N WIND 11

11

New Editors

2017 January–February | Free magazine

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CREATIVE NORTHERN ENERGY

You don’t hire us to design a brand, you hire us to help build structure in chaos.

Black Swan Brands branding bureau, the creators of N WIND, has a special offer for creative, social, and cultural entrepreneurs. We look for dedicated individuals with bold new ideas who would like help building their brands as structures in chaos.

Get in touch: office@blackswanbrands.com

N WIND is North Wind.

We encourage exchanges of creative Northern energy.

Magazine, events, people.

Agnese Kleina, editor-in-chief of Benji Knewman Photography by Aiga Ozo Ozolina Clothes by Arita Varzinska for PAVILJONS Studio Hair & Make-up by Anete Sidlovska

A free magazine about creativity and culture as our future in the New North, distributed in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and available online.

ISSN 2424-5895 2017, No. 11 Circulation: 8500 Created and published

by Black Swan Brands Ltd Black Swan Brands is a branding bureau. You don’t hire us to design a brand, you hire us to help build structure in chaos.

Get in touch: office@blackswanbrands.com

Address Vilkpėdės 22, LT-03151, Vilnius

Curated

by Giedrė Stabingytė, Andrius Skalandis

Printed

by BALTO print www.nwindmag.eu nwindmag

Text editing

by Anna Reynolds Anna Reynolds is an academic editor and translator, who greatly enjoys working with people who have something to say. She lives in Riga and will be glad to hear from you.

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Supporting the exchange of Norwegian creative energy

Get in touch on Skype: reynoldsae Authors Tautė Bernotaitė, Denis Bondar, Ruta Eva Cepulyte, Victoria Diaz, Paul Emmet, Joye Lone, Gintarė Parulytė, Daina Dubauskaitė, Arterritory Say hi hello@nwindmag.eu Advertising and projects hello@nwindmag.eu Subscribe to N WIND delivery@nwindmag.eu

Supporting the exchange of Lithuanian creative energy.

The project is partly finance by Lithuanian Council for Culture.

New editors are without authority.

They don’t start with assigned power or the right to give orders and make decisions. They start with a different kind of force.

Sometimes it’s a gravitational force that draws them to a growing phenomenon or concept and, moving together with others, they speed faster than the spinning Earth and glimpse into the future. They recognise budding trends, what the collective consciousness is shaping, and edit the storyline along the way.

Sometimes it’s a force within them—a genuine belief in their own views and ideas—a force so strong that bright stars are born from the fragmented nebula of their consciousness—consuming masses of content, melting and melding, creating bright vectors for us to follow. Think of those people who have become media brands, not by their singular creativity, but because of something akin to a wish to structure the chaos around us into a storylines they themselves could inhabit.

Think of the brands that have become the new editors of our lives. We no longer edit the brands; they edit us. We have happily surrendered our creativity to commercial branding. We give our energy to perpetuate their success and maintain the storylines we like. Sometimes, a storyline feels like a genuine experience, generated within our minds, filling in the spaces of our actual lives, the spaces where we could have created our genuine experiences. Is it a pity?

The new editors are editors without institutional authority. They are editors that feed on the power given by the crowd.

So, has the crowd become the new editor?

Yours in contemplation, N WIND

New Editors

She knows how to craft a story. The daughter of a seamstress and a carpenter, Agnese Kleina is very good at joining pieces together and shaping something long lasting. Today she is the founder and editor– in–chief of Benji Knewman — the mysterious biannual bookazine that has received a smattering of international resonance during the two years since it began.

The creation from Riga has already appeared in places like MOMA and is now being sold in 22 different countries. Benji Knewman has been shortlisted twice (2015 and 2016) for Magazine of the Year by Stack Magazines, and was nominated for Editor of the Year this year. Although, it is not entirely clear who would get the prize in case of victory — would it be Benji Knewman or Agnese Kleina, who is more than happy to maintain the riddle of just how real Mr Knewman is.

Photography by Aiga Ozo Ozolina Clothes by Arita Varzinska for PAVILJONS Studio Hair & Make-up by Anete Sidlovska

Agnese Kleina

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The Secret Smile of an Editor

Tautė Bernotaitė

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You are a recognisable character in Latvia.

Do you yourself feel the influence you have?

I guess I represent a certain generation. I started my blog Whimsical Agnesiga seven years ago and worked on it steadily for five years. The 17 year olds using Instagram and similar media are celebrities of their own these days, with video blogging, etc. I am not active in that world anymore, so we don’t know about each other. But the slightly older generation, who follow my blog and get that I’m about constructive, next level things now — they listen to my opinion. Last year I was one of two people hosting a TV program in Latvia.

The country is about to become 100 years old and people are preparing to celebrate. The front faces of the program, Divs Reiznieks and I, were young people discussing our roots. We were questioning whether the traditional costume is set in stone, or if we can change it because we are different today. Can we take parts of the costume and wear them daily, maybe for our personal festivities, or when going abroad? Can we mix traditional formal dress with modern Latvian design? Basically — is it finished or can we adapt it to today? The whole nation, watching the program, was divided in two.

Some were very angry with us, because we were initiating alternative thinking. Divs and I were prochange, because who says that the development of the costume is finished? Who knows if the museum version is actually right? The guys taking notes on folk customs centuries ago were not scientists. But today the museum keepers say this is the only folk costume possible. However, we are the folk.

This program was one of the activities outside my field that I said ‘Yes’ to. I wanted to tell people that this is what I do as a journalist — open doors. Our communities, Latvians, Lithuanians, and similar, end up surrounding ourselves with borders and there is no evolution from there. No future. I want Latvians to learn about the people around us. At the same time I’m showing Latvia to the world saying: ‘See?’ Not like: ‘Don’t you know about us?!’

Because why would they, right? With Benji we

come up with stories that people would find interesting no matter what their provenance is.

The tagline of Benji Knewman says: Made in Riga. Curated for the world. Declaring the world to be your audience is rather ambitious, don’t you think?

Yeah, but we don’t say that we take all of it, just those who want to listen.

Still sounds pretty brave.

In Latvia, whenever someone takes part in a showroom during Paris fashion week, opens a small store, does something meaningful, but kind of small, the headlines always say: ‘Latvians conquer the world!’ Or conquer Japan, Paris, etc. It’s never true. Come on, nobody knows about you. On the one hand, our goal is big. The difference is, we are not going to conquer anything; we are just putting an alternative on the table. We are not going out there with force. We have investors and some help from sponsors, but I don’t need to fill the Excel tables at the end of every month. There is no outside pressure, only the inner one.

What is the business model for Benji?

Has it changed from the first issue?

In the beginning, I invested the funds that I had gathered from creating daily planners for four years into publishing the first magazine. We did what businessmen do — use money from one project to launch another one. We did that with help from my longstanding relationships with some of our sponsors. The ones we share beliefs with. The marketing teams of Nike and Latvian H&M are genuinely excited when the new issue is out, they read it and get it. That is how we get the money to make another one. I wouldn’t say business is booming, but it’s growing slowly. Which is normal for a product with no advertising budget.

Especially, when it is still a niche in a niche. That is the reality and we are not sad about it. Many people are only discovering Benji now. Many people have yet to discover it.

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We meet in a café next to the Freedom Monument in the old town of Riga.

Before the interview I witness the honour guard who patrol the monument, changing at 3 p.m. With their impressive self-assurance and a conscious distance I intuitively respect, the servicemen are a relevant introduction to the kind of a person I was about to meet. Agnese arrives without any of the extraordinary headwear she is known for, but wearing a coat that resembles a kimono.

Coincidentally, Japan would be an important part of our conversation and we begin by talking about the Latvian national costume. Is it a stable entity or something that can be revised? Editing ideas that others consider set in stone is what Agnese and Benji Knewman seem to be about.

And vice versa — leaving the imperfections of the human story unedited.

The Latvian factor is important for your magazine. How do you see the Latvian identity today?

Fragmented. The global world is already here, everyday more and more. When it happens to a member of a small nation, either you start calling yourself a Londoner or a New Yorker and get lost in the crowd, or you stand out by being proud of who you are. I know Benji is read by both, definitely.

Because there is Latvianness in it, but not in a nationalistic ‘Oh, we are proud!’ way, but, again, in a human way, just telling others what has happened to us as a nation, just like other nations are telling us what has happened to them. And not that we are more important than other people, it’s just another story, another piece of a puzzle.

It would be interesting to step back a little and talk about the things that shaped you into the person you are today. I read that you started writing when you were 16. What were you interested in earlier, as a child?

My dad is a painter and a carpenter, so he can really mend and even build a house. He too believes in working for the highest level of quality you can create on your own. Despite all the cheap furniture you can get now, my dad is still making the real thing because he has this strong belief within himself. I feel I have it from him. My mom finished the Liepaja School of Applied Arts as the Soviet Union came to an end, and was working as a seamstress.

It was a time when you couldn’t really buy anything in stores, so seamstresses were very popular.

Hence, my first magazines were Burda.

In that case, were does the talent for storytelling come from? It is a very prominent feature in Benji Knewman.

Yes, Benji is all about stories. Especially individual stories. All those that are left out of the mainstream magazines where everything is so polished and watered down that the person isn’t there anymore. The talent for storytelling? I guess I have just acquired it along the way, because I never studied journalism. Ok, I was good at essay writing in school, so this one woman who knew

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How big was your circulation in the beginning and how big is it now?

How much do you sell outside Latvia?

The first issue had a print run of 3,000 copies. The international distributor appeared between the first and second issues. So, some copies were already sent abroad with the second issue. The problem is, we never completely sell out the batch that goes abroad, and whatever is not sold is thrown away.

As tiny as we are, we try not to add to the waste.

Plus, you publish at your own risk when you are paying for everything yourself. Now, after a couple of issues, we try to work closely with our distributor. It’s not about the money as much as it is about the energy we are losing. Printing a magazine to be thrown away in another part of the world, that’s stupid. That’s why I’ve been pressuring my distributor to get the data on the previous issues, so that we can see the pattern and understand which countries we can drop as our stockists. So for the fifth issue we have printed fewer copies.

That is, 2,200 copies. 1,100 went to our distributor and the other half remained with me in Latvia. I send it to the local stores we work with directly. In this way I see what kind of people pick it up here.

It’s definitely here, in the local market, where I could work even more to put out the word about our product. What matters is that the magazine gets into the hands of the right people, those who actually read and appreciate it. Many mainstream magazines, especially in America, announce how big their circulation is because they want to show the numbers to the advertisers, but then they throw the copies away.

What did you do after the exchange year in Japan?

I had two options. One was the University of Latvia, where they teach communication. All the adults were, like… you know how they are: ‘So, you’ve finished high school, what are you going to do now? Going for journalism?’ It was never my inner wish to go there, but the people around me were wishing for it, so I assumed I should go. And I didn’t get in. Which I now think is great! At the time, though, I was crying my eyes out, of course.

The other option was the Academy of Culture. So I ended up studying French for 4 years. Not only the language, but history, geography, and even accounting in French. It was never my dream. It just always happens that something comes up and I react to it. I don’t exactly go with the flow; I change the direction of it sometimes. But nothing that is happening now has been pre-planned. All through my studies I worked part-time as a journalist.

Also, in school they teach something that is known. With Benji, dare I say, you try to open the doors for what will be. Would you agree? Do you feel you have the power to shape the future with what you do?

A little bit, yes. I have some power. But the territory is tiny. And I always feel responsible for what I put in the magazine. Even if I don’t know the people who read Benji, we are shaping their world. And there are others who do that too, at the same time.

If I can add some logic to the picture, or show our readers that there are alternative things they can do, I consider it my duty.

How do you find the stories for the magazine?

Hmmm... (Agnese smiles secretively — Ed.) They just happen. That’s the thing about life. It is really happening around us. All you have to do is to be open to it. I guess it is also a journalist’s way of looking at our surroundings — studying everything as potential material. Now, many stories simply come from Instagram or Facebook. I see people I know or don’t know posting things and, since I’m curious by nature, I want to find out more. Also, since we’ve been in business for two years, Benji is popping up everywhere, like, many places in the world I will never even see — those stores, cafes, etc. I imagine Benji Knewman is usually passed from person to person. If they find the magazine interesting, they write to us themselves.

Photography by Andrejs Nikiforovs

But how do you keep the intensity of each piece? How much do you actually direct what goes into the articles? From what I’ve read, even the interviewees sound like great storytellers.

That’s the point. We are really very picky. We choose carefully what stories end up in the printed publication. I judge the material from the position of a reader from another part of the world. If I know somebody has been working on something for six months, I expect something good! Visualwise, content-wise, paper-wise. Many people creating independent magazines globally are not journalists, they are designers or just people who wish to put their work out there. As a journal-

NEW EDITORS

Photography by Andrejs Nikiforovs

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my mom asked if I could help her with the local paper and create a page for young people. That’s where I started writing publicly. I was 16. From that point until now I have been actively learning how to tell a story. During my exchange year in Japan, when I was 18, I was writing letters back home for the newspaper I mentioned. It was the year 2000 — no Internet, no blogs, no Instagram.

Most everything was new and weird for me at the time, and I was writing about these new Japanese experiences every month. I guess my storytelling comes from there.

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NEW EDITORS ist, I’ve learned there must be a plot. Otherwise, it’s just, you know, words. If they don’t tell you anything new or prove anything, it’s not going to end up in Benji. We also have an agenda in mind: to create a space where anybody can simply be.

We are eager to read stories where people are just being themselves, really personal.

The other goal is to tell the Latvian story in an international language. That’s why the stories that we print about Riga or Latvia might have happened in other cities, because these are human-interest stories. For example, in the newest issue, No. 5, there is a story that I’m very proud of as an editor.

It is definitely something new, even for locals. It is about a new movement of street photographers that arose here in Riga in the 1920s and continued up until WWII. The Freedom Monument had just been erected. It was a new thing. People walked around it, talked about it, many were meeting with family and friends from the countryside there. Riga street photographers picked up this theme. In a way, their pictures are all the same — they depict people with the monument behind them and the subjects are always in movement, walking and never posing. So this Latvian guy, who had always been interested in photography and the history of it, noticed a picture like this in his family archives.

He didn’t know who the two young ladies in the picture were, his aunties or something. Then he stumbled upon several more, similar pictures in the album. He went to a museum where there was a file of pictures that told the story of two decades of street photography that ended with WWII and the Soviet times, when nobody was allowed to have any private business.

The Benji Dinner was the first event of its kind with the aim to bring even more #lifethatyoucanread to the readers. In Benji Dinner Vol.1 the guests listened to five stories from previous issues transformed into live musical performance and ate dinner prepared by Dzintars Kristovskis, the chef who wrote a diary in Vol.2.

Photography by Peteris Viksna

Has Benji read the magazine?

No. Hm... Let me think. I’ve never heard this question. Yeah, I should ask him.

What type of knowledge does Benji possess? The surname Knewman is suggestive.

It isn’t really about knowledge. When you pronounce the name, you don’t hear the 'K' so you don't know if it’s about knowing something or something about a new man, a new person. Secondly, when you see the name, you see the past tense of knowing, and you get the feeling of having known this guy for sometime already. The same happens with the stories when readers say: ‘Oh, that has happened to me, too.’ For example, in the first issue I wrote an essay on how I liked to read in the toilet. For me, as a girl, to come out with this announcement officially was quite big. Other girls thanked me on Instagram. It turned out they were not the only ones! So we share those funny, sad, and all kinds of stories that allow our readers to not feel lonely with their experience. I guess that it’s for this very reason that we get emails every other day from people who would like to write for us. I always tell them: ‘Ok, just come up with your personal story, somewhere deep inside of you.’ And people usually think their individual story can’t possibly be interesting to anyone else. But actually, the Individual is not being represented out there much. Everything is generalised. Even when we write something openly on our Facebook walls, we are in character, wearing masks.

There is an opinion that an editor should only write editorial pieces. You write quite a lot of content pieces yourself. Don’t you find it somewhat of a conflict? How do you make it about the whole picture and not about yourself?

First of all, technically I do not write the Editor’s column for Benji… I’m not going to go into detail, but it’s not me. I can’t write like that. If you look closely, you will see the style is different from my essays or the rest of Benji. As for editors, I see two types: those who write the Editor’s letter only, and those who are journalists as well. I’ve been like that forever. In Benji, we wish that our writers retain their distinctive style. I keep a close watch and our proofreaders know about it. They don’t take out their brushes to make everything look the same. Sometimes you can feel the age of the author, or that the English is not so easy to read.

I really try to get good stories that don’t need

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With this manner of story telling I guess we get under the skin of the reader. Because you can imagine your grandma in such a situation. Stories like this also let you learn about the place where everything took place. A common phrase that I get from foreigners is that ‘Benji really makes me wanna go to Riga’. And I hear it quite a lot. It’s becoming a legendary phrase.

Photography by Andrejs Nikiforovs

Editing ideas that others consider set in stone is what Agnese and Benji Knewman seem to be about. And vice versa — leaving the imperfections of the human story unedited.

I find the street photography movement interesting and say it could apply to any corner of the world because of the workings of the human mind and psychology. First of all, people were eager to buy these pictures, since they were usually meeting friends and relatives after a long time, so they wanted a memory of the moment and pictures were rare back then. On the other hand, anyone might be afraid of those street photographers.

Imagine you come from the countryside with your family, and suddenly some unknown guy jumps in front of you taking a picture. Then he suggests that in two days you could get a copy of it at the press kiosk if you just gave him 50 cents. Some people went to City Hall and made complaints. Because, in a way, they felt those photographers were attacking them, and some of them were just in it for the money and never put film in their cameras.

Even if I don’t know the people who read Benji, we are shaping their world.

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As a character, or even as a brand, you seem to have kind of a fairy tale factor about you, starting with the name of your blog, Whimsical Agnesiga, the style you often pick, the mystery behind Benji. Would you say you believe in the power of the fairy tale?

Hm... the power of fairy tales? That’s a concept!

Well, I wouldn't call myself naïve, but let’s say I’ve always liked movies that have plots about other worlds — the possibility excites me. Of course, another world can exist in your mind, when you consciously choose to build your universe. That is what I have been doing for some time now. In Benji, like I said, we create a space where anyone can simply be, because in the real world it isn’t easy to do that.

Photography by Aiga Ozo Ozolina Clothes by Arita Varzinska for PAVILJONS Studio Hair & Make-up by Anete Sidlovska

What would you say is the main reason behind the success of Benji Knewman?

The texts? The design? The mystery?

Of course, all the things you mentioned add to it, but I would be more eager to answer: none of the above! What I mean is that it’s the feeling or the mindset we put into Benji, something between the lines. It is the presence of emotion. We have a small crowd [of followers] but I feel how much they anticipate each new issue. There is this one guy, I don’t know him personally, but he asked on Facebook where he could get the previous issues. I told him that they are not around anymore. So he went to check all the stockists to see if maybe they still had some. He found one copy in an organic food restaurant where they had the first issue on display for people to read there. It has been there for two years. Just imagine how it looks now. This guy thought of maybe just taking it for himself to finish his collection. Luckily, he ended up finding the issue elsewhere. He admitted to me on Facebook: ‘I never imagined I would become such a sucker for a magazine.’ And he’s not, like, stylish, artistic, he’s just an average guy. But his inner world must be there, in Benji. This is touching. It makes me want to keep on doing it, to look for ways to finance it and retain the quality.

You don’t publish the old issues online, so the only way to read Benji Knewman is on paper?

Yes. When all the copies are gone they are gone.

So some issues are now collectors’ items.

Tell me why.

When people ask me why we don’t share the issues online, I ask them to tell me two topics they have

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anything more from me. Apart from, maybe, the title, because I know our layout. Otherwise, I keep the stories intact.

So would you say paper media is here to stay?

Ah...who knows what will happen? I don’t! But the thing with books or magazines, you have to open them and then close them when you’re done. You feel as if a job has been completed. Then you can pass them on. Or you put them on a shelf... Oh, I feel old now, saying this... I am simply passionate about magazines and this is what I do. If there were a movie director in my place now, I guess he or she might say how they like to yell ‘Action!’ or something. In the end, I know Benji is like a diary for me. It is 9,5 cm of life. I didn’t measure it myself, but one guy in Amsterdam who runs a magazine store posted photos of all the existing issues on Instagram with the caption: 9,5 cm of life that you can read.

Let’s talk about a piece from issue No. 4 — the cover story, the interview with Mikhail Baryshnikov. The beginning of the interview is rather stiff and only in the middle does it find its rhythm, yet you published the whole conversation. Why did you decide to do that?

Right after the conversation, the girl who interviewed Baryshnikov called me from Tel Aviv, telling me how she met him, and that he was feeling very ill and not eager to talk. Some would say, and some did, that they expected something entirely different from the interview. The same crowd was disappointed with what happened in the show itself, after which the interview was conducted. It was just poetry being spoken, Baryshnikov wasn’t dancing. So some say it’s a bad entry. But the thing is, it’s ‘Life that you can read’. (The Benji Knewman slogan — Ed.) When you think about your own encounters with some of the people you meet for the first time, this becomes normal. There are those conversations that don’t go smoothly, but then they become stories and history. That’s why I left it untouched.

And then there is the other thing, the interview changes in the middle, when the interviewee becomes interested and starts asking questions back. That’s when the conversation begins, when it’s no longer an interview. If you can get that out of a celebrity, like Baryshnikov, from a man who is tired and suffering from back pain, that’s really interesting to witness. So I left if for those two

reasons. Life that you can read goes in all kinds of directions. And from my journalistic point of view, it is a rare interview. Even if people were expecting something else.

In thinking about this issue of N WIND, we noticed that today the reader has gained the power to become the editor. From our conversation, it seems you still hold the editorial power.

Well, power is a strong word. I might call it the liberty to choose and to listen. I hear from those who suggest ideas to me, but we don’t get much in the way of direct requests because the readers see that our concept is strongly expressed. Others just offer their pieces as contributors. Even when our in-house writers suggest illustrations to their stories, it’s only me, as an editor, who sees the whole picture for the issue, concerning both visuals and the content. I need the stories to all fit together and, at the same time, to stand out. I guess that’s what the editor is there for — to oversee the whole. If he or she doesn't, the magazine fails.

That understanding comes from my previous experiences when I was partly told what to do. I had a boss and advertising guys who would tell me this or that brand would like for me to write some advertising promo, which everybody hates, but then we might sell more advertisements and all that kind of thing (Agnese makes the sound of being nauseous — Ed.). It’s all artificial, just to get more money. At Benji, we do it the other way round. We have the story and I see that a certain brand might find it attractive. If they do, we can put their name under the article as supporters of the story. The story would be in the magazine in any case, with or without the supporter. That is how we sold the story on the street photographers to Live Riga.

Because it is a terrific story to accompany an ad about Riga — there was a place where this type of thing happened… the Freedom Monument is still there… you can print the picture and it’s exciting, it’s not about another new restaurant.

You strike me as a person who seems very secure in her decisions. What are your biggest challenges? When do you have doubts?

In a technical sense, I always have to make decisions about which story fits better in the issue, but that’s something every person dealing with artistic matters faces. But in the grand outline, doubt is not present much. Not because I know everything, but because I have the criteria in my mind, and anything that comes along has to meet those criteria. The first is that Benji Knewman is a space where everybody can simply be. Second, it’s just about somebody’s story being told to the world.

If both of these boxes are ticked, or even just one

of them, it’s a story for us. If not, it’s a story for somebody else. That’s why the big picture is really easy. Of course, you have to reach the point of knowing ‘why’. In the beginning, when my blog was one of the first, there were definitely events I was invited to, and I went and wrote about them.

I would never do that now. There was nothing the reader could take home.

What were the strongest internal experiences that have shaped you and helped you to know your direction and your crowd?

Japan, definitely. The exchange year happened when I was right on the border of personal transformation, keep in mind that I was 18 at the time.

Also, ever since I came back to Riga to study, I have been supporting myself financially. Being on your own shapes you. The period of writing my blog and becoming a brand also taught me a lot.

If we are talking about shorter happenings, it was my master's degree at the Stockholm School of Economics. That was, and still is, an alien field to me, and would be to any creative who comes from the humanities world. During those studies, called Executive Master of Business Administration, I came up with the idea that my team and I would work on Benji. I acquired a second backbone and the confidence that I could really do it. To go back to Japan, I felt really lonely there, but it taught me that the same things [I do at home] can be done differently. On the other hand, I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter if a person is Latvian or Japanese — we all seek love. That is what Benji is still about. benjiknewman.com Tautė Bernotaitė is a freelance writer, copywriter, and editor obsessed with words as entities and passionate about creating names or titles.

Get in touch: menulija@gmail.com

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read about online recently. They can’t really come up with any. Online is messy and very fragmented.

Plus, it’s tiring to read online, especially long stories, however good they are. It is also about human consciousness. If you really want to immerse yourself in a read, for it to become something you don’t want to put down, it has to be on paper.

The Crowd —

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The North Dakota Oil Fracking Boom Shortly after president George W. Bush signed the document deregulating hydraulic fracturing in 2005, new territories in the US suddenly became economically viable for industrial exploitation. A land grab for mineral rights took place, distributing them in a global financial market of investment and speculation, eventually completely transforming the rural landscapes of North Dakota. The state turned into an oil powerhouse with higher oil production levels than certain OPEC nations. Even more peculiar, however, is the fact that 99% of the 180 thousand invisible contractual relationships facilitating the astronomical growth and territorial acceleration of North Dakota have been made by people who have never set foot in the state. To learn more about how we remotely crowdsourced one of the biggest developments the history of oil production, and its environmental consequences check out this longread from the timeless New York Times here: goo.gl/jO9zLk

Digital Bubbles Do you edit your own environment?

Are you the one choosing what and whom to see and not to see? Easy.

Facebook recently apologised to its users for exposing them to the content they don’t agree with, once again exposing the fact that we all live in our own carefully curated digital bubbles, which are best at reinforcing the beliefs we already share. To get a glimpse of what the not-so-distant-future could look like, a place where augmented reality is widely adopted and existing behavioural trends are further extrapolated, check out Hyper Reality — Keiichi Matsuda’s latest short film — here: goo.gl/X1agh9

Edit Wars Did you know that popular articles on Wikipedia are sometimes edited back and forth up to 2,000 times per day?

How about making 47,000 edits to manually fix a single, repeated mistake on Wikipedia? That is exactly what fifty-one-year-old Bryan Henderson, a software engineer from San Jose, California is doing. Bryan is determined to fix every single entry containing the incorrect usage of the phrase ‘comprised of’. The 10th most visited website on the planet, the successfully crowdsourced, free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is understandably becoming the platform of influence where opposing opinions, interests, powers, and propagandas clash. Try googling ‘edit wars’ to learn more.

Denis Bondar

The ‘crowd’ is the ‘new editor’. It has always been, as a matter of fact. As Marx once famously noted, ‘theory [or an idea]… becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses’. What was true in the past, and has occasionally materialised throughout history in the form of revolution and violent transformation, has now become even truer, and [albeit in less violent form] is taking place on a daily basis, oftentimes without us consciously acknowledging it. With the proliferation of technology and ubiquity of networks and platforms enabling us to unite around and act upon various causes, our reality is constantly being crowdsourced, crowdfunded, edited, and curated by people like you and me. From the political regimes that have been torn down and then reelected from the bottom-up with the help of networkenabled crowds to overnight Instagram-celebrities springing up to shape the buying preferences of tomorrow — we have never seen such times recent

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The New Editor

Editing

The Crowd However, let us not be deceived by the wonders and the power of the Internet.

Like any powerful tool, the Internet is a doubleedged sword that comes with its own consequences.

The technology we have grown so intimate with and dependent on may have actually co-opted us instead. In this age, when behavioural data is routinely acclaimed as being the new gold, and more and more companies routinely record and collect every trace we leave behind — online and off, and big computers in the Valley are working hard to analyse, predict, and inevitably modify our behaviour for profit, one starts to wonder how hard it is to actually ‘edit’ the crowd?

Here is a collection of sneak peaks at how we edit, and are edited, on a daily basis.

Surveillance Capitalism The Chief Data Scientist of a muchadmired Silicon Valley company that develops applications to improve students’ learning once said, ‘The goal of everything we do is to change people’s actual behaviour at scale. When people use our app, we can capture their behaviours, identify good and bad ones, and develop ways to reward the good and punish the bad. We can test how actionable our cues are for them and how profitable for us.’ To learn more about why companies collect your data, how they modify your behaviour for profit, and what the logic of the dominant wealth accumulation model of our time is, dive deep into the seminal research of Shoshana Zuboff, a Harvard-based professor who coined the term ‘surveillance capitalism’ here: goo.gl/xTGEac

Editing the Election Can you edit an election? Quite possibly. At least that is what one Facebook-conducted study suggests.

On November 2nd, 2010, more than 61 million adults visited the Facebook website, and every single one of them unwittingly took part in a massive experiment. It was a randomised controlled trial, of the sort used to test the worth of new medicines. But rather than drugs or vaccines, this trial looked at the effectiveness of political messages and the influence of our friends in swaying our actions. Unlike most medical trials, this one had a sample size in the millions. Learn the results in this article from 2014 in The Atlantic magazine: goo.gl/Yp2TXD

Project Data Coup Project Data Coup, an initiative developed by researchers from the Strelka Institute in Moscow, is a factheavy, detail-rich, solution-equipped manifesto that investigates the future development of technology in the context of surveillance capitalism and ubiquitous data mining. The work doesn’t shy away from… ummm…suggesting ways to disrupt Google and Facebook, while paying you for the data you provide to thirsty marketeers. Curious? Check out the project here: goo.gl/kwEVIr

Denis Bondar is researcher and design strategist operating at the intersection of digital and built environments. As a researcher, Denis is primarily concerned with power dynamics, trends, and systemic shifts enabled by technological progress. As

design strategist, he works with businesses to help them identify opportunities and develop strategic offers that better harness the potential of the networked age. denis-bondar.com

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history, it seems, when we, the people, have had so much leverage and so many opportunities to edit the world around us.

NEW EDITORS

The editor is someone who stands out from the crowd. Why is that? The editor traditionally is the one member of a society who has the power of foresight and a unique ability to filter out the important ideas from the noise, tapping into the collective consciousness and seeking out emerging patterns, remote possibilities, and unexpected links. It often happens where different disciplines, attitudes, discourses, cultures, and markets meet and sometimes collide. Editors are not only seekers and seers, but also devise effective strategies to communicate the incomprehensible, and this is what separates them from the rest.

The thought thaT is thinking me

Society has a tendency to greatly admire those who appear to pull new ideas from thin air. The common image we have is of the solitary individual dreaming up new ideas in brilliant flashes of inspiration, but this model of venerating the curator is up for challenge. Attractive as it is to imagine the lone obsessive dreaming up the futures we are now inhabiting, isn’t it the dreamer who is in fact being dreamed? As Nietzsche said — you don’t think your thoughts, your thoughts are thinking you.

The editor is no longer manufacturing the future; he simply taps into visions of future we are all unconsciously generating between us.

Let’s imagine the entrepreneur, innovator, or other type of change maker as the editor of modern society and the way we live today. I see so many people building their business ventures through their next leap into the unknown future, only to discover that halfway across the world, someone else has come up with the same idea. The initial response is always one of fight or flight, the entitled thought, “I came up with it first!” However, we can see that ideas are born at almost the same time in multiple places, and speed across the globe as fast as light.

Assuming that the editor is one who gives body to an idea, where do those ideas come from?

Where does the thought that is thinking me come from? Reflecting on these questions, I came to the realisation that our collective consciousness has more power over us than we think. Good ideas, the sparks born in those innovators, are merely the manifestation of our collective consciousness — the constellation of our mutual ideas, beliefs and values, a wide pool of minds, a network larger than any individual, a place where we are all linked.

So even while it seems that editors or disruptive entrepreneurs, innovators, and other creatives are working through their own agendas to make change happen, in fact they are simply bringing into reality the ideas and values we are all already dreaming.

This led me to wonder when we are going to talk about the content of these dreams. Content and storytelling have become increasingly important tools for facilitating change in people, like brands and media shape the public opinion and societal

values. The content of our collective consciousness is also our tool for extending the networks we have with others, positioning individuals in relation to the others. The content of our dreams binds societies and makes us one.

We live in times of uncharted territory; through new technologies we are more interconnected than ever before, and we have direct access to much better resources than ever before. In response, there must be ever more editors emerging to generate content powerful enough to change popular perceptions, to engage the diverse, distracted audiences of a continuously disrupted and turbulent media landscape. But there is a cultural shift in the way content is being consumed; we are moving from being a passive audience to being one that is encouraged to seek new content, make connections, and produce collective meaning. Eventually this begs the question: how much content is too much content? And, when does content turn into garbage?

We live in a time of prosperity. Financial capital has placed trust in a generation of wannabe young entrepreneurs, pushed by the media and their baby-boomer parents to ‘follow their dreams’. It almost feels wrong not to, so strong is the belief that if you have enough courage, you can accomplish everything. But in reality, as more individuals seek to become editors, sooner or later the content loses its value.

With growth in prosperity comes waste. We see this all around us right now, you can’t avoid the very tangible evidence of it. But what is the subtle

shift in a culture that turns ideas themselves into garbage? And who decides what is garbage, especially in times when our current social values and morals are increasingly questioned?

There is doubt in the mind of every entrepreneur.

Every day in my business we too challenge the foundation of the ethos that drives us to create value. It is my responsibility as an entrepreneur to be responsible for what I’m putting out there into this world: are we fulfilling a genuine need? Are we improving our relationship to the planet? Are we inspiring others to do the same? I am on a quest to create added value through ideas blossoming from our collective consciousness, and never compromise on my vision to achieve this. Can every editor of content look at themselves and their work and honestly say the same?

This leads me to wonder, what is it that gives some ideas an extended life in bodily form, and what happens to them in these extended bodies? We have seen that with prosperity, we lose sight of our principles, and can keep on consuming without purpose, shame, or fear of the consequences. We can consume to the point that the consumer himself becomes the very thing that he consumes. The prosperous and dangerous marriage of advertising and social media is proving this point in ever more complex ways.

What does it take for a culture to step back, take stock of its core values, and reset the compass to a bright and sustainable future? What it takes is a deep and searching fearlessness, the entrepreneurial warrior mentality that saw humanity spread across the globe from a few disparate tribes to a globally dominant species. But maybe that’s too heavy to contemplate for you right now!

You may think of yourself as this new type of editor, the type of editor who must operate in a competitive landscape where discerning voices often go unheard among the noise. The new editor should feel the burn to be more critical towards the content they produce and the purpose they are serving — I am constantly reminding myself — and to take on the responsibility to call out garbage when she sees it!

Ruta Eva Cepulyte is a co-founder of several startups and an innovation consultant, who strives to creatively narrate change and demystify the future.

Ruta has recently launched praba750.com, a direct-to-consumer up-cycled fine jewellery brand, offering handcrafted pieces produced by using recycled precious metals and at a 50–70% lower price point. She believes in a fair price, a transparent business model, and a shift to a new stage of business consciousness.

Get in touch: info@praba750.com

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Ruta Eva Cepulyte

Editing Values:

Victoria Diaz

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Sustainable, eco-friendly, ethical, socially responsible — these buzzwords have been floating around the fashion and design industries for years, but what do they really mean? What is the real impact of these concepts for global fashion and textile industries?

Responsible fashion

Carcel creates minimalist designs using only high-quality natural materials handmade by women in prison.

Through this work, they ‘transform lost time into skills, paid jobs, and better futures’.

If we look around, we soon understand that we live surrounded by things: consumer products, status items, lifestyle objects. According to UCLA anthropologists, ‘We are living in the most materially rich society in global history, with average families having more possessions than any preceding society.’ By now most of us know that the clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world, right after the petroleum industry. The level at which we consume fashion and lifestyle products is record braking and alarming.

80 billion articles of clothing are purchased worldwide each year — 400% more than a decade ago!

But our patterns of consumption are slowly changing and a new industrial revolution is underway, driven almost exclusively by consumer demand for corporate accountability and transparency. In the near future sustainability, ethics, and trans-

parency will no longer be merely buzzwords for the fashion industry, but expected business practice, energised by small steps that make a large impact. Consumers want better products and production processes, but more importantly we want true transparency from the brands we rely on.

Brand values have become vitally important in our era; they can no longer be merely a list of nicesounding words and intentions.

Today people expect real action and honest transparency in the production chain — wide and rich in fashion industry. We want sustainability to be an industry standard, not a marketing ploy. For global consumers of fashion, aspects such as design, quality, great fit, sustainability, transparency, and social responsibility all need to be part of an integrated whole. We are talking about the need for a holistic approach for the future of the fashion industry.

man in French luxury fashion, Mr Jacob left it all behind to dedicate himself entirely to fashion activism from the day he visited one of the world’s most notorious prison in Peru. Now, that Pietà has a more solid foundation, the company is developing production lines in three South American prisons, and retailing in their online and multi-brand stores as well. True to his background, Mr Jacob’s clothing project uses entirely natural, luxury organic materials such as pima cotton, baby alpaca, and wool.

Of course, design matters too. The fashionable don’t want to give up style, impressive looks, or luxury materials in the name of sustainability. The role of design is shifting as we expect the products we buy to serve the greater good. How will brands respond now that we expect products to not just BE good, but also to DO good?

In the Nordic region we also have inspiring examples of fashion activism, such as Carcel. To explore the ethical fashion movement and learn more about her brand we interviewed Ms Veronica D’Souza, a social entrepreneur with a strong and international academic foundation. She boasts an Executive Degree in Social Entrepreneurship from INSEAD and a Master’s Degree in International Business and Politics from the Copenhagen Business School. Later she specialised in Sustainable Business Operations and Strategies at Columbia Business School and earned an additional Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Languages, and Culture from CBS/La UADE in Argentina. With this impressive background she founded Carcel — a Danish fashion label created to do good in the world.

In the search for front-runners in the new era of social activism in fashion, Pietà — a French menswear project founded by Thomas Jacob — came to mind. Once a top

Carcel creates minimalist designs using only high-quality natural materials handmade by women in prison. Through this work, they ‘transform lost time into skills, paid

jobs, and better futures’. Carcel partnered with the National Prison System of Peru to develop a small line of knitwear made from fine baby alpaca wool. They have thoughtfully reinvented timeless classic forms, but the timeliest aspect of their business is not the clean design aesthetic, but their unique approach to transparency in business. By being open about the way they integrate their production lines into different social realities, Carcel makes it possible for their clients to feel connected with and support communities around the globe.

‘We are living a new paradigm. Different customers ask different kinds of questions, but a fair question is ‘why this price?’ People have started to require transparency from brands and this is a key aspect companies should hear’, commented Ms D’Souza.

Carcel is a transparent brand that reveals both its vision and its financial plans in detail online through their wisely structured website.

Unlike many fashion brands, they invest a part of their revenues in social impact projects. For example, they provide training and education, and buy machines so that the women they employ can work in better conditions. They are a fashion brand with NGO social elements.

When asked what moved her to create such a disruptive brand, D’Souza vividly answered ‘I come to fashion from my background as a social entrepreneur, so I see the need for designing better solutions we can all live with. What I saw

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NEW EDITORS

Around the world, poverty is the main cause of female incarceration. In Peru the majority of women in prison are sentenced for drugtrafficking because they are used as ‘drug mules’.

Photography Carcel.

CARCEL first collection is inspired by a mix of Scandinavian subtlety and the bold colours of Peru.

Photography Carcel.

the first time I visited a women’s prison was a lot of disaffection and inequality both from the human and the business perspectives. From the human perspective female prisoners are completely forgotten and even more so in underdeveloped countries; from a business perspective they were already sitting and working all day, but they didn’t have proper materials or a market. To me this was a very stupid misuse of resources. I was inspired by the idea that if I could provide the market, the materials, and the designs then we could actually create a solution that could change lives and make use of wasted resources. We are changing the world for the better and creating a more coherent society, but though aspirational and beautiful solutions. I do not believe in moralising or ‘making people feel bad’ to drive us to live better. I think human beings need inspiring solutions, beautiful solutions. I also have a strong belief that quality can reunite people and make life better.

For instance, engaging in quality conversations make people feel proud and satisfied. As a woman helping women in prison, and as an entrepreneur to basically repurpose wasted time as resource. From a fashion perspective this inspires me to create beautiful products with a strong design, we are developing products that make people proud so they want to be part of it.’

As a young brand, Carcel found the perfect platform for both financial backing, and for communicating their plans, values, and business approach in Kickstarter. ‘Kickstarter

has been a very positive experience for us. We were fully funded on the first day of our campaign and people from all over the world have expressed their interest in helping us’, said Ms D’Souza. Shortly after our interview, the Carcel team went to Peru to produce its first collection, which will be released at the end of February.

Obviously people are attracted to interesting ideas. Innovative brands must reach out to potential customers creatively. ‘Our customers are on social media. We engage with them through our different platforms, through magazines and blogs’, explains the founder.

Different realities Small brands and independent designers face many challenges on their way to becoming sustainable.

Sourcing materials and manufacturers, then dealing with production minimums, all too often results in uncompetitive final retail prices. We can read about such challenges in detail in interviews with designers, analyses of the fashion business, and specific markets reports, but not everyone thinks that it needs to be so challenging.

To find out how challenging could it be for small or young designers to be sustainable and ethical in their work, we spoke with Norwegian expert Mrs Tone Tobiasson, a former fashion editor who left to start a career in sustainable fashion. Today she is the co-founder and editor of

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Brand values have become vitally important in our era; they can no longer be merely a list of nicesounding words and intentions.

NICE — a useful and progressively strategic platform where people working in the Nordic fashion and textile industries can find information about textile innovation and social responsibility. ‘No, it is not challenging at all. Young designers or brands should focus on a few simple issues. Like catering to the actual needs of their consumers.

We need good clothes that get us through the day, from work to leisure activities; clothes that keep us warm and allow for movement and activity. This means studying fibres, how they react in various temperatures and settings, how they stretch and bounce back, or not. Become a designer because you actually want to solve problems and help people look their best. That’s the Nordic model — equality and participation.

Create something that deserves to be made and will last a long time.

Hang the UN Sustainable Development Goals above your desk. What have you done to contribute to one of those goals in your design?’

work with elevated quality standards and meaningful materials.

Ms D’Souza’s concept of quality is holistic: ‘Quality is the essence of what we do. We are very transparent about what we do and why we do it. For us quality is about materials first. That’s why we use only local, natural fibres. But quality is also in the process: we produce a limited number of selected designs that we believe in. We don’t create collections in the sense that we do not develop new products every six months and have piles of unsold stock after the season. We believe in our products and they are designed to last; another way of ensuring quality is through creating longlasting designs. Quality of life is also very important for us; quality of life for the people we work with, helping the women in prison make better lives for themselves, helping their children. We see quality from many aspects: how we select and process the materials we work with, how this affects the planet, our designs, the people around us, and the process.’

Meaningful materials

Developing responsible fabrics and clothing designs isn’t just about sourcing organic, ethical, or recycled raw materials. Fresh takes on integrated manufacturing processes, socially responsible business models, and advanced environmentally friendly technologies elevate sustainable and ethical fashion to the next level. From highend fashion to sports apparel, those who are choosing the new breed of eco-minded, yet high-performance materials are making a statement.

Going forward, importance will increasingly be placed on sophisticated sustainability; solutions that turn structural, social, and environmental problems into beautiful materials and objects, in other words… beautiful solutions.

In a backlash to planned obsolescence [designing products to last for a short period to ensure continued sales due to the need for their replacement], designers are now focusing on items designed to last decades. There is a noticeable shift in product life cycles as the consumer demand for quality and craftsmanship starts trumping fast fashion.

As people redefine value, both in the purpose of an item and in its monetary worth, there is increasing importance placed on repairing cherished objects rather than replacing them; this mindset is fuelling the rise of niche brands, which

In this context I started to ponder the concept of luxury. Are we, as a society, developing a new understanding of ‘luxury’? As design moves beyond outward appearance toward the deeper meaning of things, the products we create represent not only status, comfort, and security, but also the continued elevation of socially conscious design. Luxury today is not just about the object itself, but becomes more about experience and structure. The ‘who, where, and why’ of production are what make a product so special.

I discussed my idea with Ms D’Souza and here is her opinion: ‘I think luxury is having both the energy and the capital to purchase according to your convictions, not needing to compromise on design, quality, or process.’

Our readjusted sense of luxury inspires a redefined opulence, where the value of an object is not just in its function, but also in the meaning of the object, the production process, and in being in tune with socially conscious brand values.

After my interview with Ms D’Souza I had the lovely feeling of living in intense and disruptive times, where there is plenty to explore and to rethink in the fashion business. carcel.co nicefashion.org Victoria Diaz is a textile engineer with a degree in Fashion & Life Style Branding. She is a trends-forecaster who travels the world studying the evolution of socio-cultural and aesthetic trends. She consults local & global fashion brands in product strategy and brand development.

Get in touch: hello@victoriadias.com

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NEW EDITORS

‘I think human beings need inspiring solutions, beautiful solutions’ Veronica D’Souza

Veronica D’Souza is a social entrepreneur and prior to Carcel, she co-founded the award-winning social business Ruby Cup. She is recognized as a ‘Global Shaper’ under Word Economic Forum, the youngest Jury member at INDEX: Design To Improve Life, a SOCAP selected entrepre- neur, a Youth Mentor for Ashoka, Nairobi, a senior fellow of Humanity in Action in New York, a United World College Student and co-author of ‘The Road Map for Sustainable Leadership’ from the leading Scandinavian Think Tank, Monday Morning (Denmark).

Photography Carcel.

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Each item is made by hand-knitting machine, and inside each piece, you will find the name of the woman who made it.

Photography Carcel.

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NEW EDITORS

Editing Values:

Trolls and the New Totalitarian Narrative

Paul Emmet

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The Pompous.

Hand crafted mask

by Elina Rudzite, part of 'Eliminative' project, London 2016.

Photography by Aiga Ozo Ozolina

As the info-wars are spiralling out of control, the spectre of censorship rises. Doubts are sown about the accuracy of all news channels, government snooping seems ‘ok’, and questioning free speech is back on the agenda. In this new totalitarian narrative trolls are the foot soldiers, and sensationalist fake news sites, are the tanks that disseminate misinformation at great speed throughout the Internet battleground. Anonymous spewers of vitriol and on-line intimidation have weaponised social media at an unexpected rate.

These tools have primarily, although not exclusively, become the successful new cyber-front for the far right, Russia, and Daesh. Unscrupulous and media savvy entities are quick to capitalise on the public’s appetite for non-mainstream media in response to the patronising and self-serving mainstream, which is proving increasingly out of touch. It is now click-bait headlines, eye-catching graphics, and state-sponsored propaganda feeding a disenchanted and dissatisfied public’s darkest desires and demons on a daily basis.

This is a realm in which Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro, of the Finnish national broadcasting company Yleisradio, or Yle, has rapidly become an expert.

In 2014 she investigated a ‘troll factory’, where upwards of 300 people work 24/7 to generate proRussia propaganda, fake news sites, anonymous profiles, and the synonymous trolling of people they are told not to like. After she published her article, Jessikka was bombarded with hundreds of direct and very personal attacks — on her credibility, sexuality, and motives — all from anonymous trolls.

The Russian propaganda channel RT Deutsch produced a disinformation article written about her in German, spinning a fantasy of her as a lonely village idiot with no support or credibility and an ‘obsession’ for trolls. She received numerous death threats and, even in Finland, fake news stories circulated about her, which led to her receiving threats from people she formerly counted as friends. Trolls are no longer the Nordic mystic bogeymen of folklore, but angry, dangerous, and politicised stooges for nefarious political outcomes. Jessikka elaborates on her

Jessikka Aro investigated a ‘troll factory’, where upwards of 300 people work 24/7 to generate pro-Russia propaganda, fake news sites, anonymous profiles, and the synonymous trolling of people they are told not to like. After she published her article, Jessikka was bombarded with hundreds of direct and very personal attacks. 'It seems the trolls and propagandists who did this to me maybe thought that because I was woman I was more likely to submit, to not report it or talk about it, but there they made a mistake — they profiled me as somehow weaker.'

experience and the hazards she still faces stemming directly from her research topic. She now strives to create a wider awareness of a new kind of very personalised and contagious info-warfare.

How would you define a troll?

I investigated aggressive and anonymous online social media profiles, which spread pro-Kremlin messages on social media platforms, discussion forums, and comment sections of the regular media.

I was particularly interested in the anonymous dissemination of texts that, judging by the amount and contents of the messages, seemed orchestrated and organised.

As a serious journalist how do you walk the line between getting clicks and reporting objectively?

Easily. In the Finnish academic research of journalism the idea of ‘objectivity’ in journalism was abandoned already in the 70's. Journalism by definition needs to be fact-based and, according to the Finnish journalism code of ethics, headlines as well as articles need to be based on verified facts. A journalist’s goal is to report truthfully, not to try and get clicks.

However, propaganda, especially in its blackest form, is quite the opposite. Generally, propaganda is politically motivated public communication or manipulated information — for example, mixing truths with half-truths or outright lies. Propaganda is ‘free’ from all ethical concerns and is targeted at manipulating the receiver’s thoughts, attitudes, and actions, thus benefiting the sender of propaganda.

What interested you in the topic of Russian trolls?

It was a new phenomenon and I wanted to know how trolls have influenced Finnish public debate and freedom of speech. We have over 70 thousand Russian speakers in Finland and Russia is our neighbour, so Russian issues have always interested me. A little more than ten years ago I studied, worked, and travelled in Russia; I have always been

NEW EDITORS

Trolls are no longer the Nordic mystic bogeymen of folklore, but angry, menacing, and politicised stooges for nefarious political outcomes.

interested. I am fluent enough to understand the difference between truth and lies in Russian. I love the culture and the people so much — they are kind and nurturing, and they really take care of you once they get to know you. They are also very very strong since they have managed to survive in difficult social circumstance for decades. They have a similar sense of humour to the Finns — really dark.

I really like Russia, I have a lot of Russian friends.

What is their reaction to the attacks on you?

I get more sympathy than negative reactions. I have friends there who have become targets too; they are also journalists who have been investigating stuff the regime doesn’t want investigated, so they can relate to me. Some people think I am brave. I think these critical and investigative journalists working in Russia are the bravest people I know, they are my inspiration.

Have you ever been trolled by a woman? Is trolling gender specific?

Most trolls are anonymous, so I don’t know. What I know about hate speech from the research done in Finland at the Tampere University Journalists Institute is that any woman who makes a statement immediately faces much more aggressive, often sexist, hate speech. Our looks are criticised and our gender becomes an issue when we are targeted. Women face the worst of it, not only from trolls. Women also become sexualised in a way men don’t — some men have fantasised about raping me.

If you want to think about the core of sexism and hate speech it’s about power. Just like rape, it’s not about sex, it’s about abuse and power. The sexual talk is used as a way to put down women with very powerful and nasty language. It seems the

trolls and propagandists who did this to me maybe thought that because I was woman I was more likely to submit, to not report it or talk about it, but there they made a mistake — they profiled me as somehow weaker.

The official mission of the U.S. Air Force is now: "To fly, fight and win...in air, space and cyberspace". Do you know any such official statement or motif related to the Russian military establishment?

Interesting slogan! I don't know, really, but it doesn't mean there isn't one. The Kremlin has a policy of defending its interests in the information space too, they see mass media as a weapon — their Defence Secretary stated that in 2015. And ‘journalists’ are also awarded military medals.

At what point does hate speech clash with free speech? I think I should be free to say anything whether someone agrees with it or is offended by it. Whether religious, political, or gender, where do we draw the line between hate speech and someone’s stupid opinion?

I don’t see how people have a problem with that.

In Finland it is clear in the legislation what you can and cannot say. About the trolls, they are inciting people to more and more aggressive views, and language, one of their aims is to normalise hate speech, another is to blur the lines between normal opinions and hate speech. When there are anonymous profiles everyday repeating hate speech, commenting with threats, using insulting language, they gain more and more followers. On Twitter when people see this propaganda, and become targeted by it, and see it everyday, they start to think this is normal, and they start to use it in their everyday language. Ordinary people start to spread propaganda in their social media networks after they became targets of the propaganda. Then you could say the propaganda worked because people started to echo the propaganda messages.

I have noticed so many people have become targets of also racist propaganda.

In the beginning of social media, on YouTube and Facebook, whenever any nudity was published it was immediately taken down and the user blocked, the same with unauthorised music?

It’s a double moral standard, yes. Who cares if there is a nipple — they are really nice, everyone loves nipples. And yet they want to leave hate speech and death threats. I want more nipples on Facebook. At the moment I am on a social media break, I won’t be using any of my accounts for the next period, there is so much incitement there from the trolls and propagandists that even sane people are starting to lose their minds and become agitated. The conversations become really aggressive, and I don’t want to be part of that. It’s really difficult to voice even a moderate view or opinion in this kind of landscape of hatred.

Whose responsibility is it to curb hate speech and prevent on-line bullying and trolling? Is it the owners of the sites or the government? Or is it a case of people becoming better informed?

I’m interested in how to solve this problem. One part of the problem, as well as a possible key to the

solution, would be the social media giants. At the moment the social media companies are allowing their networks to be platforms for organised hate speech and the spreading of propaganda. It is difficult for me to understand how they can be doing business in Finland, yet are not reacting to users’ reports about hate speech and abuse on their platforms. They should be responsible for how they do business in Finland, and other countries as well, and not allow their platforms to spread such filth.

This is also a commercial problem — their customers have had enough of hate speech and trolls.

We have social media police in Finland, but they have not addressed trolling until recently. I felt very lonely when I was being attacked. Our Ministry of the Interior has already provided more resources to tackle such attacks, so there is some development.

Are trolling, hate speech, and fake news sites purely ideology-based activities, or is there some financial incentive? The more extreme articles seem to get more clicks, and more clicks can translate into revenue.

One source of pro-Kremlin trolling is the Russian Embassy in Helsinki. They have been spreading propagandist images of dead bodies in the Ukraine, altering people’s tweets and messages, re-tweeting them as original, and directing followers to anonymous troll profiles. And they get funding directly from the Russian Federation.

The fake news site ‘What the Fuck Paper’ in Finland is under police investigation, and they have many ways of getting money with fake news.

In the beginning they had Google advertisers on their page — ordinary shops that didn’t know until youth activists started to call and asked them if they knew what kind of site their advertisements were on. Then they started to pull out from there.

There are also many crowdfunding projects, fake crowdsourcing media services, that make anonymous propaganda videos about Russian military activity in Syria, and they do not say who made them. When I published my research on this they immediately made an anonymous video mocking me in English. So they use crowdfunding and advertising. And they also receive funding from anonymous sources. I see trolling and spreading fake news as a national security threat that should be addressed accordingly. But how to address it in a way that still protects ordinary people’s privacy and freedom of speech? That is a problem and it should be faced. It can be addressed in so many ways I have tried to list and innovate: what society can do, what journalists can do to raise awareness of these pages and the language being used, bring it into the light. I will remain really active in speaking about this matter. I counted — this year I have spoken at 42 events so far.

Facebook: jessikka.aro Twitter: @jessikkaaro Paul Emmet is a freelance writer, environmentalist, and DJ.

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If you want to think about the core of sexism and hate speech it’s about power.

The sexual talk is used as a way to put down women with very powerful and nasty language.

Journey Through The Images Of Time And Space Joey Lone

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NEW EDITORS

Brave Books

…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. (Borges)

NEW EDITORS

For Tom Mrazauskas, publisher of Brave Books, images have become a means of communicating with the world. It can be a hard work to supply a narrative, make it into a story that is understandable, believable, and touchy for you and me. And for others who can read the images.

Brave Books strives to be both accessible and unique. It is no longer a utopia dream to find art through the Internet. If you cannot afford to fly across the ocean to see an upcoming exhibition you have always dreamt of visiting, try clicking through the webpages and have the exhibition visit you directly in your bedroom.

Visitors to the Brave Books website will see photos connected to series of special events, creating a narrative. By thoroughly examining the pages one after another, visitors will learn about the history of social reality, view memories of the post-soviet landscape, and discover dystopian facets of artists’ imaginations. It is the visual journey, which hypnotises.

Tangible and unforgettable.

It was nice to chat with Tom. His passion for publishing is endless and the way he designs his books reveals different aspects of his character. He is a ‘new editor’ who believes in connecting disparate parts of the world in Brave Books. It is pure magic to see how digital tools can create one common interest in few hours. It seems that concept of the ‘Global village’ predicted by Marshall McLuhan in 1964 is now inevitable. ‘Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.’ (McLuhan) Adventures in the ‘Global village’ are an exciting part of Tom Mrazauskas life.

And really, what can be better than knowing the possibilities of space are limitless?

Becoming a publisher has to start somewhere. It is always challenging to embark on something new that you have never tried before. But

getting tips from Tom is truly helpful.

The most important thing is to learn by doing from the very beginning.

It is always a good idea to seek out new experiences and improve on your own mistakes. The digital world can provide many opportunities.

Nevertheless, making the most of an opportunity may end up being an intense, full-time job.

Challenges can be found in every aspect of the publishing process.

Starting from crowdfunding your campaign and ending with the last details in the printing process. But most important what we got as a truly frank advice is to search the magic around and not to go too far for it. Just imagine, meet with and talk to people who inspire you, think a lot, and don’t be afraid of making mistakes because it is the only way achieving perfection.

Jean Baudrillard claims that in our postmodern culture society has become so reliant on models and maps that we have lost all contact with the real world that precedes the map. Reality itself has begun merely to imitate the model, which now precedes and determines the real world: ‘The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory–precision of simulacra that engenders the territory.’ (From The Precession of Simulacra.) In the third order of simulacra, associated with the postmodern age, we are confronted with a procession of simulacra; representations precede and determine what is real. There is no longer any distinction between reality and its representation, there is only the simulacrum.

Exploring Brave Books, you find narrative, rhythm, and time. Michal Iwanowski’s ‘Clear of people’ is a good example of journeying through past and present landscapes.

Iwanowski retraces the path, which his grandfather and grandfather’s brother took to escape the gulag.

The rhythm of the existing landscapes has no beat apart from the pain and emotions of a person on the run. Viewers feel the same rhythm and distorted sense of time — there is no reality but the one we perceive ourselves, we are the true viewers of

images. As passive participants of the exhibition, we become the truth as we experience narrative, rhythm, and time.

Time in the past Utopia which has just become a ghost of itself. Rhythm adapts to narrative; Brave Books demonstrates this.

‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’

Orwell’s sentence plays like a mental motif while you visit Arnis Balcus’s photo book ‘Victory Park’. Brave Books writes: ‘This photographic work is more than just documentation or research material — the spontaneity of the shots and the juxtaposition of the images in the book create the impression of an artistic experiment carried out in-situ.’ ‘Victory Park’ focuses on a particular location in the Latvian capital of Riga, a park with a complex history overlaid with the policies of former regimes and cumbersome social realities. The photo book is resplendent with expressive colours and visual remnants of the past that serve as a gateway to the dystopian present of that place.

The unusual construction of the book gives readers the chance to find the hidden places in ‘Victory Park’.

I hope we will all play the game of time and space.

It is pure magic. An adventure. In the end, Simulacrum is the truth.

Brave Books, founded by Tom Mrazauskas, is an independent publisher focusing on photography and other works that are best represented through book format. bravebooks.berlin Author Joey Lone holds an MA in Anthropology from the University of Warsaw.

Follow: twitter.com/joeylone

“Arnis Balcus creates more of an impression than a description of the Victory Park in his series. What we may see are photographs of seemingly different origins, yet working gracefully together to create a visual unity.” (Krzysztof Sienkiewicz, Urbanautica)

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We have all pursued the truth, but all we have become are images of ourselves.

NEW EDITORS

'Victory Park' by Arnis Balcus

NEW EDITORS

Let our food speak for itself and tell you about the flow of time here in Lithuania. Summer tomatoes contain all the warmth of the short Baltic summer, edible greens contain the soothing feeling of an evening dip in the lake, swimming through the miraculous water lilies and caressed by their dark leaves. Time and Nature are the creators of these sensual echoes. The flavours are then combined and edited by hand into artful, modernist culinary creations at Sweet Root, a fine dining gem in Vilnius, recently awarded the No.1 restaurant in Lithuania by the White Guide, the leading restaurant guide in Nordic countries. Their kitchen is all about reimagining the perception of Lithuanian cuisine by turning only local and seasonal ingredients into unexpected flavour compositions, continuously working as editors in league with Time and Nature. The chefs at Sweet Root are dedicated to revealing authentic taste experiences within the bound of what the seasons provide, without overdoing it with the tiresome tricks of molecular gastronomy. Sweet Root have now embarked on a creative journey of a different kind — the restaurant is publishing a book, Proud of Lithuania, stemming from the continuous inspiration they find in Lithuanian seasonal foods, pairing beautiful imagery with their quietly bold aesthetics. We talk with Sigitas Žemaitis, the co-founder of the restaurant, about why the book is more like a fairy tale, than a recipe book. A fairy tale written by Sweet Root.

Wheel of The Year: Miglė Rudaitytė, Blushing Studio

Sweet Root

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Editing by hand

Publishing a book seems so unrelated to running a restaurant. How did the idea for Proud of Lithuania come to mind?

It all started with us trying to gain a deeper knowledge of our own work. As a restaurant serving local food we always thought about the importance of the ingredients we use. We wanted to become familiar with more than the quality — we also wanted to know the story of each ingredient.

After all, ingredients aren’t born in the restaurant.

So, from the very beginning we have been visiting the farms we get our produce from. Photographer Šarūnė Zurba joined us in our quest and as we were getting to know the farms and their goods, took some beautiful unstaged photos. We have spent almost three years at the restaurant, in this immersive experience, and it all added up to something that we couldn’t keep just to ourselves anymore. We felt like it was time to tell our story.

Your book is intended to be very visual. What other elements do you use, apart from the photographs, to shape the content of the book into your vision?

You will see one graphic element throughout the book — Rėdos ratas or The Wheel of The Year. It helps us talk about seasonality. The illustration we use comes from an ancient schematic representation people long ago used to help them organise their ideas about the natural world; it is a great reminder of the cyclical nature of life. Along with the

seasonal changes, there are changes in nature that also influence what we can harvest. Seeing the seasons as part of life, not as an outside inconvenience, allows us to see the ingredients we use in a different light. It helps us appreciate them more.

But isn’t choosing only seasonal food limiting — especially in the restaurant kitchen?

At Sweet Root we don’t see seasonality as a limitation. We see it as giving us direction. If you have all the freedom in the world it’s easy to lose yourself.

To a chef, working with seasonal products means having a defined platform to start with. Limitation inspires creativity. Not being able to rely on the easiest way out forces you to look for unusual solutions. At the same time, it’s worth remembering something we seem to be forgetting: people crave different things in different seasons. Springtime makes us yearn for fresh and crunchy foods, while autumn calls for sweet and filling. Even though we live in a world where a supermarket can be found on every corner, humans are still part of nature.

What’s more, if we all ate food that was in season, not only we would learn to appreciate it more, but our world could become much more sustainable.

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What is the message you are sharing through Proud of Lithuania?

In times of instant gratification we have become very used to getting what we want the moment we want it. Grocery stores stack their shelves with

fresh fruits and vegetables all year round — anything to cater to our cravings. On the one hand food globalisation allows us freedom, but at the same time it takes away the pleasure of anticipation. If you’re eating store-bought berries in the middle of the winter, they are just berries. But when you pick long-awaited strawberries in the early summer, their flavour might spark the inspiration to get the camping gear ready. Ingredients tell a story, if you allow them to. The story of where they come from and what they tell us is the key topic of our book. We draw the reader’s attention back to the origins of Lithuanian cuisine.

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We don’t believe it’s possible to create something beautiful without a strong foundation.

A big part of the process for creating Proud of Lithuania was working on the visual images in the book. What is more important, the inside or the outside?

We don’t believe it’s possible to create something beautiful without a strong foundation. Substance and aesthetics complement each other. The same goes for the food we make. Of course, a carrot can be delicious on its own, freshly pulled from the ground. But when you are familiar with the hard work it takes to get food from the farm to the table, you want to prepare it a way that would do it justice, elevate it, and give it the presentation it deserves. We believe in the beauty of local food and we want to present it in a respectful way.

You have a team of creative professionals helping you with this book. Being more curators than creators of this project, how does it feel giving everything into someone else’s hands?

When you have defined your values for yourself it’s easier to communicate them to others. The team that is helping with our book are all people we feel we have a connection with. We have known each other for years and have worked on various projects. And when there’s a connection, there can also be trust. We share trust with the

people who deliver the ingredients to our restaurant too. Our food depends on the ingredients they bring, so it feels natural to us to know them by their first names. Knowing the backstory and having a connection makes the result so much more meaningful.

Where do you wish to see your book once it leaves the printing house?

We don’t think this is going to become a bestseller and frankly, that’s not why we’re doing it. Our goal is for this book to become something a Lithuanian could be proud of. It’s a known thing we tend to shy away from what we consider to be our local cuisine. We tell our foreign guests: yes, we have cepelinai, yes, they’re kind of greasy, but we don’t eat them everyday. We want to shatter the stereotype that our local food is bland and unimaginative. We hope this book will serve as a medium through which a foreigner can learn what Lithuanian food really is. It’s a representation of our versatile country through its versatile ingredients. sweetroot.lt

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Photography by Sarune Zurba

Allow us to introduce you to Veronica Mike Solheim, creator and chief editor of A New Type of Imprint, an independent quarterly published by the award winning creative agency that goes by the same initials. Recently nominated ‘Editor of the Year’ by Stack Awards, 26-year young Veronica began working at ANTI as an intern, only to swiftly become the instigator, and later the editor, of the first magazine to showcase Norwegian design and creativity to local design lovers and to the world — a print-loving escapade into design magazine making.

Veronica Mike Solheim was recently nominated ‘Editor of the Year’ by Stack Awards.

Photography by Andris Søndrol Visdal

Veronica Mike Solheim

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The Vanguard of Norwegian Design

Gintare Parulyte

How would you describe the creative agency ANTI that the magazine A New Type of Imprint stems from?

ANTI is a full-service creative agency making everything from large advertising campaigns and TV series to brand profiles and magazines. It’s definitely a vivid, pulsating creative environment, full of talented and hungry people. This is probably why we’re one of Norway’s most awarded agencies and famous for being ‘the challenger’.

ANTI is short for ‘A New Type of Interference’.

What was the journey that led you to work for ANTI? My road to ANTI was a bit of a cliché, to be honest. I come from a small town inhabited by 800 people situated on the west coast of Norway, and I guess I was that one weird kid. There were two of us actually. We dressed differently than the rest, we weren’t into sports, we played in a [really bad] punk band and I began to write and take photographs at a very young age. My parents were very supportive and encouraged me to express myself creatively, which led me to study Art Direction in Oslo many years later.

The three-month internship my studies required had me applying all over the world. But I really loved ANTI. They were ‘the weird kid’ in the Norwegian design industry, making a lot of cool stuff.

I thought they might be inspiring colleagues too, so I actually begged them for an internship. Kenneth, my boss, eventually gave in and I was given a desk in one corner of the office.

Did you already want to make a magazine like this before you began working at ANTI, or did they inspire you to create it?

Yes, I already had the idea and I had created a few magazines before I began at ANTI. Not exactly like Imprint, but similar. It was the ANTI spirit, and their approach to design and creativity in general, that made our collaboration on this concept a perfect fit.

At what point during your internship with ANTI did you pitch the idea for the magazine?

After about one month. I booked a meeting with the boss who, at the time, had no clue what I was doing all day. I was lucky enough to get hold of him for fifteen minutes, a true Eminem–moment. It was that one-shot opportunity.

How did you manage to convince ANTI to launch the magazine? What were the arguments that had the strongest impact?

The main reason it happened is because ANTI’s CEO Kenneth 1) loves magazines, 2) likes to take risks, 3) wants to make an impact, and 4) liked the idea. My main argument was that highlighting Norwegian design and creativity is a very important project and that of course it’s a good thing for an agency to show effort of that nature as well as passion. ANTI loves design and the magazine is one of the most important projects for Norwegian design in ages. It was a match made in heaven.

How long did it take from the pitch to the release of the first issue? In which ways has working on the magazine changed since the beginning?

We spent three to four months researching after we were given the go ahead from the bosses in early March 2014. By we I mean myself and my intern at the time, who is now the art director — Andris Søndrol Visdal. We spent a lot of time on production and design and launched the magazine in November of the same year.

I would say that everything has changed since the beginning. I had no experience in leadership or publishing at such a serious level. We had no clue what we were doing; there were no routines.

Every system, every budget, every distribution deal had to be figured out by trial and error. And a lot of Googling. I think at least three issues went by before I gained control. Today we are an efficient, coordinated, and strong team.

What motivated you most to launch the magazine? Why did you think there was a niche for it? Were there themes you wanted to write about that hadn’t been properly explored or not explored at all?

What struck me was that I knew more names of Danish and Swedish designers than Norwegian ones, and I’m into design. I found that extremely sad and I realised that it was probably an indication that my friends, fellow creatives, and the rest of the world must know little about Norwegian creativity and design too. The problem was not that we didn’t have designers or an interesting design history, but rather that nobody had told the stories, whether about veteran designers or undiscovered talents. We needed a platform where Norwegians could pitch their products, as well as their stories, and we needed to make sure that both Norwegians and the world would hear about them.

Since the magazine is published by a creative agency, how has it served ANTI? What is its role in and for the agency?

Things like these are hard to measure, but I know that it has done a great deal for ANTI, like every other ‘department’ at the agency. The magazine is an important part of the ANTI package. We are a full–service creative agency operating much like an editorial board. We have the best people in the industry and key knowledge in everything from branding to publishing. The success the magazine has had is a great example of the knowledge we have and where we can take things for clients, too. Like I said, the magazine, which is financed by a surplus budget, has meant a great deal for Norwegian creativity and design, especially since we’ve gained attention from abroad. This is good news for everyone, not only ANTI. Selection is often based on intuition, but how would you describe your taste and how do you choose your content? What themes do you prioritise? Which ones do you tend to avoid?

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ANTI loves design!

This magazine is one of the most important projects in Norwegian design in ages. It was a match made in heaven.

We spend a great amount of time deciding on content for each issue. It’s based on evaluation and analysis, not intuition. We evaluate each issue, we ask critical questions to make sure we keep developing and creating ever better products. I want the perfect balance between trivial lifestyle stories and professional articles of 3,500 words.

What is the approximate number of pages of every issue?

160.

Our issue is about ‘the new editors’. How do you perceive the role of editor today? How has it shifted since the advent of the digital age and changed media consumption?

Today’s editors need to know a lot more than the ones who ruled before the technology boom. I usually say that we spend 20% of our time creating the print issue; everything else is all about digital presence and social media. You have to be on top of the game, and you have to treat your magazine like any other brand — what story do you want to tell, how and where do you tell it? It’s no longer enough to simply create good content, since everybody can make good content. The ones that will survive are fast, agile, and smart.

You need to be able to turn around quickly and constantly make [the right] changes because the industry and market are changing all the time.

What inspires you most about Norway?

The fact that we are challengers, that we’re onto something great. I love talking to passionate people who are ready to kick some ass. Norwegians have got so much knowledge and talent they want to show the world. Simply talking to an architect or a designer is pure bliss. People can talk for hours about their passions, which I find very inspiring and beautiful. Things are changing a lot over here. There is a strong pulse, an animal waking up. It’s electrifying and I feel so grateful for being a part of the change. I know Norway will make an impact on the international design industry and it’s about time.

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I like honest and unpretentious content. I want things to be inspiring and engaging, but far from naive and ‘too perfect’. I think many creative magazines focus only on the positive sides of the industry and in this way create a distance between the content and the reality. I want people to learn a lot and I want to tell real stories that make people want to get out of their chairs and unfold themselves creatively.

Where is the magazine being sold and how many copies are printed?

We print 3000 copies that are sold all over the world, mostly in design shops, book stores and magazine shops, museums etc. Our top countries are Norway, Taiwan, the UK, Italy, the USA, and Denmark.

How many issues did you plan on releasing when you launched the magazine? Has your aim changed in the meantime?

We’ll do this for as long as people buy it and we find it inspiring and fun.

How many people visit the website? How many people follow you online compared to buying the print version?

Digital is always bigger than print. We have an average of 15,000 monthly visits. The print magazine is our product, the core of our brand, while the digital platforms — the web and social media—are where we build and communicate.

How do you select the articles for the online version of the magazine?

It depends on whatever we find interesting at the moment. We receive submissions and we discover

Chapter 2 introduces a new theme in every issue, where the content, design, and layout all reflect the chosen topic. For instance, Volume 8 was about urban design; the layout, made

by Lid & Wiken, drew inspiration from the tube or underground in New York City and London.

Photography by Andris Søndrol Visdal.

articles through other platforms or through word of mouth. We want the online magazine to have faster and easier content. I wish we received more submissions since I’m sure there are many undiscovered talents out there. And yeah, we cover Nordic countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland online.

What’s your stance regarding the people you collaborate with during the creation of the magazine? How much do the ANTI creatives get involved in the magazine?

Are the collaborators behind the scenes predominantly Norwegians too?

There are four of us on the Imprint-team. I’m editor-in-chief, our creative director Andris Søndrol Visdal works with art and photography, Andreas Francisco is our writer and text editor, and Maja Hyggen is our strategist and digital manager. Gaute Tenold Aase designs the cover, while I’m designing the content. Chapters 1 and 3 are ‘normal’ chapters filled with essays, interviews, features, and short stories, as well as photo- and illustration series. Chapter 2 introduces a new theme in every issue, where the content, design, and layout all reflect the chosen topic. For instance, Volume 8 was about urban design; the layout, made by Lid & Wiken, drew inspiration from the tube or underground in New York City and London. We ask external designers to design these segment. The process of working with external designers is always fun and inspiring; they have fresh ways of thinking and fresh reflections about the magazine and thus contribute in a very important way. Although we’ve only been working with Norwegians so far, a fabulous Finnish Agency called Leroy will be designing Volume 9 featuring Finnish design and creativity. We’ve asked them to make it as Finnish, colourful, and fun as possible.

What’s cool about this collaboration is the fact that Agency Leroy publishes a magazine of their own called LEON. We’re very similar in spirit and I can’t wait to see the result!

In a sense today’s curators are the masses.

Do you try to adjust your voice to a certain audience? Who do you have in mind when you work?

I want to speak to young professionals like myself.

Creatives that are into good stories or great visuals or both!

What values are most important to you as an editor? What is your work process? And who or what do you base it on?

Honesty and inspiration. At least that’s what I want when I’m reading other magazines. I do my best to not be naive. We’re trying to paint a picture of the creative culture today, as well as the people who are part of it and are eager to change it. As for the printing process, it involves evaluation, analysis, workshops, research, decision-making, production, designing, the launch, and so on.

Other than that we try to make sure to have a consistently vibrant online presence. We are developing the brand as well as creating content for our clients. After all, this is where the money comes in. We want to make more products like Imprint for clients in the year to come, which is an exciting development for the staff.

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What does A New Type of Imprint mean to you personally? How has it changed you?

A lot. It was too personal for me the first year. I became a nervous wreck before each deadline and it was all I did 24/7. I was even working ‘for fun’ on Sundays. I had to distance myself from it in order to be able to cope with life. Today I treat it as a job. I don’t think about it when I go home, I spend a lot more time with my friends, and I’m a much better girlfriend. But it’s my baby, for sure.

If you had to name a series of magazine titles that A New Type of Imprint could be considered a collage of, what would they be?

The titles we’re often placed next too on the shelves and on Instagram are Cereal, Kinfolk, Oak, Eye, Open House, The Great Discontent, Drift, and Nytt Rom. These are our friends.

Regarding individuality and originality, what do you try to do differently compared to your competitors?

The biggest and most obvious difference is that we write mainly about Norwegians. Other than that I would say that our ‘Chapter 2’s are one-of-a kind, in-depth, professional design journalism that are always changing in content and design.

What magazines, through their content, style or design have inspired you?

Nathan Williams, Editor-in-Chief of Kinfolk, has been the most important inspiration of my career.

Kinfolk created a market that previously didn’t exist, or at least they made it a serious league to play in. The world of indie magazines wouldn’t be the same without them.

anewtypeofimprint.com A melancholic, yet life-loving resident of Berlin, Gintare finances her record collection and expensive organic food by writing about topics and people that intrigue her, as well as acting in movies and plays that confront her with her ridiculous fears. Lithuanian–born, but unable to speak or write fluently in her mother tongue, contributing to this magazine gives her the blissful and welcome illusion of being slightly closer to her roots.

Get in touch: g.parulyte@googlemail.com

Things are changing a lot over here in Norway. There is a strong pulse, an animal waking up. It’s electrifying and I feel so grateful to be a part of the change. I know Norway will make an impact on the international design industry and it’s about time!

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Best read: The Gentlewoman Best in design: Eye Magazine Best feel-good mag: Kinfolk Best for knowledge: Monocle

Finally, what would make you want to cease the existence of A New Type of Imprint?

It’s over when it’s over.

JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ:

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N WIND x 8 DAYS A WEEK

not a passive music maker

Daina Dubauskaitė

Born to an Argentinian family in Gothenburg, and having participated in numerous collaborations in drastically different genres of music, José González has managed to remain one of the purest (and most definitely not purist) artists out there. A fan of Bob Marley and Michael Jackson in his teenager years, later on González experimented with hard-core punk and in 2003 made it big time with a cover of ‘Heartbeats’ by fellow Swedish band The Knife. We’ll talk about ‘Heartbeats’ later, but the chat sprung off the artist’s rehearsals with The String Theory Orchestra in Berlin.

Their second tour has started on January 15th and is very intense, making their February 2nd gig in Vilnius their seventeenth show in the tour!

The musicians Nackt and Chérie from the band Warren Suicide, composers Ben Lauber and Nils Tegen, and other artists first started the String Theory project in Berlin in 2006. What started as an event made by and for friends — a string quartet, actually — soon developed into an international network of artists from numerous fields. The project was then brought to Gothenburg by two of its participants and was augmented there by local artists, one of whom happened to be González. His music, together with other Swedish songs, was arranged by The String Theory composers and then performed by classical and jazz musicians.

It is pure luck that Lithuanians will be able to hear the artist’s show with an orchestra, rather than as a solo performance. This is, of course, just one of the ways you can discover this artist, but by far one of the most interesting. In the interview González himself states that he was surprised to hear his music performed by 22 musicians. He speaks about it very modestly, and does not let you think he might be bragging about it. His modesty is there throughout our talk.

You have performed with The String Theory before. How did you start working with the project and whose initiative was it?

It was partly them, partly me. The art director of the project, Nackt, invited me during the initial stages, when they had many different artists from Gothenburg and were playing one song from 2009. I liked the project a lot, so I thought it would be fun to do more. So, we played a show in Gothenburg where one composer did the arrangements for the whole concert. That’s what we toured with in 2011. It has been a while, and it's fun to finally get back together again.

Does the music that you compose in your head before you write down change dramatically when performed by an orchestra?

I was very surprised of how much music there is in my songs. When I write the songs, most of the time I do a very simple version. I don’t really see it as complex, but they do. So, when I’m sitting in the middle of twenty musicians, the feeling is very nice. It felt overwhelming the first time I heard it.

I got to hear new harmonies and new sides of the same songs.

Will you go back to travelling solo after the orchestra tour?

Yes, in 2017 we'll start with the orchestra and then I will do some solo shows.

Do you feel safer when performing solo?

It’s very different for me. Playing solo is what I started doing and I am very comfortable with that, but once you get used to performing with a band or orchestra, it can be difficult to go back. I feel that the style that I have gotten used to is solo.

That is something I will probably always come back to, but it’s important for me to vary myself.

When I do very long tours by myself, I sometimes get bored and I feel a lack of purpose.

Your studio is at home. Why did you choose that style of working?

It is a little bit of everything. I always use my headphones, so it doesn’t really matter if I sit in a studio or at home, since I am still so solitary.

I might as well sit at home where I can do other things in between — I can also go out for lunch in the middle of the city, for example. A recording studio is a bit too quiet sometimes, so it is nice to be at home and have the window slightly open and let some of the ambient sounds in.

Do you anticipate the reaction from the crowd and the critics when you release new music?

I think about them once in a while, but I also always think about whether or not I like it or not myself. That is the main thing. I believe I am one of those artists who thinks about how they will be perceived and how it will be compared to their other music. It’s not because I feel tied up in my own style, but because I feel curious. I continue to elaborate on my guitar playing and change the style, but not drastically. Even though I like many different styles of music, I don’t feel that I need to play all the styles that I like.

Do you think the crowd’s reaction can cause you to edit the composition of your songs, or influence your future songs?

When I toured with my first album I noticed which songs worked best. I found I needed to vary myself a bit, especially when I was doing longer sets. The songs that were a bit more percussive and louder were better in live settings. ‘Down The Line’ and the cover of ‘Teardrops’ are two songs made for live performances. Now I’ve released five albums and I’ve done about a thousand live shows so I sort of know that my music can be perceived in different ways. People like to just listen to the music on their headphones, so that sort of music can be melodic and doesn’t need to reach out in a dramatic way that works best in a live setting.

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‘Between Shuggie Otis and Simon & Garfunkel’ is where José González has conveniently positioned himself — that is, of course, very brave, since musicians tend to avoid revealing their influences or compare themselves with artists who touch a similar nerve. This is also what makes his music as timeless as ‘Strawberry Letter’ or ‘Mrs. Robinson’.

Seventeen years in music business without ever losing one’s identity or getting bored or boring is, after all, a long time. It is healthy to argue whether his music is ‘indie folk’, as it’s labelled most of the time, or if it is actually an example of the rare balance of strong song writing and talented singing.

The result is more than a genre, style, or trend.

It’s music.

Photography by Malin Johansson

N WIND x 8 DAYS A WEEK

José González has managed to remain one of the purest (and most definitely not purist) artists out there.

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N WIND x 8 DAYS A WEEK

I find it fascinating ‘Heartbeats’ has made it so far. Of course I am talking about it being used for the Sony Bravia TV ad. Do you consider yourself partly responsible for the success of the campaign?

I am aware of the possible dynamics of adverts and TV shows and I think about it a lot, of course — I am very interested in how culture evolves and changes through the interaction between ideas and our minds. When I said ‘yes’ to letting them use ‘Heartbeats’ for the ad, I didn't anticipate it would become that big. Once it got there, I understood how it was going to be part of my life.

They still use that advert! It’s how things are — if it works, it works. If I were younger, I would probably feel more uncomfortable with it. Nowadays I feel like it depends a bit on the type of product, and how it’s done and promoted.

Are there certain brands you would not be comfortable working with?

Yes, definitely. Many! I have people working with my music and they make some of the decisions for me; sometimes they say ‘no’ and don’t even ask me. Blackwater could be one that I would not promote. (Blackwater received widespread publicity in 2007, when a group of its employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians and injured 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad.

Four of their guards were convicted in a U.S. court.

Blackwater is now called Academi, — Ed.) I changed my approach a couple of years ago, when I decided to start using my Twitter account

to promote organisations or think tanks I think are doing a good job and are associated with effective altruism and humanism. I feel that I am not only a passive music maker; I try to use my music to promote things and ideas that are important or interesting to me.

Do you think everyone who has a certain amount of power in social media should do the same?

Not necessarily. Everyone is free to do what they want. I don't see a value in everyone having to do it. There are so many things that we can promote, but a lot of the time I just want to hear some music. I don’t want to hear a message — political or branded. I am very happy that this particular aspect of my work can be independent, so that it’s just an expression of a person. But I’m also happy whenever there is work to be done. For example, there is this one organisation called one.org. It doesn’t ask for money, but instead asks for attention to global issues. For me, that is a nice way to promote issues that have to do with global ethics.

Could you try to explain the background of the worldwide success of Swedish music?

What is the secret, if there is one, apart from the hard work?

I’ve heard people talk about this, but I haven’t seen any sociological papers on it, so I can just mention the things I’ve heard, without knowing which one is the most important. Anyway, let’s

start with language. Many Swedish bands have become known by singing in English. You can compare how early Swedes begin learning English to other countries. Then, from the age of 7 or 8, most kids learn how to play an instrument. As a teenager, I had access to rehearsal stages, so I didn’t need to buy the instruments I was playing.

That was a great way to get going! Also, when I started playing live, I got grants from the government to tour in Europe. Not every country offers that opportunity. In general, I believe, it’s a combination of many things Swedish. Oh, and another thing about Sweden is that we like to travel a lot and we have the means to travel. A part of the Swedish culture is figuring out what’s happening in the world by travelling as much as you can. We go to cultural metropoles, soak in what is happening there, and then translate that into our own versions. jose-gonzalez.com soundcloud.com/josegonzalez Daina Dubauskaitė (alias of Kotryna Lingienė) is a music and culture writer living and working in Kaunas, Lithuania. dubauskaite.lt.

The Wind Vane

the wind vane

by Arterritory

Founded in 2011, Arterritory is based in Riga, Latvia and run by a dedicated team — Daiga Rudzāte, Una Meistere, Agnese Čivle, Odrija Fišere, and Sergej Timofejev. They believe that the art world is an open space that has room not only for professionals, but also for art lovers and connoisseurs. The goal is to provide readers with professional information and personal insight into the latest events, current trends, and exciting movements taking place in the art world.

Twice a year, Arterritory publishes print magazines. Arterritory Conversations is devoted to interviews with artists, curators, critics, and others whose names are well known and sought-after in the global art and culture scene. Arterritory Conversations with Collectors gives its readers access to the most prestigious private art collections in the world; in these conversations collectors describe how art, and the passion to collect it, has changed their lives and the ways in which they see the world. Thirty-five interviews have been already conducted for the three issues of the magazine.

During the last two years Arterritory has expanded the range of its operations, organizing public lectures and discussions on art, as well as curating exhibitions. arterritory.com

Arterritory.com is an art and culture website in Latvian, Russian, and English focusing on Baltic, Scandinavian, and Russian art and their manifestations around the world.

October 7 – February 26

October 21 – February 11

WHAT? Žilvinas Kempinas Solo Exhibition WHERE? Galerija Vartai, Vilnius, Lithuania WHEN? December 20th, 2016 – February 3rd, 2017 WHY? The exhibition presents the artist’s newest works and earlier works not previously shown in Lithuania. Kempinas employs the laws of physics, masterfully manipulating the motion of light, air, and metal, as well as those of the viewers themselves, thus creating unique aesthetic experiences.

WHAT? Mona Hatoum Solo Exhibition WHERE? Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland WHEN? October 7th, 2016 – February 26th, 2017 WHY? The internationally renowned artist Mona Hatoum challenges the surrealist and minimalist movements, making art that explores the conflicts and contradictions of our world. Her poetic, and often political, oeuvre comment on the state of the world in general. The power of Hatoum’s work is her ability to transcend local and personal issues, and allow viewers to see their universality.

WHAT? Vladimir Tarasov. Water Music and Other Pictures of Sound WHERE? Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia WHEN? October 21st, 2016 – February 11th, 2017 WHY? By focusing on the work of one artist, the exhibition aspires to view sound art as a multifaceted art practice, and to analyse its connection to music. Using rhythms, sounds, and melodies Tarasov addresses various themes related to cultural history, drawing on both Eastern and Western philosophies and religions.

kiasma.fi

kumu.ekm.ee

December 2 – February 12

November 11 – February 19

November 25 – March 12

WHAT? Kristians Brekte. Arsenal WHERE? The Arsenāls Exhibition Hall, Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga, Latvia WHEN? December 2nd, 2016 – February 12th, 2017 WHY? Kristians Brekte’s works turn the exhibition hall into a contemporary narrative on human nature under the circumstances of real or imagined threat. Found photographs, common objects, screenprints, sculptural objects, oil paintings, noise music embody the artist’s understanding of the essence of an arsenal and its significance today.

WHAT? Georg Baselitz. The Heroes WHERE? Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden WHEN? November 11th, 2016 – February 19th, 2017 WHY? Georg Baselitz is regarded as one of Europe’s most prominent and influential artists.

He has often taken a provocative and deeply critical stand against established truths and flock mentality, and has opened the way towards a remarkable and brilliant painterly practice. The Heroes is an opportunity to see Baselitz’ early artworks — two controversial series created in 1965–66.

WHAT? Paul Delvaux. A Waking Dreamer WHERE? Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia WHEN? November 25th, 2016 – March 12th, 2017 WHY? Delvaux’s coherent imagery is a unique synthesis of motifs that have inhabited his imagination since childhood. The unusual, enigmatic, and fascinating universe he creates in his paintings abandons all rationality or universal logic, instead offering us the keys to the artist’s dreamlike poetic reality.

lnmm.lv

modernamuseet.se

galerijavartai.lt

kumu.ekm.ee

the wind vane

December 20 – February 3

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