The Wild by Giovanna Badilla

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WILD

Hero Issue

Dear Readers, The idea behind the creation of The Wild came up in early 2010, when everything felt stagnant, and the urge for something new was vital. For a long time I’ve felt self-centeredness has taken the front seat in our society’s current discourse. Our quest for happinness, beauty and riches has taken up the time we should be employing in figuring out how we can really contribute to our surroundings, and help our fellow citizens. I kept asking myself the question - what is it all worth if you still feel empty inside? The earthquake in Haiti united us in the realization that we each need to empathize with those who are struck with tragedies of such nature. Donating money is very effortless, but is making a donation enough to quiet our ringing conscience until the next tragedy makes headlines? For me it wasn’t and I was left with the feeling that I need to do more. Now, I don’t mean to imply that everyone can solve the world’s problems, but I truly believe that by starting small, by being conscious and interested in what occurrs in the world today, will make us more open minded and will give us a more extensive understanding which will naturally change our future actions for the better. I come from a fashion photography background, so it was only natural for me to turn The Wild into a Fashion / Music/ Culture magazine. I was inspired by magazine’s like the now-defunct Face and the iconic ID, but I wanted to mix it up with the social and environmental running themes that I felt pop culture magazines generally lacked. Our team decided that The Wild would highlight admirable people from different corners of the world who strive to make their planet a better place for all. People like Pierre André Senizergues, the Etnies/Sole Technology creator and green hero who redirected his company’s efforts into an example of what the term “environmentally friendly” really means. Or the girls from A Peace Treaty, Dana who is a Lybian Jew and Farah who is a Pakistani Muslim, both living in NY, who created a lovely line of scarves and jewellry that’s made by local village artisans in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their creations have provided war widows with the means to support themselves not only economically, but emotionally through their art. Or Evans Wadongo, the young Kenyan entrepreneur who would skip two meals a day to raise enough money to create solar powered lamps that would provide the people in his village with a safe source of light, as opposed to the expensive and dangerous kerosene lamps. All these people are heroes to me, so it was natural that the first issue of The Wild (issue Zero) would be themed: Hero. Highlighting heroes is something that we want to have as a recurrent statement in The Wild, while at the same time throwing a good mix of the inescapable pop culture that we all love. It should be noted that this issue of The Wild was made with no money, but with the good will and great talent of an amazing group of writers, photographers, stylists, designers, graphic designers, illustrators, musicians and artists. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as we did creating it! Welcome to The Wild! Giovanna Editor in Chief.

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EDITOR’S LETTER

editor in chief GIOVANNA BADILLA creative director SUSANNA WIDLUND art director JEREMY HU

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WILD

designer HAROLD HULL-AMBERS senior editors NICK COPE JOSEPH ISHO LEVINSON fashion director GUILLAUME BOULEZ fashion editor KETEVAN GVARAMADZE editorial assistant KATIE MARY GIOIA contributing writers AUDREY LEFÈVRE, DANIELA GILBERT, ALISA GOULD-SIMON, SOPHIE LANDRES, MIKAEL OHLIN, AMAURY FERON, CORINNA SPRINGER, STELLA KRAMER, SERENA HALLER, ANNA CLAUSEN, KATIE PINCHAM, MARINE DE LA MORANDIERE

contributing photographers and illustrators AINGERU ZORITA, DEBORA MITTELSTAEDT, BRYCE PINCHAM, NICK HEAVICAN, ALESSIO BONI, ARMEN DJERRAHIAN, JASON FLORIO, CECILIA CARLSTEDT, NEIL GILKS, SARAH SINGH

special thanks to ARMEN DJERRAHIAN, MICHAEL BEAUPLET, MAUREEN SHEEN, GAETAN ROUSSEAU & MARIETA BLASKOVA @ WWW.PARADOXAL.NET, ROSS KASOVITZ & SHELLEY MINTZ @ WWW.EXOPOSURECAPTURE.COM, GARANCE WILKENS, KARINA CIFUENTES, TEENA KANG, GREG VALOT, AFAF KONJA, SOPHIE FLINDER, MARIA LUCIA HERNANDEZ GUIDO, DELPHINE DAHNIER, SIMONE MERLI, YUSKE YOKABE, MARIANA VIDAL, BRENDA SPRINGER, GRACE HEALY, CANDICE MADEY, CHRISTINA PAPADOPULOS, RAINA SEIDES

www.thewildmag.com

“I THINK PERFUMERY IS ONE OF THOSE THINGS YOU COULD WORK A LIFETIME AT, AND STILL FEEL LIKE THERE IS MORE TO LEARN. LIKE OTHER ARTS, IF YOU HAVE CREATIVE DRIVE, YOU’LL ALWAYS WANT TO REACH FURTHER.”

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CAPTURING ETHEREAL MOMENTS

by NICK COPE

he renegade perfumer Anne McClain is not resting for a moment after the successful launch of MCMC Fragrances, her boutique line of hand-crafted perfumes. She is back to work planning the second installment of the Humanity Project, a site-specific art mission that aims to promote humanitarian efforts around the globe, as well as creating a new scent called Garden to support the Ananda Harvest’s farming initiative at Ananda Ashram. We met at Do Sirak, a Korean hole-in-the-wall downtown, to have a chat. Wow, perfuming! It seems like such a romantic practice. The mixing of aromas, the “notes” — how did you find yourself in this world? I’ve always been interested in traveling and photography. I seek to capture those amazing, ethereal memories afterwards. I was raised in both Rhode Island and Japan (where my mother is from), and from a young age I traveled. When in college, I had the urge to just get up and go. I took a year off and went camping on the coast of Mexico for three months, backpacked in Thailand, and moved to Maui for a summer. Then I spent three months in Nepal and came to New York City for a few months, too. It’s a wonder I graduated! In those early days, discovering my style of art-making, I was attempting to capture these incredible moments I had traveling through photography, and by collecting and making collaged mementos from my trips. Even now, my bookcases and drawers are crowded little installations filled with old letters, postcards, shells, seeds, and all kinds of other things. I’m fascinated with trying to capture that core magic of an incredible memory or moment. In 2005, a little while after moving to New York, I took a natural perfume class at the Open Center in Soho. That was it! Those amazing ingredients — which to me are like the distilled jewels of nature — seemed to capture memory better than anything. Scent and memory are really closely linked. From that time on, perfumery grew into a hobby, which then grew into a passion.

ANNE MCCLAIN

PHOTOGRAPH BY GIOVANNA BADILLA

Was there need for any practical training? Yes, I studied on my own for a couple of years, which consisted of reading a lot of books on perfumery, plants, aromatherapy, and botany. There is a serious shortage of perfumery classes in America, so I ended taking any aromatherapy classes that I could find. Then, I took a correspondence course with perfumer Mandy Aftel, who is based in California. But at a certain point, I kind of exhausted what there was to offer in terms of learning in the U.S. and made the decision to move to Grasse, in southern France. I went to the Grasse Institute of Perfumery, which is a one-year intensive program with just twelve students. It changed everything. I think perfumery is one of those things you could work a lifetime at, and still feel like there is more to learn. Like other arts, if you have creative drive, you’ll always want to reach further. The practical training helps you to understand what materials there are to work with, and how to work with them. Has living in Brooklyn, such a ripe community of artists, impacted your decision to become a perfumer? Most definitely! I can say 100 percent positively that Brooklyn and the community here was a major inspiration and helped me to follow my creative dream. There’s such a sense here that you can try anything, and there’s a lot of support for independent creators of all kinds. I think success is measured differently in Brooklyn, too. Of course financial success is great, but so is happiness, and I feel like the community here is all about going out on a limb and doing what makes you happy.

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Tell us a little about MCMC fragrances. MCMC Fragrances started as a dream. I remember being on the island of St. Martin a few years ago, and that was when I decided definitely that I wanted to pursue perfumery whole-heartedly and build my own line. If you were to look at my old notebooks, I had already started conceptualizing and formulating the fragrances that are now part of The Stories Collection.

At The Wild, we are fascinated by people who are passionate about making a contribution to the greater social welfare, and your causes collection seems to fit right into that vein. Can you tell us about it? I want to make sure that I’m able to support good causes. It’s something that’s important to me and integral to my life in general. Beyond the Humanity Project, I am working on a fragrance called Garden, which came about because some friends of mine started a farming initiative upstate called the Ananda Harvest, to teach themselves and others about giving back to the land. They started a fairly large garden, enough to call a farm, and are about to complete a cabin that they built so more volunteers can come up and stay there. With the Humanity Project, 100 percent of the proceeds have gone toward the cause, and with Garden, 50 percent are going toward the Harvest. I want to make a real contribution. We have heard that you are hosting monthly events at Le Labo, in Nolita. Do you actually teach people hands-on perfuming methods there? Right now I’m teaching a Level One introductory class at Le Labo. It’s a two-hour broad introduction to materials, with the goal of understanding and being able to break out individual scents from a composition. Once you grasp the idea that perfume is actually just a formula composed of individual ingredients, something clicks. It’s like cooking except more subtle. Soon I’ll be introducing a Level Two class at Le Labo, which will go more in-depth, and hopefully will involve some simple blending. I have also been thinking of holding a series of intense classes, with just five people or so, where we really learn the materials the way I did in France (blind tests!) and get into some pretty hardcore learning. I’m looking for a space if anyone out there has one they’d like to share with the cause of spreading the knowledge of perfumery. Any secrets you would like to share with The Wild?

Before you launched MCMC, you made waves with your Humanity Project. If i remember correctly, it’s a multi-faceted concept involving an inspiration trip to an orphanage in Mexico, followed by a custom fragrance, and then a perfume-fountain installed in a public park in New York. So is it more a conveyance of art than commerce?

As much as I love to travel and be spontaneous, I equally love just being at home. Lately I’ve really been appreciating gardening. And I secretly love interior design. It can be anything really, but what is your wild wish?

The Humanity Project was always about art and social good. It is going to result in a public fountain inspired by the feelings of compassion I experienced while volunteering at the Casa de los Angeles in Mexico. But the Humanity Project will live on as a yearly act of compassion with corresponding fragrance editions. I’ve already been looking toward the next volunteer trip and I think it might be to a birthing hospital in Bali, Indonesia. The perception of fragrance from a marketing standpoint can be pretty superficial, and I wanted to turn that notion on its head and purposefully make a fragrance that would set an example of how scent can be used in a completely different way. In this case, to promote and interpret the volunteer experience I had in Mexico. I didn’t really anticipate that commerce would play any part in the Humanity Project. We’ve been working on the project since February 2009, and only this January has a wearable fragrance been developed. Lance McGregor, Alan Iwamura, and I created the editioned heart bottles as a fundraiser for a public perfume fountain. Actually, the fragrance has become sort of a Trojan horse for the project; it has received lots of attention and introduced the project to a whole new audience, which is fantastic. My ultimate goal is to engage the fragrance industry in a conversation about how we can use the power of fragrance marketing for good. Do you have a favorite scent? You know, it’s funny. Growing up, I didn’t wear perfume at all, and now I love it! Cologne by Thierry Mugler is a little-known gem with an amazing fresh, green, citrusy wood scent, and I like the soft powderyness of Neroli 36 by Le Labo. On special occasions, I wear Serge Luten’s A la Nuit. And I have to admit, I wear my own fragrances a lot. My favorite ingredient is Haitian vetiver. It’s nutty and earthy and there’s a fiery aspect to it that reminds me of burning brush when I was growing up in Japan.

To speak Dominican Spanish fluently. Do you have a personal hero? In terms of perfume, it is definitely Jean-Claude Ellena [Hermès’ perfumer], but generally speaking, I look up to anyone who follows their heart.

“I WEAR MY OWN FRAGRANCES A LOT. MY FAVORITE INGREDIENT IS HAITIAN VETIVER. IT’S NUTTY AND EARTHY AND THERE’S A FIERY ASPECT TO IT THAT REMINDS ME OF BURNING BRUSH WHEN I WAS GROWING UP IN JAPAN.” ANNE MCCLAIN

PHOTOGRAPHER ALESSIO BONI

fashion

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE by ALISA GOULD-SIMON

orn in Cologne, Germany, Siki Im is a fledgling fashion designer with an expert eye and a desire to change the way that men’s fashion is perceived. This may be no small ambition, but if Im’s impressive debut collection for SS10 (which won him the Ecoo Domani award) and equally moving follow up for FW10 are any indication of his potential to do so, chances are good. Having honed his skills as a Senior Designer under the watchful eyes of both Karl Lagerfeld and Helmut Lang, Im’s aesthetic sensibilities are best described as synchronous with those of the two aforementioned masters. With extreme attentiveness to tailoring and detail, Im’s collections call to mind myriad influences, from his interest in architecture and furniture design to graphics, art, and music. His allegiance to structure and a strong sense of form surely goes back to his time spent as an architect with the progressive firm Architectonics before embarking on a career in fashion. The WILD spoke with Im just before his leaving NYC for Iceland and Stockholm (the soon-to-be best man having just put the finishing touches on a custom-made suit for his friend, the groom).

“...I THINK THAT AS A FASHION DESIGNER...IT’S NOT JUST GARMENTS OR SHAPES WITH FABRICS, BUT A WHOLE AURA OR ATMOSPHERE OR DREAM.” SIKI IM What was your intention when you decided to launch your own line? First of all, I wanted to propose a different perspective in fashion. And, secondly, it’s definitely exploring in more detail what menswear is or could be, as well as what is modern menswear right now. Those angles made me do what I do.

Your mobile rings a Bach composition. What role does music play in your design process? I used to be in bands, and I love music. When we’re designing, we listen to mostly classical music like Tchaikovsky or Chopin. Sometimes we’ll listen to washed out or beach house. Some Wu-Tang is always good. There’s also a really nice band called Daws.

What effect would you like your clothing to have on its wearer? What else are you working on right now? To make them feel more confident and more comfortable, and to have less fear of how to wear clothes... especially in America. To try out more silhouettes and to think of different ways to wear clothes, not just the one way that the media says. What inspired your FW 10 collection? It was especially driven by the financial environment we’re in.

I’m going to start teaching at Parsons next season; it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m going to do the senior concept classes for the fashion school. There are always side projects, too. We’re doing collaborations again with accessories. My friend Waris and I have a shoe brand made in Italy that will be called Wssi. I also just started a hat collaboration with Heather Huey. We did some last season, and we’re going to do more for next season. And then my day is pretty full.

What effect did the recession have on you?

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You’re quite prolific! Where do you find the time to sleep? I’m already very small, so it was very humbling. I kept going even more and even stronger with what my vision is about. It gave a lot of room for newness and openness, to think about what is important in life — in many aspects, not only in fashion. It’s almost a good thing, in a way; it gives you a different perspective.

I can sleep very well. I love sleeping. Its just not enough. One of my goals is definitely to manage more sleeping. Any other goals you’re working toward?

What did it change with regard to your own perspective?

To create better collections. And to try to find the right pace.

Basically to be humble and not excessive. To be conscious not only when times are hard, but also when times are good. And don’t always be bending with the trends. Financially and morally, there are always going to be ups and downs. So it’s about being consistent during those ups and downs. Fashion is obviously so driven by trends and motion, so it’s always in flux; but in that flux, there can be consistency.

What individuals, living or deceased, do you consider to be your heros?

How does your experience as an architect inform the way you design? I’m adamant about construction: the inside of a garment should be as beautiful as the outside, and the construction and detail of each garment has a certain excellency and craftsmanship. So, in that sense, maybe my knowledge helped me. Also, being an architect is not just about the way a building sits, it’s about creating an environment and a space, whether it’s invisible or metaphysical or spiritual. And I think that as a fashion designer too, it’s not just garments or shapes with fabrics, but a whole aura or atmosphere or dream. What was the biggest lesson you learned from working with Lagerfeld and Lang? One thing that I recall was that you shouldn’t put too much importance on the past. I think that’s what makes a modern person challenging as a designer. Don’t think about how amazing the past was — the ‘60s, ‘70s. I think Karl does very well for his age because he’s modern and aware. He’s a very smart and wise man. I learned a lot from him. What are your thoughts on one day expanding into women’s wear? I used to do women’s wear before, and I do my current collections to be carried by both genders — I think it’s very unisex, and that is what I like. I would love in the near future to explore more of the women’s wear. It’s something I’d really like to do.

St. Paul the Apostle, for writing probably the most influential books, and believing that salvation comes through faith, not works. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for his activism and vigorous dream against mainstream. Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris Le Corbusier, for his utopian manifestos, and not only changing design, but social living. My parents, for always believing in me and letting me live my dreams.

ILLUSTRATOR SARA SINGH

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THE REINVENTOR

by SUSANNA WIDLUND

ssembling parts of designer classics with found and unknown items and furniture, Martino Gamper has created a very individual approach of furniture design.

The making of a piece challenges the consumer with an aesthetic that sometimes boarders on bad taste, using unexpected mix of materials, sharp angels and soft curves, cheap plastic and beautiful wood, it focuses on unused spaces and nurtures an interest for unwanted objects. Martino Gamper has found a way of challenging and opening our eyes, breathing a second life to something we were about to discard in a beautiful and very unique way.

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Why furniture? My Background was in furniture, I did an apprenticeship when I was very young, after years of trying various other areas, sculpture, ceramics and industrial design, I came back to furniture. Furniture was also a way for me to further explore my interest in spacial concepts, like the corner project. But furniture also enabled me to use my craft skills, and there I was able to make the work myself, it felt that I could communicate through making furniture. You always seem to have many projects going on at the same time, what are you working on right now? I’ve never really managed to concentrate on one singular project, I like to think of various project at the same time, the projects learn and inform each other. At the moment I’m working on furniture for a Pizzeria in Athens, Greece, quite a bizarre project. Bizarre because it is in a very run down area, in the middle of the red-light district, a very multicultural and socio- diverse place. I am also working on an exhibition on leather and I have an exhibition coming up in San Francisco in July. It is interesting to see how you seem to have managed to find a “space “in between art and design, exhibiting furniture in art galleries. Since I’ve studied sculpture and design for some time I have been very much influenced by both fields, but this was not always so clear for me, for some time I thought I had to create my very own space outside these two fields. But after leaving the Royal College of Art in London, I realized that it was the design field (but with a very artistic approach) that interested me. People get a bit confused from time to time, but for me it’s very simple: I design functional objects that in some cases are exhibited in design but also in an art context. You have a very unique approach to design, assembling designer classics with unknown random furniture and reclaimed materials. What is it about this process that inspired you? The ideas of re-appropriation and assembly is something that interests me very much, it’s the relationship of objects and the history that I’m drawn towards. I like to respond to a very particular context, in this case design classics and found objects.

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THE REINVENTOR

by SUSANNA WIDLUND

ssembling parts of designer classics with found and unknown items and furniture, Martino Gamper has created a very individual approach of furniture design.

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Do you choose to do this for any environmental reasons or just purely aesthetic? The environmental issue is not my main focus, it’s more about the ideas of value, and how value can shift. For example I find a chair on the street that hasn’t got any value in people’s eyes, and therefore is at the end of it’s consumer cycle; now me reworking this chair creates a new sense of appreciation. This could be seen as recycling, but I would rather say it’s up-cycling. Is the function of an item important to you? Yes, in some cases the function might not be as straight forward as it seems, like sometimes beauty and culture can also be functional. We live in a world that seems to be very rational and obsessed with functionality, but there is more to life, objects that echo emotions, interiors that create associations and environments that change our behavior. But when looking through the functional eyes, this would be considered irrational, so in that sense, irrational looking objects can be very functional in our society.

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You once named an exhibition “If Gio only knew?” where you used Gio Ponti reclaimed materials; What do you think Gio would have said if he knew? I’m not sure. All I know is that he was and is one of the greatest designer architects of the last century. I once met his granddaughter, and she told me that he would have been very proud to see his furniture reworked. You set a very ambitious project for yourself a few years ago to do “one hundred chairs in one hundred days”. Why did you choose to restrain yourself to doing it in such a short time and why chairs? There is a saying in English: necessity is the mother of invention. By giving myself a very tight framework and concept I challenged myself to come up with a new idea of a chair every day. The challenge really was to free myself while inflicting a constraint, it was an exploration in how many different characters of chairs I could create in one day, with no restrictions. The speed in which one works can really emphasize the essence; I’m much better working quickly but intensely than month after month going very slowly. How would you describe your work process? Spontaneous, process passed, hands on, contextual and very much in collaboration with others. You have a special interest in corners. Why corners? Yes, the corners are part of a very particular interest, it’s the interaction between architecture and furniture. They both work on a spatial and functional level, but their scale is very much different. The corner for me also resemble a forgotten space, a place that most times creates problems rather than opportunities.

“THIS COULD BE SEEN AS RECYCLING, BUT I WOULD RATHER SAY IT’S UP-CYCLING.”

MARTINO GAMPER

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“THIS COULD BE SEEN AS RECYCLING, BUT I WOULD RATHER SAY IT’S UP-CYCLING.”

MARTINO GAMPER

You also seem to have a great interest in food; you have for years run a kind of “pop up” restaurant called Total Trattoria. How did this idea come up and how does it relate to your furniture? Food is something that I’ve always been interested in. Since my childhood food was very much part of my upbringing; I started working at my Ants restaurant when I was 12 years old. Food is also something that connects people, very similar to furniture; the pop up restaurant was a way of combining the two together. It was a friend of mine Alex Rich who suggested a place called Hat on Wall, where we (Maki Suzuki, Kajsa Stahl from Åbäke) did our first Trattoria al Capello dinner. From then on we did it on a regular basis.

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You often combine an exhibition with a live performance... The kind of live performance came from the need to do work onsite; first, because I didn’t have a proper workshop, and second, to be able to work site specific, and to work spontaneously without paper directly on the piece. What challenges do today’s designers have to deal with? I guess the same as anyone before; to stay true to your ideas and work, enjoy what you do while coming up with new exciting work, make a living. This issue of the Wild is called Hero. Who would be your hero? Ettore Sottsass. The late Ettore Sottsass was the founder and mastermind behind the post-modern Memphis group, and all of this at the age of 60 years old, a true poet in terms of design. His lightness and intense sharpness in his work is a great inspiration to me. And also My Parents.

Martino Gamper has an exhibiton coming up in San Francisco at the beginning of July, where he will exhibit one hundred chairs. The 100 chairs are part of the TechnoCRAFt exhibition in San Francisco, @ YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS TechnoCRAFT: Hackers, Modders, Fabbers, Tweakers and Design in the Age of Individuality Curated by Yves Behar Sat, July 10 – Sun, October 3 YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission Street San Francisco, CA

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PHOTOGRAPH BY BRYCE PINCHAM

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ON STELLAR RAYS

by SOPHIE LANDRES

s if adopting the monikers for New York cops and firemen, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center’s third “Greater New York” quintennial exhibition hopes to identify the finest and the bravest artists emerging from the city’s five boroughs. With only 68 participants, “Greater New York 2010” will be a numerically scaled down edition. Its approach, however, is strikingly daring. Focusing on the artistic process and opening P.S.1’s converted schoolhouse rooms for artists to work in residence, the exhibition will feature art that has yet to be made. For those who expect museums to display static tokens of completed thought, this may seem like a risky wager. But when soliciting a city’s unbridled innovation, there is no safer bet than on the rudiments of creation.

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A LOWER EAST SIDE LABRATORY FOR AESTHETIC EXPERIMENTATION Not surprisingly, four of the exhibiting artists are represented by On Stellar Rays, a burgeoning Lower East Side gallery that is itself a laboratory for aesthetic experimentation. Candice Madey opened On Stellar Rays when the economic recession began to breach. While the New York art scene sat on a deathwatch, Madey initiated a series of vigorously demanding yet elegantly executed exhibitions and performances. Although the work she shows is often challenging, each piece is capable of relating to audiences on what Madey describes as “a human level.” Through craftsmanship, technique, intellectual rigor and raw, enigmatic allure, the exhibitions prove that possessing a formal education or art world exposure is no substitute for an open mind. “The artists are extraordinary. I believe so unconditionally in the work,“ she confided, “It doesn’t work if we don’t trust.”

Tommy Hartung

With this philosophy, On Stellar Rays appeals less to the mere collector than to patrons who similarly desire expanding the realm of aesthetic possibility. “You can either allow yourself to be informed by something, receive and experience a work,” Madey explained, or “try to bring to it and think how it can relate to what [you] already know. I’m more interested in the first person and I want work that is informing.” Allowing exhibitions to evolve unrestrained, the gallery is a haven for its accomplished artists to germinate more projects, dialogues, and opportunities. And for the “Greater New York” curators, opportunity for unfathomed art forms is an indication of New York’s finest.

Maria Petschnig

Debo Eilers Debo Eilers’ powerful visual language awakens the most insipid surroundings. In digital prints and mixed-media assemblages, lime, fuchsia and banana yellow stripes and stencils parade over generic found-objects or computer screenshots. Bisecting lines and cuts in canvasses disorient the viewer while his accosting color pallet confronts the banal imagery with humor and purpose. Whether working to emasculate corporate culture or taunt the pedagogy, his performances emit an equally electric energy. In 4 Hour Fundamental (2009) the artist managed to reference Valentine de Saint-Point’s Manifesto of Lust, Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, Keith Haring and Lawrence Weiner, all the while dripping with day-glow paint. For “Greater New York,” Eilers plans to turn his exhibition space into a sculpture and performance studio: a spectacle impossible to miss. Zipora Fried Endurance is fundamental to Zipora Fried’s process. Regardless of medium, it is also the lasting emotional effect of her exquisitely crafted work. Her large-scale drawings are slathered in meditative yet obsessively exhaustive markings. In the sculpture Chère Maman (2007,) Fried burdens a dinner table by attaching hoards of bottles like suckling piglets hanging to its underside. Telling characteristics of portrait subjects endure despite obstructions, such as the huge chrysanthemum blocking the face of the tattooed, R.H. (2009.) Even her use of sound and language deals with intangibles, persistence, and negated function. In addition to a selection of sculptures and photographs, Fried’s contribution to “Greater New York” will include a filmed performance depicting the creation and climatic destruction of a glass bottle grotto. Solitary, laborious, fragile and violent, the scene is a psychic exploration of the artist’s cardinal motifs.

Tommy Hartung’s The Ascent of Man (2009) combines stop-motion animation with footage from a 1973 BBC documentary on the evolution of humans. In contrast to typically chauvinistic justifications for our position in the world, his elusive imagery describes a poetic yet inglorious evolutionary path. Fluttering reproductions of classic paintings, puppets tied to mechanical contraptions and a snail dropping from the worn sole of a floating shoe depict a clumsy and artificial existence. Hell-bent on dominating our environment, our species is also shown as vulnerable and crippled by desire. Unraveling the threads of anthropology, The Ascent of Man exposes history, and perhaps life itself, as a manipulated but beautifully mysterious construct.

Feminists often struggle against firmly established cinematographic devices to arrive at their own visions of the female body, its innocence and its sexuality. Wanting a more direct medium through which to address issues of public perception and private confession, Maria Petschnig recently abandoned painting to focus on performance and video art. Intermingling old, Super-8 family videos (shot by her father,) with footage of her adult body performing for the camera, Petschnig presents the act of performance as both a violation and the means to liberation. Catholic iconography and images of her twin sister further complicate the viewers’ associations with the objectified body. Rearranging familiar images of ritual, fantasy and manipulation, Petschnig’s work is as expressive as it is authentic. gallery info On Stellar Rays 133 Orchard Street New York, NY 10002 onstellarrays.com

Eilers, Debo Reslig, 2008 Mixed media 52 by 33-1/2 inches

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Fried, Zipora Untitled, 2009 Graphite pencil 67 by 47 inches

Hartung, Tommy The Ascent of Man, 2009 Video (Video still)

Petschnig, Maria Born to Perform, 2010 Performance (performance view)

PHOTOGRAPH BY ALESSIO BONI

music

THE COUSINHOOD GIGS OF JAVELIN by AUDREY LEFEVRE

avelin is a band formed in 2005 by cousins Tom Van Buskirk from Providence, RI, and George Langford from outside Boston, MA. They grew up together playing music and moved to New York improvisedly in 2008, having signed with David Byrne’s label Luaka Bop. Javelin just released their new album No Más on the label and have taken the U.S. and Europe by storm with their current tour. Meet Tom Van Buskirk and discover the eccentric and colorful tunes of Javelin, as you will be hearing them increasingly.

Is there a story around your band name? We were playing a show with Ratatat, and needed a name for the poster. Finally, it was George’s sister who said the word “javelin,” and we found it was much better than any other name we had thought of. It seems very arbitrary and we liked that. Also, we liked j’s and v’s ! How did you start the band? We each had developed in our own way musically. Then I think George suggested to team up and make music. We were each already very involved in recording and producing. Through our creative relationship, things were moving fast. Neither of us had made music like this before. It was a definite chemical collaboration. What is your musical background? Both my parents are musicians. My dad is a classical pianist and my mom teaches kids music, so we always had instruments around the house. And I started cello when I was around three, then I picked up piano and guitar. George is the same, he started playing

guitar at around 11 — altogether, he’s incredible with anything rhythmic. I remember someone saying something funny once: “Oh so you’re not DIY?” But I sing, and I was never taught! We’re almost going against our strengths, influences, instruments we learned to play. Did you play in other bands before? George played in a punk marching band called the What Cheer Brigade in Providence. I always shied away from bands. But we did play music with different people in Providence. We’re on a few Lucky Dragon records. Nothing was ever official, we just all got together and played. What instruments and machines do you use? Well, the main instrument we use is a sampler called the MPC. It was invented in 1986 by a guy called Roger Linn. It’s like a computer but made for music. Dance and hip-hop [music] were all created on machines like these. Now mostly computers are used, but the functions are based on those of the MPC. It’s like a drum machine on which you can use or add any sound to manipulate rhythmically. I’m mainly a keyboardist, and we both play guitar. And I recently played cello on a couple tracks. Do you do remixes for artists?

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We have two remixes on the internet now. Both created little splashes. One for the band The Very Best, we took a track of theirs and turned it into a kind of ‘60s garage band sound. The second is for the L.A. band HEALTH — it did quite well on the blogs. So do bands usually ask you to do remixes? Or do you initiate the process? Bands contact us, generally. Someday, when we have more time, we will start playing around with people’s music, and if something good comes out, we could show them. That would be something to do for larger bands or artists.

record you want in it. It throws a little bit of chaos into their system, but it’s a common technique! If you weren’t playing music, what would you be doing? I might be in grad school. I thought about going into education, but I always had a vague sense of, if you want to teach some day, you have to live and then teach. You have a song called “education”… Yes, it’s something important! Do you have any fun tour anecdotes to share? George and I were on our first U.S. tour, we were driving through rural Illinois looking for somewhere to camp. It was really dark. Suddenly, a meteor just ripped through the sky right above us. We kind of felt like Tom and Huck! Camping by the Mississippi, and the meteor... Can you speak about your new album? And what are your current projects? We have projects in the works, kind of internet mixtapes. But first they would exist as CD-Rs, called Canyon Candy, all based on western music. We found a bunch of cowboy records to sample from, and we will do artwork on the original covers for our mixtapes. Once all CDs are sold out, we will publish them on the internet. Are there any writers, composers, or producers you would like to collaborate with? (Dead or alive!) I really love Beck, especially his work prior to Sea Change. Then there’s MF Doom, this hip-hop guy. His work is amazing. He and Ghostface Killah are my favorite people in hip-hop. Have you recently discovered any bands that you really like at the moment?

We’ve actually never met him, which is ironic! We made this demo, “Jams and Gems,” which is now available on the internet. Initially, it was just on CD-R. It found its way to the label. We never shopped for labels.

TJib Kidder is incredible, from the West Coast, and I really like Art Department from Baltimore. They’re great. One that I love that doesn’t exist anymore is the Killer Whales. George and I have already talked about choosing our favorite songs they never recorded and putting them out. They are really our favorite band.

What is the place of scenography in your shows?

Who are your music heroes?

Our performance is maybe the most interesting thing about us. I sing our songs and also a large number of popular songs interwoven. A lot of Mariah Carey, Smokey Robinson, whatever pops into my head. All artists have their tricks!

People like David Byrne or Quincy Jones.

How did you sign onto David Byrne’s label, Luaka Bop?

You both buy lots of music from dollar bins. Can you tell more about the importance of collecting music? It’s mainly vinyl. I have been shopping for records in dollar bins and thrift stores since I was a teenager. You start to be able to read that pile of records, and be able to predict which will be interesting. That’s a huge part of what we have done. We try to find weird gems, and a lot of times we use them to create music. Can you judge a record by its cover? Yes! You can know a lot from the cover. The year it is produced is huge, or if it is on a major label, and sometimes the instruments are listed. Visual art is big, too. I actually make collages out of record covers. Often, in record bins, you find a good cover, and the record is not so good, so you take the cover and put in the

Special thanks to De Santos Restaurant for welcoming us for the interview.

PHOTOGRAPH BY FRED BENENSON

music

GILBERE FORTE’ “87 DREAM” by AMAURY FERON

ip-hop must be one of the only genres where every day, you will discover tons of new artists by just skimming through blogs and websites. If it is easy for a new artist to put his music on the web, it becomes harder and harder to separate him or herself from the rest of the pack. So once we have the opportunity to hear someone whose music has the potential to reach the masses it is our duty at The WILD to introduce you to him. Hailing from Philadelphia by way of Chicago, Gilbere Forte’ is what you could call an artist’s artist. The 23-year-old has the total package: he mixes, sings, and produces. From writing lyrics to making beats, there’s nothing he can’t do. “When it comes to penning down rhymes or producing to paint the best picture possible so the listener can envision everything that is being said on the track,” he boastfully admits. His first project, an E.P. entitled “BLVCK” done in collaboration with the brand Black Scale, was just an appetizer to his up-and-coming mixtape called “87 Dreams.” But tracks like the bass-hypnotic anthem to the famous Converse “Black Chukkas” and the Don Cannon-produced “The Color Black” are already a step ahead of a lot of songs that we can find on the internet. His music reminisces that of Kanye West — a more lyrical, 1987 version of the Chicago native. This explains the influence of electro music in Gilbere Forte’s sound. “The Louis Vuitton Don is one of my biggest influences in music,” the Michigan-born, Philly-raised artist eagerly states with a big grin. For this reason, he decided to freestyle over the track that West allegedly produced for Diddy’s “Last Train To Paris” called “I’m So Appalled.” Lately, things seem to have picked up for Gilbere: “Black Chukkas” is being heavily played on Hot 97, and he is being cosigned by heavyweight DJs by the likes of Dj Enuff. With a video shot by the world-famous video director Chris Robinson, it’s only a matter of time before the artist receives the attention he deserves. Produced exclusively by Gilbere Forte’ and music partner Raak, the mixtape “87 Dreams” might be one of the best projects to drop this year, and the anticipation surrounding the release of the project keeps getting bigger and bigger. If the leaks of tracks like “My Time” featuring S.T.S. (Sugar Tongue Slim) and the introduction to the mixtape “1st Floor” (featuring Freelance Whales and produced by Aislyn of Passion Pit) are any indication of what we will hear it won’t be a surprise to see “87 Dreams” top the year-end charts. Just remember where you heard about him first.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ARMEN

world

Alternative Solutions by NICK COPE

he skater/entrepreneur Pierre André Senizergues is driven by his quest to make skateboarding culture further flourish on a global level. First chasing his dreams as a teenager skating around the City of Lights, Senizergues has more championships than you can count on two hands (or even five) and is the founder/CEO of Sole Technology, an innovative company that enjoyed $200M in revenue in 2009. Furthermore, Senizergues has taken the initiative to make his company carbon neutral by 2020. As if his plate wasn’t already full, Senizergues is in the third season of his apparel line C-PAS and is founder of Skate Study House, a concept furniture line that is manufactured with 100% reclaimed materials. So Pierre Andre, do you rest?

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Never! I was a young skater at one time, practicing my kick-flip on a dirt driveway in rural America and was looking up to you. What made you decide to get into skating? I loved the creativity of it, the freedom and of course, the fun. What inspired you to move to America and California in particular? I always dreamed of skating in California because of all of the concrete. I bought a one-way ticket and never moved back because I loved it so much. At what point did you begin to see the potential to monetize your passion for action sports? It wasn’t really like that. I got involved with designing shoes because there was a need for shoes that came from skateboarders for skateboarders. I did it because I was passionate. Even when the market was really bad in the early 90’s I still kept doing what I was doing, it wasn’t about money. The mid-90’s ushered in a new surge for skateboarding and the company really take off then and become profitable. My core principles and the passion fueling me has remained the same as when I started this whole adventure. The Etnies Lomax was and still is a great shoe. Were you startled by the rapid success of Etnies, ES, Emerica, and others? Yes, I was stunned that after struggling for years, suddenly people wanted to wear my shoes. I actually remember the first time it hit me that things were taking off. Even today, I still get stoked when I see people wearing my brands. At some point, you became committed to shifting your companies’ practices so to be more environmentally-friendly. Can you tell us what brought about this change? At some point everyone has to look at their life and reflect on how they are living. As I mentioned earlier, the mid-90s was a crazy time

of growth for Etnies and Sole Technology. Right about the turn of the millennium though, I started looking at what I had accomplished and realized that I needed to do more to give back. I’ve always been conscious about the environment because as a skater, I knew what it was like to skate outside in Paris with polluted air. In action sports we need clean air to skate, clean water to surf and we need snow to be able to snowboard. Over 10 years ago, trying to make green changes wasn’t as easy and certainly wasn’t as popular. It hit me one day suddenly - I was up in Colorado at my friend, Daryl Hannah’s ranch and she had a car that was operated off of veggie oil. It was crazy driving so fast through the mountain roads and we were not using petroleum - we were using oil from the McDonald’s that they use for French fries. I realized then and there that it’s about innovation and taking a step into the unknown and figuring it out. So, that is what I did - I took a step into the world of eco conscious practices and 10 years later, I’m happy to see that the world talks about it now on a daily basis. Many people assume that incorporating sustainable alternatives into their business or daily life is costly. When you made the decision to rebuild Sole Tec, installing water-saving systems, solar panels, what did you discover? Are you saving on operating costs? I discovered that a lot of people weren’t familiar with it, so I brought them on the journey of changing how we operate with me. The thing about trying to make your company green is that it doesn’t happen overnight - it’s a process. The only way that you can accomplish something this big is by involving others into your vision and hopefully that will spread to passion. I started the Blue Bin Brigade, which is our internal eco committee made up of one person from each department and they come together and figure out how to impact their departments with ecological focus and together they determine how they can impact change within the company. It’s been really cool to watch the transformation happen. Some things are long-term investments, like the solar panels, which we are now close to seeing the payoffs of that investment. Other things are instant, like the water savings or the energy savings on some of the retrofitting we did - in one year we started saving over six figures on our energy bills alone. We now have a recycling center and it is profitable. It’s great to experience savings during this process, but regardless, I would still being doing it because for me, it’s the right thing to do. Speaking of heroic acts, do you have a personal hero? Everybody is my hero – we all have unique situations that require unique talents and it’s a heroic spirit that gets us all through life. A few outstanding people to me are Mikhail Gorbachev (Nobel Peace Prize Winner), Daryl Hannah (Green Goddess) and Andrew Reynolds (Skateboarder Extraordinaire). On another note, with C-PAS, your high-end line of men’s apparel, you are exploring the world of fashion, which as an industry has been criticized for being resource-depleting. Can you tell us a bit about the innovations at C-PAS and perhaps impart a bit of advice for people out there working in fashion? Sure. When I was getting ready to premiere the 11th Hour with Leonardo Di Caprio at the Cannes Film Festival, I realized that it wouldn’t be right for me to walk the red carpet in a suit that wasn’t eco-friendly. I began searching for one and what I found was that there were not any out there. So, I spoke to my friend Pierluigi Pucci who is a clothing designer and we started looking for the right kind of fabric and we found this really cool material that takes old recycled cassette tapes and makes them into a fabric. It was the perfect thing for a dressy tuxedo. I lined it with old etnies t-shirts and I had myself a great tuxedo. When I wore it during Cannes, I had so many people ask about it that I realized that there was interest in this kind of a project. A higher-end more mature line

Pierre Andre on the solar paneled roof of Sole Technology.

“I’VE ALWAYS BEEN CONSCIOUS ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT...IN ACTION SPORTS WE NEED CLEAN AIR TO SKATE, CLEAN WATER TO SURF AND WE NEED SNOW TO BE ABLE TO SNOWBOARD.“ PIERRE ANDRÉ SENIZERGUES that utilized unexpected materials, recycling them by giving them new life. We continue to use the cassette tape fabric, but we also use things like old recycled army parachutes or constructions tarps and more mixed with other sustainable fabrics to create a collection every year. I figure that with Sole Technology and with projects like the 11th Hour, I’m helping create environmental awareness to a large group of people. With C PAS or with my other project, Skate Study House, which is mid-century modern recycled skate design furniture, I’m able to reach a smaller group of influencers. If I can inspire people in fashion or design to look at materials differently and have them start exploring it in their work, then it contributes to the larger picture in an impactful way. It can be anything really, but what is your wild wish? In an ideal world - a planet to live on in the future, food and water for everyone, no more poverty and the end of wars. It’s a wild wish, but one that we all need to work toward.

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MODERN PRANKSTER by JOSEPH ISHO LEVINSON

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eet Special Agent Charlie Todd, the man behind Improv Everywhere’s missions of chaos and joy in public spaces. The group’s repertoire boasts of staged shenanigans such as the sudden freezing of hundreds of Grand Central Station passers-by (imitated in an episode of Law & Order), the annual “No Pants Subway Ride” (it’s exactly what it sounds like), throwing a faux U2 rooftop concert, their celebrated yearly MP3 experiment (a synchronized experience involving a couple thousand people), and the “This American Life”-celebrated “Best Gig Ever,” in which they packed an empty venue with diehard fans of an unknown starting band. The videos are available at www.improveverywhere.com, but first, here’s Charlie.

PHOTOGRAPH BY GIOVANNA BADILLA

On pulling victimless pranks: I’ve never been the type of person that likes to have somebody else mad at me, or who likes to upset someone else. And I love playing. I love playing tricks on people. I love fooling people. I love making someone believe something that’s not true, confusing people. And I just quickly realized that it’s too easy to cause a scene by disruption or fighting, so it’s very easy for people to get into a big argument on the subway and cause everyone to notice it, but it’s just not very interesting. On Law & Order using their grand central freeze idea: It was a little bit unsettling because the character that played me was a murderer and you know, I really didn’t like that. But it was played by Robin Williams, and ultimately I thought that it was just too funny that Robin Williams was playing me on prime time television.

“I LOVE PLAYING TRICKS ON PEOPLE. I LOVE FOOLING PEOPLE. I LOVE MAKING SOMEONE BELIEVE SOMETHING THAT’S NOT TRUE, CONFUSING PEOPLE.” CHARLIE TODD

Part of what I was really proud of [with] that one is that we did it without permission. I actually considered contacting the Madison Square Garden arena or contacting the Knicks, and asking them for permission to do it so we could be ensured to get the cameras inside… ultimately, I decided not to do it. It would be too risky that they might say no, or they might say yes, but they’d want me to put a logo in the video or change the idea and I just decided that it wasn’t worth it. Well, about 24 hours after the video was on the internet, I got an email from the PR department of the Knicks basketball team asking if I would please come do it again. On Improv Everywhere being showcased as art: We were in an art gallery in Cologne, Germany last year and our Grand Central video was played on a television loop. It was unexpected and wild to us that one of our videos would be playing in a gallery in Germany and not just on YouTube. On the future of Improv Everywhere:

I’m definitely very proud of the U2 concert for sure. I’m proud of it because it was so much work - renting the PA system and getting all the instruments on the roof and the band had to rehearse the songs and everything had to work out just right. I don’t know [if U2 ever found out], but the New York Times covered it and put it on the front page of their Arts section, a photo of it, and it was on VH1 quite a bit.

I think it’s important for us to continue to come up with new ideas and new concepts and new styles and new locations so that it feels fresh. I feel that very specific things can become fads or can become out of style. I think that if every month we were getting people to freeze in place, I think that would get very old quickly. But I really believe that the concept of doing unexpected things in public places is… broad enough that we can continue to keep it fresh. And I’m also just excited about technology and how for example, the “MP3 Experiment,” we first did it in 2004, and I don’t think we could have done it in 2003. I mean there were people in 2004 that downloaded the MP3 and burned it to a CD and were using Discman; there was one guy who was using his laptop computer to listen to it and now everyone has a device in their pocket that plays an MP3 at all times. And I’m excited to know that pretty soon everybody’s gonna have an iPhone or a GPS or an iPad that can do all sorts of things that we haven’t even imagined, and I’m excited to work with that.

On his favorite moment:

On possibly meeting his hero, Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne:

The very first “No Pants Subway Ride” was a big favorite of mine… When I first saw the videotape of this one particular girl reacting to myself with no pants, and then reacting to the second guy who gets on the train, I still think it might be the funniest ten seconds of video that we have. And whenever I do a talk or a live performance, I always show that video and the audience always goes crazy.

Maybe one day. Although they do say it’s dangerous for you to meet your heroes and your idols because maybe they won’t live up to the idea you have of them in your mind.

On the impromptu U2 rooftop concert:

On his latest big highlight, “Where’s Rob?”: Rob, who’s a friend of mine and frequent Improv Everywhere agent, got out of his seat at a basketball game…and went to get some popcorn and beer. As he was walking back, he was unable to find his seat. There [were] four of us… [we stood] up and screamed, “Rob, we’re over here!” but he was a little bit further away from us and he [couldn’t] quite see us. By the end of the game, there were hundreds of people shouting his name. The entire area of the arena that we were in were all aware that this guy was lost, and everyone was screaming and trying to help him get back. Eventually, he did get back and everyone went absolutely crazy. People [were] laughing at him because he [was] behaving like an idiot… and it’s funny but they [were] genuinely concerned with him getting back to his seat.

world

Lighting The Way by NICK COPE

look up to Evans Wadongo. Mr. Wadongo, 23, is a young entrepreneur originally from a small village in western Kenya who turned the hardship of his humble origins into a springboard not just for personal success, but for the triumph of his entire country. Recently named a 2010 CNN Hero for the design and distribution of his solar lantern, his endeavors involve solving many basic problems facing rural Kenyans with one small device.

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Like so many others, Mr. Wadongo suffers from poor eyesight caused by prolonged exposure to smoke from kerosene and firewood, as the burning of these fuels was his family’s only means of providing light. Lacking access to electricity, it was common for him and other students to either travel to public light sources (e.g. highways, the town square, etc.) or, more often, avoid study altogether. Such a situation naturally places these students at a great disadvantage, making it difficult to compete with those who do have electricity, and therefore even harder to escape poverty. In the ultimate quandary, those who opt to purchase kerosene or firewood for lighting spend precious financial resources that would otherwise be used to procure food. In a courageous act of solidarity to those suffering from the predicament of his youth, Mr. Wadongo himself went without eating to fund the startup costs associated with his business. “All along, I had been skipping two meals a day, so that I [could] construct the lamps,” he says, and construct them he did. Working with a local artisan, Mr. Wadongo sought the simplest and most cost-effective strategy to manufacture the lamps. His design utilizes salvaged sheet metal, which is more environmentally conscious than using new metals, coupled with imported battery cells and wiring. The silicon-based solar film at the top of the lantern is, of course, the mainstay of the innovative device and is salvaged from recycled solar panels. He uses donations (about $20 per lantern) to sustainably support his small volunteer workforce, who assemble and deliver the lanterns. Mr. Wadongo himself works full time without pay to pursue his dream of providing every last rural family in Kenya with the gift of light – all free of charge. Recently, other projects have taken off as well. SDFA-Kenya is currently supporting the Mukhonje Youth Group, and provides them with the resources to maintain a sugarcane plantation of 10+ hectares. Beyond the basic skills and discipline acquired by working on the farm, the group is also being educated in simple economics so that they may expand their venture. Another project that is in partnership with the Malanga Women’s Group involves dairy farming. SDFA-Kenya matches funds with the group so that they can purchase cattle (with finances that would have typically been used to purchase kerosene). The group is also instructed in micro-enterprising skills, project management, and basic accounting, which, in turn, is ultimately as valuable as fiscal support. SDFA-Kenya’s Poultry Project employs a similar template of “micro-funding plus education equals empowerment.” Such a tremendous social impact all thanks to one man and the light of his profound invention.

HERO

As of February, his Nairobi-based company SDFA-Kenya (Sustainable Development for All Kenya) has proudly dispersed over 10,000 solar lanterns to the rural people of Kenya — and it is only the beginning. Mr. Wadongo calls his invention the MwangaBora, Swahili for “good light.” Good light indeed.

For more information on Evans Wadongo check the SDFA-Kenya website: http://sustainabledevelopmentforall.org

PHOTOGRAPH BY SDFA-KENYA

O N E W H O I N T H E F A C E O F D A N G E R D I S P L AY S COURAGE AND THE WILL FOR SELF-SACRIFICE

PHOTOGRAPH BY DARIUSZ ROMPA

n Afghan widow. A Pakistani farmer who has lost his farm. While these may seem like the unlikeliest of fashion designers, thanks to New York-based collection A Peace Treaty, they are part of a group of artisans from six different countries that are creating pieces for the world’s stage. The brainchild of Farah Malik and Dana Arbib, A Peace Treaty was founded in 2008 after the two women met in Rome while Malik was living there and Arbib was attending her brother’s wedding.Taking a break from her non-profit work in women’s rights, Malik had traveled to Rome to study the art of ancient Roman goldsmithing. “I always had an interest in jewelry,” she says, “dabbling with it on the side” as she worked for a variety of non-profit organizations after completing a master’s program at the London School of Economics. Arbib, meanwhile, found her calling in design and, after graduating from the Parsons School of Design in New York, worked on freelance design projects for companies such as Sotheby’s, DKNY and the Morgan Library. Eventually though, her humanitarian roots took hold. “I traveled with my father [Walter Arbib, a well-known, award-winning humanitarian] to Ethiopia at a very

young age to help him distribute AIDS medication and I saw first hand the impact that could be made,” she says. Malik, a Pakistani Muslim and Arbib, a Libyan Jew, are a perfect pair – while Arbib waxes poetic about design and inspirations, Malik notes that globally, cottage and family industries are suffering at an alarming rate. “We want to bring these communities into the global economy,” she says. “We are hoping to help them reinvent themselves.” In addition to creating employment for artisans at above fairtrade rates, paying up to four times the local wages, 10 percent of A Peace Treaty’s sales go to Counterpart International, a company whose mission is to empower vulnerable people to implement innovative, holistic and enduring solutions to social, economic and environmental challenges. So far, proceeds from A Peace Treaty’s sales have helped give medical supplies to people in Darfur, as well as aid and medicine for Palestinian children and helped support women’s rights and reconstruction in Afghanistan. The women have also found a variety of communities to produce their goods in – they commissioned a group of Pakistanis that could block-print silk by hand, a technique that is practically unheard of in today’s world of disposable fashion; they traveled to the Himalayan Mountains to work with women artisans that weave cashmere shawls made of the shedding hairs of Capra Hircus mountain goats – a long and painstaking process; they even found a way to produce traditional African textiles in India after working in Africa proved to be a challenge. For their most recent hand-knit alpaca collection of wraps, ponchos and hats – named Pitania – Malik and Arbib found their inspiration from both ancient Incan iconography as well as the simple geometric patterns and unlikely color pairings found within women’s weaving workshops during the Bauhaus art movement of the early 1900’s. Naturally, explaining this inspiration to the group that would create the collection – indigenous Aymara and Quechua communities nestled deep in the Andes Mountains – could prove to be difficult. Would they understand Bauhaus? Absolutely, says Malik. “Not only are we dealing with true artists here,” she says, “but we have learned to figuratively speak their language.” One example from a prior collection found Arbib trying to define the faded black color she wanted to a group of Afghans. “Like a burkha after 10 years in the sun,” was how she described it. “They understood completely,” she says. Jewelry, a new category for Spring 2010, grew out of a mutual love, but more importantly, Arbib and Malik saw it as a way to expand the collection and help some of the new communities they had seen in their travels. “We’re excited about the jewelry,” says Arbib, noting that she is currently experimenting with materials outside of metal for future lines. Entitled Sunari – “female goldsmith” in the Pashto language – the first collection is inspired by the Kuchi nomadic tribes of Afghanistan and the Turkoman tribes of Central Asia. The 24 gold-plated pieces feature geometric patterns on amulets and talismans that are hand carved and formed into pendants and earrings, as well as a selection of stackable and two-finger rings.

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF A PEACE TREATY

The biggest challenge of manufacturing in their roster of countries—Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Peru, Bolivia and India, their latest venture – say Malik and Arbib, is undoubtedly meeting their store’s delivery calendars. The solution? “We are constantly producing,” says Arbib. Adds Malik, “Within a collection there are three or four shadow collections which keeps

PHOTOGRAPH BY DEBORA MITTELSTAEDT

“WE WANT TO BE AUTHENTIC IN A WAY THAT RESPECTS THE TRADITIONS OF THE PEOPLE WE WORK WITH” DANA ARBIB, CO-FOUNDER OF A PEACE TREATY everyone working and gives all of our retail chains something different.” A retail chain that was well thought of was denied –“we turned Saks down at first because we didn’t want to grow so quickly,” says Arbib. Today, their list of retail outlets is impressive: Barneys New York, Bergdorf Goodman, Fred Segal and Harvey Nichols, as well as early supporters Shopbop, Rugby Ralph Lauren, Henri Bendel, Oak and Odin. And while they haven’t had much time to think about future plans – “we went from a small operation in Dana’s apartment to something that is growing every minute,” says Malik – the goal remains the same: to continue to expand the line and seek out more communities to help. For that, they will eventually have to add more staff. “We would love to clone ourselves,” jokes Malik. “Ninety percent of the work is in visiting these communities and producing the goods.” “There is such love here,” adds Arbib. “Our work is to really highlight the faces behind the brand. We want to be authentic in a way that respects the traditions of the people we work with.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY GIOVANNA BADILLA

PAZ PANTS AND BELT BY STELLA MCCARTNEY

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PAZ AND LOVE by JOSEPH ISHO LEVINSON

az loves the word “love.” She also loves talking about love. She especially loves to proclaim her love for old films and celluloid heroines. I met Paz just as she was in the middle of channeling the spirits of a few of her favorite leading ladies: Kim Basinger in 9 1/2 Weeks, Brigitte Bardot in Le Mépris, Nastassja Kinski in Paris, Texas, Isabelle Adjani in One Deadly Summer, Béatrice Dalle in Betty Blue, Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris, Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits. After the shoot, I had the privilege of seeing Paz the way few people in this world have: baking banana and chocolate chip muffins. I set up my recorder a second too late after she entrusted me with her secret recipe. You’ve said many times you’re comfortable with nudity, and that’s certainly something that’s been brought up a lot in profiles on you. Yeah, I mean here’s the thing, I’m really comfortable with it as long as it is done tastefully and beautifully. My favorite photographers always took really great photographs of women naked. And my favorite actresses were always not worried about that sort of thing. And I just think that I’ve always been an exhibitionist. But I understand now I’m in this new series and they want me to present myself with some more clothes on, more of a political thing, but I respect it and I like wearing clothes too, as long as they’re pretty and sexy. Jim Jarmusch said something about you along the lines of “being naked and confronting your fears is what makes you a great actress.” Well, I feel like if you do things that you’re afraid of, and you’re courageous... I always try to find roles that challenge me in some sort of way, and nudity for a while was something that maybe I wasn’t comfortable with. I needed to face that fear and I do think that part of being a good actresses is being able to be comfortable naked because you have to be naked emotionally and in every other aspect, you know? You have to be comfortable bearing your soul, which is more than being naked. And I practice Kundalini Yoga, which has completely changed and saved my life. It’s a very spiritual form of yoga that is also very good for being an actress because it really opens up your heart. It just keeps you pure in a way that I’ve never experienced, in the most realistic way there is without drugs, without alcohol. You know, people say they do drugs to feel this kind of pure experience — it’s not pure because it’s not real, but their intention is to experience something pure, and Kundalini Yoga... I’ve never experienced so much truth and I’ve never healed so much in my life. I have a tattoo of a snake; it’s kind of like the snake keeps shedding its skin, which is why I got that tattoo — I relate to that. Is there any role you have your sight on? Yeah, there’s a lot of roles I feel like I could have played and there are roles I wanna play, like Karla Faye Tucker, who was a woman years ago in the early 80s, [who] was given the worst set of cards: she came from a family of drug addicts, by age 10 she was shooting dope, she was prostituting by age 14, and by age 22 she was just an insane person, never sober, and one night with her boyfriend they did a lot of drugs and they were kind of in that manic [state of] like, “What do we do tonight?” you know, for excitement. She was in this haze of drugs and they ended up murdering this couple, and she got sentenced to life. While she was in prison, she started studying and reading the Bible and took prison as what it is supposed to be meant for — to transform people, for people to get better, for people to heal, for people to really change, and that’s what the system was set up for, right? It doesn’t seem like that anymore, but she actually was a perfect example of how the system could work. She became head of the ministry there and started inspiring all these people to get better. She became this woman that everybody loved and everybody wanted to be around — she was transformed. She had never been sober a day in her life, and so she finally got sober and realized these things that happened, that she did,

they weren’t her because she was under the influence. And in the end, the most hated man in the world, in my opinion, George W. Bush, who was governor of Texas at the time, called the shots and sentenced her to death. And it became really controversial because people argue that isn’t this what the system is about, reforming people? It was very devastating and I want to tell that story, that’s one role I would love to play, it’s about how people can change. Also, I would like to do Laughter in the Dark by Nabokov. I’m working on getting the rights to it and having Salman Rushdie adapt it to a screenplay, because I feel that with a writer like Nabokov, you need an equally great writer to get his sensibility into a screenplay. And I have so many ideas of my own. I’ve directed two films and I’m about to direct my third film this summer. Can I ask what it is about? It’s about... I don’t wanna give away the ending, but it’s about a woman who’s about to do something nobody expects. And it’s inspired by Cocteau’s The Human Voice with Ingrid Bergman which is just a woman on the phone with her lover for an hour. And I also want to take The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant and do a play version of it, playing Karin. And I know lots of actresses that would be great for the role of Petra. I have many ideas. I’m also fascinated with women and how obsessed they are with their hair. Chris Rock just came out with a documentary on black women’s hair, have you seen it? No, I’m more curious about white women’s hair and how they bleach it and blow dry it, and how old women, instead of having their gray hair, they go blonde. Hitler always wanted Eva Braun to have blonde hair, and he’d literally whip her if it weren’t blonde enough. He wanted her to look as Aryan as possible. And not a lot of people know this, but she had Jewish blood in her. He gave Eva Braun a camera, and she filmed him from her point of view and literally it’s just like watching a home movie of a woman in love with her husband. It’s as if you’re watching your own home film, except that it’s the most evil person ever. And it just goes to show you that women can fall in love with whomever for whatever reason and... Don’t you think it goes both ways? Of course, but a woman tends to be attracted to power, and a woman can be so in love with someone that you’re completely unaware and blind to the situation, like you don’t have a clue. We’re in denial of all the horrible things they do. I’ve been in abusive relationships, and my god, when I was in them, you know, I was in love, but this [situation is] beyond that — he was killing millions of people, and Eva just wanted a peaceful life. He was very eccentric, —he used to make her read Alexander the Great to him every night, and she had to exercise in front of him, and just some other bizarre facts that may or may not be taboo. That documentary of her films is just fascinating. Like, you see him playing with his dogs. It’s bizarre. And of course, a man as evil as Hitler is gonna have a dog as his best friend; the dog is never gonna judge him.

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!"#$%&'($)*+*,&-# PAZ AS ISABELLE TOP BY OHNE TITEL BRA BY VICTORIA’S SECRET KNICKERS, VINTAGE (STYLIST’S OWN)

Are there any other historical figures you’re interested in? Jane Fonda, a sex symbol who was always a great actress and who became an activist, standing up for women’s rights and civil rights. And I admire her because she grew up in the public eye, but she went through her phases gracefully. And I admire Angelina Jolie; I feel like she’s a woman who is able to continue being a great actress, having a family, having a husband, having a life, helping people, and being a movie star all at once. Wow. It’s amazing. You admire these activists and people with causes, and now your mother works in the UN… Yeah, my mother works for women’s rights all over the world. She sets up schools and organizations where kids can go and learn about sexual education so that young girls aren’t getting married at 7 years old and dying from their first time having sex because their bodies aren’t ready yet. That’s something I admire about my mother. Is there any cause you stand behind? Are you working on anything? Yeah, I am working on a few things. I’m going to Haiti sometime this summer to teach acting classes. And, I know, you might as well say it: “Why don’t you build houses? They’d be more useful.” But these kids need some fun and distraction. So, I’m gonna do a workshop. And then I’m also going to paint a mural with a bunch of poor kids in El Salvador for their school. You ever had exhibitions? No, It’s crazy because I direct films and I paint, yet those are the two things that I haven’t felt ready to show the world. I hope that I can be successful in what I do and do good things with my success if I have it. I’ve done art therapy, and it has really helped me. Apart from being an artist, I would love to be an art therapist. What are you intimidated by? If I’m around mean people, it’s time to leave. I’m not intimidated by them, I just don’t wanna be around them. I just don’t like mean people. You can have a big ego and that’s fine, but if you have no heart and you’re a mean person, it’s not like I’ll give you even the honor of letting myself be intimidated by you, I’ll just leave. I’ve learned that you can always just leave. There’s always the door. What was the experience of filming Enter the Void like? That was amazing. I had just turned 23, and Gaspar Noé (the director) is one of my best friends, but when we were filming that was a different story because he really didn’t talk to me. One day, I said, “Why are you not talking to me?” and he goes, “I casted you because I trust you.” And I said, “Alright then, just don’t try to direct me because every time you try to direct me the words come out all wrong,” ‘cause his English isn’t very good, and he speaks from a very superficial level, which isn’t good for an actor. So I was like, “Okay, don’t talk to me. I’ll take care of the emotional work, you take care of the technical work,” which is not necessarily a bad thing, it was actually quite freeing. I mean, Alfred Hitchcock never directed his actors, and look how brilliant he was. Did you find it was the same for everybody, or was this just you? The other people weren’t even actors! They didn’t know what they were doing, and that’s one thing I’m still frustrated at Gaspar for. But, I let it go, it’s his movie, that’s what he wanted. But it would have been nice if I [had been] working with actors. Are you happy with the result? I haven’t seen the final cut version, which some people say is really good, so I’m excited to check that out. I wasn’t happy with the first cut at Cannes. At Toronto, I was happier, and apparently there’s been more work done, but I’m so critical. And I have to say that Gaspar is a genius, and I really do feel the film is going to be a cult classic.

And being at the screening, did it bring some of those emotions back? I felt really clean and in a great space. I felt like I wasn’t a part of it anymore. I felt like a voyeur, like someone in the audience, because I had cleaned up this connection to everything, I had wept this whole experience out of me. And that’s how I like to work, I like to do things and move on. I then did Jarmusch’s film, which was totally different. He is amazing. And then I just did (the series) Boardwalk Empire, where Scorsese shot the pilot. It was like a dream come true. What’s it like taking orders from Marty? He’s actually the most relaxed, fun-loving guy, and he really knows how to have a great time on set, except he gets really serious, but not in a way that’s manic or crazy, rather more in a natural, beautiful way. He loves what he does and he approaches it like a little kid fascinated by film, which he is. It’s the quietest set I’ve ever been on, and he really creates the atmosphere with you and for you. And since this was a period piece, you’d walk into the room and you’d be in that time. And Marty lets you take it in, and he does a few rehearsals but he is not married to anything, so he lets you improv too, which is my favorite thing to do. I’m very free, but some of the other actors really didn’t like it, they felt uncomfortable. I remember Steve Buscemi was like, “Wow, have you worked with Marty before? You’re so free around him!” and I said, “Well, he’s a nice guy! This is what it’s about, it’s a fun scene!” In improv, you create relationships, and we created this whole thing [among] me, Steve, and the guy who plays Steve Buscemi’s butler, this comical tri-dynamic that’s quite funny. And that all happens in improv, and because Marty let us be free. Have you learned anything from working on big productions?

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It taught me how to be really professional in a big budget set. In independent film, you can tell a person right before your really emotional scene, “Don’t touch my face! Nobody touch me! I want my makeup to be fucked up!” But here you have a makeup artist who is like the best makeup artist in the business, you have a hair person who’s the best at it, and everybody’s doing their job their best, and you’re not gonna tell the makeup artist, “Don’t do your job.” Even if it’s the most emotional scene, even seconds before I’m doing an emotional take, the makeup artist will be doing something with my hair, or will be touching me up, I mean you really have to meditate and keep your focus. What’s it like working with Steve Buscemi? He’s really great, he’s super funny, he makes me laugh, he’s so real. And I feel so grateful for that experience, and I hope I don’t get killed off in the show. [Laughs] What happens when you, Paz, are in an unknown land, Japan, with an unknown language? I was really lonely. But I loved the quietness of not understanding the language, to be honest. It’s so interesting, because ultimately you relate to people on energy levels. Words don’t mean anything. They really don’t. You just pick up on people’s energy, and it was a really beautiful way to work. I loved not knowing what people were talking about. You know how in America people are always so chit-chattery, and I’m always like, “You say something about me?”, and there, I loved not knowing if someone was talking about me. And I loved the peacefulness of it, but it also contributed to my character and how lonely she feels. I was very lonely. I didn’t hang out with the French crew because it was all a bunch of guys drinking beer all night, and I had to keep healthy. I was dealing with a lot emotionally, and I didn’t wanna drink. I knew that if I drank, it would not end up good. Did the whole experience feel a little bit like Lost in Translation? That movie, for me, after having the real experience, is the sugarcoated experience. But I love Bill Murray, props to Bill Murray, he is my friend. He knows how to make you smile. Do you ever find yourself stuck in a role and not being able to step out of it? I was a bit traumatized after Gaspar’s film and I went to an ashram and I wept for 15 days. I just let the whole experience out of my system and released everything.

Did you ever feel like calling him Donny and telling him to shut the fuck up? I never sat through that film [The Big Lebowski]. I love old films. I love Isabelle Adjani, I love her in Queen Margot and The Story of Adele H. I love Maria Schneider in The Passenger, one of my all-time favorites. I love Brigitte Bardot, I love studying her because there’s an ease about her that just makes everything so much fun. I also love darker films — I love Irreversible by Gaspar Noé, I love Before Night Falls by Julian Schnabel, even Basquiat; I feel like there are great performances in that film, Jeffrey Wright is amazing. David Bowie was pretty good as Warhol. He’s amazing. My favorite movie is Vivre sa vie with Anna Karina, it makes me cry for hours. The Fugitive Kind with Anna Magnani and Marlon Brando. We could be here for days... Paris, Texas, the Billie Holiday movie with Diana Ross Lady Sings the Blues... ¿qué más? ¿Qué más? Jamón, jamón, El Matador by Pedro Almodóvar, also his last one Los Abrazos Rotos. Don’t Look Now with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, that was the scariest movie ever, I owned it and then I gave it away because it scared me too much. You know, I really think Angelina Jolie was really good in Gia, just gotta put that out there.

LEFT: PAZ AS KIM. TOP BY STELLA MCCARTNEY; JACKET BY ETRO; SHORTS BY MATTHEW AMES RIGHT: PAZ AS BEATRICE. SHORTS BY BRIAN REYES; SHOES BY BRUNO FRISONI.

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PAZ AS BRIGITTE KAFTAN DRESS ( WORN AS A BUSTIER DRESS ) BY REEM ACRA

PAZ AS MARILYN DRESS BY ZAC POSEN

Which director are you dying to work with? I would love to work more with Martin Scorsese, Martin Scorsese, Martin Scorsese, Martin Scorsese, and Martin Scorsese — I want to be in all of his films. You want me to transcribe it that many times? Martin Scorsese. I want Marty to shoot me in a film in all black and white. Why do you think people find you eccentric? It’s Ameeeerica. You write poetry, right? What are the present themes in your poems? I’ll just be writing and a few words will come together and just fit. Like, “He penetrated me with a wolf-like sharpness.” [Laughs] There’s a line. It just came right now. When are you putting your poetry out there? I’m working on a book called The Birds Didn’t Die Over the Winter, with photographs of me when I was going through a really hard time, living in this apartment by myself. It’s very cinematic, and I write poetry along with the images, kind of like a diary. I was going through a really hard time, and I remember hearing the birds chirp, and just before that, I had been thinking there had been an apocalypse, everything was dead, and then I heard these birds chirping and I remember I called my friend. I was really freaking out, and I called her up and said, “I thought they were dead!” and I was really believing this, so that’s why the book is called that. What came first, the poetry or the pictures?

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The pictures. And then I just started writing about that time in my life. So, this issue’s theme is Heroes, and I feel like I have to ask... Who my heroes are? Well, all the angels that have crossed my path at certain times, I really can’t name names because people come in and out of your life to teach you things, and then they leave, you get the visit and... I’ve been an angel in people’s lives too, I guess. [Turns to the oven in a panic] I think I over baked them! That makes me mad!

PAZ AS MARIA PANTS BY MATTHEW WILLIAMSON SHOES BY JIL SANDER HAT BY EUGENIA KIM COAT BY VINTAGE AT NEW YORK VINTAGE FLOWER ORNAMENTS, VINTAGE (STYLIST’S OWN)

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stylist GUILLAUME BOULEZ stylist’s assistant REGINA CHAN hair WESLEY O’MEARA at The Wall Group make up MEREDITH BARAF at The Wall Group Shot at Studio 385 in TriBeCa New York www2.exposurecapture.com Thank you to Michael Beauplet, Ross Kasovitz and Shelley Mintz.

PAZ AS NASTASSJA CARDIGAN BY SONIA RYKIEL

CELINE

the wild magazine issue zero

BLACK MOTORCYCLE JACKET BY JEREMY SCOTT X SCHOTT S/S 2010/ WHITE T-SHIRT BY DKNY GOLD BAR NECKLACE BY GINETTE NY

LEATHER WITH FUR BY MARJAN PEJOSKI FOR OPENING CEREMONY WHITE T-SHIRT BY DKNY BLACK UNDERWEAR BY AMERICAN APPAREL GOLD BAR NECKLACE BY GINETTE NY VINTAGE WATCH BY CARTIER ID BRACELET BY DANNIJO

LEATHER JACKET BY HUSSEIN CHALAYAN VINTAGE WATCH, STYLIST OWN UNDERWEAR BY AMERICAN APPAREL

fashion

Think About You PHOTOGRAPHY AINGERU ZORITA

STYLIST GUILLAUME BOULEZ

TANK BY 3.1 PHILLIP LIM NECKLACE BY RISTO EARRING BY LIZ LAW

SHIRT BY MCQ BIKER SHORTS BY OBESITY AND SPEED VINTAGE BIKER JACKET AT WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND SOCKS BY AMERICAN APPAREL SNEAKERS BY ADIDAS SKULL PENDANT AND CHAIN BY PAMELA LOVE NECKLACE BY CHRIS HABANA

JEANS BY Z ZEGNA VINTAGE T-SHIRT AT WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND BANDANA BY VINTAGE AT WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND CHAIN BY KRIA JEWELRY ROSARY BY CHRIS HABANA

JEANS BY WILLIAM RAST VEST BY SHIPLEY & HALMOS SWEATER (TUCKED IN POCKET) BY BURBERRY PRORSUM BRACELET BY JENNY BIRD

FROM BOTTOM TO TOP: SHIRT BY SKENDER DRAGOVOJA T-SHIRT BY ROBERT GELLER HENLEY BY SHIPLEY & HALMOS JACKET BY VINTAGE AT WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND

TANK BY DIOR HOMME JEANS BY DOLCE & GABBANA SHIRT BY RICHARD CHAI LEATHER BRACELET BY KRIA JEWELRY PENDANT AND CHAIN (WORN AT WRIST) BY KRIA JEWELRY

BLAZER BY MICHAEL BASTIAN JEANS BY LEVI’S BOXERS BY AMERICA APPAREL NECKLACE BY KRIA JEWELRY PENDANT AND CHAIN BY KRIA JEWELRY BRACELET BY PAMELA LOVE

SHIRT BY MCQ BIKER SHORTS BY OBESITY AND SPEED VINTAGE BIKER JACKET BY WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND SKULL PENDANT AND CHAIN BY PAMELA LOVE PENDANT AND CHAIN BY CHRIS HABANA

HENLEY BY DOLCE & GABBANA VINTAGE KILT BY AT WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND NECKLACE BY CHRIS HABANA VINTAGE BANDANA BY AT WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND

TANK BY CALVIN KLEIN COLLECTION BRACELETS BY SISCO FAMILY JEWELS

HENLEY, DOLCE & GABBANA VINTAGE KILT, AT WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND SOCKS, AMERICAN APPAREL SNEAKERS, ADIDAS RINGS, PAMELA LOVE VINTAGE BANDANA, AT WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND

VEST BY DIOR HOMME SHIRT BY THOMAS ENGEL HART SHORTS BY LEVI’S BRACELET BY CHRIS HABANA

SOCKS BY AMERICAN APPAREL SNEAKERS BY ADIDAS

Hair stylist: Shin Arima Photo assistant: Ijfke Ridgley Styling Assistant: Regina Chan Model: Brad Bowers Retouching: Jane Tam

NEW YORK by SERENA HALLER

After a long, cold winter New York is finally thawing. New Yorkers, too long cooped up in their tiny apartments, are ready to get out and make up for lost time. Like most things in New York, you never know what to expect from day to day, but you know it will probably be exciting. New places are sprouting up - if you’re lucky, you’ll spot the Van Leeuven ice cream truck (try the Earl Grey). Find special vintage at Isobel Arenberg (280 Mulberry St.) and the Hester St Fair on the weekends (get a lobster roll while you’re there). Opening Ceremony perpetually has great treasures. Find good coffee and surf stuff at Saturdays (30 Crosby Street).The shows at Governors Island promise to be great (Grizzly Bear, The Walkmen, Gang Gang Dance and Caribou among others...), and the Jane has finally reopened for late nights. The Marina Abramovic retrospective at Moma is over, but small galleries are popping up all over the Lower East Side. Lots of young artists everywhere. Ride your Bike around and find out what’s going on...

PARIS by MARINE DE LA MORANDIER

June in Paris, my personal favorite! Even though Parisians are still a little confused on whether the summer is really there or not (with this demanding weather), you can still feel the air is changing. Days last forever and so does cafés rue Vielle du Temple in the 4th district (l’Étoile manquante, Trésor). I love getting lost in this historical area of Paris, you never know what you might stumble upon! A vintage store, secret cafés, charming restaurants.The latest gem of this area is Derrière (69 Rue des Gravilliers in the 3rd distict). This secret address is where all the edgy Parisians, fed up What I am listening to: with trendy design spots, go for a friendy “feel at insbourg La Javanaise – Serge Ga home”dinner. Still in the same area, you will find ou Odessa – Carib ms a selective second hand boutique fashionistas Book of stories – The Dru love called Alternatives (18 Rue du Roi de Sicile in the 4th district). They carry a wide slection of edgy designer clothes, as well as timeless Hermes or Balenciaga pieces, all in perfect condition. June is also the time of fashion week, with the city full of models running from one casting to another, the fashion craze is definitely building up. It‘s also the time for aspiring designers to show their graduation projects. Curio Parlor (16 Rue des Bernadins, in the 5th district) another must, a tiny one of a kind bar hidden in a little street off the left bank. Famous for their innovative cocktails and Buvez Madison nights, this intimate bar run by Olivier and Hughes, the two stylish men behind Buvez Madison, is the meeting point of Paris’ young talents. Ponystep is back! Our favorite London party people are back in the city for a little teaser of their Kitsune x Ponystep launch event next month. Set in Le Baron as usual, amazing music, fierce style, Richard and his team sure knows how to spice up the Parisian nightlife. Waiting for the next one...

REYKJAVIK by ANNA CLAUSEN

This year, I have officially been living long enough in Reykjavik to claim my vote, not for government election but for local city counsil election. I feel inspired marking my X down. The big news is that on the election list in Reykjavik a new party named “Bestu flokkurinn”(the best party), lead by popular comedy actor Jón Gnarr, is running for mayor. Jón Gnarr is being supported by people from all walks of life. Some that are placed highest on the list are original punk and surrealists in Reykjavik like Einar Örn (Sugarcubes/Ghost Digital), Hugleikur Dagsson, ening young talented satirical writer Óttarr Proppe and What I’m list hardcore singer and writer Sjón to name a few. to right now: Jón Gnarr wants to fill the flower pots with plants and greens by the pond, save polarbears that float on icebergs from Greenland to Iceland and making buses free for all. All these sweet things that bring joy to the local people of Reykjavik.

ASH

AUCKLAND by KATIE PINCHAM

The eastside of Auckland City has picture perfect white sands and Pohutakawa trees, while the westside has black sands and an intensily rugged coastline. They are polar opposites. Good times in Auckland city consist mostly of going to exhibitions, like the Polaroid Diary by Karin Hofko, hanging in the park with good friends and eating Pavalova, listening to Backyard bands, jumping on a ferry for 30 minutes and ending up on Waiheke Island for a spot of demolition derby, wine tasting, beaches and sculpture trails. Also Eating some Paella and rummaging through old collectables at the Coatsville farmers market. If you want to check out some local bands like Connan Mockasin, then head to Monte Christo or Whammy bar. To finish the night, go to DOC (Department of Conversation),then mop up excessive alcohol with a selftited burger from the White Lady street food caravan.

m what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; listening to right now:

GEOFFREY BAWA TRUST

“NEVER BEFORE HAVE I SEEN THE UNION OF MAN AND NATURE SO PEACEFUL.” A VISITOR TO LUNUGANGA

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HARMONY BY DESIGN by NICK COPE

hile languidly browsing imagery on the relentlessly expanding cosmos that is the Internet, a Tuesday morning passing into early afternoon, I was forever changed. A single photograph, of Kandalama Hotel in Dambulla, Sri Lanka, exacted such an impact on my senses that I have not been able to free myself of its grace. A homage to high modernism utterly cloaked in dense foliage; this structure speaks differently: It contains all of the order and logic that we come to expect from the architectural progress of modern times, yet there is a tenderness.

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ARCHNET The Vines grow on the Kandalama Hotel. The hotel was designed by Geoffrey Bawa and constructed between 1992 and 1995 outside of Dambulla, Sri Lanka.

The late Geoffrey Bawa, a somewhat obscure though influential architect of South Asian origin, had crafted a structure that almost as soon as doors opened in 1994, jungle vines were beckoning entry. In fact, Bawa was heard saying that, “in a decade, the hotel would not be visible to the naked eye.” It is this respect paid to the natural world, which John Ruskin calls Gothic or Vernacular, that separates Bawa from the bulk of mediocre architects and designers, some of who are household names. His understanding of natural systems and building materials is only exceeded by his aesthetic taste. To educate those unaware of the definition of Vernacular Architecture at this point in time is so essential. We live on a planet that, according to Thomas Friedman, is becoming “hot, flat, and crowded;” namely, our climate is changing rapidly, the middle-class is expanding (thereby increasing demand for energy, consumables), and population growth is booming, particularly in the developing world. A drastically changed human society is only moments away, and the effect of our built environment during this time is ever so important. Most people do not realize that over 50 percent of total energy usage in the United States is dedicated to the construction, maintenance/operation, and demolition of buildings, whereas automobiles represent a paltry 10 percent (according to the US Department of Energy), yet remain a more dominant part of the energy dialogue. Vernacular Architecture specifically represents methods of design and construction that utilize regionally available materials and native traditions to address local needs. This approach places efficiency and function above all else. Unlike “polite architecture,” the standard design-and-build approach, where detailed and sometimes inessential

ideas are delivered by ivory tower architects to laborers responsible for one simple segment of the construction process. Vernacular building employs an integrative approach, which relies on the prowess of empowered craftsmen to understand and create essential systems on site. These techniques often lead to a more resource-effective construction process and produce a superior end product. Long before the term “sustainable” became a buzzword, Bawa quietly employed such design techniques, yielding structures that emphasized an integrative approach to building. His method is systems-based, and carefully considers the ramifications of each decision in a holistic manner, being particularly mindful of the sensitive living systems that can be disrupted so easily during construction and beyond. At Kandalama Hotel, Bawa most clearly displays this approach in his decision to leave the first of seven floors entirely empty to allow the flow of both water and the wild animals that roam freely in the area. Those fortunate enough to have visited Kandalama Hotel will remember this sign (opposite page, left). This cute feature to Bawa’s design is only the beginning of the many integrated systems that we find at Kandalama. The use of convective cooling or cross-ventilation necessitates the installation of air-conditioning in only the bedrooms, restaurant, and conference area, which translates to massive energy savings. It also provides visitors a nice sense of indoor-outdoor flow while meandering the lobby and hallways, with a gentle breeze on one’s back. This sentiment is reinforced by the use of large glass windows that enfold much of the building’s façade, and further generate the seamlessness between interior and exterior (opposite page, top-right).

ARCHNET Sign on the first floor of Bawa’s Kandalama Hotel. The first floor of the Hotel is left empty to allow for water and animals to roam through freely.

ARCHNET Baja’s style provides visitors a nice sense of indoor-outdoor flow while meandering the lobby and hallways. There are cross-ventilations that creates a gentle breeze that allows for energy savings.

Bawa again pairs visionary design and basic pragmatism in his lighting scenario. The building has zero daytime lighting requirements because of the site selection and wise orientation to free and available sunlight, again a major energy savings. In doing so, Bawa is paying respect to the traditional placement of buildings so that they are sun-facing and benefit from solar-heat gain; this is a custom in almost every indigenous human culture, yet something that most moderns seem to have failed to understand. When lighting is necessary in the evenings, you will find only energy-efficient compact-fluorescent bulbs (CFL), photoactive lighting in the gardens, as well as power cut-off switches on all circuits. The hotel also uses the power of the sun to generate power for hot water systems. Also worth noting are the many state-of-the-art recycling facilities on site. Plastic bottles (PET) are converted into pellets, and then eventually into usable fabrics. All paper used in the hotel is combined with elephant dung and transformed into high-quality stationary. As in many places outside the United States, food waste is composted with the resulting fertilizer being used in the garden, which grows the organic veggies, herbs and fruits that are served in the hotel restaurant. A closed loop. The many vegetated roofs (more commonly known as greenroofs) are amazingly innovative as well, given that they reduce indoor-cooling demands and absorb rainwater, therefore making drainage systems unnecessary. All of these details reinforce Bawa’s careful tailoring of his building to the site and indigenous culture, yet he somehow maintains a sleek and contemporary design. Although I am so partial to Kandalama Hotel, wishing to spend my latter years in repose on one of the upper verandas atop a bed of grass, many consider Bawa’s masterpiece to be Lunuganga, the country estate to which he dedicated over 50 years of effort. Here, I will not further endeavor to highlight ecological achievements, but rather focus on this overwhelming aesthetic feat and close with images of uncompromising beauty. Note how Bawa creates a different type of structure, one that feels alive, or rather one that is caught in a state of entropy. To find out more of the amazing life and career of Geoffrey Bawa, vist: http://www.geoffreybawa.com

GEOFFREY BAWA TRUST The gardens at Lunuganga estate. The estate was the inspiration for Geoffrey Bawa to become an architect, and was the setting of many artistic experiments throughout his life. He modified the gardent until his death in 1998.

PAINTING BY CES

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CHANNELING HIGH FREQUENCIES

by CORINNA SPRINGER

y name is Corinna Springer. I lead a double life, one as the owner of a fashion PR company called NOUVEAU-PR, and the other as an energy healing and spiritual consulting teacher. I was asked by The WILD to write my own story of how Reiki changed my life. Growing up in Germany, I was always an outsider; I never really fit in, and never wanted to. Fashion quickly became the only way for me to cope with reality, because in fashion, creativity and self-expression and weirdness all become something extraordinary that can transform and shift whomever it touches through photography, fashion shows, films, etc. At 18, I moved to Paris, where I soon found my way into a fashion PR agency. The shows of visionaries such as Raf Simons, Olivier Theyskens, and AF Vandevorst made me feel that there was much more to fashion than just commerce and clothes. When I think back, I realize that I was very blessed to be at that particular agency at that particular time, when fashion started to be something so powerful and not yet all that corrupted. But as much as I enjoyed fashion, it was not my whole world. I was looking and yearning for more. I wanted to add another more spiritual value into my daily life. I tried meditating, but it wasn’t for me. I discussed my feelings with my mother when I returned to Germany for the holidays, and she told me about Reiki, a healing system that worked through energy transmission. I had heard of energy work before, but I had no idea what Reiki was. I never really thought about or considered it until I actually had my first initiation. That is when I really felt something, and I was able to make it come and go at will. Later, I managed to take away my mother’s headache just by putting my hands on her for a few minutes. Today, as a Reiki teacher, I like to explain Reiki best as a high vibrating energy that is all around us in the ether. Every piece of matter vibrates and has a certain frequency range, thus we can imagine Reiki as a less dense matter with a very high frequency range that can be channeled through the etheric body of a practitioner. Reiki is said to alleviate and eliminate physical pain and emotional or mental stress through balancing the lower frequencies of the sick organs with its very high frequency. My first year of Reiki initiations shed light on what I truly liked and didn’t like. Through being in touch with this magical energy, I simply became more aware of my choices, and soon found that I didn’t actually want to be where I was. A totally new path started to appear.

Less than a year after my last initiation, I began to understand that I had to leave Paris for New York, which changed my life completely. I focused all my attention on one goal, and it worked out well for me. Within a few months, I found a job, an apartment, and new friends but with all the positive also came some negative. Certain situations brought unknown difficulties and a lot of frustration. I went through extreme difficulties with myself, with others, hating my job, hating every Monday morning with intensity. At one point I just knew that I had to change my current work situation, so I started to dream of having my own agency one day, and out of the blue, I started writing a business plan and putting more and more energy into it. In the meantime, my spiritual life had reached new heights, new initiations. I discovered how the energy works: we’re spending our life every moment making decisions, some of which will raise our vibration and some of which will lower it. Everything in this universe operates on the spectrum of love and fear; any decision we make based on love lifts our vibration, and based on fear will lower it. However, there is no judgment, the lower vibrations need to be experienced and then integrated, and whatever caused them needs to be forgiven, before the higher ones can be experienced fully. Once high vibrating energy comes into your system, it will highlight all the dark (lower) and make it come up so you can integrate it. Not always an easy task. And then it became clear that I was finally ready to open my own agency. I updated my business plan, and NOUVEAU-PR came to be the name. Of course, there were major challenges, such as a lack of money, but I went through with it anyway, trusting every day that I would have more than enough money to take care of everything and to build the company step by step. One quote that helped me through this period was, “Trust in trust, have faith in faith.” A daily reminder to be nice to yourself when you spend your day in denigrating yourself also works wonders! The more I write and remember, the more I feel as if the time of struggle has diminished a lot, and there are more and more moments of pure bliss, and more projects and visions to be manifested. What I wanted to show with my story is that we are truly creating our reality in every moment. The more our subconscious is cleared of old belief systems and obsolete reality constructs, the more freedom we have to create, or rather co-create, our lives. Sure, there is a part of destiny, and then there is a large part of freedom of choice in which we get to decide how we look at things and how we want to react to certain challenges or obstacles — most of the time they are windows of opportunity. And by reacting differently, by breaking a certain pattern, we actually get to the next level. It takes a lot of courage and overcoming doubt and uncertainties, but eventually, we’ll all get there.

“MASSOUD WAS NOT JUST A DEVOUT MU ELEMENTS OF ISLAM, AND BELIEVED THAT

world

REMEMBERING AN AFGHAN HERO

by STELLA KRAMER

the wild magazine

issue zero

n the summer of 2001, I waited over a month with journalist Pepé Escobar to get into Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley, one of the last remaining strongholds of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance forces. Our mission was to photograph and interview Ahmed Shah Massoud, one of the greatest guerrilla leaders in the 20th century, known as “The Lion of Panjshir.”

Massoud rose to international fame in the 1980s when his rag-tag band of mujihideen fighters repelled attack after attack from the occupying Soviet forces. According to international observers, Massoud’s fighters inflicted around 60 percent of all damages and casualties on the Red Army. The Soviets finally withdrew in 1989 after a 10-year bloody conflict. The Soviet Union’s defeat was not only a defeat in Afghanistan, but led to the collapse of the Soviet system and was followed by the liberation of the Central Asian and Eastern European countries from Moscow’s control. Massoud was not just a devout Muslim but also a pragmatic modernist who abhorred the extremist elements of Islam, and believed that a modern, moderate Islam could work in Afghanistan. He said, “The extreme left or right failed in Afghanistan, since both had neglected the needs of the people. Therefore, we could not govern Afghanistan like any traditional Muslim country.” Massoud became the darling of the media, especially the French, who saw him as another Ché Guevara. But his open door policy for visiting international media eventually led to his demise. He was considered a renaissance man; he spoke multiple local languages, as well as French, and often quoted Persian poets such as Hafiz and Mowlaanaa Jalaluddin-e Balkhi (Rumi). He was quoted as saying in an interview, “I love Hafiz’s poems. I always read them. They change and inspire me. Music talks to the innermost feelings of a human being. Poetry and music have influence on every one.” Studying at Kabul Polytechnic Institute for Engineering and Architecture, Massoud became politicized during his student days when he saw the rise of the Afghan communists in the early 1970s. As a student, he joined the Hezb-e Jamiat-e Islami party that spawned the mujihideen groups that would begin fighting first against the Afghan communists, and then their backers, the Soviet Union. When the Soviets were ousted from Afghanistan, and the Afghan communist government met its demise in 1992, Massoud became a mujahideen commander with forces surrounding Kabul. Friends of Massoud asked him to form the new government and lead it himself. But he handed over the responsibility to the political leaders and withdrew himself in order to give no reason to continue the war. Instead, Massoud became Minister of Defense. Over the next four years, other mujihideen groups would decimate Kabul in their push for power.

USLIM BUT ALSO A PRAGMATIC MODERNIST WHO ABHORRED THE EXTREMIST T A MODERN, MODERATE ISLAM COULD WORK IN AFGHANISTAN”

By 1996, the people of Kabul had suffered greatly from daily bombardments from a Pakistani-backed mujahideen group, and were now coming under solid bombardment from the Taliban. Massoud ordered the retreat of the entire armed forces from Kabul, even though he would have been able to hold the city for an infinite time. To protect the civilian population of Kabul, he preferred a retreat to Panjshir. The Taliban took Kabul in late 1996 and quickly gained power over 90 percent of the country. Massoud and his Northern Alliances forces held back the Taliban from the remaining 10 percent of the country, even though a number of his former commanders capitulated, and joined the Taliban to take up arms against him. In April 2001, Massoud addressed the European parliament in Strasbourg, France. This was his first official trip to the West. He tried hard to attract Western support for the resistance against the Taliban. But no one was listening. In Strasbourg, Massoud delivered a prophetic message that nobody took seriously at the time: “If President Bush doesn’t help us, then these terrorists will damage the United States and Europe very soon — and it will be too late.” On August 9, 2001, Escobar and I were granted our interview with Massoud in his spartan bunker in Panjshir. He was dressed immaculately in crisp khaki, his brown European shoes highly polished, and his pakool hat slung back on his head at its usually jaunty angle. This would be his second-to-last interview. Exactly a month later, on September 9, Massoud, always eager to get his message out to the world, agreed to an interview by two “Moroccan journalists.” The two men were actually Tunisians recruited allegedly by al-Qaeda. The video camera and the battery packs they carried were full of explosives that they detonated just a few feet away from Commander Massoud. He died of his injuries a short while later in the back of a Toyota Landcruiser on route to his helicopter.

His assassination two days before the September 11th attacks, for which I was a witness in NYC, may have been a signal for the attacks on the USA to proceed and show al-Qaeda’s growing strength to the rest of the world. Some believe that the killing may simply have been Bin Laden’s gift to the Taliban leader Mullah Omar for sheltering him. Others with a more conspiratorial mind argue that the only ones to profit from Massoud’s death would be the powers in Washington, D.C. Post-September 11th and the coalition forces ousting of the Taliban, the USA would never have been allowed to maintain its military presence under as brilliant a nationalist commander as Ahmed Shah Massoud. Massoud was posthumously nominated for the Noble Peace Prize in 2002.

Photography by Jason Florio who is one of the last photographers in Afghanistan to photograph Massoud in August 2001.

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TURKISH DELIGHT by AUDREY LEFÈVRE

n the 1960s, Turkey was hit by a tidal wave. Anatolian rock was officially brought to light by a generation of restless cultural avant-gardists. In post-revolutionary Turkey, the Altin Mikrofon (“golden microphone”) contest took the national rock scene to a whole new level.

Equalizing with western psychedelic/progressive rock sounds, and maintaining a traditional touch, “Anadolu Rock” (the Turkish translation of Anatolian rock) happened to be one of the broadest psychedelic talent pipelines worldwide.

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issue zero

In the early rock ‘n’ roll days, the first fruits of Turkish rock appeared in 1956 under the name of The Shadows. They opened the path for the crossover between Western music and traditional Turkish music, making rock ‘n’ roll accessible to an audience mostly unfamiliar with the English language. The Shadows were therefore inspirational for future Anatolian bands. Moving forward to the ‘60s, Western rock music had traveled to Turkey, as it had to most countries. In unison, global youth was being regenerated by bands such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin. In a political context of an new democracy and increasing freedom of expression, the Turkish youth was given a chance to step forward and find its place under the spotlight. Inspired by the considerable amount of aspiring bands springing up around the country, newspaper Hürriyet decided to organize a competition that allowed amateur bands to be heard throughout Turkey. The first edition of the competition, Altin Mikrofon, took place in 1965. The young participants were submitted to a set of mandatory rules by the contest organization. To be accepted, the candidates were asked to compose a song in Turkish, or rearrange a traditional tune. Also, they were required to play their song in a Western style, using typical Western instruments such as electric basses and guitars. Contest finalists were given the chance to perform in tours throughout the country, and record a single LP that would be released for sale. Thereon, a bridge was built between European or American psychedelic sounds and traditional Turkish music, creating most unusual arrangements and a new genre altogether. The haunting combination of Turkish lyrics and Middle Eastern melodies, added to the use of typical psychedelic instruments such as oscillators and organs, brings the listener to a whole new dimension. The progressive instrumental parts are so familiar to our Western ears, and yet, one is thrown off by the cultural intertwinement. The most influential Anatolian rock bands or musicians were revealed at that time: Baris Manco, Erkin Koray, Mogollar, Selda Bagcan, 3 Hürel, and Cem Karaca, to name a few. But the golden age of the Turkish rock scene declined by 1979 as the political, cultural, and social climates took a new turn. To this day, the wild and somewhat elaborate music genre not only left a footprint in the history of Turkish rock, but also within the international psychedelic scene.

A PEEK AT MY ANATOLIAN ROCK TOP 5 : 1- SELDA – Yaz Gazeteci Yaz >> Powerful song with filtered and distorted synth instrumentals. The funky guitar solo is amazing. 2- ERKIN KORAY – Askimiz Bitecek >> Erkin’s voice is at its best here. The song sounds nostalgic, and yet really energy driven by the Turkish folk guitar. 3 HÜREL – Omur Biter Yol Bimez >> Great psych-rock song, with wah-wah effects and strong drums - interrupted with dervish style percussion and guitar. 4- TURGUT OKSAY- Carsambayi Sel Aldi >> It sounds like a mixture of surf music and ethiopian jazz. So haunting and dancy! 5- 3 HÜREL- Aglarsa Aram >> Sounds like a lively dialog between an electric guitar and a Turkish clarinet accompanied by one of the Hurel brothers as a narrator. For some reason it reminds me of Peter and The Wolf...

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EXPANDING HORIZONS

by MIKAEL OHLIN

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issue zero

echnology shapes not only our daily lives, but our minds as well. As I try to get a hold of Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu in order to effectuate this interview and we exchange emails, I imagine a lot of problems, some of them technological – but they never occur. Once we’re connected over the net, the sound is constantly lost, cutting off questions and answers alike mid-sentence. Eventually, we turn to chatting to finalize the interview. My habit of rephrasing my questions as I am asking them, which in the past has bored some interviewees but also yielded interesting answers, now only makes for very long pauses. I imagine her sitting in her New York hotel room thinking what a dunce of a journalist I am. Yet she answers my questions with wit and enthusiasm – often to question the way we think about the film industry. Her first feature “From a Whisper” (2008) gained critical acclaim and several awards, including Best Picture and Best Director at the 2009 African Movie Academy Awards. Based on real events, the film explores the aftermath of the terrorist bombing in Nairobi in 1998. Her latest effort, “Pumzi,” is a post-apocalyptic short dubbed the first Kenyan sci-fi. Set 35 years after “the water wars,” when man has resorted to living in underground compounds in order to survive the heat and lack of water, it feels reminiscent of older science fiction movies, especially in the set design. It comments on current topics such as global warming, government propaganda, and reduced personal liberties, which makes it quite an original work. Kahiu often sees her work being called African Cinema, a term she is not comfortable with. There is no clear idea of what African Cinema is, so she fears it just degrades films by Africans to something less than real cinema. “African cinema is not a genre,” she says. “Still, often people categorize it as one, but there are only African filmmakers making films from Africa. Instead, it reduces the films into a sub category. Africans don’t make films or do not contribute to cinema – they make ‘African’ films,’” she says. Similarly, male art has been seen as universal, whereas female art is only described by the female world – but if Kahiu gets her way, this will be a thing of the past, at least when it comes to film. “It is not a discussion that needs to be had anymore, because, primarily, the audience does not have it,” she says. “Generally the audience does not walk out of a theatre saying, ‘This film is made by a female filmmaker,’ rather they talk about if the film was good or not. However, who we are informs the films we make. ” But if the art is the same, the trade of a Kenyan filmmaker can be a little different in other ways. The small budgets don’t allow her to compensate the cast and crew in the way she would like. The informal trade of services that allows films to be made does not supply the capital and investment that makes for the foundation of a successful industry. Another problem is reaching the local audience; good distribution is not always easy to come by in Africa, but Kahiu’s solution may surprise many Western filmmakers. “Distribution is a challenge everywhere,” she says, “but in Africa, where distribution in most cases is not set up formally, it can be even more challenging. Sometimes it takes many small deals to find the right person to put your film out in the formal shops in the right way. So I don’t mind bootlegging. If I find the right bootlegger – as long as my films reach the audience in good quality – I’m ecstatic. We need to incorporate the people with the largest distribution into the industry. They have the resources and manpower, so the informal distribution makes it work. It’s a matter of banding together to form a more cohesive distribution mechanism that honors both the filmmaker, their work and the audience.”

A large local audience might boost foreign interest helpful for advancing Kenyan filmmaking and creating that elusive industry. “People all want to see a successful film,” she says, “and success is determined by audience numbers. Hopefully, the numbers are an indication that the film resonates on some level, be it the story or whatever. However, to be frank, we know a lot of successful films worldwide, Hollywood included, that had large numbers, but were not what I would call ‘quality’ films.” Apart from her films, she also has her blog where she writes sporadic but long posts, laden with anecdotes and observations. She gives insight into the life of a young filmmaker, but also informs us about who she is – a young Kenyan with a loving but critical eye for her country, continent, and industry. She seems driven by a need to inform us about the way she sees the world, and thus change it. “I’m a storyteller,” she says. “I have things in this world I would love to be able to share, good and bad. I don’t limit myself [to film] – I think different media suit different stories. Whatever works best for the story is what I will use, even shouting from rooftops if need be.” Wanuri Kahiu’s blog can be found online at: mywretchedconsciousness.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/wanuri-kahiu

PHOTOGRAPH BY GIOVANNA BADILLA

“GO CONFIDENTLY IN THE DIRECTION OF YOUR DREAMS! LIVE THE LIFE YOU’VE IMAGINED.” - HENRY DAVID THOREAU

share your world

anne mcclain

1. Noble is inspired by time I spent in Nepal. I lived there for four months with a Tibetan family, and it is the most spiritual place I’ve ever been to. It’s just infused into every aspect of life. 2. My friend Diana first showed me these japanese fishing floats. what a beautiful object they are, and to think, they were so utilitarian too. 3. I took this picture years ago, before i lived in Brooklyn. that’s the Williamsburg Bridge in the background and i remember just thinking how cool it seemed there.

4. This is another image i just stuck in my inspiration for MCMC Fragrances. I love how cute the girl is! But gritty too. 5. I’m reading this book right now called “Medicine of the Right Way”, about Native American traditional medicine, which is mostly based on philosophy. It’s so relaxing to read this, and about the connection to the natural world. It reminded me of dreamcatchers, and how I used to make them when I was younger. I think I want to resurrect making dreamcatchers. 6. For a couple of years now i’ve been collecting inspiration pictures of how i want MCMC Fragrances to feel. This kind of faded, lazy California desert is one way.

NEXT ISSUE OF THE WILD WILL BE OUT IN SEPTEMBER

2010

until then...