by digital culture, museum attendances are stimulated by it. “As the world becomes more virtual, people feel a need to see real objects more,” says Deller. “You can look at anything you want onscreen or on your phone, but the experience of the actual physical object is something that can’t be replicated virtually.

You have to go to a specific place to have that experience and that makes it more precious, more special, the fact that there is only one place for it. If you go to somewhere like the British Museum, some of their objects are treated like rock stars – there are never less than 20 people around the Rosetta Stone, for instance, taking pictures of it. You can approximate seeing a two-dimensional painting through virtual, perhaps, but at the moment you can’t do that with three-dimensional things like sculptures. You can’t walk round them. Maybe in 15 or 20 years you’ll be able to. But not yet. Then there’s the question of scale.

You can’t recreate the Elgin Marbles in your living room. So you have to go to the British Museum to see them.” And if you want

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to see Picasso’s Guernica, or Hockney’s digitally produced multi-screen landscapes, at the scale the artists intended, you have to visit the museums that are displaying them.

Deller is confident that the public’s love of museums is secure. The real existential question, he says, is whether there is the political will to fund them.

We are speaking a few days after Walsall council announced that it might close the town’s highly regarded New Art Gallery in order to save money.

The previous week, Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden said that it proposed to allocate future budgets to scientific studies rather than continue to finance its onsite gallery, Inverleith House, from which the funding organisation Creative Scotland withdrew support two years ago.

“All museums are under financial pressure, even in London, which tells you something,” says Deller. “I’m sure about the hunger and curiosity of the public, and their willingness to go to museums. But I’m not sure about the hunger among politicians to support them and understand their value. At the moment, museums are under threat of closing due to a terrible lack of funding.

But however much the British Museum, for instance, suffers from financial pressure, to close it would be a national disgrace, and politicians are well aware of that. The New Art Gallery and Inverleith House are both super successful and super respected. It’s not as though they’re failing institutions.

In terms of what they do they’re hugely important. They’ve done some incredible shows. But it’s weird in art, because the objects that are owned by museums and galleries are often worth huge amounts of money, I think a lot of politicians look at these assets and can’t understand why they’re not being sold to support the institutions. In a way, the growth of the art market has become a problem for museums.”

One great opportunity digital offers to museums, says Deller, is the way it increases the degree to which contextual information can be made readily accessible to audiences. “Virtual allows you to experience things from all over the world, content that couldn’t be shared previously,” he says. “You can find out more about the artists, find out more background, prepare for what you will see in physical shows. It’s clearly something that the public want. So there’s that kind of archival resource element to virtual. Almost like a library.”

Deller also acknowledges the publicity potential of digital platforms, where social media have become the new channels for word-of-mouth recommendation. “It’s a rapidly changing landscape,” says Deller. “Ten years ago, most museums didn’t allow audiences to take photos. But museums really want people to take pictures now, they see the benefit of the public discussing their shows on social media. They know that word of mouth is

As the world becomes more virtual, people feel a need to see real objects more. You can look at anything you want onscreen or on your phone, but the experience of the physical object is something that can’t be replicated virtually.

Jeremy Deller, artist

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You have to constantly check that your digital material is not corrupted. We’re talking millions of dollars a year just to keep it up to date. Viewed from that perspective, the good oldfashioned painting is looking like a really good thing.

Glenn Lowry, director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art

always the best publicity. For instance, We’re Here Because We’re Here [Deller’s multi-venue tableaux commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme in July 2016] had a huge online presence on the day, bigger than for any other online artwork in Britain, I’m told. The trending of posts about it was incredible actually. I was amazed.”

For Glenn Lowry at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where visitor numbers increased in 2015, digital is integral to the future wellbeing of museums. For Lowry, the issue is not that digital presents a threat to bricks-and-mortar institutions, but that it comes with a large price tag. He says that over the past decade, MoMA’s digital expenditure has grown from around a million to several million dollars a year and the rate of increase is accelerating. To prevent acquisitions budgets being cut to pay for the technology and programmes it enables, new money has to be found.

“It’s the fastest growing aspect of our budget,” says Lowry. “We haven’t even begun to grapple with how much money we need to allocate for digital. I think most museums haven’t. For instance, we just put online our entire exhibition history since 1929 [when MoMA was founded]. It includes press releases, photographs, checklists and so on. There are around 30,000 images. We needed a special grant from a foundation to do that. But it’s already become our most sought-after research tool. You want to find out whether MoMA ever did an exhibition on neolithic rock painting? It turns out we did – here are the images from that show, here is what we wrote about it when we put it together.

That’s just the research side of digital, which takes up millions of dollars before you start producing online courses, enriched websites and social media conversations.”

Lowry points out that the cost of storing and maintaining a digital archive dwarfs its start-up costs. Digital art arrives at MoMA in unstable formats, because as software evolves it needs to be transferred to new programmes in order to stay viewable, and even if it does not need to be transferred, software becomes corrupted. “You have to constantly check to make sure that your material is clean,” says Lowry. “We’ve had to create a digital repository which takes everything we acquire digitally, migrates it to a master platform and then constantly upgrades that platform to a stable condition. Doing this is wildly expensive. We’re talking millions of dollars a year just to keep it up to date. And it will become increasingly expensive as more and more art comes to us in a digital format. Viewed from that perspective, the good old-fashioned painting is looking like a really good thing.”

Costs aside, Lowry sees digital as a win-win for museums. “If you’re in our end of the art world, digital opportunities provide an enormous set of possibilities that are on one hand liberating,

because they allow us to access ever greater audiences, and on the other hand enabling, because they allow us to do more and do better,” says Lowry.

“I don’t see it in the least bit as a threat, any more so than live broadcasts of sporting events reduce attendance at those events. I see digital as an incredibly valuable extension of what we do. It is an essential and integral part of both how we communicate to our audiences and also how we generate content. And that is as true for social media platforms as it is for websites and as it is for the use of digital devices. They’re all interrelated and that’s one of the things that makes digital so interesting. It allows for a rich, integrated experience. A decade ago people were scratching their heads about websites – forget later manifestations of digital possibilities such as social media – but today everybody is talking about how do they build out the most robust digital content and what are the strategies for doing that. There isn’t a single museum I know of in North America that isn’t deeply engaged with trying to figure that out and isn’t excited about it.

“I think we’re going to either evolve to the point where the virtual and the real are one and the same thing, a kind of collapsing of the space between the virtual and real, or we’re going to evolve to a point where we accept that we have multiple locations, one of them being an actual location in London or New York, and another in digital space. And those locations don’t have to mirror each other. They’re two separate entities that feed off each other, but can provide different kinds of experiences. For instance, we offer a range of online courses that engage audiences around the world, many of whom will never come to MoMA. We offer conversations, blogs and programmes on our website that don’t have space in the physical museum. They amplify what we do. They connect audiences to each other in new and different ways.” Given that alongside the artworks themselves, MoMA maintains a library of around 300,000 books and exhibition catalogues, 1,000 periodical titles and 40,000 files of ephemera about individual artists, which the majority of MoMA’s worldwide audience will never get the chance to see as physical objects, Lowry’s enthusiasm for digital distribution makes sense.

Hans Ulrich Obrist has no doubt of the continuing public desire to see art live. “Here at the Serpentine it has been a record year,” says Obrist. “We’re having more visitors than ever before and the average age of the audience is young. So there is still a strong desire to visit exhibitions, to see things otherwise than just on a screen.”

But Obrist acknowledges that predicting long-term trends is a tricky exercise. “We don’t really know what the future will bring for people who grew up using digital media,” he says. “This is why my colleague Simon Castets and I set up the 89plus project, which investigates the generation of innovators born on or after 1989. The 89plus generation, who were born after Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the world wide web, are the first generation to have grown up with this technology since early childhood.

We started to map them and we have a database of about 7,000 people now. This allows us to see patterns. One of the first things we saw was that many of these young emerging artists connect strongly with poetry. So the widely reported story that writing would be diminished or even disappear in the digital age has proven to be wrong. There is a whole new generation of J &

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The widely reported story that writing would be diminished or even disappear in the digital age has proven to be wrong.

There is a whole new generation of artist-poets emerging.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of London’s Serpentine Galleries

artist-poets emerging. And the story that books would disappear when the internet started […] if you look at the 89plus artists there is feverish publishing activity, more than ever before.” Go to any art event today and you will likely find at least one tabletop display of self-published books and magazines.

“I tend to be optimistic in this regard,” says Obrist. “But of course I always want to check my suppositions. Which is what we can do with the 89plus project, and our findings confirm my innate optimism. Digital is not replacing the physical experience. It would be very sad if it did, of course, if Instagram replaced going to a gallery. But our findings suggest that people embrace digital to see what they wouldn’t otherwise be able to see – because we can’t physically be everywhere at once. Digital doesn’t affect the desire for the live, which is as strong in art as it is in music. So I think exhibition going will continue to grow.

Digital and physical complement each other. Neither negates the other.”

Obrist points to his mentor, the Martinican writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant, who developed the concept of modality. Glissant offered this as an alternative to digitally facilitated globalisation and the binary nature of responses to it, for and against. “Glissant wrote that globalisation triggers a homogenisation of cultures,” says Obrist. “Some disappear and those that are left begin to resemble each other. So globalisation encourages a process of extinction. The counterreaction to globalisation is even worse; it leads to a lack of tolerance, a new form of xenophobia and new forms of racism.

Which is horrendous. Glissant said that we face two traps in the 21st century – globalisation and the counterreaction. He put forward modality as a kind of third way, which embraces global dialogue and understanding and the possibility of us changing through engaging with other cultures. We don’t lose our identity by doing that; our identity becomes more exciting in the process.

Glissant said modality was a difference-enhancing global dialogue.”

Another major benefit of digital technology, says Obrist, is the ease with which it enables emerging artists to establish a public profile. “They can become visible by doing it themselves – there’s a long tradition in London of artists presenting exhibitions in private apartments – or they can show in art schools and exhibitions,” says Obrist. “Now there is another level through which artists can become visible, through Instagram and so forth. I have no problem with that, as long as it is complementary to rather than replacing live. It can also be used by established artists. Stephen Shore, for instance, has started a photographic project on Instagram. By looking at his Instagram feed, you see a new Stephen Shore photograph each day.”

Does Obrist think that there is any likelihood of a generation of artists emerging who put aside creating physical artefacts and focus exclusively on virtual art? Not the millennials, perhaps, but the next generation. “When photography was invented, people said painting would disappear,” says Obrist. “But painting was actually reinvented through photography. When TV was invented, people thought that radio was threatened. But look at how radio is developing today. All over the world there are exciting new radio stations, often niche stations, using digital technology. I think parallel realities are always going to exist, and I think they can enrich each other. There is so much exciting drawing going on among the new generation of artists.

So another layer is added.

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“Here at the Serpentine we are very interested in art that emerges digitally. We show all kinds of art. We want to focus on digital art as another aspect of reality. Not to replace physical art but to complement it. We are doing digital commissions which live purely online. When a physical exhibition actually happens, it comes and goes. It has a finite life and then the works go to the next city or are returned to the artists or collectors. But with digital a new notion of oeuvre is actually created, one which will last, potentially, for thousands of years, as long as there is electricity. And if that work is created with algorithms, it will continue evolving as long as there is electricity.

Earlier this year, we commissioned an interactive digital work using algorithms, called Bad Corgi, from Ian Cheng. It is about resisting the idea of being programmed and the work will continue to evolve.”

Theatre goers observe that watching a stage performance as part of an audience enriches the experience. Obrist says the same applies to museum visitors. “Spending a lot of time in front of a screen can lead to a new form of solitude,” says Obrist.

“Even if you’re in touch with people all over the world, you’re still in a bubble. Tim Berners-Lee is concerned about the direction it is taking. He says he invented the internet to encourage enquiry. But now we find the internet locks us more and more into our existing predilections – filters stop us getting opposite opinions and just give us stuff our online history legitimises as something we are interested in. Quite the reverse of the enquiry that Berners-Lee sought to facilitate. We need to be confronted by other voices, other ideas. Instead, the tendency is to lock us into our filter bubble.

“Many artists now want to explode the filter bubble and go back to enquiry, back to being flâneurs,” says Obrist.

“To escape that in art, we need gatherings such as you get at exhibitions, and we need rituals. The Palais de Tokyo [in Paris] was recently transformed by Tino Sehgal into a living sculpture – you encounter people, you have conversations, you see constellations, it’s a ritual. Unlike going to the theatre, where you sit down at an appointed time and watch until the end, at an exhibition you come and go as you want. At the theatre, something is broadcast to the audience and the audience gathers around it. In an exhibition, however, you are with other people but you are alone with the work, so it’s an interesting dialogue, both individual and collective. An interesting thing is, what will augmented reality do to that?

We don’t know yet. Sometimes when you watch people at exhibitions, and they’re listening to a commentary on headphones, it’s the opposite of being a flâneur. We must always remember not to become locked in filter bubbles.

That would be a big impoverishment for humanity.”

Words Mark Webster Photographs Gavin Bond Styling Mark Anthony Bradley Hair Ron Stephens Grooming David Stanwell at The Wall Group using Bobbi Brown Retouching Sophy Holland Photographic Assistant Paul Rae Location Van Zio Rentals ziorentals.com

John Legend

discusses Barack Obama’s legacy and the state of US politics, giving up the day job and living up to his name.

It’s a name that would weigh heavily on most men’s shoulders. But ever since John Roger Stephens became John Legend he has done everything in his power to fulfill its promise.

Perhaps it helps that his name was bestowed upon him rather than adopted. “You sound like one of the legends,” he was told by poet, author and sometime Kanye West collaborator J. Ivy. “In fact, that’s what I’m going to call you from now on.” Everyone else followed suit.

But if John Legend is concerned with how a legend is made, he spends little time worrying about how one should behave. He has the talent, but not the ego that many would think it affords.

He worries instead about the larger things.

We spoke just weeks before the US went to the polls following the most divisive presidential campaign in modern history. It has particular resonance for him. This year his production firm, the Get Lifted Film Company, released Southside With You, which tells an origin story of sorts; two young lawyers, Barack and Michelle, embarking on their first date in 1989, in Chicago.

The film follows the success of the TV show Underground, which Legend produced for US channel WGN. It tells the story of the Underground Railroad, the clandestine network to transport escaped slaves from plantations

in the south to freedom in the north. He’s appeared in front of the camera too – most recently in the Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone film musical La La Land, out in January, and on TV show Lip Sync Battle, hosted by Legend’s wife, Chrissy Teigen, with whom he has a daughter, Luna. That performance exploded on social media, even if it seemed a shame to cede his voice to MC Hammer. Because it’s his voice that evokes J. Ivy’s legends – those performers for whom the description ‘pop star’ was never going to be adequate.

When a friend introduced John Stephens to Lauryn Hill in 1998 he was wasn’t yet a legend. Hill was gearing up to record her first post-Fugees album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and needed a piano player.

Back then he was still a student at the University of Pennsylvania – he’d turned down Harvard to attend – where he studied by day and played piano in clubs by night.

Hill asked him to perform on the

track ‘Everything is Everything’. As the sleeve notes attest, his first commercial recording was as John Stephens.

He left the university a year later and maintained his split lifestyle, juggling gigs along the East Coast with a nine-to-five job as a management consultant. In 2001, a college roommate-turned-club promoter, Devo Springsteen, introduced Stephens to his cousin, a hip-hop producer in New York called Kanye West. Legend had his new name by now and felt the pressure. He shouldn’t have worried. If the seven hooks he sang on The College Dropout didn’t meet his moniker’s promise, then his debut album, Get Lifted, certainly did. Released on West’s Good Music label, it earned Legend eight Grammy nominations – a tie with his new boss.

The three albums that followed – Once Again, Evolver and Love in the Future – proved that whatever he owes to the legends, he won’t restrain himself to their range. His latest, Darkness and Light, goes further still. Produced by Blake Mills, who Legend approached after he heard his work with Alabama Shakes, it’s an album rooted in soul but tinged with blues and dancefloor funk.

It’s a record that drips with confidence – the sound of a legend embodying his name.

Jacket and shirt by Issey Miyake Men; trousers by Prada; hat by Dasmarca; boots by Hudson.

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Your 2010 album Wake Up! [a collaboration with hip-hop band the Roots] evokes the likes of Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers and Donny Hathaway.

I look to those artists for inspiration more than any other artists. I consider myself to be someone who is part of a legacy, but doing it in my own way. I’m not trying to directly mimic what they’ve done, but I’m highly influenced by them and my goal is to take that influence and make something that is fresh and new.

It’s not all just about ‘Let’s Get it On’.

Exactly. That’s always been part of the inspiration for me in what those artists did.

They sang about love and relationships in a really beautiful, sensual way but they also

sang about love in a broader sense: love for mankind, love for justice and for peace.

for me to be developing my own career as an artist.

Your time in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania seems to have been a real catalyst.

After university you moved away from music as such. Was that because you didn’t see it as being at the forefront as a career at that time?

For any university student it’s important – your first time away from home and embarking on adulthood. And for me it was a good time being in Philly because there was so much going on in the music scene there. And that was inspiring to me. I didn’t become friends with the Roots at that time, I became friends after.

But I witnessed a lot of what they were doing around Philly and the music they were making with people who were coming into town and working with them. It was an inspiring time

Shirt by Kenzo; trousers by Prada.

I never really left music. I worked in the day job, but every struggling musician works in a day job of some sort. It was just an atypical job. The idea of working as a management consultant isn’t really what you expect a starving artist to be doing.

But for me, I was always pursuing music as a career, even when that was happening. I was playing at local clubs, writing songs, and I was intent on being able to leave my day job and make a full time

I consider myself to be someone who is part of a legacy, but doing it my own way. career in music. It took me longer than I expected, but it happened.

Did you always see yourself in the frontman role – was that your ultimate aim? You have worked in so many different elements of the music industry.

Absolutely. I always thought of myself as a solo artist. I wrote songs for myself, for my own performances. Any other side work I was doing was a means to that end.

As a collaborator, is that a different dynamic? Something you can enjoy in a different way?

It’s different because when you’re writing a song with or for someone else, you’re kind of pitching them an idea that you’re hoping they will take. But when you’re writing for yourself then you cut out the middleman.

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Jacket by Oliver Spencer; trousers by Prada; shirt by Joseph; boots by Hudson; ring and socks, model’s own.

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Jacket by Thom Browne; trousers by Emporio Armani; shirt by Kenzo; boots by Jimmy Choo; ring, model’s own.

We have every right to speak out, and we have every right to say our country needs to do better. We have every right to speak truth to power.

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Coat by Prada; trousers by Joseph; shirt

by Lanvin; hat by Oliver Spencer; boots

by Jimmy Choo; ring, model’s own.

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You are now so busy throughout the entertainment business. Is that a new thing in your career, or an idea that has always been with you?

I did theatre as a kid, but I hadn’t acted for a while so it is something that is new. But I approached acting in the film business more as a musician than as a producer. I got involved with a lot of films as a songwriter but when I started my company it was a process that involved finding the right directors, finding the right cast, telling the right stories. A lot of that comes from my own political sensibilities.

A lot of the work we’ve been doing reflects the issues I care about politically. But also there’s simply my love of great storytelling and my love of great music in relation to telling those stories.

Do you enjoy the process of working in television and films?

Yes, because it is very different from music production. It takes a lot more people to make it work. For me, making an album, even though there are a lot of collaborators, I have so much more control over how it comes out. When you’re dealing with a director and actors and the studio – there are so many people who have important roles.

It is more complex than making a record.

how historically significant they are, but also how graceful and elegant and strong they have been as leaders of the country over the last eight years. People are rightfully intrigued by their relationship and how they met. We thought it was a great story to tell. Films will be made about his career as a politician but it takes a little more time to have perspective on that kind of story.

This seems to have been an abominable time for them to be bowing out, with the Black Lives Matter movement and the presidential race we’ve witnessed.

You also produced the film Southside With You. It seems like now was the right time for that to come out.

It’s been a challenge for him, because he represents the state and he represents law enforcement and he represents the Justice Department. I think he understands where those protests against that apparatus are coming from, but he still has to represent the government. It’s an interesting conundrum that he finds himself in because he genuinely knows what the black man in America has to deal with and the stereotypes that come with that. And the possible violence that comes from those stereotypes. But he also understands the importance of law enforcement, and the fact that it has to feel legitimate, for people to feel safe.

So it’s a challenge for him to deal with it and you see it every time he has to respond. You can see that it seems that he has to play both sides, which I can understand. Because I guess practically, he just does. But people who are not in his position, we have every right to speak out, and we have every right to say our country needs to do better. We have every right to speak truth to power. And that’s what those protests are doing. And I’ve been doing it, other celebrities too, in our own way.

Now was a great time because a lot of people are feeling pretty nostalgic about the first couple and

Both President Obama and Michelle Obama’s recent speeches [the first in relation to voting,

You’re working as a producer on the TV project Underground.

Yeah, we had a really successful first season. It’s the highest rated show in the history of the network that it’s on. And it was one of the most successful dramas on cable TV in 2016. We’re coming back in 2017 – hopefully we’ll get more distribution around the world.

It’s a show we’re really proud of, it’s gotten awards already and it tells an important story. It’s a big part of American history.

Particularly African American history. It tells of the movement to abolish slavery, and increase civil rights in the country.

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That’s always been part of the inspiration for me, what artists like Marvin Gaye and Bill Withers did. They sang about love and relationships in a really beautiful, sensual way, but they also sang about love in a broader sense: love for mankind, love for justice and for peace.

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the second in response to the Donald Trump groping video] seem to have given them both a new lease of life.

Their approval ratings have gone up throughout the campaign because people are already missing the way they conducted themselves in office. Particularly when you compare them, especially with Trump and how tawdry so much of the campaign has been. I think people are appreciating how scandal-free his presidency has been and, like I say, appreciating him more and more. And combine that with the fact that the economy is doing much better than it was before he came into office. Unemployment’s down, incomes are rising. All in all, people are realising he did a pretty great job.

On a personal level, do you know how the balancing act is going to work for you in the near future, in terms of film, music and family?

It’s going to be mainly music – and family, obviously. I’ll be touring most of next year and the idea is that my family will be able to travel with me a lot, depending on Chrissy’s work schedule. So we’re planning to have Luna and Chrissy with me quite a lot. They are the major priorities, while my company will still keep on producing, and that’s not going to stop because I’m on the road. I have a capable team evaluating projects, running things for me on the ground.

My main job when it comes to that is paying attention to the script and making sure the content is something I can get excited about.

Then doing what I can to help make it work.

New single ‘Love Me Now’ is out now. Legend’s album Darkness & Light is out in December johnlegend.com Legend stars in Damien Chazelle’s film La La Land, out in the UK on 17 January lalaland.movie

Coat and sweater by Gieves & Hawkes; trousers by Prada; hat by Dasmarca; boots by Oliver Spencer.

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Photographs Jon Mortimer Styling Mark Anthony Bradley Styling Assistant Calum Paterson Hair Jean Marie Le Guen for Sassoon Salon Covent Garden using Sassoon Models Terry Grant, artist and DJ; Tony Higgins, communications manager and music consultant; Scott Ogden, co-founder of Dawson Denim and Calum Paterson, drummer in Engine facebook.com/theengine1

Scott wears jacket by Our Legacy; apron, sweater and neckerchief by Dawson Denim; glasses, model’s own.

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Tony wears coat by Richard James; jeans, shirt, boots, hat, scarf and belt, model’s own; jacket by Farah.

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by John Varvatos; jacket by E. Tautz; shirt by Ermenegildo Zegna Couture; boots by G.H. Bass.

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Terry wears jacket by Kenzo; trousers by Margaret Howell; top, model’s own.

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S c e n e Calum wears coat by Casely-Hayford; jeans by Lee; jacket by Lanvin; shirt by Libero Milano; scarf, stylist’s own.

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Terry wears coat by Turnbull & Asser; trousers, shirt and braces, model’s own; jacket by Harry Stedman; boots by Modshoes.

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Tony wears coat, hat and scarf, model’s own; trousers and braces by Nigel Cabourn; cardigan and shirt by Caruso.

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Calum wears jacket by Nigel Cabourn; jeans by Lee; cardigan by Casely-Hayford; shirt by Farah; hat

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The term renaissance man is used rather too freely these days, but it certainly applies to Charles Atlas, whose output includes film directing, lighting design, video art, set design, live video improvisation, costume design and documentary directing.

For the past 30 years, Atlas has been best known for his collaborations with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark, who he began working with as a lighting designer in 1984. His first film with Clark, Hail the New Puritan, was a mock documentary that followed dance’s punk renegade as his company, aided by performance artist Leigh Bowery and friends, prepared for a new ballet.

First broadcast on Channel 4 in 1986, Hail the New Puritan mixed faux-cinéma vérité style documentary with surreal interludes and extraordinary, dada-inspired dance pieces, set to the music of the Fall. Shot among the decay of Thatcher’s Britain, the film now serves as a vital document of 1980s London, when fashion, music, art, dance and club culture collided.

The pair continued their exploration of London’s post-punk subculture with their next collaboration, Because We Must. Recently screened to coincide with To a Simple, Rock’n’roll... Song, Michael Clark Company’s new ballet at the Barbican in London, Because We Must was based on an original stage production from 1987. The piece mixed footage of that Sadler’s Wells performance with hallucinogenic dream sequences and the surreal invention of club kid Leigh Bowery, who, as well as appearing in the film in his own idiosyncratic outfits, co-designed all of the costumes with Stevie Stewart of 1980s fashion brand, and longtime Clark collaborator, BodyMap. Atlas teamed up with Bowery and Clark again on the video installation Teach (1998) and the

short film Ms. Peanut Visits New York (1999), before directing the documentary feature The Legend of Leigh Bowery (2002). The two have remained close collaborators – Atlas designed the lighting for Clark’s production at the Barbican – but it was with another legendary choreographer, who was himself a great influence on Clark, that Atlas came to prominence when he first mixed video and dance in the mid-1970s.

Merce Cunningham was already a leader of the avant-garde when Atlas joined his company as an assistant stage manager, in 1970.

He began filming him soon after, in experimental movement studies shot between rehearsals. He became filmmaker in residence in 1974, a role he held until 1983, during which time he became a pioneer of media and dance. “We really were committed to human movement and body, and what a body could do,” Atlas explained during his installation-based work Charles Atlas and Collaborators, at Tate Modern in 2013. “The way that I learned from Merce is about really exploring all the possibilities of any given situation. We always started with the questions and whether we found the answer or not was not that important.”

As well as collaborating with Cunningham on works that forever changed the way dance is filmed,

Atlas also created the 90-minute documentary Merce Cunningham: a Lifetime of Dance. And in 2008, a year before Cunningham died, Atlas filmed a production of the choreographer’s ballet Ocean (inspired by Cunningham’s partner and collaborator John Cage) at the base of the Rainbow Granite Quarry in Minnesota, the performance unfurling against 160ft walls of rock.

Alongside his better-known works, Atlas has directed more than 70 other films, from As Seen on TV, a profile of performance artist Bill Irwin, to Put Blood in the Music, his homage to the diversity of New York’s downtown music scene of the late 1980s. In the early 1990s he made What I Did Last Summer, a short film trilogy that celebrated New York’s gay subculture at a time when Atlas lost many friends to Aids. In 1999 he released the film It’s a Jackie Thing, about the excesses of Johnny Dynell and Chi Chi Valenti’s Jackie 60 parties, thrown in New York’s Meatpacking District (Atlas’s home for many years) before its regeneration.

Over the past decade, Atlas has become absorbed in live improvisation. His work with experimental artists such as Mika Tajima and William Basinski, electronic producers Christian Fennesz and Julianna Barwick, and his MC9 installation/performance in 2012, has seen him compose and edit in real time. He’s also forged new collaborative partnerships, such as Turning with New York band Antony and the Johnsons, a project that began in 2004.

In January, Atlas has his first performance in New York of his “stereoscopic 3D dance film”, Tesseract, with choreographers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener. Shortly after the Michael Clark Company programme at the Barbican, we caught up with Atlas at his studio in New York.

Words Andy Thomas Portrait Janette Beckman Images © Charles Atlas, courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

CHARLES ATLAS Famed for his filmic collaborations with choreographers Merce Cunningham and Michael Clark, over the past five decades Atlas has been pushing the boundaries of performance on screen.

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And then I made a short Super 8 film of one of the dancers from the company, Valda Setterfield, doing one of Yvonne Rainer’s pieces during a residence in Berkeley, California. That became Valda Dances Yvonne from 1971 and was the first time I had ever filmed dance.

choreographed five solo dance pieces and performed each one in a different costume. The last segment was particularly challenging as he choreographed it so he could appear on-screen with all five costumes at once. The main thing we had to learn was the relationship between the body and the camera and how to think in terms of multiple camera angles.

When you started using video was that your decision or Merce’s?

How did the creative process work between the two of you?

I’d made a 16mm film of one of his dances called Walkaround Time. That was an existing stage piece from the repertoire of the company and so he didn’t choreograph it for the camera. I filmed the first part at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, using a single handheld camera, then the section in Paris, where I rented three cameras and shot the final performance

by Merce’s longtime dance partner, Carolyn Brown, before she retired. Soon after Merce said he wanted to start working with video, so turned to me. That was when we Atlas during a live collaboration with composer William Basinski, really started collaborating Strange Pilgrims, the Contemporary Austin, Texas, 2016 properly. I had never worked in video so bought a book Who were the first filmmakers to inspire you? called The Spaghetti City Video Manual and learned I was a big film buff in my early years. I was inspired everything from that. Then we spent three or four by everything – from the New York underground to months just working on ideas before we began Hollywood. From the New York underground it was working on a piece called Westbeth. really Andy Warhol and Stan Brakhage. I also really liked movie musicals, but at the same time people Could you talk about your next piece from 1976, like Carl Dreyer and Jean-Luc Godard. I had a wide Blue Studio: Five Segments, when you started to range of tastes – everything from D.W. Griffith to explore the possibilities of video and dance?

Sam Fuller.

Even though Merce never really liked watching himself, he was open to everything and

What was your introduction to dance?

The Merce Cunningham Company. I hardly knew anything about dance before then. Before I started working with Merce, his work was the only dance I’d ever seen. And that was because I went to see it for Robert Rauschenberg [who created the décor for Cunningham’s work in the late 1950s] who was really my hero at the time.

How did you move into making films yourself?

I got a Super 8 camera in 1970 when I was 21.

I started working on small personal films, doing these little home movies when I was travelling with the Merce Cunningham Company. My first work was called Cartridge Lengths and Long Shots and was filmed while we were on tour, just the things I saw along the way. Footage of me in a dressing room in the Netherlands or the grey landscape of Pittsburgh

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Still from Ocean, choreographed by Merce Cunningham, directed by Atlas, 2011

He treated me like an equal, even though there was a great difference in our age and experience. I would tell him what kind of video ideas might work for an upcoming piece and then we would try and get those central to the choreography. Before we started with moving the video camera we did stuff with a still camera, panning and zooming, and then when we got it right we started moving the camera.

That took about four pieces for us to get it right, because it gets really complicated when you move the camera and the dancers.

What were the biggest challenges of filming dancers? I’m thinking in particular of pieces like Coast Zone from 1983 – that must have been technically very difficult.

Everything is moving so it takes a lot of rehearsal. We always had the dancers for about six weeks, from scratch. For the first four weeks, we would rehearse the moves and work out how that interacted with the cameras. Then the last two weeks were when we did the shooting. That was just a matter of doing it over and over again until we got it right. For Coast Zone, we used a moving crane shot to open, which was the first time

Atlas and Merce Cunningham, Westbeth Studio, New York, 1970s

about phrasing and performance, all sorts of technical things about dance. He also developed my eye, so I saw things like he did so I didn’t need to consult him as much when editing. It was all about rhythm and he was a master of that. But then I also picked up his bad habits of being a workaholic. I used to go to the studio every day.

What do you think Merce thought video brought to his work?

I had used one. We also used a dolly with a crane arm to move around the dancers. We really were experimenting with depth of field with this piece.

Then we had cameras positioned around the room and Merce threw a coin to determine where the shoot would start and end.

I want to ask you about Merce’s use of the ancient philosophical text, the I Ching.

The I Ching was really part of Merce’s constant work in all of his pieces in various ways. There were various elements of pieces that used some form of chance methods to make decisions.

You once said that Merce always started with a question and whether you found the answer or not was not that important. What were the other main things you learned from him?

In the early days, we would sit there and watch all the takes together and I would learn everything

We never used special effects.

Our work was based only on the possibilities of the human body.

I couldn’t say from his point of view, but I think it was an interesting challenge for him and he always liked challenges.

He was interested in doing things he hadn’t done before, in the same way I was. So that’s why I think we worked so well together. I thought he was the most interesting choreographer at the time and also since. But I was part of that family so maybe I’m a little prejudiced.

Godfather where there were a lot of things going on at the same time and they used cross-cutting between them. So we divided the studio into separate spaces and had dancers doing different things and running from one space to another. This was also the first time I used animated travelling mattes as transitions between shots. Before this I had only used cuts and never used dissolves, but I used them to connect to the movement so they would tear or crack into the next scene.

Is the concept of space and the use of it one of your main interests?

I was interested in everything you could do with film, video and dance, so of course space was part of that. We never used special effects and always respected what a body could do. Our work was based on the possibilities of the human body rather than something you can only do on film. That was never something that interested me.

Performance artist Bill Irwin in As Seen on TV, directed by Atlas, 1987

You became known for your multi-channel video installations.

When did you first use them?

The first one I did was in 1984 at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. I also did something similar with Merce, though, where we used to have live cameras with monitors and screens.

That was like the third piece we did together, called Fractions, from 1978.

For that, I stationed video cameras and monitors around the studio and the feed from each camera would appear on a monitor in a different place. This was really the start of my live video editing, to create alternative perspectives of the dancers or different parts of the dance.

Leigh Bowery and Rachel Auburn in Hail the New Puritan, choreographed by Michael Clark, directed

by Atlas, 1986

One critic wrote that Fractions “tests the boundaries of perception… and in turn demonstrates the inadequacy of any one angle or structure”. You could see this even more in a work like Channels/Inserts from 1982.

Channels/Inserts was using cross-cutting between different spaces to show simultaneous dances. My inspiration for that was the parallel action of the wedding scene in The

Because We Must, choreographed by Michael Clark, costumes by Leigh Bowery, directed by Atlas, 1989 J &

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dance film and I told the producer I would do it if I could work with Michael Clark. And so we came up with the idea of a half-hour dance piece based on Echo and Narcissus [from Greek mythology]. And then by the time we got the proposal to Channel 4 what they really wanted was an hour-long Leigh Bowery and Atlas at Wigstock, New York, 1993 arts documentary for television. So that’s the budget I got. As I’ve said before, it was my love letter I was also interested in Secret of the Waterfall, to London and the larger than life personalities where you used poetry rather than music. of this underground scene that I knew couldn’t That was with the choreographer Douglas Dunn last. Meeting Michael, Leigh Bowery and all these and was the first work I did for television. But different people in London was very important I actually shot the piece in silence and put the to me. I felt very lucky to be in that position and poetry into the piece in the edit. So the poetry I wanted to make something of it. affected the rhythm of the edit, rather than the rhythm of the dancers.

Shortly after this you began working with Michael Clark. How would you compare working with Michael to Merce?

It was completely different because Michael was 21 and part of this whole underground scene in 1980s London. But I got to use everything I had learned with Merce over the previous 10 years and I started to apply it to a situation with Michael that was much more what my real life was like at the time. Less of the studio work I did with Merce and more the London scene at that time. I also didn’t work with Michael in the same way as Merce, because with Merce we worked much more on things together, and we had a lot more of a history.

With Michael I basically picked things out of his work I thought I could do something with.

I think of Hail the New Puritan as being one of the definitive documents of that creative time in London. Could you talk about the making of it?

It started out as a proposal for a little half-hour

As well as some wonderfully surreal dance pieces, it featured that hilarious improvised scene in Bowery’s apartment. Could you talk about that?

The plan was, we were going to shoot that day with Leigh, Rachel Auburn and Trojan. We knew that Michael was coming over and it was improvised around an idea of them getting ready to go out.

And they were always going out to clubs. The way I did it was each time we did a different take there would be a set line to start out, and then they would just go with that. My only instruction was: “You don’t have to be nice to each other.” And I knew they were good at that.

What was Leigh like to collaborate with?

He was completely cooperative and keen to do anything and try anything. He really was fun. In Because We Must, you can also see he was becoming more of a performer. He was never shy and retiring before that, of course, but in terms of what he could do on the stage he wasn’t that practised before. But he grew into it really quickly.

There was that incredible dream sequence with the Velvet Underground’s ‘Venus in Furs’. Whose idea was that?

Atlas on the set of The Pedestrians, a live installation with Mika Tajima and New Humans, South London Gallery, 2011 Photograph Mark Blower 86

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Michael had made a dance to the music and it had started out as a single shot. Leigh had made the costumes, which we didn’t see until the day of the shoot.

The dancers were kind of freaked out that they had to wear outfits with masks, so they couldn’t see anything. Then after the piece had been shot

I added a lot in the editing. It looks like something you could do on your computer now. But at that time, I worked at this editing facility in Ireland and I had to use about 10 machines at once.

Could you talk about your film work from New York in the late 1980s?

Put Blood in the Music focused on Sonic Youth and John Zorn, so it was really the two strands of New York’s downtown scene of the late ’80s.

One was rock based and the other was the jazz, free improv world. That was actually made for London Weekend Television, for Melvyn Bragg. Then Son of Sam was shot in 1988 and was finished in 1991 and was a lot of New York performers I knew from the clubs. It was focused on the Aids epidemic and the violence of the time.

I also shot the trilogy, What I Did Last Summer, including Butchers’ Vogue that I made after being incensed by Madonna’s appropriation of voguing.

These films were made with my friends from the clubs and shot around the Meatpacking District, where I have lived since 1980.

The other two films were called Draglinquents and Disco 2000 and they were also coming from the clubbing mentality – so very campy and sexy.

How do you compare the live video experimentation you are doing now with what you were doing with Merce in the 1970s?

I try not to repeat myself and I try to engage with more and more complex situations. It’s certainly more challenging what I am doing now. I’ve always done a lot of planning and put a lot of thought into my previous work with dance and now I am doing it live, so that is really demanding.

How did Turning come about?

Me and Antony, or Anohni as she is now known, were friends for 10 years before we started working together.

So I had seen a lot of his work already.

The situation came up where Antony was to do a performance for the Whitney Biennial, in 2004. And he asked me to collaborate with him.

I was doing live video by then but I didn’t think I was ready to do it for the stage. But he convinced me to go ahead and do it. My idea was to put women on a revolving platform and film them with two cameras and then do a live mix portrait during the

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Johanna Constantine performing to live video editing within the installation MC9,

by Atlas, Tate Modern, London, 2013 Photograph courtesy of Tate Modern

Hail the New Puritan was my love letter to London and the larger than life personalities that I knew couldn’t last.

Still from a live audiovisual performance with guitarist Fennesz, directed by Atlas, 2009

performance. And once we did the intimate performance in New York we went to Europe and did it for larger audience in big venues.

work with Merce, but I’ve never worked with them as choreographers before.

You are now also working with different producers and DJs. You’ve done almost everything else so I wondered if you had ever considered making music yourself?

What is it about working with choreographers that continues to inspire and challenge you?

No, I have to draw the line somewhere. I have so many good musician friends and collaborators that I don’t need to. I guess I like to work with someone else who is better at organising sounds.

What do you look for in producers you work with?

I’ve only ever worked with electronic music producers. And I normally work with music that doesn’t have what you would call a regular beat.

I have done some things with pop music to accompany some of the parts of my films, but when I improvise or use live video I like the more experimental electronic musicians.

Could you talk about your upcoming piece with Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener?

Half of it will be a stereoscopic 3D film, projected on the screen with the audience wearing glasses.

And then the second half will be live dance with live cameras and live mixing, projected on the screen in front of the dancers. So it’s two different kinds of 3D. The performance is called Tesseract and it has a sci-fi atmosphere. Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener are dancers I knew through their

I just love dance and I love performers. And I’ve always been very much into collaborating. But this is the first time I’ve done a major dance piece for a long time. It takes a lot of time, money and organisation to actually pull these things off.

Tesseract is at Empac, New York, in January; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 16-18 March; and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, 23-25 March empac.rpi.edu walkerart.org mcachicago.org Atlas’s work forms part of the exhibition Merce Cunningham: Common Time, at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and MCA, Chicago, from 11 February; and the Robert Rauschenberg exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 21 May moma.org

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The Set-Up, 1949

From cinema’s inception, its pioneers have been obsessed with boxing. It was the first sport to be captured on film, at the end of the 19th century, and ever since its screen debut the world’s greatest actors and directors have been eager to step into the ring. With its high-stakes dramatic tension on both sides of the ropes it has captivated audiences as much as filmmakers. From Kid Galahad to Rocky, from Raging Bull to Million Dollar Baby, boxing has proved itself to be the perfect cinematic subject.

Words Mark Webster

The only screenplay that Alfred Hitchcock wrote was for a boxing film, his 1927 silent feature, The Ring. The film is light on conversation, which is unsurprising since Hitchcock believed a filmmaker should resort to dialogue only if he had exhausted the possibilities of pictures. So it’s fitting that his single writing credit should be for a genre in which actions always speak louder than words.

The Ring explored the drama Hitchcock had witnessed during fight nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall. It portrays a love triangle between heavyweight champion Bob, fairground boxer Jack and his girlfriend, Mabel. In the finale, Mabel’s declaration of love inspires a bruised Jack to rise from his corner and send Bob crashing to the mat, winning Mabel’s heart and his opponent’s title.

In mixing melodrama outside the ring with the intense action going on inside it, Hitchcock created a blueprint for the boxing film. But the master director wasn’t the first to see the value of the sport as a compelling backdrop for film drama.

Among his cast was the popular British champion Bombardier Billy Wells, who in 1916 starred in the boxing film Kent, the Fighting Man, where gambling and pugilistic honour clashed.

Even earlier than this, William K.L. Dixon, who Thomas Edison had tasked with making his idea for a moving pictures camera a reality, chose boxing as the perfect subject matter to test his creation: the

kinetograph. In 1891, he shot a five-second film of two Edison employees squaring up in street clothes and boxing gloves. Three years later, in June 1894, he filmed the first competitive fight, six rounds of boxing between Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing.

At the time, boxing was illegal in the US, although this did nothing to dent its popularity.

Though attending fights was against the law, photographing them – and, by extension, filming them – was not. Audiences paid to watch each round on Edison’s peephole kinetoscope machines, which the inventor had sold to specialist parlours across the country.

In September the same year, Dickson convinced James Corbett – later played by Errol Flynn in the 1942 film Gentleman Jim – to fight Peter Courtney on camera. Corbett was the heavyweight champion; his opponent an unknown contender. To maximise profits the filmmakers convinced Corbett to pull his punches, to guarantee there would be more rounds to sell to viewers. This was real boxing that understood the requirements of drama, and it made Edison a fortune.

Boxing films were so popular that they drove technological innovation. The original kinetoscopes could show 20 seconds per reel, so the Edison company created special versions, priced at a premium, to show 60-second rounds.

By 1897, technological improvements took Corbett

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to the big screen. His fight against Bob Fitzsimmons lasted more than 100 minutes and was shot on three cameras, which captured all 14 rounds, the breaks in between them and even the pugilists’ walks to the ring. It was so successful that an enterprising filmmaker, Siegmund Lubin, filmed a recreation of the fight a few months later, with two freight handlers playing the prizefighters.

Filmmakers then began to pay boxers to recreate famous fights. The next step was to pay screenwriters to invent them, and boxing’s small stage began to fill up the big screen. As Hollywood moved into its golden age, few matinee idols could resist the temptation to step through the ropes and fulfil their bloody but heroic destiny. From the 1930s a flurry of boxing films hit the big screen, from The Champ, which earned director King Vidor an Oscar, to Kid Galahad, in which the gangster genre met boxing as Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis tussled in and out of the ring.

Gentleman Jim, 1942

Raging Bull, 1980

A genre once seen as low-brow entertainment began to win awards. In 1947, Body and Soul earned John Garfield and Abraham Polonsky Oscar nominations for best actor and screenplay. In 1949 The Set-Up, starring Robert Ryan, won a Bafta for best film, and Kirk Douglas’s lead role in Champion earned him an Oscar nomination. Even Stanley Kubrick got the boxing bug. In 1951, aged 23, he filmed a documentary short called Day of the Fight, then borrowed money from an uncle for his second feature, the boxing noir Killer’s Kiss, in 1955.

In the latter half of the 20th century, filmmakers played with what were now established rules. In 1975’s Hard Times, drifter Charles Bronson hustled an underground boxing league, walking away with the money but not the girl. Diggstown, from 1992, played the same con for laughs.

The genre’s apex came in 1976, with a film that unknown actor Sylvester Stallone famously wrote in just three days. United Artists saw Rocky as a vehicle for the likes of Robert Redford and James Caan. But like his hero, Stallone hung on in to star in one of Hollywood’s most successful franchises, still going strong with last year’s Creed.

“It was so important when Rocky came out,” says boxing expert Steve Bunce. “It contains some of the best and the worst moments in not just boxing films, but all of cinema. But somewhere

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in there, within the fight sequences, training sequences, the relationships, it really, really works. There was no ringwalk music until there was Rocky.

Boxers, they know every word to those films. They’ve got the posters. They train to ‘Eye of the Tiger’.”

Bunce understands boxing’s drama from both sides of the ropes. He presents a weekly show on cable channel BoxNation and in 2010 wrote his first novel on the sport, The Fixer, while a book on his formative boxing years will be published next year. As such, he understands the real-life moments that inspire cinema: “When Eddie Futch cradles Joe Frazier’s head in the Thrilla in Manila [the third epic battle with Muhammad Ali] and says, ‘You’re finished son. No one will forget what you’ve done here today.’ You take those kind of incidents, and write backwards and forwards from there.

It can seem like cliché, but these are things that are true in boxing time and time again, so it is how well you manage those clichés.”

Bunce approaches the medium from both directions – that of the expert and the fan. “I like some films that other people don’t like, and dislike some that most people love,” he says. “I’ve mostly given up on boxing scenes being authentic. I’m not dismissing all boxing scenes in all boxing movies, but it’s the build up that wins me. Or loses me.”

He points out that “there has to be an asterix” on much of what he says because he’s “deep inside the old boxing beast, and you can get a bit sceptical”.

Nevertheless, he feels there are good reasons to judge at least certain elements of films for their technical ability to deliver something that rings true. “I’m not in love, for example, with the Raging Bull fight sequences,” he says. “They’re too stylised.

Killer’s Kiss, 1955

Diggstown, 1992

Rocky contains some of the best and worst moments in not just boxing films, but all of cinema.

I understand what they are, that they were made to be that way. But for me, I just loved everything away from the boxing scenes.” Not that all depictions are so on target. “When Morgan Freeman puts on the pads in Million Dollar Baby, he looks like he’s never seen them before in his life. If him and Clint Eastwood were playing plumbers, they’d pick up a hammer to try and put in a screw.”

But Bunce happily admits he is often just as taken in as we civilians by the dramatic interpretation of the sport on the big screen. The build-up elements in The Fighter, David O. Russell’s 2010 biopic of boxer Micky Ward, are “truly great”, says Bunce. As well as best picture and director nominations, it won Oscars for best supporting actress – Melissa Leo, as Ward’s mother, Alice – and actor, for Christian Bale as his half-brother and trainer, Dicky Eklund. Sports Illustrated magazine proclaimed it to be “the best sports film of the past decade”, beating out Million Dollar Baby, 2001’s Ali, with Michael Mann at the helm and Will Smith in the ring, and 2005’s Cinderella Man, in which Russell Crowe and Ron Howard delivered the story of the ‘Great Depression Rocky’, James Braddock.

But even as Hollywood falls back in love with the boxing film, Bunce is buoyed by projects from this side of the Atlantic. The new year will see the release of a biopic, My Name is Lenny, with Josh Helman in the lead role, which tells the story of infamous bareknuckle fighter Lenny McLean.

And in Finland, The Happiest Day in

The Ring, 1927

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My Name is Lenny, 2017 Photograph Rob Youngson the Life of Olli Mäki has been selected as the country’s nomination for the 2016 Academy Awards. The film, which recounts the story of one of Finland’s most successful boxers as he prepares for a championship fight in 1962 without relying on the genre’s expected notes, won the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes film festival this year.

But Bunce is particularly excited by two new projects that have been created from the ground up by British actors Johnny Harris and Paddy Considine. Bunce has known Harris since his pre-Hollywood career as a successful amateur boxer, and the upcoming film Jawbone touches on Harris’s exploits as a teenager when he won the national amateur title.

Bunce bonded with Considine over the pair’s shared love of the sport and this friendship led to Bunce working on Considine’s forthcoming film, Journeyman, which explores the impact of a career in the ring once a boxer leaves it for good. “I know these two boys, they are serious, the real deal,” says Bunce. “Johnny, he can’t just go in a couple of days a week, looking at his watch. He has an addictive nature. He’d be seven days a week, and stay around

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the gym when he’s finished training. And Paddy spent six months at Kell Brook’s gym in Sheffield and I know directly that he has gone out on a limb to make the action sequences authentic. And he has really got the dynamics right away from the ring, too. Nothing is going to be out of place with these two, because they have that integrity.”

Back inside the American film industry, a new biopic, Bleed for This, written and directed by Ben Younger, is equally committed to this sense of authenticity and integrity. It also has the master’s touch on it, with Martin Scorsese as executive producer – the man who, in 1980, put Robert De Niro in the ring as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull.

De Niro recently returned to boxing films as trainer Ray Arcel in the story of Panamanian lightweight Roberto Durán, Hands of Stone.

Bleed for This tells the surprisingly little known story of the American fighter Vinny Pazienza (aka the Pazmanian Devil) who broke his neck in a car accident but returned to win the World Junior Middleweight Championship, despite doctors warning that he might never walk again.

“Getting the jargon right is really important to me,” says Younger, speaking before the presentation of his film at the recent BFI London Film Festival. “I think that people know when they’re being fed bullshit, even when they don’t really know that world at all. There’s something about

It’s the last day. If I get knocked out, I get knocked out.

Let’s finish the movie.

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, 2017 Still courtesy of mubi.com authenticity that gets smelt out – if it feels real or not. I knew what I was getting into – the importance of getting a boxing film right. And I watched them all, but more about what not to do. The Fighter, The Champ, I love those movies. And Raging Bull really was an important movie to me growing up.

I remember thinking this guy Scorsese really knows what he’s doing.”

But it’s not just a matter of talking a good game, of which Younger is clearly aware. You have to deliver visually, too. “My concern was not being clichéd,” he says. “That’s why in the first two minutes of the movie you see that woman take a spill. We did the slo mo walk down the hallway – boxer, trainer, hot girl. There’s the music. You think, oh I know what this is. Then she falls on her face.

“It’s also why we shot in Cranston, Rhode Island, where Vinny’s from. Down to the scene where Vinny’s father finds out his son’s been in an accident, that was the room Angelo [his father] was in when that actually happened. Because that’s where they played cards. It’s where they still play cards. I’m all about location.”

The film, a raw tale of triumph over adversity, comes across as acutely real – partly because the young star Miles Teller, who plays the lead role, never ducked a shot. “Every punch you saw,” says Younger, “there’s never one when a fist went by and the actor had to time turning his head. We would stack up the gloves and shoot from behind. So when you see a body move, it’s because it got hit. Physics.

It’s why we only just got to finish the film. Darrell

Foster, our fight co-ordinator, got knocked out on the last day. And it’s because we hired a pro fighter for Roberto Durán, Edwin Rodríguez, who’s a fucking animal, in the best way possible. A real pro. And we were kind of putting him in a cage. ‘Do this, do that. Hit your mark.’ One is a jab, two is an uppercut. He couldn’t keep on track. So we’re getting ready to shoot the last scene, I turn around and Darrell’s just laid out. Edwin just knocked him the fuck out.

So he eventually got up and said, ‘This is dangerous, Miles is going to get hurt.’ We just looked at each other and Miles says something like, ‘Well, it’s the last day. If I get knocked out, I get knocked out.

Let’s finish the movie.’”

Pure Rocky. But this is the point.

Perhaps that is why the boxing film has shown such stamina over the decades. Why it just doesn’t know when to quit. Because when it works, it is pure cinema.

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki is out in spring mubi.com My Name is Lenny is out in spring lionsgatefilms.co.uk

The Journeyman, written and directed by and starring Paddy Considine, is due for release in 2017 Photograph Dean Rogers

Jawbone, written by and starring Johnny Harris, is due for release in 2017 vertigofilms.com Bleed for This is out now openroadfilms.com

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Photographs Dean Chalkley Styling Mark Anthony Bradley Words Hamish MacBain Hair and make-up Dani Richardson using Dermalogica and Fudge Photographic Assistants Juliette Broquet and Chris Chudleigh The Second Sons Alessandro Cinelli Ollie Clark, Chris Harding Nick Harding and George Price Location Courthouse Hotel 335-337 Old Street, London EC1 shoreditch.courthouse-hotel.com

The Second Sons Nick and Chris Harding’s blues-tinged rock’n’roll has garnered a legion of fans including Bobby Keys and Chris Kimsey.

Nick Harding, lead vocals, wears jacket by Burberry; jeans, belt and rings, model’s own; shirt by Z Zegna; scarf by Rockins.

Chris Harding, guitar and vocals, wears waistcoat by The Kooples; jeans, jewellery, watch and belt, model’s own; shirt by Pretty Green.

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I don’t know if there’s anyone out there right now who we could go and do a tour with. So, either we’re crazy or we’re really onto something.

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ne morning in 2014, Nick Harding, vocalist in the Second Sons, woke up to a missed call from a Nashville number. He knew no one in Nashville. “I checked the voicemail and it’s like, ‘Hello Nick, this is Bobby Keys calling,’” Harding recalls. “And he said, ‘I didn’t think that anyone made music like this any more’.”

Harding was elated. Keys spent 55 years recording some of the most recognisable saxophone licks in rock’n’roll. He played with John Lennon and George Harrison, with Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Joe Cocker. But his most enduring and best known relationship was with the Rolling Stones, with whom he spent the last 35 years of his life, touring and recording. He was the group’s longest serving sideman, one whose position onstage belied his creative input. It is his horn that blasts through ‘Brown Sugar’, perhaps the most famous sax solo in rock music, which Keys nailed in a single take. He was Mick Jagger’s best man. He once helped Keith Richards toss a TV from

Chris wears coat, waistcoat and shirt

by John Varvatos; jeans, jewellery and belt, model’s own; boots by Jeffery West. Ollie wears jacket by Tiger of Sweden; jeans and belt, model’s own; shirt by Just Cavalli; boots by Jeffery West. Nick wears coat by Etro; jeans and ring, model’s own; shirt by Z Zegna; scarf by Rockins. Alessandro wears coat by Etro; jeans, necklace, belt and chain, model’s own; shirt by Just Cavalli. George wears jacket by The Kooples; jeans and necklace, model’s own; shirt by Pretty Green; boots by Jeffery West.

their hotel room into a car park 10 storeys below.

His horn is all over peak period Stones: Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street and Goats Head Soup. He knew rock’n’roll better than most. And with that voicemail message, he’d just given his nod to the Second Sons.

Harding had formed the group with his guitarist brother, Chris, a few years earlier. The name refers to their family tree: Nick is their father’s second son (their father was previously married); Chris is their mother’s second son. The pair, who grew up on their parents’ Hank Williams and Muddy Waters records, today make the kind of lithe, bar-room rock’n’roll that no one else is making any more. Guitar music inspired by an era when the instrument was all-conquering, before bands swapped their six strings for synths and their swagger for gigs hunched behind laptops. The Second Sons’ sound is one that cries out for a Bobby Keys sax solo.

Recognising this, they had previously asked their agent to ask his agent whether that was possible.

The response came back that a day’s session would set them back somewhere in the region of $4,000.

“So, that was not going to happen,” says Harding.

His was an unsigned band with an unsigned band’s bank balance. But if he couldn’t buy a Bobby Keys sax solo, he thought he might be able to earn one. An icon of old school rock’n’roll, surely he’d prefer a more direct approach. So Harding looked up Keys’ Facebook page, found an email address and sent him a demo of their track ‘Best of Me’. “I just said, ‘We’re huge fans, we’re a band, we’ve got this track, what do you think?’ And the next day I woke up to this phone call.”

Though the news was good, the timing wasn’t.

“He was about to leave to go and rehearse with the Stones in Paris,” says Harding. But Keys had his own studio and the kind of talent that doesn’t require multiple takes. “He had this short window that he could do our record in, so I said, ‘The solo starts around here, just play till the end and go with your gut, just go with your instincts.’ The next day he sent it over and we were bowled over. He’d nailed it.”

“And not only that,” continues Chris Harding, “but you’d chat with him and he’d be like, ‘I think

I can do better.’ So we were having to say, ‘Bobby, it’s perfect, man.’ And then he goes, ‘Look, when I get back, next time you guys are recording, you can all come to Nashville, you can stay with me, and I’ll cut the fucking thing in the room with you, so we know that we get it.’”

This sojourn was not to be; Keys died soon after.

But doubtless he would be happy to know that, of the last two sessions he recorded (the other being on Keith Richards’ solo album, Crosseyed Heart), one was for a wet-behind-the-ears band who were living the spirit he had spent his entire life believing in. And he would no doubt be even happier to know that – as well as affirming the band’s belief that they were really on to something special – his efforts would open doors for them.

“Bobby taking the chance and doing what he did validated it to almost everyone else,” says Nick.

“Immediately, people were paying attention to it.

Because even if they didn’t know who we were, they knew who he was.”

The Second Sons have pricked the ears of other Stones affiliates too, who hear in the band a kind of soul- and blues-inspired rock’n’roll that, like Keys, they might also have thought was extinct. Chris Kimsey, who engineered and then co-produced some of the Stones’ later albums – Some Girls, Tattoo You, Steel Wheels – got back to another cold-call message, this time from Chris.

He asked the brothers to come and meet him at Olympic Studios in Barnes, south-west London, where he told them that the solo Keys had put down on their single was one of his favourites ever, and that he’d help them make the next set of the Second Sons recordings.

There is also John Giddings, once the Rolling Stones’ European promoter and now organiser of the Isle of Wight Festival, who in 2007 booked Jagger and co for their first UK festival show in three decades. A veteran super-agent – as well as the Stones, he’s represented the Ramones, Iggy and the Stooges and a host of stadium-filling pop acts – he was so taken with the Second Sons that he invited them to play their first show at the festival in 2016, a quite unheard of feat for a new band.

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S o n s Chris wears coat by Prada; jeans and jewellery, model’s own; shirt by Z Zegna; boots by Jeffery West; scarf by Brooks Brothers. Nick wears coat by Lanvin; jeans and rings, model’s own; shirt by Ermenegildo Zegna Couture; boots by Jeffery West; scarf by The Kooples.

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Chris wears shirt by Burberry; scarf by Rockins; necklaces, model’s own.

Nick wears waistcoat by John Varvatos; shirt by Pretty Green; jewellery, model’s own.

It’s not just a couple of geezers who like the Stones and go, ‘That’s it,’ and stop there. We started from further back.

Giddings even used their song ‘Best of Me’ as the soundtrack to a compilation of highlights from the festival, and told anyone who would listen that he foresees big things for the band. After Giddings told one magazine interviewer that the Second Sons might be capable of filling the slots at the top of festival bills, Chris recalls waking up to a mass of Twitter alerts, that most modern tracker of the buzz in a band’s fanbase.

All of which makes getting noticed sound easy. But for a London band playing soul- and blues-influenced rock’n’roll, nothing is easy. There is no scene to slot into. There is no ready-built audience. There are no record company scouts trawling the capital’s small venues, looking for the direct descendants of the Rolling Stones. Rap and dance music has displaced the rock band at the top of the charts and the music industry has very little interest in finding groups to dethrone them.

The Rolling Stones’ album covers might be emblazoned on T-shirts along London’s Oxford Street, but odds are they’re not on their wearers’ headphones. Classic rock might be the soundtrack to every action sequence in every action film, but outside the cinema, the once ubiquitous sound has never been less in vogue. No new bands are playing it. Few venues, beyond those on the cover band circuit, want to book it. So if you’ve decided that you are going to do it, you have to make your own luck – the kind that starts with cold-calling music legends.

“I do sort of feel like we’re in a field of one,” says Nick. “If you look at the 1960s and 1970s, there were all these

great bands around and they were all hanging out with each other, crossing each other on tour, they’d spill on to each other’s records. There were a lot of people making the scene happen. But nowadays?

I don’t know if there’s anyone out there right now who we could go and do a tour with. So it’s like, either we’re crazy or we’re really onto something.”

The Harding brothers are the Second Sons’ creative centre. They write all the songs and were the ones who recorded the current batch, a year ago in Los Angeles, with whoever they could find to help out. But when they came back to London to play live they needed a band, and they took an appropriately old school route to find one. “Just up the street,” says Chris, motioning out the window of the Soho hotel bar we’re in, “there’s a blues club called Ain’t Nothin’ But, which was one of the first places we started going to. They have open jams on Sundays and Mondays, so we would just go in and

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Nick wears jacket by Tiger of Sweden; jeans, belt and rings, model’s own; shirt

by Z Zegna; boots by Jeffery West; hat

by The Kooples; scarves by Rockins.

Chris wears jacket by Valentino; jeans, sunglasses, jewellery and watch, model’s own; boots by Wooyoungmi.

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play blues tracks and see who else was around. That’s where we met our drummer, Alessandro. A lot of the people in that blues scene are almost like historians of it, they know so much.”

Not that the Hardings don’t.

They grew up ensconced in soul, blues and the rock’n’roll that built on it, courtesy of their parents’ vinyl collections. “We grew up in the country, around nobody,” says Nick, “so all we had was records.”

Although, surprisingly, not those by the Rolling Stones.

They swapped music, keying each other into sounds that excited them and which they thought would excite the other. And that back and forth, that ability to creatively bounce off each other, is still as present in their conversation as it is onstage.

Nick When we were around 15, someone said to us, ‘Oh you must like the Rolling Stones.’ We’d heard of them, of course, but we didn’t know the Stones because our parents didn’t own those records.

So when we did hear them, it was like a whole other thing. All the records that we’d been listening to were smushed together into these records by this band, and that really turned us on.

Chris But before that, I knew who Muddy Waters was, I knew who Hank Williams was, and I knew who Wilson Pickett was. And I think that’s what helps our sound come across, and why – and everyone says this – it’s authentic. Because it’s not just a couple of geezers who like the Stones and go, ‘That’s it,’ and stop there. We started from further back.

Nick wears suit by Joshua Kane; shirt and ring, model’s own.

I don’t think there’s a lot of bands our age that go back and listen to, say, Stax records. I don’t think they even know what that is.

Nick Chris makes this point often, that a lot of bands seem to find a Queen or a Led Zeppelin or whoever, and they’ll be inspired by that, but they’ll sort of stop there. They won’t really research any further back than that. I just don’t think there’s a lot of bands our age that go back and listen to, say, Stax records. I don’t think they even know what that is. But we knew all of that stuff.

Chris People come up to us all the time and say, ‘You guys look so happy onstage.’ And it’s like, well, yeah, I’m onstage with my mates, playing the music I love. Why would I not be happy?

Nick Every moment not on stage is a moment spent waiting to get onstage. It’s a lot easier to stand up there and not put it on. You can play and not engage people. But to get up there and make eye contact with people and pull them in, shake your hips at them and really entertain people, it takes a

lot of – you’ve got to be confident enough to give it a swing. It takes a certain level of confidence or cockiness or whatever.

When we did Nambucca [a gig venue on London’s Holloway Road] the other night, it was amazing because there was all these uni kids that had come in. There were 20 or 30 of them all just hanging out. Halfway through the set they got into a bit more of a dancing thing, and then they all split off into groups and were twisting and dancing. I’ve never seen kids that are 22 years old, who’ve come

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Ollie wears shirt by Just Cavalli; bracelet, model’s own. Chris wears shirt by Pretty Green; watch and jewellery, model’s own. Nick wears shirt by Pretty Green; scarf by Rockins; rings, model’s own. George wears shirt by Pretty Green.

The idea of making drums on a computer grid, to make it perfect, where’s the swing? to a rock show, actually dancing to the band. It was really cool to see that happen.

Chris And the other thing about the response we’re getting is that there are people, really young people, coming up to us saying, ‘I’ve never seen a band like this before.’

band doing it, or are they content with the back catalogue of the bands who did it the first go around? But the response we’ve been getting has been so positive and so many people seem excited that there’s a young band that are doing it right now. And that makes me feel very confident in the direction that we’re going in.

Nick About a year ago I was really wondering, because those bands are still so revered – the Stones, the Kinks – will a new group that hits in that vein, will it be acceptable? Will people want to hear a new

The Second Sons’ plan from here on out is as simple as their musical persuasions might suggest: entertain the hell out of every person they find standing in front of them, then hope that they all

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go home and tell 10 friends about what they have just seen. Repeat. And then repeat again. They don’t need a traditional record deal, because this method, aided by their tenacity, is working out just fine. They don’t even have a manager, preferring to do everything themselves.

They are most looking forward to getting into Olympic Studios at the end of this year and replicating this attitude. Kimsey is, Chris says, “the first producer we’ve spoken to who is like, ‘No click tracks will be used during this thing.’ No punch ins, no overdubs. Just the band in the room.

If it ends quicker than it starts, if it speeds up, then that’s the song.

Finally, we get to work with someone who understands how we want to work.”

“We’re a group, and we play as a group,” says Nick. “Nothing is more isolating than going into a booth, separately from your band, trying to recreate magic on top of what they do. The idea of making drums on a computer grid, to make it mathematically perfect, where’s the swing? There’s no human element.” This attitude, like their music, will be dismissed as retrogressive by some. But the way they see it, what they are doing is important precisely because it kicks against the way modern life is lived largely through a screen. They are intent on bringing rock’n’roll back into view. But they are even more intent on bringing human interaction back to music.

Both brothers find it depressing to go to a live show and see an audience more concerned with videoing what’s happening than watching the band.

“They might as well not have bought a ticket and just watched it at home on YouTube,” says Nick. So in their own shows, they aim to make people so excited by what they are seeing that they forget that they even have a phone in their pocket. The Second Sons exist to show people that the music they grew up loving is still being made, still being performed, in the way that it always should be. That the world needs it now maybe more than it ever has. And if they have to be the only ones doing it, then so be it.

The Second Sons’ singles ‘Can’t You See’ and ‘Best of Me’, which features Rolling Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys, are out now thesecondsons.com

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Nick wears jacket by John Varvatos; jeans and rings, model’s own; shirt by Pretty Green; boots by Jeffery West; scarf by Rockins. Chris wears jacket

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Frank in his studio, New York Photograph Š Michael Ackerman

ROBERT FRANK

The Swiss-born photographer and filmmaker, who captured the essence of America in the 1950s, has the camera turned on him for a documentary that sheds new light on his lesser-known material.

Words Andy Thomas Images Lisa Rinzler © Assemblage Films LLC

“I hate these fucking interviews […] I can’t stand it, you know, to be pinned in front of a camera.

Because I do that to people, I don’t want it done to me.” So announces Robert Frank in Don’t Blink, a documentary film by Laura Israel. As Frank’s film editor for more than 25 years, Israel has had unprecedented access to create an intimate and revealing portrait of one of the 20th century’s most influential, but equally private, photographers and filmmakers.

Frank is best known for The Americans, his collection of black-and-white photographs shot across the United States in the mid 1950s. His camera-vérité style and photographic pursuit of truth has inspired everyone from Annie Leibovitz to William Eggleston. And you only have to look at Michael Penn’s ‘The Philadelphia Project’ to feel his influence on contemporary street photography. But it wasn’t just in still photography that Frank created his radical aesthetic. Shot in 1959 and narrated by Jack Kerouac, his first film, Pull My Daisy, was one of the defining documents of the Beat Generation.

He is perhaps best known as a filmmaker for the controversial Cocksucker Blues, documenting the Rolling Stones’ 1972 tour of the US. Frank went on to make more than 30 films, many hidden in the archive until the release of a recent box set edited by Israel. Her relationship with Frank began in the late 1980s through filmmaker Michael Shamberg. “He was a friend of mine and did a lot of the New Order videos,” Israel tells me over the phone from New York. “I used to edit a lot of his videos and one day he said to me, ‘You are going to do one with Robert Frank.’ I was so excited because I loved his work.” This video was

for New Order’s ‘Run’ from 1989. “I remember the first time I worked with Robert,” she says. “This was back in the days of tape and you had to fast forward and rewind and then create these selections. When we had finished I looked over to Robert and said, ‘Once we’ve made this selection, are we going to have to go back and look at them again?’ and he was like, ‘No, first thought is the best thought.

We always go forward, we never go back.’ And I thought, that’s my kind of director. That’s my type of work ethic as well.”

Israel bonded with the notoriously irascible photographer through a hobby they shared. “My studio was near his home on Bleecker Street [in Manhattan] and I used to run into him and his wife [the artist June Leaf, who he married in 1971] and we started to become friends. I was a postcard collector and so was he and I think that clinched it between us,” says Israel. “When I got a good postcard I would write a little note on it and post it through his door as I walked by. When he’d go away he’d send me one of the postcards he’d find with a little note on and it went on like that. These postcards he used to send me were beautiful, all hand written with pen and ink. It’s funny, over the years people have asked me,

‘Have you got Robert Frank’s email address?’ And I’m like, ‘Email, are you kidding me, he doesn’t even write with a ballpoint pen.’”

At the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, where Israel was showing her first film Windfall, one of the writers there suggested she make a film on Frank. “They have a mentoring programme where you can pick from a list of people to help you,” she says. “I chose Tue Steen Müller.

He was interesting because he had written about people like Chris Marker and Jean-Luc Godard as great documentary makers. As soon as I told him I worked with Robert Frank he was like, ‘Do you know how many people have tried to call him and to do a film with him?’ He said, ‘You have to make the film – you really have to do this.’”

By this time Israel had been working with Frank as his picture editor for 20 years. “At first I resisted the idea,” she recalls. “I said that would be a really odd change of roles because I work for Robert and together with him. For me to direct him it would be too weird. So I said no at first, but Müller kept insisting.” Despite her reluctance, on the plane home she started to imagine what the film could look like. “I was staring out of the window and started to visualise all these scenes we could shoot and I started to write it all down in my notebook.

By the time we landed, the notebook was full. So I thought, as soon as I’m home I’ll go back to Robert’s house and talk to him about it.”

Initially Frank was as opposed to the idea as Israel had been in Amsterdam. “I went round to his house and said, ‘Hey, you don’t think it would be a good idea for me to do a film about you, do you?’

And he was like, ‘No, that would be really weird.’ So I changed the subject immediately. But I could see him looking at me out of the corner of his eye. And he said, ‘You come back tomorrow and we can talk about it.’ So I went round the next day and he said, ‘OK, let’s start next week.’ Then I really started freaking out.”

Seven years in the making, Don’t Blink was created with cinematographers Ed Lachman and Lisa Rinzler, with additional camera work by Tom Jarmusch. “It was great working with them because they had done both narrative and documentary,” says Israel. “I thought that was great because I feel that Robert is between those two worlds. And I was also thinking that the film should be between these two worlds and obviously between still photography and film.”

Frank was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Zurich in 1924. There, his German father passed down his love of photography. “My father was a good photographer,” says Frank in Don’t Blink.

“Photography was photography and it had nothing to do with making a living. He just liked to photograph – it made him forget the problems he had with his business. It was always talk about money […] you are not making enough money or somebody had more money.” While in Zurich, Frank became an apprentice to a commercial photographer, Hermann Segesser. As well as studying portraiture and landscape, he also learned graphic design and the art of bookbinding. In 1946

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he created his first handmade book, entitled 40 Fotos. The front cover of the book was a camera lens, which on the subsequent page opened to reveal an eye. It was Frank’s eye looking out onto the world he has been surveying for 70 years now.

The 40 photographs contained within the book were both beautiful and profound, and displayed the artistic and narrative genius he would become famous for. It’s the stories implied around the photographs that are the most captivating. “It seems like this moment in time, but within that moment there is a beginning, middle and end and it’s encapsulated in that one little frame,” says Israel.

In 1947, Frank moved to the US, taking 40 Fotos with him. Amongst the people he took the book to was Alexey Brodovitch, the Russian-born photographer, designer and art director for Harper’s Bazaar, who saw something similar to his own aesthetic in the 23-year-old’s photographs. Frank

Near his home in Mabou, Nova Scotia

Selecting images for his 1971 film, Conversations in Vermont, photographed by Sid Kaplan

became fashion photographer at Harper’s Bazaar in the autumn of 1947. Brodovitch was known for an experimental approach to photography; his vibrant montages of image and text revolutionised what had been a staid, lifeless fashion magazine, and Frank soon learnt that photography could respond to situations emotionally, rather than analytically.

He also began to experiment with some of his new mentor’s less orthodox techniques. Brodovitch would bleach negatives or crop in radical and unexpected ways. These methods moved Frank away from simply capturing the facts of a scene and towards attempts to convey the experiences and emotions it contained.

He started to shoot at night, taking deliberately blurry and unfocused images on grainy film. Often he would develop frames over each other. These images captured America as seen by an alien – a country that could be cold and hostile. Alongside his street photography peer and great friend Louis Faurer, he started to develop his own style built around what he calls “spontaneous intuition”.

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Frank worked at Harper’s Bazaar until 1952, during which time he married his first wife, artist Mary Lockspeiser, whom he appeared with in the group show 51 American Photographers, at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He visited Europe as well as Central and South America taking portraits of everyday life. His Peru travels resulted in two handmade books which he sent home to his mother, each featuring the same 39 photographs but arranged differently. As with 40 Fotos, they saw him develop the style and image sequencing he became known for. “I was very free with the camera.

I didn’t think of what would be the correct thing to do; I did what I felt good doing. I was like an action painter,” he recalled of the faces and landscapes he took with his hand-held 35mm Leica camera. As you can see from his collection of photographs in the books Paris and London/Wales, which along with the Peru books are also now available, Frank was bursting with invention and ideas as he looked to set out on his own. “I think as a photographer you have a certain time when it’s good for you and

you’re possessed by doing that work and seeing it develop,” he says in Don’t Blink.

“Little by little I knew what I had to try and get. Pictures that talked about the character of the people.” It was on a trip across his adopted country that Frank would really make his mark on 20th-century photography, with The Americans.

Disillusioned with what he saw as the romantic reportage of Life magazine, in 1955 – with the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship and guidance from Walker Evans – he set out on a road trip to reveal the real USA. “At the time, the pictures, which cast a candid eye on racism, alienation and class division, were criticised for their challenge to the official optimism of the postwar consensus. Before long, they took their rightful place in the photographic canon, alongside the works of Walker Evans,” wrote Kenneth Turan in the New York Times in 2016. “I was tired of romanticism,” Frank told photography critic Sean O’Hagan in The Guardian, 2004. “I wanted to present what I saw, pure and simple.” As his friend and collaborator Jack Kerouac put it in the introduction to the first edition of The Americans, Frank “sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world”.

Recalling the year 1955 in the Thames & Hudson book Robert Frank, first published in 1983, the photographer said: “I cross the States.

For a year. 550 rollls of film. I go into post offices. Woolworths, 10-cent shops, bus stations. I sleep in cheap hotels. Around 7 in the morning I go to a nearby bar. I work all the time.

I don’t speak much. I try not to be seen. One day in Arkansas, the police stop me. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘I have a Guggenheim scholarship.’ ‘What’s a Guggenheim?’ I spent three days in prison.”

In Don’t Blink we get a rare insight from Frank into his most famous work. “You find out the most interesting things in all of these people,” he says. “Yeah, I was a hunter and you hunt for a good picture […]

I was interested in the picture, I tried not to talk to them and didn’t want them to talk to me.” Like the Depression-era photographs of the Deep South by Walker Evans, The Americans revolutionised the documentary tradition. “Edgy, critical, and often opaque at a time when photography was generally understood to be wholesome, simplistic, and patently transparent, the photographs disconcerted editors even before the book was published,” wrote curator Sarah Greenough in Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans, a book to accompany a 2010 exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. “What The Americans did was to free other photographers up to do things they didn’t feel like they had permission to do, in a way,” says Israel.

“To have it be dark or let it go grainier; or to let the composition go off kilter.

And that really excited people. He really liberated photography.”

For Israel it’s not just the individual photographs that are so inspirational.

“As an editor I also find the sequencing of his books so exciting,” she says. “In The Americans, when you flip the pages you can really feel that movement. You can almost do it like a flipbook in a way, so it’s really got that filmic quality. Some photographers, when you go to their show or see their

With a projection of his 1969 film Me and My Brother

It seems like this moment in time, but within that there is a beginning, middle and end, and it’s encapsulated in that one frame.

Working on an early version of his 2013 book, Household Inventory Record

book, it’s just like a collection of their best photographs. With Robert it really seems like the sequencing is the important thing, and what makes the story move.” In Don’t Blink we hear Frank talk about this process in making The Americans, where he had to edit the 27,000 images he had taken.

“It’s a very important part of a photographer’s work, to choose the pictures,” he says. “When I chose them in the beginning I made big prints and pinned them up on the wall… You had to somehow organise it and to narrow it down. And when I chose the 83 photographs for the book, I really thought they got the essence.”

Way ahead of its time, The Americans was unfairly panned by many critics when it was published in

1958. “They are images of an America seen by a joyless man who hates the country of his adoption” and “Meaningless, blur, grain, muddy exposure, drunken horizons, and general sloppiness” were just two of the press reviews in Popular Photography in 1960.

But as with Evans before him, Frank went on to be lauded by critics and photographers alike. And like his great contemporaries Louis Faurer, William Klein and Weegee, it’s hard to imagine the world of street photography without him.

For Frank, the science of photography was just as important as the art. In Don’t Blink, while shopping for one of his throwaway cameras he bumps into Sid Kaplan, his old darkroom man. “Before he became famous he spent a hell of a lot of time in the darkroom,” says Kaplan, back in his own darkroom. “Robert would look at the print and say, ‘How much time did you give it?’ And I would say, ‘22 seconds.’ ‘Make it 24’ […] Sometimes he would scratch on the negative, other times he would write on a piece of glass and put the glass on top of the

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print and print it through. We did a lot of experimenting, no two techniques were ever the same.”

I am curious to know what Frank, who created his most famous work with a screw-mount Leica IIIc with 35mm and 50mm lenses, thinks about digital photography. “Robert likes mistakes and I guess it’s harder to make mistakes with digital,” says Israel. “He also loves all the throwaway cameras. He said to me he finds them interesting because they are rudimentary and he has to actually think and change himself to take a picture. And that makes him take a different one.” As we see throughout Don’t Blink, as Israel travels with Frank across New York, he is still never without a camera. “It was funny, he went to go to back home to Nova Scotia last summer and I said to him, ‘Are you going to take cameras, do you want me to get anything?’” says Israel. “And he said, ‘No, I hardly take anything when I travel any more.’ And he had his suitcase open and it was all cameras and all film.”

Although he is best known for his 70 years of photography, his work with the moving image has been just as revolutionary. ‘‘If Robert Frank wasn’t so acclaimed as one of the most influential photographers of all time, he’d have a much larger profile as an American indie filmmaking icon,’’ Richard Linklater told Nicholas Dawidoff from the New York Times in 2015. For Israel, Frank’s Photographing the documentary crew transition from during the filming of Don’t Blink photography to film in the late 1950s was only natural. “I’ve always thought that if you look at his photographs, it almost all looks like film.

And I actually think his move from photography to film was the most exciting moment about him,” she says. “When I started out I thought I would do my documentary about Robert as a filmmaker rather than a photographer. I felt that was less Blink. “That was very important in known and so it would be more interesting for my development as an artist. That everyone. But what happened was, when we sat kind of desire to express something down to talk to him he talked about photography new, to move in a different direction, and film as interchangeable. So then I realised it believing that you could find your was going to be a bigger thing than I anticipated. own way and create your own rules Because he uses photographs in film and film in […] It was so different to being in photographs, that is what my film had to do. It had Switzerland, where you had to do to be all about imagery.” what your father did or what was Written and narrated by Jack Kerouac and in the instruction book.” starring other friends from the New York The spontaneous, improvised underground, Frank’s Beat Generation film Pull narrative (later revealed as planned My Daisy was shot in 1959 with co-director Alfred and directed by Frank and Alfred Leslie. “This was a good period because of these Leslie) and naturalistic style made people like [Gregory] Corso, [Allen] Ginsberg, or Pull My Daisy a landmark in the Kerouac, maybe they didn’t know where they were American New Wave alongside works going but they were moving forward all the time or such as John Cassavetes’ Shadows and moving into whatever direction they chose to move.

Shirley Clarke’s The Connection. Frank Just let it roll and go and do it,” says Frank in Don’t would return to the subject of the Beat

Frank’s studio

Yeah, I was a hunter, and you hunt for a good picture. I was interested in the picture, I tried not to talk to them, and I didn’t want them to talk to me.

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Generation in 1968 with Me and My Brother.

Co-written with and featuring Allen Ginsberg alongside his partner Peter Orlovsky, the film deals with Orlovsky’s brother Julius’s mental illness. The improvised collage style of Frank’s first full-length feature film echoed the work of the Beats. “It was always hard for me to follow a script. A lot of that stuff is really spontaneous – that’s the good part of it,” says Frank as he watches the film again in Don’t Blink.

Apart from his 1988 feature Candy Mountain, Frank’s other best-known film was one that never received a commercial release. He had first worked with the Rolling Stones for the cover of their LP Exile on Main Street. Documenting the group’s 1972 tour of the US, Cocksucker Blues can still only be legally screened when Frank is in attendance.

“It’s a fucking good film, Robert – but if it’s shown in America we’ll never be allowed in the country again,” said Mick Jagger of the film.

Frank made more than 30 films over a 50-year period. Reflecting on Conversations in Vermont, his 1969 film that examines his difficult relationship with his children, Pablo and Andrea, from his first marriage, Frank says: “It’s nice how film survives [from] many years ago and they come back, and they move and talk […] It brings back the real thing.

Jersey City

It’s not the way photographs are, it’s still alive. A photograph is just a memory put away.” Even more personal was Life Dances On, dedicated to Andrea, who died in a plane crash at Christmas time in 1974, and Home Improvements, which studies the artist’s relationship with his family, including his schizophrenic son Pablo, who died in 1994. Many of these little known films were hidden away in the archive until Israel found and remastered 28 of them for a box set that the German publisher Steidl released in 2008.

Which of the many little-known films Frank made were the most important to Israel? “The films are like little time capsules and tell the stories of places and times in people’s lives. So it would be hard to pick out which are the most important,” she says. “The ones I feel most fond of are the ones that are New York as I remember it – the New York where I had so much fun. But of all the films, One Hour from 1990 might be my favourite, where he just gets in a car and drives around the East Village

sit around and talk about our lives or something we’d just heard about.

I remember one day asking him if he’d ever thought about putting all his stuff in storage and just disappearing – so we would have an hour-long conversation out of that instead.”

Don’t Blink is assembled using fragments of Frank’s life and works mixed with the director’s footage of him in New York and Nova Scotia, where he and June converted an old fisherman’s shack in 1971. Frank also talks about some of the friends he met and filmed along the way, such as avant-garde icon Harry Smith and inventor Robert Golka – the subject of Frank’s 1981 film Energy and How to Get it featuring William Burroughs.

“These are good people, marginal people who live at the edge, that always interest Collection of vintage cameras in his studio me,” says Frank in Don’t Blink. “I prefer to walk on the edge rather than the middle of the road.”

The end result is a collage-like documentary that is as brilliantly unorthodox, raw and surprising as Frank’s own work. And like his work, it straddles the world of photography and cinema as well as reportage and narrative.

“We have noticed that when we show the film to people they start to see the narrative really quickly and start rolling along with it as if they are watching a film rather than a for an hour, all shot in a single take. And personally, documentary,” says Israel. “It really of the ones I worked on, Paper Route means the starts to take off and they are wrapped most to me. It’s just Robert getting into a driver’s up in the story. And that is what I delivery van through the snow in Nova Scotia, very wanted. I didn’t want to do that simple but beautiful. Robert came and gave me the thing when someone talks over the footage to edit right after 9/11. Everyone was so photographs and do those slow down at the time and that film just took me to a moves in. I wanted to do something different place. It showed such a simple way of different. But I think the best thing being, driving around in the morning as it gets light about the film is what someone said and you have a coffee with the radio on. It’s just to me: ‘It’s Robert and his friends,’ such a happy, simple film, it really helped me.” and I guess that’s what it is. And that’s In Don’t Blink, Israel has created an intimate the kind of film I’d like to see about portrait of an elusive artist who could only be somebody. You just step in as if you reached by someone who knew him well. “The are one his other friends. If anything, whole thing about Robert and his wife June Robert would want to break down the is they just don’t do anything they don’t feel like idea that he is a legend.” doing. If one day they are not in the mood to do something they don’t do it. And I think that is Don’t Blink, the documentary film great,” says Israel. “What would happen was, we on Robert Frank, is out in early 2017 would go around to interview him and he’d say, grasshopperfilm.com ‘Shall we just drink some tea today?’ So we would dontblinkrobertfrank.com

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Photographs Gavin Bond Styling Mark Anthony Bradley Photographic Assistant Paul Rae Grooming Candice Birns at Crosby Carter Management using Oribe Hair Care

MARK MAHONEY

Coat by Bally; trousers by Ermenegildo Zegna; shirt, shoes, jewellery and suitcase, model’s own.

Mark Mahoney started tattooing aged 14, in 1970s Boston, when the art was still illegal and his clients were equally underground. “Whether they were sailors, outlaw bikers or construction workers, they all shared a ‘fuck it’ attitude,” he says.

It was there that he learnt black-and-grey tattoos, a prison style that Mahoney has helped make as famous as his clientele – Mickey Rourke, Johnny Depp and Lady Gaga have all stepped into his shop, the Shamrock Social Club, on LA’s Sunset Strip.

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Mahoney, who landed an acting role in last year’s Whitey Bulger biopic, Black Mass. “I asked Johnny Depp to hook a brother up and god bless him he did,” he says. “Johnny is a righteous homeboy, we have been friends for 35 years.”

Next year Mahoney appears in David Lynch’s longawaited Twin Peaks revival, but he’s not ditching his first love. “It has been a gas to do something different after tattooing for so long, but tattooing will always be numero uno to me.” Ink is for life, after all. shamrocksocialclub.com

All clothes, model’s own.

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Shirt by John Smedley; trousers by Ermenegildo Zegna; vest, shoes, sunglasses and watch, model’s own.

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Shirt and jewellery, model’s own; trousers by Ermenegildo Zegna.

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Jacket by Turnbull & Asser; trousers

by Ermenegildo Zegna; shirt, shoes, sunglasses and jewellery, model’s own.

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Coat and shirt by Issey Miyake Men; trousers by Ermenegildo Zegna; shoes and ring, model’s own.

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Coat by Mackintosh; trousers, vest and jewellery, model’s own; shirt by Emporio Armani.

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Jacket by Our Legacy; trousers

by Ermenegildo Zegna; shirt by Richard James.

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Jacket by Hawksmill Denim Co; trousers by Ermenegildo Zegna; vest and sunglasses, model’s own; scarf by E. Tautz.

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In the 1980s, a group of artists, musicians and free thinkers formed an experimental collective in New York’s Lower East Side.

At last the movement is receiving the recognition it deserves.

RIVINGTON

Words Andy Thomas

Fence of the Sculpture Garden on Forsyth Street, New York, 1988 Photograph Andre Laredo

In 1986, if you walked east along Rivington Street, in New York’s Lower East Side, you would be confronted by a hulk of metal that twisted into the air like a giant spider hauling itself from the earth. It was welded together, over many dope-fuelled nights, by a collection of artists, musicians and outsiders known as the Rivington School, who had salvaged the abandoned cars and scrap metal that littered their neighbourhood. They christened it the Rivington Sculpture Garden.

A year later it was bulldozed by the city, eager to capitalise on the area’s property boom – which in turn was driven by the art scene at the end of the street, where artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were gaining international recognition. Visit the corner of Rivington and Forsyth today and you’ll find luxury condos, built in 1988, worth millions of dollars.

“The Lower East Side kept producing mythological art heroes such as David Wojnarowicz and Richard Hambleton,” writes artist Istvan Kantor (aka Monty Cantsin) in his new book, Rivington School: 80s New York Underground. “But behind the celebrity facades there were some concealed, rat-infested territories, surrounded by decay, ruins and scrapmetal.”

In the early to mid-1980s, a group of maverick street artists, sculptors and performers created a gritty and anarchic alternative to New York’s hip art scene. “A new breed of artists got fed up with Soho’s growing dictatorship,” Kantor tells me. “The Lower East Side seemed to be a perfect territory to get away and to free themselves from the complete control of market machinations. It was a time to make shit happen and that’s what we did full time.” The story of Rivington School is one of resistance and rebellion that has been lost beneath the legend of the downtown scene. “The tools of the media were in the hands of the corporate-driven gentrified art world that had no interest in socio-political

SCHOOL

discussions. They overlooked everything that was not strictly for profit and tried to pretend it didn’t exist,” says Kantor. “While highbrow museum scholars wrote their essays on auction winners, bestsellers and gallery favourites, we had parties in abandoned buildings and empty lots.”

Although critics and cultural historians overlooked the Rivington School, it was an important strand to 1980s New York art. “It might sound contradictory, but the Rivington School was not part of the downtown art scene,” says Kantor. “The downtown art scene mostly meant the East Village wannabe galleries and nightclubs, seeking recognition and money, dominated by fashion and cheap glamour. The Rivington School was a guerrilla-style art community camping in the ruins of a remote area in the Lower East Side.”

With essays from a collection of Rivington renegades, along with the incredible photographs of Toyo Tsuchiya, Rivington School: 80s New York Underground feels long overdue.

What became known as the Rivington School had its roots at No Se No social club, a steamy, dimly lit basement that opened on Rivington Street in 1983. The club was founded by ‘Cowboy’ Ray Kelly, who first came to New York from Texas in the mid-1960s to study at the Art Students League, becoming an assistant to Mark Rothko. “New York was really cheap then, so we bought a large building for $50,000 on the Lower East Side. I was doing construction, painting and started doing sculptures using water and light,” he tells me. “But I moved back to Texas some time in the ’70s to run the family farm. Then, after my father died, my brother and l bought a farm in Belize where l lived for several years. I wasn’t doing much art then.

Rothko had committed suicide and I thought that painting was a dead end.” He was drawn back to New York in the early ’80s. “Things were starting to happen on the Lower East Side by then,” he says.

“There were still lots of drugs, junkies and prostitutes, but you had galleries like ABC No Rio and the Storefront for Art and Architecture.”

In 1983, he began looking for an alternative art and performance space inspired by Club 57 in the East

Village and other underground art events. These included the infamous ‘Shit Show’ held in 1982 at the Kwok Gallery on Mott Street and the ‘Performance A-Z’ series at Storefront for Art and Architecture on Prince Street. He found the space in one of the roughest areas of the Lower East Side.

“Rivington Street was like the stock market in the morning, only they were selling drugs,” says Kelly.

“A friend of mine, R.L. Seltman, found the No Se No space. It was a former Puerto Rican after-hours club that was busted for drugs.”

As the photographs in the book show, the Rivington Street of the mid-1980s was almost post-apocalyptic. “Getting closer to Houston you could already smell a different air,” says Kantor.

“Crossing Houston was like crossing a border into a new realm, the landscape became totally different: ruined buildings, poverty, junkies, rats, no glamour at all, empty lots, crap all over the place. It was a danger zone with a postwar climate. I grew up in a ruined world in Eastern Europe, so I felt at home.”

It was into this environment that Kantor plunged himself, travelling from Montreal, where he had founded the experimental neoist art movement.

“In 1982, I organised a neoist apartment festival

in New York that took place partly in East Village and Lower East Side locations,” he says. “We had a campfire on Houston Street, burning paintings donated by local artists. I was fascinated by the landscape and insane energy.”

Linus Coraggio came across the No Se No space in 1983, during his last year at art school, where he was making politically themed wall relief sculpture using found objects and welding. “I took a walk on the Lower East Side in search of signs of a parallel cool existence I knew had to be there,” he says. “I walked into 42 Rivington and met Ray Kelly and Freddie the Dreamer [aka Fred Bertucci], who were painting the inside totally black with smelly enamel paint.” Initially thinking they were just “nutty old-guy freaks”, he returned a few months later with his friend Ken Hiratsuka (now a well known stone sculptor, whose first works were carvings along the sidewalks of New York). “I already had that ‘get the fuck out of my way I want to do something’ attitude and stance, but Rivington would intensify those feelings of autonomy,” he says.

The No Se No came to prominence as a performance space in the summer of 1983, through the ‘99 Nights’ programme. “Each night

It was like crossing a border into a new realm, you could smell a new air: ruined buildings, empty lots, rats, no glamour.

Outside No Se No social club, Rivington Street, New York, 1983 Photograph Toyo Tsuchiya

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would be a different performance, which Toyo would photograph and post the following night,” says Ray Kelly. “That was really fun because you never knew what to expect, sort of like open mic, anyone could book a night and perform.” “Leave Yer Preconceptions at the Door, Shithead” announced the flyer to the free events that ran seven nights a week. Many of those that appeared had also performed at the ‘Shit Show’.

This included the instigator Kwok Mang Ho, performance art pioneer and filmmaker Arleen Schloss, dancer/choreographer Christa Gamper and Christine Hatfull, actress from sci-fi film Liquid Sky. Some of the others who performed included musicians and multimedia artists Julius Klein and Raken Leaves; filmmaker Kembra Pfahler; multimedia artists Bradley Eros and Aline Mare; artists John Beckmann and Peggy Cyphers; as well as Taylor Mead and Jackie Curtis, associates of Andy Warhol.

No Se No was one of a number of spaces in the neighbourhood managed by artists and built on the principles that art and activism should be for everyone. “There were important links to most Lower East

R i v i n g t o n Side alternative spaces, artist collectives, non-profit organisations, and small independent galleries,” says Kantor. “They were all working together, shaping each other.” As early as 1980, arts centre ABC No Rio had been squatting buildings around the Lower East Side with their Real Estate Show celebrating “Insurrectionary Urban Development”. Other spaces are similarly long gone, wiped out by the rapid regeneration, but their myth remains. The best known at the time was Freddie the Dreamer, opened next to No Se No in 1984 by Rivington artist Fred Bertucci. And in the same year another No Se No regular, Jim C, opened the Nada Gallery at 40 Rivington Street.

“They could survive because it was pre-gentrification times and rents were still low,” says Kantor.

“Artists could move to the Lower East Side from all around the world, get a cheap studio and start a gallery or performance space. There were also tons of abandoned buildings to take over and squat.”

As soon as he set eyes on No Se No, Kantor knew it was his kind of place.

“I was really fascinated by the venue itself,” he says. “It was a small dark bunker with a bar. The ambience was a great part of the performances.

There was no glamourous decoration or blinding light show. You felt yourself immediately somewhat different as you entered. You got confronted by the space and became part of the show.”

Poet, writer and performance artist Michael Carter, co-editor of the book, was similarly drawn in on his first visit to one of the ‘99 Nights’. “It was Julius Klein who first dragged me down there, for this ‘fashion show’ where the models all wore paper couture created and painted by a Taiwanese artist named Kwok [who had staged the infamous ‘Shit Show’].

But I totally dug the place and asked them if I could do a show.”

He remembers the clandestine atmosphere of the venue well. “No Se No was an old illegal Puerto Rican social club. The title means, ‘I Know Nothing’, which says everything,” he tells me. “It was officially members only at the beginning, geared to an inside clientele, and drinks were sub-rosa [secret]. It was an old-school storefront that was sunken a few steps below street level. Especially in the early days, a lot of the decor was

retained, giving it a kind of Caribbean feel, but soon that was subsumed by graffiti. Eventually, it would look worse than the CBGB’s bathroom.

Often the floor smelled of whiskey, stale beer, Marlboros, and week-old vomit. Sanitation was not its strong suit and there was no ventilation.”

Carter compares the rather confrontational communication between performers and audience at ‘99 Nights’ with other strands of the New York underground of the early 1980s. “The initial crew at No Se No was mostly an inside crowd, later adding the outer fringe of performers and musicians who knew each other, at least well enough to offer taunts and insults, similar to what occurred in the early days of rap and poetry slams,” he says. “It was also a kind of experimental lab, where you didn’t know whether what you did would elicit loud boos, raucous laughter or cat calls. Nobody got it more than Mike Keane, who would suddenly drop his trousers halfway through his weekly poetry rant.”

‘99 Nights’ heralded the beginning of one of New York’s most underground performance spaces.

“Thematically, its focus was parodic, lampooning what we today associate with the early baby boomers that they were rebelling against, with a heavy accent on gay/LBGT/drag underworld culture, though it was also a haven and laboratory for edgy performers and musicians, such as Rhys Chatham and Y Pants,” says Carter.

No Se No would soon rival its more famous East Village neighbour Club 57. “Around the end of ’82, Club 57 had reached its nadir,” says Carter.

“Many of the folk I met there became kind of the last gasp or last wave of Club 57 and in 1983 gravitated towards this little shithole on Rivington Street.” The grotty basement was far removed from its hip East Village neighbour, where many of the No Se No instigators had migrated. “As opposed to 57, it was free and raw, no tickets, it was cheaper, and you could get away with almost anything short of out and out violence,” says Carter. “There was definitely a ‘cute’ factor about 57 that you would never experience at No Se. People at 57 cared as much about their attire as their attitude. There certainly was no dress code at No Se; if anything, it was hillbilly flannel.”

No Se No was just one of a number of performance venues for alternative

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Angela Idealism and David Andrew Bennet after performing with their band, Womb Service, at Cuando, East Village, New York, 1985 Photograph Jeffrey Schwarz

Ray Kelly, Tovey Halleck, Jack Vengrow, John Wayne and David Mora Catlett, circa 1985 Photograph Toyo Tsuchiya

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People would congregate without a city permit to drink beer, create art, make noise and cause mayhem. artists. “There were just a plethora of places back then,” says spoken word/performance artist Angela Idealism (aka Angela Repellent). “They were everywhere, all over the East Village and Lower East Side. There was a bar called Downtown Beirut that really did look like somebody had bombed it.

With all the vacant lots everywhere full of rubble and broken glass, it was such a raw canvas you felt like you could do anything.”

In the latter part of 1984, No Se No staged several exhibitions as it was transformed into a performance space and gallery. “There was a show

by E.F. Higgins III that really sticks in my mind,” says Kantor. “He put up a large selection of his smaller-size ‘Firecrackers’ paintings, filling up the walls in a very orderly fashion that was quite different from the usually more chaotic, badly lit No Se No exhibitions. Of course, there was lots of irony in his installation in making it look like a real gallery show, but that in fact marked a new beginning of the No Se No gallery.”

The name for the new art space was suggested

by Coraggio. “All the future exhibitions planned

by No Se No will be called the Rivington School,” announced a 1985 press release written by Tsuchiya. “The aim of this gallery is to grasp the next step. That is the sound and form of our feeling.” The press release then named some of the artists who would exhibit in the space, including Tsuchiya, Coraggio, Ray Kelly and Ken Hiratsuka.

Others to exhibit there included the then unknown Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

The name Rivington School was partly derived from the fact that it was a place where artists could teach their craft. It was also meant as a way for the collective to make their mark on the downtown scene. “Without a definite, self-imposed name for the group’s random, morphing mayhem, the 1980s media and art world would have an easy time marginalising Rivington School from near insignificance to total non-existence,” writes Coraggio. To promote the work of the school, Kelly nominated Kantor as its spokesman. “I guess he saw in me what was missing from other Rivington soldiers, the social skills and other communication qualities that didn’t alienate people but rather convinced them to join the party,” says Kantor.

“I was singing my propaganda songs backed with a ghetto blaster, giving speeches, doing blood performances, spreading the idea of revolution in the streets, putting up posters, spreading the gospel at private parties, in galleries, clubs and through the media. I was also documenting the school’s activities on film and video.”

The symbol of the Rivington School was the six o’clock sign, the supposed closing time at No Se No.

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“There were actually no closing hours until whomever had to close it said so,” says Carter. “And even then the party would continue, in the lot or streets nearby. Street parties outside No Se No on any given night generated a kind of proto-rave environment.” Often the party moved to the vacant lot at nearby Rivington and Forsyth, where the Rivington Sculpture Garden was born in 1985.

The Sculpture Garden began as a reaction to the creeping gentrification in pockets of the Lower East Side.

“Once the city got the lot cleared they threw up a chain link fence which was supposed to keep people out for five or 10 years until the plot could be auctioned off to the richest developer,” says Coraggio. Kelly and his cohorts had other ideas. “We tore down the fence to an adjoining vacant lot,” says Kelly. “Ken Hiratsuka brought in a huge stone from an exhibition with the parks department, Robert Parker and I brought in a checker cab that he had cut up, Linus brought down his welder.” A few years earlier Coraggio had been inspired by a visit to Los Angeles.

“I’d seen the ‘Watts Towers’ in the black ghetto in the ’70s,” he tells me.

“These were gorgeous kooky mosaics on steel frame towers that a nutty Italian guy [Simon Rodia] built over his lifetime then abandoned. I always wanted to make something like that.”

The Sculpture Garden really took shape when a few Rivington School artists including Kelly and Coraggio went hunting around the local area for scrap metal. “That part of town was still fairly industrial so stuff could be found everywhere,” says Coraggio.

“Rebar [reinforcing steel] and other metal could be found piled up by construction sites, which were usually unguarded at night. So that’s when our group scavenger hunt took place.”

With an arc welding machine he had stolen – hooked up to 100 feet of welding cable, a breaker box and three jumper-cable clamps – he began to create the metal part of the sculpture.

With the fence torn down so the work was open to the public, the sculpture

grew as other artists built around the metal tower created by Coraggio. Tsuchiya and Tovey Halleck hung up two pieces of a 50ft ladder sculpture, created by Kazuko Miyamoto, from old rope and branches. Hiratsuka created his two-ton carved stone piece and Michael Zwicky added a twisted wooden structure.

The whole space was suddenly alive with sparking blue flames of welding torches and the red-hot magma of melting iron. “As it developed, what made it bigger was more cars were abandoned and more material would be dragged in, so each car would serve as a base to weld off of,” says Coraggio.

As many as 400 people would congregate without a city permit to drink beer, have open fires, create art, make noise, and cause general mayhem.

So what was it like to work in this anarchic outdoor space? “It was pretty insane but fun,” says Coraggio. “Just odd having random people, bums or jobless Puerto Ricans watching you without saying anything. The public’s reaction varied from uncomprehending confusion to amused disbelief mostly. But nobody ever complained about the noise or the art.” The artists responded by opening the garden to the community. “The little local Puerto Rican kids played in the sculpture garden and spraypainted it,” says Coraggio. “Their parents would come and hang out a bit and the artists in the surrounding blocks would get involved showing art or just coming around to talk or drink beer.”

Kantor calls the Sculpture Garden “a surplus monument built from thrown away urban excess”.

He acknowledges that they weren’t the first artists who had recycled objects, but their whole aesthetic was new. “The Rivington School artists were scavengers, feeding on all the crap they could collect in the city. This kind of junk art existed before of course, but the way the Rivington School was doing it was different. They didn’t create nice, good looking, cute museum objects, there were tons of other craft artists doing that. The school created a social event where the whole neighbourhood participated in the construction of the sculpture, and that was the greatest art in it.”

The many painters who contributed to the Sculpture Garden were just as impressive and innovative as the sculptors. “FA-Q and U-Suck and Rick Prol could be counted on for works of immense talent,” writes Angela Idealism. “Brilliant colours, odd angular perspectives, and strange textures, were characteristic of the primitive, figurative abstract, symbols of this collective conscience. These images were splashed onto found objects; refrigerator doors, window frames, dolls, plastic toys. Junk was their canvas.” Carter compares the school’s artists with others making their mark in New York. “They followed the South Bronx graffiti writers by tagging and desecrating each others’ work, most of which was created on or out of found junk,” he says.

As Kantor recalls, the artistic statements were often as spontaneous as they were inspired. “One of the most surprising moments was when Toyo Tsuchiya painted the garden white,” he says. “The junk sculpture that was made from bits of scrap

Artist Jack Waters performing at the ABC No Rio social centre, 1983 Photograph Toyo Tsuchiya Scrap metal noise performance by Demo-Moe at the Sculpture Garden, 1986 Photograph Toyo Tsuchiya

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suddenly became almost a clinically clean and conventionally beautiful fairytale site. It was almost disturbingly unreal. But it didn’t last for a long time and with the help of the weather and new additions it soon regained its hardcore quality.”

Inspired by the Rivington School, Coraggio set up another sculpture garden on Avenue B and 2nd Street in the summer of 1986. “I called it the Gas Station aka Space 2B ‘Son of Rivington’, because it looked so similar,” he says. “In this case a wild, towering scrap metal fence with cars, motorcycles, giant floor safes and boats welded into it. Later towers and arches filled the inside space. It also had a three-bay garage where art shows, music, poetry and plays would take place.”

The Rivington School Sculpture Garden reached out further into the community when it also became an alternative art space for wild, avant-garde performance, even more out there than shows at No Se No. “I think Demo-Moe’s shows were probably the most memorable, if only because it wasn’t just a band, but tons of steel and debris anyone could beat on,” says Carter. “They supposedly had songs but it was all about the noise and din they could create.

And those were raucous affairs, with anyone able to join in; I certainly did.

My fledgling band, the Vacuum Bag, played there and there wasn’t a lot of junk there yet, but a lot of fires.”

One of those to regularly perform was Angela Idealism. “Trash from logic, and logic from trash. We ride the wave and don’t come back,” was one of the lines she screamed during her performances. “It was just such a raw, wild and expressive scene back then and there was so much going on,” she tells me. “All you would have to do was just walk down the street and you would run into Monty [Istvan Kantor] or Ray Kelly. They’d say, ‘Come down, at eight we are going to start breaking up a ton of glass and bringing a load of spray paint and tools down too and creating a new sculpture and making some noise.’

There was never any structure to it, which I loved.

“I really liked performing there because it was so underground and experimental. For my first performance I painted my whole body silver and wore a diaper while screaming at the audience. If I wanted to sing or speak or swear or spit I felt

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I painted my whole body silver and wore a diaper while screaming at the audience. I never knew what I would do next. free to do anything. I would act my pieces with props and I loved that there would always be these objects lying around. It would be very outrageous, I never knew what I would do next.”

She would also play gigs with her band Womb Service there alongside groups such as Demo-Moe. Despite some of the macho personas in the group, Angela soon felt at home in this alternative community. “I was very young and this was the first time in my life I really felt part of something,” she says. “They all loved how wild and expressive I was and how much of a tough guy I was.”

In the mid-’80s the free market growth that had been part of Reagan’s neoliberal dream was already putting increasing pressure on the alternative scene. “Undercover real estate agents and hedge fund managers marched through the ruined landscape of the Lower East Side, rubbing their bloody hands while distributing eviction notices,” says Cantor. As rents spiralled and real estate speculators moved in, the Rivington School responded. ‘Stop the War on the Poor, Gentrification is Genocide’ and ‘Hands off the Homeless’ read two banners at a demonstration by members of the group.

The Rivington School was eventually forced to move out of the first Sculpture Garden on a cold November night in 1987, shortly after No Se No had closed its doors for the last time. “When the first garden was going to be demolished, we planned some resistance by chaining me to the fence of the garden,” says Kantor. “But this action seemed futile and was dropped when the workers arrived with their bulldozer. Our revenge was when

Ken Hiratsuka with his artwork Seed of Culture, Central Park, 1985 Photograph Jim Louis

Istvan Kantor, aka Monty Cantsin, reading his manifesto in front of his artwork Blood-X, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1988 Photograph Gabor Szitanyi they couldn’t figure out how to start their job because the Sculpture Garden was welded together so strongly that it took them some great efforts to finish their assignment.”

A new sculpture garden soon emerged in another vacant lot down the block on Forsyth Street. “The second one had an amazing fence, a true masterpiece of welded street art,” says Kantor. In 1992, this was also torn down, but would rise again two years later on 6th Street between Avenue B and Avenue C, a few blocks from Coraggio’s Gas Station/Space 2B. Three years later, this final sculpture garden also closed down as the Lower East Side’s rapid regeneration reached a new intensity.

Like their counterparts from the Creative Salvage movement in the UK (home to designers Tom Dixon and Ron Arad), many of the recycling mavericks went on to become renowned artists in their field. Best known for a strand of street art called 3D Graffiti, Coraggio is still creating abstract welded art from his studio in New York.

Similarly, Kelly’s metal sculptures have appeared in landscapes and galleries across the world – from PS1 in New York to Nagoya University of Arts in Japan. From inner-city sidewalks to the desert and coastline, Hiratsuka’s stone sculptures have made him one of the best known street artists working today. Owner of Gallery Onetwentyeight on Rivington Street, Kazuko

Miyamoto is now also one of the great minimal artists in New York.

Editor of the arts journal Redtape until 1992, Carter has authored two books on poetry and contributed to many others. And these days Kantor is best known for his guerrilla blood performances at such venues as New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Under the name Monty Cantsin, he has also put out several albums, among them Ahora Neoismus, and produced Demo-Moe’s only LP, Demolish NYC. He is also a regular collaborator with Angela Idealism, whose latest song ‘Millionaires’ Lament’ is about how “in New York the billionaires are now pushing out the millionaires”.

Despite the extreme regeneration of the Lower East Side, the spirit of the Rivington School remains in the few defiant underground galleries that remain – such as Bullet Space, set up in 1986 as a squat by a group of Rivington members. Similarly the ABC No Rio continues to run art events in the neighbourhood. But the legacy of Rivington School is more far-reaching. “It spawned a DIY aesthetic that influenced or inspired many of the artists and people who interacted with it or saw it going on,” says Coraggio.

“Then there were the thousands more who just walked or drove by and have some image lodged in their memory of seeing a crazy mountain of steel that made no sense in a city of only buildings.”

With the collective’s sculptures torn down and artists forced out, Rivington School: 80s New York Underground is an important document of a time when creativity not money was the gauge of success.

“The monuments that could have been our legacy were destroyed three times,” says Kantor. “Therefore there is not much material legacy of the school except for the remaining documentation and related ideas.

Our legacy in this situation could perhaps be the Rivington School T-shirt slogan, with an addendum to “Make Shit Happen Again!”

13th Street squatters oppose eviction by the NYPD, 1995 Photograph Clayton Patterson

Community protest, 10th Street at Avenue B, New York, 1990 Photograph Clayton Patterson

The book Rivington School: 80s New York Underground is out now blackdogonline.com An exhibition on the Rivington School is at the Bishop Gallery, New York, in summer 2017 bishoponbedford.com

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Words Chris May Photographs Jon Mortimer

Jóhann Jóhannsson From soundtracks for The Theory of Everything and the Blade Runner sequel to the collaborative Drone Mass at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the genre-defying Icelandic composer is the master of melancholic complexity.

Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson began his professional career playing in bands in Reykjavík in the mid-1980s, during the fertile period that saw his near contemporary, Björk, emerge with the Sugarcubes. After being introduced to recordings made in the late 1970s by Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman for Brian Eno’s Obscure Records label, Jóhannsson shifted his focus from guitar to chamber group and orchestral composition, developing the striking blend of acoustic and electronic sounds and baroque-to-modernist aesthetics for which he has become known. You are most likely to have come across Jóhannsson via his music for the Icelandic TV series Trapped, broadcast

by BBC4 last year, or his Oscar-nominated score for Denis Villeneuve’s thriller Sicario.

Both are excellent introductions, for among Jóhannsson’s particular talents is the evocation of tension and atmosphere.

Born in Reykjavík in 1969, Jóhannsson spent his childhood in Iceland and France, where, aged

10, he fell in love with Sparks and the Velvet Underground’s first album, in heavy rotation on an older sister’s record player. Jóhannsson bought his first synthesiser aged 15 and began playing in bands a year later. The collaborative, interdisciplinary nature of Reykjavík’s cultural scene suited him well – he began writing for the stage in 1995 and formed the record label and cross-arts collective Kitchen Motors a few years later. Jóhannsson’s work continues to have a strong collaborative strand. Last year he teamed up with Acme (American Contemporary Music Ensemble) and vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth to perform Drone Mass at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Previous

collaborators include Marc Almond, Pan Sonic, Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit and Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))).

Jóhannsson’s first solo album, 2002’s Englabörn, grew out of music he’d composed for a stage play. Since then, he has continued to compose for the stage and for film. His soundtrack for the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything won a Golden Globe, and his score for Sicario was nominated for an Oscar and a Bafta. He recently began work on Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner sequel, the duo’s fourth collaboration.

Jóhannsson spoke to us from his home in Kreuzberg in Berlin, a city he has frequently recorded in and to which he relocated three years ago. Jóhannsson was preparing for his upcoming US and European tour, which features his latest release, Orphée, his first solo album in six years and a typically singular combination of string orchestrations, electronics and unaccompanied voices.

J ó h a n n

J ó h a n n s s o n

When did you first become interested in music?

When I was very young. We always had instruments in the house. We had a piano, and an organ, and my grandparents had a harmonium.

My father was a computer engineer but is also an amateur musician. He plays accordion and percussion. In his retirement he’s building a pipe organ – he’s halfway there; it’s a wonderful instrument. I started very early on, playing around with the instruments in the house. Later, I studied classical piano and trombone. I would improvise a lot. I preferred playing my own things rather than the exercises my piano teacher gave me.

My parents also had a big collection of classical records, which I delved into and grew familiar with. I have three older sisters and they had their own tastes. At the age of 10 or so, there were certain things in their collections that I gravitated to, around 1979. We lived in France at the time and Sparks were huge in France then. So Sparks were a favourite band, in their Giorgio Moroder phase. Later on, I discovered their earlier work, which is amazing.

The record that had the most influence on me then, however, was the first Velvet Underground album. One of my sisters played it a lot. At 10,

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I obviously didn’t understand what the lyrics were about, but I listened a lot to the first side. I had no idea what ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ or ‘Venus in Furs’ were about, but I thought they had a cool beat and I very clearly remember listening to ‘Sunday Morning’ and ‘Femme Fatale’, these beautiful pop songs. Several years later I got into the second side and the whole history of the album. But that was after I’d become a music enthusiast, reading the music papers and buying my own records. I discovered what the album actually was and I became a huge Velvet Underground fan. But at the age of 10, it was just an album with a funny cover and a collection of nice, kind of melancholy, pop songs. I’ve always been attracted to the melancholic.

When did you start playing in bands?

When I was 16. I was already into electronics.

I bought my first synthesiser when I was 15.

I worked for a whole summer on a farm and all my wages went into buying a Roland Juno-106.

I started playing around with that and with two cassette recorders, doing simple overdubs.

Eventually, I bought a four-track recorder. Then at 16, I fell in with a group of like-minded people and we started a band.

I was actually the only one who could play much, so I wrote the tunes and told them which strings to hit.

But we all had the same sensibilities. We started playing in public around 1987. There was already a vibrant scene in Iceland. The Sugarcubes were just starting out and we played with them quite a few times, before they got world famous. And I liked Björk’s previous band, Kukl, a lot as well. The Reykjavík scene was very lively. It was small and connected, collaborative and supportive. And particularly at that time, not career orientated. Nobody cared about recording contracts. We were just playing music and staving off boredom. People were doing interesting things. Everyone seemed to have two or three projects on the go. It was a good place to have your artistic

upbringing and to grow musically.

There were no barriers. This applied not only to rock but to classical and jazz musicians too. They were all connected. Not all classical players had this attitude, but some did.

From 1986 to 1999, I was mainly playing in bands and doing a lot of different collaborative projects. The main one, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was Ham, which was a kind of a melodic nu-metal band.

It wasn’t my band, they roped me in as a guitar and keyboard player.

It was a very strong live band, really powerful. It’s music that people don’t generally connect with me, but it had an atmospheric element, it was cinematic in a way. I don’t want to overemphasise its importance, because it was one of many projects, and I was still making my own music, evolving my own sound. But the major thing I learnt from being in Ham was how to create a powerful sound on stage.

You went on to harness Reykjavík’s collaborative energy with the Kitchen Motors collective.

We started Kitchen Motors in 1999. We wanted to do interdisciplinary, hybrid art forms and encourage collaborations between people who maybe wouldn’t otherwise cross paths. It was me, [composer and audiovisual artist] Kristín Björk Kristjánsdóttir and [jazz guitarist] Hilmar Jensson, three people from very different backgrounds but with similar sensibilities. We would dream up different projects and bands with interesting combinations of musicians. We would just call up these people and say, “Hey, do you want to come and do something next week?” It’s harder to do this in bigger cities. But because Reykjavík is small, everyone is reachable.

Things happen fast.

Did you start writing music for film and theatre at this time?

That started a few years earlier, around 1995. I became the resident composer with a theatre company and they gave me a lot of resources.

I had several years of being able to experiment and work with small ensembles, combining classical players with electronics.

You’ve written that it was discovering Brian Eno’s Obscure

Records catalogue from the late 1970s that got you into writing for ensembles. When and how did that happen?

That was through Andrew McKenzie, also in the 1990s, who leads the Hafler Trio. He was connected with the British industrial music scene and in the first incarnation of Cabaret Voltaire along with Chris Watson. Andrew lived in Iceland for a number of years. He had an enormous archive of rare and strange and interesting records. Through him, I discovered a lot of experimental music, avant-garde and contemporary composition, electronic music.

A lot of esoteric stuff. He’s a remarkable artist and very underappreciated. Andrew was kind of a mentor to me in the sense that he exposed me to a lot of different music and art and literature.

And also in philosophical and aesthetic terms, how to create art. He was also associated with Touch Records, who put out my first albums.

Andrew had the complete collection of original Obscure LPs. Three that made strong impressions on me were the original version of Gavin Bryars’ ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ and also his music for the opera Irma, and Michael Nyman’s Decay Music. Especially ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’. It was like an epiphany, a real moment of revelation. It’s the

Germans use it. It’s a different condition from sadness – it’s a much more complex emotion, one of reflection, of a tragic view of art.

The idea that art can affect you emotionally, with melancholy but also with a sense of joyfulness – this strange, complex mix of emotions.

I’m always interested in things that are joyful and sad at the same time.

If you can achieve that in a piece of music, then that’s success for me.

You started recording your own music relatively late. Why? It took me a long time to develop a sound as a composer. My first album came out in 2002, by which time I was over 30. It was a product of all those years accumulating influences, from experimental music, classical music, certain film music – Bernard Herrmann’s work was a massive influence. And of course from my background in electronic music.

What attracts you to writing for film and theatre? Many musicians prefer

My work tends to be calm, slow, quiet, but it has an underlying sense of tension and melancholy. original [25-minute] version I like. And though it’s not obscure in any sense, Arvo Pärt’s ‘Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten’, another piece from the late 1970s, was also an epiphany for me. To hear something so strong expressed in such simple terms and using such simple means, that had a very powerful effect on me.

Your music is cosmic in dimension, but unlike with Pärt, it doesn’t project an explicitly spiritual perspective.

If you are interested in classical music, it’s very hard to avoid the Bible. Much baroque music was written for the church and it wasn’t until the romantic period that this changed. With Arvo Pärt, he is such a strong composer that it transcends the spirituality. One thing I dislike is when people describe my music as meditative.

Personally, I never listen to music without giving it my full attention. Which is in a way meditative, I suppose. But the word has connotations with new age music, which I recoil from and shudder at. My work is more about tension. It tends to be calm, slow, quiet, but it has an underlying sense of tension and melancholy. Melancholy is very complex. I understand the word in the way the

their work to be purely audio.

It’s never been about writing incidental music. It’s just music.

My criteria is always, does this work as a piece on its own? A lot of my work has been written for theatre and film, but then it took on a life of its own. Like Englabörn did in 2002. It was originally written for a theatre production and then I created a suite based on that, which was intended as a record in its own right, not as a soundtrack.

Writing for film and theatre usually involves interventions from directors. How do you find that?

I have been lucky with the people I work with. I haven’t had any serious conflicts. I choose my projects very carefully. I have three criteria for any project which is not my own, which these days are mostly films but also art related. One, is the idea interesting, does it excite me in some way? You can’t always tell from a

script whether it’s going to be a good film – there have been plenty of good films made from bad scripts and vice versa – so it’s more the idea, the atmosphere, the concept of the proposed film.

The second criteria is, do I think I can bring something to this project, can I offer something and make it better? And third, are the people involved talented, are they people who are doing interesting things? And are they people I want to spend three or four months working with? So far I haven’t had any problems. Also, people seek me out because they like my music. That’s how I got into writing for film, through Englabörn and my other solo records. So directors know my sound, and that’s what they’re asking for. I don’t mean to denigrate journeymen composers, some of them do great work, but I’m not interested in working like that. I’m not really interested in film music in general. Herrmann and Ennio Morricone are among the exceptions.

You lived in Denmark for several years, and now you’re in Berlin. What prompted the move?

I had one foot here for a very long time. I lived here for a year before going to Denmark. About three years ago I decided to make the full move. I was often coming to Berlin to record and many of the friends and people I work with live here. It’s a very vibrant city and bigger than Copenhagen, and cheaper. I have a large studio in the centre of the Kreuzberg district, a great area. That would be impossibly expensive in Copenhagen or London.

Your music defies categorisation, but people try to label it. It’s frequently described as post-classical. Do you recoil from that?

It’s not really my job to come up with words to describe my music, but I don’t care for post-classical. I think it’s simplistic, inaccurate and nonsensical. But I totally understand the need for a shorthand description. Record labels need it. Journalists need it. So until there’s a better description, I suppose we’re stuck with it.

Jóhannsson’s album Orphée is out now deutschegrammophon.com Jóhannsson performs at the Barbican, Silk Street, London, EC2 on 9 December barbican.org.uk His soundtrack to the film Arrival is out now johannjohannsson.com

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RICHARD SAWDON SMITH Photographs Ross Trevail Styling Adam Howe Photographic Assistant Kane Layland Styling Assistant Sophie Chittock Location Norwich University of the Arts nua.ac.uk

Richard Sawdon Smith is a photographer and professor at Norwich University of the Arts. In 1997, a photo of his Aids-stricken boyfriend, Simon, won the John Koplan portrait award. He exhibits internationally and edits the industry manual Langford’s Basic Photography.

Sawdon Smith’s work explores health and medicine. For the photo series The Anatomical Man, he tattooed blood vessels onto his arms and chest. “It makes a correlation between using a needle in a blood test to draw blood, and tattooing as a process that uses a needle, with blood as a byproduct,” he says.

The images draw attention to life with HIV. “Even if that person is healthy they still have to have regular blood tests to check the levels of the virus in the body. It reveals what’s perhaps invisible to most people about those constant observations, checks and intrusive procedures.” richardsawdonsmith.com 134 J &

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Coat by Paul Smith; trousers and waistcoat by Vivienne Westwood Man; jewellery, model’s own

Jacket by Baracuta; trousers by Paul Smith; T-shirt by Supreme x Undercover; bracelet, model’s own.

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Suit by Matthew Miller; shirt by Orlebar Brown; shoes by John Lobb; socks by Uniqlo; jewellery, model’s own.

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Coat, waistcoat and shirt by Polo Ralph Lauren.

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Jacket by Thom Sweeney; trousers

by Neil Barrett; shirt by Mr Fish; socks by Uniqlo; rings, model’s own.

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Shirt by JBJ; trousers by Richard James; shoes by

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Coat, trousers and brooch by Alexander McQueen; shirt by Mr Fish; shoes by John Lobb; ring, model’s own.

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Sweater by Neil Barrett, trousers by Belstaff; jewellery, model’s own.

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Photographs Klaus Thymann Styling Chris Tang Photographic Assistant Grace Lines Models Jakub Baron and Ivan Ilijevski Casting Sandra Haselback eskimos.ch Location The Capra, Saas-Fee, Switzerland capra.ch Lift passes courtesy of Free Republic of Holidays Saas-Fee saas-fee.ch

SAAS-FEE Jakub wears gilet by Penfield; trousers by Belstaff; shirt by Club Monaco; shoes by Adidas x Porsche Design Sport.

Jakub Baron, 27, started snowboarding at 14. He joined the police but grew frustrated with the lack of time to ride, so three years ago he took a job as a chef in Saas-Fee. His time outside the kitchen is spent hiking the area’s 4,000m peaks – Saas-Fee has 13 of them – to find fresh powder. Skier Ivan Ilijevski is 36 and is currently training to be a mountain guide, for which he couples skiing with ice climbing. This winter he plans to spend seven weeks traversing Europe’s highest peaks, skiing between mountain huts.

Ivan wears coat by Element x Griffin; hat, model’s own; sunglasses by Ray-Ban; gloves by Arc’teryx.

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Ivan wears coat by Peak Performance; trousers by Rossignol; boots, model’s own; goggles by Orgreen Optics; gloves by Arc’teryx.

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Ivan wears coat by Bally; trousers by Woolrich; sweater by 3.1 Phillip Lim; boots by Moncler; sunglasses by Westward Leaning; socks by William & Son.

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S a a s - F e e Jakub wears gilet by Stone Island; trousers by Woolrich; cardigan by Margaret Howell; boots by Moncler; watch by Tudor.

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Ivan wears coat by 7L; trousers

by Stone Island; sweater by C.P. Company; boots by Hunter Original; torch by Finisterre.

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Ivan wears jacket by Moncler; trousers by Margaret Howell; top by Adidas x Kolor; gloves by DSquared2.

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Ivan wears jackets by Rossignol; trousers by Peak Performance; shoes by Adidas x Porsche Design Sport; hat by C.P. Company; watch by Nixon.

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Ivan wears jacket by Tommy Hilfiger; trousers by Emporio Armani; red jacket by Canada Goose; goggles by Oakley; gloves, model’s own.

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Words Andy Thomas Portrait Kevin Davies

Michael Smith “It’s different by the sea. A bit strange even. Just as the coast lies at the ends of England geographically, it’s also at the edges of our society and the margins of our culture – a liminal, threshold place where little England meets the wide mysterious world beyond, which has always made it a site of myth, eccentricity, transgression and romance.” So begins Michael Smith’s reflective narration of the first episode of Stranger on the Shore. These three short films “about the weirdness of the English coast” are the latest in a series of documentary poems by the writer and broadcaster.

They were made with his old friend, filmmaker Maxy Neil Bianco, who Smith last collaborated with on the trilogy Another England. What he called his “meditation on this marginal, sometimes otherworldly place, and the characters that haunt it” saw him return to his hometown of Hartlepool in the north east of England. “Quietly conquered by the beauty of the Tees Bay, evening sky shot through with red, like the Ancient of Days to which we all return,” he narrates. Smith’s contemplations around place are just as poignant in Stranger on the Shore, investigating the peculiarities of Hastings and St Leonardson-Sea, where he now lives.

“A masterpiece in gutter romanticism,” was how one critic described his debut 2007 novel, The Giro Playboy. This modern-day Beat novel followed a disillusioned drifter as he moved between the north east, London and Brighton, contemplating the meaning of life while on the dole. “I knew a better world was waiting for me,” the narrator says while sweeping up broken glass and cigarette butts in an east London pub. “A world of sophistication and ease, a world of kalamata olives, browsing through antique bric-a-brac […] it was clear to me that idle, balding bourgeois complacency was my birth right […] but how was I to claim it?”

Smith came to the attention of BBC4, which commissioned his TV series Citizen Smith (dissecting notions of Englishness) and Drivetime, “a journey about a Britain in between. A Britain we drive to on the way to somewhere else”, said Smith.

It was with the inquisitive eye of the outsider that Smith viewed London for his 2014 book Unreal City. “All great cities resonate, and it is to this exquisitely dangerous frequency that the true flâneur will always be tuned,” wrote DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall in the foreword. Unreal City follows the narrator as he returns from his solitary seaside existence to wander the streets of Soho and the East End, tuned to what he calls the “the deep hum at the heart of it all” through the constant fog of a hangover. “The London I first fell in love with; all those wildflowers that once poked through the derelict brickwork, the strange wild flowers of the tarmac wilderness that were the secret life of the city, all tidied up and weeded now,” Smith writes. A long time fan of Smith’s poetic meanderings, Weatherall created a darkly ambient soundtrack to accompany Smith’s narration of Unreal City. And the two have teamed up again for Stranger on the Shore.

We headed down to Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea to join Smith on a walk around the place he now calls home.

Raised in a coastal town in the north east of England, the British filmmaker, novelist and broadcaster is fascinated by the peculiarities of English life.

His poetic explorations continue in his latest film trilogy, Stranger on the Shore.

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It amazes me that in this stagnant economy there are so many people with money.

What was it about Hastings that drew you in?

There was a certain charm to the place that I really liked.

The ramshackle feel of streets like the one we are walking on now, kind of tatty but also really interesting, I just loved that. There were also these odd characters around so it all felt a bit eccentric and I just got the sense it was different. And then we moved here from London about a year ago. It felt like a second chance somehow.

It seemed like there was a freedom here to take an approach to life that was a bit more on your own terms.

Still from Dark Satanic Malls, 2016 Still from Hounds of Whitby, 2016 Still from Dark Satanic Malls, 2016

Could you tell me about the area?

St Leonards is like the faded glamour of the English seaside resort. The aristocracy used to come down in Victorian times. So by the 1920s it had become very fashionable as a resort. Then the arse fell out of it when people started to go to Spain on holiday so it was suddenly empty. And then you had the Thatcher government almost socially cleansing the inner boroughs of London. So if there was a problem family they would be pushed out to B&Bs or whatever on the south coast and these places became really bleak.

In Stranger on the Shore you talk about the seaside as a liminal space.

When you are walking down the shoreline, you’ve got on one side the familiar small world of England with its little streets and shops, and then on the other side you’ve got this vast, infinite blue that just goes on forever. W.G. Sebald has this lovely quote in his book Rings of Saturn when he’s talking about the Suffolk fishermen staring eastward out to sea. They were not there for the fish, or the companionship, but to “be in a place where they have the world behind them, and before them nothing but emptiness”. And I can really associate with that. It’s always really attracted me, that being on the margin of something, the edge of something poetic and unfathomable really. Living here on the threshold, to me that is a very romantic thing.

When did you start writing?

I always thought I’d do something creative but I never knew what that might be. I used to love drawing actually as a kid, then as a teenager I started to imagine myself as a painter, I really liked that romantic idea. And that’s what led me to going to art school in Brighton. But I dropped out after a couple of months and then started to get into the writing. And I started to pursue that as I realised I was much better at it than art.

How did the first book The Giro Playboy come about?

I started it when I was living in Brighton, so that would have been 1999. When I left college, I became something of a recluse. That winter I was in this bedsit on a downer.

But I found that was very productive creatively. I was writing down all these little pieces accompanied by drawings. It was a slow process to begin with, it wasn’t like all of sudden I thought I’m writing a novel. I was just enjoying writing them but over time themes started to emerge and I started to think about how I could link them.

Who were the writers to most influence you?

Richard Brautigan was a big influence on the first book. There was a collection of short stories he did called Revenge of the Lawn. They were all very short stories, often just a page long and often very tangential. I also got quite into essayists, so things like ‘An Apology for Idlers’ by Robert Louis Stevenson. And then I really got into Baudelaire’s writings about modern types like the flâneur and the dandy. What I really like about Baudelaire is he can write almost flowery poetry and then quite analytical 156 J &

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cerebral essays about cultural commentary. And I really like the idea of switching between the two. And when I started to write more I really got into him, especially his prose poems. He was one of the greatest at that. He did one called Paris Spleen, all these brilliant little vignettes that someone gave me towards the end of me writing Giro Playboy.

I found that the structure of my writing was quite like his and also emotionally and tonally they are quite similar. But yes, over the years his prose poems have been a great influence.

I understand Giro Playboy began as a series of pamphlets.

I was sending the manuscript to all these publishers and I was getting back the same cut and paste replies. And so I thought, if they are not interested, I’ll just do something myself. I was living in Brick Lane and it was the time when there were all the little quirky little boutique places opening up across the East End so I would sell the pamphlets there.

So how did the publisher Faber & Faber pick them up?

I knew this guy called Laurence Johns who worked for Simon Finch Rare Books in Notting Hill. He used to have quite a large selection of Charles Bukowski and Beat stuff and I guess my pamphlets felt a bit like that, something you might find on Black Sparrow [the 1960s publisher]. So I started to sell Laurence these pamphlets. He said, ‘Why don’t we compile them and do them as an artist type book box set.’ Because the book was about having no money and a real low-rent quality, we decided to do them in pizza boxes. I used to do music as well with this Italian guy called Diego, so we put a CD in and

M i c h a e l through that I started to have a residency at the Whitechapel Gallery.

Through all these things happening, Lee Brackstone, one of the editors at Faber & Faber, asked to take the book on.

How autobiographical was Giro Playboy?

It was totally based on my experiences, as is all my stuff. I’ve tried a few times to make things up but that’s not my thing, I just don’t think I’ve got the imagination. The books have always been marketed as fiction and the films as documentary, but they use the same process really. To get the raw material I wander around, take impressions down and then record them. So they are like very rough sketches. And then the second stage is to edit them into a narrative structure and shape.

So that is where the fictional element comes in, but the material is always seen or experienced. And then I guess there is also the extent to which you are trying to make sense out of your experiences, so that becomes the stories made out of your memories.

How did the broadcasting come about?

That was through Simon Breen who worked in TV and used to drink in [Shoreditch pub] the Bricklayer’s Arms where I was working. The first book had come out and it was something I had always really wanted. But I guess in the end it had become a bit of an anticlimax.

I was so excited about being a novelist and then nothing much really happened. It wasn’t exactly how I imagined it. So I was thinking, what do I do now? Simon must have come to a few of the gigs we did and heard me reading and thought, this guy’s voice sounds unusual and I think he would be good for TV. So we started to put a pitch together for BBC4 and surprisingly we got it.

So this was Citizen Smith. What was that like to make?

It was a great thing to make because every day you were somewhere different. One day you’d be on the Thames on a boat carrying sugar and the next day dressed as a druid on Glastonbury Tor during solstice. It was great fun, but looking back I’m not that pleased with the outcome creatively. Whereas Drivetime, the next thing I did for them, was horrible to make but I really liked the result.

Drivetime was you looking at places in between.

That was the interest to me – looking at these marginal places, the in between places. By this point, I was really into pursuing the idea of what you can do with TV, how far you can go to make something experimental and distinctive. I wanted to push the boundaries of TV. And that was especially the case in the second series – when I really found my own voice.

Were there any filmmakers you were thinking of when making Drivetime?

The most obvious one was Jonathan Meades, but an even bigger influence was Patrick Keiller. I absolutely love those films like London and Robinson in Space.

I had seen bits of his films late-night on Channel 4 and they had gone in but almost like a dream. Then one night a friend put London on and I watched it properly and it just blew my head off. And then I became really obsessed by it and watched it again and again. It was the way it just obeyed its own rules and was so fresh. I had just made Citizen Smith and I was looking for ways to make something that was less formulaic, and so I really started to study Keiller. As someone who was trying to do something different, they were a huge inspiration.

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How do you stop yourself simply copying the style?

That’s the challenge I guess. But it can also be a really enjoyable part of the creative process. For example, in the little technical details, Keiller’s shots are always locked off, basically postcards that moved. And we would do things like set a dolly up so the shot would move, to mimic the inner experience of a slow amble. We wanted it to feel more subjective, internal. Then in terms of the narration, it was also a case of finding my own voice and tone. As much as they hit upon a general formula, Keiller or Meades always had a more critical, cerebral, intellectual tone than the one I wanted for my films. I wanted mine to feel more lyrical and poetic, more from the gut, echoing the inner state of mind of somebody moved by something Cover of The Giro Playboy, 2006 beautiful, or unsettling, or just strange.

Image courtesy of Faber & Faber I wanted the voice to be more romantic than intellectual I suppose, and getting that voice right was a big part of it.

I understand these first films were made with Wojciech Duczmal?

Yes, and I really have to give him joint credit for the direction we took on Drivetime.

We really forged that one together with blood, sweat and tears in a little edit suite in Soho. So there were lots of late nights.

Then after Drivetime you did quite a few BBC2 Culture Shows?

Yes, I liked some of them but they weren’t really commissioning the sort of things I really wanted to do. By the end of that, there was a sort of frustration at the whole process of making television. So when The Culture Show finished I really didn’t want to do any more TV, I wanted to make short films instead.

Had you made any films before?

No, but I’d learned how to make films by disagreeing with directors in edit suites.

I was always interested in how the film was made, so I picked it all up that way. TV taught me the process so I could make the films I wanted. And the first one I made independently was called Drift Street, that became part of my East End trilogy.

So this brings us to your time in east London in the late 1990s.

I, along with everyone else, first came to Hackney because it was cheap and that

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Andrew and Nina Walsh [his production partner] went away with the manuscript and came back with some sort of mood pieces very quickly. They played me a couple of tracks and certain passages of music suggested themselves to the narrative, so I just read over the top. It was a really easy and enjoyable process.

I was really impressed by how free their approach was, especially compared with working on TV. With Andrew and Nina, it was such a relief as they have that real freedom of proper artists. It’s really lovely to see how they work. And with Unreal City, something really quickly came out of the other end we all liked.

Reading of Unreal City, performed by Andrew Weatherall, Nina Walsh, Smith and Franck Alba at the House of St Barnabas, London, 2013 Photograph Marcus Bastel

In Unreal City, you had that line about “all those wildflowers that once poked through the derelict brickwork”. Is there anywhere that you still see this?

Here in Hastings. When we got here we thought, great, we are out of the loop, but you are definitely starting to see the regeneration here now. Since we’ve lived in that street in St Leonards, house after house has ‘Elephant’s Breath’ – or whatever by Farrow & Ball – painted on windowsills. For me it’s like the image from the 1950s B-movie film The Blob, but it’s a duck-egg green oozing everywhere. But seriously though, it is a problem.

In the book, you also talk about being part of the perceived problem as well.

Yes of course, we are also part of that gentrification. It’s like people complaining about the traffic when they are sitting there in their car clogging the roads up. It seems like it’s a situation that there’s no way out of. But it amazes me that in this stagnant economy there are so many people with money. Where does it all come from? It doesn’t make any sense to me. And I feel increasingly squeezed for options.

What is it about bohemia that interests you?

It’s something I’ve always been drawn to but it always seems to be on the verge of being snuffed out somewhere. It was great when we came here to Hastings.

We didn’t know anyone but just had this gut feeling that there might be something interesting afoot. We were amazed when we got here by how rich the art scene is here. Everyone seems to be doing interesting things.

Still from Can House, 2011, written and edited by Smith, directed

by Maxy Neil Bianco gave everyone a kind of freedom to not have to chase money and to pursue something creative. When I arrived there, it just felt like exactly the right place at the right stage in my life to be perfectly in tune with it.

London really felt like the centre of the universe. It almost felt like virgin territory with all these unexplored corners where you get away with things. And now all of it has been scrubbed too clean for it to happen any more.

One of the recurring things in Giro Playboy and Unreal City is the pyramid of Canary Wharf and its blinking eye.

That was me just looking at it is as some sort of masonic pyramid with this weird power like the Eye of Sauron [from The Lord of the Rings] or something. It’s funny though, a few weeks ago I got taken up the Shard for some posh cocktails. That’s also like this stretched pyramid and I really thought there was something not quite right about this building. Anyway, we got in the lift to go up to the bar and all there was was just the ground floor and number 32, which of course is a masonic number. I don’t know, but that building’s got evil vibes.

I first came across Unreal City thanks to the soundtrack

by Andrew Weatherall. How did you meet him?

It was in a field actually. I was at this Caught By the River [Heavenly Records nature/music blog] thing at Port Eliot Festival and he just came and introduced himself and said he liked my films. I was a big fan of his through things like Screamadelica and My Bloody Valentine and so I really admired him. And we really got on. Then about a month later I was talking to Lee Brackstone at Faber about doing some music for the new book. It was just a long shot really, but to my surprise and delight when we asked him he was into it.

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In Stranger on the Shore, you trace the spirit of independence in Hastings back to the 18th century and the formation of the American ground squatters’ community. And in Unreal City you imagine walking around during Victorian London. This brings to mind the writings of Peter Ackroyd.

I loved his book London: the Biography. It really gave you a new way of looking at a place. And the relationship between a place and time and the way places have these echoes of the past. It was always something I had sensed, but reading Ackroyd it really crystallised that idea that a place almost has a psychology or a conscience with all these buried memories. But conversely, in the Drivetime programme I was interested in the idea of places that have an amnesiac kind of quality, these very new shopping malls or the places you get along the sides of motorways. They are these dead places, inhuman somehow. And I find those places very unsettling.

Going back to the London trilogy, had you worked with Maxy Bianco before?

No and that is what was so brilliant about working with him. He was an old mate of mine who I had known since I was a teenager. He had always had that instinct that he wanted to make something. Not necessarily a film, but I think after seeing me doing all the TV that kind of inspired him and he thought, why can’t I do that as well?

You also made your Hartlepool trilogy with Maxy. They are obviously very personal films to both of you.

Our part of the world always seems to be under the radar and it’s never been represented much. I think what drives Maxy is to articulate what life is like where we are from. So he wants to show what life is like in these hinterlands. It’s the things that have fallen through the cracks that interest him. He’s working on a new one at the moment called Hunters of the Hinterlands. It’s about these lads on the dole whose benefits have been cut so much that they go out poaching. They catch these rabbits or deer or whatever and they will cook it up for their dinner. So they are eating all this Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall type food while being on the dole. What’s so good about working with Maxy on these projects is that he’s so embedded in these margins of society and edge-land locations. And I guess I bring a different

perspective having been away for so long. We both get very emotional seeing what has happened to our town but from different perspectives.

London had all these unexplored corners.

Now all of it has been scrubbed too clean.

Could we return to Andrew Weatherall, who created the soundtrack for the new trilogy with Nina Walsh.

I look up to Andrew so I always feel a bit shy to ask him, so it was great when he agreed to do stuff with Nina for the new films. He was dead into it. We’ve started to do events in the basement of our wine shop called Weird Shit. It’s a local review show with blokes from around here, so it might be one of the psychogeographers or a man who plays free-jazz saxophone while smashing plates on his head. I’d invited Andrew along and wasn’t expecting him to turn up, Still from Citizen Smith, 2007, written and but he came down and presented

by Smith, directed by Simon Egan was just really into doing more music. I really like working with him and Nina.

And they’ve done a great job with the new trilogy.

I love the ending of Dark Satanic Malls, in the Stranger on the Shore trilogy, when your narrative about the “jaws of the beast” that is the port of Tilbury blends into Walsh’s outro song.

It’s amazing that, really beautiful. She played me that song and I was like, bloody hell, you’ve just made my film 10 times better. Nina’s great – I really love her album Bright Lights & Filthy Nights.

How did you find the estuary lands in Dark Satanic Malls?

I had a friend from Essex who was interested in that area and we used to drive around there. I just found it really weird. I revelled in the strangeness and the bleakness of the place. It’s the atmospheres of these places that I am always looking for. That’s what I always start with in my films. And that had one of the strangest feelings that I had ever felt. You can feel that it’s toxic and haunted in some way, without necessarily knowing it used to be rife with malaria, or ‘marsh madness’, or that there used to be gallows for hanging pirates by the river bank. You just pick up on this singular atmosphere the place has.

Then when you look in to it, you realise lots of writers have sensed this, Still from Another England, 2013

like Dickens at the start of Great Expectations, or Conrad, who called it “one of the dark places of the Earth” in Heart of Darkness.

Why are seaside towns so interesting to you?

I was always interested in the coast as a place of myth.

There are these funny stories connected to the seaside.

There was one when I grew in Hartlepool about this monkey that gets washed up on the beach during the Napoleonic Wars. Not knowing what a Frenchman looked like, they put it on trial and hanged it. I thought this myth was specific to Hartlepool, but from Cornwall to Aberdeen, the same basic legend occurred all along the coast, it was almost like it revealed an archetypal truth about the seaside in some Jungian sense, a truth about being on the threshold of the land and something more mysterious beyond it.

Although, when I went to Whitby, I thought there might be more to it than this.

Can you tell me about the curse you relate in Hounds of Whitby, which completes the Stranger on the Shore trilogy?

I swear to you, that night I could hear the howls of a ghostly giant hound prowling the streets in the small hours, and I’ve never been so terrified in all my life. The next day I found out about the legend of a hellish apparition of a black dog that haunts Whitby, which Bram Stoker picked up on when he wrote Dracula there. I don’t know whether I think these things are just legends or something more real and more mysterious.

Maybe they somehow hang around buried deep in the psyche of the place, something we can pick up on at some psychic level and experience as ‘supernatural’.

I don’t understand it, but that makes it more fascinating.

What’s next for your work?

What interests me most is working with different disciplines. I’ve never been a purist in terms of the forms I use. I think the forms are there for you to play with. That’s where I get the most satisfaction from, so mixing music with words or seeing how words can fit with film. In some ways it feels to me that most art forms have developed because of the limitations of the medium.

But in the 21st century we are still locked into the idea that it’s a record or it’s a film or it’s a book. So it’s all kind of rigidly defined. And I’m interested in something that’s much more porous, that can free things up and make it more interchangeable. That’s what I want to explore more.

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Words Mark Webster Photographs Rob Low

Basketball Goes Global

When America’s Dream Team played in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the world’s view of basketball changed forever. The NBA returned to Spain this October to once again spread the word.

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Palau Sant Jordi arena, Barcelona

he 1992 Barcelona Olympics set a bar that every games since has strived to clear. Compared to Rio, which was protested before the flame was even lit, Barcelona was a model of how to weave stadia and sport into the fabric of a city. It worked not just for a fortnight, but also the quarter century since, a spectacle that has been absorbed into daily life.

But during those Games, there was one event that, for some, seemed at odds with the Olympic ethos. The basketball squad that flew in from the USA was unlike the teams they’d come to play. They bunked in a five-star hotel, not the Olympic Village.

They even turned up with a showbiz nickname – the Dream Team. It wasn’t hyperbole. Three years earlier, the International Basketball Federation had

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relaxed rules that banned professionals from playing in the Olympics. In later years, the US’s dominance meant some superstars would skip international tournaments, preferring rest to a shot at Olympic gold. But in 1992, the National Basketball Association (NBA)’s greatest players stepped up: legends ‘Magic’ Johnson and Larry Bird; the Utah Jazz’s deadly duo of Karl Malone and John Stockton; Clyde ‘The Glide’ Drexler and enfant terrible Charles Barkley. They were led by the Chicago Bulls’ 29-year-old captain, the mighty Michael Jordan.

As expected, the Dream Team walked the tournament. The NBA’s superstars finished with an average win margin of 44 points. In the gold medal game, they trounced Croatia by 117-85. Sports commentators have since labelled the side as the most dominant group of sportsmen ever assembled.

But the squad’s most important impact was off the medal table. Fans mobbed the players outside their hotel, desperate for a picture with their heroes.

Opponents did the same during pre-game warm-ups. And a global audience, which had previously shown little interest in basketball, was introduced to the game at its best.

Since those hot, summer nights in Spain, the NBA has mushroomed round the world. The Dream Team announced basketball to an audience beyond its homeland, but the league’s endeavours since have changed how – and why – the rest of the world plays the game. Which is why the NBA returned to Barcelona this October, for an exhibition match a few weeks ahead of the new domestic season.

The league travels the world playing in exhibition matches and spreading the word under the banner of the NBA Global Games. This time, it was the Oklahoma City Thunder who

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Oklahoma City Thunder and New Zealand national basketball team centre Steven Adams

Former NBA and French national basketball team centre Ronny Turiaf

Wherever you play in the world, NBA teams are going to find you. rolled into town, with a coterie of NBA personnel and former players.

Two nights before, Cristiano Ronaldo had watched the tourists succumb to Real Madrid by five points. Now, they faced FC Barcelona Lassa – the basketball wing of Barcelona’s most famous sports team – at the Palau Sant Jordi sports arena. Built for the 1992 Games, it sits high on Montjuïc, alongside the Olympic stadium.

Nick Collison, born in Iowa in 1980, is a 14-season veteran of the League, utilised either as a centre or power forward. He is a one-team player; he began his career in 2003 with three seasons as a Seattle Supersonic, then moved when the entire organisation decamped to Oklahoma City in 2008, as the USA’s sports franchises so often do.

Former NBA player, now FC Barcelona Lassa centre, Joey Dorsey

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Oklahoma City Thunder and USA national basketball team point guard Russell Westbrook

Although there were a handful of foreign stars in the NBA when Collison made his debut – most notably Serbian forward Vladimir Radmanović, who played for seven teams in a 12-season NBA career – their numbers have since proliferated. The 2016 draft included a record-breaking number of international players and an Australian – Ben Simmons – was first pick, signing for the Philadelphia 76ers. By last season, Collison was playing with or against 32 Canadians, 23 Serbs, 23 Frenchmen, 20 Croatians, 20 Australians, 17 Brazilians, 14 Nigerians and 14 Spanish – in total, more than 100 men from 37 countries.

This perhaps explains why no USA squad since has quite matched the Dream Team’s exploits. Of the 47 NBA players at Rio 2016, fewer than

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a quarter played in USA colours. Twelve nations competed and 10 had at least one league player.

Spain’s bronze medal-winning squad alone featured seven, including the Oklahoma City Thunder’s exciting young shooting guard, Alex Abrines.

“Guys from different cultures have had a real positive effect on the league,” Collison said, as Russell Westbrook faced a swarm of media at the other end of the court. Last season he was deemed MVP (most valuable player) at the All-Star Game, the league’s annual exhibition match between its best performers. “They are playing basketball at the highest level and it seems that wherever you play in the world, NBA teams are going to find you.”

As the morning session wound down, that sentiment was being echoed in a newly opened restaurant at the top of Barcelona’s Las Ramblas boulevard. The NBA chose Barcelona (where a team has been playing competitive basketball since 1926) for its first European NBA Cafe, which it filled with a vast array of memorabilia.

Opened just a few days before the Thunder arrived in the city, it was where the NBA

commissioner, Adam Silver, announced a new European Ambassador Programme. The programme will “see our former players continue to contribute to the growth of basketball beyond retirement,” he said. “These ambassadors will teach young boys and girls values that apply on the court and in life, including teamwork, leadership and respect.”

They are values that Silver, a New Yorker and Knicks fan, has embodied in the three years he’s held the job. Just two months after he took office, TMZ leaked a recording of LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist comments. Silver’s response was swift – he banned Sterling for life.

This year he moved the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte, North Carolina, in response to the state’s anti-LGBT laws. And as his counterparts at the National Football League struggled with players who sat during the National Anthem – in protest at police discrimination against black Americans – Silver opened a dialogue with senior NBA players to discuss how those protests could best be supported.

Silver’s actions recognise not only the cultural

It is such a beautiful thing to see basketball being played on such a high level.

Oklahoma City Thunder fan Michael Akuwanu, from London

Oklahoma City Thunder shooting practice

history within his sport, but also the world in which it operates. “Twenty years ago I was still chilling in the Caribbean,” said Ronny Turiaf, a Frenchman born in Martinique, who retired in October after a decade in the NBA. “But when I got to 15 or 16, I started watching basketball. It was when the likes of Michael Jordan and John Stockton [were playing].

That’s when the revolution, the dream started for me. It sparked a flame for me to get there.”

Turiaf reached the NBA via Paris, then Gonzaga University in Washington state. He was the 37th pick in the 2005 draft, signing for the LA Lakers, before stints with the Golden State Warriors and New York Knicks. He became an NBA champion in 2012, part of the LeBron James-led Miami Heat.

“When I got into the league, I’m not sure how many international players there were exactly,” he said.

“But I’m pretty proud to say that the French were the most represented.

“It is such a beautiful thing to see the game of basketball now being played on such a high level around the world. And I think that is testament to not only the growth of the NBA, but of basketball in

FC Barcelona players Victor Claver, Juan Carlos Navarro and Stratos Perperoglou

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Oklahoma City Thunder players Enes Kanter and Andre Roberson and FC Barcelona’s Dorsey and Perperoglou

general. And there’s this ambassador programme, a junior programme – it’s a trend to keep inspiring kids around the world to reach their dream.”

Turiaf was also aware that his sport is big business. Altruistic motivation aside, there is “also the financial one”.

“It’s twofold, but both things can work together,” he said. “And that way, so many international players can be highlighted wherever they are – Moscow, Fenerbahçe, Italy, Spain – and their achievement as businesses and teams mean they can provide a platform that says you can be successful anywhere that calls your heart. The door is open.”

The NBA’s trio of new basketball centres in China, each equipped with league-trained coaches, is proof of its international ambitions. The aim

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is to develop players for the Chinese Basketball Association, but also to find players with enough talent to play in the NBA. And bring basketball back home to a billion new potential fans.

Later that evening, back on Montjuïc, a throbbing stadium paid testament to Turiaf ’s sentiments.

Though the home side lost by three points, the game provided a showcase for Barcelona’s talent – not least a pair of American players who embody the Global Games ideal. Joey Dorsey, 32 and from Baltimore, is on his second stint with the Spanish team, after a career crossing continents to play for the Houston Rockets, Toronto Raptors, Olympiakos and Galatasaray. Barcelona’s point guard, Tyrese Rice, 29 and from Richmond, Virginia, went to Boston College but has never played professionally in his own country. He has spent nine years as a pro with the likes of Greek side Panionios, Bayern Munich and Maccabi Tel Aviv.

But judging by the 17,000-strong crowd’s cheers, they were here for one man – Westbrook. Though

he only played 21 of the 48 minutes, his 12 points, three rebounds and five assists lit up the arena. The previous evening, young fan Michael Akuwanu had flown in from London – which now hosts a regular season NBA game every January, at the O2 in Greenwich – to see him in the flesh. “I’m a big fan of Oklahoma City and of Westbrook,” he said before the game. “It’s the closest they’ve ever been to London and probably ever will be. So Barcelona was a no-brainer. It’s really good to be able to see a live game in a city near you. And I went to a Euro league match a couple of years ago too and the standard was good. Talent is definitely a lot deeper nowadays outside the NBA.” Akuwanu has taken the NBA Global Games spirit to heart. He name checked Luol Deng, who was born in South Sudan but whose family were granted political asylum in Britain. “He went to a school near me in Brixton, Saint Mary’s. And he’s NBA,” Akuwanu said. After excelling in the UK’s junior basketball leagues, Deng travelled to the

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Oklahoma City Thunder centre Nick Collison

Oklahoma City Thunder shooting guard Victor Oladipo

States on a college scholarship as a teenager. He signed for the Chicago Bulls in the 2004 draft and has since played for the Miami Heat and the Lakers. He is an All-Star in the US and captains the GB basketball team.

As Akuwanu walked into the stadium, he mentioned his own Nigerian lineage. “And there’s always been an influx of Nigerian players in the league,” he said. “If you’ve got talent, if you’ve got size, you can get there.” No matter where you’re from in the world.

NBA Global Games takes place at the O2, London SE10 on 12 January nba.tv NBA Cafe, Barcelona nbacafe.com

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MAX BROWN Photographs David Goldman Styling Mark Anthony Bradley Grooming by Oliver Daw at Frank Agency for Blow To Go Photographic Assistant Adam Kaniowski Car 1967 Ford Mustang courtesy of Dream Cars, Surrey dreamcars.co.uk

By nine, Max Brown knew he wanted to act. So after youth theatre, he skipped drama school for a role in Grange Hill. He’s since steered more aristocratic with roles as Edward Seymour in The Tudors and, more recently, Prince Robert in The Royals.

Eldest son of Elizabeth Hurley’s queen Queen Helena, the prince was believed dead but reappeared at the denouement of the last series. “The Guardian had reviewed the show as the highest quality trash on TV, which was a red flag,” says Brown. “But Mark [Schwahn, its creator] said he had an amazing character arc that

I’d have a lot of fun playing. He lived up to all his promises.”

Next he appears as John Hurt’s son in That Good Night, “a black comedy about John’s character, debating whether to end his life or not after finding out he’s got ALS [amyotrophic lateral sclerosis]”, says Brown. “We got on really well and created this really lovely estranged father-son relationship on screen.” It’s quite the family tree. “That’s not bad, right?” he laughs. “Two off the list.”

The third season of The Royals launches on E! on 4 December

Jacket by Neil Barrett; trousers by Moncler; top by Pringle of Scotland; hat by Lock & Co; watch by Omega; gloves, on dashboard, by Ami.

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Jacket and shirt by Burberry; trousers by Marni; top by Merz B. Schwanen; shoes by Mackintosh; hat

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Coat by Ami; jeans by Hawksmill Denim Co; Harrington jacket by Grenfell; bomber jacket

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Coat by Marni; trousers, stylist’s own; jacket by Moncler; sweater by Tourne de Transmission; shoes by Mackintosh; belt by Lyle & Scott.

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Coat by Ermenegildo Zegna Couture; shirt by Polo Ralph Lauren; hat by Lock & Co; scarf by John Varvatos.

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Jacket by Polo Ralph Lauren; trousers, stylist’s own; shirt by Carrier Company; boots and scarf by John Varvatos; gloves by Ami; ring and socks, model’s own.

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Jacket by Coach 1941; trousers

by Carhartt WIP; corduroy jacket

by Acne Studios; top by Merz B. Schwanen; hat by Lock & Co; belt

by Lyle & Scott.

MEXICO CITY Words Chris May

Mexico City makes London feel underpopulated – no easy task.

But almost 22 million people live in Greater Mexico City, almost three times the number who live in Greater London, which is spread out over a larger area. Significantly, all but one of the Mexico City residents we spoke to called their hometown “chaotic”, an affectionate description that acknowledges both the intensity of life on the streets and also the traditionally disruptive character of the city’s cultural scene. The cross-border refuge of choice for William Burroughs and other Beat writers in the late 1940s and early 1950s, before it was eclipsed by Tangier, Mexico City retains the transgressive spirit that made it such a draw in the mid-20th century.

Located in a valley on Mexico’s high-altitude central plateau, Mexico City was founded by the Aztecs in the early 14th century.

Most of it was destroyed by the invading Spanish conquistadors in 1521, and it was rebuilt in line with Spanish architectural conventions.

But remains of the Aztec structures can still be seen and some have been restored to their original grandeur. The city is enjoying a cultural renaissance that does not stop at archaeology. After centuries on the back foot, indigenous traditions, championed by the creative sector, are replacing the colonially induced inferiority complex that followed the arrival of the Spanish and, in the 20th century, economic dominance from over the US border. In the vanguard of this cultural reclamation is a gastronomic revolution led by chefs who are serving menus originating in Mexico’s pre-Hispanic civilisation. There is a widespread revival of interest, too, in ancestral architecture. An increasing number of Mexican architects and designers are reviving the country’s pre-Hispanic traditions and recalibrating them for the modern world. Meanwhile, Mexico City’s finest colonial-era buildings are also being restored.

Contrary to rumour, Mexico City is a safe place to visit. There are edgy neighbourhoods, but the city has avoided the worst consequences of the drug-induced gang wars that have ravaged other parts of Mexico since the country replaced Colombia as the main transit point for South American cocaine exports to the US. Ten Mexican cities appear on a list of the 50 most murder-prone cities in the world recently compiled by Mexico’s Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice. Mexico City is not among them.

Along with the pre-Hispanic gastronomy and architecture, Mexico City has world-class museums, art galleries, clubs and concert halls, religious sites, public parks and open spaces. We asked a chef, a musician, an actor, an architect and a journalist/musicologist to tell us what makes Mexico City special for them and to suggest some must-see places.

Serradilla in the garden of the Talent on the Road agency Photograph Ruben Marquez

M e t r o p o l i t a n

Ana Serradilla is an A-list star in Mexico and

elsewhere in South America. She broke into the mainstream playing Gabriela Solis in the TV series Amas de Casa Desesperadas (the Spanish-language version of Desperate Housewives). More recently, in 2014, she started in another major TV series, La Viuda Negra (The Black Widow) playing the real-life cocaine trafficker and murderer Griselda Blanco, who was shot dead in Colombia four years ago. Serradilla returned to the role this year in La Viuda Negra 2.

“Unfortunately, in parts of Mexico today we are living the drug war in all its glory,” says Serradilla. “Just like it happened in Colombia. The fiction you see in the TV series does not even get close to the harsh reality. It’s incredibly sad. The ending of the second series was left open for the possibility of a third season, but I don’t think it will continue. For myself, I am in search of new projects. I want to tell new stories and experiment with new characters.” In preparing for the roles of Blanco

and Solis, did Serradilla detect any similarities between their characters? “They’re both people who are driven by ego and are capable of doing anything to get what they want,” says Serradilla.

“Though obviously on different levels and in different circumstances.”

Mexico City is acquiring an international reputation as a happening global city with a vibrant artistic community. What makes it such an exciting place?

“Mexico is a country with a rich culture and roots that attracts the whole world,” says Serradilla. “Mexican people are warm and when people arrive in our country they feel embraced, they feel at home.

From gastronomy to architecture, and with so many interesting things to see, Mexico City is a magical, enriching place.”

What is the one thing above all that visitors to Mexico City should not miss? “The San Angel neighbourhood,” says Serradilla. “It has cobbled

streets and beautiful colonial houses and a whole lot more. There is so much history behind it – monuments, architecture, museums, plazas and traditional parties. It has one of the most popular art markets in the country as well as art galleries. And great restaurants. If you have time to get out of the city, I also recommend Tulum, on the Caribbean coast. Not only because of its beautiful beaches – there are also important archaeological zones and a biosphere reserve. You feel attached to the peace the place evokes. It’s a place where you simply feel free.”

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Lucas Cantú runs architecture and design

practice Tezontle along with Carlos Matos. The firm takes its name from the reddish-brown volcanic rock that has been widely used in Mexican architecture since pre-Hispanic times. As its name suggests, Cantú’s practice is concerned with Mexico’s ancestral cultural traditions, revisiting and reconfiguring them for the modern world.

“The Spanish conquest happened around 500 years ago and it resulted in the loss of much of our indigenous culture,” says Cantú. “Our practice references Mexico’s vernacular tradition but in a modern way. We are building for now, with new materials and new technologies. In Mexico today people often look to Europe and the US for architectural inspiration, when Mexico itself has so much to offer. Younger architectural practices like Tezontle are making a conscious effort to draw on pre-Hispanic culture and do interesting things with it.

The idea is not new. In the 20th century, Luis Barragán drew from Mexican culture but did something really contemporary with it, using an international architectural language.

“Like fashion designers and painters, we are reclaiming our culture. We are all working round the same ideas. Not in a kitsch way, but in a relevant and sophisticated way. For us, that primitive culture we have in Mexico is mysterious and exciting. Something is boiling up, there is an identity crisis happening all over the world caused by globalisation and the internet – everywhere is beginning to look like everywhere else – and people are getting bored by this.”

Why does Cantú think Mexico City is such a stimulating place in which to live and work? “It’s a really chaotic, intense city and parts of it are badly contaminated by traffic pollution,” says Cantú.

“But you can also find quiet neighbourhoods full of trees. And we have amazing weather and wonderful museums and parks. So there is plenty to enjoy. I’m always discovering new, hidden-away parts of the city. I love it all, even the rough parts.

I compare it to Bangkok. I was there recently and it had a similar feel. Huge energy, a lot happening and many people on the streets.”

What would Cantú say is the one thing visitors to Mexico City must see? “I have two

recommendations,” he says. “My favourite place is Unam, the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

It’s a modernist masterpiece with pre-Hispanic references. Around 20 Mexican architects collaborated on the designs. There’s an open park you can visit and sculptures and artworks to enjoy. In the main campus there are murals by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. When you sit in the central courtyard you feel like you’re in a pre-Hispanic place. My second choice is the National Museum of Anthropology. It has an outstanding collection of Mayan and other ancestral art, all encased in this amazing building designed by Pedro Vázquez, Jorge Campuzano and Rafael Mijares Alcérreca. You could happily spend a couple of days there.” tezontle-studio.com

Carlos H. Matos, Kleopatra Chelmi, María Del Corro and Lucas Cantú, Tezontle Studio Photograph Rodrigo Chapa

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People who are born in Mexico have a natural anarchist mind, savage and rebellious. There’s a taste of natural chaos in all of us that makes Mexico special, vibrant, dangerous and alive.

Rubén Albarrán is a founding member of Café Tacuba, one of Mexico’s most successful rock bands, which takes its name from a 100-yearold restaurant in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico district. Since forming in 1989, the group has released seven albums, winning a Grammy and eight Latin Grammy awards. They have also collaborated with Kronos Quartet, David Byrne and Tex-Mex pioneers Los Lobos.

The band is a quartet with standard guitars, keyboards and drums instrumentation, but folk-music violinist Alejandro Flores has been added to the line-up for most live performances over the past 20 years. To what extent does Albarrán consciously weave Mexican tradition into the band? “There are different types of tradition, some are evolutionary, others are backward,” he says. “On one hand, there is sexism, violence against ‘the others’ and corruption. On the other hand, there is a spiritual connection in tune with nature and liberated thinking. I believe that tradition lives in me and so there is no necessity to push it to be reflected in my music. What comes must be in its natural, unforced form. In fact, I’m no longer proud of being Mexican – I prefer to think of myself just as a human being, honouring the earth and its evolutionary traditions, wherever they come from.”

One ancestral tradition Albarrán adheres to is dietary. “The original Mexican cuisine was pretty vegan and so am I,” he says. “My diet consists of corn in all forms of presentation – sopes, tlacoyos, tacos, there are many kinds –

Albarrán in the Parque Ecológico de Loreto y Peña Pobre Photograph Ruben Marquez

beans, rice, squash, cactus, cacao, avocado, tomato, amaranto, chia and alga espirulina.”

What makes Mexico City such a stimulating place to live? “People who are born and live in Mexico have a very natural anarchist mind, savage and rebellious,” says Albarrán. “There’s a taste of natural chaos in all of us that makes Mexico City special, vibrant, dangerous and alive. Everything that we do, say and plan has this texture woven into it. We live the mystery every day, here and now.” Is the live music scene also an attraction? “Yes. There are so many brilliant composers, musicians and bands in all kinds of music: traditional, rock, pop, jazz, electronic, and many mixtures in between.”

Due to his frenetic work life, Albarrán has a strategy for finding tranquillity in the chaos of Mexico. “There are so many interesting, beautiful and delicious things going on every day in this big city,” he says. “But I am no longer a person who can give out this sort of information.

When the work agenda for the day is done, I become a hermit and surrender to the peace of my home or a corner of nature outside the city.”

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Duran working in the kitchen of Páramo Photograph Sandra Blow

Hugo Duran was born in Mexico City and has lived there most of his life. Six years ago, when the graphic design company he worked for went bankrupt, he decided to turn his passion for cooking into his profession. He began working in restaurants owned by friends and plans to open his own place just outside the city in 2017.

Duran’s cooking places a strong emphasis on Mexico’s culinary traditions, which, like much of the country’s ancestral culture, has been threatened by influences from north of the border. “Mexico has a deep issue with lack of self esteem,” says Duran.

“People are not happy about who they are. They want to be white, they want to look like Europeans. This goes back to when the Spanish arrived here 500 years ago.

Not only because they came and killed many people, but also because they killed our culture. Many of our languages disappeared. This happened throughout Central and South America, of course, but the effects were particularly tragic in Mexico.

“One of the ways of trying to counter this is through celebrating our traditional cuisine, which is something that everyone can define themselves by and feel proud of. It is part of a larger movement in which urban Mexicans are making an effort to realign themselves with traditional, rural culture. Until recently, the process was always in the opposite direction – rural Mexicans were encouraged to become urbanised, because 180 J &

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A growing number of people realise that Mexico needs to reintegrate with its ancestral culture. The country needs to recover its confidence. people in the cities considered them to be uncivilised and uncultured. But now a growing number of people realise that Mexico needs to reintegrate with its ancestral culture. The country needs to reclaim its traditions in order to recover its national and cultural confidence. I often forage for my ingredients in the countryside and I’ve learnt my recipes by going out of the city and listening to what the rural people tell me, especially the older ones. I love to do that. I learn much more from them than they learn from me.”

How does ancestral Mexican cuisine compare with the clichéd Mexican dishes served in Europe?

“The connection may be tenuous,” says Duran.

“Traditional Mexican cuisine is often very complex.

I could make you many dishes which are as elegant and elaborate as French cuisine, for instance. The flavours are extraordinary.”

Duran’s tip for visitors? “The street markets first,

the architecture second,” says Duran.

“Even in Mexico City the markets retain aspects of our ancestral culture. If you have enough time though, the most wonderful market in Mexico is in Tianguis de Ozumba, which is two hours by car from the centre of the city. It works just like in the pre-Hispanic days. They sell wild produce, some of it foraged in the traditional manner. They also sell handcrafted objects such as ceramics. It attracts tourists but has not yet become touristic.”

Duran’s first restaurant, Nib, in Xochitlán de Las Flores, near Mexico City, opens in 2017 pichon.mx

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M&O PARIS JAN. 20-24, 2017 PARIS NORD VILLEPINTE THE LEADING DECORATION SHOW CONNECTING THE INTERIOR DESIGN & LIFESTYLE COMMUNITY WORLDWIDE

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Ross Allen, Phil Asher, Kev Beadle, Ashley Beedle, Tee Cardaci, Marcia Carr, Charlie Dark, Diesel, Rusty Egan, Terry Farley, Femi Fem, Trevor Fung, David Hill, Dave Jarvis, Bob Jones, Tim Keenoy, Danny Krivit, Jimmy K-Tel, Simon Lee, Perry Louis, Gordon Mac, Phil Mison, K Mucho Soul, Mutiny, Nancy Noise, Princess Julia, DJ Paulette, Rhythm Doctor, Murray Richardson, Rocky, Noel Watson, We Are The Sunset & Leo Zero.

Thank you to all the DJs who have played at our music series, Echoes, curated by Stuart Patterson jocksandnerds.com/echoes

M e t r o p o l i t a n Alejandro Franco is a

journalist, publisher, radio DJ and musicologist. He is the founder of Grupo Sentido – a content agency that works primarily with bands and record labels, filming gigs and making videos – as well as Warp magazine, another music-focused venture, which has a print and online presence. And for two hours every weekday evening, he broadcasts a nationally syndicated radio show on W Radio, playing music and interviewing bands.

“I work very, very long days,” says Franco.

Franco acknowledges the chaotic nature of Mexico City, but says this has produced a special energy, particularly in the creative sector. “Like many big cities, we have huge problems with infrastructure,” says Franco, “so we have to try and get things done no matter what and we have to rely on ourselves because the government is so inefficient. Right now some of that energy is going into restoring indigenous culture – in gastronomy for example. We have so many amazing restaurants in Mexico City. I think we have the best food in the world. As a Mexican, I would say that, but I travel a lot to other countries and I do believe it’s true. The modern chefs are doing wonderful things without losing our roots.

You can go to restaurants and find all the flavours

We have a bunch of new designers who are taking our pre-Hispanic traditions and creating amazing modern clothes with them.

you grew up with but presented in a modern way. The modern gastronomy is one of the main things that makes Mexico City special.

“A similar thing is happening in fashion. We have a bunch of new designers who are taking our pre-Hispanic traditions and creating amazing modern clothes with them. They are working in collaboration with small indigenous communities who have never been really colonised and still use the old ways of doing things. The designers don’t just buy things from these communities, they work with them to make the textiles and dye them and to develop new making techniques based on the historic ones.”

Franco says the Centro Histórico district in downtown Mexico City is the place visitors should explore first. “You can see all the layers of Mexican history there – the pre-Hispanic, the colonial and the modern – and great restaurants.

You have the most important church in the city and you have the remains of pyramids built by the Aztecs. So you can see every aspect of our history. And if you have time, the big pyramids at Teotihuacan are only an hour away.” slktr.com

Franco on the Avenida Presidente Masaryk Photograph Ruben Marquez

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Photographs Paul Vickery Words Chris May

Steel Horses Motorcycle Club Bike Blessing The Brooklyn club’s annual bike blessing event welcomes locals and members from other clubs to celebrate the biker community.

E x p o Ever since Marlon Brando roared past László Benedek’s camera in his 1953 movie The Wild One, motorcycle subcultures have had a fraught relationship with the press.

Mainstream media has mostly ignored the distinction between socially dysfunctional motorcycle gangs and their more or less law-abiding cousins, motorcycle clubs. But groups such as Brooklyn’s Steel Horses – the subject of Paul Vickery’s photographs – get together for the pure pleasure of fellowship, pride in their machines and love of the open road. “Steel H o r s e s t o m e m e a n s f a m i ly, brotherhood and sisterhood,” says their president, Darrell Big D. “It means unity and a bond among all my members. We support and respect each other. It means we all stand together.”

“I’m interested in documenting subcultures where the participants aren’t just putting on a show,” says Vickery, “but living a lifestyle, doing something they are deeply

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passionate about.” His photographs document a Steel Horses “bike blessing”, an annual ceremony that many clubs hold to keep their members safe on the road.

“These bikers live to ride, and ride fast, and their love of speed entails risk. They take their lives in their hands each time they go out,” says Vickery. “A pastor usually says a prayer over the tannoy system. At the end of the prayer, the bikers all rev up their engines as a sort of ‘amen’.”

But despite what the media assumes when it sees bikers en masse, Vickery stresses that a bike blessing – like other motorcycle club events – is a social gathering above all, a celebration of passion, machines and comradeship.

“Biker communities tend to be based around family and Steel Horses are no exception,” he says. “For them, family means immediate blood family as well as the extended family of the club. Because clubs are about family, it’s normal to see whole families, including their kids, with their own

At the end of the prayer, the bikers all rev up their engines as a sort of ‘amen’.

bikes at events such as bike blessings.

There is usually food and a DJ and everyone looks out for the kids and makes sure everyone is safe, because there is some powerful machinery rolling around.”

The Steel Horses began in Brooklyn in 1999 and now has chapters in four states across the US. It is a relatively new arrival among African American motorcycle clubs, which, putting aside the few isolated groups that existed before the Second World War, have a history almost as long as white ones.

The first post-Second World War African American outfits are thought to have been the Chosen Few in Los Angeles and the East Bay Dragons in San Francisco’s Bay area, both set up in 1959.

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E x p o

These bikers live to ride, and ride fast, and their love of speed entails risk.

They take their lives in their hands each time they go out.

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The Dragons were founded by Tobie Gene Levingston as a spin-off from the Hells Angels’ Oakland chapter, which legendary biker Sonny Barger had established two years earlier (Hunter S. Thompson later embedded with Barger’s club for his seminal exploration of outlaw biker culture).

The Chosen Few and the East Bay Dragons were formed because black bikers were, in effect, excluded from white-dominated groups such as the Angels. As recently as 2000, in a BBC interview, Barger said, “The club, as a whole, is not racist but we probably have enough racist members that no black guy is going to get in.”

Their loss is motorcycle culture’s gain. According to the website blackmotorcycleclubs.us, there are now almost 1,500 African American motorcycle clubs and chapters across the US, sporting such great names as the Steel Horses, Afro Boys, Soul Brothers, Rude Boys, Buffalo Soldiers

Society and Bad Azz Country Boyz.

M o t o rc yc l e c l u b s h ave n o t , historically, been at the cutting edge of gender equality – hence the formation of female-only clubs such as the Black Diamond Divas, Kurvalicious Riders and First Ladyz, and websites such as blackgirlsride. com and suckafreewmc.com. But as Vickery’s photos prove, the Steel Horses are more welcoming. “There were plenty of women bikers around,” he says, “and I learnt that some of them hold significant positions within the club membership. To outsiders and casual observers, motorcycle clubs might be perceived as male dominated, but I’d say that’s increasingly not the reality.” paulvickeryphotography.com More photographs from Paul Vickery’s series are available to view at jocksandnerds.com

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Snood by Rapha; jacket by Wooyoungmi; trousers and sweater by Etro.

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Kensal Rise Photographs Mark Mattock Styling Karen Mason Grooming John Christopher using Bumble & Bumble and Bobbi Brown Styling Assistants Michaela Gooden and Victoria Pugh Model Oscar Lorenz, student

Coat by Acne Studios; jeans by Levi’s Vintage Clothing; sweater

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Sweater by Blk Dnm; cape by Caruso; jeans by Hawksmill Denim Co; trainers by Vans; socks by Burlington from Sock Shop.

Scarf by Hermès; coat and sweater by Etro; jeans

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Sweater by Caruso; jacket by Belstaff; jeans by Levi’s Vintage Clothing.

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E d i t Coat by Stone Island.

Jacket by Versace; jeans by Levi’s Vintage Clothing; sweater by Daks; trainers by Vans; socks by Burlington from Sock Shop.

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Scarf by Richard James; sweater by Champion; jeans by Hawksmill Denim Co; sunglasses by Moncler; bracelet, model’s own; belt, stylist’s own.

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Peter Mitchell Photograph Mark Mattock Words Chris May Photographer Peter Mitchell was raised in south-east London but moved north to Leeds in 1973, after graduating from Hornsey College of Art. “Serendipity took me to Leeds but it became what I do,” says Mitchell.

He considered himself a silk-screen printer when he arrived in the city, photographing shop fronts and factories to serve as starting points for poster designs. When a gallery owner told him she preferred the photographs to the posters, Mitchell followed her advice. In 1979, his work was exhibited at the Impressions Gallery in nearby Bradford and he soon became a local hero, admired for his evocative shots of the disappearing industrial landscape of Leeds and the people who lived and worked there.

In some ways, Mitchell seems like a photographic version of the city’s other great chronicler, Alan Bennett. “When I did my book on the Quarry Hill flats [Memento Mori, 1990] he was one of the people I thought of to write the preface,” says Mitchell. “I felt his work resonated with mine. It wasn’t nostalgic, more grittily sentimental.”

Mitchell has always shot front on and from a distance, so as to include the surrounding architecture. “They’re not really photographs of people,” he says. “They’re there more as shadows of people. I was acutely aware that I was photographing something in its twilight years. There was a huge amount of demolition going on, very fast. The people co-operated because they realised that with the destruction of their neighbourhoods, a phase of their lives was ending.

Mitchell’s book A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission is out in April rrbpublishing.com

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Photograph Chris Tang Words Edward Moore If you ever went to a Gallows gig before singer Frank Carter left, you would remember adrenaline, blood and anger. He would fight the audience, inviting them to punch him in the head. If they didn’t, he’d do the job himself with a microphone.

Since his split from the band in 2011, Carter and his wife Sarah have moved in together and had a child.

In person, he is insightful and level-headed. On stage, with new group the Rattlesnakes, it seems domesticity has done nothing to calm the beast.

“Me and Sarah were going through so much,” he says. “She’d lost her father while she was pregnant, I was angry at my career, which seemed in tatters. I just felt, if anything, it was easier for me to pour it out. But only on stage. At home, I became very different, very calm. I was aware that my wife was going through some stuff. I was aware that I now had this little baby to look after. I wanted her to grow up in a safe environment and feel that she was loved every day.”

The band’s latest album, Modern Ruin, focuses on relationships in all forms. “It’s about how devastating modern relationships can be, as well as being life-affirming,” says Carter.

He acknowledges his new softer side as a father, recounting a story about showing his two-year-old daughter, Mercy Rose, his new music video. “I’m hanging upside down in this weird abyss and screaming, covered in bodypaint. She’s watching it and bobbing along. Sarah’s like, ‘Should you be showing her this right before bed?’ I’m like, ‘It’s fine.’ Then my kid laughs and says, ‘Daddy’s silly.’

She doesn’t know what a monster is.

She’s not scared of anything.”

Frank Carter

The album Modern Ruin by Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes is out on 27 January kobaltmusic.com andtherattlesnakes.com

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S H O R E D I T C H

Located in the heart of Shoreditch... “Located in the heart of Shoreditch, famed for eccentric charm and East End warmth, the Courthouse Hotel Shoreditch combines the grandeur of a Grade II listed Baroque style building with laid-back personalised service, forming the perfect alchemy.

With bespoke guest rooms and suites, a unique restaurant concept, 3 bars including a roof top bar, flexible event spaces, 2-lane bowling alley, luxurious spa, swimming pool, fitness centre, cinema and a classically elegant lobby, the hotel epitomizes a dynamic social hub where guests and discerning locals can work, relax and soak up a new Shoreditch experience.�

For more information email Shoreditch@Courthouse-hotel.com or call +44 (0)203 3105555

335-337 Old Street, EC1V 9LL

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Photograph Orlando Gili Words Chris May In the late 1960s, Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane took astral jazz into full orbit, with the albums Tauhid and Ptah, the El Daoud. Mainstream critics were less uplifted. They wrote the new style off as a risible sell-out to the acid-drenched counterculture, which was then beating at the door of the decade’s predominant jazz style, hard bop. To its denigrators, astral jazz was a bells and incense irrelevance that would disappear as quickly as it had arrived.

Five decades later, Sanders and Coltrane’s legacy still hasn’t returned to earth. Their music continues to inspire new generations of musicians, among them keyboard player Amané Suganami. Currently in his final year of jazz studies at the Trinity Laban

Amané Suganami

Conservatoire of Music and Dance in south London, Suganami is also a member of Maisha, an astral-jazz ensemble led by drummer Jake Long. The sextet recently released its debut EP, Welcome to a New Welcome, which takes Sanders and Coltrane on a raw, afro-beat trip.

Suganami was born in Stoke-onTrent to Japanese parents, who put the accent on the last letter of his first name to help non-Japanese speakers pronounce it correctly.

He moved to London in 2010 and in the six years since has released his own debut EP, last year’s electronicsfocused Lost Weekend. Alongside Maisha, his other projects include touring with the singer Jorja Smith.

“The first jazz players who got me excited were Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, in their mid-1960s acoustic period,” says Suganami.

“I’m studying jazz because it gives me the broadest insight into music and a lot of music comes out of jazz.

I don’t want to do just one thing, but a lot of different things.”

Maisha’s Welcome to a New Welcome EP is out now jazzrefreshed.com soundcloud.com/amanemusic

P e o p l e Photograph Simon Way Words Paul Bradshaw “I see myself as a writer of novels but I am best known as a writer of reggae,” declares Penny Reel.

He’s just read a passage from his forthcoming novel, In Groves and Along Lanes, which tells the story of Spike the Gipsy’s machinations through London.

Reel’s mobility has been restricted by a recent stroke, but his memories – of encountering a surly mod called Marc Bolan in a Tottenham bowling alley, or seeing Oswald Mosley driven out of Dalston’s Ridley Road Market by an army of “cab drivers, Jews and mods” – remain undiminished. We’re talking in his long-time Dalston home, where he sits within arm’s reach of a portable record player and boxes of seven inches.

As someone who also became known as a writer of reggae, I have long admired Reel. He covered the scene for International Times and Black Echoes, and the NME piece in which he travels from Ladbroke Grove, in the company of Tappa Zukie and Militant Barry, to check Keith Hudson at Phebes in Hackney, remains a classic. It showcased his

Damon Runyon-esque style, which continues to flourish in his recent, self-published novel Up the Dreary Slope and the forthcoming In Groves and Along Lanes, Ghost Dance and The Yardbirds, all written in the same year. These London novels build on two previous books: Deep Down With Dennis Brown, a biography of the Jamaican reggae great, and Monkey Business at the Monkey House: the Times and Trials of the Hoxton Boys, which recounts the history of Hackney’s post-Blitz street gangs.

Reel’s legal name is Peter L. Simons. To me he’s Pete. To others he’s Horace Whitmer, Roy Drake, Richard Kingscoat. He adopts these personas to process the vivid tales of a culturally obsessed Londoner.

“I write autobiographically ’cause

that’s the only way I know how to deal with it all,” he says. “I’ve written four books in one year. They are similar due to my writing style, but all address different people, characters and places.” He touches down at Middle Earth in the 1960s, rubs shoulders with Aloysius ‘Lucky’ Gordon in the Grove, is sacked from the post-punk NME and dances in town halls, clubs, dives, discotheques and shebeens throughout the capital.

As a writer, he immerses the reader in his city, its architecture and history. “I am a walker, a real walker,” he says. “All my life I’ve walked these streets.

I’ve walked round this city thousands of times, thought a lot, and written books in my head.” Those books continue the legacy of writers such as Colin MacInnes and Iain Sinclair, and, give thanks, there’s much more to come.

Reel’s book In Groves and Along Lanes is out now. His book Ghost Dance is out in early 2017 dubvendor.co.uk

Penny Reel

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Photograph Mattias Pettersson Words Chris May

Shirley Collins

Shirley Collins was a key figure in the British folk music revival of the 1960s, but stopped recording and performing more than 30 years ago, suffering from dysphonia, a neurologically induced voice disorder. This year, she returned with a new album, Lodestar, recorded by electronic duo Cyclobe.

Collins’ condition was triggered by the break-up of her marriage to the singer and bass guitarist Ashley Hutchings, with whom she formed folk rock group Albion Country Band in 1971. “We were working at the National Theatre in promenade performances and everyone there knew Ashley had ditched me for an actress,” she says.

“Some nights when I tried to sing, nothing would come out. Eventually, I couldn’t put myself through it any more.”

Collins credits her return to two people. “One was David Suff of Fledg’ling Records, who continued to reissue my old albums and some of the EPs from the early 1960s. The other was David Tibet of [folk band] Current 93. He kept asking me to sing at his concerts and I kept saying no. He carried on asking, so I started to say yes.” But when the shows came, Collins couldn’t face stepping on stage. “Until about 18 months ago,” she says. “He asked me to sing at the Union Chapel in Islington. I sang two songs. That was the start of a sort of rebirth.”

Lodestar, Collins’ first album in more than 30 years, is out now dominorecordco.com Collins’ UK tour starts in February shirleycollins.co.uk

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Eric Elms Photograph Janette Beckman Words Edward Moore Designer Eric Elms has led a charmed life. Before he moved to New York from his hometown, San Diego, some 17 years ago, he had already worked with the world famous artist and founder of the Obey clothing company, Shepard Fairey. Then, two months after starting at New York’s Pratt Institute, Elms met the designer Brian Donnelly (aka Kaws) and became his studio assistant. After leaving the Pratt

Institute, Elms stepped into his first design job, with James Jebbia’s brand Supreme.

“I moved here in the late 1990s,” says Elms.

“I think it was easier to run around and do whatever you wanted with little to no money. Everything kind of happened organically from the people I met.”

By the mid-2000s, Elms had become recognised for his graphic design work – most famously for his reinterpretation of a Second World War pop culture character named Kilroy – and sculptures that explored different facets of language. He also launched his own design studio, Partners & Others, and the publishing label AndPress, working with clients such as Nike, Red Stripe, Uniqlo and Vans.

Elms’ latest project is clothing brand Powers, which takes its name from Powers Street, where his studio is located. “I was a little burnt out on making graphics,” says Elms. “There were a few years where there wasn’t much fresh creative energy in that world. When I started seeing people like Peter Sutherland and the Oh! Blood!! brothers from Tokyo, making fun, gritty stuff again, it got me interested in starting my own project.”

Powers, Eric Elms’ new clothing brand, is out now in selected stockists, including London’s Dover Street Market, Goodhood and Garbstore powers.supply partnersandothers.com J &

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P e o p l e

Dan Goldwater Photograph Joe Fuda Words Chris May Inventor and social entrepreneur Dan Goldwater is the founder of San Francisco bicycle technology company Monkeylectric, and co-founder of the makers’ website Instructables (with the motto “share what you make”). He was previously a scientist at the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he developed robot technology, low-power lighting and 3D spatialtracking software. He and other Monkeylectric staff are actively involved with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which campaigns for improvements to cycling infrastructure and the integration of bikes with public transport systems. The company also makes low-weight, high-decibel mobile sound systems, transportable on a bike, for parties in the remotest locations.

The jewel in Monkeylectric’s portfolio is its range of Monkey Lights – beautiful, full-colour, full-wheel

display systems that create hologram-like images and animations on both sides of a bicycle. The idea grew out of an illuminated “art bike” Goldwater built at MIT, with lights embedded in a clear, plastic frame.

Though rideable, it was bulky, so he shifted focus to a lightweight wheel attachment that meant riders could actually get up hills.

“I made the first Monkey Light as a project for my own bike,” says Goldwater. “That was about 10 years ago, not long after I’d left MIT. I had no idea of it becoming a company, it was just a hobby – I’d been a maker all my life. But everywhere I would go, people would literally run down the street after me and say, ‘That’s amazing, where do I buy it?’ After that happened 50 times I was thinking, hmm, maybe I’ve got something here.”

As well as being works of art, Monkey Lights are high-visibility safety devices. They range from the

four LED, 40 lumens entry-level model through to the 256 LED, 2,500 lumens Monkey Light Pro. “I’d been making random, crazy things for years, and this one was catching people’s imaginations unlike anything I’d done before. Then I realised it had a safety angle too.

Monkey Lights create a real glow round the rider and other road users see them clearly. Plus, car drivers seem to like Monkey Lights, so they contribute to a more congenial spirit on the road. A lot of cyclists think standard front and rear lights are kind of uncool. But Monkey Lights are perceived differently.” monkeylectric.com instructables.com J &

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I c o n Artists and designers often want to reinvent the way we perceive the world. But few have expressed that drive more literally than the Italian futurists of the early 20th century. Filippo Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, published in 1909, called for nothing less than “the reconstruction of the universe”. His movement failed to achieve that lofty objective, but its more prosaic innovation, the overall, reshaped the way society dressed.

The garment was invented in 1919 by the futurist artist Thayaht. Born Ernesto Michahelles, in Florence, he studied textile design in the US and painting in France, where he returned in 1919, aged 26, to work for Madeleine Vionnet. A Parisian couturier, she revolutionised French fashion with the bias cut, which produced a drape that accentuated the body inside the gown.

Her collaborator took the opposite tack. In 1920, Thayaht launched the TuTa, which he described as a “costume for living”. It was a loose-fitting, one-piece garment, with full-length sleeves and legs. The name referenced its T-shape and played on the word “tutti”, Italian for “everybody”. In Thayaht’s mind it was clothing for all – comfortable, practical and affordable.

Thayaht advocated that his TuTas should be adopted by all social classes, to accelerate the birth of the egalitarian, machine age society for which futurism yearned. Like many futurists, Thayaht was for a time drawn to Italian fascism, another iconoclastic belief system that promised a dynamic new society. His most famous painting is Il Grande Nocchiere (The Great Helmsman), a stylised representation of dictator Benito Mussolini, steering Italy towards a brave new world.

Thayaht followed his original, unisex design with a female version, featuring a long skirt in place of trousers.

In 1922 the Soviet artist and designer Varvara Stepanova, a member of the constructivist movement, produced her own female version, this time with trousers.

To speed its adoption, Thayaht published the TuTa’s pattern in the Florentine newspaper La Nazione in July 1920, along with instructions on how to make one at home. Or, perhaps, how your seamstress could make one for you, because the TuTa was immediately appropriated as an avant-garde fashion item in the upper-class salons of Florence, Rome and Milan. Aristocrats, actors and socialites were among the first to wear it.

With the excesses of fascism in mind, Thayaht’s civic uniforms are today less likely to evoke a classless utopia, more the kind of totalitarian state depicted in Orwell’s 1984. But despite its faults, futurism was well-intentioned.

Its advocates wanted to repurpose Europe’s cultural activities and make them accessible to the masses.

Overalls reached their iconographic height during the Second World War, when they were used in propaganda that celebrated women’s contribution to the war effort.

One of the most famous images depicts a factory worker wearing dungarees, the close cousin of overalls, in US artist Norman Rockwell’s painting Rosie the Riveter.

British artist Laura Knight’s less well-known painting of 1943, Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring, features a munitions worker wearing blue overalls.

Winston Churchill was another champion. He encouraged people to put on overalls (“siren suits”) when air-raid sirens were sounded. Austin Reed made him a pin-striped version, while Turnbull & Asser crafted another from bottle-green velvet.

Today, as at their inception, modern overalls are at once egalitarian and elite. The TuTa has continued to fascinate couturiers – Emilio Pucci, Mariuccia Mandelli, Roberto Capucci and, most recently, Junya Watanabe are among those who have revisited it – but they also continue to have military and paramilitary associations and are standard issue to aircrew in Britain and the US. Pioneering aviators Charles Lindbergh and Amy Johnson donned them, as did Tom Cruise in his role as a hotshot pilot in Top Gun. France’s riot police wear them on active duty. Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay wear orange overalls, as do hostages held by Isis.

Malcolm McDowell wore white overalls when he played the anti-hero in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

This winter, the Flaming Lips borrowed his look to promote a string of gigs. The Who’s Pete Townshend habitually wore overalls onstage and, more recently, Japanese politicians wore overalls at press conferences announcing the clean-up operation following the 2011 accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Artists, too, are drawn to their practicality – they are almost uniform for painters and sculptors.

All these diverse usages signify the same thing: seriousness of intent. Thayaht would be pleased.

OVERALLS

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Words Chris May Photograph Vanni Bassetti Styling Giulia Querenghi

Overalls and T-shirt by APC; shoes, scarf and socks, model’s own.

Artist Théodore Fivel lives and works in Paris. A former musician and performance artist, his latest project, Charge, blends painting and sculpture and adapts as the viewer changes perspective. He has also directed a video for 10lec6’s single ‘Bedjem Mebok’, released in January on Ed Banger Records. theodorefivel.com edbangerrecords.com

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Directory Daks

Neil Barrett

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Dasmarca

JBJ

Nigel Cabourn

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jupe-by-jackie.com

cabourn.com

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DSquared2

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Our Legacy

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Richard James

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Coach 1941

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21

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WINTER 2016

THE SECOND SONS

First interview with the band who might just save rock’n’roll

ROBERT FRANK

J O C K S & N E R D S

The reclusive photographer steps in front of the camera

CHARLES ATLAS How dance met video with the artist who changed ballet forever

JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON

The Blade Runner 2049 composer talks Björk Brian Eno and sound art

AMASUNZU

Rwanda’s arresting haircut comes back

Hans Ulrich Obrist Jeremy Deller and Glenn Lowry on the

MUSEUMS OF TOMORROW

JOHN LEGEND PLUS Northern Disco Lights / Shirley Collins / NBA Mexico City / Frank Carter / Eric Elms / Yoko Ono Michael Smith / Mark Mahoney / Boxing on Film Wolfgang Tillmans / Max Brown / John D. Green Penny Reel / Winter Fashion in the Swiss Alps