Double Dot Magazine | Los Angeles & Vancouver by Double Dot Magazine

Vancouver

m a s t h e a d ART DIRECTOR Shannon Jager EDITORS Julie Baldassi Barry Chong COPY EDITOR Erin Pehlivan

CONTIBUTORS

Asa Fox Bram Gonshor Brownen Jervis Caitlin Russell PRINTING Chelsea Rooney Spirit Graphics Dan Morales Devin White Caitlin Russell Double Dot Jack Taylor Jamie Jupp magazine explores Jesse Skinner Jordy Van Den Nieuwendijk the cultural Josh McKenna Kristin Condia and creative relaLee Marshall Matthew Tammaro tionship between Megan Prediger Michael Abel sister citiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;where Michelle Gill Natalie Neal they part and Noah van der Laan Oksana Berda where they collide. Parker Kay Sam White Cover Sara Andreasson Patterns by Shereen Alex Marcello Velho Tracy Stefanucci Photography by Tuan Nguyen Jamie Jupp Yasuko Shapiro Distribution Magazines Canada

CONTACT info@doubledotmagazine.com Unit 501, 263 Adelaide, Toronto Ontario mmmmm Canada

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vancouver TREACHERY OF SIGNAGE B r o nwe n Je r v i s.............................................................. VINTAGE REVIVAL Noa h va n d e r L a a n.........................................................

VAN BRAND 3000 Pa r k e r K ay.................................................................... MANSIONLAND C h el sea R oo n e y . . ............................................................ . AMBER DAWN Tra c y S t e fa n c c i..............................................................

LIFE AFTER LOL L ee Ma rsh a ll . . ................................................................ THE OUTSIDER Ja m i e Ju p p.....................................................................

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los angeles THE YOUNG LADY WHO FELL FROM A STAR Na t a li e Nea l...................................................................

GRINGO STAR S a m W h i t e..................................................................... X-TRA S h a n n o n Ja ge r . . ..............................................................

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THE SECOND SEX Jesse S k i n n e r................................................................. FAR TOO CLOSE C h el sea R oo n e y . . ............................................................

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LOCAL NATIVES B ra m G o n sh o r...............................................................

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STAR OF DAVIDA A n d r ea L e i gh Pelli t i e r.................................................... THE PATRON SAINT OF HOLLYWEIRD Isa bel S lo n e...................................................................

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Treachery of Signage B r ow n e n Je r v i s I llu s t ra t i o n b y Jo r dy va n d e n Ni e uwe n dijk

Back in 2008, graffiti artist Viktor Briest ensky had a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest. The then-20-year-old had ran kled authorities in Montreal (his home town), Saskatoon, and Vancouver with his tagging. After his arrest in Montreal and arraignment in Regina, he seemed to have settled down and focused on his studies at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Then, in 2012, he struck again. In a sleepy park in the gentrify ing Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, he erected a sign: Dude Chilling Park. The sign looked exactly like any of the City of Vancouver’s parks signs, down to the white Clearview Hwy font, Kelly

green backdrop, and arched-top rectan gular shape. The only thing wrong was the name. Officially, it was called Guelph Park. But who was to know? The city had never staked a sign in the ground. Guelph Park was founded back in 1972 and named after Canada’s colo nial monarch. Queen Victoria had de scended from the house of Guelph, an Anglo-Saxon line dating back to the 11th century. Vancouver’s pre-consti tutional repatriation elites still thought sucking up to the Queen’s Granny was good civic practice. Who wouldn’t want to play soccer on a field that commemo rates a bunch of drunken inbreds that Vancouver

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lived nine time zones and 7,500 kilome But is that all it really is? An irrever ters away? Ingratiating ourselves with ent conceptual project to be trivialized the establishment was common naming and made precious by being named practice for public spaces back then, just art? It seems to me that the sign does as naming everything after the highest what any sign should: it names some bidder is common practice today. Why thing for what it is. It brings to mind bother with reflecting the common citi The Treachery of Images, Rene Magritte’s zen’s use of the space? famous painting of a pipe with “Ceci Briestensky did just that. As far as he n’est pas une pipe” written beneath it. was concerned, the name was a joke be Magritte’s intention with such a con tween him and his friends that did dou trast was to point out to the viewer ble duty: it recognized the that art is the object of his cedar driftwood sculpture of But is that all canvas, not the pipe de noted public artist Michael picted – that art isn’t as it really is? Dennis, Reclining Figure, simple as what is presented An irreverent and the local East Side char in two dimensions. Yet, acters that sat around drink conceptual with Briestensky’s sign, the ing mouthwash. It’s where project to be meaning could not be more dudes figurative and literal trivialized and literal: if you don’t know just laid back and chilled out. made precious where you are or what to No sign ever marked it as call this place, look around by being anything else so Briestensky and note dudes chilling; the named art? and his friends always noted object is, and always was, it as “dude chilling park.” description. So is it just art? And so, one night in 2012, he planted his Or is it someone with the balls to enter sign at the East Side Vancouver park. a public space and simply name it after The city, of course, would have none the public’s use? of it, and made quick work of removing When a morning jogger or evening the imposter sign. stroller passes by the sign, how will they A local resident took issue with its re know it by any other name? Perhaps the moval and started a petition to get the sign’s irreverence will make them guess. city to reconsider. But was official recog But the City of Vancouver, in embrac nition really necessary? Google took ac ing the sign, is tacitly acknowledging tion by rejigging their map so that if you that this country needs to throw off its clicked on the park, the quote box that uptight old order, loosen itself up, and popped up declared it Dude Chilling recognize that sometimes a park full of Park. Eventually, the petition received winos and sleepy public art doesn’t need more than 1,800 signatures and the City to be gussied up with honorific names. relented, resurrecting Briestensky’s sign They’re wise enough to know that it’s the in February 2013, a year and a half later, kind of space that should be named by calling it a public art installation. a man who once lived his life on the lam.

Vancouver

GRAVITY

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Vintage Revival Noa h va n d e r L a a n I llu s t ra t i o n b y Mi ch a el Abel

From the early settlers who skidded logs along the lumber town’s main arteries, Vancouver’s downtown was dubbed “skid row”, in the original sense of the term. Later, rooming houses and taverns sprung up on the former log roads, thanks to the gold rush and transcontinental railway. Living quarters were cramped and below standards, yet provided workers with af fordable accommodation in a central place where they could shop, socialize, and rest. There were kitchens and communal wash rooms; an environment of proximity arose that fostered social support structures for waves of Chinese immigrants who estab lished their own city within a city. Chinatown blossomed into a vibrant district that offered unique shopping and culinary experiences. It was a hub of East-West culture. But as decades passed, younger generations assimilated and Chinese Canadian residents uprooted to suburban communities outside the core. Recently, the Downtown East Side com munity has fallen on sleepy times. The

loss of traditional teashops, herbalists, restaurants, and craft businesses has left little cultural heritage and plenty notori ety. Chinatown wears the scars of urban decay, area landowners, many of whom helped shape the community, have had to reinvent their neighbourhood. Anna McLean and Ann MacLellan were childhood friends. They grew up in Ottawa and later studied together in Montreal, where the two developed a love of vintage clothing. After moving to Van couver in the early aughts, the Annas de cided to open up their own shop. They scouted the commercial strips—Robson; Main; Commercial Drive—but found oversaturation and some of the highest lease rates in the country. McLean looked to Chinatown. She had a great affinity for the area, both from working there and the fond memories she had of the Chinatowns of her youth. “It was the sense of community, the history, the old buildings, and the perennial beauty of it all” that endeared her to the area she says. But Vancouver

n e i g h b o u r h o o d s when the Annas set out to find a space, most of the available storefronts were boarded up. Among the worn century-old balcon ied structures was a building on East Pen der Street, the Columbia Block, which had housed a former hotel, soybean fac tory, pawnshop, gambling den, post office, and home of the Chinese Musical Soci ety. McLean admits she wasn’t sure what she saw in the space at first, but couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the place. “We looked at five other properties but kept returning to that old block,” she says. It was then that MacLellan discovered an ad for the non-profit organization Build ing Opportunity with Businesses (BOB) that was recruiting entrepreneurs to set up shop in the Downtown East Side. The pro gram brought together the area’s property owners, new tenants, and the municipal government, offering a subsidized façade restoration grant contingent upon a fiveyear lease agreement. The Annas cast aside uncertainties aboutthe space and signed up, establish ing a home for Duchesse Vintage and Such. They renovated the interior–no small task since the ceilings were collapsed, the lino leum flooring was broken, and the win dows smashed. It took seven months of daily renos before the space was ready. During the process, neighbours, fellow shopkeepers, landlords, and city officials, visited the Annas and expressed gratitude for the revitalization efforts. “Some local guys brought us flowers on opening day,” gushes McLean. Meanwhile, neighbouring tenants the Chinese Musical Society closed shop and re-located to the newer Chinese business district in suburban Richmond. The Chi

nese Freemasons, which owned the Col umbia Block, asked the two to search for new tenants. The Annas brought in likeminded entrepreneurs, and the city agreed to increase the façade restoration grant to include the new tenants, now stretching three storefronts. Among those new tenants was the Chinatown Experiment, an organiza tion dedicated to hosting a rotating col lection of pop-up shops. Since opening in 2012, the Chinatown Experiment has pro vided a low-cost and temporary outlet for young impresarios to bring their concepts to a wider audience. The space has hosted retail, art exhibits, workshops, town halls, product launches, cafés, local designers, and a pop-up wedding project that saw 12 couples tie the knot over two days. Of late, other rejuvenation efforts have been launched in Canada’s largest China town. To bring a greater residential pres ence into the community, developers are retrofitting former tenements; balconied old buildings that held so many new im migrants over a century ago. The City’s planning department has also been busy consulting with residents and businesses to identify areas of potential growth, while developing housing policy and social ser vices aimed at improving the lives of lowincome residents. While some cast the transformation of the neighbourhood as gentrification, for many, the change is welcome. As Mc Lean explains it, “the community has wel comed creative, youthful people. For area landlords, it was never about who could pay the most or earn the biggest margin.” The communal spirit of Chinatown lives after all. Vancouver

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Jef f Wa l l ~ P ic t u r e for Women ~ 1979

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St a n D oug l a s ~ W i n , P l a c e or Show ~ 19 9 8 v ideo

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Van Brand 3000 Today, it seems as if the Internet has shifted the place of value from a finished work of art to an ongoing, artificial persona. In order to perpetuate his or her career, the artist is responsible for con structing the context that is most sellable. This idea of a “personal brand” or con structed context has been largely attrib uted to the rise of network culture online; however, the idea of branding has been a part of Canadian art for decades. It began with the once-underdog Group of Seven, grew with General Idea, and most notably came to prom inence in the 80s with a group of artists that critics have called the Vancou ver School of Photoconceptualism. Ian Wallace, Jeff Wall, Roy Arden, Stan Douglas, Rodney Graham, and Ken Lum are often credited with this shift in artistic branding, though, if you look closer, these artists’ supposed self-promotion is better understood as a club of like-minded friends. In or der to understand the group beyond somewhat flimsy art historical categor izations, we must see the Vancouver School as a strong social circle rather than a unified art movement. The Vancouver School as an aesthetic approach is for the most part an aca demic construction. Wall, perhaps the member most disapproving of the categorization said, “The work of [my colleagues] or my own [is] often pointed to as somehow representative of art in Vancouver or even Vancouver art. Noth ing could really be further from the truth.” Vancouver

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The term photoconceptualism has been linked to these artists mostly be cause of its fairly general definition and its geographic connection to the west coast of Canada. Photoconceptualism is not defined as photography with a concep tual intention, but rather photographic works that emerge out of conceptual art and late modernist tendencies. Although Photoconceptualism shares many of the same aesthetic properties as modernism; it simultaneously critiques modernism from within. Modernist photography fo cuses on highlighting the inherent qual ities of the medium (motion blur, focus, the frame, etc.), while photoconceptual ism, according to critics, is concerned with subject matter and representation, which allows artists to move freely in and out of different mediums and techniques. During the late 1960s, the art canon in Vancouver (and for the most part Can ada) consisted of pastoral landscapes and traditions of coastal aboriginal art. Unlike Toronto, Montreal, New York, and LA, Vancouver’s contemporary art market was severely lacking commercial art galleries and buyers. Because of this stagnation, galleries tended to be prov incial in their programming in efforts to promote local talent. This resulted in few international artists exhibiting in Van couver, and little international attention to Vancouver-based artists. In response to this regionalism, Wal lace, then an emerging artist and profes sor at the University of British Columbia, lectured his students on the importance

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v i s u a l of situating art in an international context, or even constructing a context through critical and theoretical writing. It was at UBC that Wallace first met Wall and Graham. Early on, these three artists formed a bond over common interests in contemporary art and Euro pean cinema. In 1972 Wallace accepted a teaching position at the Vancouver School of Art (later Emily Carr Univer sity) where he went on to teach Arden and Douglas. Meetings, exhibitions, lec tures and even a post-punk band called UJ3RKS ("you jerks”) would be the prod ucts of a blossoming friend circle. The moniker of the Vancouver School of Photoconceptualism, irrespective of the artists’ wishes, was born in 1985 when Wallace curated an exhibition at the 49th Parallel Centre for Contemporary Can adian Art in New York that featured all of his friends. In the text accompanying the show, Wallace at once understood and refuted the categorization: “We take an intense interest in the production and exhibition of each other’s work, providing an immediate intellectual rapport and spontaneous interdependence…We en courage and emphasize our differences, conceiving and producing all works in dependently of each other.” Perhaps the most significant charac teristic of photoconceptualism is the im portance of language and writing. And while all of the above artists em braced these modes of expression, it can’t be said that they defined the group aesthetically. Key to the Vancou

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ver School mythology was Artspeak, a hub for conceptual-based artists and students familiar with Wallace and Wall’s academic writing. Artspeak pro vided not only a meeting place for dis cussion between artists, writers, and poets, but it also presented exhibitions of Arden and Douglas. “These talks were the first time that I found myself in a conversational community larger than a handful of friends,” said Douglas. “I think the con tact with poetry is also where I became interested in vernaculars of rep resentation.” So, we see that the sup posed Vancouver School was informed as much from without as within. Generally, artistic movements are brought on by political or world events (the first World War births Dada), a response to a previous movement (mod ernism births post-modernism), or a collection of artists working with a sim ilar aesthetic (abstract expressionism). These Vancouver-based artists do not gracefully fall into any of these categories. Wallace, Wall, Graham, Lum, Douglas, and Arden are unique in their intention to construct value, not as a group, but as independent artists writing about each other. Wallace has written many essays on Wall; Wall has written extensively about Arden and Douglas, and so on. This circle of Vancouver-based artists has become an internationally celebrated group of not by creating similar work, but by acknowledging that strong work can come from strong friendships. Vancouver

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I a n Wa l l a c e ~ Unt it led Sl ide P iec e, 1971

Ro d ne y Gr a h a m ~ C a mer a Obs c u r a , 1979

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Mansionland C h el sea R oo n e y I llu s t ra t i o n b y Josh McK e n n a

It was the year of the horse. For luck, the Tangs had hung red chūnlián from their black marble mantelpieces, both of them. Two fireplaces yawning along the west wall of the house, dark and gap ing mouths. The tutor (her thinking at times provincial due to a rural upbringing) wondered why a home needed two hearths less than 10 feet apart. She imagined the heat they could cause to gether, like a bomb. Her student Miley, meanwhile, worked beside her. The 20-foot long dining room table stretched beneath them, also black, marble and cold. The chūnlián are traditional New Year banners with special hanzi beckoning fortune and joy. The tutor, Harriet, eyed these banners, captivated by their arcaneness. The word for year in Chinese — nian — also means monster. To enter a new year is to safely pass the monster. The monster is afraid of the co lour red. Hence the banners. Harriet liked this knowledge; it felt heavy and old, and she tucked it inside herself, borrowing its weight and context for her own history which felt light and unanchored. The patriarch of the Tang family — his western name was John— seemed to sense this need in Harriet, and so he filled their time together with axioms either portentous, auspicious, or both. “You must be careful during the year of your animal,” he’d said. “It can be lucky, but also, bad things happen more easily.” His youngest daughter Serena, Miley’s little sister, was a horse. The red banners hung for her especially. Vancouver

f i c t i o n Harriet watched Miley zip through her SAT grammar ques tions with ease. She liked these lessons best because Miley was self-sufficient. Harriet opened her Internet browser and searched chinese zodiac horse and scanned a translated page. “Horses are hard-working,” she said, and thought of little Ser ena, how she swam every morning at the university pool up the hill, how she danced every afternoon at the expensive studio in the mall down the street while her classmates milled outside eating cheeseburgers and sugary iced drinks bigger than their heads. Certainly Serena was hard-working like a horse. Miley looked up from her SAT grammar questions and blinked. “No.” With her pencil, she pushed her glasses up her nose. “Horses work hard. There’s a difference.” Harriet’s forearms chilled against the immaculate stone tabletop. She looked down and saw her reflection: dark circles under her eyes, chin doubled between pale face and neck. Out the large, floor-to-ceiling windows, move ment drew Harriet’s eyes up. A Land Rover was pulling into the garage. She spotted the matriarch in the driver’s seat: Vanessa, a small woman who reminded Harriet of a sleek, benign spider. “Your mother’s home, Miley?” “Miles,” the girl reminded her, now 15 years old, now outgrown of the western moniker she’d chosen at the age of eight. She didn’t look up from her work. “Can you look up the etymol ogy of the word ‘memory’? I’m sure it comes from to mourn. I remember the origin is sadness.” She was working on an SAT essay now, arguing a difficult inductive: that selfishness is a sac rifice one should make during trauma in order to more purely confront one’s pain. Miles was pretty, but didn’t seem to care. She wore oversized t-shirts flagged with faded American emblems and tights that bunched at the knees. The thick, black rectangles of her expensive eyeglasses framed shiny brown and doubting eyes. Ink-black hair hung sharp and unattended to across her shoulders. Harriet typed ‘memory’ into her etymology dictionary. “You’re right. The Old Welsh is marth, which means ‘sadness, anxiety.’ And the Old English is murnan, which means, ‘to mourn sorrowfully.’” Miles continued writ ing, her longhand a faint and whispery silver. Harriet looked outside again. Serena was jumping past the window toward the back door, shouting in a high pitch. “Your mother’s home?” “I know.” “No, I mean…she’s back? From China?”

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f i c t i o n The mother appeared in the walkway, moving in a strange manner, her arms hanging crooked at her side, her head low. Blunt bangs had grown long and into her eyes, her mouth a thin grey line. The tutor took a deep breath. Vanessa was grieving. Her father had been dead for less than one month. “A week ago,” said Miles. “She got lonely.” The backdoor opened and the young one came charging through speaking rapidly in Mandarin and English. She wore a black leotard and pristine white tights and clutched to her tiny chest a package of girl’s underwear, all the co lour red. Serena was eleven and very tall for her age; her arms and legs looked as though they’d been drawn too thin for her formidable head. She skipped up to the table and with long fingers pushed around Miles’ scattered SAT notes.

The tutor watched the young one’s eyes slip over the eso teric words, searching for just one she could point to and say, “I understand,” but they were all still beyond her reach. She dropped her red underwear on the table. It was her benming nian, the meeting of her zodiac year. A very unlucky time. During your benming nian, you had to be extra careful when performing ordinary tasks, like running downhill or executing a precarious ballet move. Wearing red every day helped keep you safe. Miles pushed the red underwear off her vocabulary exercises and onto the floor. “Go away, horse.” Serena’s eyes filled with tears. She turned and sprinted toward the stairs. “Bùyào yùnxíng!” shouted Vanessa from the kitchen. The young one slowed, as if catching herself, remembering: I have to be careful. This is the year of the horse. Harriet leaned forward in her chair and looked around the corner into the kitchen. Vancouver

f i c t i o n “Hi, Vanessa.” The woman’s western name was still strange on her tongue, not befitting her slight appearance, her unstylish but ex pensive clothes, her unadorned face. Vanessa stooped against the granite island, eyes on her phone. “Hi.” She didn’t look up. The tutor’s stomach clenched. For the past year and a half, Harriet had also been the parents’ tu tor, coming every Tuesday and Friday afternoon, having twohour conversations in limited English with Vanessa and John. Initially, the conversations were supposed to be about Cana dian culture. The parents had been in Canada for over three years and still hadn’t made any Canadian friends. They still didn’t know the traditions of a Canadian Christmas. They still didn’t understand how to order at a Canadian restaurant. Must we each order one of every course? Four appetizers? Four entrees? Four desserts? The early conversations had been full of levity as the tutor dis pelled the enigmatic rituals with ease. The parents wanted more lessons, more articles to read. They took her out for dim sum to res taurants of various quality, the dirty hole-in-the-wall diner on the tutor’s own street, one she’d passed a hundred times without glanc ing at the hanging ducks, the Chinese picto- and ideograms shield ing the restaurant from her attention. She’d never lived outside of Canada before. This limited what she could see. At the diner, the parents, her Chinese parents, ordered the strang est dishes, delighted by her adventurous spirit. “Sure, I’ll try that,” she said to each suggestion, happily sucking down the cartilage juices of chicken’s feet. The rubbery sweetness of pig’s hooves. Steamed cuttlefish marinated in hot curry that bit at the corners of her tongue. She ate with glee, happy to please her benefactors, imagining that this was the beginning of a lifelong friendship, a cultural exchange that knew no bounds, expand ing with every conversation, every meal. In Vancouver, thou sands of miles away from where any of them had been born, they’d together found a home. Miles nudged Harriet’s elbow. “Is this right?” she asked again, tap ping on a vocabulary question, having moved on from the essay. Har riet focused. Pain produces a tendency to protect the affected body part while it heals. People with congenital insensitivity to pain have reduced life expectancy. “It seems right.” Miles continued working. Harriet leaned for ward again to look at Vanessa. “Welcome home,” she said. Vanessa didn’t look up. “Welcome home, Vanessa.” The

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f i c t i o n mother glanced at her. She’d lost weight; the space between her skinny legs now made an arch shape. Her father’s death had been sudden, but not unexpected. A heart attack. He’d been depressed since his wife died seven years before. “Thank you.” She pushed off the granite countertop, shuffling over and sinking into the oversized couch. When the lesson was over, Harriet stood and made a ruckus of putting on her coat and plan ning the next SAT lesson. Vanessa did not look up, didn’t move. That’s okay, thought the tutor. She can pay me next week. It’s fine. On her bike ride home, she made an effort to acknowledge the beauty of her surroundings. The sharp crystal of the midwinter sky, glowing amethyst. How she pedaled into the small clouds formed by her hot breath. How her legs felt as she pushed and pulled, pushed and pulled her way up and down the hilly city. She took her favourite route home, skirting the thoroughfares, through the section of Vancouver she called Mansionland. Houses so big they looked unreal. At the peak of a hill, she stopped cycling, her lungs sore from breath ing in the cold air. She gazed at the mansion in front of her, a sprawl ing slate-grey Tudor-style home. A wrought-iron gate with railheads like daggers. At first she thought she was hallucinating when the gate started to move, swinging slowly open, until the thump of hip hop bass penetrated through and the BMW sports car pulled into the driveway. In all of her days biking through Mansionland for the past 18 months, she had never seen an inhabitant of one of these dwellings. Filipino nannies and East Indian yard workers, yes, but no residents. The BMW slid to a stop and the music deadened. A kid, a white boy, with spiky blonde hair tucked under a baseball cap, beak pushed up high, climbed out of the low vehicle, his long, gangly legs pushing his knees toward his nose. He was scrolling through his phone, his face illuminated by the bright screen, and the tutor could see he had pimples and soft, pink lips. She coughed, and he jumped. He spotted her, squinted and frowned, while the black gate swung shut between them. At her own home in the southeast corner of the city, Harriet opened her email and typed Vanessa a message. All emails to her Chinese parents she wrote simply and unadorned. Subject, verb, noun. Linear composure. Adverbs, if any, preceding their verbs, not dangling somewhere unanchored. Present tense or past. Noth ing perfect or continuous. Too confusing. Vanessa, I’m sorry you have Vancouver

f i c t i o n so much sadness. You remember the story I told you and John. Though I was only eight years old when my parents died, I still remember the pain. I am here if you want to talk as a friend, not a teacher. Harriet thought of that morning, when she’d woken to her grandmother’s hand on her face. Tears leaked from the old woman’s eyes and fell onto her forehead. Her grief already throbbing before Harriet even knew what had happened. Her grandmother carried her from place to place, homes of peo ple she didn’t know, sat her in corners while the grandmother cried and cried and people rubbed her back. They’d eyed Harriet somberly, handed her candy, wondering how much she could understand. How much she could feel. I feel everything! She’d wanted to yell at them. I feel it all! She had told her Chinese parents about the car accident a few months into their lessons. John had been talking about a father’s love for his daughter. How an old Chinese proverb says a man’s daughter was his lover in a past life. “Vanessa actually becomes jealous sometimes of how I feel for Miley and Serena,” he said. Vanessa laughed. “No, I don’t.” John nodded. “Yes, you do, of course. How I feel for you cannot at all reach how I feel for them. It is a forever love. But a possessive love. It obsesses me. This is how it is for all fathers.” He looked at the tutor. “Your father too.” “My father died when I was eight.” John became still. “That’s very sad.” She nodded. “You missed out on something.” “Maybe.” “Definitely.” The next morning, she checked her email. No response. She felt embarrassed for reaching out, for overstepping her bound aries. She made coffee and waited while the smell of roasted beans filled the room. Outside on her paved patio, the hot steam caught in the light and made swirling arabesques in the air. A garbage truck grunted and wheezed in the alley, and the tutor did her stretches, imagining a rope tied around her waist, one end anchored to the sun and the other end to the spinning ball of metal at the center of the earth. She imagined the rope pulling her open, pulling every cell in her body open, opening to the infinite space the world gave. The world that could hold every little thing — every small sadness and misstep — that Har riet had to offer.

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Amber Dawn I n t e r v i e w b y Tra c y S t e fa n u c c i Ph ot og ra ph s b y Mega n P r edi ge r

Amber Dawn is the award-winning author of the novel Sub Rosa and the memoir How Poetry Saved My Life, and a forthcoming collection of poetry, all published by the Vancouver-based Arsenal Pulp Press. Her fictional debut tells the story of Little, a teenage runaway who joins an underground world of magical prostitutes, in a fresh voice and magic realismâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;style that brightens its dark subject matter and does what only the best books do: make you see something in an entirely new light. A speculative fictionalized version of her own story, Sub Rosa was followed by a memoir comprised of prose and poetry that brings together nearly 15 years of writing. Offering a poignant and powerful glimpse into Dawnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lived experience hustling the streets of Vancouver, the collection preaches what it practices with a call to arms that asks readers to honour and speak their own truths.

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i n t e r v i e w Sub Rosa had a big impact on me. I read it when I was living in Strathcona on Pender Street and the bushes behind my house were the site of a lot of sex work. At first, this was really hard for me to reconcile–my socially programmed responses of fear, pity, or even disgust didn’t sit well with me, but I wasn’t sure what I should feel or think instead. For me, your book humanized sex workers in a way that nothing else I’d ever encountered had. When you first began working on your novel, what was your inner conversation around taking up such a subject? Working in the bushes on Pender Street does sound hard! There is no running wa ter. No way to keep the workspace clean or secure. I hate working in the bushes. I didn’t want the protagonist of Sub Rosa to work in the bushes. I portrayed Little’s working environment as large, clean and bright: “Nowhere did [Little] spot a dust bunny or fingerprint or scuff mark.” Little also works alongside her own household and an extended community of sex work ers. Information about work skills, work ing conditions, and the clients are openly shared amongst members of this com munity. Writing these kinds of conditions into Sub Rosa is humanizing. It is the way all workers should be able to work. Isola tion, silence, stigma, and expulsion from society are the very core of dehumaniz ing. And as we’ve seen in Vancouver and worldwide, when people–especially poor women–are dehumanized, their lives are utterly unprotected.

I wanted Little and the other characters of Sub Rosa to not be burdened with dehu manizing working conditions. I needed their focus to be on an emotional land scape that was “higher” than mere survival. The idealized world you create for Little is a powerful device. I had so much fun going on Little’s journey with her that at times I would pause and think, “Wait, is it okay to view this as fun?” I almost felt guilty, as if I were taking pleasure in something I shouldn’t be. This inner dialogue encouraged me to question the ‘good/ bad’ and ‘right/wrong’ dynamic that I was bringing to the subject. I also found myself wondering if this world was the ‘reality’ of the book or Little’s translation of her experience. Were you intending to set up the possibility that LitVancouver

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;The grey area between reality and fantasy is as critical to me as the vast grey area between right and wrong.â&#x20AC;? los angeles

i n t e r v i e w

tktktk Crime writer John McFetridge moves the action of his latest novel to 1970s Montreal

By Vit Wagner

Jeremy Scott came to me when I was 17 years old, in an i-D magazine I shoplifted from the local Chapters. On the cover, Jeremy looks like some approximation of a redneck with his racing stripe mullet ‘do, posed saucily alongside his muse Devon Aoki, the cherubic half-Japanese model wearing an animal-printed playsuit of his design. It’s the ‘ice cream’ issue, and the whole magazine is more colourful than the counter at Baskin Robbins. I flip quickly to the feature article, where Aoki is lounging about in a pink jacket that looks like an inflatable pool toy and a dress printed with anthropomorphic junk food. I had no idea there was more to fashion than stately Oscar gowns. Instantly, I am obsessed. he year is 2007, and the height of pop culture is occupied by teen pop star Rihanna, and summer blockbuster Spiderman 3. But beneath the fatty milk solids occupying the most visible level of pop culture, there is a current brewing, as evidenced by The Cobrasnake; a website where photog-

rapher Mark Hunter—whose thick facial hair is groomed to resemble a pedophile from the 1970s—takes pictures of preternaturally gorgeous Los Angeles party kids in their element. Everybody looks high on coke and wears face paint, neon, fanny packs, and ironically oversized Bar Mitzvah t-shirts scoured from the local thrift store. The it girl commanding the scene is Cory Kennedy, Hunter’s doe-eyed girlfriend; underage at 16 years old, Cory’s long dirty hair and gamine presence are dissected everywhere on personal blogs. She’s like Helen of Troy for the Internet age. Orbiting around her are lesser but still recognizable presences on the Cobrasnake: pop star Sky Ferreira, club kid Jonny Makeup, and Jeremy Scott; a fashion designer at least ten years everybody’s senior. At the time, LA fashion was synonymous with Juicy Couture Sweatshirts and Ugg boots, and celebrities who sucked life he year is 2007, and the height of pop culVancouver

i n t e r v i e w tle might be an unreliable narrator using fantastical amplification to process and communicate a harsh reality? Yes, I understood while writing that Lit tle would be seen as an unreliable nar rator by many readers, and that the ide alized world that surrounded her would be considered aspects of her own creative coping mechanism. I was careful never to completely confirm or discredit either reading of Little’s character and experi ences. To me, it’s more interesting to see where the reader arrives with Little for themselves. The grey area between real ity and fantasy is as critical to me as the vast grey area between right and wrong. I love that! It is so poignant how speculative fiction reflects that perception is always a “grey area,” as reality and truth are subjective. Maybe that is part of the reason why the genre is so suited to stories that challenge the status quo. How did writing in this style help you put words to this story? Readers trust a magical or fantastic con tainer. Normally, as soon as magic is in troduced into fiction, the reader can ex pect a victory of some kind. Magic is an ally a protagonist can count on. As soon as Dorothy puts on the magical silver shoes (made into ruby slippers for the film) the reader can rest assured that magic will al low her to make a comeback from all the hardships of Oz. Similarly, magic allows my readers to have confidence in Little’s journey. Magic gives Little–and all the Vancouver

characters in her community–the upper hand that reality does not. Magic allowed me to introduce readers to a community of runaway, young prostitutes and not have them spend the entire book worried about the girls’ safety. What gave you the “strength and inspiration,” as you put it in the introduction of How Poetry Saved My Life, to write Sub Rosa? I really dug into what Sub Rosa was, as a novel, between 2007 and 2009. This is long enough ago that I don’t exactly remember how I did it. Sometimes it seemed I was in a trance. I remember lit erally lying on my bed, face down in a pil low, while my arms were outstretched in front of me, fingers still tapping away on my laptop keyboard. I went the MFA route to learn my craft and Sub Rosa was my graduate thesis. As I expected, I was involved in the discussion of: “Can magical (speculative) fiction be literary f iction?” These ongoing debates did not hinder my process; I was well-sup ported as I wrote. However, I crashed af ter graduating. I no longer had the MFA workshop to nurture me. Sub Rosa–the thesis–was not yet working as Sub Rosa the novel. I got very low and lonely fin ishing the final drafts on my own. I wish I could say I didn’t feel pain while writ ing it, or that I didn’t relapse, or that I was proud of myself. Writing my mem oir was much easier than Sub Rosa, be cause with the novel, I–the author–had the power to change the way sex work looks. It was both an opportunity and an incredible emotional burden. All in all,

i n t e r v i e w In your memoir you quote Jeanette Winterson: “A tough life needs a tough language –and that’s what poetry is.” How did poetry give you a voice? It was healing to use poetry to tell part of my story. Poetry is a great genre to disrupt any dumbed-down popular cul ture messages and to invite the reader to really re-think meaning and story. In this day and age, poetry is an underdog genre–I can relate! Poetry and so-called ‘outsider stories’ make great mates. What advice to do you have for other authors who are grappling with personal, stigmatized topics? I simply knew I just had to finish the darn book. As inhabitants of this trep idatious world, we only have so many chances to declare “The end.” How was collecting and publishing the texts in your memoir, a different experience? Surprisingly, I found publishing my mem oir an uplifting and healing experience. I felt strong owning my story. And the per sonal nature of the book has brought me close to scores of readers. Readers often hug me or share tender words with me at literary events. I waited and waited for an tagonistic responses, and no such responses reached me. When I won the 2013 City of Vancouver Book Award at the Mayor’s Arts Awards, it really sank in: people want to hear from sex workers and survivors–not just debate about them–but hear their au thentic, complex, unique stories.

Reach out to your people. Honestly, don’t work in 100 percent isolation. It isn’t ideal for sex workers and it isn’t ideal for writers either. Even if your sole way of connecting is via an online writ ers’ community or organizing a writers’ group that meets as few as four times per year. Attend readings of writers you admire–introduce yourself. Let your friends, lovers, your yoga teacher–someone you know that you are writing chal lenging work. If your friends are not writers or avid readers, ask them to sup port you in the ways they know how–like going to see a big-budget action movie with you or making you some chicken soup. See what I’m saying here? Reach out. It’s totally unreasonable for writers to employ these creative, brave voices in our writing if we are not able to ask for what we need from others around us. Reach out. Vancouver

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m u s i c

Life after

LOL L ee Ma rsh a ll I llu s t ra t i o n s b y D e v i n W h i t e

Former LOL Boy Markus Garcia moves his Internet-inspired beats offline to Vancouverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s burgeoning dance music scene 34

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Markus Garcia is running late for our in terview–he got caught up taking a friend to the clinic, helping another friend recy cle, and buying artisanal beef jerky. But it doesn’t matter because, when we finally speak, he hangs out on Skype with me for almost three hours. And he is so present. It’s like he just wants to get to know me. Garcia, one half of the now-defunct LOL Boys duo, mixes percussive, sythn sational electronic music as Heartbeat(s) and runs a label, ASL Singles Club, from Vancouver’s East End. His work is cel ebrated by music blogs like The Fader, FACT, and XLR8R–but that hasn’t gone to Garcia’s head. “I’m not making music so I can be cool on the Internet,” he says, “but I do want people to hear my music.” Garcia is a modern southern gentle man with nostalgia for a time when we made stronger connections with the

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things we buy and to the people we buy them from. “People don’t have a guy for their meat anymore,” he says, reflecting on the rad butcher who sold him that fancy jerky. “There’s no relationship anymore. To me, that’s really important – getting back to that one-on-one relation ship,” he says. For Garcia, the dialogue or transaction is as important as the prod uct. Garcia’s emotional, direct music is about making personal connections. The 29-year-old half-Mexican, halfVietnamese nomad was born in L A, raised in St. Louis, and educated in Chi cago, where he started spinning under the name Sirhan in 2008. That year, he met Jerome Potter in an online forum and they starting making young, fun, party music together as LOL Boys. In 2009, Garcia moved to Montreal and Pot ter moved from Minnesota to LA, but they kept creating music, sending beats back on forth on the Internet until they had built a song. Mixtapes, remixes, and touring across North America and

m u s i c Europe helped the LOL Boys become some of the coolest kids online. They were at the peak of their popularity when they released the well-reviewed EP Changes in July 2012, but the prophetic ti tle signaled an amiable (if unexpected) end to the partnership. Life as a LOL Boy over, Garcia wanted a “whole new experience” and consid ered moving to Chicago, Toronto, or Vancouver. Warm weather drew Garcia out west to the city that he feels is still in its adolescence. “That’s what Vancouver is to me – this teenager,” he says. “And you don’t know how that person is going to grow up. You don’t know if they’re go ing to grow up to be a really good person or be a kind of shitty person.” Garcia loves the mountains, the water, and the do-it-yourself creativity in Van couver–he lives across the street from a store where you can learn to make your own soap and kombucha–but worries about the ceaseless propagation of con dos, the skyscraper-high rents and a cul ture built on competition rather than collaboration. What he isn’t worried about is the elec tronic music scene in Vancouver. Rave culture was big in the city in the 1990s at nightclubs like Graceland only to fall out of favour with the rise of indie rock. But Vancouver is the kind of city that is still de ciding what it wants to be, where things are changing. The electronic music scene is small now, but burgeoning. New venues are opening, labels launching, and artists emerging, which made it the perfect place for Garcia to reinvent himself. “I’m in a new city. I’m in a new place. I needed to do something new,” Garcia

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m u s i c says. He adopted a more mature look –long hair cut short and slicked back, bright plaids swapped for denim button downs– started the solo project Heartbeat(s) and turned away from LOL Boys’ Internetinspired vibe, reaching offline for the real physical world. Last year, he released his first solo EP Home Remedies as a cassette tape as well as a digital album. Garcia’s inspirations are found IRL, from the “mystical avant-garde feeling” he gets watching ocean waves to mundane encounters, like the writing on a bath room stall behind his single “All Hexes.” His new sound is unapologetically emo tional and often features addictive, heartwrenching lyrics like “You can kiss me or cut me as long as it's just me.” But it’s not too dark or introverted: Garcia doesn’t just make music for himself. “I want people to be making out in their bedroom to music that I make. I want it to have some sort of attachment to people,” he says. “I don’t want it to just be vapour.” Garcia brings that emotive philos ophy to ASL Singles Club, the audiovisual collective he co-founded with musician Patrick Holland in the fall of

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“I want people to be making out in their bedroom to music that I make. I want it to have some sort of attachment to people. I don’t want it to just be vapour.” 2013. He met Holland (a.k.a. Project Pablo) when they were playing a show at The Biltmore, and the two began talking about starting a new party night. (He was thinking about the success of Boomclap, a weekly dance party he hosted in Mon treal, and wanted to do something similar in Vancouver.) But their plan expanded. They joined up with artist Devin White (a.k.a. Cheffers) and started producing music and clothing under one label in a studio basement in Gastown, a bougie downtown neighbourhood. “We didn’t want to be another faceless music label that just puts out music on the Internet, these digital things. We also wanted to give people something tangible to hold on to,” Garcia says. That something tangible comes from the consistent, visual aesthetic that rep resents ASL. White designs all the album covers, posters and hand-silkscreened t-shirts. His artwork is refreshingly min imal in black and white, featuring var sity jacket lettering, a hexagonal emblem, and, simply drawn illustrations of ran dom objects like bagels, the Grim Reaper, and a Corinthian column.

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It’s been less than a year, but ASL has already released six EPs online with a sev enth on vinyl in the works. Vancouver mu sician Brock Mackay (a.k.a. Rook Milo) joined the collective after the imprint re leased his EP, but all of the musicians who have releases on the label– including Sleepyhead, Nick Wisdom, Autem, and Prison Garde–are honourary ASL family. Garcia wants to build “a world that peo ple can dive into” with ASL, he says. That means creating an intimate experience at the events they host, cultivating the idea of ASL as a place that you can go. For one party, they filled a hotel room with fake tropical plants, built a glowing sphere on the ceiling, released low laying fog, and played chopped and screwed tracks all night. “It was like you walked into the jun gle and there was a UFO crash,” he says. ASL has since left the Gastown base ment. The scene downtown can be cheesy, Garcia says–except for Shine Nightclub where he has opened for acts like Cyril Hahn and Jacques Greene. The dance scene is east of the core in cheaper areas like Mount Pleasant, Strathcona, and East Van where the ASL crew plays for

mixed crowds of free-spirited Pacif ic Northwestern bros, environmentally con scious art students, and skater punks at venues like Open Studios, The Biltmore, and recently converted porn theatre Fox Cabaret (where they launched a monthly party in April). “The good stuff is still quite under ground,” he says. “It rides a fine legal line.” Garcia cites illegal summer par ties in Stanley Park, but doesn’t mention the recurring ASL after parties that I’ve seen on Facebook called Homies Only– they're message-for-location affairs. A few weeks after our interview, Gar cia thoughtfully sends me a link to a great LiLo interview and the .ZIP file for his second EP, Hopeless Romantic, which was released at the end of April. It’s four tracks of cymbal-rich house beats with smooth and tender lyrics like “all my love” and “I want to love you tonight and forever” on loop, each song a Valentine to his fans. I listen to the EP on repeat, and I’m reminded of something Garcia told me in our first conversation. “You can really curate life to be something great,” he said. Or you can let ASL do that for you.

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f a s h i o n

The Outsider

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photographer Jamie Jupp model Shereen Alex, Charles Stuart International stylist Asa Fox ⚑ hair Lawrence Hon make-up Paula Lanzador ⚑ nails Michelle Gill

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Dress MINK PINK, Hoodie ADIDAS, Shoes NIKE via GRAVITY POPE, Hat PUBLISH

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Sweater UNIF, Toque Vintage

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Pants MARSHALL ARTIST, T-Shirt MINK PINK, Top DACE, Shoes NIKE via GRAVITY POPE

Pants ISLE JACOBSEN, Sweater (Pepsi) VINTAGE, Under Jacket UNIQLO

Shirt NIKE, Dress BB DAKOTA , Jacket SURFACE TO AIR, Shoes NEW BALANCE via GRAVITY POPE

Hoodie PUBLISH, Shirt SOMEDAYS LOVIN

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Sweater RVLT/REVOLUTION, Knit Sweater MINK PINK, Jacket ISLE JACOBSEN

Shirt LONDON ALEXANDER, Sweater MINK PINK

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Sunglasses SURFACE TO AIR

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F A S H I O N

The Young Lady Who Fell From a Star

eal e N ia i l a er d on ill N at C y M h in ap ela togr ist pho by K r y P a m a p i r o d e h s t y le A s h l o S yen k u u D A N up Y a s n N g D u c e a e ma k y l i n g T u C h r i s t st hair assistan o t ph o 74

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custom star hair pins Switchblade Styling Âśdress Stylist's Own

LEFT: hair comb Erica Koesler ¶jewelry Stylist's Own ¶bra Stylist's Own ¶dressing gown Vintage ¶panties Agent Provocateur jewelry Stylist's Own ¶lipstick YSL Rouge Volupté- Peach Passion

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peach dress Vintage Pavillion Designs Âśsocks Hansel from Basel via The Loved One Âśshoes American Apparel

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hair comb Erica Koesler ¶sunglasses Stylist's Own ¶jewelry Stylist's Own¶swimsuit Zac Posen for Target

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beret Stylist's Own Vintage ¶jacket Vintage Nipon Night ¶blouse ModCloth ¶shorts Handmade Vintage

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headband Erica Koesler ¶sunglasses Urban Outfitters ¶jewelry Stylist's Own ¶coat Vintage Soir De Paris

dress Zara ¶pearl collar vintage ¶brooch vintage ¶belt Beaded Trim from M&L Fabrics

pink dress Minuet via Modcloth ¶earrings Kitsch via Modcloth ¶red bodysuit Leg Avenue ¶capelet Vintage Stylist's Own

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metallic brocade 2-piece Vintage Bee Jo California Âśjewelry Stylist's Own Âśred dress Tatyana via Modcloth

sunglasses Spitfire England via Modcloth ¶dress The Reformation ¶hat Kathy Jeanne via Modcloth ¶socks Hansel from Basel via The Loved One¶shoes American Apparel

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pink dress Vintage Stylist's Own Âśsocks Hansel from Basel via The Loved OneÂśshoes American Apparel

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custom headpiece Switchblade Styling ¶dress The Loved One ¶rings Stylist's Own ¶bracelet The Loved One ¶shoes American Apparel

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F O O D

Gringo Star

Sam W hite

I llust ration by Sara Andreasson

The taco is a perfect food. A tortilla filled with meat and fresh vegetables is cheap, portable, fast, and delicious. And ubiquitous. Where New York has pizza, Los Angeles has tacos: an immigrant food that’s become a key export of American cultural dominance, so much so that tacos have even gone onto the International Space Station. In LA, taco trucks are everywhere. They represent the possibility of good, cheap eats in a sprawling city landmarked by fast food and convenience stores. Taco trucks are so important to LA that a 2008 lawmaking vehicle loitering a misdemeanour caused a flare-up of racial tensions and led to city-wide protest until a municipal decision overturned the law. So how did the taco take over? The history of the taco in LA can be told in three stages: its arrival as an exotic food, its transformation into a mass-market item that could be produced with most of the same ingredients as a Big Mac, and its recapitulation as globalized upscale peasant cuisine. But unlike most fast foods the history of the taco in America is freighted with racial tension. According to Jeffrey M. Pilcher, author of Planet Taco: A Global History

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of Mexican Food, the word “taco” originally referred to small amounts of gunpowder wrapped in paper used to blow up ore in Mexican silver mines in the 18th century. Later, the taco became a peasant food in Mexico with tons of regional variation. Unlike the burger, there’s no platonic ideal: Baja California does whitefish, shredded cabbage, and crema; Northern Mexico’s carne asada tacos have grilled skirt steak. The al pastor variation uses rotisserie pork and pineapple, originally brought to Mexico by Lebanese immigrants. The taco’s never been one thing, and that’s always been the appeal. In the early 20th century, immigrant women pushed carts filled with tacos, tamales, and chili around the white sections of San Antonio, Texas and LA, allowing gringos the opportunity to sample an exotic food in a ‘safe’ context. In return for their efforts these “Chili Queens” were stereotyped as exotic, spicy, and available, just like the food they sold. In post-war America, taco shops popped up in white neighbourhoods, again a chance for white people to sample ethnic food without visiting ethnic neighbourhoods. In 1951, a hot dog salesman named Alan Bell started los angeles

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selling tacos for 19 cents each. His claimed innovation was a taco form that allowed restaurants to pre-fry tortillas into a hard “shell” that kept for weeks. Taco Bell was able to could truck its shells across vast distances and expand globally. But few know that the original 1950 patent for the taco shell belonged to Juvencio Maldonado–not the first nor last time that a Mexican has gotten the shaft in America’s creation mythology. As Taco Bell expanded nationally in the 1970s, it adopted ingredients that were part of America’s burgeoning postwar industrial food system: ground beef, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and I-can’tbelieve-it’s-not-plastic cheese. It was at this time that the dichotomy between “Tex Mex” and “authentic” tacos surfaced. Today, Taco Bell is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, which also markets poor quality variations of American regional cuisines to a global audience under the Pizza Hut and KFC brands. But here’s what’s surprising: according to the 2010 Tortilla Industry Association

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Technical Conference (yes, that exists), hard-shell tortillas account for only two percent of today’s tortilla consumption, compared to 42 percent for corn tortillas and 43 percent for wheat flour tortillas. Even as Taco Bell provides us with our worst image of the taco (as well as offensive stereotypes of Mexican culture and persistent intestinal complaint), the “authentic” soft-shell taco has taken off in contemporary foodie culture. Just like the burger and pizza, restaurants have recast the taco as high-end 21st-century American comfort food with quality ingredients playing the starring role–never mind the fact that Mexicans have been making delicious tacos all along. Recently, the soft-shell tortilla has become a vessel for the Americanization of East Asian cuisine. The most famous taco truck in LA right now is Kogi BBQ, belonging to Roy Choi, a tattooed weed-smoking former line cook from LA’s Koreatown. Choi serves tacos with ginger-soy marinated chicken, gojuchang-marinated pork, tofu, and chillies, and yes, kimchi, as well as Mexican ingredients like fresh cilantro and lime juice. The truck posts up outside packed clubs at night, and workplaces and beaches by day, hounded by its more than 123,000 Twitter followers who expect line-ups of up to two hours. In Choi’s hands, the taco offers a marriage of LA’s Mexican and Korean immigrant communities. But this food has always brought cultures into contact, in ways both exciting and messy, through the transfer of a simple bit of knowledge: that the tortilla is an endlessly modular vehicle for anything fresh and flavourful. los angeles

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Since 1997, X-TRA has been an integral part of Los Angeles’ arts and culture scene. Publishers Stephen Berens and Ellen Birrell, both artists and curators in their own right, met in LA in the 1980s and later founded the quarterly magazine with Jan Tumlir and Jérôme SaintLoubert Bié. As LA’s longest running art journal, X-TRA offers a critical look at and response to, what LA artists are making. Curated by an editorial board of eleven, the magazine’s simple concept of covering solely art has reasserted the artist’s right to sit at the table and talk. Issues feature candid conversations about the creative process with artists including Laura Owens and Michelle Grabner, as well as essays and reviews of local exhibitions at the likes of The Gallery at REDCAT and The Vincent Price Art Museum, offering an informative resource on the vibrant LA scene. In the past decade, X-TRA has grown alongside the LA art community, and as the city has secured a name for itself on the art-world map. X-TRA continues to feature the work of its locally grown artists, and occasionally follows their paths past the California state boarders. X-TRA’s spring 2014 issue, for example, includes a review of LA photographer John Houck’s first solo show, A History of Graph Paper, at On Stellar Rays gallery in New York. The magazine has grown into a way for its editors to have collaborative discussions about scale, context, practice, and process, and share stories about the city’s art scene that might otherwise be left within the white walls of a gallery. X-TRA has also played an important role in hosting exhibits and talks in tandem with its non-profit publisher, Project X Foundation for Art & Criticism, allowing the two to establish and grow their own community. For those of us living outside of Tinseltown, leafing through the latest issue of X-TRA has the feel of opening a care package from a friend living in LA. Every issue invites you into the discussion, with its clean aesthetics and vibrant imagery. The magazine has the ability to make you feels as if you are in that space looking at the work… for a just a moment.

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M A G A Z I N E S

Volume 16 Number 03 ~ spring 2014

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F I L M

The Second Sex

Je sse Skinne r Illust ration by Jack Taylor

Paul Schrader’s 2013 sex-drama The Canyons, starring Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Deen, begins with a montage of abandoned, decaying urban movie theaters. This slide show exists as a plea; it’s a series of establishing shots for places the characters never visit. Is Schrader memorializing the bygone era of the porno screening? It’s a quaint idea, especially considering that audiences have rejected many deliberately erotic mainstream films in recent years, including The Canyons. Real sex, explicit sex, is less of a box office draw now than it has been in decades. Softcore porn is also dying an unceremonious death at the hands of Internet piracy. Between 2007 and 2009 alone, revenue for the industry largely centred in the San Fernando Valley dropped a good 40 percent, leaving behind the gravestones of forgotten smut shows. The world of sex and money is one that

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Schrader has visited in the past, twice before as a director of Hardcore and Auto Focus, and tangentially as the writer of Taxi Driver. But while those films were very much about the dehumanizing and anti-social effects of porn, The Canyons pines for its heyday, or at least a time when erotica crossed deep enough into the mainstream to make movies like I Am Curious (Yellow) and Deep Throat box office successes. The film’s characters–an alpha-male asshole (Deen), a dominated vixen (Lohan), and her former everyman lover (Nolan Gerard Funk)–come right out of the softcore playbook. It’s not hard to imagine exponential permutations on their triangle, each character fucking the other, eventually leading to more sinful gratuity. But the most shocking thing about The Canyons is how un-gratuitous it is. It’s a drama assembled from the bits of interaction that go on between the sex seen in most pornos. And while the film isn’t exactly shy, los angeles

tktktkt Crime writer John McFetridge moves the action of his latest novel to 1970s Montreal

By Vit Wagner

photographer Mark Hunter—whose thick facial hair is groomed to resemble a pedophile from the 1970s—takes pictures of preternaturally gorgeous Los Angeles party kids in their element. Everybody looks high on coke and wears face paint, neon, fanny packs, and ironically oversized Bar Mitzvah t-shirts scoured from the local thrift store. The it girl commanding the scene is Cory Kennedy, Hunter’s doe-eyed girlfriend; underage at 16 years old, Cory’s long dirty hair and gamine presence are dissected everywhere on personal blogs. She’s like Helen of Troy for the Internet age. Orbiting around her are lesser but still recognizable presences on the Cobrasnake: pop star Sky Ferreira, club kid Jonny Makeup, and Jeremy Scott; a fashion designer at least ten years everybody’s senior. At the time, LA fashion was synonymous with Juicy Couture Sweatshirts and Ugg boots, and celebrities who sucked life from their Venti Starbucks cups as they

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F I L M it leaves sex on the margins of a tedious melodrama. It’s as if Schrader and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis got together to make a trashy throwback to 70s erotic cinema, realized how deeply ambivalent today’s audiences are about graphic sex in movies, and retreated. You can’t blame them. Audiences born after the 70s are by and large not used to realistic or graphic depictions of sexuality in Hollywood. Sex in mainstream cinema has been reduced to static nudity or grossout humour. Some blame the MPAA’s increasingly stringent restrictions on sexuality, but audiences haven’t exactly encouraged them to change course. The 90s revival of erotic thrillers like Basic Instinct, came and went, and since then, many films that have offered raw sexuality in the confines of a narrative—like Bertolucci’s

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The Dreamers—have failed to make much of an impact at the box office. Why is this so? Some blame lies with the rise of “four-quadrant” film production, which emphasizes movies that appeal to both genders, and broad but useful estimations of “young” and “old” audience members. Movies now are less of an escape for curious viewers who can find the most explicit content imaginable online. They are more a social experience than ever in the medium’s history, and sex has been the first causality of the new forum. The Canyons would make a fine doublebill with Lars Von Trier’s recent erotic epic, Nymphomaniac. Both films are about people under the order of their sexual urges, and both are deeply lacking in anything remotely arousing. While The Canyons is at fault for its lack of actual explicit content, Nymphomaniac is filled with the kind of clinical sexuality that can be observed but not enjoyed. It's about a woman for whom sex brings more and more diminishing returns, and only those viewers who can completely detach themselves from tone will be able to get off on it. When these films are considered together, one gets the impression not that Western pop culture has become more puritan in the last four decades, but that sexuality has simply ceased to exist in its natural state in pop culture. For millennials who came of age with the Internet, it’s hard to imagine a time when people watched pornography in the company of strangers. But what’s more odd is that sex, in its purest form, has become so marginalized that films like The Canyons won’t deliver it, and films like Nymphomaniac deliver it cold. los angeles

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F I C T I O N

NOT TOO CLOSE

O ksana Be rda Illust ration by Caitlin Russell

The wind pushed back Ica’s hair. She swept both of her hands across her face, pausing at the temples and pulling the skin back which forced her eyes closed. Releasing the pressure she refocused grasping at what little energy she had left. The other tables on the café patio were empty and the street was humming with passers-by. Picking up her pen once more, she forced herself to concentrate. She wrote, “Tuesday, August 11th, 2024—3:30 p.m.” on a fresh manila page. Ica had to find ways to make quick money. She started participating in sleep clinics. In the last couple of years, there was a huge increase in public advertising for paid sleep research. The subject of sleep took a forefront in topics of medical interest in Los Angeles. Work and money in any industry was hard to come by. Already known for its ruthlessness, LA was becoming more competitive and tougher for Angelinos to make ends meet. Today, the shining city was filled with bodies, pale and frail like paper cutouts. The people didn’t look like they belonged in the sun. As more and more people tossed and turned at night, productivity dropped, and carelessness, accidents, public breakdowns, and aggression rose. Ica had done seven sessions up to that point. Keeping a sleep diary had become a nuisance; it was harder and harder to concentrate. This time around she had to stay up for four days and keep a sleep diary that focused on her mood changes. The clinic liked using Ica for two big reasons; one, she was very diligent and always kept legible entries that she turned in on time; second, she had an irregular sleep pattern, and sometimes could be found sleepwalking.

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F I C T I O N Ica resented writing; it took a lot out of her. Mostly, it bothered her because it stopped feeling like the money was easy. The blank page in front of her burned white from the relentless afternoon sun. She set the pen down and examined her hands. They were clean and raw, With cuts and scrapes along the fingers. The

fingertips on her left hand were sore and red from all of the times she accidentally poked herself with a sewing needle. She put her fingers up to her mouth, and for a moment, she couldn’t feel the aching pulse. Despite the heat, Ica kept getting shivers that swept goose bumps across her skin. She pulled on her sweater with her right hand, still keeping her left fingertips on the cusp of her mouth. She caught the gaze of a man with sunken eyes and a pale face on her as he walked by the café patio. Ica’s fingers circled the page where she started writing her latest entry. The paper felt good to touch. She had half a mind to succumb to buying thimbles, but she had become so frugal. Thimbles also slowed her down and she didn’t like how they felt. Usually, she wouldn’t work during a sleep clinic. She found that her sewing would get sloppy and she would injure herself more often. If she worked during a session, almost everything she completed would have to be taken out and redone later when she was sleeping normally again. Only exhaustion brought about regular sleep. Participating in back-to-back sleep clinics was beginning to warp Ica’s behavior. Some nights, walking home from the studio room

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F I C T I O N she was renting at the Otis College of Art and Design, Ica would be flooded with paranoia. She would glance over her shoulder every couple of steps. Wanting to make sure no one was there, often whispering into the fluorescent night, “I’m not afraid of you.” Ica began losing herself in thought; she would invent narratives that would go on and make her lose track of where she was or what she was doing. Ica would find herself at the grocery store holding a can of coconut milk sometimes up to an hour, lost in a maze of her own mind. It would start with confusion. She would try to recall, “Did I already buy coconut milk yesterday or am I imagining it?” Her thoughts would take flight, leaving her body frozen in Grocery Aisle Number 4. Ica spent a lot of time by herself. She was happy in her solitude from childhood. Her father had a successful web development company and was supportive of her creative ambitions. Ica’s mother died during childbirth; her maternal grandparents devastated by their loss wouldn’t acknowledge the new baby girl. Ica’s father moved himself and his young daughter to California where they had no roots or acquaintances. He wanted to give his small family a fresh start. The adoration and love that the father and daughter had for each other was as vast and limitless as the high blue sky of their new hometown. He put all of his hard work into his company and all of his love into his darling daughter. A year ago to the day, Ica was sitting on the same patio, enjoying the sun and sketching in her book. She had been sketching ideas for an installation; she loved the idea of re-interpreting spaces. As she got to the last page, her phone rang. A doctor from Cedars Sinai Medical Center informed her that her father had just passed away after being rushed to the hospital from work. He was in the middle of meeting with a client when suddenly he clutched his chest and fell to the ground. In that moment, with a pencil still in her hand, she sketched out on a blank page a drawing of expansive wings. Placing her hand on the image and closing her eyes, she imagined her father cradled in the wings, comfortable and free of pain, floating through the desert. She imagined herself next to him, floating away from the sadness–from the future. She placed the sketchbook back in her bag, paid the bill, and took a cab to the hospital. The money she inherited was put away. Ica put all of her father’s things into storage and paid 10 years in advance to keep it all there. She put the rest of the money into a savings account that los angeles

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FF IACS THI IOONN she never touched. Her disconnect from grieving refocused all of her energy into the project that was born out of the initial shock of losing her father. Ica would sit in her rented studio for hours, tediously sewing together bird feathers. She would collect the feathers all through the city, mainly from public parks and chicken coops at farms, then organize them by colour and size in large wicker baskets. On this sunny afternoon, sitting at the café with just the date written on the blank page of her sleep diary, Ica felt compelled to visit the studio and re-inspect her work. She didn’t want to concentrate anymore because she couldn’t resist thinking that today was the anniversary of her father’s death. In the studio, there were books on bird anatomy and aviation, and photography books of Greek statues, and a beloved copy of the Brothers Grimm tale, The Six Swans. Ica had a total of six complete wing sets. She would construct them with very fine metal netting and sew each individual feather onto the skeleton. She bought eleven dress forms from a sewing factory sale and now six of them were made into angels. Ica looked at each piece, brushing her hands over the intricate patchwork of wings. She felt tears rush into a knot in her throat; she swallowed hard and closed her eyes. Regaining some composure, she moved the angel with the calico wings to the desk. Ica unlatched the harness, leaving the mannequin form naked. Ica slid her small frame into the harness; mustering all of her strength she lifted the piece onto her shoulders. She felt the power of her work for a second and the overwhelming emotion buckled her knees and made her stumble down to the floor. The wings pulled her shoulder down and she melted. Her heart beat pushing at her chest as she attempted to catch her breath. The pressure eased from the crown of her head as her eyelids covered her bloodshot eyes. As Ica battled to stay conscious, she couldn’t think of anything else other than today’s date, and as a chill passed across her skin with goose bumps, she could see her father’s face. The sun streamed in through the window lighting up her body. Cradled by a perfect patchwork of feathers she found, cleaned and sewed together, Ica looked like a child. Her pale face and shabby dress shone white; Ica was transformed into a statue. She was frozen in a moment of tranquility. As she fell asleep, she saw herself floating away from the city, and toward the desert.

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ROSEHOUND APPAREL

www.rosehoundapparel.com @rosehoundapparel

I N T E R V I E W

In 2010, LA band Local Natives embarked

on its first US tour in support of their breakthrough album Gorilla Manor, named for the Silver Lake house they lived and recorded in. In an organic and truly “indie” way, the album launched Local Natives from LA’s best kept secret to an essential addition to summer playlists across the world. Nearly four years later, when I speak to guitarist Ryan Hahn, the band is gearing up to open for Kings Of Leon on a major arena tour across North America.

With breezy guitar riffs, catchy harmonies, and an impeccably timed rhythm section, itʼs no wonder the band caught the attention of one of indie rock’s biggest influencers, The National’s Aaron Dessner, who produced their critically acclaimed sophomore album, Hummingbird. While working with Local Natives at his Brooklyn home, Dessner helped the band further their craft as musicians and performers. Between their natural rise from small clubs to Coachella’s Sunset Slot, Local Natives have always stayed true to their roots, gaining a devoted following that’s eager to come along for the ride.

Local Natives

Inte r view by

B ram Gonshor

Pipe r Fe rguson

Photograph by

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I N T E R V I E W

Bram Gonshor Ryan Hahm

It doesn’t really get much better than Opening for Kings Of Leon, in the rock world right now. Are you excited to be on this tour? Yeah, very much so. We’re playing the biggest venues we’ve ever played, so that’s really fun. I was a massive fan when their first two records came out. I just remember going to see them with Taylor [Rice, guitarist in Local Natives] back in the day, so this is kind of like a rad full-circle thing.

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I N T E R V I E W B: What was the biggest crowd Local Natives has played? I saw you guys on the Main Stage at Bonnaroo last summer and that must have been pretty huge in the grand scheme of things. R: Bonnaroo was bigger than we expected, but yeah I think that was our biggest crowd. That was insane. B: Your set definitely put everyone in the right mood and headspace for the day. I felt like the guitar sound of Local Native triggered this subconscious desire for summer and sun and love before a single note was even sung. Is this a conscious decision with the band’s guitar tone? R: Oh, wow, that’s really interesting. I don’t think we ever thought of it in that sense. With Hummingbird, we really tried to use guitar in different ways, so I guess that was acting upon that instinct. B: How did working with Aaron Dessner [of The National] on Hummingbird influence your sound, and what do you think made him connect so well with your music? R: First and foremost, I think when we toured with them, we were happily surprised to find that he was a big fan of ours and really enjoyed our first record. When it came time to work together, it seemed like were on the same page as far as what we wanted to accomplish. I thought he had cool ideas and especially guitar-wise, he was able to broaden our palette and take us outside of our comfort zone. It was nice having him around. B: Being from LA, I know playing The Greek Theatre was huge for the band. What made that show so special? R: I think it’s because it was a hometown show and a venue that I personally had never been to but always viewed as – except for the Hollywood Bowl – the pinnacle of playing in LA. You know, it doesn’t really get more massive than that for us. Something about it always seemed like a goal,

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B: What was your first guitar?

I N T E R V I E W and to be honest, a far off goal. So doing it at this point was definitely a “brain explosion,” if you will.

B: Would you ever consider leaving?

B: You guys went to high school together in Orange County. Was it music that brought you all together? R: Taylor [Rice] and I met in junior high school and we started playing guitar together maybe the year after. It was just something we wanted to do. Then we met Kelcey [Ayer] later through a friend. I think music is what brought us all together. Musically, Orange Country is a very interesting place to come up in. There’s a lot of punk rock and hardcore music and ska. But, when you like the kind of music the three of us liked, I guess you sort of gravitate towards each other. It was really a strong bond, even deciding where to go to college. We wanted to stay close to each other. B: Did the hardcore punk scene in Orange Country influence Local Natives? R: We’ve been playing music together for so long that I’m sure somewhere along the line, it’s in there. I think we’ve gotten more comfortable in the studio but live is really where we like to be. I think that comes from, the music we grew up with. It’s a really energetic live show, and we toured our asses off before we ever even put out a record. We just played so many shows in Orange County that I think we’ll always have those roots in there. We really pride ourselves on being able to play live and put on a show and having that badge. B: What’s the thinking behind creating your own album art? R: I think we learned early on that you just have to rely on yourselves to really get anything done that you’re going to be proud of. I think you can’t outsource it to other people and expect them to be as passionate about it as you are. I think we always try to push ourselves to handle as much of it as we can.

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I N T E R V I E W B: After touring in the US, is LA still home? R: Yeah, we all still live within a two-mile radius of each other over in Silver Lake and Ecco Park. B: Would you ever consider leaving? R: It’s funny, we do enjoy touring and we do enjoy visiting other cities but I just feel like I’ll always come back to LA. It’s one of the few cities I can picture myself living in for an extended period of time. Sorry, one second……[Ryan talks to someone in the room]....Sorry, was just talking about a guitar I just got with our guitar tech. Just have to fix it up a little bit. B: What kind of guitar did you get? R: It’s a Burns, from the 1960s. I got it when were in Dublin. I wouldn’t necessary call myself a guitar nerd or anything like that, but I played it in the store and fell in love immediately. It’s my new baby. B: What was your first guitar? R: It was a red Epiphone Strat – didn’t even have a guitar amp. My dad was nice enough to get me a guitar but I think he wasn’t willing to shell out on a guitar amp yet. So I just had this electric guitar with no amp and then when he saw I wasn’t going to stop, he bought me a mini amp for it. B: Needless to say, he must be happy seeing you at The Greek Theatre. R: Yeah, he’s probably our band's biggest fan. B: When you’re done with all the festivals, does the band have some time off or are you heading right back into the studio? R: We have a bunch of ideas floating around but I think we’d love to get back into our rehearsal space and really dig into it. We’d love to get a third record going as quickly as possible. We’re trying to learn how to write on tour better and we tried to keep our touring schedules to a minimum this year.

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R: Yeah, he’s probably our bands biggest fan.

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issue #3 coming soon... www.carbonpaper.ca

Star

of Davida

Andrea Leigh Pelletie r Photographs by Mat thew Tammaro

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A R T I first met Davida Nemeroff in 2011 at a talk she gave at Ryerson University in Toronto, where I was studying photography. She was exhibiting at Gallery TPW in Toronto and, as a Ryerson grad herself, she spoke to my class about her work. There was something immediately intriguing about Nemeroff: standing at 5’10 with a head of wild, curly hair, she has a commanding presence while maintaining a creative, approachable energy. Her work, a mixture of still and moving images, examined American urban culture through a series of meditative portraits, still lifes, and landscapes that gave insight into Nemeroff’s unique form of looking. As a Canadian now living full-time in Los Angeles, Nemeroff’s experience of Californian culture was at once present and absent, and as she discussed her practice, I found myself transfixed. The year before, in 2010, Nemeroff had opened Night Gallery in a former party-supply store turned squatters residence, in a run-down strip mall in Lincoln Heights, a predominantly lowincome Latino neighbourhood outside of downtown. In the beginning, Night Gallery was open from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. during the week, and it served as a space for the young artists of LA to exhibit, and talk about their work, drink, and smoke. “A lot of it was about smoking,” she says, sitting with me in a sunny patch of the gallery's parking lot, doing

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W O R L D just that. “I wanted to smoke inside.” As much as it was a place to party, the space quickly gained attention for being a hotbed of the city’s up-and-coming talent. Artists like Samara Golden transformed Night Gallery with her environmental installations, earning a headline in LA Weekly which read “Samara Golden’s Rape of the Mirror Transforms Night Gallery Into Beachside Villa in theʻSixth Dimension’... With a Jacuzzi.” Darkroom, a 2011 group show which featured local emerging artist Sean Townley, Yale graduate and Brooklyn-based artist John Bianchi, and Minneapolis-based artists Justin Thomas Schaefer and Jay Heikes, consisted of a series of faintly present photo-based works, many of which were dimly lit by red lights, as if reminiscent of the analogue photographic process itself. After a year of running Night Gallery solo, Nemeroff partnered with Mieke Marple, a dealer with a keen business sense. With Marple on board, Night Gallery increased sales and broadened their reach across the country. In January 2013, Night Gallery moved to a larger, more professional setting on the eastern edge of downtown and introduced daytime hours. Last year, the exhibition Made in Space traveled from Night Gallery to Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Venus Over Manhattan, in New York, where it was the toast of the town. “It started on the couch los angeles

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A R T of the old Night Gallery space as a conversation, and then Peter [Harkawik, Nemeroff’s then-boyfriend] and Laura [Owens] took lead of it and curated the show,” she says. The exhibition featured a roster of LA-based contemporary artists, including Nemeroff and a myriad of others, from the well-known, such as Jorge Pardo, Jim Isermann, to young up-andcomers, like Vanessa Conte and Joshua Callaghan. Made in Space addressed a 1981 article by Village Voice art critic Peter Schjendahl in which he dismissed LA as a car town that isolated its artists from one another. In their reactionary exhibition over 30 years later, Harkawik and Owens highlighted a community of artists that were flourishing – both in conversation with one another and individually. In an era of globalized artistic practices, Made in Space gave a peek into an art scene that is intensely local, showing a community of artists that are thriving creatively in LA’s sprawl. I had only been in LA for a few hours before I understood the appeal of Night Gallery’s nocturnal hours and communal energy. Wandering around Silver Lake on foot was not as easy as I had hoped, and I began to understand what Schjendahl had meant. The shops were all blocks apart, and the sidewalk was terrifyingly close to speeding traffic. Other than a few crowded coffee shops, it was difficult to find a communal area in LA that wasn’t overwhelmingly los angeles

W O R L D corporate like Beverly Hills or full of ridiculously underdressed weirdos like Venice Beach. Though Nemeroff is ingrained in LA’s vibrant art community, she seems uncertain about her future in the city. “Itʼs really chill here, everyday is sunny. Itʼs not like you’re gonna get a big rain storm – everything is constant and consistent,” she says. “I love LA, I am just terrified about living the rest of my life here. Itʼs very existential. Itʼs very fucked up. I smoke a lot of weed here.” I wondered why, after two years in a bustling metropolis like New York City, Nemeroff had chosen LA in the first place. “I graduated in 2009 when the market crashed and I took one look at New York and figured out I wasn’t going to make it there,” she explains. Ever the risk taker, Nemeroff received an invitation from Toronto gallerist Katharine Mulherin to assist her in opening up a satellite space, and she bought a one-way ticket to LA. “I had never even been here before. If I had been here before I never would have moved here. I showed up on the day of Michael Jacksons funeral, took a supershuttle from the airport, and got dropped off in Chinatown,” she says. “At the time Chinatown was so dead, there was a tumbleweed that went by and I was like, ʻWhat is this place?’ And I have been trying to figure it out ever since.” In the process of figuring it out, Nemeroff has managed to make quite

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the name for herself. Unaware of the calm yet intriguing quality of her presence, Nemeroff has amassed an impressive network of gallerists, artists, and creative thinkers from around the world. Over the two hours I spent with Nemeroff at Night Gallery, flowers were delivered from X-TRA magazine, and she had visits from the impeccably dressed Miami gallerist Michael Jon Radziewicz, an artist from Berlin named Candice, and Chelsea Culp, a Chicago artist and gallerist known for her involvement in the alternative art space New Capital Projects. But despite her xascendance, it’s clear that her journey with Night Gallery has not been an easy one. Being the face of a hip art space has had its downfalls. “I lost a lot of friends. It’s hard, people got pissed,” she says. “Its hard to trust people. Its hard to be in relationships with artists.” Like many young entrepreneurs, Nemeroff struggled to find a balance between working and personal relationships, feeling as though her rise in LA’s insular art community made her vulnerable. Now, she says, running the Night Gallery in its new space and with a more professional vibe, is “way more chill. It’s competitive on a much different level. And I can party somewhere else and someone else can be that host.” Meanwhile, Nemeroff’s work as an artist continues to push her into the spotlight. Her 2012 exhibition with Golden, Modern

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Painters, which used the aesthetics of a hotel lobby press conference to explore the relationship of the Curator/Dealer (Nemeroff) to the Artist (Golden), garnered a strong review in Art in America. As of late, Nemeroff has been working on a book project that dissects one hour she spent with a group of horses in Hawaii. The book, a collaboration between herself and a collection of writers and artists, reflects her practice as a gallerist and curator, bringing together a variety of works with an underlying theme. In the process of working as a curator and gallerist, Nemeroff says she struggles to maintain her artistic practice as a separate vocation. “Even though I am not producing [art work], itʼs what’s collecting in my studio that is art. That’s where I am at with art,” she says. “My practice includes running the gallery, and my photography.” When I ask about how she self-identifies, her voice is clear and strong: “I just know 100 percent I am an artist I am not sure if I am a gallerist.” Nemeroff sees the way in which she interacts with the art world as wholly artistic. Whether as an artist, or gallerist, or something in between, “You have to feel something, you have to decide what it is youʼre about,” she says. “Something that I am about is seeing work that has conviction. That is what I have decided. And what I will tolerate. If I donʼt see any conviction in the work, then why am I looking at it?” los angeles

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FF AA SS HH I I OO NN

I sabel Slone

Illust ration by

Jon B urge r man

Jeremy Scott始s polarizing prints have taken the LA fashion designer from outsider to icon

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F A S H I O N Jeremy Scott came to me when I was 17 years old in an i-D magazine I shoplifted from the local Chapters. I was drawn to the cover, where the LA fashion designer looked like an approximation of a redneck with his racing stripe mullet ‘do, posed saucily alongside his muse Devon Aoki, the cherubic half-Japanese model wearing a tiger-printed playsuit with a tail. The year is 2007: Rihanna’s “Umbrella” is on constant top 40 radio play, and Spiderman 3 is the blockbuster of the summer. But underneath the apex of pop culture, there is a swelling growing on the side of Hollywood’s face; one that rejects the monolith of celebrity worship, parties maniacally, and dresses to provoke stares. At the time, LA fashion is synonymous with the Juicy Couture Sweatshirts, Ugg boots, and Venti Starbucks cups seen on US Weekly and People magazine covers in the grocery checkout line. The Cobrasnake, a website where photographer Mark Hunter posts pictures of preternaturally gorgeous Los Angeles party kids in their element, has captured the imagination of every dissatisfied alt teenager logging on to MySpace. The It Girl commanding the scene is Cory Kennedy–Hunter’s doe-eyed girlfriend– whose long dirty hair and precocious afterschool activities make her the subject of endless speculation. She is a Helen of Troy for the Internet age–a face that launched a thousand blog posts. In Hunter’s party photos, everybody’s eyes look a little glassy and their fashion sense belies lowered inhibitions too: face paint, neon, fanny packs, and ironically oversized bar mitzvah t-shirts scoured from the local thrift store.

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Jeremy Scott and fellow irony-obsessed LA designers like Brian Lichtenberg were largely responsible for this surge towards the visually ridiculous. In the Cobrasnake era, Scott was best known for producing clothing emblazoned with anthropomorphic french fries and Oreos. But despite his obscurity and lowbrow designs, Scott was hardly an untrained whippersnapper –he debuted his first fashion collection a whole decade earlier in Paris in 1997. By the time he created his third–an all-white collection inspired by the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster–Scott was a critical darling of the fashion elite. He was even lauded by Isabella Blow, the Brit fashion editor behind Alexander McQueen’s meteoric success, who was known for sniffing out young talent like a trained truffle pig. For his fourth collection, Scott decided to rail against the reigning Helmut Lang-inspired sleek minimalism of the day, and sent an entire collection of opulent gold 1980s-inspired creations down the runway. Horrified by this unseemly departure, André Leon Talley of Vogue said he should never design again. Shortly after this faux pas, Scott decamped to Los Angeles in 2002. His sense of humour never meshed with the uptight traditionalism of Paris, and he “wanted to step out of the middle of the whole fashion thing,” he told i-D. But 10 years later, he was in the middle of another zeitgeist, sartorially capturing the spirit of druggy nu-rave parties in the heart of Los Angeles. Scott grew up on a farm 40 minutes outside Kansas City, Missouri. He was fourteen when he realized high fashion existed, los angeles

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F A S H I O N 2012 collection is heavily inspired by teen bloggers on Tumblr, and features plenty of emoticons and Bart Simpson. He is the and became determined that was the world fashion world’s answer to Andy Warhol; a he belonged in. High school was basically an excuse for him to get dressed every day, man whose trademark is taking pop culture and he would save all of his lunch money imagery and placing it into a new context. and spend it on designer clothes. By the “People don’t want boring clothes from me, time he ended up in the fashion design people don’t want safe clothes. It’s just not program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in who I am and not what people look for from the early 1990s, Scott was rocking a pret- me,” he said in an interview with the fashty extreme look. “He had a wide, stringy ion film website SHOW Studio. Instead, mohawk and shaved eyethey’re looking for sneakers with teddy bears on them, brows, and he wore a khaki For all the skirt with cargo pockets that clothes that are bright, poppy, detractors who bold, and unique. dragged on the sidewalk,” remembers writer William To Scott, conspicuous confind his clothVan Meter in the New York sumption isn’t something ing tacky or Times. He was the opposite déclassé, there to fight against, rather it’s of fashion establishment, yet something you can draw a are the people he longed for a place inside caricature of and then laugh who identify the industry. Scott moved to at. “Any message you can so hard with Paris after graduation to catatransmit with humour is going pult himself into the locus of Scott’s designs to be stronger, more effective centuries-old haute couture, and received better. I have a that they’ve but found he couldn’t even natural ability to find humour formed their in almost every situation,” he get an internship picking pins own community. says. His direct parodies of up off the floor of a couture Snickers bars and Spongehouse. During an extended period of couchsurfing, a French boy said bob Squarepants are not clever, in fact they’re very obvious. But the cheekiness to him: “If you’re so good, why don’t you do is fun, and surprisingly wearable. Scott’s it yourself?” The rest of Scott’s career has designs are not avant-garde in the sense essentially been a huge fuck you to that of a Comme des Garcons jacket with French kid. three armholes or the complicated drapScott’s career is built on an extremely strong sense of self. “I try to be as pure as ing of Ann Demeulemeester. They have I can about what I do: what I feel is right, wild prints, but it’s just a dress, just a top. “I my instinct,” he told i-D. This instinct is ir- feel like people can understand my clothes reverent, colourful, sometimes downright whether they work in fashion or not. It’s not garish. He puts fast food on sweaters, and like you need a dissertation to understand makes dresses that look like jukeboxes, postcards, and plastic bags. Scott’s fall los angeles

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it. A lot of high fashion can have that lofty feeling,” says Scott, who prefers his clothing to be universal. There are people who get it and people who don’t. Rosie Newton, a fashion blogger based in London, England, claims Scott’s hoovering of pop culture is like a “less harmful” version of cultural appropriation, invoking Scott’s blatant rip-off of legendary skateboard artist Jim Phillips. In early 2013, Scott introduced some sweaters depicting sweaty, raging faces that looked suspiciously like skate decks distributed by the Santa Cruz skateboard company in the 80s. After six months of legal persistence, Scott admitted his faux pas by settling the intellectual property violation out of court. To Newton, Scott is essentially the highfashion version of a mall kiosk that sells joke t-shirts with pot leaves shaped like the Adidas logo; sleazy, low class, and totally not funny. “People probably think he is a genius for taking his inspiration from pop culture or whatever,” says Newton. “But I think it’s really unimaginative and boring.” But for all the detractors who find his clothing tacky or déclassé, there are the people who identify so hard with Scott’s designs that they’ve formed their own community. Andrew Chipman, the Winnipeg-based blogger behind Pull Teeth, estimates he has around 20 Jeremy Scott pieces and has made a tradition of purchasing a new item for his birthday every year. Chipman started collecting in 2009 with a sweatshirt reading “Eat the Rich” in bloody dripping letters found on eBay for only $100. At the time, it was almost impossible to find anything Jeremy Scott on-

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line. But since Scott’s foray into populism with his ongoing Adidas collaboration, it’s a completely different story. “Now you look and there’s thousands of things that come up on eBay,” he tells me. Jeremy Scott’s raucous prints and devotion to streetwear has taken him from fashion outsider to the upper echelons of the business. After proving his outré aesthetic has plenty of retail appeal–in the last decade, Scott has produced successful collaborations with Swatch, Longchamp, and Adidas–he was hired as head designer for the Italian label Moschino in October 2013. Moschino’s heyday was in the 1980s, where designer Franco Moschino liked to poke holes in the serious façade of fashion with heavily logoed, brash designs that touted such a crass approximation of luxury they veered into self-parody. Scott’s proclivity for repackaging trash culture into high fashion was a perfect fit. His first order of business for the label was producing a McDonald’s-inspired collection, drawing heavily on the Golden Arches and a ketchup and mustard colour palette; disgusting, hilarious, and totally Scott. “If you’re designing for another house, it’s like doing a drag act,” Scott told SHOW Studio. But Jeremy Scott’s recent collection for Moschino seems more like instinct than a glittering performance. There is no doubt Scott will continue to inject his irreverent and playful sensibilities into the Moschino brand while garnering publicity, and most likely, increasing sales. Jeremy Scott is solid proof to all the weird little teenagers out there that freaks do grow up to run the world.

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$12 ~ ISSUE 5 ~ SUMMER 2014

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