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# E F A S T 10 U B D E K NA

R T @N SFORM

hero of the day: Anastasia

E U R O P E : T H E T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F A C O N T I N E N T

T R A N S F O R M Transformation as an end in itself.

For our 10th issue of Nakedbutsafe, which celebrates five years of successful independent and international publishing, we chose transformation as the pre-eminent theme of our era. The very idea of transformation is so central to our tumultuous times that morphing itself demands to be recognized as a dominant state of things.

Not only is the world radically changing moment by moment, at a pace like never before, but, concurrently and for the first time in history, the dialectic regime of instant online interaction alters our collective perception of reality beyond recognition. Both object and subject simultaneously evolve at the same feverish pace, one event at a time, billions of clicks per second. Thus, a debate in flux is no more merely an intermediate stage but the dominant context of any discourse and the prevailing regime of our existence. There is no before or after, there is only during, there is no being, there is only becoming.

Sex, gender, marriage, family, nationality and cultural identity: definitions of such elementary concepts are questioned, dissected and reformulated within a civilizational framework that seems to radically shift from one blink to the next, while the narratives of our lives are reshaped right before our eyes in unforeseen ways and at unpredictable velocity. Within this vision of perpetual mutation, unexpectedly and counter-intuitively, the ancient quest for existential selfdetermination remains as an essential question for our times. Origins and departures, destinations and arrivals, latitudes and longitudes continue to be definitive parameters decisively shaping our identity, even while vital notions such as borders, citizenship, locality, faith, ideology and identity are redefined in an epic way and a grand scale.

Whether one speaks of the refugee crisis or the transgender moment – to name but two radically different subjects which however are both emblematic of the contemporary zeitgeist - the demand placed upon us by the historical moment is one and the same: progress.

We, as thinking citizens and conscious humans, must face up to immense challenges set by the fascinating times we live in and come up with solutions and answers that work for a future that is already transforming our present in radical ways. It is in this spirit that we spoke to some of the most brilliant minds on the planet, each of them coming from a different discipline and contributing a variant of wisdom to the debate of what kind of aesthetic, moral, intellectual and perhaps spiritual transformation we should be aiming for.

Renowned Muslim scholar Ziauddin Sardar discusses the unthinkable for a humanist European tomorrow; famous French writer and philosopher Pascal Bruckner reminds us that no target is exempt from scrutiny for the truly incisive mind; legendary German artist Helmut Middendorf looks back on three decades of iconic work; theatrical genius Theo Adams reinvents performance for an age when performativity itself is examined like never before; avant-garde performance artist Zackary Drucker provokes boundaries as he blurs the lines between fine art recognition and mainstream television success; conceptual artist David Henry Brown Jr. transfigures himself into personas for an age when reality itself aims to be a show; humanitarian journalist Fragkiska Megaloudi takes us to the edge of conflict; Alex Cameron, Magic Islands, Antoine93 and Kevin Halpin introduce us to an alternative world of independent music.

What remains as a common denominator for all of the above is an unshakeable belief in our innate potential for transformation inherent in every reality, a belief that often does not shy from invoking the miraculous.

P.S. This is issue is dedicated in the memory of the unsurpassable David Bowie, an artist who embodied transformation like no other.

Panagiotis aka Otis Chatzistefanou, Berlin.

Reality Artist

DAVID HENRY BROWN JR

For over twenty years artist David Henry Brown Jr has forged a unique path in contemporary art.

His work examines our complicated relationship with the media and our fascination with celebrity culture. Weaving an intricate web of deception and subterfuge Brown has manipulated the media to subvert its message. In his public interventions and performances the artist poses the questions: Where does reality end and fabrication begin?

What exactly is our fascination with fame? He is currently engaged in a performance series that he calls “Resemblage’, in which he physically inserts his body into a variety of images and bizarrely inhabits them. David Henry Brown Jr was interviewed exclusively for Nakedbutsafe by Steve Cox in London.

All images courtesy of David Henry Brown Jr, opposite page: 8. Resembage - Poker Face.

The events you staged with British artist Dominic McGill under the alias of ‘Standard and Poor’ (1995-98), exposed a method to get the public to actively participate in questioning why they needed celebrity. Could you speak about the nature of these events and what transpired?

The name ‘Standard and Poor’ is taken from Standard and Poor’s, which is an indexing company that rates the value of stocks and bonds. Our performances explored the supposed ‘standards’ of self-worth in consumerist culture – the social myths forced upon the public by corporations and their advertising. We created humorous and engaging performance situations, which we presented to the public as real. These were all outside of the art museum or gallery context, so that the non-art world spectators would unconsciously inform the creative process. There was no mention of art, not ever, while performing these works. We began with a series of experiments in 1995, which culminated with our most sophisticated social sculpture: Red Carpet Rollers.

Carpet Rollers started out as an experiment in 1996 in front of Trump Tower in New York City. We showed up at the grand entrance, posing as a company hired to roll out the red carpet for some mysterious VIP’s arrival. We wore tuxedos and white gloves and held a 36-foot roll of red carpet. We had no idea what would transpire! We would tell security and the police that we had a Fax from our boss ‘Jack’ telling us to show up.

As we waited expectantly with the carpet rolled up near the door, a large crowd of onlookers formed. After one hour it became a massive 500-person spectacle and there was total chaos when no VIPs arrived.

At the end of our first experiment, we slinked off with our carpet knowing that we had hit something big. Then we teamed up with documentary video artist Richard Sandler – we knew we were working with a consummate pro. When we would get a raw tape from him it was already organized into a brilliant in-camera edited work of art. We started advertising as an actual company. We made business cards. We got a few ‘roll out the red carpet’ jobs by advertising in a Long Island coupon mailer and through word-of-mouth. There are two video pieces that show us at surprise birthday parties.

In these works you see the relationship between family structure and celebrity. The carpet becomes a stage for family dynamic. The honoured celebrant plays the celebrity while the rest of family and friends become the fans. At the same time, these pieces perpetuate the myth of the company that rolls out the red carpet.

When the media stepped in it must have seemed like a selffulfilling prophecy?

We were approached by CNN for a piece that aired in late 1997. We taped another Red Carpet roll no-show in front of Trump Tower. The camera crew inadvertently hyped the situation even further and a pretty hilarious piece emerged.

The reporter, Jeannie Mose is surrounded by a large group of spectators demanding an explanation. They thought the Spice Girls or Donald Trump was supposed to show up. The piece aired in late 1997. One of our final and best works was a red carpet roll in which no one shows up at the former Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. In this piece the edit shows the buildup of a large crowd, but with a specific emphasis on Richard Sandler’s brilliant capture of the crowd’s reaction.

Richard probed the viewers’ imaginations as they project their ideas on who will show up, a mapping of desire. As Resembage - Fantasia of Nature

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the situation collapses and time is wasted away, the crowd becomes angry and critical at the idea of celebrity. One woman who acts totally star struck in the beginning, by the end yells “Why should I care about this person if this person doesn’t care about me?” The Red Carpet Rollers video documentation was shown as a solo show in a small gallery in Williamsburg and also in a group show at PS One. One review at the time described it as “a disturbingly accurate portrayal of our time.” Many have observed how the idea of waiting for nothing next to the Red Carpet is like the play “Waiting For Godot”. For me the work brutally exposes the hollowness of our time, the emptiness of Celebrity - a standard by which we are forced to compare ourselves. At the same time the work demonstrates great hope. It radically proposes that in the right behavioral conditions, social criticism is instinctual and intuitive in humans. It shows that we can empower ourselves to throw off the shackles of corporatist repression.

Your piece ‘Host’ was the documentation of your six-month’s employment at Madame Tussaud’s wax museum on 42nd St (for which you faked a resumé and references in order to get the job). You have said it was a place where reality is ‘hallucinated’ and fractured.

On my first visit to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum I could easily see that it was a readymade theatre full of great sets and performers. I thought it was an interesting model of a corporatised/commoditized reality. It was dark and repressive and totally Orwellian. It was a hallucinatory look into the future, before reality TV and before the Internet had developed very much. I thought it paralleled Guy Debord’s “Society of The Spectacle” - i.e. actual socializing is replaced by mediated representation of socializing. I changed my hair and parted it in the middle and grew a moustache in order to alter my appearance and stay incognito for the project.

I wanted to look at the phenomena of celebrity from the side of the working class, and in terms of being just another cog in the spectacle. The job of a Host was to assist and guide visitors through the museum. I created my daily performance situations based upon how I was reacting to the job. I noticed that many of the other Hosts were struggling actors or comedians and I began to riff off what I would see them doing at work. It was rather common to be mistaken by the guests for a wax figure. There was even an actual wax figure of an employee in the museum. A few other Hosts and I started intentionally acting like wax figures in order to freak out the guests. We were responding to the death-like feel of the wax figures by mimicking the deadness. The lifelessness of the wax figures projected into their surroundings and made everyone seem dead. You had to create methods of withstanding this all day in order to not go insane and having your soul sucked out.

The job at the wax museum was, by your account, harsh, and you have stated: “When the working class is given no forum to criticize the workplace they will resort to sabotage - I would regard sabotage in the workplace as critical creativity”. Could you expand on this thought?

I think this goes with my premise that criticism is intuitive in human beings. As Hosts we sabotaged the job by acting like wax figures and carrying out other forms of sarcasm on the guests. We hated the guests and the Wax Museum. We had to wear miserable and silly ‘Jester’ outfits. We had to listen to the same horrible soundtracks looped over and over in the themed rooms. Everything we did was under surveillance.

When workers are unable to communicate their discontent, they will act out. I was trying to create a framework for this acting-out and channel it into a critique of what the wax museum symbolized. The wax museum was a spirit-deadening model of the corporatist worldview, everything for the 1% and only a distracting spectacle for the rest.

In your Von Furstenberg project, from 2000, you further explored notions of celebrity-worship. But in a neat reversal you expose the fact that celebrities and VIPs are no different from the rest of us in their worship of the famous. For a whole year you pretended to be Alex Von Furstenberg [who is actually a real person] and you gatecrashed many celebrity parties and VIP functions. The project is documented by sixty photographs of ‘Alex’ standing with various celebrities: the Clintons; Puff Daddy; Ivana Trump etc.

I wanted to become a celebrity fanatic as a performance piece and spent four months standing outside various VIP events only to go home cold, sometimes drenched, and always disappointed. I read the Gossip pages of The Daily News and the New York Post every day and began to track information on VIP whereabouts. The Media was always saying how wonderful it was to be at these parties: that you really should be there, that you would be a better person if you were there. If it was indeed all so great, why not show up myself? I was also obsessed with the idea of being a total Fantastic Nobody who must adore celebrities in order to experience feelings. I was interested in how celebrities functioned as substitute family members. The idea of being a celebrity-stalker is taken from pop culture. There are actually people whose singular obsession is to meet celebrities and get photos of themselves with them. That’s what they do their whole lives. I had met a few including one that was well known, Gary Lee Boas. There was also the famous creepy case of the guy who impersonated a Rockefeller in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I was sampling this behavioral trope, although my story would unfold in surprising ways. I bought a cheap $20 vintage conservative-looking suit. One night in the summer I was headed to a VIP event at a club called Chaos on Houston St and it occurred to me that I needed a name to actually get inside the soiree. Alex Von Furstenberg came to mind. It was a name that was well known. When I introduced myself at the door I was immediately ushered in and served champagne.

I met my target, Barry White, quickly and he said he was thrilled to meet me. I handed my 35 mm Rollei point-andshoot to a stranger and a beautiful yet random photo was taken.

What was the general attitude of the celebrities to ‘Alex’?

Were they all happy to be seen with him?

Most of the celebrities I met were rather cordial and taken aback that they were meeting a Von Furstenberg. Ivana Trump was very excited to meet me and introduced me to her boyfriend and few of her other friends at the party. Puff Daddy put his arm around me and said “You the man, Alex!”

I swear that Sara Jessica Parker grabbed my butt when we posed for a photo, although in the moment I was never sure if it was her or someone else. I started out not giving a rat’s ass about famous people. As the project progressed I allowed it, like all my work, to totally take over my mind and direct my behavior. I was becoming Alex. I became truly obsessed and my friends were worried. I became good friends and colleagues with soon to be famous artist Mark Lombardi. He told me “When you stare into the abyss, remember, the abyss stares back at you.”

Ah yes, that great quote from Nietzsche!

As I went deeper into it a few experiences really took me to a different plane altogether. I read in the Gossips that Hillary Clinton would be celebrating her 53rd birthday party at a fundraiser at the Ford Center in midtown Manhattan. I was a party-crasher professional at this point but I was naturally a bit hesitant to believe that I could meet Hilary and President Bill Clinton. At the Ford Center there was a very secure super-VIP entrance and a less secure one for the rest of the partygoers. I chose the easier of the two. After hanging back and observing the flow of things for thirty minutes I walked up to the nicest looking security guard and said “Hello. I’m Alex Von Furstenberg, I went outside for a cigarette and forgot my ticket stub,” He said: “No problem, please proceed to the metal detector.” I passed through this and could not believe that I was inside. I went to the cheap seats on the upper level of the theatre where I was able to see where the Clintons were located. At the Intermission of the show, I rushed downstairs and pushed to get closer. The vicinity of the Clintons was like being in a mosh pit of hysteria.

The secret service guys pushed me away at first but then somehow I was let into the innermost circle. I quickly met Hillary and Bill Clinton. I told them I was a Von Furstenberg.

They said that they were both pleased to meet me. I handed my camera to a nearby stranger. I was brazen enough to put my arm around Bill. I promptly scrammed out of there in an ecstatic but also a paranoid state. I had just crashed a party to meet the frickin’ President and first Lady! I was totally spun. I had the photos developed right away and they were amazing.

What happened when the real Alex Von Furstenberg met the pretender – it must have been quite a charged moment?

I met the real Alex while in character as Alex at Diane Von Furstenberg’s house on West 12th Street. Yes, for me it was rather charged. I told Alex that I had been mistaken for him often in the last year and that some of the photos had even appeared in magazines. He said, “Well, cool to meet you, sounds pretty weird.” I asked him if we could get a photo of us together just to “complete the coincidence”, which he did.

This photo is legendary in my Von Furstenberg print edition.

Was your eventual exposure as an imposter an essential part of the performance?

Yes, of course outing the project was part of the work! A young gallery called Roebling Hall offered me a solo show of the project for October of 2000. I found investors to help me produce the large photo edition of sixty images.

That summer I organized a massive PR blitz. I first outed the project to a writer at The New York Observer. He actually came out with me while I was Alex. The article was pretty big and was featured on the front page of the newspaper.

It was published about a week before the opening. In the meantime rumours were circulating about the show and ABC Television approached me. The camera crew actually filmed at the opening of my solo show, making the whole event totally surreal. I met the real Alex well after the show and thanked him for being pretty cool about the whole thing. I think that he understood that what I did was an amazing work of art.

left top: Von Furstenburg - Alex with Hillary Clinton (autographed) Ford Center, NYC, bottom: Trump signed 1999

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Your project ‘Stalking Donald Trump’ brilliantly unpicks the cult of celebrity and notions of patriarchy. You stalked Trump for a year, gatecrashing numerous VIP functions where he was appearing, and having yourself photographed with the man at each one. But it developed into a deeper and more complex art event when Trump ramped up his campaign to become President.

I met Trump five times while stalking him in 1999. He started to spread rumours in the media that he was going to run for president. I designed a Trump for President 2000 poster, before any campaign signs even existed, in order to fulfill the rumour and feed the flames of the chaos. I campaigned on Trump’s behalf, with video artist Richard Sandler documenting as the next level of involvement with the performance. One time we went around near Wall Street on a really bleak winter day and interviewed prospective Trump followers. It just so happened that the band Rage Against The Machine and Michael Moore were video shooting an illegal concert on the steps of the Stock Exchange. I was spontaneously included in the video - you can find a quick cut of me with my Trump sign in the ‘Sleep Now in the Fire’ music video on YouTube. I joined Trump’s Exploratory Committee as a supporter and have a letter of thanks from ‘The Don’ himself. I also was invited to his casino, The Taj Mahal, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to attend a Pro Trump Rally. I went with my video camera and videoed interviews with Trump fans. This became the video I edited called ‘The 8th Wonder’. I met Trump in person at the Casino and had him autograph all five of my 8x10s photos in a gold paint marker. He said, “You must be a HUGE Trump fan.”

He gave me his contact info and said I could drop him a line anytime I needed help. Years later I asked Donald for help with raising money for a creative project, but my calls were never returned.

The video documentation for the Trump piece is at times rather disturbing; the Trump followers seem almost to be experiencing a kind of religious ecstasy.

I know this because I have personally experienced this religious ecstasy while stalking Trump. When one looks behind the construction of this you see that they are in awe of their oppressor. When you meet a celebrity like Trump in person your mind totally reels and you hallucinate. This is because you have seen their image like 100,000 times before meeting them in person. You are brainwashed. Your mind will struggle to conform the living image to the one you have learned beforehand, in other words you will fucking trip out.

It is a strange as hell moment, especially with Trump because he is a pretty weird guy and his hair seems to defy physics. My work about Trump was way ahead of its time, totally prescient to what is happening with the Republican psychopaths right now. I could see Trump as ‘reality performance art’ at the time and he would go on to become reality TV star. I was seeing into the future of America. He has now snowballed into a religious figure for the confused and misinformed right wing here in the USA. I still am interested in Trump as a potent symbol, even though I disagree with what he says.

When did you pretend to be Banksy? How did that project unfold?

I posed as Banksy while he was here in New York during his ‘Residency’ in October of 2013. There was so much hype about trying to find the real Banksy that I decided to become him.

I wore a black hoody with the name BANKSY written in large

letters on it. I wore a cheap wig and a fake moustache and cheap dark sunglasses. I spoke in a muffled and terribly done English accent. I went out to the locations of his daily street art works dressed in my Banksy attire and caused confusion.

I did a few other appearances and performances as Banksy.

I met New York art critic Jerry Saltz at PS1 as Banksy. He told me that he hated my work. I swear to god I must have really irked the guy because he started publishing a huge anti-Banksy smear campaign immediately after that day. I have hardly any interest in street art but I was fascinated by how the phenomenon crosses into performance art. I was really interested in how people in public projected onto me their own imaginary ideas about Banksy, a celebrity whose face is unknown! The reaction was pretty irrational. Women were smitten and swooned, even though I looked like a creep.

People asked me to pose for photos. Cops did lots of double takes, but they didn’t know what to do. Even when people acted certain I was not he, I sensed their hidden uncertainty.

The piece ended on the perfect day, I went around as Banksy on Halloween - what a riot it was! I outed the project with AnimalNY magazine. There are a couple of my videos on YouTube. I have often been asked if what I did was officially sanctioned by Banksy. I will say that although I do know people who know him, at this time I can neither confirm nor deny an association with Banksy.

In your work you regularly adopt other personae, so that notions of ‘self’ are fluid or dissolved. Does this only happen when you are staging performances for art pieces, or do you find yourself performing ‘interventions’ in your everyday life as studies for potential future pieces?

The boundaries between my art and my life are not clear-cut.

From the beginning it has been my intention to break down that wall. Through my sustained experimentation in art I have shifted the light on how I see life. When you engage life from a certain vantage point life will react to your vision. I do catch myself unconsciously reenacting some of my characters in odd moments of day-to-day existence. The intermixing of life and art is an engine for creativity. I use my personal problems to my creative advantage as much as possible. My characters are my life. I’m into multifaceted characters. I don’t believe that there is one self in the psyche and personality. I see humans as part of a continuum of energy. I think the persona is like a Rubik’s cube, that it configures itself to its surroundings.

We are more shape-shifters than static objects. More facets equal more imagination. I can only portray myself as so many different things out of a deep understanding of who I am. I never entirely let go of me. I just let the mask do the work; it will rearrange the order of reality around me and force me to create in the moment.

Your performances have garnered some major media attention over the years. Do you think that this exposure becomes another essential element of the performances? As the artist, how would you define your relationship with the media?

As much as I’ve criticized the media (the press), I have also been totally hypocritical and exploited the shit out of it! I think for some projects the press helps to perpetuate the

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narrative of the work into society. One example comes to mind: In the Von Furstenberg project I actually editioned a print of the article that was run by The Globe as a work of art.

The whole article is very exaggerated by the Globe writer and they even badly retouched my hairline with Photoshop.

It was too hilarious to pass up! The media’s response to my work can inform the creative process sometimes. I also have a relationship with producing my own media. In the earlier 1990s we never really considered the recording of the performance or action to be part of the work. It was just for the experience.

The documentation was secondary. You had to be there. By the later ‘90s the recording was much more considered. In Red Carpet Rollers the cameraperson became a vicarious live performer. In Alex Von Furstenberg the project automatically produces its own media. The project samples a system of behavior that intentionally produces photos with celebrities.

In the Fantastic Nobodies, we sometimes used a live video feed in our formal shows so we could simultaneously create and observe how the action appears, right on a screen, live.

The recording of a moment and a real moment blur with my artistic development over the last 20 years.

Your recent image-based works – which you call Resemblage - are a fascinatingly grotesque exploration of the media and the self, in which you humorously subvert clichéd imagery of fashion, advertising and celebrity by cutting, creasing and folding them and introducing yourself into the pictures. The results are bizarre and surreal; equally comical and horrifying.

They seem to allude to elements of identity theory and the fractured self. What are some of your thoughts behind this project?

I’m super excited about this new work. Resemblage is a term I coined to encompass the words resemble and collage. It involves physically putting objects or paint or imagery onto the body so that a resemblance (or call and response) occurs between the self and the iconography. It’s a dialogue between the consumerist landscape of the present and the body, and especially the face. I am continuing with the idea of inhabiting images but spinning it into social media. I am still making masks. I am sometimes taking printed images from magazines and books and twisting them into a physical mask through ripping, tearing, cutting, folding and sculpting. I am exploring the idea of how the mind assimilates everything it looks at into its own self-image. I create an imitation between the imagery and myself, I try to become the advertisement, but it doesn’t really work - thus the humour and the bizarreness. My flesh cannot rationally conform to the demands of the ‘machine’.

This is the world I see through. This is what we are forced to see. I do not take it passively. To me Donald Trump looks like a character in a Hieronymus Bosch painting. I inhabit the image to show how I see it. I learned to breakdown the dogma or rules that I built up in the ‘90s by collaborating with the

Fantastic Nobodies in the 2000s. The new Resemblage work is primordial, childlike and playful. I challenge the shit out of myself but enjoy the hell out of it. I could do it every day for a long time. I cannot predict its future direction and feel.

This is a quality I find to be totally liberating. It is young and rebellious against my words. I don’t want to put too much of a mould around the new work as of yet. It doesn’t follow the rules of my statements anyhow! I work out of my studio, which looks like a crazy lab for art making. I work with readily available Lo-Fi materials. The ongoing work is posted usually as soon as it’s done on Instagram. I also produce very high quality editioned prints of these Resemblage pieces, which are for sale. Follow me at: davidhenrynobodyjr.

Today’s art is packaged, sanitized and commodified more than ever before in history. Do you think there is any escape from this? How do you view the role of the artist in the present climate?

A friend gave me a t-shirt recently that says ‘Stay Weird’. I think this means actually ‘stay human’. We are now surrounded by - and thus inevitably compare our lives to - that which is portrayed by computers and machines. For a creative artist the only escape is long-term persistence and resistance in one’s humanness. Only then can you make what you want when you want. Artists confuse ‘not giving a shit’ with being free. I can see this confusion in the huge glut of terrible abstract paintings being made these days. I see most of the young artists desperately trying to mimic overly clichéd very, very academic ideas of art making. It looks totally oppressive in its vibe. It’s pretty shocking in a not so good way. I don’t have anything against selling and I love to sell my work! But it looks all too commercial, too fast. I would like to see many more artists attempting to challenge what art can be instead of mimicking what is has been already. For me, I see that we are living in a time when you can fabricate a fake persona online very easily. It’s like a whole new horizon for the notion of identity and a cool as shit challenge for my work. I think it posits lots of questions about who we really are. This is what I am seeing. I try to take the ugly questions, create understanding, and laugh at it all. I aim to take oppressive structures and turn them into mind-expanding playfulness. I think this is my role in the current climate.

More on Instagram @davidhenrynobodyjr and @davidhenrybrownjr.c

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Editorial Director Production Manager Strategic Business Development Art Editor, New York

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Julia Fullerton-Batten, Amanda Charchian, Gregory Harris, Charlie Drevstam, //DIY, Fideli Sundqvist, Fanny Latour-Lambert.

Psychic Nomadism

Warbear, A.K.A. Francesco Macarone Palmieri, is an international man of the arts and letters for the 21st century. Simultaneously an academic, DJ, LGBTQI activist, and legendary multimedia provocateur, he divides his time between his University studies in Rome, and Berlin where he runs the super successful Gegen party which takes place at the chic and erotic Kit-Kat adult playground. In his brutally intelligent way, he personifies a refreshingly radical iteration of what it means to be a European renaissance man today, and he was exclusively interviewed for Nakedbutsafe magazine

by Panagiotis aka Otis Chatzistefanou.

Tell me a bit about yourself. Where were you born, and how were you shaped by the environment in which you grew up?

and I spontaneously found myself studying sociology and cultural anthropology.

I was born and grew up in Rome. I am very tied to this city although it is not easy to live it. I always say that I am an error in the birth planning of a Catholic family who does not practice abortion. This means I was born when my parents didn’t expect me since they were old when my mother got pregnant.

They did love me though, especially because being white and male in a heteronormative southern European society means being privileged but they did not know what surprise I saved for them.

I can see my parents as the result of three centuries of socialization, bringing and passing us a southern Italian culture through their living path. I grew up in a Jesuit college where, as a child, I did understand the very nature of power in terms of guilt manipulation and physical violence, which brought me almost to the border of autism but even seeded the desire, more than the refusal, to incubate anti-authoritarism by developing survival strategies which became the dialectical source of my desire.

These were the nineties, an incredibly explosive and creative period to live in. And these were my university times in which I felt finally completely free and I put all this freedom in acquiring knowledge and enjoying it.

Then I was moved to a public school, which was exactly the opposite environment of the transparent bell of violence in which I was living.

Now violence was not coming from “authority”, it was coming from the group of peers, not just because my queerness was coming out, but for the fact that my body did not respond to their stereotypes, being bigger, masculine and feminine in the same time and with different dynamics of body and social relationships.

I was a freak but elegant, I was bigger and taller but my body did not respond to the macho/normative violence of a patriarchal values system. I was a target not just because of my sexuality but because of an irreducible difference which escaped any normalization.

It was hard and sick. I had to physically fight every day, since the very beginning in my life. My body exposure made me a living target for everyone’s frustration. Death was always present either in the desire to kill my aggressors or the desire to kill myself. But this identitarian escaping and the refuse of dialectics became later my weapon and my queer critical filter in the definition of my thoughts and actions.

So, during secondary school, I studied languages through the desire to embrace the linguistic otherness as a way to escape my present world,

At the same time, I started to get involved with Roman countercultures and social movements. Since the beginning of the nineties I got involved into squatting, promoting the Italian movement of “Social Centers”, DIY antagonistic open structures based on the squatting of abandoned areas where degradation, heroin, violence and brutality reigned, as a way to create sociality and cultural production where institutions did not care to arrive.

This put me in connection with lot of different people and we started different projects. It was the explosion of the cyberpunk movement and I got involved in a project of subversive telematics which was a network of independent Bulletin Board systems which created a digital network way before internet exploded.

In the same time, I founded with my friends an independent magazine called “Torazine. Capsule policrome di controcultura pop”. It was a superior product, made with four colors, 160 pages and the contents were based on black humor and politically incorrect perspective as a way to criticize the dogmatism in the social movements but at the same time we aimed at opening new perspectives on counterculture and desire.

It was about spreading the last counterculture in Italy, squatting warehouses, promoting pirate radios, supporting and distributing independent labels and the right to party, creating bridges between the squatting community and a new generation of roman ravers which was a scene composed by sub-proletarian kids manipulated by the Roman and Italian right wing.

This is where my first book “Free Party” comes out from. The book was part of a writing process I started in parallel with my studies and my political action as a way not to systematize but to let my different identities explode and converge in a written form.

For me this meant not just entering academia but squatting it with my languages and mixing it with the methodologies I acquired with

Photographs by Jacopo Benassi

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my studies. In this process, to make things easier, I came out too. My coming out was very late, hard and ridiculous on the same time.

I started to go around gay bars in Rome finding myself with a cheap cocktail in my hands listening to cheap music with cheap people around me but most of all my sexual desire was not there at all. This brought me to a state of crisis but being in crisis was my only way to survive since the Jesuits, the only thing I could do was using it to create a space-time of falling, floating, and flying.

This is where two different projects came out from. As I understood that my sexual desire was within the imaginary of a de-symbolised masculinity like the bear culture used to witness at the end of the eighties, I decided to start a bear scene in Rome and Italy with a bear group called “Epicentro Ursino Romano” and with a bear party called “Subwoofer”.

At the same time I was witnessing the progressive emerging of normativities, homophobia and mysogyny within an LGBT Italian context that still has no access to civil rights. So I understood that my desire and my subversive visions were way beyond a gay masculine subculture. Therefore I grounded a queer project called “Phag Off”.

This was another bomb exploding in a very simple and desirous way.

It was a queer party coming out in the beginning of the y2k mixing up all my countercultural experiences with the LGBT scene in a neutral space of transition which was a little club in the heart of Rome.

Incredible to say but those two areas almost never touched and once they did it, it was a Detonation. I remember, at one of the parties for my birthday, all the Leather Club Rome and Epicentro Ursino Romano came over, took over and started to have sex and fisting publically on the dancefloor. It was such a shock as still a lot of people involved in social movements were so moralistic and heteronormatized that this trauma blew everything out and created an incredibly powerful queer scene. I did almost ten years of activities with this project grounding two festivals – the Queer Jubilee and Fe/male Festival – and started to curate the queer section and got involved with a big independent movie Festival Called “Tekfestival”. At the end of this experience time was mature to open myself to different scenarios so I decided to move to Berlin and this is a whole new story that speaks about my present times and that I will let flow in the other questions.

We first met in Berlin, where you were one of the main instigators of the famed Gegen club. Would you like to talk about how this project influenced you and what you learnt from being involved so directly and centrally with Berlin nightlife?

Well there is a lot to say here too. I am developing a new strategy based on handling and controlling a process of self-institutionalization.

“Gegen” the queer event I co-produce with my friend and colleague Boxikus, is going in that direction. I arrived in Berlin six years ago and I was tired and fed up with cultural production, promotion and so on.

I needed to bring thoughts down and I thought Berlin would allow me to do it. Well of course it didn’t. I found myself studying German at the VHS and the constant word coming back to me was GEGEN. This meant I had to take a position on everything in a dialogue, being it individual or social and the value scale I had to perform in positioning was always based on a dialectics. It always had to be antithetical. I “needed” to do it or I would disappear as interlocutor. This meant to produce and support a power relationship because if you stand against something or someone then you recognize as your “enemy”, therefore you invest it with power. It has a power on you, on your lifestyle, on your choices. Studying this concept I saw that there was another meaning of the word “GEGEN” which is open. When we have to meet, we say “wir treffen uns gegen 21:00” and this GEGEN means circa, it means around, it finally is an open concept. It is not dialectical anymore.

That impossible contradiction of two opposite “dialogical” meanings

in such a precise, defined, identitarian language like German which is really anchored to the ground of semantics just shocked me. This is why I thought using “GEGEN” without a proper object could mine the basics of identity politics in German linguistics. GEGEN what? This is the question we pose you with the Event concept which means “What Are you Pro? What is Your Desire? What Is your project to acquire it?”

And I think this is even the success of it. Again, psychic nomadism came back on a different form as you are pushed to perform as -dividual within the party. This means sharing and multiplying your individualities in an open, pandrogynous process of desire. And I think this worked because it came from migrants or expatriates even though the two words have different ideological meaning. The event as I said goes on since five years. It happens in the incredible Kit Kat Club which is an enormous sex club of Berlin that tells the story of the city since 21 years and had developed its own free sexuality manifesto performing queerness way before the concept became an academic niche-market.

This powerful energy created an aggregation of worldly wild beautiful minds and mixed up all out of b/order subjects. For a better understanding and deep reading of the concept check out our website gegenberlin.com.

You’ve just published your new book. What is it about?

It is entitled “Tanz Berlin. Oltre il muro del clubbing (Beyond the wall of clubbing)” and it is an application and individualisation of a new methodology applied to the Geographies of Sexualities and the Study of the city as an open subject.

This is called “Autoethnography” and it is a cultural methodology of research dedicated to the use of autobiography as a tool to analyze the social and cultural frame starting from the self as object of research.

So i started to tell the story of my involvement with queer positive club culture in Berlin as a filter to analyze the last five years’ changing of the city in terms of scene economies, sexual cultures and sexualized spaces, scene economies and queer gentrification in Berlin.

To enforce that I wrote my first novel as a chapter in the book entitled “Evil inside. Life and death of a social bottom”. The novel is a construction of the “social Bottom” model intended as the stereotypical expatriate who is trapped by the new lifestyle of Berlin as a form of marketization and selling of the City.

The concept of “Poor but Sexy” defined by the former major Klaus Wowereit was the perfect Claim to develop a specific privatization of the city, defining it as new transnational model to import resources and to export itself in the world.

The result is represented by this enormous flux of subjects polarized in Berlin by its fake utopia of creativity and life quality as the perfect substitution to the absence of desire. So “the social bottom” is a stereotypical character that arrived in Berlin from Italy attracted from this fake desire sold through the definition of the “Berlin Life Style” who becomes submitted by the queer clubbing scene until his very tragic end. I built up this character connecting a Frankenstein of life failures of the people around me who constitute my own failure again used as a critical filter to analyze the global market city strategies applied to a social media economy. If you are patient enough you shall read it in English but even have a special surprise which I am not anticipating here. I do have to thank my friend and professor of Urban Sociology Massimo Ilardi and my friend Annamaria Licciardello who supported me during the whole process. You can check my book here: http:// www.manifestolibri.it/tanz-berlin/ Is there any advice you would care to give to somebody younger who would want to follow in your footsteps?

Love yourself by keeping your desire into perspective.

warbear lab. at home with painting of warbear

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Amplified Emotional Meditation

Magic Island aka Emma Czerny is a 20-something Toronto-born musician living in Berlin. Her fragile pop singing and songwriting are enveloped in a woozy, soft-focus, free-associating cocoon, a pleasure all the more rarefied by her versatile production skills. She’s part of an international group of artists that embody the dislocated romanticism of the expatriate experience in an urban context that is often equated with the capital of a new European reality, yet her esoteric sound encapsulates the peculiarities inherent in the subjectivity of our collective experience. Magic Island was interviewed exclusively by Panagiotis aka Otis Chatzistefanou for Nakedbutsafe.

Tell me a bit about yourself. Where were you born, and how were you shaped by the environment in which you grew up?

I’m from the earth, the ground, and soon I will return to dust. From the time I can remember I’ve always felt like a lone wolf, so I guess this has shaped me. Find strength and happiness in yourself because in the end that’s all you have.

At what age did you decide you will dedicate yourself to music fulltime? How did this decision come about?

I’m still not sure I’ve made that decision! I think now I understand that I will always be making music, but in this day and age its difficult to survive off of art so I’m trying not to put pressure on Magic Island in that way… I work several other jobs that keep a roof over my head and food on my table. This also gives me freedom to live the lifestyle how I feel comfortable and that is what allows me to have fully immersive experiences, and from these experiences I feel enough to make music.

How would you describe your music?

That’s always a hard one. Someone the other day called it ‘honest pop’, and I liked that way of describing it. I’m feeling especially coherent about my new body of work, my new album, “Like Water”. All the tracks have some sort of connection to fluid, organic movement; ebbs and flows; emotional looseness or definitive power. I feel like my music is pretty raw, emotional and lo-fi. I also once thought about it as ‘dream rap’, since its ethereal and cosmic in some ways but with a slight R’n’B influence. My dream when I was young was to be the female vocalist / sped up sample in the chorus of rap songs, so hopefully I will still fulfill that fantasy in the future.

What are the pros and cons of being an independent artist in Berlin?

Mm… Pros: Cheap rent and expenses for a high quality of living. A history so full and unique. I sometimes personify Berlin and I would have to say that its characteristics would be the most incredible person or friend. Bureaucratic, but practically. Modest because of certain historical events, but also then confident in its current state. Accepting and supportive of difference. But most of anything, the best part about Berlin is the people and the sense of community. You can easily go

out alone and leave with a new group of friends who share the same interests and values.

Cons: Distraction. It’s an incredibly interesting city and social structure within the different diasporas, but it can be dangerous if you aren’t careful. I sometimes question the hedonistic values of Berlin’s youth culture and find myself drifting between extreme left and right views. I have some friends who have lived here for 7 years and are still going to Berghain every weekend, from Friday until Sunday. If you can manage it and still maintain your pocket money, your sanity and some sort of employment to pay these minimal living costs, then I’m impressed! But to be honest I don’t know how well these people are really managing on a mental level… Not to say that I’m any better with or without these temptations!

Your sonic aesthetics are simultaneously variable and elaborate. Is this a conscious aesthetic choice? Do you research your atmospheres and sounds or do you just go instinctively where your personal taste leads you?

Hm, hmm… This isn’t really a conscious choice. I listen to a lot of different styles of music, and go through phases of listening. So I guess subconsciously, if I am pulsating over noise or abstract experimental techno than maybe I would imagine elements of this the next time I’m producing. But mostly I am just going where my feelings and fingertips take me.

How do you see what you do in the context of the modern pop music scene?

I make my music for myself, and as long as it fulfills me and helps me to deal with my emotional traumas then it’s done its purpose. There are so many fish in the sea now that I’ve stopped thinking about where I fit in in the context of the modern pop music scene, and more so wonder where this material fits in my emotional journey and how to move on from it. I’m just another girl making electronic music. I don’t really give a fuck anymore. But I’ve become a slave to it so I’m stuck in chains for the time being.

Are there any artists you’d want to collaborate with in the future and why?

photographed by Pablo Lauf, right: Emma_01.

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Mm, I’d love to work with someone in the rap game (Rick Ross, Ghostface Killa or Drake would be very chill). And make some heavier R’n’B but keep it really ethereal, lo-fi and pop too. I don’t know, I have this feeling and sound in my mind but yet to turn it into reality so that would be interesting. I also think Casper Clausen is a genius and I would love to get freaky in the studio with him.

For now I am also feeling incredibly inspired by some of my friends and that’s the most comfortable sort of collaboration, really organic… A song on my new album features Sean Nicholas Savage. Another friend, Karolini, is producing the title track. When we are working together it just feels like hanging out and this is the best.

What should we expect from your first album?

I think it’s definitely more mature than my other material. But still with a lot of room to grow, which feels comforting. That I don’t necessarily have to commit to anything yet, that I’m still sort of discovering my sounds or letting them adapt as my world changes. It will be 10 tracks, release date is set for March or April 2016 depending on how quickly I can get the rest of my shit together.

What’s your relationship with the online aspect of relating to your audience? Do you participate in social media gladly or is this an element of contemporary living that you would rather avoid?

I would rather live without it. But I have conflicting views. To be honest I find it a waste of time—I’m quite traditional in some regards and would rather pick up the phone and call a friend than text all the time, I’d rather have spontaneous run ins and actually get to know someone on an intimate and interactive level. The feeling that we can’t live without it, even for a few hours.

Do you have a formulated relationship to politics? Are you active in this respect, are there causes that you support or would like to talk about?

Do not trust any government. We are all part of a system, even the anarchist and rebellious positions are allocated for within this system.

I’m scared for the future. I think America (excuse me, and all other nations) should hone up to their actions and stop dealing arms into a war that they say they are fighting against. They are feeding it.

Corporations should not dictate governmental decisions when they only care about profit. Who the fuck actually cares about the people?

I’m really angry. I don’t want to get too into this topic or someone will be showing up at my door to check me into asylum...

The feminist cause is happily enjoying resurgence as an important topic of today’s public dialogue. Music is a platform where the voices of many powerful women, like FKA Twigs, Grimes or Nicki Minaj, are articulating a discourse about gender inequality and sexism that is updating and focusing the conscience of a new generation about these issues. How do you relate to the fact of being a woman in the music industry? Do you encounter sexism and misogyny and how do you deal with it?

There isn’t true equality until tampons are free. There is sexism and misogyny in the music industry but not more so than anywhere else I can imagine. But it is difficult—the industry is still male dominated, but this is slowly changing. Almost all of the sound engineers, lighting technicians, bookers, promoters, producers I have encountered have been mostly male. Many times I’ve been intimidated, or been suggested ‘stupid’ because I’m a girl and am nice while we’re doing a soundcheck.

But you learn to just ignore it. And it’s not always the case, there is no generalization. It’s an interesting concept though, because in a sense I think this gives the female voice more power. A soprano sticks out in a room full of Alto/Baritone ;)

Would you say there is such a thing as a contemporary European identity? What would be the value system or set of beliefs that would structure and give meaning to such an identity?

I think acceptance and understanding is key in a contemporary Europe.

Fear is a monster and causes irrational behavior. I think contemporary European identity is becoming more diverse, borders are becoming irrelevant, and everyone has to remember that we are all human.

How much of your real self is present when you perform or when you are in the public eye like doing an interview? Do you adopt a persona or do you expose who you are unfiltered and prepared to pay the price of honesty? Would you call performing a transformative process? If so, in what sense?

I would say performing is a form of therapy to me. Kind of like amplified emotional meditation. It’s the time I forget about everything and have a private moment where my songs and my body reconnect. I am very sensitive; my songs are all very emotional to me. When I am performing I honor these emotions that led to the creation of this piece and I let them take me over again. It feels really good to have this control and at the same time, complete lack of control. My body goes into sort of seizure—I move a lot when I play, quite spastically. When I’m done a set I don’t really remember much, like I really went away. It’s magical. My island.

How do you believe artists can or should respond to the refugee crisis? Is this an important issue for you and in what sense do you identify with it?

I think it’s difficult to respond, as an artist or as any type of human. You can see so apparently that NO ONE, no government even, seems to know exactly what to do or how to deal with this situation. There are no clear answers or directions. This is an extremely important issue for me— this is part of our immediate life here in Berlin now. Germany has taken so many refugees this year that it will reshape the city and the generations to come, I am living in this part of history while it is being written. I have spent the last months reading everything I can, formulating my opinion and trying to decipher how to exist amongst this crisis. For a while I was crying every day. I woke up the other day beside my beautiful boyfriend underneath our blankets and the first thought I had was “how many refugees just arrived to LaGeSo and are sleeping in this cold? Do they have coats, blankets? How long will they be there, waiting?” I’m volunteering now once a week at one of the centers that hosts 180 refugees. I actually just came from there.

It’s an old school and I serve them dinner every Wednesday between 17.45-20.00. It’s not enough but its all I can do. The men always line up first but we serve women and children before them. They get white bread, or sometimes pita bread if we’re lucky, some cold meats and frischkäse. A tomato and a piece of cucumber. An apple and a banana.

The first time I went one woman told me, “careful with the bananas— people will ask for more, but there are only enough for everyone to have one each.” Sure enough, I had children coming up to me asking for 5 bananas. Grown men eating their meals and then coming back and pretending they didn’t get their banana. That was a day that I cried there, it broke my heart more than any love to have to tell a hungry man that he couldn’t have more. Bananas are the tastiest thing we have on this ‘menu’. I will keep going there until it is no longer needed, but what breaks my heart even more is that I cannot imagine the day that will be.

What advice would you give to a younger person who would like to follow in your footsteps?

Do what feels right and what your mind and body crave, it will tell you and you won’t need to think so much.

Left: Emma_08.

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On The Unthought Ways Of Being ‘European’

ZIAUDDIN

SARDAR

Ziauddin Sardar is Britain’s top Muslim intellectual.

He was born in Pakistan and grew up in East London. He is a Renaissance-type polymath working across disciplines; from Islam and future studies to science policy, literary and art criticism and postcolonial theory. His thought is characterised by its emphasis on radical plurality and critical dissention. Sardar has worked as science journalist, was a columnist for the New Statesman and has served as a Commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission. He has published over 45 books. The Future of Muslim Civilisation (1979) and Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come (1985) are regarded as classic studies on the future of Islam. He pioneered the discussion on science in Muslim societies with a number of books, including The Touch of Midas: Science, Values and the Environment in Islam and the West (1982), which is seen as a seminal work. Postmodernism and the Other (1998) has acquired a cultish following and Why Do People Hate America? (2002) became an international bestseller. Sardar’s Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim (2004) and Balti Britain: A Provocative Journey Through Asian Britain (2008) have received wide acclaim. Reading the Qur’an (2011), which began as a Guardian blog, has been described as a ‘mini masterpiece’. He has also written and presented numerous television programmes – most recently ‘Battle for Islam’, a documentary for BBC2 and ‘Dispatches’ for Channel 4. Zia Sardar was interviewed exclusively for Nakedbutsafe by Dr Christina Kostoula in London.

Portrait by Jason Lambidis at jlambidis.tumblr.com

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You have argued that we are living in post-normal times of uncertainty, realignment of power and chaotic upheaval.

Europe in 2015 has been such a place where old orthodoxies die and you have been a critic of its dying ‘creeds of domination’. Can we begin to think of a new paradigm that allows us to consider the present or imagining a new reality in a Europe not yet to be born?

The “postmodern” is dead. Things that give meaning like history, tradition and religion are making a big comeback as they are not subsumed into contemporary secularism. The metanarratives are not going away. The cultural relativism that postmodernism introduced is superfluous now. For example we have certain Muslim cultures that do female genitalia mutilation. Now, you can’t just simply say, because of cultural relativism, that ‘this is their culture’. You have to make an objective decision. There are aspects of cultures that we have to appreciate but there are certain aspects that violate the very nature of what it means to be human.

The fact that we should give voice to the voiceless, I think that is really what the struggle is all about. In postmodernism it was argued that only liberal democracy can give voice to the voiceless. On one hand postmodernism tried to demolish all metanarratives but on the other it created a metanarrative itself which became a new form of imperialism and it actually didn’t give voice to the voiceless; it spoke for them. Even those voiceless that spoke for themselves, they only spoke within the framework of liberalism; therefore they could not articulate their genuine concerns.

Europe thinks that it exists in isolation from the rest of the world; that its history is unique, that the histories of other cultures and civilisations are just small rivers that flow into this mighty ocean of the history of Europe. That particular moral thought still exists and within Europe this moral thought has categories. So, while Europe says ‘we are antiracists, we are against demonising other people’, despite all the paraphernalia that they have about human rights, if you scratch the surface, racism comes out and it can be detected between Eastern and Western Europe. Because Eastern Europe is still ‘East’ and ‘East’ has a connotation of otherness, despite the fact that Europeans have constructed this history. Greece for instance, has actually existed at the boundary of racism, at the boundary of the ‘East’. Now we saw that in the whole Greek crisis. Greece was treated like Greece because it lies outside the inner sanctum of what Europe is all about; it is very much outside. The layer of human rights is just surface, used essentially as an instrument.

How would you diagnose the pathology and identity crisis of contemporary Europe? Is it related to its treatment of the Other?

Europe can only develop its own identity by imagining itself as ‘not Other’. Europe cannot change. It can become more or less prosperous, it can have more or less power, the European Union may continue or fail but all these things are not going to change Europe. The real change will come when Europe admits or transcends the notion of otherness, in the sense that it learns to appreciate that there are more than one ways of being human and they are equally valid ways of being human.

It has to recognise that there are other histories and that Europe has learned a lot either by engagement with others or by exploiting and colonising others. That history has been swept aside. Europe does not appreciate the fact that there

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wouldn’t be the Europe we know without Islam. A great deal of what Europe regards as European – philosophy, the ideas of Renaissance, the use of rationality in religion and science, empirical matter, universities and how they are structured, the very idea of a professor – all of these came from Islam. But there was a systematic attempt to delink Islam from Europe.

Europe has to realise that it is a product of the contributions of different civilisations just as all other cultures. Cultures are not monolithic, they don’t develop or learn in isolation and Europe has to realise that there is no such thing as ‘pure European’, that it contains a number of other civilisations that have shaped the European outlook.

Where will this change come from? How can alternative pathways be initiated?

The centre does not change, it collapses. The changes come from the periphery. The change will come from places like Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Pakistan and Indonesia. They are going to transform the centre. Capitalism has failed and we have known this for a long time so we need to rethink what is economics. It is people who are suffering on the out layers; they are the people who are going to introduce change like ‘what is economic activity’? ‘How do we create an economic system’? The people who suffer, they will come up with the alternatives through their experiences. I was very hopeful of Syriza in Greece, but I did realise that the odds against Greece are tremendous, its back was against the wall, forcing it to stay in Europe and accept the slave-like conditions that Europe has imposed on it. That is very interesting; Europe imposing enslaving conditions to another European country,

saying ‘we are part of the same system’. It is like a brother turning its brother into a slave. The other option was for them to walk out of Europe, which most people could simply not imagine, because that for them is the unknown, the unthoughtof. Eventually, we need to take the leap to unthought-of, even though it may be very frightening. But the periphery is the place of the grinding experience and the real place of the future.

We see a number of European intellectuals who are apologists of Europe and of its self-idealising fixations. They dismiss the desires of refugees and migrants seeking future in Europe calling them a futile utopia that does not exist, in a Europe that does not exist. Isn’t this shocking turn of liberal thought attempting to wipe out the very idea of a Europe that responds to universal rights of human survival?

For the refugees this realisation would not come as a shock.

Most refugees who come here are educated people who already know Europe is a utopia. They have already suffered in the hands of Europe. Everyone wants to survive. You do not have to be European to survive. They are coming for basic necessities of life; food, accommodation, employment and they are running away from oppression and war and annihilation. To actually say that they are coming to us for something that is utopian is ridiculous. But this is the typical game that postmodernists play and it has become a totally meaningless and absurd game that is undermining the reality.

When Slavoj Zizek argues that the refugees are seeking an unknown place that does not exist, what he actually means is that the Europe of imagination does not actually exist; that

Europe is a pretty harsh place. But at the same time he is demeaning the people who are coming here for universal human needs; shelter from the death that Europe has unleashed in the Middle East. Europe is exceptionally guilty and is responsible for creating the havoc that is happening.

That is what is wrong with dominant European thinkers; they just want to play intellectual games and the world has moved on. Thinkers like that are becoming superfluous intellectual clowns. They personify total meaninglessness.

A meaninglessness, nevertheless that gradually transforms to a concrete We that becomes a prescription and precondition of being part of the European identity; an incitement as to what We as Europeans should do in order to preserve ‘our way’ of life. We fail to see real bodies and lived desire to belong with other bodies - what you have described in your work as a ‘civilizational corpus’ - they are getting erased by European power. Isn’t this an alternative way of knowing and a way of being that the refugees bring with them and that Europe feels threatened by?

Every refugee who comes here and who speaks a different language brings a totally different world of concepts and understanding with him and they bring the history and memory that they embody. Each migrant adds a new dimension. We know that the more pluralistic a society the more successful it is, the more culture it produces. If we close our borders then we are saying ‘we do not want to learn’, ‘we do not want to be different ways of being’, ‘we do not want to do other ways of doing’. When it comes to the real crunch, all the liberal democracy evaporates in thin air. Notice how many of leftleaning postmodernists have actually moved to the Right.

The openness of relativism was all pretence. Now, even that pretence could only be allowed within the given framework; if you rejected that framework you were a barbarian. If you believe that human rights are not enough, that we need other notions of human dignity like food and shelter and not only freedom of speech, then you are outside the boundaries of civilisation! Despite all the rhetoric of openness, the imperialism of Europe has always been deeply entrenched and the borders fixed.

Let’s concentrate on an emerging awareness of a commonality of struggle between some Europeans - or let us call them ‘Europe’s others’- and the migrants. Focusing on solidarity, how can we think of a way to resist this onslaught of administrative networks that actually integrate all multiculturalist discourse and manipulate the very idea of solidarity to turn it into a new type of imperial bureaucracy to introduce totalitarian measures? How can we start working on the foundations of the unthinkable non-imperialist Europe?

The unthinkable is only unthinkable as long as you don’t think about it. The unthinkable is not unthinkable as such but it is unthinkable within the dominant paradigm. So, one has to begin by dismantling the basic paradigms and principles of the dominant paradigm. Only by breaking open the dominant paradigm you’ll be free to think the unthought-of. When we are talking about struggles and solidarity, what is one of the first thing that brings us together? Oppression. And within Europe there is tremendous economic oppression, austerity.

Within this system, no matter how much it goes out to help the poor, in the end the only people who benefit are the rich. The marginalised are always the victim and the ones continuously exploited. The first bond of solidarity has to be economic solidarity; how to find alternative ways of existing

economically in a viable fashion. A lot of it comes from experience of surviving. If you look at the migrants, how do they manage to survive? It is astonishing, in that sense. How much courage and ingenuity they need to travel by sea or walk thousands of miles to reach the border. If you were to put that ingenuity to creating alternative systems, that would be a definite step forward. That itself would create a bond and the glue for further solidarity.

So, we bond and move forward by recognising something we share as human beings, this living, embodied tradition of surviving.

That is basically what I mean by the term ‘transmodernity’. In a system of transmodernity you are giving voice to the others but you do it on their terms. We have developed this notion of ‘polylogue’ that comes from (Julia) Kristeva; that we need to learn not just to talk to each other but talk collectively.

It is not a dialogue between two people but a polylogue between multiple groups, their different ways of doing and knowing, their different aspirations. The polylogue is a space where you can learn to discover the traditions, the histories of what it means to be different. It is a pluralist space where the Other speaks as the Other, not the way you have defined them but the way they have defined themselves. It is not going to be easy because we are not used to listen to different ways of being. What we are talking about here is not a simple conversation but it is actively listening how different people are different in their being, in their soul, in their individual culture. And that is more profound than simply different people coming together for a meal.

There is something in your work that talks about something completely missing from elsewhere, and that is linked to the fact that you are an Islamic scholar. It’s the notion of Hope and faith in the future of humanity, in what can be learned by humans despite their human limitations. It is the ability to know inherent even in the experience of painful failure or strife that can provide a different way of learning to be. Please talk to me a bit more about the need of the polylogue with an Islamic point of reference. From a discourse of stigma that is attached to Muslims deemed by the dominant discourse as failing to integrate, how can we move to understanding this dignity of the struggle for knowledge?

If you look at the images of the migrants on television, walking towards Europe you could ask ‘why bother’ in a sense?

Because they have faith. The function of faith for them is very much hope and trust. They still have hope and that keeps them going. They are not nihilistic, they are not pessimistic, they still believe that some good will come out of it. Despite all the suffering they have gone through, despite all the violence and tribulations they still think that something good is possible. That is a very powerful feeling. All those people who say religion is meaningless are talking nonsense because that is what motivates certain people towards goodness and survival. It also motivates ideologies and people towards evil as well, I am not denying this, but for the vast majority of the people it is a real provider of hope. One of the conditions for religion to move to a transmodern space is for them to give up the notion that their truth is a universal truth. Their truth is absolute for them but it is not a truth for all humanity. You have to allow other truths to exist and you have to learn from other truths through engagement.

That fundamental notion of universal truth that applies to all humanity has to change. Interestingly, it’s exactly the same as

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the truth of modernity and the truth of Europe. Europe says our truth is universal truth, it applies to all human beings.

All ideologies and religions and outlooks have to transcend that boundary that in fact certain truths are only absolute for you. We need to move to that space where I appreciate your absolute and you appreciate my absolute.

In one of your books you say that tolerance can only come from accepting multiple interpretations. My last question would be to invite you to think about one of your quotes in relation to what is Europe at the moment: “what will happen as the life-denying forces of the West encounter the lifeenhancing traditions”? It is almost ironic how Europe is acting out this fixation that it is a fortress, a centre that fears collapse, and we also have these life-affirming encounters between struggling people in the periphery that are seen as a threat. How do you interpret this historical moment and what you predict for the future?

We are at a juncture and we are heading towards an extinction of human beings. We are at a historical point where we know that we are running towards the cliff and it is a very sharp drop. The task is to create life-enhancing ideas and multiple notions of what it means to do economics, politics, of what it means to be human or what it means to be European, so that we can stop members of our human family taking us to the cliff. Some of these life-enhancing ideas already exist in traditional societies; they exist among the Amazon people in Latin America, among the Australian aborigines that we look down upon with such racism. Their societies are so sophisticated. Life-enhancing ideas and practices exist in Muslim communities in Muslin countries. We need to learn from them instead of demonising them. Of course we have to be aware that a lot of tradition is very oppressive. We have to be aware that all human constructions have good and bad components. The role of transmodernity is to move the world towards much more sustainable and life-enhancing future.

The kind of future we are forced to live is like a highway and there is a big pile up in the highway twenty miles away and we are driving in one hundred miles per hour towards the pile up without thinking about it. The first thing we need to do is to slow down so we maybe we can stop before we end up in a crash and then finding ways of turning round.

This is the message in postnormal times; there is going to be an almighty crash not too far ahead in this motorway of the future. We do want progress but we don’t want progress at any price. What Europe has done is to make us forget what it means to be human; there is amnesia about being human.

This is how we get all these ridiculous ideas about Singularity and transforming human beings via bioengineering. What we need to do is to learn to remember again.

Over And Under The Over

HELMUT MIDDENDORF

German artist Helmut Middendorf rose to international fame in the early 1980s as part of ‘The Young Wild Ones’ (Neue Wilden), a new breed of painters associated with Neo-Expressionism. His energetic, large-scale paintings of rock singers, nightclub revelers, and bombers floating across the night sky - all painted with characteristically lurid colour combinations - influenced a whole generation of younger painters throughout the world, interested in turning their backs on outdated, stuffy Academicism. Since then, Middendorf has turned to multi-layered abstract paintings, and he continues with his abiding interest in collage works, which explore astonishing juxtapositions of imagery. This interview coincides with the publishing of an important new book on the artist – “Berlin: The 80s & Early Works” (Kerber Verlag).

Helmut Middendorf divides his time between Berlin and Athens and was interviewed exclusively for Nakebutsafe by Steve Cox. All images courtesy of Helmut Middendorf. opposite page: Flugzeug - Traum, 1982, Dispersion on canvas, 4 x 3 m

I first became aware of your work in 1983, when I saw catalogue of the landmark exhibition Zeitgeist. Can speak about your early days as a young artist – before were catapulted onto the international scene? Have always painted?

the you you you

I decided to become an artist when I was twelve years old.

When I did my application for the School of arts in Berlin (Hochschule der Künste, Berlin) in 1972, I put together a group of small drawings and collages and paintings on paper. The collages were influenced by Max Ernst and the other works were a mixture of realism and surrealism. The following years at the HdK I worked very experimentally, trying different styles: I made big drawings and painted objects from cardboard, I made silkscreens and etchings and lithographs, and the size of my paintings started to get bigger over the years. At the same time I started to make a lot of short Super-8-Films, which were experimental and funny. The decision to concentrate mainly on painting came around 1977 when some friends and I founded our own gallery, the Galerie am Moritzplatz.

During this period punk rock had erupted as a major cultural phenomenon. Do you think that Punk (and later, New Wave) informed your work, or your world view?

I played guitar and in my youth I sang in different bands in North Germany. I knew the records of MC 5 from Detroit and I had seen a concert of this band in the beginning of the Seventies - that was pre-punk par excellence! I have seen a lot of punk bands in the infamous club CBJB at the Bowery in New York in 1978 when I stayed in Little Italy for a while. And punk became important in the Berlin neighborhood Kreuzberg with the music club SO 36 and it was deeply impressive. There was a new unknown intensity and rawness in this music. I did a great number of paintings that deal with this phenomenon.

But my interest was to transfer the energy of the music into painted energy. You will not find the fashion elements of punk in my paintings, I was not interested how people were dressed and behaved. My paintings are not realistic, most of the compositions were done from memory, I did quick sketches which I then transferred on big canvases. With big brushes and accompanied by loud music, a kind of action painting.

In 1977 you were a founding member, along with Rainer Fetting, Salomé, and Bernd Zimmer, of the Galerie am Moritzplatz in Berlin, which is associated with the Neuen Wilden. Can you say how this significant development came about?

In brief: Salome and I were students in the class of Hödicke, and he told me one day about an empty space in Kreuzberg, and that we could use it as a gallery space and show our own works. We asked some friends to join us, which worked.

Then we renovated the space and started to do exhibitions.

One reason to found our own gallery was the boring gallery scene in Berlin at that time; the few galleries that showed contemporary art were mostly showing the so-called: Kritische Realisten. What we did, was totally different. In the first year of the Galerie am Moritzplatz, you could see performances, concerts, films, photos, paintings and drawings. Within the following years painting became more and more important.

And from the beginning we had a fast growing number of visitors. A lot of the openings were like parties. And the older generation of artists like Lüpertz, Hödicke, Koberling or Polke liked the gallery and gave works for group shows.

Was there a strong community spirit amongst the painters of your generation? How conscious were you all of forging a new cultural direction?

In the four years we run the Galerie am Moritzplatz there was a strong team spirit amongst the painters. We found out that we were following similar strategies and ideas in painting. There were people who were totally against us and who told us permanently that it would never work what we were doing and that made us even stronger and motivated.

Things changed when we had the big group show “Heftige Malerei” in the Haus am Waldsee in Berlin in 1980. That was a breakthrough. Very quick we got a lot of media attention and German and international galleries offered us one man shows. And the first serious collectors appeared. As with nearly all artists’ groups the team spirit faded slowly when it got commercial. And despite all rumors the Galerie am Moritzplatz was never a financial success.

In 1979 Martin Kippenberger took over the management of the Kreuzburg club SO36, and he began to change its direction to include a crossover between punk, new wave and visual art. It soon became one of the finest new wave venues in the world, and it inspired a number of important paintings. How important was it for young artists?

Kippenberger arrived in Kreuzberg in 1978. He rented a big loft at the Oranienplatz which he called Kippenberger’s Büro (Office) and here he organized exhibitions and curated group shows. I lived opposite to him on the corner of Oranienplatz and I hung out with him often in his studio, or he came over to my apartment. We always had a lot of fun.

Because of an inheritance from his mother he could afford to become the co-owner of the club SO 36. SO 36 in Berlin was beside the restaurant Exil, the most important hangout for artists and painters of Kreuzberg. The audience in SO 36 was a mix of squatters, anarchists, punks, artists, performer, fashion-hipsters and those from the underground scene. But sometimes you could also see David Bowie, Iggy Pop or Patty Smith among the crowd. The space was pure and naked, very minimalistic, and the music was incredibly loud. And it was extremely inspiring. Beside the music, Kippenberger started to organize other events. In 1978 Rainer Fetting and I created a big wall painting in the SO 36 and showed Super 8 Films.

There was an opening and then, two weeks later, everything was overpainted. Bernd Zimmer painted a larger-than-20m long painting of a subway, and showed it for only one night in the SO36. I remember also a great evening where you could see new short films from New York filmmakers, mainly from the Lower East Side.

1980 you travelled to New York, which must have been an amazing experience. How did you find that city?

I had been in New York in 1978 for a while, I knew Soho, the gallery quarter, already and most of the clubs. I had a scholarship from the DAAD to stay for one year. I soon had a small apartment in the Lower East Side, but it was too small to work on big canvases. So I did sketches and works on paper which became important for a series of paintings that I did in Berlin later. New York was a rundown city and many areas really dangerous. I felt never really secure in my small apartment in the Lower East Side, at night I often took a cab to go home. But beside that, I had a fantastic time and got a lot of new ideas for new works. In New York I also started to take a lot of photographs, mostly slides and black and white.

Untitled, ( Elvis), 2005, Collage, 40 x 30 cm, Images courtesy of Eleni Koroneou Gallery.

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Dispersion on muslin, 1981, 1.75 x 2.20 m

New York had this incredible intensity, even stronger than Berlin. You could feel that there was something changing in the art world.

How long did you live there? Was there much interaction with New York painters?

I lived there in 1980 and in the middle of the 80s I had a loft in SOHO on Wooster Street, corner of Spring street.

The loft belonged to Annina Nosei, my gallerist in New York.

And each time I came to New York I could stay there and work. But beside the work, I stayed very often in New York cause I did a lot of one-man shows there, not to forget the big group shows “ Survey of recent tendencies in painting and sculpture” and later “Berlin Art” in the MOMA and at the end of the 80s the big “Refigured painting”- show in the Guggenheim Museum. Through all the years I had contact with a lot of New Yorker “art stars”, you could meet them on dinner and cocktail parties of collectors and gallerists, openings and after-show parties or in the than famous restaurants like Odeon and Indochine. But that doesn`t mean that there was much interaction, people mostly cared about their own business and were very competitive.

In the early ‘90s you and a group of artists ventured to the Greek island of Syros and inaugurated MoMAS (Museum of Modern Art Syros). What was the attraction to Greece?

What other artists were involved?

Michel Würthle, the co-owner of the legendary restaurants Exil and Paris Bar in Berlin and his wife Katharina owned a house and a wonderful piece of land on the Cycladic island of Syros. I live besides Berlin since the beginning of the 90s also in Athens, because of my wife, the Greek gallerist Eleni Koroneou. As I know Michel Würthle since the late 70s very well from Berlin, we visited him sometimes on Syros. Martin Kippenberger, also an old friend of Michel and Katharina, did the same and he started to work and paint on Syros. He painted most of his world-famous self-portraits on Syros. As Martin Kippenberger had joint the gallery of my wife in the beginning of the 90s, he did some shows in her gallery with works he had done on Syros. And at that time he came up with his idea of a virtual museum which he called Momas, Museum of modern Art Syros. On a mountain opposite the port of Syros was an unfinished building of a slaughterhouse. Martin declared it as his museum site. And he invited artist friends to contribute something to his Momas idea. Chistopher Wool, for example, did road signs with the word MOMAS, Cosima von Bonin cooked spaghetti, Steven Prina did a wonderful performance by the sea and Chistopher Williams showed experimental films in a small cinema of Ermopoulis, the islands capital. Most of the time I joined Kippenberger to Syros, there was never a big audience, just 10 to 15 people, but we always had a great time and lots of fun.

anything realistic of the city. They were mostly abstract and they were paintings about the colour grey. These paintings have nothing in common with my paintings of architecture from Berlin in the 80s. The Omonia paintings were inspired by this endless sea of concrete, that you see when you overlook Athens from a higher point. And especially in winter the city shows all kinds of grey.

Collage has been an important aspect of your work over the years. How do you go about selecting and combining images for these works?

From the beginning I was interested in collage and montage.

By the way: a film you cut is nothing else. At the end of the 80s I did a whole series of big painted collages which I glued on canvas and showed them in New York and Berlin. And in the next 20 years I did a lot of collages but didn`t show them.

In 2012 I did a book, OBSERVER, which showed a selection of my collages, mostly from the last 10 years. This works are mostly done from collected photo material. The photo material I collect is filtered very strictly and ca 90 % of it is thrown away before I start to work with it. And it takes time to finish a collage.

Can anything be the subject for art?

Sure, but not for any artist.

What are your thoughts on today’s art schools – and do you have any advice for young painters who are just starting out?

With art schools it’s always the same: When the right people in the right time at the right place meet, great things can happen. That was the situation in Berlin at the end of the 70s.

That was the case at the Düsseldorf academy in the 60s and 70s, it happened in London with the Goldsmith College and it worked at CalArts in Los Angeles in the 80s. But there are no dead sure recipes.

Your work has constantly evolved and changed over your career and you have regularly pushed into new, unexplored areas - technically and conceptually. Would you agree that this is an essential position, for an artist?

For me, definitely. I never liked the idea of creating a trademark and following it endlessly until it gets shallow and academic. That’s totally boring. I’ve always worked in series and groups of works. I like to change the medium and the issues. Also, my way to create a painting has changed over the years. Times are changing and attitudes change. I always liked a phrase from the 80s: Art has to change what you expect from it.

You have said: “When I work … the subjects can come from many different things, such as photographs I have taken, images from magazines, drawings. I am not one of those artists who looks out a window and paints”. Has this always been the case?

Yes. The way I work is more conceptual then it seems. As an example: In the beginning of the 90s I started to live besides Berlin in Athens, Greece. And after some years I painted a big group of oil paintings called Omonia, paintings about my experience of the city Athens. These paintings didn’t show May the farce be with you, 2000,2 x 1.30m

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Tireless Dedication

FRAGKISKA MEGALOUDI Fragkiska Megaloudi is an independent journalist covering humanitarian stories and news, about issues such as poverty, gender roles, drug use, people displaced by conflict, refugees and much more. A part of my work is dedicated to the consequences of the financial crisis in Europe and the marginalization of the poor. She works for Al Jazeera, the Spiegel, Huffington Post UK, the Guardian Development Network, Devex (global media development platform) and has contributed for publications by Universities such as the Feinstein International Center of Tufts University, also UN agencies and Aid Organizations. She has worked as a report and public information officer for the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Manila, the Philippines, and just completed a book on DPRK (North Korea). Her intrepid trekking in the line of fire, often taking her to dangerous areas of murderous conflict and extreme crisis, as well as her tireless dedication in giving a voice to those who otherwise would never be heard, makes her an exemplary beacon of hope for journalism in the 21st century. Fragkiska Megaloudi was interviewed exclusively for Nakedbutsafe by Panagiotis aka Otis Chatzistefanou.

All images courtesy of Fragkiska Megaloudi.

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Tell me a bit about yourself. Where were you born, and how were you shaped by the environment in which you grew up?

I grew up in Athens in a working class neighborhood, I have one older sister and my father was a construction worker. My origins are what I could call “humble” but in a good sense. I learnt to appreciate simple things in life, to work hard and never take anything for granted. Coming from a poor family also made me to relate more with ordinary simple people.

How would you describe what you do to somebody who doesn’t know anything about you?

I started as an academic. I have a PhD in Archaeology and for five years I was teaching at the University, first at the University of the Aegean in Greece and then at the University of Western Australia in Perth. In 2007 I was granted an academic leave and I worked as Head of Mission for an NGO in Jordan. I was working with Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria. I traveled extensively to Syria, Israel and Palestine, a valuable experience that made me familiar with the cultural and political history of the Middle East and its people. Working in a humanitarian contexts had a profound effect on me. This experience, together with the birth of my son in 2009, changed the way I have planned my future. I abandoned my academic career and I moved to Uganda where my partner was also working. After that all changed.

I started working as humanitarian reporter and I travelled extensively in Africa and Asia. I lived in North Korea for two years. I have worked as Public information and report officer for the United Nations in the Philippines.

I work as a humanitarian journalist for IRIN News, Asia and Africa, I am a regular contributor at Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, I have worked as humanitarian analyst for the development platform DEVEX funded by the USAID, in the past I have reported for the German Spiegel and for various media in Greece.

What would be the common denominator between all the activities that you are involved in? Is there a specific context or meanings that you cross-reference from one area of your work to the other and what would that be?

I think the best way to answer to this question is by using the words of Bertrand Russel: ” Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind” You’ve just published your first book. What is it about?

Well it is not exactly my first book as I have already published a scientific book in English in 2006 on the history of the first agrarian economies of the eastern Mediterranean.

This book now, that is published in Greek but we plan to publish it in English as well, is going to be out mid- January.

It recounts my experience of living and working two years in North Korea, from June 2012 to March 2014. I describe my life there but I also analyze how the system works in the country. I think that North Korea remains misunderstood by the outside world, partly due to the lack of access by foreign journalists and researchers but also because public opinion about the country has been shaped by overused stereotyping narratives and images. In my book I want to speak the truth.

Would you care to describe what you do in practical terms?

Is there a particular routine that you follow during your work days? Do you often visit locations of crisis? Under what capacity do you work there? Which is one of your most memorable trips and why?

I visit crisis as humanitarian journalist. For the past 3-4 years I was covering humanitarian crisis for both IRIN news and Al Jazeera. I think the most memorable-also because is the most recent- is my work covering the Boko Haram insurgency in Northeast Nigeria and my recent work in Jordan where I reported about the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan and the living conditions of Syrian refugees in the country.

Do you think that the concept of European identity – or even identities – is valid? If so, could you define the value and belief system that frames and supports such a construct?

I also wonder if such a thing exists…What is European identity?

Is it a common set of values, such as humanism? Is it Europe specific? Is it democracy? Do we really have democracy in Europe today? I am really very skeptical on such labels…

How would you respond to somebody who irrationally fears that their European culture and civilization might be negatively affected by the incoming Muslim refugees and immigrants? How can one effectively cope with and resolve this social panic?

Somehow I understand this fear and I think that it is not only European. I believe that Muslim refugees also worry about the loss of their own “identity”. This is something that many Syrians told me in Jordan. I think the only way to cope with this is through knowledge. There is no other way.

Europe seems to focusing primarily on the basic / biological needs of refugees (food, shelter, water, medicine) and seems to underestimate their psychological well-being. Given your experience, what kind of psychological support is necessary for people caught up in the vortex of humanitarian crises; I think support needs to be provided in different levels.

There is no one-size -fits-all solution. Refugees are not an amorphous maze. They are individuals with different needs, different backgrounds and often different expectations.

Among the refugees there will be families but also former fighters, rebels or members of the regular army. Those people need special psychosocial support; they might even need to go through a de-radicalization process in order to be able to return to a normal life. Refugees have experienced loss, death, torture abuse; many have been displaced two or three times. Every time they have to start from scratch. This is a crushing burden for a person. They need help to adjust, they need information of what to expect in their new country.

Often there are serious cultural differences. All those issues have to be addressed in a respectful but effective way.

Could you trace the original feelings and thoughts that inspired you to be a journalist who specializes in work with a humanitarian focus?

Curiosity, a passion for travelling and knowing the world, a desire to be where the action is and experience it first -hand.

What pleases you to share with the people you meet? Do you feel you are affecting their lives for the better and how?

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I don’t know if I affect their lives. Sometimes I feel that we -journalists or photographers- we take advantage of the people. We write their story, we get the credits but nothing really changes for them. I always get very connected to the people am working with. I spend weeks or even months with them. I have some limits that I never cross. I will not use their stories for my personal promotion, I know that I am privileged because at the end of the day, I can leave while they cannot, so I try to be as useful as possible. There are cases where we managed to highlight a story and find solutions for the people. This is when I feel that what I am doing is worth doing it. I will never be able to disconnect myself from the people I am working with. If I wake up one day and what is happening around me does not affect me anymore, it’s time to change profession.

What is Boko Haram actually doing in Northern Nigeria?

What are the main motivations behind their actions? Are they primarily religious, economic or political?

It’s a complex situation. It’s political, religious and socioeconomic at the same time. Boko Haram wants to create an Islamic state in NE Nigeria. They oppose to secular education but also to any kind of government structure.

The disdain towards and fear of boko (Western education) arose from its historically close association with the colonial state and Christian missionaries. This also suited colonial educational policy well, as the British had no intention of widespread education anyway. The aim of colonial education, particularly in northern Nigeria, was to maintain the existing status quo by imparting some literacy to the aristocratic class, to the exclusion of the commoner classes. The jihadists built on an existing historical narrative. But beyond that, there are also many political interests. Local politicians support the jihadists to promote their own agenda. The war in Libya has also fueled local tensions and a part of Qaddafi’s arsenal has ended up in the hands of Boko Haram fighters. The crisis is now regional; it involves all the countries around the Lake Chad and not just Nigeria.

How intense is the military presence in cities and areas ruled by Boko Haram? How dangerous is it for a white man to move around there?

It is very intense. White people cannot work in Borno state of fear of kidnapping. I was the only white journalist up there.

I witnessed two suicide bombings and one attack. It’s a very dangerous place.

In your article about Boko Haram you mentioned the following phrase “Beautiful proud women who have seen more than you can stand from man.” How are you personally affected by people who have had such experiences?

It affects me a lot. The situation of the displaced people in norther Nigeria is very hard. We are talking about 2.5 million people that have been forced to leave their homes. They have seen unspeakable things. They have seen their children and their friends slaughtered, their daughters raped and kidnapped, their homes burnt to the ground. They have lost everything and they end up extremely poor in the towns or inside government run camps where they have nothing to do and where their children risk to be raped or abused again.

We cannot imagine the suffering and the pain that those people have experienced.

Having had the privilege of an insider’s view about North Korea, how much would you say that the Western media distorts the reality over there?

North Korea is notoriously opaque, with strict controls on information and a censored state media. Foreign journalists -with the exception of AP and Chinese and Russian agencyare not granted access to the country. Information brought together with much imagination and gossip, comes out from intelligence officials or diplomats and is then channeled to journalists working in South Korea or Japan. A political agenda is often hidden behind those reports. What one should keep in mind is that the debate over North Korea is heavily politicized. Information is crucial and can highlight human rights abuses and lead to policy changes. But fabricated and erroneous reporting can have grave consequences on the lives of ordinary North Koreans that are being punished for the acts of a government that they have no control of.

Misguided reporting and the cartoon picture of North Korea shifts the attention from the important changes that taking place inside North Korea and hampers our understanding of their political impact.

While you were in contact with people in North Korea did they express an opinion about the political situation of their country and Kim Yong Un? What were their living conditions like?

North Koreans never discuss politics and they never talk about their leaders. I had several encounters with North Koreans and we were talking about daily things, our life, families, daily problems, nothing political. The country is poor but it’s far away from the images of starvation. People don’t starve but they don’t eat quality food. Living conditions are low to average, there is a minimum for all, for example all people have a place to stay, a doctor to attend them, all children will go to school.

What advice would you give to a younger person who idolizes you?

Oh no, why should some idolize me? I have done nothing to deserve that. I often receive email from people asking me for advice on how to do what I do or just to tell me how they like my work. It’s is flattering but it also comes with a great responsibility. So I don’t really know what to say. Every person is unique, everyone has his/her own path in life, so I wouldn’t know which advice to give. I am nothing special Any plans for the future you would like to share?

Well I just finished my mission in Jordan and am currently working on a web interactive that we will present about the refugee crisis in Jordan and a feature that will be published in Al Jazeera. I also have my book coming in the next days, after those delays and I am excited. My next mission will be in Africa in the next months. I am trying to secure my visa- so I cannot reveal the place but it’s going to be in a country that faces civil war and has a refugee situation as well.

Tough -Talking Poetry

Alex Cameron is an Australian singer-songwriter whose amazing album “Jump the Shark” is already an indie classic by word of mouth, charming fans of the alternative with its moody atmosphere framed by solid songwriting, sparse electronic production and idiosyncratic delivery. As his mordant lyrics testify, he’s a master of urbane bitterness via tough-talking poetry a la Bukowski, while on stage he proves himself to be a captivating performer, simultaneously channeling and updating the dark allure of esoteric rock n’ roll icons such as Low-era Bowie, Pete Murphy, Suicide, Bryan Ferry and Ian Curtis. Alex Cameron was exclusively interviewed for Nakedbutsafe

by Panagiotis aka Otis Chatzistefanou.

What kind of environment was the one you were raised in and how did those circumstances contribute to who you are now?

I was raised in two locations. One was coastal. I was born by the sea. I’m like a big white stick so floating in the sea wasn’t really comfortable for me. I felt like dried dog shit. The other was rural.

A town called Deep Water. My mother’s family are cattle farmers and sheep shearers. It was traditional. Isolated. Australian. I remember there being a lot of space to think. I latched onto pop music as the basic atmosphere for thought and creation. It drove my imagination. Also the landscapes were vast so I would write a lot in my head. Dialogue. Melodies. Scenes. It was perfect for me to create worlds. I killed a lot of rabbits and loved dogs. First time I saw a sex act was in the back of a ute. In the dog trey. My dog Wilbur mounted another sheep dog and I saw the red rocket right at eye level. I still remember the rattling of the ute and Wilbur’s mechanical thrusting. It was a quick thing and both dogs seemed unaware that it was happening. They were panting and looking off into the distance at separate thoughts.

Is the theatrical aspect of your act a form of rebellion about the cult of success itself?

It absolutely started that way. The act is a product of circumstance. I write what I know about, and what I know is basic obscurity. Normality.

A craving for something more. The songs were also a punishment for feeling entitled to more. On stage I am what I need to be to get the job done. Since the first time I stepped on stage and performed this set I’ve been telling a story. The story is ongoing. It’s about failure and accepting the beauty of failure. What drives the show is a genuine desire for security through success. What the show ends up being is a search for a way around that. I am constantly searching for other means of satisfaction. Those moments of satisfaction have so far been on the fringe. On boats singing across the harbour other boats. Or on the street singing out of a guitar amp. Or playing for a pint of vodka and a plate of potatoes. Those moments are satisfying because they’re real.

What kind of emotions and thoughts do you want the audience to experience?

It’s all about how the audience feels. It has nothing to do with my emotions. They shouldn’t have to care about how I feel. And I don’t want them to. My job is to make them feel something. It’s gotta be a celebration of that connection. How I feel changes from show to show.

Lately I’ve stopped drinking before going on stage, so I feel elated before I perform. I’m not nervous drunk. I don’t have any filth in my blood so my heart beats properly. And to sweat feels good and warm, not tingly and uncomfortable. And I know it’s hot. And I gotta keep moving. Work to do and what not.

Does constant self-examination extoll a high price from your morale, especially when focusing on your existence through the lens of fear?

I’ve struggled with morale in the past. People warned me about becoming the things I was singing about. I suppose they were assuming that I wasn’t already the things that I’m singing about.

Perhaps it’s not normal to so openly admit to possessing many of the things that constitute failure. But I did that. And it hurt. But I mean what I say when I tell people to celebrate those things. i wanted to find beauty in failure and I did. So morale is high. My energy to perform is expanding. And I want to live despite having discovered these disgusting things about myself. Denying them in the first place felt more self-destructive.

Could you teach a lesson of universal value learned from your mistakes, a moral tale that would help dissuade young artists from repeating such errors?

I don’t think I’m at a place where I can impart definite knowledge.

But I can say that I’ve been making music and performing since I was sixteen. And it was self-belief that kept me going. But self-belief can be delusion. And for the greater part it can feel like that. Like mental illness. But you have to commit to something. Don’t apologize for writing songs. Don’t say sorry when you sing them. And find a way to get off. Enjoy it. Find something that makes you horny again. And find someone you love having sex with. Wait for it. And jerk off or flick your bean if you have to in the meantime.

If you could erase something from reality what would that be?

The need to explain emotion to someone that I love.

photographed by Maansi Jain in Berlin.

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Unapologetically Idiosyncratic Existential Palliatives

-- stability and community. I’ve been here long enough that I’ve ended up with a real nice collection of friends and contacts that I would have a tough same saying goodbye to. Also, given that knowing people lies at the crux of this trade, it only stands to reason that I stay. I still like the city a lot, though the writing does seem to be on the wall that things are changing, and I’m, perhaps unfortunately, resistant to that change.

Suffice it to say, I’m not feeling great about the way the neighbourhood is going. Artisanal does not register as positive with me.

Kevin Halpin is a 30-something Canadian expatriate living in Berlin where he promotes musicians and concerts through his Shameless/ Limitless events. Slowly but surely, over years, he has managed to define an uncompromising aesthetic that is simultaneously international and localized. Fiercely independent and unapologetically idiosyncratic in both practice and taste, the roster of artists that he represents varies wildly in style, from cold-wave electro-pop crooners to ethereal singer-songwriters including any and every permutation of recherché meta-fusions. Ultimately, he has managed to forge a vital signature that underlines a new wave of 21st century declinations about the potential of pop music, that most important of existential palliatives.

Kevin Halpin was interviewed exclusively for Nakedbutsafe by Panagiotis aka Otis Chatzistefanou.

Are you the same person when you decided to live there and today?

What has changed, if anything?

Well, I’m different in that I’ve consumed 10 000 beers in the meanwhile.

That’s gotta do something to the stuff that constitutes me. Sometimes I worry that I’m not different enough. Post student ideals (roughly) still in check. Party appetite undiminished. Thirst for new experiences and interest in meeting new people strong as ever. One difference, at least in how I approach this project, is that I now favour a more traditional approach to shows and parties than I did in the early days. When this was just getting started, doing things at abandoned Iraqi embassies and half sunken ships in the Spree was the norm. Fun though those pursuits were, I’ve come to prefer at least a modicum of comfort (though encountering entire bathrooms that are out of order is still par for the course) in my cultural pursuits.

How would you describe what you do?

While it would be tempting to describe what I do as being a mix of sending countless daily emails, spending every third night in a venue, sorting through technical minutiae, tracking down odds and sods that more often than not prove to be unnecessary, keeping contacts happy and engaged, finding new contacts to replace old contacts who are no longer happy and / or engaging, hanging posters in the streets, researching new artists and investing time and money in what can sometimes feel like a less than efficient manner, I could also just use a single word: I’m a promoter.

What is Shameless/Limitless and how did it come about?

Who are you? Where were you born, where did you grow up and how did your environment shape and influence who you are today?

I was born and raised in Williams Lake, a small logging and mining town in interior British Columba, Canada, It’s something of a challenge to find a through line from my upbringing to where I am now, as not a lot was / is going on there in the way of show throwing and party promoting. That said, the interior is frontier country, so building something from the ground up (as I have done with Shameless/ Limitless) is standard operating procedure. Beyond that, though, the environment which I come from has very little to do with the world which I now inhabit. “Promoter” is not a job option, or even a commonly understood word, in those parts. My high school friends have a very hard time grasping just what it is I do.

How long have you been living in Berlin and what is it that makes you stay here?

I moved to Berlin in the summer of 2008. That makes 7 and a half years. At this point, the things that keep me here are -- and I realize the irony in this as these were the things that I was leaving when I came

Shameless/Limitless puts on parties and shows in Berlin. It is my attempt at realizing some kind of ill-defined ambition to “work with music” and to “party all the time”. It’s me sat at my desk sending off mails and anticipating problems and stressing over any number of potential issues, all the while listening to a continuous stream of amazing music, striking up relationships with interesting people and, more often than not, going out, and staying out, late. It came about as a result of moving to Berlin and attempting to follow through on an interest I had always had, but had never had any luck in pursuing. The beautiful thing about Berlin, at least at that time, was that the barriers that had previously stopped me from doing this kind of thing (be they legal, social, or financial) didn’t exist here. Selling alcohol without a license?

No problem! Don’t have a personal relationship with the promoter that has a monopoly in town? No stress -- the city is plenty big for everyone.

Can’t pay the exorbitant fees for rent and licenses for an official venue?

Easy, use an abandoned space instead! Slowly (I’m talking Berlin slowly here -- over a matter of years) I started getting a better idea of what I was doing, and the current form of S/L came into being.

What have you learnt over all these years doing what you do?

It is important to always have enough alcohol for the band to reach lift-off. That, and to approach events with an attitude that is a kind a sweet spot between “stressed to the max this has gotta happen right now” and “chilled the fuck out it’s gonna work out don’t worry, brother”, as equal amounts of both are needed to make an operation like mine work.

photographed by Anneke Kaan in Williams Lake, Canada.

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Also, on a more practical level: it doesn’t matter how good a friend you are with the band. Knowing the agent is what matters. I’m reminded of this last one pretty frequently.

Is Berlin independent music a scene worth noting and why?

What is it that motivates you most about what you do?

Sure it is, but come on, would you expect anything else from a guy whose job description explicitly includes “Rep Berlin independent music”?

I just get a kick out of being around interesting people doing interesting things. As luck would have it, both the number of people I meet and the number of opportunities being presented to me seem to be on the uptick. So long as the trajectory continues in that direction, I’m keen to find out what will happen next. That, and, come on: this gig is more often than note exceedingly fun, and shortcoming though this may be as I pass from “junior adulthood” to “definitely adulthood”, fun seems to be a more motivating factor than anything else.

The longer I live here and more caught up in the local scene I get, the less reference I have for what is happening elsewhere. That is to say, I can’t comment on if the wild variety of things happening here -- from forward thinking producers charting heretofore unknown territory to a thriving old school and very legit punk community to a whole host of DIY 80s influenced AM gold songwriting showstoppers to party stars with chart topping EDM ambitions -- is worth noting or not. I’m going to lean towards yes.

Do you ever see yourself as a person who produces culture? If so, what are your values as a cultural producer?

What is different in Berlin in terms of the music industry, as compared to other Western cities like London or New York?

Yes, to an extent, I do. It could be a matter of believing your own press, but I’m told often enough that the work I’m doing has some arguably real, small but meaningful impact on the city, or at least on a group of people who seek this kind of stuff out.

Given that I’ve only spent limited amounts of time in London or New York (or any other major Western city, for that matter) I’m not really in a position to comment on that. What I have to say is mostly boilerplate Berlin: the cheap cost of living, the extremely lax licensing laws, and the distinct lack of high earning potential in Berlin must have their effects. Generally positive, I would imagine.

I tend to be drawn artists whose ambitions are more coloured by art than commerce. As such, I tend to value and support artists who favour self-expression, boundary pushing, or music for music’s sake over people who are more interested in some notion of “notoriety” or “financial success”.

Do you feel responsible for the artistic integrity of the people you promote?

Absolutely. Though at times it can be difficult to discern just how much people are paying attention, I feel that my working with an artist or on a project is a tacit endorsement of it. I’m hoping that means something.

Of course, I have come to realize that integrity comes in different forms.

I’m not opposed to the pursuit of financial spoils per se, though it does tend to rub me the wrong way when the art seems to be serving a financial end rather than the other way around.

On the few occasions that I’ve tipped the scales to favour commerce, the outcome has been decidedly disappointing. Which is, for the sake of integrity being a big part of this operation, probably for the best.

How much does your personal taste account for the artists that you collaborate with?

A whole lot. My liking an artist that I work with is kind of a deal breaker.

One of the benefits of keeping things small (albeit, in fairness, small is actually as big as I’ve been able to make it to date) is that my operating costs are low, so I don’t have to make any curatorial sacrifices to cover overhead. Also, this is probably a given, but it only stands to reason that if you’re going to set out to do something you enjoy, you may as well try to surround yourself with people you like and engage in projects you believe in.

How personal or social is your relationship to the artists?

Generally speaking, and especially if we manage to connect in an organic way, the relationship is personal. I can imagine that in the past it would be tough to fathom how such a vast network of people, based in diffuse hemispheres, along diverse coast lines and in very different cities could be considered friends, but hey, such is the beauty of the time and age we live in.

It takes a certain kind of discipline to make it work here, albeit an entirely different one from the “nose to the grindstone, day in day out” mentality that is required in cities that demand more paid working hours from their inhabitants. No, the discipline that is needed here is one which pushes you to get out of bed before you absolutely have to, to work on a song when you could be out socializing, to call it a night on your own accord, and to maybe get something finished in the absence of anyone imposing a deadline.

Do you have a notion of what a European identity is? How do you relate to this notion, or the absence of it?

European identity? Perhaps it says something about my feelings on it, and my approach to it, that even though I’ve lived on the continent for 7+ years, I still approach living here as an outsider. As inclined as I may be to paint myself as being an “other” against my will, that might not be the most truthful of answers. I’ve put little to no effort into integration, and, more often than not, I wear my outsider status as a badge of honour. This doesn’t stem from any particular distaste (well, maybe a little) for the picture on the ground here, but rather from a value that I arrived at over the course of my travels, which tries to put individual character and experiences ahead of more prominent identifiers like nationality, language, etc. That is to say, I view life and living here in an admittedly contradictory but also harmonious way that sees relationships and exchanges existing in in a frame that is vastly bigger and infinitely smaller than just “European”.

How politically conscious are you? Do you have a sense of civic responsibility? How does this affect your life and work?

Given how much of a firebrand I was back in my student days, I’m a little surprised at how passive I’ve become as I’ve settled into adulthood.

Apathetic would be the wrong word, as I put time and work into being aware, and energy and sorrow into being angry. Where I come short, though is action. To quote Broken Social Scene: “Every time I take a stand, I get world sick”.

Defeatist though this may read, it just seems to me that knowing, and subsequently committing (shit, I’m not even sure what order that is supposed to go in) to a perspective and a line of action on any given issue is a near impossible task which results in anxiety clocking in at

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a higher than desired level. I suppose that I apply the maxim “Think global, act local” down to a level of putting my wants and worldview first, all the while holding out some hope that I’m perhaps doing something right, for the greater good, and that the vibrations will amount to something of a positive outcome.

What are you reading, listening and watching right now?

I’m currently working through Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, “Purity”.

His ability to not only identify, but also so easily communicate, the minutiae which makes up so much of human relationships never fails to amaze me. The fact that a good chunk of the book is set in Berlin doesn’t hurt, either.

On the much lighter side of the spectrum, a multidisciplinary artist named Jason Harvey recently released a book of his absurdist poetry.

I’m willing to wager that anyone who dedicates at least one minute to flipping through the book with feel glad they did, and will carry on their day with a smile on their dial.

Obvious though it may be, I mostly listen to people that I work with, many of whom I’m lucky enough to also count as friends. Molly Nilsson put out a fantastic record a few months ago, and Alex Cameron’s uncompromising and fully realized voice really strikes me as something special. He was recently in Berlin doing some recording, and I had the fortune of hearing some new demos of his. It is too easy to get lost in the hyperbole game when repping music, so I’ll just leave it at this: his new record is going to change the game.

I would be remiss in my promotional duties if I didn’t mention other artists from the truly deep well of talent currently affiliated with the S/L world -- people and bands like TOPS, Touchy Mob, Sean Nicholas Savage, Magic Island, Scientific Dreamz Of U, Seekae,...I could go on.

As far as recent films go, I really enjoyed John Maclean’s Slow West and Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria. They both managed to perfectly execute the ideas and aesthetics that they were aiming to communicate.

What advice would you give to a young person who wants to get into the line of work you do?

You can see this one coming from a hundred k away, but so be it: DIY. Do it yourself. Go to shows, send emails, respond to emails, send more emails, meet people, accept that money isn’t the main objective of doing this, be flexible in your aspirations, remain optimistic in the face of (sure to be persistent) failure, spin failure into success, realign your expectations, and it’s probably also good if you have another paying job on the side.

While programs and lines of study which purport to prepare people for the game exist, I can only answer this based on my own experience and outcome. As it is, my experiences to date have been unforgettable (except for the particularly late nights) and I couldn’t ask for much more in terms of outcome -- a fun, supportive, broad network of people who are concurrently floating on the rock, full of uncertainty and doubts, all the while having more fun than one could reasonably except to in this life.

The Myth Of Hard Work

A N T O I N E 93 Antoine93 is the chat-nickname sounding moniker of a 20-something Canadian singer-songwriter and producer based in Berlin. Not only blessed with pin-up boy good looks and an attitude to match, he is unabashedly ambitious on an international pop-star scale. A determined and incredibly dedicated artist who makes music that sounds as if it would taste delicious and sweet and sticky, there’s not a trace of irony in the quintessentially millennial directness of his shimmering, self-confident, synthetic Europop. A perfect soundtrack for the Snapchat generation, his polished sound shimmers with radio-friendly catchiness despite its DIY roots, disguising and making digestible not only the labour and struggle that is involved in creating his music, but also the heartbreak and emotion that each song is built around. Despite this masking, the bite in his songs still seeps out. As someone making pop within an alternative music community, he is able to push what is recognized as mainstream sound with the intention of creating music that is beyond trends.

Simultaneously delicious and familiar as well as unusual and specific, Antoine93 was interviewed exclusively for Nakedbutsafe by Lina Martin Chan photographed by Adrienne Marcella Kammerer in Berlin.

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Let’s start by talking about your new music that you have coming out! You’ve been taking some time with this album, what do you do if you’re not excited anymore after sitting on it for a while?

Yeah! I’m really excited because, it was done like, a couple months after I got here. But I wanted to wait and make a proper release and stuff. I wanted to take a step back from the music because sometimes artists want to release their stuff right away because they’re excited about it. But it’s good to be glad you waited, I would rather not put something out than put out something that’s just ‘ok’. That’s not the way I was going about it like, two years ago. I guess I’m not that old now but I was a bit younger and less experienced and I would have released anything I would have made because i just wanted to put out stuff but now I’m trying to make all my releases meaningful and trying to be proud of all my stuff even when it gets old.

In terms of trends and contemporary music, do you feel that it’s hard to make something that lasts and that is meaningful… do you feel yourself getting caught up in trends?

It depends what is at the core of your idea, I used to get a little bit caught up in trends, and more specifically I was really interested in all that post-internet stuff you know? I guess my project name kind of betrays that, but also now I realize it’s kind of simple in the end. That if you just have something to say and the way you say it is unique and relevant then it lasts forever. And things aren’t changing that fast, you know? I feel like now I care less about what’s the next big thing and more about making good, efficient pop music. And one thing that kind of struck me was, you know “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen? I am still really into that song and it came out in 2012 before she even got any major exposure, and I’m listening to that today and it sounds fresh. I mean it’s only 3 years I guess which isn’t huge, it’s not like Bach…

But imagine where you were in 2012 I was in school living in Quebec city and I was making DIY low-fi music. That was bad.

You think that’s bad? When you look back?

I think it’s not for me, some people do it well but right now nothing keeps you from making high quality stuff. Now we have the tools within reach, why do people want to make shitty sounding music? And I don’t mean standardized and generic. It’s more like some people don’t want to give any thought to production. I’m like ugh. I get it, it’s countercultural, it’s a statement. But you can still be punk and work hard on having rich, complex production.

I would never aim to make a political statement with my music, it’s mostly just emotional, a lot of it is about feelings.

But yeah - the most important thing is that I don’t want to push the meaning too much. My lyrics and style of writing are very simple, I like to take the simplest idea you can think about and explore that. People don’t like complicated shit.

Your work is very emotional! We’re the same age, and we’ve been talking a little bit about people trivializing our experiences because of our age. Recognizing that there is still a lot for us to learn but also that just because you’re young and you haven’t had all those experiences yet, doesn’t

mean that your experiences of, for example heartbreak, should be invalidated or isn’t as painful as every other heartbreak.

Montreal, and my friends there than I used to be. So that’s one of the biggest things that changed, or is specific to our generation, everything is so global.

It’s also crazy how the myth of working hard works on me. I also believe that a lot of the time, that if I work hard I will succeed eventually and get a lot of money.

Exactly. I had my first one last year actually, and I was almost like I don’t want to get better. It’s so hard, you want to understand your pain and get to the bottom of it. But the good thing is now I can write songs about it. It’s amazing no?

Turning negative energy into art. Wish more people could do that. It’s funny I get really efficient when I’m sad. If I’m writing a song, it’s the most efficient way: to feel a strong emotion. It doesn’t have to be sadness necessarily. Just a strong emotion.

But your move seems to have paid off, you’ve been getting a lot of support here.

But that’s the American dream. Something that was invented to make middle class people feel like life was fair and that capitalism was a fair system. It’s not and we all know about it.

But a lot of people buy into and support that bullshit. “The harder you work the more success you’ll get”. No. Everything is unfair, and once you acknowledge it, that’s when things get easier because you have low expectations. But yeah I find myself thinking like that too. If I just work harder it will work out. The thing is that my class and situation is not gonna change drastically. Maybe if I stick to that way of thinking, what’s the worst that could happen - if I work harder you know? Maybe there’s a bit of truth in it. I don’t know it’s like 65% bullshit 35% true. The myth of hard work.

I wanted to say something about experience. I only want more experienced, more knowledgeable people around me. And if this means I’m being laughed at once in a while because I don’t know shit then so be it. It’s good to be reminded of your ignorance and the fact that you need to work harder and be better. You should always feel uncomfortable, it sounds absurd to say that. But I mean if you feel so comfortable that you shouldn’t be doing anything different in your life it means there’s a problem because you’re probably not moving, you’re stagnating. I don’t want that.

You don’t like being comfortable?

I really like taking really hot baths with bubbles. I do. I haven’t done that in a while. I don’t have a bath at my place. I don’t like comfort in the main aspects of my life.

Problems really bring people together, you can relate or sympathize with the other and if it’s too easy then it’s boring.

Struggling gives you experience.

Sadness is so weird, because it’s not necessarily something that you don’t want, it’s feeling something, it’s not nothing. I think the best way to deal with it is to let it come to you and let it do its work and then let it go away. There’s a need for it. Society is afraid of sadness, “how are you?” “I’m good”, society don’t like people who are just okay or who are sad.

Do you miss Montreal?

I miss some of the people there, but I feel really comfortable living in Berlin. I want to go back for a couple weeks because I want to catch up with my friends. I don’t identify very strongly with cities. I’m more into going places and moving and keeping it going, so that it still feels special, once I get too comfortable in a city it’s hard to get that creative boost.

So it’s not because of Berlin, just because of my mindset.

It seems that you’ve been very productive in Berlin!

Yeah, not necessarily because of Berlin, what I’ve been realizing actually is that cities used to have a stronger influence on people’s work but now I feel like the way we’re connected through the internet makes a bigger difference.

So you can’t say my music sounds more Techno because I live in Berlin. I’m almost as connected to my community in

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Yeah! Welcome to Berlin has been especially great, [Berlin Community Radio] did so much for me this year, Converse and them paid for my new single and then i got this i-D feature and I don’t know if it’s because I’m new here or it’s just the way it works here but I’ve felt very supported and it’s been a really good year. I’m glad people are starting to back my music, because it really makes a difference when other people start really caring. I’ve been doing everything myself for many years and it’s not because I want to. A lot of people think that’s where I put myself [the DIY box], but I’m just poor. Some people wait until they have a contract before putting out an album but I just need to make it happen. It’s good to feel like people are starting to get my stuff. It’s hard to make straight up pop music within the indie scene. It’s a bit like a mirror of what it would be like to be an indie musician surrounded by mainstream people. Thankfully, now the boundaries are getting blurred between those two spheres.

But it’s a struggle. Like people are scared, people from a very creatively openly scene, the underground scene project an image that they’re open minded and very inclusive but if I say that I’m interested in making music that could enter the Top 40 if I had more money, then it turns people off in a way. For them it’s too simple. But it’s not! It’s so complicated.

The stakes are high. I advocate for mainstream pop music all the time, but I actually like all different kinds of music, I just feel responsibility to make up for all the people who don’t take it seriously. I feel like I want to show people that it’s not all black and white, sometimes there is amazing quality stuff, sometimes there’s bullshit. Some stuff on the radio is groundbreaking.

You said earlier that you used to be influenced by postinternet aesthetic, and thinking about not being inspired by any city in particular, do you think that by saying that it makes you still part of this post-internet movement?

No! no, because you know it’s like Duchamp with arts, after Duchamp everything you make has a conceptual aspect to it. You don’t have to mention it. It goes without saying.

It’s the same with Internet. It’s just a tool that you need to acknowledge and use. I feel like I don’t even have to identify with internet culture to know that I’m part of it and that it’s influencing my music. And the distinction, is like that before it was more focused on the aesthetics of it and something that is more on the surface because it’s a lot of like visual recycling and what I realized over the past years is that I need to have a strong core, and that style couldn’t be the main aspect. You need something stronger than trends.

Spirit Of Resistance

PASCAL BRUCKNER Writer and philosopher Pascal Bruckner is the personification of the consummate French intellectual superstar: a suave man of letters whose provocative writings invoke a wide variety of literary, scientific and philosophical debate about his immediate social surroundings and the world issues at large. Unafraid to irritate those that would rather avert their eyes from conflict, he has criticized the strain of guilt that lies underneath contemporary European culture and typifies the post-modern condition. Many take issue with his insistence on confronting the reactionary aspects of radical Islam or his willingness to question delicate issues such as the legal state that will support the stability and order that are necessary for the fragile experiment of multiculturalism to prosper. In an age when Europe is facing one of its most critical evolutionary periods, voices like his are necessary if not always comfortable because they dare to raise the level of critique and vigilance against tyrannical and violent potentialities that are inherent in each and every crisis. Pascal Bruckner was interviewed and photographed exclusively for Nakedbutsafe by Emanuella Kondylatou in Athens.

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Following your work you express strong criticism upon French society. You remain on your views after the late incidents? You remain against multiculturalism?

We live in a multicultural society as long as all the communities that compose the society follow the rule of law and the value of the French republic which is secularism, democracy, equality between man and woman and freedom of speech. As long as you recognize those values there is no problem. But if in the name of your own culture or religion, you refuse those values, if you ask for separate rights, there is a problem.

In your opinion what is the solution about terrorism in France?

Radical Islam needs to be neutralized one way or another, militarily in the Middle East in which concerns Isis. But the main issue is ideological: Islam needs to transform itself into an ordinary religion such as Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism etc. Islam is the only religion creating trouble in Europe when the rest of them exist without bothering one another. We need to succeed about antiterrorist operations to crack down the killers. There is no choice of failure, in war it’s rather victory or misery. But in this war, we need the support of the Muslim community in France, the agreement of the imams preaching moderation and humanity to the faithful. I hope they will do it.

Do you believe Europe is taking a rather conservative turn? In politics there is a rise of fascism all over Europe.

There is a rise of extreme right wing parties in Greece an Hungary, not fascism, maybe –potentially to be –fascism. But within democratic systems their activity can be prevented and minimalized. For example leading members of Golden dawn in Greece are kept in jail and will face justice. We should not confuse populism and fascism. There might be connections between the two but they are different. The only fascism that really exists is islamofascism, they do not discuss, they kill you.

So the biggest source of fear in Europe is terrorism?

Definitely yes. It’s not just France, the attacks in Paris are a wakeup call not only for Europe but for the United States and Russia, for the UK, Germany, even for Greece. Greece is an important member of European society even if lately they got quite cornered by the rest.

Angela (Merkel) was wrong for suggesting Greece to leave the euro, although it’s a fact that Greece needs to reform itself, needs to change its tax system. As we all know Greece will never reimburse its debt which should be postponed or cancelled in part as we cancelled the debt of Germany in I953, I think. The reform should include the Church, the ship-owners –even God has to pay taxes in Europe but it’s crucial for Greece to remain part of the euro system.

What is the importance of Greece to remain part of EE? Sentimental value, symbolic value. Rome and Athens where the two founding cities of Europe. As a European I feel closer to Greece than to Scandinavia for instance. I believe that Greeks made a statement about it in June and refuse the German dictate.

How has the art industry has changed on 21th century in your opinion?

Oh, it has changed tremendously basically out of few aspects: First you see a reconciliation of the artists and the bourgeois, which is a very interesting phenomenon. Classically, since the 19th century, artist considered themselves bohemians, they were renouncing the bourgeois way of life, regularity, the thirst for money and the conventional way of life. They were living out of the moral conventions of society. Now that has totally changed. The artists are making a lot of money when they succeed, they seem to imitate the bourgeois way of life. Also the bourgeois are fascinated by the artists, by their sense of transgression, they consider them the avant-garde part of society. It’s a mutual fascination. Now modern art is more of a business as Andy Warhol said. Artistry is the ideal of the modern individual. The core of our own existence.

So art is the opposite of society’s norms?

In principal yes, but in fact it has become the most conform way of living in the society. But there is more to it. All that interest about art from Sotheby or Bonham’s or even the museums has driven the attention of people about it. Art is the religion of Western society.

Paris was considered the capital of arts. Is it still n your opinion?

Yes I believe is still is, at least one of the three art capitals world wide.

The artistic scene in France is very active- only competition comes from New York-London kinda follows - and this competition is definitely for good. Apart from the west there are rising art scenes as in Shanghai, Bombay maybe Hong –Kong. One of the things about contemporary art is “Is it art, or is it just a farce?” Sometimes it just looks like garbage or daily objects but the art critics and the snobbish collectors beg you to bow before it.

You’ve said before you would like to come back to life as woman?

Why is that?

Your work seems to be an amalgam of extreme emotions, a study upon human relationships and their dysfunctions. Where your inspiration springs from?

From my experiences, my life for some part, and some basic intuitions.

As a young man I had a few, although overall, I lived a very simple life but with strong passions and a taste for traveling. I’m interested by the way most individuals by a certain point transgress their principals and suddenly they discover something new about themselves. The plunge into the total unknown.

What is your vision of the future?

Oh for at least two reason: Woman can bear children. Also –about intercourse - woman’s pleasure is much more profound and richer than men’s. Less mechanical and more multilevel. Tiresias said that to Zeus in the Greek mythology. I always wondered if a woman’s life is indeed harder than a men’s in society, apart from the fact that they are doomed under the dictatorship of time.

Is it a fact that men feel intimidated by women?

The female body has that effect on most men. It’s a primitive fear that the female body could devour, swallow them. When everything about men is apparent, woman’s anatomy is much more mysterious. You find traces of this awe in archaic texts and today in most religions where woman is prohibited

I’ve lived a very good life so far. I received the recognition I was looking for. I have been showered with blessings, much beyond my expectations. I’m looking forward for indefinite repetition of the same pleasures, I want to have the same emotions, same sensations but I know that is childish. My goal now is to serve, as much as I can, my community and my people. Social-wise we are going through difficult times, we are entering a war and we need to resist. Spirit of resistance, as during WWII, that is what we need in Europe now.

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Portraits of Europe in Transformation

EUROPEAN HUMANISM Nakedbutsafe presents an attempt to capture the changing face of contemporary European humanism as an inspirational abstraction, free from any dictated narrative, yet still beguiling in its particularity. In times of radical change such as ours, it is urgent that we, as citizens of the world, define what our identity is about, what values we hold dear and makes us human out of our mere being. Let’s start with aesthetics, because the world is in the eye of the beholder. What we choose to admire, for reasons that not always make sense but often appeal directly to the senses, can only evolve if we further our concepts of what beauty is, and for this particular continent, it should be about a world full of possibilities and new definitions, like any civilization and way of life that aims not only to survive but to flourish.

photographed by Christos Karantzolas styling: Nicolas Eftaxias 1641

this page: headpiece doramarra.etsy.com, earrings Givenchy, top Herve Leger, underwear La Perla, left page: jacket Junya Watanabe Comme Des Garรงons, bodysuit Maison Margiela, boots Dior.

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this page: top Christian Siriano, rings Laruicci, right page: jacket 3.1 Phillip Lim, dress Nina Ricci, belt Alexander McQueen, pants Saint Laurent.

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this page: headpiece doramarra.etsy.com, earrings Givenchy, top Herve Leger, underwear La Perla, left page: srings Alexander McQueen, Photographed by Christos Karantzolas @ Balloon Agency, styling: Nicolas Eftaxias / nicolaseftaxias.com, hair Stylist: Menelaos Alevras @ celestine Agency using Oribe haircare products, make up: Robin Schoen /robinschoenmakeup.com using MAC Cosmetics, styling assistant: Marvin Funes, models: Johanna & Rita Saunders @ Muse Model Management, Mona Matsuoka @ IMG Models, Ida Dyberg @ Fusion Model Management, Delaney Coyle @ Major Model Management

Enlightened European State

LEAH STUHLTRAGER

Leah Stuhltrager is a 30-something American consultant, curator and project manager living in Berlin. Her influence spreads all over the world as a passionate advocate of the nexus between contemporary art, technology and the digital world. Starting off as a founder of the Dam Stuhltrager gallery in Brooklyn in 1998, today she is well known as a co-founder of The WYE creative and production agency, a vehicle through which she is involved in countless projects that span everything from event-based international exhibitions and forums to magazine editing. Her busy schedule includes collaborations with an impressive list of institutions and events, ranging from SOFA in Bogota, TEDx and German Senate in Berlin, and the Convergence festival in London - while her curating refreshingly interconnects a variety of both left-field and mainstream audiences.

An embodiment of contemporary international dynamics and simultaneously a visionary for an enlightened European state of mind that knows no borders or nationalities, Leah Stuhltrager was interviewed exclusively for Nakedbutsafe in Berlin

by Panagiotis aka Otis Chatzistefanou.

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Tell me a bit about yourself. Where were you born, and how were you shaped by the environment in which you grew up?

I’m from the States. I grew up engrossed in the punk music scene, which was a gateway to bucking the norm and creating my own path. I set out young – headstrong but naïve looking for a better future. I had figured a life for me must exist somewhere. I found nothing was out there anywhere waiting on me, that surviving demanded street-smarts, and tomorrow was only what I could make of it.

In my early teens, I lived in a damp, grey basement (lovingly named “The Dungeon”) outside Philadelphia with other kids.

Existing in the face of not having money, without any security of the next day, void of being entitled to anything, working twice as hard just to prove one deserves a chance to be like others while unlike all… This is what shaped me. It is the fighter I am under the armor.

Those kids I slept on the floor next to in my early days remain some of the most unique, brilliant talents I know today.

Knowing humanity because of them – I know the world is a place where extraordinary people find ways to do meaningful things. This is why I am a fighter under the armor.

The year I graduated college, I opened my first art gallery: Dam Stuhltrager with Cris Dam. DS was among the first art spaces in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Ten years later, I opened an international annex in Berlin which grew into THE WYE and became my homebase.

I still collaborate with Cris and travel to from NYC for projects. Right now, Cris is leading curation of an exhibit with Anna Frants (opening in NYC at One Art Space on Feb 12, 2016) so I can focus on Cyberfest NYC (at Pratt University Feb – Mar, 2016).

Tell me a bit about THE WYE. Right. In short, THE WYE is a creative hub. It started in the massive (20,000 sq ft) iconic Old Post building on Skalitzerstr.

This past spring, the landlord ran out of extended time to meet contemporary city codes – which placed us in the middle of a building war that was not our battle and had no winning position for us. We moved from the Post and were immediately offered other locations by developers. Instead, I decided the extreme labor involved in running a brick-andmortar institution would be spent better serving all those / that I cared for.

From Brooklyn to Berlin, it’s only now - for the first time in over 20 years - my day is not occupied with the operations of a large venue. Despite this change stemming from circumstances out of my hands, the last 6 months has been a fast, exceptionally successful transition. I went from overseeing daily operations of a massive physical space (which I resented consuming my time but valued providing me the experience to deal with more than could be imagined) to concentrating on the creative agency and event production services which have always been my/THE WYE’s intentional focus.

I took my staff with me as THE WYE. In the past months, myself and my team as THE WYE project managed Asia Pacific Week for the Senate, CYBERFEST (Russia’s largest Art::Tech festival), the Berlin-Tokyo Project for Recruit Technologies...

We created a full color magazine for the important German

newspaper FAZ from concept to completion… We consulted on an event with BMWi and the International Chess Championship… We curated a part of the video art program at SOFA (South America’s largest Art::Tech festival) in Bogota…

We spent a week as guest of Ireland’s Cultural Department exploring international development with Belfast, Derry and Dublin… We served on dozens of panels, mentored at accelerators and innovation initiatives, served on Advisory Boards, advised VCs on business ventures and collectors on artworks… We created videos, a website and CI for clients…

Among a plethora of other things. Well, it’s been exciting to say the least to matchmake Art::Tech as a full creative / production agency.

example. It’s been exciting because I get to meet all these fascinating personalities but also explore subject matters not entirely in the mainstream; retaining an edge which is crucial for me. Of course, there is a lot of work to be done because both readers and the publishing world are only now getting accustomed to the experimental and avant-garde concept of technology as a medium of interdisciplinary creativity with layered impact and application in our lives.

What is your relationship to Berlin like? You get asked to contribute to some panels that are directly affecting the life of this city beyond the esoteric world of contemporary art and advanced technology.

You were recently named as curator of digital art for Convergence festival, happening in London this next March.

What is that about and what kind of challenges are you facing there?

Convergence originated foremost as a festival for music and tech. This year, the organizers have decided to build the interactive art programming into its own force. An art exhibit will run parallel to the top notch music events planned. I am plotting a very special exhibit of local and international artists worthy of the venues including London’s best spots.

(Barbican, Village Underground, and Truman’s Brewery among others…) I’m up for the challenge of curating and bringing to fruition approximately 15 mostly site-specific installations.

Do you think an emphasis entertainment is a problematic aspect of the contemporary art scene?

As in everything, I try to bring to attention incredible projects that are neither Art nor Tech but on the frontier of both fields.

It is also imperative to me that work I show be able to engage diverse audiences, and embody both medium and concept poetically. Culture needs to be more than entertaining – to me, it must be inspired.

The art I choose needs to be bold and innovative enough to attract media and visitor’s attention, but also different and deep enough to challenge their notion of what interactive and digital art means.

Increasingly in exhibits I see, “entertainment” has replaced concept. Flashing lights, rapid movements, noise… Sometimes

My relationship to Berlin is multifaceted. I can’t talk about some projects that I am involved in as a consultant at the moment, but I am a witness of the process of the city changing and in need of a dialogue to happen between communities trying to accommodate each other’s needs without distorting what this city is about.

it is hard to tell if I am on a ride at Disneyland or at a museum – and to me there is a difference between those two in intention, meaning, and experience.

Do you see this showbusiness ethos affecting other areas of public life beyond the art scene?

Well, look at the rising popularity of Donald Trump in America… He is a flashy, rapidly moving, loud buffoon - who is potentially the candidate of Republican nomination – but worse, popular Republic vote. To rule him out is to not understand the contemporary ethos of a society trained to respond to brash, baseless sensationalism. I consider it dangerous that voracious media and hypnotized audiences are cultivating this mutual addiction to superficial entertainment at the cost of critical thinking.

Recently you’ve branched out into publishing as well, with Ahead magazine. How did that come about and what are your impressions from such a direct experience with the media?

THE WYE was retained by Red Onion (license holders for TEDxBerlin, Munich and Frankfurt) to create AHEAD, a fullcolor print magazine exploring new areas where creativity, technology and innovation merge to produce new ideas that will change our world and define our future. It’s distributed by the iconic Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), one of Germany’s top newspapers. Theorists, scientists, critics, and trendsetters have shared their insights including Andrew Keen (writer and tech critic for Wired magazine), Dr. Wolfgang Coy (Prof, Humboldt Uni), Natasha Vita-More (leader, Transhumanist Movement, Entropy Institute), Aubrey de Grey (Chief Science Officer at the SENS Research Foundation) and Max Hollein (Director, Stäadel Museum Frankfurt), for

Corporations and big business want to participate in the future of urban planning and at the same time need to integrate their projects in the actual life of this city, which is a complicated and rich international environment with a lot of history, a vibrant present and very interesting prospects.

It is not enough to invest money though – if one is to dream about Berlin, one has to involve other people and account for their dreams, aspirations and potential, otherwise you end up with a white elephant. And people in Berlin can, and should be, quite sophisticated and critical, which makes everyday transactions and processes, particularly those about the urban identity, a fascinating act of balance.

How do you feel about Europe at the moment?

In general: proud and hopeful.

Do you have a concept about what a European identity is?

What would that be?

You are asking the rebellious, eccentric, androgynous villain what her concept of identity is? I oftem tell people my name is Cornelia Conspicuous so earnestly they believe me.

What are you watching, reading and listening to at this moment?

I watch Bianca Del Toro clips on youtube and Vimeo. I read less and less email and more and more texts despite refusing to have a smart phone. I listen to everything from Sean Kingston to Buzzcocks to Rod Stewart to The Cars to Amanda Palmer to H20.

What advice would you give to a younger person who wants to follow in your footsteps?

Stay Gold.

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Documenting The Scene

Michael Rädel is the 40-something German Editor-in-Chief of blu magazine, which is the biggest lifestyle magazine in its country of origin.

Based in Berlin, he takes care of the editorial content which is published also in five other editions, with localized material for each of the German cities it is distributed. Parallel to this immensely influential position, he is a well-known nightlife personality, not only promoting and manning the door at various queer parties, but also documenting the scene with his lens as a photographer for the party pages of the magazine he runs.

As such, he enjoys a unique view of a city where legends are made every day in more ways than one. Michael Rädel was interviewed exclusively for Nakedbutsafe by Panagiotis aka Otis Chatzistefanou.

Where were you born, where did you grow up and how did your environment shape and influence who you are today?

I was born in Freiburg in 1977. It’s a beautiful and very old city in Southern Germany next to the Black Forest. I had an awesome childhood right there! Since we’re all Christians we did celebrate Gods’ creation by caring for it and planting a lot of trees, a tree for each kid in the family… When we walked to the church on Sunday, mum or grandpa showed me even the small and yet beautiful animals on our way – animals that I like to photograph right now and put them on Facebook. My parents moved to the Lake Constance when I was teenager, it was there where I learnt sailing and riding horses… I think it’s because of my childhood and the love of my parents and grandparents for nature, that’s why I’m so into animals, trees and landscapes now. After a hard day in the publishing house or a long night at a club, nothing’s better than walking where the trees are humming and the birds are coupling.

You’ve been the Editor-in-Chief of blu magazine for the last 13 years. Could you describe what you do and tell us a few memorable moments from this experience?

Well the day starts a 8 or 9 am, after having checked my emails, I start writing about the things that are worth writing about, I contact artists for interviews, I plan bigger features like home stories and listen to the music I want to write about. Normally twice a week I’m having an interview with an artist, performer or gay activist. Some memorable moments?

Being one of the VIP guests at a Barbra Streisand concert and having a good laugh with Erasure – I was the first one in their three decades long career who asked why they have birds on some of their albums… Andy simply likes those little

fluffy singers. Most exceptional was my date by chance with the Pet Shop Boys at a gay underground Disco party. They were really nice and liked to ask me things about the Black Forest. And I really did enjoy my interviews with Jess Glynne, Lori Glori and Jam & Spoon – artists that I really love. One of my most precious stars of Berlin I met in private: Nina Queer.

Back then she was just a clubber like me and we had a good time. Over the years she became the drag icon she is now and I became the Editor of the biggest gay lifestyle magazine in Germany. I think we did something right…

What has your experience as the Editor in Chief of blu taught you about the Berlin LGBT scene?

That there IS a community where “lost“ people can get back to social life and do something good for the others and themselves. It’s not all about bitching around at the Fashion Week, in the club or at a vernissage. There are many, many people who are willing to help, to take risks and who are willing to give you a chance.

How much and in what ways has LGBT Berlin changed during the period of your editorship?

When I came to Berlin in 1999 it was all about fighting against Aids. Nowadays Aids isn’t such a big theme anymore, since the disease lost its danger (somehow). The community is now heavily involved in the big city life…it shows a lot of presence when it comes to socio-political issues. I have a feeling that now we’re demonstrating more frequently on the road – almost each month.

All photographs by Michael Rädel.

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How do you think your work as the Editor-in-Chief of blu has influenced what the Berlin LGBT scene is about?

In 2000 the music of the gay scene was Vocal House, Techno – and Punk in the Underground. blu was always on the forefront of promoting parties and festivals that included Indie Rock and Disco. I think we did a good thing to help to make parties like HORSE MEAT DISCO and LONDON CALLING well known and successful. blu surely helped to show gay clubbers that they can dance to any kind of music at night (and day). We were the first monthly magazine in Germany with a drag queen as a writer, Biggy van Blond.

I think it helped her career and it helped other drags who followed her footsteps like Barbie Breakout, Polla Disaster and Gloria Viagra to name but a few.

Do you feel responsible as somebody whose work helps to define what it means to be a gay man in Berlin?

Sure. I want everybody to get the chance to lead a good life, I’m happy if I can make them go to the Pride marches, dress well, go to the gym and to parties where the team is well paid and the music’s good. And I promoted bears and hairy chests 15 years BEFORE all the hipsters had them. ;) What would your value system be?

Be open minded, love the one you’re with. Take care of your body and don’t do fast food.

What is your experience with LGBT people living outside the Western/European cultural environment that you represent?

What message would you like to send them?

Never give up your dreams. It sounds cheesy but it’s true.

God will help them who are willing to fight for their beliefs.

You really can achieve everything you want. Don’t provoke people too much, just let them know and experience that it’s okay to be gay. We’re not dangerous for anyone.

Who would be an ideal cover and exclusive interview for blu? Would you put a straight personality, excluding stars like Madonna or Lady Gaga who have a strong LGBT fanbase?

We already had the perfect cover with a picture by Patrick Mettraux, my favorite photographer. Just a man with rabbit ears in front of a yellow wall with a blond beard. Awesome!

Straight people “fighting“ for our goals are always fine to be on our cover. We already had Désirée Nick, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and many other straight stars. An exclusive interview with Moby would be great. Wait, we already had him…

You have a parallel career as a nightclub photographer, documenting the beautiful people having fun at the various parties that you collaborate with. Could you tell me how this activity started, why you keep doing it and what does it mean to you?

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Well, it started in 2000 when I wanted to take pictures only for me, myself and I. But then I discovered that the magazine I just started working for was in need of a new photographer.

And since I knew all the relevant and interesting people, I kept on taking pictures. It makes me happy if I can get a picture that clearly defines the moment it was taken. It’s like a documentation of Berlin’s nightlife to me. And it always makes me happy to make people happy by photographing them for blu or Social Media. :) Would you say your photography is a visual extension of your work as an editor? If so, how?

Yes! It’s a very good way to get a good story for the magazine.

I like the privacy of the moment, when I take a picture of someone, we always talk a bit more than just blah, blah, blah…

Could you define what makes a Berlin night out memorable for you?

Coming to a club where the people who work there are happy to see you, have some good chats and laughs. Since I like to dance, I’m happy when the DJ’s are playing stuff I like at night: House, Disco and a bit of Eurodance. I like parties where club kids, artists and drag queens have fun together.

And I do enjoy bearded men having fun to Donna Summer’s anthems.

What are you watching and listening to at the moment?

All the movies with Audrey Tautou and Meryl Streep and a cheesy soap in German television: „Um Himmels Willen“.

Talking about music: I’m really into Jess Glynne, m people, Kylie and the Queen of Pop Madonna. Right now I’m listening to Faithless. And to make it even gayer: I never stopped listening to ABBA, The Sugababes, Technotronic, Boney M. and Ace of Base… „Life Is a Flower“, you know?!

What advice would you give to a younger person who would like to follow in your footsteps?

Treat everyone you meet with respect and care for everyone next to you. Stick to your friends and to your family (even they can be a pain in the ass) and of course to yourself. Be honest to yourself: If you love fashion doesn’t mean you can become a famous designer. Find out what you can and then do exactly this. Don’t be a slut, don’t do too many drugs: Sadly I saw great artists becoming dumb zombies because of drugs. And don’t fart in fashion shows!

Opulent Spectacle And Experimental Improvisation

Born, raised and based in London, performer Theo Adams is a one-ofa-kind creative genius who redefines the notion of what theatre is and can be. Working along with his eponymous company, which numbers at least twenty other artists from any and every stage discipline, Adams has been building a legendary international reputation. Pioneering an idiosyncratic fusion of opulent spectacle and experimental improvisation, his vision is fuelled by a passionate conviction about the transformative powers of ritualized emotional catharsis. Attracting fascinated attention and earning fawning accolades simultaneously from the art, theatre and fashion worlds, his unapologetic brand of fearless self-expression draws inspiration from disparate sources, ranging from drag to Hollywood and onnagata to Broadway, for a deeply moving theatrical experience that transcends all the forms it borrows from. Theo Adams was interviewed exclusively for Nakedbutsafe by Panagiotis aka Otis Chatzistefanou.

Where were you born, where did you grow up and how did your environment shape and influence who you are today?

I was born and brought up in North London. Growing up in such a diverse and multicultural city exposed me to so much at a young age that, without question, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today without this city. London is in my blood.

It allowed me to be myself. I love travelling, but I’m never sad to come home.

How would you describe what you do to somebody who is not acquainted with your work?

I create performances, events, films and photographic work with the Theo Adams Company, a growing collective of artists, performers and musicians who I brought together in 2008. The work we create is varied and difficult for me to fully explain in a few sentences, but at its heart we make work that explores the extreme elements of emotion, relentless melodrama, catharsis and euphoria of both the performers and the audience. I see what we do as connected to the theatrical concept of ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ or ‘total work of art’. By that I mean that we take different artistic elements (music, costume, performance, dance, text, singing, film, lighting design, make-up, etc) and harmoniously bring them together with equal importance to utilize all the senses for maximum impact.

You state that you are self-taught, but your work is obviously the result of an education about the performance arts that is deep, nuanced and elaborate. How would you describe the method of your self-education? Did you have mentors or was it entirely a result of your own sensibilities, motivation and curiosity?

I left school very early, before gaining any qualifications, at the age of 15. I was meant to just be taking some time out to concentrate on my performance work as I had already begun to perform in various clubs and art spaces in London, but that little hiatus turned into a permanent move away from traditional education. I was lucky being in London as I was able to meet so many incredible creative people who became my friends and then my teachers (and I hope they learnt things from me too). The performer Scottee and artist Matthew Stone, who are two of the most important people to me, were really instrumental in my early development as a performer and both were responsible for lots of my early shows around London. I couldn’t have asked for better teachers. I guess because I haven’t gone down the usual paths for someone doing what I’m doing, my influences and viewpoints are a little bit different. My other university was the internet. I get obsessed with things; if I find something I like, I have to research and know everything about it. If there’s a song I like I will listen to it on repeat for days and find every cover and live version of it that exists. YouTube is the greatest teacher of them all. That little sidebar of suggested similar videos is one of my greatest resources. I may click on a video of, say, Roccio Jurado singing and then 5 hours later I find myself watching Bulgarian female choirs.

What have you learnt over all these years doing what you do, both as an artist and in terms of life lessons?

Trust your instincts and stick with them. Listen and be open and to everyone’s ideas, but know that even if your viewpoint may not be the most fashionable, if it feels right then don’t be afraid to go with it. Stand your ground and never compromise with the things that are truly important to you. Don’t take no for an answer and most importantly take what you do

photographed in London by Jennifer Endom.

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seriously, but never ever be afraid to laugh at yourself. We are only visiting the world for a short amount of time so embrace the ridiculousness of it all.

What is it that motivates you most about what you do?

I’m not sure if I was always conscious that I was going to be a performer; it all happened very organically. My mind thinks in a certain way, so I’m not really sure I could do anything else.

Creating performance is just in my nature and I always act from instinct. If I knew why I had the urge to do what I do, it would probably put me off doing it. However, when it comes down to the most basic level, in terms of the aim of my work, I want to make people feel alive and free.

Would you say that your work encapsulates a sensibility that is de-facto outlaw in the sense that it does not conveniently fit any specific artistic ethos?

In a sense I would agree, as I’m never really sure where my work fits within the wider cultural climate. Theatre people think I’m part of the art world, art people see me as part of the fashion world and fashion people see me as part of the theatre world. I don’t really feel I’m part of any of those worlds. I am just doing what I’m doing, but my work is about primal human emotion at its core, so I think it speaks to everyone who is open to it. I’m not really interested in being relevant; I’m only 26 and have already seen things come and go and then come back again. I am just going to stick to what I love and what gets me excited, and if people like it then that’s great and if they don’t then at least I’m still happy.

How important is anarchy and improvisation for your creative process, as opposed to discipline and precision?

In my early work, all my performances were completely improvised. When I began to bring in other cast members, things had to become more structured. My work today is about bringing that electric energy of improvisation into something that’s more disciplined. The theatrical process of intense rehearsal and the perfectionism involved in creating spectacle is contrasted with the performers’ deep primal passion to perform, to be alive and to express what is inside of them. I aim to collapse the invisible divide between the real person and the stage character. Primarily, my interest is in creating an environment in which the performers are not ‘acting’; rather, they are truly baring their souls completely free of any kind of self-consciousness, but without compromising at all on stagecraft. We strive to create a visceral impact through visual and emotional textures, and thus an equivalent memory, so that it lives with the audience as a real experience, not just a theatrical thought. That is why I believe my most crucial task as a director is casting. Finding people you connect with who understand your vision is vital. I find people from everywhere. It’s pretty instinctive; I can just tell if someone will work well with me or not. I’m interested in those people on stage that you can’t take your eyes off.

There’s usually one in every show that just stands out. I like to find those special beings and put them all on stage together!

My job is to put them in my world and find elements of their being that make sense within it, and allow them to be at their most free while keeping everyone as a united group.

Would you agree with the observation that a dark undercurrent is one of the most major dimensions of your identity as an artist?

I am drawn to spectacle, but it’s crucial that the core of the spectacle comes from the human truth of the situation. It’s not necessarily always a dark undercurrent, but it’s always a human one. I am ultimately interested in people. If life is theatre and theatre is life then we must, as artists, create an extraordinary reality; positive, beautiful and glamorous. Makeup, glitter and sequins may not be natural, but they can be honest. The ideas of irony and camp are old and not relevant.

If we are living our lives through a series of creative choices, we must make those choices as incredible as our imagination allows, but these things must be rooted in absolute fourdimensional truth, otherwise they are meaningless. The Spanish term ‘duende’ is one that I love and most clearly explains my motivations and feelings. In flamenco, duende is a rare special moment when the performer is freed from themself and their environment and becomes one with the music and audience spiritually. It is a magical transcendent moment that comes suddenly from the pit of the soul and can be felt physically. Lorca writes: “The duende, then, is a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought. I have heard an old maestro of the guitar say, ‘The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet.’

Meaning this: it is not a question of ability, but of true, living style, of blood, of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation.”

You have stated that you consider yourself a being who feels free from specific gender identities. Would you say you share an affinity with a contemporary wave of artists who choose gender identity as a central theme of their work?

Not really, I’m bored of talking about gender to be honest.

I don’t think about my gender; I am not defined by these boring social constructs. I’m gender agnostic. But I realize how obsessed the wider world is with gender and how they are obsessed with everyone defining themselves. People have always been irrationally threatened by ‘the other’, whether that’s gender, or race, or disability. But we are all ‘other’ to someone else and because of that we are all ultimately the same. It’s the abuse and injustice people have to struggle with, because of their ‘otherness’ that is the issue I care about.

People feel I am making a statement about gender by having red nails or long hair. I just like red nails and the fact I have XY chromosomes is irrelevant to that. It’s society that is making the statement for me. People can define me however they want. So, no, gender identity is not a central theme of my work, but I suppose for everyone else it is.

I am, however, conscious of feminine and masculine energy, which is something that is not physical or mental but about spirit and aura, which I see as a separate thing. I am aware that the work I create and the majority of my cast have a strong feminine energy, regardless of their chromosomes or their relationship to the notion of gender, but this is not what the work is about at its core.

What are your feelings relating to the mainstreaming of gender-variant expression that is happening in the currently in the public eye now?

The more that people are exposed to ‘otherness’ hopefully the less the irrational threat will become. But I don’t really see this ‘mainstreaming of gender-variant expression ‘ as a new thing, although perhaps it’s new for America. Growing up in the UK, we had Dame Edna and Lilly Savage - drag queens presenting light family entertainment shows on prime time TV. Dana International won the Eurovision Song Contest

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when I was 8 (I was actually there for the dress rehearsal).

Nadia Almada, a Portuguese trans woman, won Big Brother 2004 here in the UK voted by the public. These people were ingrained in the most mainstream popular culture. I feel in some ways that the ideas of gender have become more binary again.

The media are obsessed with the idea of the TRANSition from one binary to the other, but what we are not exploring enough is TRANScending all of it and letting people just be free to be themselves without the need to fit into this structure. Being a freak is not a negative notion, it should be celebrated. But I’m aware this can’t happen until there is full equality of the sexes socially, as well as legally. Once that happens then we can work on truly all being free to just be ourselves.

Do you consciously acknowledge performance traditions as expressed by your predecessors, which might include conscious and unconscious influences, teachers and idols?

I have so many influences and performers I love, and I try to be as transparent about my references as possible. Like I was saying earlier, with the internet, I have exposed myself to so much, but I think because I have viewed it all in the same place it has helped me view it all without any kind of hierarchy. I view a performance from Soul Train and an opera performed at the Royal Opera House as total equals. The idea of cultural Highs and Lows is redundant in the internet age. If you like something and it moves you then that’s all that matters.

This element of my work, especially the earlier work, is something that a lot of people seem to be interested in. We often use a collage technique for our soundtracks where we mix multiple tracks at once. We mixed a lot of opera and classical music with contemporary pop and RnB. People would always question whether this was a comment on the whole High/Low thing, but it was simply music that I enjoyed and I wanted to interpret all my references and put them together in a way for the audience to maybe view something in a fresh way. If I find something I love I want everyone to feel what I feel when I see / hear it. It’s about sharing Joy. Is the concept of artistic integrity important for you and how would you define it?

Artistic integrity to me is simple. If you’re passionate and believe in what you’re doing, it has integrity and that’s completely crucial to making good work. My motivation has nothing to do with social media ‘likes’, or even applause. As long as people genuinely feel that I have given some kind of hope to them then I have done my job.

According to the ancient Greek sense of the word, a stage actor creates moral values for the audience. Are you conscious or even accepting of such a role in your stage work?

I’m not the kind of artist that only holds a mirror up to the audience or society. I create a doorway into my way of seeing things and my values, perhaps showing a new way of thinking, a different way of being. But I’m not here to tell anyone what to think. I just tell people what I think - they can take what they want from what I do. My role is to manipulate the audience on an emotional journey. I believe the function of art is to act as a shortcut for people to experience these extreme emotions which are dulled in ‘everyday life’, and when you are taken to that place, that’s the most real experience you can have.

It’s what makes you know you’re alive. The artist’s job is to communicate in the most powerful and impactful way. You must find ways of getting into the audience’s soul. There is

a Hitchcock quote which fascinates me every time I read it.

“Some day we won’t have to make the movie, we’ll just attach the audience to electrodes and play the various emotions for them to experience in the theatre.”

How personal, as opposed to social, is your relationship to the artists you collaborate with?

I view my company as a family. Of course it’s a completely dysfunctional family, but a family nonetheless. We have worked together all over the world, in some incredibly strange and tense situations. We understand each other.

When working on projects away from the company, this becomes even clearer. We have a way of working where I can say a few words and they will completely understand what I mean and I have learnt that is not the case for everyone! They are all also completely incredible artists and performers in their own rights, doing amazing things and projects outside of the company. I’m the biggest fan of all of them and couldn’t be more proud and excited for all the amazing things they are producing.

Do you have a notion of what a European identity is? How do you relate to this notion, or the absence of it?

I feel I have a London identity and that I’m a citizen of the world. A European identity means one thing to me in 2016; the fact we have Eurovision, and the rest of the world doesn’t even know what it is.

What are you reading, listening and watching right now?

I’m constantly discovering new things, so I could be here all day listing everything, but the things that are exciting me most at the moment are the projects that my Company Members are producing. Jordan Hunt, my Musical Director, has made the most beautiful EP, which should be coming out soon. He is so disgustingly talented, it’s unbelievable. My Movement Director, Nando Messias, is currently touring his new show ‘The Sissy’s Progress’, which I was lucky to see in rehearsals and left me with goosebumps and tears in my eyes. It’s essential work. My Choreographer, Masumi Saito, is currently spending a year in Japan and has already created over 20 short dance films or ‘Movement Diaries’. They are all completely different and so inspiring. I could go on with everyone, but there are about 20 of us so it would probably take up your whole issue. However, if people are interested just Google everyone - they all have a bio on theoadams.com.

What advice would you give to a young person who idolizes you and would like to follow your footsteps?

Don’t idolize me, number one! Be fearless. Don’t try and impress - just focus on what moves you and trust your gut.

What are your plans for the immediate future?

We have just completed our first film project ‘Safety Curtain’ which will have its world premiere in the spring on TV here in the UK and then globally shortly after. I was really inspired by the filmmaking process and we are now planning several other film projects. We are planning our next live production for the summer. I can’t reveal too much about it yet, but we are taking over a building over 1000 years old in the English countryside, which has certain challenges, but I’m very excited about it.

Radically Confrontational

PLASTICOBILISM Plasticobilism, aka 30-something Greek artist and writer Nikos Papadopoulos, has become world famous with his elaborately staged images starring Playmobil children’s figurines. His subjects are always politically conscious and topical, a series of often poignant and sometimes darkly humorous vignettes that amount to a quite painful yet lavishly illustrated chronicle of life in Greece during these recent years of extreme humanitarian crisis and socio-political meltdown.

Although his work is already radically confrontational in its social critique, its message is further accentuated by a polished aesthetic directness that manages to encapsulate both narrative power and historical resonance in a social-media friendly format, making him a true 21st century art star. The following pieces have been created exclusively by Plasticobilism for Nakedbutsafe and are a sequence that perfectly represents his knack for telling a great story at the blink of an eye, spectacularly leaping from hubris and tragedy to hope and catharsis in the space of three panels.

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Transformation is the soul of fashion To change our appearance is an existential necessity that confirms our position in the natural order – it fulfills our wish to fly like a butterfly away from caterpillar yesterdays, to swan haughtily over ugly duckling mornings, to remain a stranger yet embody the possibility of being someone.

Nakedbutsafe Fashion Director Manos Samartzis and Creative Director Stratis Kas understand the alchemical power that fashion bestows our imaginations and life. The images they create prove that rags can lead to riches, both inner and outer.

From superheroes to night club legends, from every day mortals to cinematic idols, from quiet introspection to explosive expressionism it is this innocence and playfulness which fills the following pages with the joy of self-presentation as the poetry of metamorphosis.

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Stuck In A Closet With A Superhero

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WONDERLAND

photographed by Stratis Kas. fashion boss: Manos Samartzis hot pants Siv, boots Cori Amenta.

top H by Haakan Yildirim, skirt Leit Motiv, bracelets Nicholas K.

opposite page: jacket H by Haakan Yildirim, beach wear Valentino, boots Cori Amenta, this page: skirt Leit Motiv, bracelets Nicholas K, boots Cori Amenta.

jumpsuit H by Haakan Yildirim, bag Siv, boots Cori Amenta.

this page: shirt Asos for Reclaimed, skirt Emilio Pucci, boots Cori Amenta.

top Lanvin, skirt Domenico Cioffi.

jumpsuit Wunderkind.

opposite page: top Leit Motiv, this page: dress Fendi, belt Valentino, boots Cori Amenta.

jumpsuit Daniele Carlotta, shoes Giuseppe Zanotti Design, bracelets Nicholas K , sunglasses K3, fashion editor: Olga Bartzoka, fashion assistants: Alessandra Mastatuoni, Ellie Argyridou, makeup: Dimitra Altani, hair styling: Christos Bairabas both @ D-tales, special thanks to Studio 46.

I’m Going Slightly Mad

WHAAAAAAAT?

photographed by Stratis Kas. fashion boss: Manos Samartzis jacket Dior Homme, pants Hermés, shirt Givenchy, bow Carlo Pignatelli, rings Nove25.

opposite page: jacket Ann Demeulemeester, shirt Marc Jacobs, this page: jacket Corneliani, pants Versace, shirt Balmain, bow Carlo Pignatelli.

suit Corneliani , shirt Balmain, bow Lanvin, rings Nove25.

this page: jacket Balmain , pants Burberry, shirt Alexander McQeen, opposite page: jacket Calvin Klein, shirt Chloè.

opposite page: shirt Dior, pants Comme des Garรงons, this page: pants Fendi, rings Nove25.

opposite page: jacket Balenciaga, pants Dior Homme, shirt Balmain, hat Ilariusss, rings Nove25.

opposite page: jacket Balenciaga, pants Burberry, Shirt Les Hommes, this page: jacket Balenciaga, shirt Corneliani, bow Carlo Pignatelli, fashion editor: Olga Bartzoka, fashion assistants: Alessandra Mastatuoni and Ellie Argyridou, make up: Antonella Coluccelli using Chanel, Christian Dior, Physicians Formula Organic, Mac Cosmetics, hair stylist: Daniela Magginetti@MKS using Fudge, prop art stylist Mariano Franzetti, special thanks to Milano Studio Digital.

My Boomerang Won’t Come Back

WHITE & NERDY

photographed by Stratis Kas. fashion boss: Manos Samartzis 100% organic pee by Manos Samartzis.

from left to right : shirt Dior Homme, coat Stella Jean, trousers Balenciaga, shirt Balmain, coat Versus, trousers Lanvin.

this page: coat Gall, shirt Dior Homme, opposite page: trousers Balmain, shoes Cinti.

coat and trousers Mauro Grifoni, shirt Balenciaga.

from left to right: shirt Lanvin, coat Versace, shirt Les Hommes, coat Mardon.

opposite page: trousers Messagerie, shoes Bottega Veneta, this page: coat Trussardi, trousers Balenciaga, shoes Gap.

jacket and shirt Bottega Veneta, fashion editor Olga Bartzoka, fashion assistant : Alessandra Mastatuoni , Ellie Argyridou, make up and hair styling: Antonella Coluccelli Make-up Using: Chanel, Elizabeth Arden, Neve Cosmetics Mineral,Physicians Formula Organic, Royal & Langnickel silk set brush, hair Using: Organic cosmetics Naturalmente-Artec, Special thanks to Milano Studio Digital.

from left to right coat Mardon, shirt Dior Homme, trousers Corneliani, shoes Gap, coat Versace , trousers Lanvin, coat Gall, trousers Comme des Garรงons, shoes Vans.

Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor?

THUMBSUCKER

photographed by Stratis Kas. fashion boss: Manos Samartzis top Greta Gerardi, leggings Greta Gerardi, dress Sylvio Giardina.

opposite page: top Greta Gerardi, leggings Greta Gerardi, shirt Sylvio Giardina, dress Fendi, gillet Fendi, bag Giancarlo Petriglia, top Greta Gerardi, leggings Greta Gerardi, this page: shirt Melampo, gillet Marco Corso, skirt Mangano, belt Fausto Puglisi, bag Fendi, shoes N°21.

this page: top Greta Gerardi, leggings Greta Gerardi, collar Stella Jean, top Sylvio Giardina, top Fausto Puglisi, skirt Avaro Figlio, bag Oracle, hat Federica Moretti, shoes N°21, opposite page: top Greta Gerardi, leggings Greta Gerardi, top Domenico Cioffi, top Guy Laroche, t-shirt Bottega Veneta, skirt Stella Jean.

this page: top Greta Gerardi, leggings Greta Gerardi, top Emilio Pucci, gillet Twisty, skirt Marco Corso, dress Alberto Zambelli, shoes N°21, opposite page: top Greta Gerardi, leggings Greta Gerardi, shirt L’autre Chose, dress Sylvio Giardina, head piece Sampedro accessories, fashion editor: Olga Bartzoka, fashion assistants: Alessandra Mastatuoni, Ellie Argyridou, make up artist: Rachid@freelancer using Giorgio Armani Beauty, hair stylist: Mimmo Di Maggio@freelancer using Bumble&Bumble, prop and art stylist Mariano Franzetti, special thanks to Milano Studio Digital.

The Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun

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photographed by Stratis Kas. fashion boss: Manos Samartzis top Daniele Carlotta, bracelet Nicholas K, earrings and brooch Sharra Pagano.

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this page:top Lanvin, earrings Sharra Pagano, opposite page: top Daniele Carlotta,bracelet Nicholas K, earrings and brooch Sharra Pagano, bracelet Lanvin.

opposite page: jumpsuit H by Haakan Yildirim, earrings Sharra Pagano, this page: shirt Lanvin, earrings, ring and brooch Sharra Pagano, fashion editor: Olga Bartzoka, fashion assistants: Alessandra Mastatuoni, Ellie Argyridou, makeup: Dimitra Altani, hair styling: Christos Bairabas both @ D-tales, special thanks to Studio 46.

Chinese Freestyle

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photographed by Stratis Kas. fashion boss: Manos Samartzis shirt Les Hommes, jacket Carlo Pignatelli, trousers Carlo Pignatelli, collar Arthur Arbesser.

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left to right: jumpsuit Fendi, shoes Alberto Premi, shirt Cividini, coat Bottega Veneta, trousers Bottega Veneta, shoes Giovanni Fabiani.

left to right: shirt Les Hommes, jacket Prada, trousers Prada, shoes Alberto Premi, shirt Miahatami, Jacket Haakan Yildirim, trousers Haakan Yildirim, shoes Giovanni Fabiani.

shirt Cividini, jacket Redemption, skirt Redemption, shoes Giovanni Fabiani.

left to right: shirt Cividini, jacket Moncler, skirt Alysi, skirt Sveta, collar Arthur Arbesser, leggings Sapopa, shoes Giovanni Fabiani, shirt Les Hommes, jacket Stella Jean, trousers Stella Jean, collar Arthur Arbesser, shoes Alberto Premi.

left to right: dress Hermes, shoes Giovanni Fabiani, trousers Carlo Pignatelli, shirt PlĂšs que la vie, coat Stella Jean, trousers Bugatti, shoes Alberto Premi, fashion editor: Olga Bartzoka, fashion assistants: Alessandra Mastatuoni, Ellie Argyridou, make up artist: Rachid@freelancer using Giorgio Armani Beauty, hair stylist: Mimmo Di Maggio@freelancer using Bumble&Bumble, prop and art stylist Mariano Franzetti, special thanks to Milano Studio Digital.

Oh She Is A Big Girl Now

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photographed by Stratis Kas. fashion: Markos Andriotis All outfits were transformed and crafted by the stylist.

HUMBLE

make up using: YSL touchĂŠ ĂŠclat, Armani luminous silk foundation, MAC handwritten, kid and carbon eyeshadows, YSL faux cils mascara, Shu Uemura for eyebrows, Madina chic and shine, Kryolan water body paint in white, Dolce&Gabbana lipstick.

hair using: Bumble and Bunble hairspray, white hair powder Kai To tonic lotion, special thanks to Apollonas Papatheocharis for the latex accessories, Latex House Of Harlot, fashion assistant: Savvas Aslanidis, makeup: Dimitra Altani, hair styling: Christos Bairabas both @ D-Tales. Special thanks to Studio 46.

21St Century Gender Landscape

ZACKARY

DRUCKER

Zackary Drucker is an independent artist, cultural producer, and trans woman who breaks down the way we think about gender, sexuality, and seeing. She has performed and exhibited her work internationally in museums, galleries, and film festivals including the Whitney Biennial 2014, MoMA PS1, Hammer Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, MCA San Diego, and SF MoMA, among others. Drucker is an Emmy-nominated Producer for the docu-series “This Is Me”, as well as a Co-Producer on Golden Globe and Emmy-winning series “Transparent”. She is a cast member on the E! docuseries “I Am Cait”. As one of those who lead what is possible in the radically transformed 21st century gender landscape, she belongs to those artists whose medium is self-identity itself. Zackary Drucker was interviewed, exclusively for Nakedbutsafe by Panagiotis aka Otis Chatzistefanou.

Where did you grow up and how did your early environment influence and inspire who you are today?

I grew up in Syracuse, NY - which is about halfway between New York City and Toronto. I have a great family who always supported me being different than other kids. I was raised Jewish, and had a great community of kindred spirits at the synagogue I went to, though school was more of a mixed bag.

My Grandma lived a mile away and was always checking in on me, calling me after school or just walking in the door to ask what I had eaten for lunch and if I had friends. I remember being bored, despite being really active. I remember pushing the parameters and limits of the people around me. I remember pushing myself. I wasn’t exposed to art, but I had a famous cousin, Jonathan Ames, who is a writer and now a show runner (HBO’s Bored to Death, and Starz’ Blunt Talk), and I remember looking at his books on my Grandma’s bookshelf (‘they’re really very pornographic!’) and thinking ‘maybe I can do something bigger than what’s here in Syracuse.’ I moved to New York City the week after I graduated high school.

Did you know at a young age that you would be working in the arts?

I don’t think that I had much of a choice. I struggled in high school - going through puberty in a body that I felt hijacked by, and sticking out like a zebra in a hyena colony – so my grades were not terrific. I was “alternative” and survived high school, thank goddess, by spending most of my time in the

darkroom. Photography, self-expression, representation is what saved me. By the time I graduated, I had a rock solid portfolio and got a huge scholarship to go to the School of Visual Arts. Being an artist is the foundation underneath everything that I do.

At what age did you first feel the need to perform and how did this need manifest itself?

My mother is a spitfire, and danced with a local dance company, so I grew up seeing her on stage. I love my mother; she’s my muse and archetype. I’m probably a lot like her. My need to perform came from a desire to see myself, experience myself outside of my physical reality.

What would you say were your formative cultural influences?

Whom did you idolize or emulate or admire when you were a teenager?

Ani DiFranco, Kathleen Hanna, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, riot grrrl, Queercore punk, queer youth activism, John Waters, foreign and independent film. There was one winter when my friends and I must’ve watched a dozen films a week, every single Fellini film, and then Truffaut, Bergman, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Godard, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Wong Kar-Wei. Books by James Baldwin, Eileen Myles, Emma Goldman, Kate Bornstein, Riki Wilchins, anything from the Black Power movement… I could go on and on.

photographed by Telémachos Alexiou in Los Angeles.

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is moving towards obsolescence and it’s causing all of our cultural foundations and social organizations, all of us, to go haywire. I can’t wait for us to collectively relinquish our remaining notions of the binary and start seeing humans instead of men and women, trans and cis. There are so many people inside of us. We are different, we are changing, we are evolving in every moment. In each of our relationships we inhabit a different role, we enable different personality traits depending on our environment, our comfort level, our familiarity with what we’re experiencing. I identify as a woman, I perceive myself to be a woman, but I’m not gripping it in my jaws like my life depends on it, because above all else I identify as a human.

Do you feel responsible for enlightening your audiences about the themes that inform your work?

We are living at a time when the question of gender identity, and particularly its fluidity, is being examined publicly as never before. How does this historical context influence and inform your work?

I’ve always been fascinated with history, and I think that history is embedded in our DNA. But the history of trans people is sparsely documented and much more difficult to access than, say, our family history. My friendships with elders have helped me understand where I’m coming from, the tribe in which I am not a biological descendent of, but an adopted one.

What is your relationship to your audience? Do you prioritize between self-expression and entertainment? Do you consciously address your audience when you perform or are you focused inwardly?

Despite putting myself out there a lot, I’m more of an introvert.

I am a loyal friend and have really close and long-standing friendships — the majority of my friends in adolescence are still my closest friends. All of what I do I consider work, and as my work has become more public, I’ve begun to consider the reverberations more. That changed when I started working on “Transparent” and I was in a new position of working on a project that was way bigger than me, or my autonomous selfexpression.

Do you feel a responsibility of expressing a particular and specific narrative about what being a woman means or about how your audience perceives feminine identity? If so, what would that be?

I think that gender is so malleable, and we’re at such an exciting time right now; all of our conceptions of gender are being reassessed. Everybody has an opinion, though increasingly, I have less of an opinion. Everybody is right. Ultimately gender

Absolutely, the work speaks for itself but it’s so important for artists, for cultural producers, to know how to situate and contextualize what they’re doing to maximize understanding.

I like to complicate meaning, to trouble people’s initial judgments or observations. Life is an educational process for me. I want to keep on learning every day until my time is up, so I try to make that space for others to learn as well.

Are you uncomfortable with interpretations of your work that might not adhere to your original intent or do you welcome the unforeseen aspect of subjectivity from somebody’s opinion about your work?

An artist’s intention is always lost in time. I always say that my work is about being a human. I think that artists who overstate their creative or aesthetic intentions as supreme to a viewer’s interpretation are fooling themselves. We have so much to learn from each other. Art, for this author, is just a conversation starter; everything that happens around it, after it, is a part of the work too.

What advice would you give to a younger person who idolizes you?

I am just like you. I am a regular person. You can move this conversation forward, you can take it above and beyond me.

Maybe even colonize Mars. Aim high, work hard, you have the power to manifest your wildest dreams. Ignore anyone who tells you what you can’t do — they’re insecure, they’re intimidated by your power, you know better than they do. Do whatever you need to do to stay alive, it’s worth it. One day soon you and I will be in the same room and I will love you.

Any plans for the future you would like to share?

I’ve been working on an experimental film that will be completed in 2016, featuring my mother, Van Barnes, and Flawless Sabrina. All three of them are my muses. I cannot wait to release that out into the world. Beyond that, I want to keep learning and meeting people that are expanding the world’s potential.

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Shame And Scandal In The Family

“The transformation of consciousness starts when the moth becomes a butterfly”.

Manos Samartzis, publisher and fashion director of Nakedbutsafe.

“Personal transformation is a form of time-travel a landscape of dreams that were always here to begin with”.

Stratis Kas, publisher and creative director of Nakedbutsafe.

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On the transformation of mono-reality and the necessity of stereo-perception

French cultural theorist Paul Virilio (b. 1932) is one of the pre-eminent philosophical revolutionaries of the 20th century. His writings famously collate a chaotic web of references and allusions in an attempt to map our contemporary reality with a special focus on how technology affects core existential questions of our times. His theories about speed and politics in the age of the internet and the “generalized accident” have defined much of what is considered relevant discourse for today’s simultaneously hyper-connected and dislocated state of things. Here is his take on how reality has transformed in the digital age and how we need to transform our perception of it in return.

“Stereo-reality is when there is “virtual reality” with technology, and actual reality.

The present is composed of both these realities. And somewhere, we have a “relief effect” between virtual reality (real-time) and actual reality. So there is a possibility of a visual relief of stereo-reality. Today, perception could become stereo-reality. This is under the condition of maintaining the two realities separate, and not falling into glaucoma. Here, I believe there is a future for a perception, a perspective, of “real-time” which would be just as important as the “real space” of the quartocento.

Reality today can become stereo-reality by way of screens and direct perception. There is an effect of the field of vision that comes from this doubling of stereo-real, stereoscopic

perception as in stereophony. I think for the moment we are fascinated by the virtual and have a tendency to lose actual vision, direct vision. I think tomorrow we will have to restructure around a new type of perspective that I call the perspective of “real-time,” this effect of the visual field.

We must take into account the new relief of both fields of vision because we won’t lose the screens or direct perception.

Here I think we have to go back to the perspectivists of the Middle Ages, to Paolo Uccello, to understand the importance of this real-time position of perception.

The actual and the virtual. This is positive. We are not yet there.”

The Human Condition, by Rene Magritte (1933), MoMA New York.

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The need in thinking is what makes us think.

Theodor W. Adorno