ISSUE No 2 | 2012
Story ART*CULTURE*INSPIRATION
Story ART | CULTURE | PHOTOGRAPHY
SEEK LOVE DESTROY LAURA PANNACK YOUNG LOVE REVISITED | PLUS ONE SERIPOP + DNML | PROJECT INTERPRETING THE UNEXPECTED | THE CHAIR WORD TO MOTHER | ARTOUT ARTIST ESCORT SERVICES | Radya Russian Street Art
Story ART | CULTURE | INSPIRATION
Managing Editor Richard Doran richard@storymagazine.co.uk
Editor Kasia Figiel kasia@storymagazine.co.uk
Art Editor Justine Middleton justine@storymagazine.co.uk
Web Designer Sophie Allen sophie@storymagazine.co.uk
Contributors Alma Haser, Emma Smith, Kanchi Wichmann, John Paul Gardner, Studio Thomas & Pascal, Victor Vauthier, Word to Mother, Laura Pannack, Courtney Brims, Samantha Jack , Alexis Dubois, Matthew Cusick, Alex Carol , Seripop, DNML, Timofey Radya, Alexandra Massey
Thanks to Artout, I–Wei Li, Per Platou, Anton K. Mayr, Stolen Space, Jennie Remedy, Daniel Mumford, Jianni Tien, Brian Lobel, Season Butler, Marcroy Smith
CONTACT - Advertising: advertising@storymagazine.co.uk | Editorial: richard@storymagazine.co.uk | Design/Art: justine@storymagazine.co.uk | General Enquiries: info@storymagazine.co.uk | All submissions are property of Story Magazine UK. The entire content is a copyright of Story Magazine UK and cannot be reproduced in whole or in part without written authorisation of the publishers. For more information go to www.storymagazine.co.uk
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STORY | I N T R O
Sto路ry
(magazine) n. pl. sto路ries
Seek | Love | Destroy If ever there was a metaphorical way of explaining the theme of this issue, it would be through the process of making it. When things are on the forefront of our minds, do they manifest themselves into our reality, or do we just become more sensitive to what has always been around us? If being a struggling artist is a romantic notion, then starting a magazine is porn. Lucky for you though, our porn is art. Our romance is an accumulation of humbling talent, each pushing the common boundaries of their field. Collectively their work will take you through the artistic notions of pursuit, passion and destruction that can come as part of the obsessive artistic cycle. I would like to thank each of our contributors, especially our project participants for being a part of this issue and the process of making it. The results speak for themselves.
EDITOR - Richard Doran
SEEKLOVEDESTROY | 2012
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Seek SEEK
You may feel complete, but the eye always seeks. It scans every room, trying to locate the gaze of your missing companion. The unnamed and faceless other, who will slip into the grooves of your self and make sense – the one that, despite claims of maturity, you still think will magically make everything make sense. You seek to be lost in the breath between you – without thought, without preconception or post-mortem, finding freedom in the absolute contentment and safety of your now.
Love LOVE
It’s agonising, transcendent, and tricky as hell. Trying to pinpoint when to thrash something out and when to let it go, when to stand your ground and when to compromise. It’s tearing your fucking hair out while knowing that no matter how insane they make you, anyone else would just be notthem. It demands the best in each of you, even as you ask to be understood at your worst. Real love takes you as a whole in all your messy humanity; still accepts you when you’re irritable, irrational, and impossible.
De stroy DESTROY
The real tragedy is never the dramatic implosion, the loud storming-out. It is rarely ever the big bang of betrayal – these are the endings of loves designed to burn out in a brilliant flash. It’s when no matter how much effort’s been expended, you still come up short, holding a beaten and tattered love. It’s turning away, still loving, still wanting, but without hope. It’s the twisted-up guts of having bounced off every wall you can in order to make someone happy, only to find that it’s not enough. It’s the disintegration of a future half-formed, the fading of a picture on some distant mantelpiece. Alexandra Massey
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This is N ot a
CONTENTS PAGE Projects PROJECT YOURSELF | ALMA
THE CHAIR | WORD TO MOTHER
HASER | 6
| 35
Take part in this photographic
Story tracks down the elusive artist
game of hide and seek.
and illustrator Word to Mother.
STORY PROJECT | LOVE | 15
+1 | SERIPOP AND DNML | 61
Contributors from around the
Interviews with Canadian art duo
world create pieces of art using
Seripop and their guest - print and
gifts we sent them.
installation artist DNML.
GALLERY | OBSESSION | 46
Spotlight
Five artists take on a theme of
laura pannack | YOUNG LOVE
obsession.
| 40 Award-winning photographer gives Story an insight into the makings of her series of portraits of young people in love.
Features ARTOUT | 15
RADYA | ALL THAT IS CHARRED
Investigation into the first ever
REMAINS | 74
artist escort agency.
Large-scale, fire-induced street art all the way from Ekaterinburg, Russia
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ALMA HASER | PROJECT
YOUR -SELF
PROJECT
YOUR -SELF ‘Ten Seconds’ Project Alma Haser www.haser.org www.fishingforapples.blogspot.com www.tensecondsproject.co.uk Alma Haser’s ‘Ten Seconds’ series plays homage to the childhood game of hide and seek, which the photographer used to play with her brother. The project rules are loosely based on the game - Alma gives herself ten seconds to try and hide, or make herself as small as she possibly can, before her camera goes off on self-timer. The photographs show Alma in a variety of domestic locations, with her adult body squeezed into confined spaces, never completely concealed, but also never revealing her true identity. No matter how advanced your own photography skills are, you can also join in on this project. Bring out the child in you - take your own hide and seek photographs and send them to alma@ haser.org and they will be exhibited on the Ten Seconds Project website.
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ALMA HASER | PROJECT
YOUR -SELF
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ARTOUT | A R T E S CO R T AG EN C Y
ARTOUT WRITTEN BY Kasia Figiel
The story of Artout starts with a controversy and a lawsuit. This is perhaps unsurprising, as this experimental part art project, part business is an escort agency with a twist – each of their escorts is an artist. Story investigates what claims to be ‘the first art escort agency in the history of art’
I
n an interview with Story Magazine, I-Wei Li, the current CEO of Artout, explained that this project first started as a critical commentary on the precarious living conditions of artists. And with widespread cuts in public funding for the art sectors funding around the world and the current economic condition making artists’ struggle for survival increasingly challenging, the idea behind Artout seems more relevant then ever before. Artout explores the issue of whether artists sell purely their work or rather their whole personas - in a way similar to attention-hungry celebrities. This also seems a valid question, with so many artists (think Tracey Emin or Damien Hirst) crossing the line between art and pop culture and with some art competitions increasingly resembling popularity contests. By putting the artists in a situation where they literally sell themselves, the project tries to draw analogies with artists’ metaphorical prostitution within the art world. One of the participating artist escorts Per Platou explains that he actually finds it easier to trade himself within the confines of the projects, as the rules are set out from the start: ‘It’s a very clear trade. Much clearer than in the rest of the art world where these boundaries are super blurry. And they are intentionally blurry.’ Whilst the project explores complex issues around the place of an artist within the cultural industry its literal realisation of idea that ‘every artist is a prostitute’, has caused significant criticism.
SEEKLOVEDESTROY | 2012
Particularly from feminist artists arguing that it trivialises prostitution. And then there was the lawsuit…. When the founder of Artout – Anton K. Mayr – first kicked off the project in 2006, he was not only dismissed from his teaching post at the Parsons School of Art and Design in Paris. The school had also accused Artout of running a ‘prostitution ring’. The artists successfully challenged this accusation in court and were subsequently awarded a damage pay out. Considering this recent experience it’s not that surprising that all the Artout employees we spoke to were pretty vague about just how sexual this escort experience really is. However, at no point do their comments rule out the possibility of a sexual encounter (not to discourage potential clients?) with I-Wei commenting that, ‘it’s not necessarily always sexual’ and Per stating that, ‘it doesn’t always happen’. But maybe what makes them refrain from giving concrete answers is the idea at the very heart of the concept that the rules of these encounters are not supposed to be strictly defined? As I-Wei explains: ‘This is really much more challenging precisely because we are not defining what we can provide; we don’t limit ourselves to a particular service. And this is why every time we present our project this is the part that people seem to have a problem with. Because they really want some squared answers: “You are able to…”or “Your escort can do this, this and this.”’ But this vagueness is no different from how regular escort agencies operate, and these explanations left us questioning what is it that sets Artout apart from a regular escort agency. Firstly there obviously is the artistic concept, which makes Anton call what he does ‘selling immaterial works of art’. They certainly treat the concept very Story
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seriously and Anton is hoping to explore it further – ‘We would like to do a conference on the subject of the client-artist relationship, the immateriality of the product we sell and the whole idea of the economy of art built around those principles.’ But what really sets them apart, I-Wei argues, is how they set their hourly prices for their escorts! Apparently these are worked out according solely to each artist’s experience: ‘It’s not about their appearance or their age, that’s why it’s different from conventional prostitution. Our standard is not the same. You are booking a real artist.’ But is a ‘concept’ behind this business and an unusual pricing model really enough to differentiate themselves from regular escorting agencies? Interestingly some distinction is created somehow outside of what the agency does - by the clients 12
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themselves. At least according to both Anton and Per, their clients chose Artout precisely because they are interested specifically in artistic interaction. As Per Platou puts it: ‘I’m not a model or anything. So if they want a kind of sexy Mexican boy they would have probably looked elsewhere’. Anton explains that difference even more quizzically: ‘You can buy a ticket to watch an obscure art house film, but if you hate art house, you are not going to do that, you are going to watch Transformers.’ Their experiences don’t exactly sound very racy and Anton also plays down risks involved in his work: ‘[Dangerous] things like that don’t really happen when you are hired by a wealthy client to discuss Habermas.’ And so regardless of initial setbacks Artout is somehow working, both as an art project and growing as a business. I-Wei argues it couldn’t be
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ARTOUT | A R T E S CO R T AG EN C Y
one without the other – ‘Because if it is only an art or a conceptual project, in my opinion it’s relatively boring’. At the moment it seems like the scales are tipping towards the business side, as under the direction of the new CEO Artout is now on a mission of business expansion. I-Wei explains: ‘At the moment our project it to expand our clientele in Asia, especially China, and we are also thinking about Abu Dhabi and Brazil. We started to have a very strong interest in Latin America.’ I-Wei is endearingly honest, explaining her plan is to target ‘people with money or big corporations’. An obvious question that springs to mind is whether the artistic concept will be lost because of the rapid business expansion, or the contrary. And maybe, the only way to decide what this project
SEEKLOVEDESTROY | 2012
really is about, is to try for yourself – either as a client or an escort. If the latter, there are only two criteria you would need to meet. Firstly, really grasp the concept of the project and not hope to use it to advance your own career - ‘We are not an agency to promote some artwork, we are actually selling the artists themselves. Artists are the product. ‘(I-Wei). Then you just need them to approve your work - you need to be ‘a real artist’. (Whatever that means…) And if you don’t get through the selection process, but happen to have a wad of cash lying around, the guys from Artout are eager to accommodate any needs. In I-Wei’s own words - ‘So, if you want to hire Damian Hirst to clean your toilet, don’t be afraid to contact us. I think that’s all I will say about Artout.’ Well, they certainly believe they can create worthwhile experiences… Story
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STORY PROJECT | LOV E
{
STORY LOVE Project
}
Brief: Create a work of art using your love gift
Tools: Anything THEME:
Seek | Love | Destroy
In our latest creative experiment we challenged our participants to create an artwork based on a surprise object that was sent to them. The artists utilised our carefully chosen and packaged love-gifts to produce unique pieces, centred around the theme of romance.
SEEKLOVEDESTROY | 2012
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EMMA SMITH
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PROJECT | LOV E S TO RY
{
CANDLES Emma Smith
www.emiloumakes.co.uk
}
Location
What is the best thing you’ve heard this year?
Hackney, London
La Dispute. I saw them in Camden a little while ago and they were amazing live. I listened to ‘Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair’ almost constantly during this project.
Occupation Freelance designer, maker, teacher and all-round crafts person.
What bothers you? Favourite pastime I like being on my bike. I like the freedom of coming and going as I please.
Time bothers me. There’s never enough time. I struggle to fit in everything I want to do and that terrifies me. Some days I feel like I just can’t keep up with myself.
Favourite artist I love Peter Callesen’s A4 Papercuts. I find the fact that he takes an everyday material and creates something so intricate and beautiful from it fascinating.
What is your passion? Detail. I admire people who have the skill and patience to pay attention to the intricate little details that make something beautiful.
Favourite up-and-coming artist I have many, most of them are between four and nine years old. I run an arts and crafts workshop every week, and some of the artwork the children produce is incredible. They have absolutely no boundaries and the wildest imaginations.
I seek…. a happy ending.
Favourite place
barely find the way out.
Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington is both eerie and beautiful. It’s by far one of my favourite places to escape to in London.
What was your gift?
What is the best thing you’ve seen this year? I spent a month in eastern Slovakia earlier this year on a traditional Slovak textiles course. We were surrounded by beautiful forests and meadows, which stretched literally as far as you could see.
SEEKLOVEDESTROY | 2012
I love… hearing other people’s secrets and stories. I destroy… my workspace. When I get going I can
Six black candles packaged in a brown box.
What is the concept behind your Story Project? I looked at the idea of seeking love. The feeling of desperation and the lengths you would go to, to find ‘The One’. I researched old wives tales, spells and potions surrounding the idea of seeking love and used these as inspiration. Candles hold a great
Story
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EMMA SMITH
significance in both romantic and magical sense, so I used them purely as objects to form the basis of my story. The chandelier tells the story of a woman who has never experienced true love. Teacups covered with old wives tales, tealeaf readings, spells, love potions and charms hold the six black candles. The brass frame is overgrown with ceramic roses, crocheted vines and solid silver thorns. Hand stitched ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ paper daisy chains with silver inscribed petals are draped around the base. Five silver tears hang in a glass bottle from the base of the chandelier, above a letter to her beloved.
What medium did you use? Mixed media: brass, white earthenware clay, clear and matt glaze, illustration, ceramic decals, silver, crochet, resin, paper…
What was your process? The chandelier is made up of different elements telling different parts of the story. All of the elements were individually prepared and constructed in the final stages and this feels the most natural way for me to create something that feels complete.
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I sourced the chandelier frame. I took three old brass-ceiling lights, took them to pieces, stripped them of their fake candles and ripped out the wiring. Using most of the parts I reconstructed them into a six-arm chandelier. The ceramic roses and leaves were hand-built and glazed over several firings. Alongside the teacups, they were finished with decals of hand written spells, love charms, superstitions and images. Silver thorns, five silver tears, daisy petals, silver heart and a small hedgehog were sculpted, dried, fired and cleaned up until polished and smooth. Vines and leaves were crocheted using different colour threads, in varying weights and hook sizes. All the ends were starched to create a vine like curls. ‘He loves me, he loves me not…’ daisy heads were hand stitched together with their crocheted stalks. Silver petals were added. The individual daisies were then threaded together in a traditional daisy chain fashion. With all of the elements of the story in front of me, I began to piece it all together, starting with the larger parts and leaving the smallest details until the very end.
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STORY PROJECT | LOV E
SEEKLOVEDESTROY | 2012
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KANCHI WICHMANN
I
am in the City of Angels when I receive the electronic mail that says “we like your work bla bla” and they tell me they will send me something a mystery item and I will use it to make a story about finding love having love and losing love again (Their exact words are “seek love destroy” – oh how these words will come to plague me). Meanwhile I am watching the strange contortions that other couples put themselves in to avoid facing up to the naked truth and at the same time I am avoiding the naked truth of the strange contortions that I myself and my girlfriend are putting ourselves into to avoid facing the discomfort of reality and I start smoking cigarettes again because they seem uncomplicated and something to suck into the hole that doesn’t touch the outside. When I get home there is no package. I am drawing pictures about feelings and musing and wait-
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ing for the package. In London it is raining very heavily for July. A man knocks on her door (I cannot receive post at mine), she does not answer because she is on the run. Another day he has an umbrella and knocks again and this time she sees he has a large triangular package and answers the door to him and tells me that he looked nice so she invited him in, but he was busy (delivering more triangular packages no doubt). I go to get the package and it is black paper and inside is red plastic flowers my friend later asks if they are roses but I can’t remember. I am thinking of those white bikes when somebody has died and rotting bouquets on lampposts and my friend tells me the words for I you in Maori because his friend was dating a Maori girl, but then he found out she was a Christian and then we see one of those African church minibuses, but they are trying to repair it so there is only part of a biblical quote
still visible under the filler.
I played were psychological.
Today is sunny and I am thinking of red plastic flowers and wondering what the story is.
Should I put the plastic flowers on a grave? When my dad was dead we had the chance to see his body and we went down into the basement of a building at the back of the hospital that was concrete and there was a waiting room with three broken plastic chairs and nothing else that I remember but when someone is dead you do not want to wait you actually don’t want to sit down at all you want to pace up and down but even that was uncomfortable because there were other people there and you certainly don’t want to make eye contact with another person who is waiting to see a dead body. Inside the cold room where the body was they offered us to see it and although it seemed somewhat shocking I thought hell maybe I should just force myself because my friend told me about a donkey who went mad because of its friend who was a horse who died and he never saw the body, but then they told us that
We all want the same things, but sometimes people get confused, but are we really like a flower or a carrot or a mouse with simple needs that just repeat over and over until we die? The flowers are on my table and outside my neighbours are playing a board game like normal people except somebody is smoking a cigar which is leaking into my window and making me feel sick and cough. Their voices are low-key except for excited shrieks. Why don’t I like playing games? I see pictures of my friends arm wrestling and I am glad I left the party early. When I was young a part of me longed to belong to something where you did things organised with other people (like a club or a group), but I made a feature out of not belonging until I forgot the feeling of wanting to belong and the only games
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STORY PROJECT | LOV E
{
FLOWERS Kanchi
Wichmann
www.breakmyfall.co.uk
}
Location
What bothers you?
Hackney Wick
Trying to give up smoking.
Occupation
What is your passion?
Filmmaker and youth worker
Cigarettes
Favourite pastime
I seek... answers.
Making music
I love… questions. Favourite artist Valerie Solanas
I destroy… meaning.
Favourite up-and-coming artist
What was your gift?
Helene Hegemann - she made a short feature film called Torpedo (Germany, 2008) when she was 16 years old and I love it. You can see the trailer on Youtube. I’m waiting to see what she does next. Also people that I know personally and admire who deserve to be better known (this is a long list).
Red plastic flowers
Favourite place
What medium did you use?
My home
Words and pictures
What is the concept behind your Story Project? A story about getting the red plastic flowers with some tenuously related digressions and drawings
What is the best thing you’ve seen this year? The Arbor by Clio Barnard or My Winnipeg by Guy Maddin.
What was your process? Stream of consciousness
What is the best thing you’ve heard this year? Well, today it is the album by Julie Doiron called ‘I Can Wonder What You Did With your Day’. But ask me next week and it will be something else.
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KANCHI WICHMANN
the bodies are all on a cold metal shelf together, and I thought oh no I don’t want to see my dad lying on a cold metal shelf with all these other bodies, what if it is an old lady or a child or a man with sores on his chest, the metal shelves were heavy, but they were pulling it out slowly and I turned away quickly and went back into the bit with the broken plastic chairs that felt like an insult. My friend who is a photographer comes over to take my photo because I hate having my photo taken and we eat icecream and strawberries and I tell her about the red plastic flower dilemma and she unhelpfully points out that they are a bit of a cliché and then tries to make me pose with them, I refuse because by this point I’ve gone out the other side of my photo hatred and am refusing everything she then suggests a photo with the flowers and the strawberries I immediately discover an emergency in anther room involving a foreign coun-
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try, she mentions haiku but by this point I am feeling totally uninspired. Damn those flowers they’ve ruined a perfectly convivial evening now we all hate each other. It all seemed so simple I just wanted to be taken seriously and have my creative vision celebrated in a new slightly avant-garde magazine but I am a failure and my friend is still waffling on now she is telling me to collect everything red in the flat with the immortal words “knock yourself out!” I feel like knocking her out, but console myself instead with another glass of red (wine). The flowers start to feel stressful oppressive even, glowering at me from the corner. Why oh why did I get myself entangled in this? Am I really so desperate for attention? Whenever anyone comes over they stare at the flowers and I know they are wondering when I turned into a drag-queen or collector of kitsch, but I am too embarrassed to tell them about the magazine assignment after my
friend and her enthusiastic haiku suggestions the other night. Seek love destroy seek love destroy seek love seek love destroy destroy. Trying to make a different sense out of something hidden behind the words. Growing up is letting go of dreams and learning to accept ‘reality’ and even if you are living your dreams it’s learning to accept how the dream feels from the inside which is not how you thought it would feel from the outside because from the outside you thought that it would feel like a smile and a new haircut and from the inside you still feel broken and alone and how do other people manage or are they just pretending and feeling as empty and sad as you are? Finding love is letting go of dreaming and memories become like lily pads & I am a frog hopping from one to the other trying not to stay too long and let the pain in again… I am a frog? Damn this brief - I am
not a frog! Seeking is endless waiting and guessing and pretending and keeping busy and trying to care about other things that are not love and trying to fill the hole. And when you find love eye contact is dangerous and necessary and destroy is just the logical next step and it is more a case of choosing whether to destroy yourself the other person or the thing that exists between you and if you are very intelligent and also very hurt you can destroy all three and leave the country. Days pass with the flowers haunting my every moment at home until I almost develop a drink problem so I don’t have to face them. The thing about self-doubt is you just have to fake self-belief because it will never go away, so you have to play the role you were born to play as if your life depends on it and eventually people will be fooled. I go on stage and take a bow and someone throws me a bou-
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STORY PROJECT | LOV E
quet of red plastic roses, I look closely and see they have those fake dewdrops on them, tears of a clown. I accept the challenge. Am I really an artist? I remember when I was around 20 and played with a band called Platform 5 (Our only gig at the time was at the Klinker run by Hugh Metcalfe with a cabbage on his head and his broken super-8 films) and we were doing acid and discussing what is art and somebody said “Kanchi you are art” and I left the room and vomited on the stairs. But now cradling my bouquet in the spotlight I embrace this early definition of myself and think of Natalie Clifford Barney a much underquoted American writer from 1930’s Paris “Living is the first of all the arts” and I know that I have lived, so maybe I am an artist. Sometimes I wish I had taken more time off from living to just do the art, but then something happens and I want to live again and that’s what happened to make me live so much, and does it mean
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you are old if you look back at different times in your life and they feel like somebody else’s life? But I digress… The flowers the flowers. Seek Love. Love Destroy. Destroy Seek. Oh god I swore I would not turn to Haiku, I don’t even eat fish, I am a frog, no no no I am not a frigging frog I am art, yes please grant me the license to be art and therefore to have all of my vain pathetic glorious and hopeful actions defined and recorded for other human beings to celebrate or denigrate let this not be in vain let this matter. Seek meaning. Love memory. Destroy Hope. I am happy I am dead. Put the stupid red plastic roses on my grave it’s over. And then something unexpected happens to solve the – of the red flowers. Four of us go to a wedding in Essex. It is hot I am driving hungover the sea is beautiful –Southend a kind-of British LA - and later on we take drux
because I am driving so I can’t drink and time passes slowly and fastly at the same time, but also everything goes to plan (because a wedding is planned socialising with a window at the end for things to get messy) and then we are driving back and we have an extra passenger (and the two guitars). She came to the wedding alone and is a friend of the bride/ we are friends of the groom when I looked at her nails she had this new nail polish called crackle and we became friends. We stop at the petrol station I am way too high to drive I try to race a car of teenagers who have the same car it is after 1 am and the roads are dark and long and we listen to pirate radio and our new friend tells us that Marmite is now illegal in Denmark because of something she can’t remember what and when we get back we smoke the grass we found in the grass and when it is finally time for our new friend to leave I call 3 cab numbers but no one will pick her up cos the area is
Hackney Wicked carnage and there was a man lying on the pavement sunbathing in the dark and finally I say I live in E3 a gated community and a cab comes and she leaves her name is Sangeeta and because we are new friends I want to give her something I look around the flat desperately looking for a parting gift and I see the cursed red flowers that have caused me so much stress this summer, so I give her the flowers she is confused, but at the same time pleased because she understands that that means we are new friends. I don’t realise at the time how stupid I am being to give away the flowers, I am just relieved because they are no longer there looking at me, mocking me. After my exciting new friend leaves I realise that I have missed my flight to Ireland because of all this and have to borrow money to buy a new one and then when I get back the flowers are gone. The flowers are gone and so the story is over.
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JOHN PAUL GARDNER
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STORY PROJECT | LOV E
{
BALLOONS John Paul Gardner
www.johnpaulgardner.com
}
Location
vehicles, attic crawl spaces and especially caves
I just moved to Sauquoit, New York a few days ago. This is the 9th year in a row I’ve moved.
What is your passion? My passion is Art & Adventure.
Occupation I am a full time artist.
I seek… new places and new experiences.
Favourite pastime
I love… my wife, family and friends.
I love cycling and mountain biking.
I destroy… boundaries. Favourite artist My favourite artist is Olafur Eliasson. He has an amazing ability to combine the natural and synthetic into elegant forms and spaces.
Favourite up-and-coming artist I have been into Avantika Bawa’s work after I saw some of her sculptural installations in the Pacific Northwest.
What was your gift? My gift was a box of brightly coloured balloons.
What is the concept behind your Story Project?
What is the best thing you’ve seen this year?
My concept was to seek out and subvert the use of a balloon in a playful yet elegant manner. I chose to inflate them, observed them for a few days and then ultimately destroyed them with a pair of scissors. I then arranged the balloons into an iconic heart form. My goal was to create a beautiful image from the left over detritus; to give life to these simple forms. The balloons appear spent, used up, yet oddly appealing in their final image.
The best thing I saw this year was my wife in her wedding dress.
What medium did you used?
What is the best thing you’ve heard this year?
I used balloons then processed them digitally to create a unique image.
Favourite place My favourite place is Moon Lake. It is a small lake in the middle of the Adirondacks located in northern New York.
The best thing I heard this year was my now favourite concert: Broken Social Scene at the Higher Grounds in Burlington, Vermont.
What was your process? My process was seeking, using, destroying and finally creating with the gift.
What bothers you? Claustrophobic spaces, elevators, airplanes, small
SEEKLOVEDESTROY | 2012
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RICHARD STONE
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Story
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PROJECT | LOV E S TO RY
{
SWEETS Richard Stone
}
www.richardstoneprojects.com
Location
What is your passion?
London
Art is always a passion but right now I can’t help but think about an old song by REM ‘Talk About the Passion’.
Occupation Artist
I seek… something just beneath the surface, Favourite pastime
anything that transcends time
It’s driven by mood.
I love… moments of clarity. Favourite artist One I haven’t found yet, it fluctuates in the meantime.
I destroy… most things in the pursuit of creating something else or revealing what was already there.
Favourite up-and-coming artist I’m really enjoying the imagery in the work of Alex Ball at the moment for its simple formality yet conceptual depth.
Favourite place Always somewhere else.
What is the best thing you’ve seen this year? An ‘unstately’ home long abandoned by eccentrics, essentially on the brink of ruin, yet anarchic and romantic at the same time.
What is the best thing you’ve heard this year? A recent work being selected for the Threadneedle Prize by very respectable judges and being able to exhibit this work alongside that of contemporary creative peers.
What bothers you?
What was your gift? Candy, mainly hearts
What is the concept behind your Story Project? A snapshot of a story, a kaleidoscopic, apocalyptic line of visual narrative that could be part of the beginning, the middle or the end. I also wanted it to feel a bit old fashioned, somehow.
What medium did you use? An antique spelter figurine, an antique painting, the candy hearts, patience with lighting and some post production.
What was your process? Many processes, lots of ‘ings’: selecting, threading, obscuring, arranging, photographing, doubling, revealing, to name a few.
Apathy is an issue.
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STUDIO THOMAS & PASCAL
Location South London
Occupation Artists pretending to be Architects
Favourite pastime Distracting myself with interesting things
Favourite artist Hayao Miyazaki
Favourite up-and-coming artist Sea Hyun Lee, Tom Sachs, Charles Avery, Chad Wyss, we could go on…
Favourite place Anywhere with trees
What is the best thing you’ve seen this year? Frankenstein by Danny Boyle at the National Theatre
What is the best thing you’ve heard this year? Andrew Bird whistling (He’s a Chicago-based musician.)
What bothers you? Artists pretending to be Architects
What is your passion? Trying
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STORY PROJECT | LOV E
{
BOOK Studio Thomas & Pascal
www.thomashillier.co.uk www.pascalbronner.com
I seek… the knowledge to write a successful sciencefiction novel!
I love… that anything can inspire. I destroy… time. What was your gift? Lady Chatterley’s Lover (a Penguin paperback) by D.H. Lawrence.
}
explicit chapters, recreating them for the Internet age. These new inserts are all perforated down the crease so they can be ripped out, either to keep or return the book back to its a original form. Remarking on the books chequered past, the ribbon bookmark with sewn in match and back-cover match-strike allows the reader to burn the evidence once read (or caught!). The question is, with today’s instant, digital accessibility to explicit material, would the women sitting on the train next to you bat an eyelid if you were reading this version?
What is the concept of your Story Project? Isn’t it shocking that nothing is shocking anymore? The concept came from the explicit (for its time) sexual content of Lawrence’s most famous and most controversial novel, first published in 1928 but not available unexpurgated in the UK until 1960. It is seen by many as a classic, sitting at number 39 on Le Monde’s 100 books of the century. Whereas originally the ‘saucy’ pages could be signified through well-thumbed crumpled pages and turned corners now one only needs to look down the outside spine for the glossy printed-paper inserts. This pornographic material sits alongside the existing text creating a ‘graphic’ novel (in both senses of the word) questioning the boundaries of modern decorum. Of course being English a level of decency is retained through mixing modern flesh with images from the same period the book was written blurring the boundaries between old and new. A classic pornographic ‘centrefold’ explores the books most
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What medium did you use? Paper, specifically pornographic magazines, a catalogue of everyday fashions of the twenties, ribbon, thread, wood, phosphorus and gelatine (a match).
What was your process? The process of ‘porno-fiction’ began through reading the novel cover to cover and selecting the most explicit lines and scenes throughout (it felt like revising for a GCSE English exam). After this we collected a series of images from pornographic magazines, fashion tears from the roaring twenties and of course the Internet, we collaged them together to create visual titillation within the dusty pages of this controversial book, including a classic centre fold Hugh Hefner would be proud of! The surplus scraps have been put through a shredder so that nothing goes to waste. John Thomas & Lady Jane, hope you enjoy it.
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the chair | w o r d to m ot h er
thechair
Word to Mother ALL PHOTOS BY Viktor Vauthier
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ord to Mother is an ever-elusive Londonbased artist and illustrator with roots in graffiti and street art. He proved tricky to track down, but even without ever finding out his real name we finally managed to locate him to talk about his art and differences between graffiti and gallery work. Word to Mother has just had his fifth solo show at StolenSpace - East London gallery representing past and present street and graffiti artists in a pristine white wall environment.
Hello, please tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do on a daily basis? Hello, my name is Word To Mother. Most days I go to my studio and draw, paint and try and assemble things out of salvaged objects.
When did you discover your passion for art, and how has that developed into where you are today? I have always drawn and been interested in making things. An interest in graffiti and a few years studying illustration combined with a load of other influences has shaped what I create today.
When you started doing graffiti, did you ever think your work would be seen in a gallery context? I never thought about it. D*Face told me he was
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opening a gallery in 2006, when I’d just finished university and was looking at what to do next. I started making paintings and haven’t looked back.
What is your association with Stolen Space now? I’ve been showing with them since they opened in 2006, this will be my fifth solo show there.
What was the idea behind Stolen Space? How did it come about? D*Face had had a previous space - the Outside Institute - which had closed due to various factors a couple of years before he opened StolenSpace. He mentioned to me that he was looking to open a new spot and had already been doing pop-up shows under the StolenSpace name around East London. In 2006 StolenSpace opened permanently in The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane with an objective to represent and show artwork of artists they feel are relevant today.
Are you comfortable being branded as a street artist? I don’t mind. It’s easier for people to understand if it’s branded street art but it’s just not a correct title for what I do. I don’t make art in the street. I used to paint a bit of graffiti and I love to draw, I like taking photographs, making animations, making tattoos, and building stuff out of old bits of wood. ‘Artist’ would be a more appropriate title, I suppose, Story
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beauty I find a lot of
in rusted and decaying
objects
but it sounds so wanky... I always just say I’m an illustrator.
How do Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters tie into all this?
How important is the surface you work on and why do you choose to work with salvaged materials?
I am still a massive child and love cartoons and other nostalgic childhood imagery, the use of these things are just a tip of the hat to the things I love. They can also be used as a comment on our consumer obsessed society.
It depends what I’m trying to do. My new pieces are all painted on handmade wooden panels, not salvaged wood, as I wanted all the textures and marks to be made by me. When I choose salvaged surfaces to work on, it is to incorporate my own work with the existing texture of the object. I find a lot of beauty in rusted and decaying objects that for years have existed as something else. It’s nice to draw attention to these things by making them into a painting or a sculpture.
How has the move from a small English seaside town to London changed the way you think about art? I never used to think about art before I moved here. When you start making a living from something that you used to do recreationally, it’s going to make you think about it differently at first. Now I try not to ‘think’ about it too much, just make things.
There is reoccurring use of male figures often in a sinister context. What themes or concepts have driven these works? They’re not intended to be sinister; it’s just what I draw. When I make drawings, which then become paintings, I don’t think too much whilst I’m making the initial marks. Then shapes, figures, type, buildings and geometry start to appear from those initial marks.
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In your work you mix vintage posters, cubism and commentary on the current cultural zeitgeist, comparative to that of Barry Reigate. What are the most important influences you’ve embraced during your artistic career? I am very visually obsessed and try and recreate things I like the look of, whilst giving it my own spin. My influences are constantly changing but some of the constant ones would be: the 1990’s for hip-hop, trainers, graffiti, clothes, artists like JeanMichel Basquiat, Egon Schiele, Barry McGee... I could go on and on.
What is more thrilling: going out at night to paint under streetlight or working within the confines of your studio? It’s not often that I go out and paint these days. Sickboy tells me I’m lazy... Right now I’m concentrating on spending my time in the studio and trying to make the best paintings I can in there.
How do the two working environments affect your choice of subject and medium? If you paint outside it has to be quick, so that affects what you’re going to do. In the studio you
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Photo: Andrew Telling
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I am still a massive child and love cartoons and other nostalgic childhood imagery, the use of these things are just a tip of the hat to the things I love.
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have the time to do what you want but sometimes you can get too precious with stuff because, unlike outside, there isn’t the urgency.
When you first decided to take your art to the streets, was this a secondary impulse from your studio work or the other way around? I used to paint graffiti but I never really did any ‘art’ on the streets. A lot of people do art on the street now, to try and ride this trend of urban art. They’ll do a few paste ups or stencils on Brick Lane, post a million pictures of them on the internet and then go round all the opportunistic little galleries that have emerged in East London, trying to flog screen prints or whatever. I made a conscious decision when I started, that the gallery work I produce would have its own look and if I want to paint graffiti, it will look like graffiti. If I make a tattoo, I want it to look like a tattoo. With my gallery work I want it to look considered and well crafted, 99 % of the time street art is neither of these things. (Big up all the people out there making the good shit, the 1% knows who they are).
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Is there a controversy into bringing raw street art into a pristine white walled environment? What is your opinion on it? Not if it’s done right. I think people should do what they want. There are always going to be people that have something negative to say.
Do you feel a competitive need to get a strong appearance of Word to Mother on the street? I paint letters if I feel like painting outside but I don’t have any desire to be up. I try and focus my energy on getting in the studio and progressing with my studio works.
Considering the profound development of street art since the 80’s, how do you see the future of urban art? Hopefully people will continue to produce bigger and better things in the public domain as well as in the galleries. Although there are a lot of wannabes and posers, I think there is a bright future.
What is next for Word To Mother? Have you any bold plans for the next 10 years? More paintings, animations, sculptures, tattoos, zines, books, kids, travels, shows, food...
You’ve just had Your fifth solo show at StolenSpace called ‘Essence of Adolescence’. Can you tell me a bit about it? It’s my latest body of work and my strongest paintings to date, in my opinion. I took a lot of time over this show and really tried to develop my skills to produce considered works. The paintings are filled with typography, figures, pattern work and popular culture references. They are essentially the visual ramblings of an image-obsessed madman.
- INTERVIEW BY SOPHIE ALLEN & RICHARD DORAn -
If you happen to be passing through the United States in the coming months you can see Word to Mother at White Walls gallery in San Francisco. His show ‘Can’t Afford to be Broke’ will be on display from May 12th to June 2nd 2012. You can find more information at www.whitewallssf.com. SEEKLOVEDESTROY | 2012
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L AURA Pannack | yo u n g lOV E
oung Love T
he execution of fine art portraiture has always fascinated me, particularly the idea of being able to capture something special with a complete stranger. Critically acclaimed photographer Laura Pannack spares some of her time to tell us just how she does it. We talk to Laura about the challenges and fears she was faced with when working on the Young Love project and reveal the tests and proofs images that didn’t make it.
All images: © Laura Pannack from the ‘Young Love’ series
What compelled you to explore the subject of Young Love? The project evolved from my first major project at university, which explored the representation of youth. Some of the subjects I worked with were couples and I started thinking about how it could develop into a separate project. Adolescence is an interesting time of development and experimentation and I became captivated by the simplicity of these relationships and the extreme intensity of their experiences and emotions. The relationships were as much about the way in which these young people were forming an adult identity, as about templates for future relationships being formed.
How did you find your subjects? As I said, some of them featured in the series The Untitled. I find my subjects through institutions, organisations and simply approaching them on the street or even online. Story
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The only approach I continuously take is to be very open, honest and respectful towards my subjects. People need to feel involved in the process and it is important they are engaged and connect. Some couples would call me and ask to shoot, others would disappear off the radar and I had to respect that they needed space or were simply not interested. The main problem I encountered and still do are model releases. I am often unsure what is going to come out of my shoot i.e. whether it will be a project or be published. I hate introducing any barriers but this in turn can cause so many complications later on... often years later.
Do you think there are differences when working with young couples as opposed to adult subjects? When I first started doing photography I trained myself for years to develop the confidence to approach people in the street. All I did was street photography and my desire to capture people grew most likely from my frustration at not having the courage to approach them. I would often be out for hours, cursing myself for not being brave enough to ask people who caught my eye. I refused to go home until I did and literally seconds after approaching people the realisation that the worst they could say is ‘no’ would bring me to life.
How receptive were your subjects to being part of Young Love project? It varies. I have been learning how to handle my subjects. For some sensitivity and a slow approach are often imperative, whereas others need pushing. It is instinctive for me. Whether a subject is beginning to loose interest or is particularly enthusiastic can be dependent on so many factors, from their age and lifestyle to self-gain. 42
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Huge. Some of the couples were under 18 and highly vulnerable. Parents or guardians needed to be aware and there could have been mental health, behavioural or social issues that need to be considered. To a certain degree, a photographer has a responsibility to protect and respect their subjects.
What did you aim to capture? Each person’s journey.
How did this influence the editing stage? What determined your choices? Editing is half of the process in photography. There are so many image-makers I know who are incredibly talented at creating work, but have such a different viewpoint on what is their strongest work. Getting others to look through my imagery is crucial to how it develops and is eventually presented. A series or a project is not just a collection of strong images; it sometimes requires a narrative or something that holds the images together, so that they are read comfortably as a compilation, whilst each single picture still captivates the audience.
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LAURA Pannack | yo u n g lOV E
How do you decide when a series has been completed? I don’t. I think everything has room for improvement. But I often leave projects to rest for a while, until I feel the need or desire to return.
when the portraits are formal, but I hope that this calmness is also present in the images where my subjects are distracted or doing something. I aim to capture the still moments and only press the shutter when it feels right.
How would you describe your relationship with your subjects?
What principles, and artistic values do you aim to represent in your work?
Honest , informal and intense.
It varies with projects but, as mentioned before, honesty and openness is key. I want my work to relate to the audience. I can’t connect with work that isolates itself and I hope that my images allow a relationship to form between the viewers and the subject. Creativity and thought beyond an image is imperative and I aim to create a balance between concept and content.
Where do these interactions sit in relation to your comfort zone? I often push my boundaries. To me, it is more important that my subjects are comfortable, even if this means forcing myself out of my comfort zone.
There is a sense of tranquillity in your picture. Is this indicative of the delicate nature of the subject? It’s a reflection of the process and the experience. I often ask my subjects to concentrate on a subject,
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You have recently re-visited one of your subjects with the aim of another photo shoot. What happened? Story
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Working with teenagers can be challenging and unpredictable. This can be a blessing but at times highly frustrating.
These difficulties can hinder or slow down progress, but do you feel that it can feed your hunger to respond through your photography? Of course.
You are now working on a new project Young British Naturists. How has your approach to this subject differ from that in Young Love? It’s a much more intense and very different project. It has challenged me on a completely different level. With Young Love I was focussing on an experience that we can all relate to in many different ways, regarding lust, love, relationships and adolescence.
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LAURA Pannack | yo u n g lOV E
YBN is more about an interest and the different stories behind the interest. It relates to a large variety of issues around identity and culture. With Young Love I was focussing on something I could momentarily relate to through my own experience and that allows an instant level of understanding of my subjects. YBN was about embracing a new experience in order to gain a further understanding, in order to explore why these individuals felt a need or desire to be part of this group. It was also about pushing the boundaries of vulnerability as an image-maker, as I am usually more in control, while in this instance my subjects were more at ease than me. I was the more vulnerable one - they felt comfortable naked, I didn’t. It was interesting to see how strangers interact and connect when nude, as all boundaries are literally stripped.
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What strengths are needed to deal with such a multitude of characters and circumstances? I can’t answer that because the result of a portrait, in my opinion, comes from the interaction between the subject and the photographer. It’s a relationship that differs in every circumstance and with every individual. Personally all I need is for someone to engage and connect, and for me to do the same.
What is the standard kit you use? For personal work I try to shoot on film. Ideally I’d shoot large format but at the moment I’m shooting on a Bronica 645 with Portra NC. The best advice I’ve ever been given regarding equipment was to remember that a camera is just a box. A tool... www.laurapannack.com www.laurapannack.blogspot.com Story
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OBSESS I O N GALLERY Story Gallery explores subjects of obsession and art, which so often go hand in hand. From harmless, short-lived urges, to long-standing fascinations, to uncanny manias – why are artists so often obsessed with their subjects, objectS and materials?
Each of Courtney Brims’ beautiful yet disturbing images tells a story of a different fantastical creature. Bo Peep depicts a character weary of her life as a shepherdess in the highlands, reaping the wool of her small flock as she sits and sulks. Similar themes of heartache, despair and abandonment are explored in both Tears of a Clown and Out of the Hat, the later portraying an overworked, downtrodden rabbit, who grows tired of his life of oppression as a magician’s assistant. Samantha Jack’s photographic triptych Estonia documents a time in her life when she went through a significant physical change. Her work illustrates how the initial target to lose weight and get healthy had started to develop into an obsession of calorie counting, exercise routine and measurements, with the end goal changing with each inch lost. The disenchantment of youth is the main inspiration for the works of French painter Alexis Dubois. Through his paintings Alexis aims to expose
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the universality of pain and human suffering, in a cathartic process of healing his own childhood scars. Rejecting his traditional art education, the analytical and conceptual art, he now creates ‘art for the masses’ – colourful and accessible paintings, with references both to popular culture and art history. The transgression of borders, both physical and psychological, as well as an obsession with mobility, turmoil and complete autonomy are the dominant themes of Matthew Cusick’s painstakingly put together collages. Alex Coroll’s Just a human ten-piece series is about obsession with investigating the multiple components that try to coexist inside our identity system. The two pieces presented here explore how each human is a combination of male and female qualities. These qualities are superimposed on the concept of a biological robot, which is the overall theme of this series.
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gallery | co u r t n e y b r i m s
Tears of a Clown
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Bo Peep
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gallery | co u r t n e y b r i m s
Out of the Hat
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LEFT TO RIGHT Estonia 1 Estonia 2 Estonia 3
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gallery | s a m a n t h a jack
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gallery | ALEXI S DUBOI S
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gallery | MATTHEW CUS ICK
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Bonnie, 2004 Inlaid maps on panel 42 x 60 inches PREVIOUS PAGE Kara’s Wave, 2009 Inlaid maps, acrylic, on panel 24 x 36 inches
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gallery | MATTHEW CUS ICK
Blue Horse, 2011 Inlaid maps on panel 20 x 30 inches
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Just a human ID1
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gallery | ALEX COROLL
Just a human ID2
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PLUS ONE | S ER I P O P
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SERI- + POP
D N M L
Seripop is a collaborative duo that provides the world with affordable art and set ablaze galleries with their vibrant installations and large-scale prints. Originally from Montreal, they are strongly influenced by abstract art and Psychedelia, which is evident both in their art and music project AIDS Wolf. Richard Doran sets out to find out more about them and who it is they want to nominate for their +1 interview.
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SERIPOP It’s been a while, what have you been up to over the last five years? Christ, has it been five years? Mostly I’ve been wandering around with my camera trying to make sense of th
Who are Seripop, and what are they about? It is right now the collaborative vessel of Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau. They are about to have breakfast.
You are also in a band, who are they, and what are they about? We have a band called AIDS Wolf and it’s about making the most abstract music we can, while still remaining within a (loosely defined) “rock” perimeter. It also seems to be about spending a lot of time in supermarkets.
Which form of expression is more organic to you? It’s frankly about the same for us - visual art or music - otherwise we wouldn’t have spent 15 years on both.
Which consumes the most of your time? If you factor in the time spend on tour, the two are probably taking up similar chunks of our time, with Seripop at a slight lead. We don’t really keep time clocks.
How did AIDS Wolf guide you into the print world? We were accustomed with printmaking already when AIDS Wolf started; Seripop was already a year old. But when we were working more within graphic design with Seripop, especially doing poster, AIDS Wolf 62
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was the source of the creation of a lot of contacts, friendships and partnerships that evolved in new projects for us. It also allowed us to bring our art around internationally during those tours, but both projects fed each other that way.
How did the two of you meet, and when? We met in the summer of 98 at an avant-garde music festival a few hours from Montreal. We had both went to see Christian Marclay, Lee Ranaldo & Thurston Moore and our seats were right next to each other. We started dating a year and a half later and started collaborating on music and art pretty much immediately.
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PLUS ONE | S ER I P O P
Above. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO READ IT FROM 30 FEET AWAY IN A CAR GOING AT 50 KM/H Screenprinted , lumber, plastic toys, 2010 10’ x 16’ x 12’
Installation view at LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL D’ART CONTEMPORAIN DE BAIE-SAINT-PAUL , Baie-Saint_Paul, QC , Canada
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PLUS ONE | S ER I P O P
What is the difference between your professional life and your personal life? I’m not sure if there is one. Most of our interests are art/urbanism/music related.
How does being a team affect the Seripop mechanics?
“We get an idea and we do it; that’s pretty much it.”
We get to constantly discuss concepts and our work as well as any other work we see or ideas we have/ encounter and how they affect us. I think this backand-forth is the biggest part of our creative process.
What is your process from idea to creation? We get an idea and we do it; that’s pretty much it. We are big fans of the first gesture and exploiting that without too much interference.
What is the most satisfying part of your collaboration? Knowing that the other one is going to do that part that you suck at.
What challenges do you face as a duo? The fact that we get the same fee as an individual artist would.
What sort of works sticks with you most when you visit art shows? Good work.
Who are your favourite artists at the moment? Katharina Grosse, Jim Lambie , Shary Boyle, Ryan Trecartin, Cedric and Nathan Bomford.
Who is your favourite up-and-coming talent? Karine Cossette: www.karinecossette.com Left. La Battue
Screenprint on paper 2011 Variable dimensions
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What is your main source of inspiration? Everything. From literature to just colour forms that
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Right and over the page. HOARDING SKIN Screenprint on paper 2010 24’ x 36’ x 10’
show up when you shut your eyes.
How does the urban environment influence your work? It’s this will to reproduce somehow that accumulation of sensorial experiences that happen when you are in the street. The one thing about being an urban dweller is that when you are just an ordinary citizen, it is basically forbidden to make a physical/visual intervention that is not considered illegal... So we work a bit in that spirit with the installation work and that’s why we feel like we need to go massive. This way the end product is so liberating.
What does the poster format mean to you? Well, at first the idea of being a poster artist sounded very romantic and glamorous. All we had in mind were very experimental ideas and a desire to learn the trade by ourselves (i.e. faking our way through graphic design). But really, it was a latent interest that was in our first works as visual artists back in the day.... So we just took the plunge in 2002. But it was a lot of fun. The medium just allows anything. The voice is so powerful. And the action of investing
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the street is very appealing too and any public intervention, like putting a poster up, has multiple degrees of meaning.
Does this influence your installation work? Well, of course. Our installation work, as I mentioned earlier, is rooted in the poster practice. We basically still work exclusively with the poster format, but we just fuck it up a bit.
How have your shows been received in the past? Sometimes it’s really hard to get sincere or constructive criticism. This will most likely be a grey area for a long time.
How do you see your work developing in the coming years? Right now we’re moving towards larger scale work and a more multidisciplinary method that involves found objects and other means of sculpture mixed in the paper form/environments. Maybe we’ll start working with video.
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PLUS ONE | S ER I P O P
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“It’s this will to reproduce somehow that accumulation of sensorial experiences that happen when you are in the street.”
To what point is your work expressionistic? Well, sometime we can be very boring or very tonguein-cheek (but with big inside jokes that we are the only ones to understand) although all this in big vibrant colors. So it’s hard to tell when you are deep in it.
What does perfection mean to you? Being satisfied with the result? That is a long way off.
What is your philosophy on art? Make work, lots of it, always. Then make some more.
Which of your work best summarises who you are and what you do? All of our work is best taken as parts of a whole.
What do you do when you are not Seripop or AIDS Wolf? Lift weights, ride bike, cook and eat elaborate meals,
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PLUS ONE | S ER I P O P
watch TV, sleep. Not a lot, I suppose. We are pretty much always Seripop or AIDS Wolf. I mean, when you play in a band, is going to gigs a separate activity or is it a band thing? What about when the gigs you go to are people you’ve met on tour or have done art for? How about going to art openings or museums when you are a visual artist? Is that personal or professional? Does it matter if you have colleagues there? What if you speak to them about work? I feel the lines get pretty blurry during it all. With a serious creative practice I think one is “on” pretty much all the time.
What shows do you have coming up as Seripop? We are part of a large survey show in town this fall, that we are contractually obligated to not talk about, and we have a solo show coming up at Blackwood gallery at the University of Toronto this winter. Those are the two main things we’ve been working on all spring and summer. For a rest of 2012 we are
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showing in various artist-run centers around Quebec and Canada. It’s a change of pace for us to be mostly showing in Canada. It’s nice to not have to worry about clearing customs with our work or obtaining visas.
We want you to select another person that you have been inspired or influenced by for us to interview... Who would you like to nominate as your +1 interview? Daniel Luedtke aka DNML, singer, keyboardist and sax player of Gay Beast and one of the most exciting printmakers around.
Why have you chosen this person? Because every time we see one of his prints we wish we had done it ourselves www.seripop.com. Photo of ‘you should’ by the artists, and la battue by Yannick Grandmont
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Where do you live, work and play? At the moment I live in Chicago. I just moved in August to start a graduate program at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. What other talents do you have up your sleeve? My background is in music. I’ve played the piano since I was eight, and I completed a Bachelors of Music in Piano Performance. Nowadays I opt for more portable synths... Plus I have been known to play sax and sing in various experimental pop-music projects. I love to cook and bake, especially sweet things. They are my crutch. How do you earn a living? Right now I’m in school full-time, so I am working part-time at the Video Data Bank, an amazing video art library at SAIC, as well as teaching undergrad students the basics of printmaking. Before that I was working with disabled adults in a home setting and took art/ design commissions (and some sales every now and then).
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N M L + D www.dnml.org Following neatly on from Seripop, their +1 nominee is Chicago-based print artist DNML. Humble and inspired, he creates not only mature works of print and installations, but also experiments with a variety of other media with impressive results.
Who is DNML? DNML are the consonants of my nickname “Danimal”. At the time I was beginning to get commercial commissions for design and screen printing, I decided to use a casual moniker for myself. Right now I’m not working on commercial projects so I tend to use my real name - Daniel Luedtke. 70
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When did you decide to become an artist? It was about six years ago. I never really drew or made any visual art, but because the band I was working with at the time (Gay Beast) needed posters and record packaging, I began to hobble together some skills. At first it was pretty hairy, but I was very eager to learn screen printing, Photoshop, how to draw and the myriad of complexities that are the print world. How has your music inspired your artwork? Music started my artwork. I was obsessed with gig posters, DIY record design, and the symbiotic fluidity of visual culture and popular music. What does the print medium mean to you? It means multiplicity. It means simultaneity. It is a mode of production that eschews and repositions the aura of originality in art. I am interested in print as a world between photography, drawing, painting and sculpture, and as a way to mimic how ideas and objects circulate in culture. How do you incorporate the print medium into your installation work? There have been a few different approaches. I have created sculptures with prints pasted on top of them, I have printed repeating wallpapers that are pasted directly to the floor and wall and I have created large compositions with repeated prints that work in tandem with video projection.
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PLUS ONE | D N M L
“The cycles of generosity and insecurity motivate me. I want my work to be able to communicate something intelligible to others. Almost always I feel that I fail to communicate, so that failure gives me another push forward..”
Left. Untitled (communication)
When doing installation work, I try to show the reproductive and cellular nature of printmaking... to create small components that reinforce a bigger idea and form. Instead of painting a mural on the wall, I print out patterns of paper that interlock and overlap each other to build a mural. This allows greater detail in the larger image and hopefully the viewer understands that the work is about reproduction and dissemination (through publication, broadcast, and graphic design). What are your preferred means for presenting your work? At the moment everything is totally changing. I’ve been making a bunch of original drawings that I may or may not use in prints. I just got a 35mm camera, and I am very interested in analogue photography at the moment, as well as messing around with video in conjunction with print. I’m trying to combine mediums to get my points across. As far as venues for my work, it really depends. My favourite way of selling prints has been to sell from a cardboard box while playing music shows and going on tours as a musician. I appreciate casual interaction around art and love the directness of selling “original” pieces for 5 or 10 dollars, hopefully creating a network and an exchange
Public Broadcast Mural 8ft X 12 ft Silk Screened Paper, video Projection
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Left. Portrait (randy)
of my aesthetic and political ideas in the mean time.
animation of Tom Thayer.
How do you plan to develop your art in the future? Right now I’m really diversifying. I’m planning another video installation project that will incorporate an experimental narrative, sets, sculpture and video mapped projections. I’m concentrating on content over form, letting formal decisions be dictated by the ideas behind them. I am working to figure out ways to meld my backgrounds in print and music through video.
Do you have running themes that you explore in your work? Right now I’m personally imbedded in and fascinated by the pharmaceutical industry. I have been reading a lot about how drug patents work, and how they are regulated by the WTO and how NAFTA and first world corporations disseminate patent information. Generally, I’ve been very interested in how information circulates, how it regulates and defines public identification.
Which artists have influenced you lately, and why? Arturo Herrera, his collage-ist approach is really inspiring, and I love how tense his line is between representation and abstraction. Dorothy Iannone - she’s a 60’s and 70’s painter/sculptor/video artist who has a shockingly frank take on feminist sexuality. Wynne Greenwood’s new stuff is drool-worthy. She’s a big feminist/music/video inspiration. Local Chicago band Bitchin Bajas is crazy good... Oh, and the music and 72
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Where do you find the inspiration for your art? Other artists, my personal life and my personal politics inspire my art. What is an ideal day in the life of Mr Luedtke? A day where I’m excited about what I’m working on so much that I forget to check my e-mail or answer
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PLUS ONE | D N M L
Right. The Wild Plan” (theater gig poster) Below. After A. Clayden
my phone. My ideal days are ones when I can’t stop to think about how self-conscious or anxious I am: Get up not too late, take note of an approaching deadline, have enough time to make myself a meal, work, finish a project and have a beer with friends. That is an ideal day. Accomplishment and community. How do you motivate yourself as an artist? The cycles of generosity and insecurity motivate me. I want my work to be able to communicate something intelligible to others. Almost always I feel that I fail to communicate, so that failure gives me another push forward. When do you find yourself most immersed in creative thought? I feel like I have a fairly dual personality. I share ideas with friends, and am constantly asking for feedback or guidance from them, but I also need a lot of alone time to process. I tend to have the best ideas when I’m in transit, walking, moving. I feel less anxious in between obligations. To you, what are the most important elements of your art? The spaces of ambiguity or mystery juxtaposed or framed within a “real” concept that I can personally relate to. This usually manifests itself in some form of abstraction (usually derived from drawing) coming in contact with a very tangible or known element, such as the body or a reference to something familiar, or an existing image. Do you have any shows coming up? Not anything major. I will have opportunities to show new work through school, and I’m hoping to get things out into Chicagoland soon. What do you seek? To give pleasure What do you love? Cake! What do you destroy? The phallus
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RADYA | CH A R R ED R EM A I N S
MOLOTOV COCKTAILS THE NEW RECIPE FOR STREET ART?
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treet art has taken many forms over the years. Recently a young artist by the name of Timofey (T. Radya) has been going big in Russia. His well-planned and ambitious projects grace the streets of Ekaterinburg and are beginning to make waves internationally. His recent series with a historical context - Eternal Flame - has brought destruction in art back to life and we wanted to learn more. T. Radya tells us about his large-scale projects and how the street imagination knows no bounds.
Who is Radya? My name is Timofey. I was born and live in Ekaterinburg, 4th largest city in Russia located between the European and Asian parts of the country. I’m 23 and after graduating from the Faculty of Philosophy at the Ural State University I started working as a photographer. I am the one coming up with ideas but we always work in a huge collective. I have a group of 6-7 good friends that help me out with most of my projects.
When did you start doing street art? Eighteen months ago.
How did you get into it? Me and my friends became interested in street art and started making stencils. We came across a
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small informal school and I was very lucky to have Arseniy Sergeyev as a teacher– one of the few public art specialists in Russia.
How influenced are you by street art from other parts of the world? I’m trying to see as many works as possible. I like a lot of artists, especially Blu. To me, it’s important how different the projects can be. I really appreciate street art for having no rules - it’s “good” anarchy. I always smile when I see works by Wooster Collective.
Why do you choose to create your art on the streets? I think that the most important things are simple. For any person regardless of their nationality or the time they live in. To me, Street art is a surprising way of talking about these things. The word ‘street’ is the important one. I don’t think about ‘art’ at all. I am convinced that the emptiness we encounter on the street and in the city sooner or later gets to all of us. There’s no difference between a street and a room - it’s the same surface, the same walls. But we got accustomed to care about our homes, so why don’t we start doing the same in the streets? If you pay attention, walking every street becomes a real journey, even if you walk there ten times a day. People and everything around you amaze you, as if you were in a foreign country. Everything inside you starts moving. Endless power is hidden within the streets of our cities.
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placed in windows of an abandoned hospital. What is the concept behind this series? Above all, the words written in the description of the project are the most important. War makes everything worse for everyone - it’s a tragedy where no one is a winner. In this regard, I was heavily influenced by works of a military photographer James Nachtwey. We can talk about war ad lib but we can’t imagine even a smallest part of it and of that pain, which just a single bullet can bring. World War II holds a huge significance for Russians – first of all because someone from almost every family went to war and 20 million died. I constantly think about it: what did people feel when such a big void appeared? How did they endure it? We have a ‘Victory Day’ – 9th of May. It’s a huge holiday. But we made ‘Eternal Flame’ on the 22nd of June, because the war has started exactly on that day. It’s the longest day in a year. It was a real hell. To me, this date is much more important than Victory Day. ‘Eternal Flame’ is a name for a monument popular in ex-USSR. Usually it’s a five-point star with a torch inside it, which is never extinguished. In contrast to most monumental Soviet propaganda it’s a laconic and quiet work, which the real monument is supposed to be.
I understand that to create the portraits you used bandages on board and Molotov Cocktails – what exactly was your process? At first we drew portraits, marked different tones and then secured bandages in place – more of them for a lighter area and less for a black one. Bandages
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and walls of the hospital where we secured the portraits are things that bring life. Fire – one of the main symbols of a war – takes life. Everything is mixed up, fire brought life to this faces.
How did you come up with this idea? I thought a lot about all this and about what other people think about it. It was winter of 2011 in Moscow, in metro. The idea just came to me. And it was also in a poem – “soldiers put their faces in fire”.
“These soldiers were from my city. I’ve seen their applications – many of these guys were 18-19 years old.”
You have chosen to create portraits of six World War II USSR soldiers. Why did you decide to depict these particular figures? These soldiers were from my city. It’s a most important reason: them, burnt out, still look at the streets of their city. It makes us feel closer to the war and this condition, which we can’t even imagine. What did they feel? They fought in the Ural Volunteer Corps, which formed in 1943 out of qualified workers and engineers, who were needed at the home front. Only one out of ten who wished to fight was allowed to go to the front - it was a great honour. They were armed with weapons they built in their own time or bought with their own money. I’ve seen their applications – many of these guys were 18-19 years old. Can you imagine being 19 and writing an application on a winter morning with a request to go to the war? We discussed another version: faces of soldiers from USSR, Germany, the Allies, but we didn’t have enough time to research foreign archives. The archive in Ekaterinburg helped me to make
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copies of the military portraits very quickly.
Does Russian society react to the political references in your work? Yes, of course. It’s hard for me to evaluate exactly how, but I can see that it touches deeply many of my friends and that’s enough. If a project is helpful to just one person, than it was worth it. It’s an important question – What should a project be? How should it act – like a hammer or like a mirror?
How important is public reaction to the art your produce? It’s very important. Although I’m not particularly interested in people’s reactions, I always try to create projects that leave scope for human imagination. On the other hand, there are people who are always negative. You must be able to filter opinions, especially when it comes to the Internet. Story
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If all of your work had a single voice, what would it be saying? Silence.
I noticed you have been influenced by literature such as that of poet Brodsky. Where else do you find inspiration for your works? Music and people that talk about what they think and what they feel. My friends, writers and their books, journalists and their reportages. What inspires me most is what I see around me; I’m trying to be very attentive. I didn’t think up any of my ideas - they come by themselves, if you’re doing everything right.
Your works are sometimes very ambitious in their process: cranes, fire, ice, huge buildings. Did you always work this way? From the very beginning I understood that things must be big. No one will see a small stencil. It’s hard to talk about it in general; it’s better to look at specific projects.
Street artists often have to work fast so that they don’t get caught. It appears that you don’t, you are practically bringing gallery installations to the streets. Does this cause difficulty for you sometimes? It’s very hard to do something big illegally; it’s a problem every time. We’re constantly trying new materials, technologies and that’s great. We’ve been very lucky every time - everything can be going wrong but then we immediately find a new solution. The police pass by and if they stop I show sketches, I tell them about the idea and they walk away.
What is the most extreme thing you have done to create a piece of art?
fall out of the wall at the height of eight floors. I remember that moment. We were working on project ‘Fracture’ – we were bandaging a dome of a working hospital. Four men, night, stars, surgical coats. Nobody spotted us.
What is the most enjoyable part of what you do? One of the main things is that you never know what you’ll get in the end. Everything is out of control on the street and that’s honest. Things that we create don’t hide behind walls; they live under the rain, snow, wind. Everyone looks at them. Therefore, the most important thing is the result. When everything is ready and I take a step back, I look at the result. The main criterion for me is astonishment. I’m always astonished with what we create. The second but more important thing are my friends’ reactions. I don’t fully understand why they help me; I never asked them about it directly. And when I see that they are satisfied, when we congratulate each other - that’s the most amazing.
Do you ever receive commissions to create your work? We made a project entitled “From the other hand” within the bounds of the festival ‘Alanica’ in Vladikavkaz. It’s the capital of North Ossetia, one of the republics of the Northern Caucasus. Caucasus is a restless place. When I was invited to the festival I immediately agreed. I wanted to see how art is appropriate in a place where war happened not so long ago.
How do you fund your art? I’m paying for everything myself. Your money – your rules. Of course I can’t allow myself some largescale projects but at the moment it doesn’t seem to be a problem. t-radya.com
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su bmit If you would like to see your art in our next issue, we are equally interested to hear from you. For the next Story, we are looking for talented creators who can interpret our themes with fresh minds. If this sounds like you, then please visit www.storymagazine.co.uk for our submission guidelines and more info.
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