The Skin Issue by The Word Magazine

Volume 03 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Issue 02

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style

Do not throw on the public domain.

Neighbourhood Ska steady Life We love dirt Style New skin generation Design Rise of the robots Culture Burnt and fragile + The Fashion Special

ST[ePdg R^\

The editor's letter

Publisher Nicholas Lewis

There was a moment back in February that I started to wonder whether we’d gone too far with this issue. I’d just received a message from one of our photographers telling me that she’d finally managed to talk her way into the Hell’s Angels clubhouse. Alone. At 10pm. On a Friday night. Yes, we’d flagged up the Skin issue as being raw-as-itcomes, no-holds-barred, no-place-left-to-hide, but I began to worry that we’d asked the team for too much. I fi red back a message asking the photographer to let me know when she’d got out safely – then pondered the curious journeys that we’d sent our people out on.

Editor-in-chief Hettie Judah Design Facetofacedesign pleaseletmedesign

Skin had started off as a kind of fl ippant theme – a cheap excuse to get some nudity onto the pages, and hang out listening to old Trojan recordings – but as usual, things had got way out of hand. Sure, there was a phase early on when we found it amusing to turn down party invitations because we had to stay home and watch porn for ‘research’ purposes, but the (dirty) honeymoon period soon wore off.

Writers Immanuel Abraham (ia) Nick Amies Devrim Bayar Sabine Clappaert Alex Deforce Rozan Jongstra Hettie Judah Nicholas Lewis Athena Newton (an) Yves Van Kerkhove Randa Wazen

Before long we found ourselves ankle deep in theses on bacteria and confl icting testaments from dermatologists. Mails were coming in from correspondents as far away as Australia and South Africa proposing stories that we couldn’t turn down. Subjects were becoming audacious – robots ! Future skin ! Extreme dirt ! Wrongness with fruit ! – to the point that the whole exercise seemed to be teetering on the brink of fantasy. As the content finally started flooding in a few weeks ago, it was evident that however near impossible the assignments we set, the results exceeded our expectations. Be they amazing reportage shots of a burn rehabilitation unit, sensitive portraits of fragile skin conditions, investigations into contemporary taxidermy or an intelligent reappraisal of the skinhead legacy. Everything that came in was so exciting, so fresh : it was one of those magical weeks when editing a magazine felt like Christmas all over again. Except without the comedy knitwear and family arguments – just, you know, the good bit with the presents.

Photography/Illustration Benoît Banisse Michelle Beatty Jean Biche Ulrike Biets Sébastien Bonin Carmendevos Marcel Ceuppens Sarah Eechaut Vincent Fournier Valentine Gallardo Steve Jakobs Charlotte May Wales Yassin Serghini Guy Van Laere Virassamy

Stripped back and pushed to the limit, The Word seemed to be doing better than ever and we were really excited by it. I guess once you’ve got down to the skin, you might as well go all the way.

Hettie Judah

Interns Athena Newton (editorial) Virginie Van de Casteele (editorial) Maren Spriewald (photography) For subscriptions (5 issues) Transfer ¤ 21 (Belgium), ¤ 30 (Europe) or ¤ 45 (Worldwide) to account n° 363-0257432-34 IBAN BE 68 3630 2574 3234 BIC BBRUBEBB stating your full name, email and postal addresses in the communication box. Visit thewordmagazine.be/ the-magazine for full subscription

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The Word is published fi ve times a year by JamPublishing, 107 Rue Général Henry Straat 1040 Brussels Belgium. Reproduction, in whole or in part, without prior permission is strictly prohibited. All information is correct up to the time of going to press. The publishers cannot be held liable for any changes in this respect after this date.

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MATTHIAS SCHOENAERTS PHOTOGRAPHED BY MICHEL DE WINDT

The contents

01 The cover The Skin issue 02 A word from our advertisers Delvaux 04 The editor's letter Volume 3 – n° 02 05 A word from our advertisers Essentiel 06 The contents You're looking at it 07 A word from our advertisers Filippa K 08 The contributors It's a Word's world 09 A word from our advertisers Levi's

* Life

28 The institution

74 The advance

Oh, Oh, Emmanuelle!

* Culture

Fragile skin

11 The diary Belgium 13 A word from our advertisers Burberry 14 The diary Belgium + United Kingdom 15 The diary United Kingdom 16 The diary Holland + France 17 A word from our advertisers Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen 18 The diary Gigs to catch & Give aways 21 A word from our advertisers Brussels Philharmonic * Neighbourhood

34 The other Word on The way you make me feel 38 The border Surface complex 40 The report Good dirt. What's so great…

84 The portfolio

The fi nest work 46 The showstoppers Sensory recall 49 A word from our advertisers The Word Magazine 50 The way Hard as nails, soft as velvet 52 The fashion Word

Feeling skin

89 A word from our advertisers Buroform 90 The eye If the snow never stopped *

94 The stockist And others we love 95 A word from our advertisers Art Brussels 96 The advertisers Round up 98 Before we leave you

* The Fashion Special

25 A word from our advertisers Swatch 26 The guide Skinning a rabbit 27 A word from our advertisers Cointreaupolitan

80 The shelf Public library reading 82 The pencil Some ink on skin

* Style

20 The papers

The Skin papers

Our new brothers under the skin 78 The advertorial The Word & Charles Kaisin

30 The Word on

10 The diary

The moodboard

* Design

60 The cover The Fashion Special 61 The special papers Burnt, bloodied, but unbowed 62 The special papers Girl you got me… + Looks good in print 63 The special papers Ctrl-alt-del … + Style: catch it, bin it… 66 The look Minority report 70 The special showstoppers You show me yours and I'll show you mine

99 A word from our advertisers Ristorante Bocconi 100 A word from our advertisers Bombay Sapphire

STEENHOUWERSVEST 61 & 65, 2000 ANTWERP RUE ANTOINE DANSAERTSTRAAT 42, 1000 BRUSSELS ALDESTRAAT 59, 3500 HASSELT

The contributors

It’s a Word’s world

Lapin Illustrator

There are many ways to skin a rabbit, but for this month’s Guide, we decided to approach the guy on the business end of the skinning knife. Lapin is a French illustrator working in fashion, magazines and advertising from his burrow in Barcelona. He sketches every day in his notebooks ( check out his blog for proof ! ) and uses this endless archive to form the elements of his illustration work. Lapin likes to keep things close up. lesillustrationsdelapin.com Ciara O’Shea

Page n° 26

Make up artist

Since leaving Ireland at the age of 19, make up artist Ciara O’Shea has established an impressive global portfolio of work from the fashion and music industries. A regular backstage at fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris, when we caught up with her, she was taking inspiration from the Australian sunshine, and in the perfect position to think about climate change and create her proposal for how to style the furry, feathery, unexpectedly beautiful skin of the future. Ciara’s birthmark is on her knee. ciaradoesmakeup.com

Carmendevos Photographer

Carmendevos travels back to the blessed times of free-love photography with her Polaroids; stubborn and against the digital grain, she creates her own visual language. TicKL, her rascally, Polaroid-tastic art porn magazine, has been The Word’s favourite bedtime reading since issue one, so we couldn’t resist asking her to indulge our shoe fetish in our footwear shoot. Carmen doesn’t like showing her skin. Much. tickl-magazine.com Pages n° 70 — 73

Pages n° 90 — 93

Nick Amies Writer

Arriving in Brussels two years ago gave freelance journalist and writer Nick Amies the opportunity to take his Fred Perry shirts out of mothballs. A skinhead by genetic curse rather than lifestyle choice, his hairless head combined with chosen wardrobe prompted unwanted attention in his last home in Germany. In this issue he explains the niceties of skinhead styling. Nick has a tattoo on his arm. Pages n° 50, 51

FASHION FOR WALLS by Levis Ambiance

www.levis.info

The moodboard Events Arts Music Getaways

Neighbourhood

Belgium ( 01¤ 10 ) Belgian artist Kelly Schacht’s work sits at the cusp of absurdity, such is the displacement felt when faced with her oeuvre. With a knack for removing isolated fragments and reinterpreting them within new-found, minimalist settings, she uses her acute wit and strong vision to construct a soft, moving and inclusive narrative. Evidently well thought-out and planned, most of her installations evoke something of an unfounded abstractionism to them, with a message clearly attached, all the while performing an aesthetic function. Still at an early stage in her career, we’d urge you to classify her name under ‘those to watch’.

Joseph Marioni À Until 17th April 2010 ☞ Baronian Francey, Brussels baronianfrancey.com

Kelly Schacht À Opens 14th March 2010 ☞ Hoet Bekaert Gallery, Ghent iets.be

* The show you can’t miss The Word Magazine presents Skin @Dansaert/Kanaal (Brussels), from 23rd April to 2nd May 2010 – Having treated the magazine’s pages as a gallery for over 14 issues now, we thought it was high time to get physical and showcase the works of five of our most loyal, trusted and loved photographers, commissioning them to produce an exclusive body of work based on, you’ve guessed it, Skin.

thewordmagazine.be/skin

02.

The players’ club

A prolific and versatile designer, Hutten graduated from that venerable breeding-ground for design talent, Eindhoven’s Design Academy. A conceptualist at heart, his work reveals an acute understanding of function’s importance in design, and integrates it in a playful manner – his most infamous and iconic creation, Dumbo, is a cup which boasts massive ‘ears’ as handles, for example. You might refer to him as a conceptual functionalist or a functional conceptualist, depending on the day. Also entrusted with the exhibition’s scenography, expect rooms full of laughter and a heady dose of tongue-and-cheek. Richard Hutten À Until 6th June 2010 ☞ Design Museum, Ghent design.museum.gent.be

04.

01.

Contextual irrelevance

02.

That grey area

Celebrating their bicentenary, Grand-Hornu Images and the Mac join forces with this exhibition on the joys of everyday living. Exploring the sometimes fraught relationship between art and design, the show takes a resolutely more positive approach to the issue, seeking not what distinguishes both disciplines but, rather, what unites them. Digging deep into the unclassifiable, the exhibition treats design on a par with art, eschewing any temptation to give one preference over the other. Curated by design expert Veerle Wenes and Francois Foulon, with everyone from Marti Guixé to Wim Delvoye on show.

03.

Liquid liquid

A disciple of Rothko’s, Marioni overlaps layer upon layer of translucent and transparent liquid colour, giving his painting a depth and a texture that would not usually be associated with monocoloured works of this nature. Embracing the varying temper tantrums light can sometimes have, his palette covers the essentials - green, yellow, red and blue - , building an environment to which it is central, rather than treating it as an ad-hoc component. Add to that the artist’s modernist approach to his art – ‘function follows light’ describing it perfectly – and you’ll quickly understand why Marioni doesn’t paint light but, rather, is light.

Le fabuleux destin du quotidien À Until 23rd May 2010 ☞ Grand Hornu, Hornu grand-hornu-images.be

04. * The lecture to sit through Hannah Higgins @ Beursschouwburg (Brussels), on 2nd April 2010 – Where does our collective visual bank originate from, and what are the elements that shape it? Shapeshifters demystifies the meaning of images through a series of lectures, this one by American writer and academic Hannah Higgins.

beursschouwburg.be & shapeshifters.be

01.

05.

The diary

05.

The travelling artist

To say that Koen van den Broek’s career has shot up faster than an American missile headed for Kabul would be an understatement. In the space of 10 years (a minute in art speak), he has gone from local hero to global darling, with this retrospective the climax of a career in rapid ascent. Sparse yet evocative, his work reminds one of Ed Ruscha’s paired down paintings with the exception that van den Broek’s leftfield eye – he paints kirbs, doors, shadows and asphalt cracks – adds undertone of welcome self-righteousness to it, like he’s figured something out we haven’t. We never thought ubiquity would evoke in us such passion and laughter. © Koen van den Broek

Koen van den Broek À Until 16th May 2010 ☞ S.M.A.K, Ghent smak.be

06.

07.

Moti’s work could be compared to that humongous particle collider in Cern, Switzerland in that he immortalizes long-forgotten anecdotes, incidents and individuals (‘black holes’ as he refers to them) by intertwining them on film, complementing his vision with photography, books and other found objects. The intensity prevalent in his work, together with its undertones of eternity, lends it somewhat of a grand, even imperial aesthetic, one you imagine to be shown alongside a Monet in 50 years time. His first solo exhibition in Belgium, this one takes as focus dust and failure, interlacing the two to reveal an evasive, yet moving, collision.

* The party to rock Release

@ Beursschouwburg (Brussels), on 17th April 2010 – Doing one for the community, Onda Sonora together with Laid Back Radio and regular-Word contributor Alex Deforce’s On-Point, encourage sofa-king producers to take a step in the limelight with their new venture Release, the purpose of which is to bring these bedroom wizards to the fore.

re-lease.be

Master of duality

Frank van der Salm’s work, although initially heavily influenced by the New Topographics movement (a book of which is reviewed on page 80), has evolved into a more acute and intelligible oeuvre which explores, for instance, the control exerted on space, or the lack thereof. More than mere architectural or landscape photography, his prints make for vivid, if not slightly skewed commentary on the globalised world. More recently, the Dutch photographer has taken a keen interest in the dual meaning of photography in today’s ‘copy-and-ask-later’ culture, refining his distinctive narrative further yet. Frank van der Salm – Stretched territories À Until 10th April 2010 ☞ Crown Gallery, Brussels crowngallery.be

* The concert to catch

The big bang

Melvin Moti: From dust to dust À Until 25th April 2010 ☞ Wiels, Brussels wiels.org

08.

07.

Made in Vienna @ Bozar (Brussels), on 13th March 2010 – To concerto connoisseurs, the oboe often gets relegated to the back seat. With its Made in Vienna series, the Symfonie Orkest Vlaanderen rectifi es this, bringing the timid trumpet to the fore and giving it the attention it deserves with a rendition of Strauss’ fl attering and refreshing concerto for oboe, led by soloist Alexei Ogrintchouk and conducted by Etienne Siebens.

symfonieorkest.be

08.

Black history month

From its days providing the stylistic backdrop for the early 20th century’s emancipation era to its ultimate crowning in Chanel’s Little Black Dress, there’s no denying the colour black is as important, if not more, than, say, milk is to cereal fi rst thing in the morning. Drawing on paintings, historic costumes and contemporary fashion frocks, the show gives a history lesson in all things black. So, for example, you learn that black once was solely the preserve of the rich and famous or, rather more interestingly, that Antwerp was the centre of black dyeing in the 16th and 17th Century. One which will have fashion intellectuals wetting themselves. Masters of black in fashion & costume À Until 8th August 2010 ☞ Momu, Antwerp momu.be

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The diary

United Kingdom 09.

A strange arrangement

Dutch artist Mark Manders makes sense of the incomprehensible and incompatible, bringing together random objects – chairs, tables, blankets and even dead animals – to dispel a somewhat Duchamp-esque body of work - conceptual in its nature and, above all, humouristic in its approach. Absent and self-effacing yet resolved and confident, his is a narrative that allows the viewer’s imagination to run, with something of an insider’s joke present throughout. For this exhibition at Zeno-X, Manders presents new drawings (“the investigation of thought” he has called it) as well as several sculptures.

11.

10.

Mark Manders À From 12th March until 24th April 2010 ☞ Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp zeno-x.com

Ron Arad – Restless À Until 16th May 2010 ☞ Barbican, London barbican.org.uk

12.

Contrastes @ Flagey (Brussels), on 30 th April 2010 – Somewhat of a classicist’s face to face, Brussels Philharmonic’s Contrastes series harmonises the impossible, opposing, for example, Ravel’s Boléro with Schubert’s Fourth Symphony in a duel at the highest echelons of classical music.

11.

brusselsphilharmonic.be

All eyes on me

Fashion photographer Cindy Frey fights for animal rights, likes vegetarian cuisine, is addicted to tattoos and listens to heavy metal music. These disparate, sometimes anti-social passions mean she often fi nds herself living in a certain liberating, if not slightly isolating, manner. This self-imposed solitude has led to an intimately insightful body of work where Frey is her own subject, with her camera’s shutter the only intruder. Baroque, with something of a retroglam to it, her narrative is strong, somewhat masculine, revealing a realistic sensitivity one might not initially expect. Make no mistake though, this chick rock ‘n rolls.

Richard Hamilton À Until 25th April 2010 ☞ Serpentine Gallery, London serpentinegallery.org

* The show to see

10.

Image obsessed

Taking as starting point Hamilton’s political inclinations, London’s Serpentine Gallery – which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year – presents the artist’s most poignant body of work, that which uses global politics, riots, terrorist acts and war as a backdrop for a powerful narrative. Imbued with his obvious sense of discontent together with his knack for sarcasm, the many paintings on show will resonate with most viewers’ collective visual memory, in a nod to Hamilton's fascination with the media’s obsession with and hunger for (more) images. The first solo exhibition of his works in the UK, this isn’t to be missed.

* The concert to catch

Rough to rad

Having done more than probably any other designer out there to bring design within the confines of art recognition, Ron Arad’s work eschews any kind of categorisation, continuously blurring the lines between functionality and aestheticism. Charting his three decades in the business, the show presents Arad’s evolution throughout the years, from his post-punk DIY approach to the impeccably slick, technologically-advanced objects he is known for today. Consisting of over 120 works - of which a dramatic LED installation – the sheer and instant familiarity of certain of these reminds you how much his oeuvre has entered the mainstream.

09.

( 11 ¤ 16 )

12.

Jitish Kallat @ Haunch of Venison (London), until 27th March 2010 – Sustenance, survival and mortality – the struggle of everyday life in Mumbai – are the topics which form the basis of Kallat’s work, comprised of videos, sculptural installations, photography and the large format paintings for which he is most well-known.

Cindy Frey – 100% self made À From 19th March until 16th April 2010 ☞ Recyclart, Brussels recyclart.be ©?

haunchofvenison.com

Neighbourhood

* The prize to catch Deutsche Borse Photography Prize @ The Photographers’ Gallery (London), until 18th April 2010 – Brits Anna Fox and Donovan Wylie, American Zoe Leonard and Frenchwoman Sophie Ristelhueber are the four shortlisted photographers for this year’s Prize. We bank on Wylie’s Maze show - in which he depicts the last days of Northern Ireland’s infamous Maze prison – winning the hearts of this year’s jury.

photonet.org.uk

14.

Divide and conquer

13.

Franz Ackermann À Until 1st April 2010 ☞ Whitecube, London whitecube.com

16.

For this third exhibition of his work at London’s White Cube, German artist Ackermann takes over the gallery’s many spaces, constructing an entirely new installation area at the same time. Consisting of large paintings (one, entitled Citizen, depicts the dreary face of a military pilot), drawings and found objects, Ackermann’s exploration of themes such as borders, travel and globalisation makes for somewhat of a staccato show, chaotic and dispersed. The dual nature of his work – both sinister and soothing, uplifting and depressing – create a sense of passive uncertainty: are we given a lesson in art history, or a damning commentary on urban environments?

14.

Archile Gorky – A retrospective À Until 3rd May 2010 ☞ Tate Modern, London tate.org.uk/modern

15.

The cult leader

Billy Childish’s body of work spans many practices. He paints, photographs, writes music, novels and poetry, sculpts and even sings. Symptomatic of the artist who lives in the shadows of his larger-than-life persona, Childish’s art is, well, himself, garnering a loyal and unremitting following. For this fi rst major solo exhibition attempting to bring his disparate talents together, several of his many facets are brought to life: his self-portrait and still life paintings (muscular and powerful), his music (bathed in punk ethos) as well as his literary efforts (novels and over 40 collections of poems) all are on show.

15.

East meets west

Self-taught abstract expressionist Gorky blended his obvious European and American influences into a new-found, distinctive vocabulary that forged an entirely fresh type of abstract painting, one led by emotion. Powerful, poetic and gentle, his work afforded a very European sense of hardship with an American sensibility to it, somehow akin to living on credit: you know it’ll ultimately hit you where it hurts, but you still do it. His brush stroke is strong yet sensitive, tame yet lively. Drawing on more than 150 works, this retrospective is the first of its kind to be shown in Europe for the last 20 years.

16.

Video on demand

The newly-refurbished Whitechapel gallery presents two videos, one by Berlin-based artist Charly Nijensohn, the other by Texan Nova Paul. Both, although resoundingly different from one another (despite a common fragility), are presented as part of an initiative seeking to give video (and audiovisuals in general) the place they deserve within contemporary art. In Nijensohn’s The Dead Forest, he captures the exposure and removal faced by a human figure when struggling to survive in a threatening natural environment (in this case, a storm). Paul’s Technicolour film – more colorful and poignant - reflects on the poetics and politics that make a place what it is by giving new (visual) meaning to it.

Billy Childish: Unknowable but certain À Until 18th April 2010 ☞ ICA, London ica.org.uk

Charly Nijensohn & Nova Paul À Until 18th April 2010 ☞ Whitechapel Gallery, London whitechapelgallery.org

o2academybrixton.co.uk

* The gig to queue for LCD Soundsystem @ Brixton Academy (London), on 24th April 2010 – With rumours of separation dodging the James Murphy ensemble on the blogosphere, this might well be your last chance to see the New York nu-disco ravers strut it on stage. Essential. © Billy Childish

13.

The diary

Holland

17.

The scent of a woman

Contemporary artist Katinka Lampe’s hyper-realist, meticulous brush stroke and her specific choice and subsequent use of models really is her signature style. Eschewing any temptation to give her subjects anymore meaning than that dispelled on the canvas, a certain sense of distance, even removal, is present throughout her paintings, allowing the viewer complete freedom in his or her interpretation of these. Well aware of the feminine vulnerability this lends her gazing subjects, the intention is for her portraits to be taken as a whole, more artistic concept than mere representation. Her approach is soft, her tone gentle and her work simply lovely.

( 19 ¤ 20 )

France

19.

Patric Jouin – Les substances du design À Until 24th May 2010 ☞ Centre Pompidou, Paris centrepompidou.fr

18. Katinka Lampe – Kate, Bob & Luca À From 13th March until 30th May 2010 ☞ Kunsthal, Rotterdam kunsthal.nl

* Last days to catch

* The show to see

Au-dela du réel @ Galerie Jérome de Noirmont (Paris), until 23rd March 2010 – Group show presenting the works of five photographers, painters and sculptors and, specifically, their transcending vision of what constitutes ‘reality’. A rapid-fire way of getting away from it all for just a couple of seconds.

Mylou Oord @ Foam Gallery (Amsterdam), until 24th March 2010 – Young fashion and portrait photographer Mylou Loord captures the beautiful people of Amsterdam’s creative scene, the focus of this exhibition organised as part of Amsterdam International Fashion Week.

Design by definition

Patrick Jouin’s design practice, Patrick Jouin ID, is well-reputed for its eclectic approach to project development, as well as the diversity of those it chooses to take on. Product and furniture design are central, as are architectural and interior design projects. He also designs exhibitions and, more recently, created the docking stations for Paris’ famed bike-hire scheme, Vélib. A deep sensitivity for functionality coupled with an acute understanding of his industry’s commercial realities runs throughout his creations, 20 of which are selected, by the designer himself, for this intimate and bridge-building show.

17.

( 17 ¤ 18 )

19.

denoirmont.com

The demons within

Berlin-based British painter Michael Kirkham’s world tells tales of uncontrolled, unrestricted and unrepentant youths, victims of their own sexualisation and pornification. In his plastic world, a synthetic, jilted generation gives in to its every weakness, living on excess and credit (with MGMT certainly playing in the background). Although his stroke has something of a sympathising sensibility to it, his paintings – powerful, bountiful and lustful – are highly explicit nonetheless, revealing upon further inspection a certain sense of casual despair. Not for the faint-hearted, and to be taken with a pinch of salt. Michael Kirkham À Until 10th April 2010 ☞ Aschenbach & Hofland Galleries, Amsterdam gerhardhofland.com

20.

18.

foam.nl

20.

Learning time

‘Photography from the heart’ is how Lisette Model described her style, taking documentary and street photography one step further with her audacious, raw and uncut approach. Drawing on 120 photographs, the show translates the artist’s visual candour and unsettling honesty whilst also celebrating what were, at the time, profound evolutions in the world of photography. Indeed, her near-persistent use of wide angles, radical framing and accentuation of contrasts made her a maverick whose undertones of abnormal curiosity and celebration of the eccentric set the tone, both editorially and artistically, for Diane Arbus and the likes. Lisette Model À Until 6th June 2010 ☞ Jeu de Paume, Paris jeudepaume.org

Brussels. Palais des Beaux-Arts

MADE IN VIENNA Saturday. 13.03.2010. 20:00 J. Haydn. Symphony n° 31 ‘Horn Signal’ R. Strauss. Concerto for oboe J. Brahms. Serenade n° 1 Conductor. Etienne Siebens Soloist. Alexeï Ogrintchouk. oboe

BEETHOVEN 9 Saturday. 24.04.2010. 20:00

Alexeï Ogrintchouk. © Marco Borggreve

A. Schönberg. A Survivor from Warsaw L. van Beethoven. Symphony n° 9 Conductor. Etienne Siebens Octopus choir Soloists. Sarah Wegener. soprano Marianne Beate Kielland. mezzo-soprano Yves Saelens. tenor Damian Thantrey. bass Met steun van de Vlaamse gemeenschap

reservation & tickets www.symfonieorkest.be

The diary

Gigs to catch High Needs Low

BEMF

The Toasters

Joakim

The Gaslamp Killer

Femi Kuti

13th March 2010 @ Congres Station (Brussels)

26th – 28th March 2010 @ Bozar (Brussels)

1st April 2010 @ Botanique (Brussels)

2nd April 2010 @Democrazy (Ghent)

2nd April 2010 @ L’Ancienne Belgique (Brussels)

19th April 2010 Het Depot (Leuven)

bozar.be

botanique.be

democrazy.be

abconcerts.be

hetdepot.be

— With more DJs and musicians than the 2009 edition, Brussels Electronic Music Festival is back, bigger and better, continuing in its quest to go beyond the club culture tag given to electronic music. A pointy, tightlycurated programming is the base of it all – Chris De Luca and Hexstatic being some of the sets to look forward to.

— When sounds of Ska and screams of Oi Oi Oi’s fi nally echoed through the streets of the big apple, The Toasters were on the battling front, doing for the US’ skins what The Specials did for the UK’s two-toners.

— Producer and DJ Joakim (of Tigersushi fame), fi rst made a name for himself with serious remixes for serious artists – Air, Royskopp and the likes. He now mostly prefers to play his own stuff, his most recent offering Milky Ways being on heavy Word rotation.

— Dubstep-don and Flying Lotus affi liate The Gaslamp Killer’s vibes are lethal, future-futuristic and eclectic. Infused with everything from psychedelic funk to alt-pop, this native Los Angelinos has big things in the pipeline.

— Living up to your father’s reputation will always be a challenge, not least when he is none other than the founding godfather of afrobeat. This hasn’t diminished Femi’s talent, nor has it tamed his resolve to continue in his father’s footstep and move the world to the fusion of jazz, funk and traditional Nigerian sounds.

— With undertones of Germanic rigour, High Needs Low, now in its fourth edition, has garnered a reputation for showcasing solid electro sounds. This version brings together ‘ze Germans’ Holger Zilske (aka Smash TV of Pitch Control fame) and Dave DK. Mystery Jets on 19th March 2010 @ Le Club des Halles (Brussels)

Play Amsterdam (Meloe Meloe) on 28th March 2010 Play Antwerp (Bar Mondial) on 30 th March 2010

losninos.be — Having done Ghent, it is now time for Brussels to gets it dose of block rocking beats, in the shape of the city-hopping Los Ninos parties and their very special guests, Brit nu rave-rockers the Mystery Jets.

Play Mantes (CAC) on 11th April 2010 Play Aachen (Musikbunker) on 15th April 2010

Give aways

TWO PAIRS OF TICKETS TO

NEW YORK SKA ENSEMBLE on 23rd March 2010 @ Botanique (Brussels)

THE GASLAMP KILLER on 2nd April 2010 @ L’Ancienne Belgique (Brussels)

TWO PAIRS OF TICKETS TO

THE TOASTERS on 1st April 2010 @ Botanique (Brussels)

FEMI KUTI on 19th April 2010 @ Het Depot (Leuven)

What you need to do. Send an email to wewrite@thewordmagazine.be specifying which concert you wish to go to in the subject line. The first readers to do so will each win a pair of tickets to the concert of their choice. Conditions. Only one pair of tickets permitted per reader. Tickets not for resale. Until tickets last. Applies to Belgium only. Normal conditions apply.

Brussels Philharmonic – het Vlaams Radio Orkest Michel Tabachnik, chief conductor/music director, orchestra in residency at Flagey

Brahms 2 & Xenakis

coprod. Ars Musica

conductor Michel Tabachnik, with Jan Michiels, piano 6/03/10: FLAGEY – 14/03/10: LEUVEN – 19/03/10: CONCERTGEBOUW BRUGGE

Bruckner 7 & Schumann conductor Michel Tabachnik, with Hélène Grimaud, piano 18/03/10: DE BIJLOKE – 20/03/10: BOZAR

Contrastes:

Messiaen, Schumann, Schubert & Ravel conductor Michel Tabachnik, with Marie Hallynck, cello

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— This time we’ve let the skin do the talking, from the walking biography of a foreign legionnaire’s tattoos, to the epidermal canvas of the grandmother of performance art. We track down the world champion taxidermist and ask who will keep the skin trade going for the next generation ? While listening to the sounds of the Trojan Skins, we ask what happens when an actor really gets inside the skin of a character, and stays there for 50 years? Writers Nick Amies, Devrim Bayar, Sabine Clappaert, Alex Deforce & Rozan Jongstra

Neighbourhood

Once, tattoos were almost exclusively the domain of convicts, military prisoners, drug pushers, pimps and prostitutes. Photos of them are hidden in the archives of prison doctors and dermatologists: museums of the skin. Digging through books of tattoos, we had stumbled on the extraordinary Les Tatouages du Milieu, with its photos and drawings of prison tattoos that documented the life and times of early 20th Century villains. They came across as stories from a distant era until we ran into Marc a couple of years ago. Marc was an ex-legionnaire, ex-jailbird, ex-almost all of the above, and he was prepared to tell us his stories. Marc opened the book ; his fi ngers read ‘Bang Bang’, two letters on each fi nger; the rest of his hands were covered with the portrait of a foreign legion soldier. “These pictures aren't lying, I've seen plenty like this, in prison and in the legion. Some legionnaires had their whole life story tattooed on their back.” “A lot of the tattoos with a meaning to them are traditionally French, this didn’t originate

Speaking in skin

in Dutch or Belgian prisons for instance.” He points to his neck, where he has what looks like five dots of a dice: “This means tout seul dans ma cellule” (alone in my cell). His neck has seven stripes on the front, as if it were made for scissors to cut. “Every stripe is for one year I’ve spent in prison, that's why the dice is next to it.

Above I've had ‘Legion Etrangère’ tattooed… As a memory, I guess.” “You know, I have OK tattooed on my knees, O on the left, K on the right. If ever I'd fallen in battle, my comrades would cross my legs: KO. All that is in the past though, but I have no regrets.” (AD)

the skins helped Trojan to scale the heights, the label’s mainstream success and increasingly sophisticated sound ultimately alienated its skinhead fanbase. As well as racking up hit singles, the label continued to showcase virtual unknowns from Jamaica including Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs, and a certain Kingston-based vocal trio called Bob Marley & the Wailers.

While its commercial power began to tail off in the mid-70s, Trojan continued to showcase emerging talents from the Caribbean. By the turn of the century, Trojan had a new niche as a purveyor of classic, vintage Jamaican sounds. (NA)

Back in the late 1960s, British dancehalls were fi lled with young, working class white skins and their West Indian neighbours decked out in immaculate clothes and hot-stepping to the sounds of reggae, ska and rocksteady brought to their ears by a small subsidiary of Island Records called Trojan. Formed in 1967, Trojan Records came into its own a year later when businessman Lee Gopthal took the helm. Gopthal recruited a number of iconic Jamaican producers such as Lee Perry, Bunny Lee and Clancy Eccles, as well as fostering a host of new talent from Britain’s burgeoning reggae scene. A year later, Trojan started releasing its own material, tasting mainstream success with the Upsetters’ Top 5 smash Return of Django in 1969. Hit singles followed from Jimmy Cliff and the Harry J All Stars, and a British number one, Double Barrel by Dave Barker & Ansel Collins, in the spring of 1971. Trojan’s rapid rise had much to do with the embracing of the direct, unpretentious approach of Reggae by the skinheads. Perversely, while

Rocksteady and rising

Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/ rocksteadyandrising for more memorable Trojan moments.

The papers

ˆ “ The artists breathe mouth to mouth the air exhaled by the other until they fell unconscious ”

My body, my canvas Burned, frozen, scratched or cut; over the last 30 years Marina Abramović’s skin has probably been the most abused in the art world. The spectacular nature of her work leaves quite an impact but is paradoxically why what’s widely known of her practice has often been reduced to a few very shocking images. The current major retrospective at the MoMA in New York should place her career into perspective. Among the 50 works are performances, less well known photographs, video installations and sound pieces, and it’s as good an excuse as any to take an overview of the work and legacy of this self-proclaimed ‘grandmother of performance’. Born in Belgrade in 1946, Abramović entered the art scene in the 70s with testing physical performances in line with the Viennese actionists. One of her early works invited the public to use any of 70 objects on her body, which might provide her with pleasure, pain or even (in the case of the loaded gun) death.

The product of a strict education, growing up under Tito’s dictatorial regime in the former Yugoslavia, Abramović’s extreme art practice emerged in a period when the West was shaken by social and sexual liberation movements. Abramovi positioned her work at the margins, and pushed to re-defi ne the limits of control over the body, art and within wider society. In 1975, Abramović moved to Amsterdam where she met the German artist Ulay. For over 10 years, the couple developed a common artistic practice. This “two-headed body” created works that explored the multiple parameters of a relationship through the prism of the body. Many of their performances put the body in danger. In Death Self, one of their fi rst collaborations, the artists breathe mouth to mouth the air exhaled by the other until they fell unconscious 17 minutes into the performance. Abramović and Ulay’s work belonged to a larger range of transgressive and violent bodily practices, gathered under the term “Body Art”, which appeared in the 70s and of which the most notorious propent is probably the American artist Chris Burden who ordered his assistant to fire a gun at his own arm (Shoot, 1971). After 30 years, the masochism and dramatic tension that pervaded Abramović’s

work seem to have run their course, but what of her legacy to the next generation ? Humor, rather than self-harm now seems to prevail. In Belgium, young women artists such as Danai Anesiadou and Kate McIntosh (also a member of the band Poni) create works where exuberant costumes, surrealism and burlesque replace the nudity, mysticism and austerity that characterize Abramović’s work. In the Netherlands, the collective Kimberly Clark present installations and delerious performances depicting the body of uninhibited women – “art with pleasure” as they call it. Working under the name of I.I.I.I. (for International Institute for Important Items), the young Parisians Chloé Maillet and Louise Hervé produce installations, genre movies and performed conferences fi lled with a great sense of the absurd (think : “sportsclub on the Moon”). There are inumerable manifestation of the colorful and liberated aesthetics promoted by this emerging generation of women performers, which, while they might not be as dramatic as the work of their ‘grandmother’, certainly deserve to be regarded as more than skin deep. (DB)

Neighbourhood

ˆ “ Owners bring us the mangy old body of a dog and expect us to reconstruct Fido the way they remember him as a young, healthy animal ”

A life in skin Taxidermy: it’s a word so dusty and outdated it sounds as if one must fi rst shake mothballs from its syllables. It conjures up images of stuffed foxes and dull-eyed rabbits, caught for eternity mid-stride in the glare of unseen headlights. Taxidermy may no longer be exactly mainstream, but the craft maintains a quiet following: artists, biologists, naturalists, academics and museum curators that are as passionate about the animals in death as they are in life. Among their number are Dirk Claesen and Katie Brookes - he a World Champion taxidermist, she a student discovering the art one delicate step at a time. The path to becoming a taxidermist is not clear-cut. Obtaining a formal qualification is virtually impossible. It remains a craft that is passed on from one aficionado to another and workshops are mostly offered informally by practicing taxidermists. Dirk, who won the world championship taxidermy title for his recreation of a rhino, first studied sculpture. He used this background to become model maker for local taxidermists and so learned the trade. Now, 20 years later,

he works on recreating animals that truly fascinate him: elephants, rhinos, sperm whales, the coelacanth. Katie, on the other hand, found her inspiration in the jars of pickled animals her school art teacher brought to class as inspiration. Her fascination with animal anatomy led her to London, where she is completing an internship with artist-cum-taxidermist Polly Morgan. Speaking with Dirk and Katie about their passion, it’s clear that neither would be able to kill an animal, and both draw a clear line as to what they will and will not work with. They count on family and friends - or in Dirk’s case zoos and game reserves - to collect the cadavers they use in their work. “Taxidermy is about representing the animal anatomically as truthfully as possible. That’s why I refuse to take on people’s pets or game caught by hunters,” says Dirk. “There’s too much emotion involved. Owners bring us the mangy old body of a dog and expect us to reconstruct Fido the way they remember him as a young, healthy animal. Hunters want us to capture the raw wildness of an animal and the glory of the kill in a head mounted on a feltcovered plaque. It’s an impossible task.” Skin remains as fragile in death as it was in life. To be useful, it must remain ‘fresh’ : hair and feathers must remain securely attached ; the

skin must remain plump. In winter that gives a taxidermist maximum four days to work with an unfrozen cadaver : in summer, only two. Working with bigger animals such as rhino or elephants, time becomes even more critical. While smaller animals can easily be frozen for later use, it is almost impossible to transport and freeze the body of an elephant in its entirety. Whether skinning a baby chick or an elephant, both involve skill. The dainty body and fragile skin of a chick won’t tolerate the slightest slip of the scalpel and the 4cm thick hide of an elephant must be skilfully shaven down to a manageable four millimetres before it can be used. It is a process that requires enormous patience and respect for the animal’s anatomy. For there is nothing that confronts us with death as harshly as a badly stuffed animal; and there is nothing that inspires us as much about the possibilities of life as a skilfully recreated creature . (SC) Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/ alifeinskin for more taxidermy photographs.

The papers

ˆ “ Hollywood wasn't having it ; if Joey couldn't play Joey (…), he couldn’t play anything at all ”

A role for life Once upon a time, there was an ordinary 12-year-old boy who liked Mars Bars, Fulham F.C and the Simpsons. He went by the name of Daniel. Nine years and six feature fi lms later he is known to the world as Harry Potter. It’s one thing to grow up on set, but Daniel Radcliffe has spent his entire puberty amidst invisibility cloaks and wands. Adolescence is about developing your own identity – a challenge in itself. Imagine having to figure out who you are when the world keeps telling you you're the boy who fl ies broomsticks, and has that scar? Yet Daniel – or ‘Dan’ as he now prefers to be called - appears to be handling things rather well and seems more than ready to show what other tricks he has up his sleeve. He stripped off his Potter persona very literally in 2007 for Equus, a West End theatre production that pointedly required him to bare all. While nine years is a long time to portray a character, it's nowhere near the record. Helen Wagner, otherwise known as Nancy Hughes, has played in the American soap opera As The World Turns since it fi rst aired in 1956 – a whopping 54 years. Despite the occasional

break from the show, Wagner never landed any notable roles elsewhere. Record holder on this side of the Atlantic, and perhaps a more familiar face, is Coronation Street’s William Roache, who fi rst took on the character of Ken Barlow exactly half a century ago. When The Sun accused Roache of being as boring as his character, the British actor sued the newspaper for libel and won, making it very clear that he was not to be mistaken for Ken Barlow. Ever. But there are less long-serving soap stars that also have a hard time shaking off their on-screen persona. Just think of Matt LeBlanc. After 10 seasons of playing Joey Tribbiani on Friends, the actor tried branching out by playing in movies such as Ed and Charlie’s Angels, but Hollywood wasn't having it ; if Joey couldn't play Joey (as he did in the conveniently-named TV series Joey, which fi zzled out after two years), he couldn’t play anything at all. Other names that spring to mind include Ron Moss (Ridge from The Bold and the Beautiful) and Henry Winkler (who, even though managing to score quite a number of roles after Happy Days, will - admit it - always be the Fonz). Of course there are exceptions. Kylie Minogue got her break as Charlene on the Australian soap Neighbours in 1986. Her popularity on

television probably helped feed her popularity behind the mic; her first single Locomotion was an instant hit. He's now 22 and Ms Minogue is still on the scene having just completed a string of world tours. If only Jason Donovan had been so lucky, lucky, lucky. Zoom in to our modestly-sized country and you'll fi nd actors with a more modest share of fame - yet not talent - that know all about having to switch identities. Charlie Dupont, who played Vincent in the hit series Seconde Chance on TF1, believes that though actors’appearances might stay the same, it’s the way the audience looks at them that transforms them. When he grew a moustache, four different directors thought it perfect for a part in their show, after which Charlie laid down perfect performances as a Belgian cop, a Spanish porn star, an 18th century painter and a French creative director. Now there’s something Matt LeBlanc never tried. (RJ)

Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/ aroleforlife for our pick of notorious “25-to-lifers”.

Ons vakmanschap drink je met verstand. Notre savoir-faire se dĂŠguste avec sagesse.

The institution We love Lifestyle Classic Watercooler

Oh, Oh, Emmanuelle! — An icon of liberated sexuality for over half a century, Emmanuelle has been the subject of the most successful series of skin flicks ever made. Her name became a by-word for blue movies and her imitators travelled the earth and beyond, from the Italian sexploitation gorefest Emanuelle and the last Cannibals to the Emmanuelle in Space series. Writer Hettie Judah

Illustration Steve Jakobs

Emmanuelle aime les caresses manuelles et buccales…Emmanuelle aime les intellectuels et les manuels… Serge Gainsbourg, theme to Goodbye Emmanuelle

a diet of sports, saphism, intrigue and passiondampening erotic philosophy. The eponymous heroine is a 19 years old with a genius for sex ( and a time-consuming masturbation habit ) who is inducted in the ways of the new eroticism – a doctrine of free love that abhors the banal and routine. The Parisian published Eric Losfeld purportedly received the manuscript in a hefty parcel with a Bangkok postmark. He split it into two separate books – Emmanuelle and L’AntiVierge –but despite receiving considerable attention in the alternative press, restrictive obscenity laws kept both books underground until 1968.

She has inspired fashion collections, chair designs and satire aplenty, but beyond the free love and exotic locales, who is the real Emmanuelle ? First released in a clandestine pressing in 1959, Emmanuelle carried neither the name of its author nor its publisher, it was just Emmanuelle a novel centering on a bored clique of expats wiling away their life in Thailand on

In its official version, Emmanuelle appears as the work of Emmanuelle Arsan, purportedly the nomme de plume of Marayat RolletAndriane, the Thai-born wife of a French diplomat. Marayat kept details of her identity deliberately vague, saying that everything that needed to be known about her was to be found in her writing. What biographical information there is gives her date of birth as 1940, which would have made her 17 in 1957, when the manuscript arrived from Bangkok. There has since been considerable speculation that the Emmanuelle Arsan writings were largely the work of her husband Louis Jacques RolletAndriane. Certainly the long conversations on moral sexuality at the heart of the book read more like the rationalising of a free-living middle-aged diplomat than his teen bride.

ˆ The heroine is a 19 year old with a genius for sex and a time-consuming masturbation habit ˇ Nevertheless, Marayat associated herself fiercely with the character of Emmanuelle : a slight, full-breasted figure with waist-length black hair and precocious physical allure. As the first Emmanuelle movie went into production, Sylvia Kristel recalls ‘Emmanuelle Arsan’ as being so horrified with the director’s choice of casting that

Life

she refused to meet her; “She is the heroine of her own book,” recalled Kristel. “It’s her story. She is Eurasian, dark-haired, short, an emancipated woman before her time. I am tall, pale, docile, with strict morals, shaped by my religious education. She comments that Emmanuelle would never have brought her partner to the set. She would have devoured the crew and the natives with contagious nymphomania.”

ˆ Certainly in the later films, she has an absent demeanour assisted by her hearty uptake of coke and champagne ˇ In the end, of course, it is the lean, fair Utrecht-born Kristel who won Emmanuelle. The strong-willed beauty queen – who became the lover of Belgian intellectual Hugo Claus when he was 45 and she 22 – was condemned to spend her life identified with this single character, to which she had not even been allowed to give a voice. Her relationship with Claus pre-dated the Emmanuelle fi lms ( although he encouraged her participation in them ) – and it seems significant that it was perhaps the only ‘pure’ relationship that she had with a lover. The intoxicating character of Emmanuelle dominated all the rest. “Men have loved my body,” she wrote recently. “I have been their fantasy, but I’ve seen few hearts. My fans were faceless, and I didn’t belong to myself… I wanted to be big when I was nothing but a child. I wanted to be looked at and that’s all that ever happened.” Through a life scarred by alcoholism, cocaine addiction, exploitation and bad relationships, Kristel time and again found herself wooed by men unable to separate her from her most famous role. Even in her 50s, recovering from major surgery, she was treated like public property, a walking emblem of liberal sexuality submitted to intimate questions about orgasm on French TV shows. It has become a cliché to describe the original 1974 Emmanuelle movie as tame by modern standards – what is much more striking, in fact, is its coupling of force to female enjoyment. While the women happily toy with one another and masturbate openly, most of the penetrative sex seems to be initiated in circumstances little short of rape. Watching the fi lm you can see a vista of ‘when a woman says ‘no’ she means ‘maybe’’ thinking and date rape rolling out in its wake. Emmanuelle may end the movie as a sexually liberated woman, but she attains this status via enforced pain and humiliation. Matters are not helped by the fact that Kristel so rarely looks as though she’s having a good time – her faked orgasms have an edge of disgust to them, and certainly in the later films, she has an absent demeanour assisted by her hearty uptake of coke and champagne.

The free-loving ethos is shattered in the third movie by marital jealousy – the new erotic philosophy that provides the series with its raison d’etre is implicitly discarded and normal service resumed. But while the sexuality of the fi lm is very much of its time, the book is genuinely transgressive, with a lingering fascination with childhood sexuality that leads to some unforgettable pronouncements – “The erotic woman is the one who, at snack time, calls her son and tells him to make a sperm sandwich for his little sister.” While the books are almost an exercise in sexual philosophy strung out between physical diversions, the films communicate this new libertinism via the lush exoticism of their locations ( Thailand, Hong Kong, the Seychelles ) and artful mise en scène. Both the first two films were made by fashion photographers, the fi rst by the Dutch-born Just Jaekin, the second by Francis Giacobetti, whose softcore aesthetic was

honed on the Pirelli Calendars, and who was also responsible for the iconic publicity stills from the fi rst movie. With wardrobes raided from Balenciaga and beyond, it’s not surprising that the style of the films has had a particular influence all of its own. Everything from Sylvia Kristel’s haircut, to the heavy kohl eye makeup to the rattan furnishing to the peek-a-boo eveningwear became a cultural reference. The Emmanuelle style has influenced fashion collections ( notably from Veronique Branquinho ) and is still visible on women of a certain age. Unlike Sylvia Kristel, of course, the generation of copycat Emmanuelles really did choose to align themselves with an image of sexual hedonism and availability – and thus perhaps most deserve the title of the real Emmanuelle. Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/ ohohemmanuelle for our selection of classic Emmanuelle scenes.

The Word on

We love Exclusive Photography

Fragile Skin Photography Sarah Eechaut

Eline (10) Eline was injured in a fi re accident four years ago. She was one of the fi rst people in the world with a subskin transplant, taking skin from her thighs to cover the burns. When her skin started to get tougher, she became a judo-addict.

Interviews Yves Van Kerkhove

Life

Irene (21) Irene was born in Lubumbashi, Congo, and has been living in Belgium since she was three. She is doing a masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree in Biomedical Sciences at Ghent University on liver failure and diagnostics. She has a total absence of pigment in her skin.

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Aloys (64) Aloys was born in Rwanda. For 12 years now, he has been living and teaching in Belgium. In 2004, he suddenly started to suffer from Vitiligo, a disorder causing depigmentation of the skin. None of the treatments had any effect, so he brews his own mixture of essential oils which slowly improve his condition.

Life

Mieke (29) Mieke is a qualified cook and lifeguard. Now, she works as a shiatsu therapist in her Sauna Suomi in Zandvoorde. Mieke has extremely pale skin, caused by albinism, and only has 10% vision. Her daughter, Lisa, is three months old and does not share the condition.

The other Word on Consume Watercooler Play

The way you make me feel

— It all started rather innocently. The idea to test some tanning products on several peaches was thrown into one of our infamous brainstorms, more of a ‘let’s see if they latch on to it’ type of idea than a thoughtthrough pitch. To our amazement, our bluff was called and there we were, mid-January, scouring the streets of Brussels for soft fruit, getting ready to apply some ungodly beauty products on these five euro a pop peaches ( adjusted for winter price hikes ). Photography Benoît Banisse

Retouching Ilan Weiss

Life

01. Kiehl’s sun-free self-tanning (¤28)

kiehls.com

02. L’Oréal accord perfect blush (¤11,49)

lorealparis.com

The other Word on

03. Rimmel stay matte pressed powder

rimmellondon.com

04. Rituals gemstone foundation (造19,90)

rituals.com

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05. L’Oréal sublime one day body bronze (¤14,49)

lorealparis.com

06. Louis Widmer tinted hydrating cream (¤14,90)

louis-widmer.be With thanks to Robs for the peaches

The border

Talent Photography Global

Surface complex â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Travelling through South Africa, we discover that nothing about skin is ever simple Photography Guy Van Laere

Two Women, Langa (2010) Established in 1923, Langa is one of the oldest townships of Cape Town, designated for Black Africans before the apartheid era. It is mainly Xhosa women who use clay or chalk on their faces (and sometimes other parts of body, like shoulders) to keep their skin hygienic, young, and in a good condition. Some of these women go to work with their faces whitened, but usually they do it at home.

Life

Two Men, Cape Town (2010) The man on the left is an Afrikaner from Joâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;burg on holiday in Seapoint, Cape Town. The one on the right lives in a suburb of Cape Town, is Muslim, and of mixed descent, with Indian ancestors. There are many Muslims living in Cape Town, particularly in the picturesque central neighbourhood called Bo-Kaap.

The report Underground Getaways Lifestyle

Good dirt. What’s so great about washing, anyway ? — Viva pet dirt ! Your skin is host to a flourishing layer of bacterial flora that protects you against aggressive pathogens. Individual to you, these babies need to be nurtured rather than scrubbed out. We spend vast amounts on cleaning and treating our skin, would we do better to leave it alone ? Photography and interviews Ulrike Biets

As part of her graduation project last year, Sonja Baumel constructed a giant petri dish lay down briefly on the jelly-fi lled container, then covered and incubated it to create a self-portrait rendered in bacteria. Sonja’s background is in fashion design, and her project looked at human skin bacteria as a kind of living outfit – one that dispersed and reacted to its surroundings, and which, like a well considered ensemble, simultaneously protected the wearer and made an individual statement. In her thesis (In) Visible Membrane, she proposed fashion as a medium by which science and scientific information could travel outside the laboratory. Researching the project, Sonja interned in a microbiology lab and learned about the delicate bacterial balance that was required to guard against disease, she experimented with growing bacteria on textiles, and even with growing textiles from bacteria. She was also surprised by the extreme specialisations of the different scientific departments that she worked with, and contemplated a role for designers in provoking interplay between specialists and allowing them to see their practice from a different perspective. The fashion business, does, of course, have an existing relationship with the bacteria on our skin. We don’t only wear a dab of Chanel No.5 behind our ears in bed these days – we tend to wear the matching body lotion, eye cream, face milk, lip balm, neck cream, décolleté gel, cellulite drainer, hand food and hair masque. Fashion may be an exciting medium for collaborations on skin bacteria, but the fortunes being made by the industry in persuading customers that they are dirty, smelly and unattractively wrinkled are likely be a significant impediment to visible bacteria textiles becoming a hot new trend. As leading dermatologist Dr Torsten Zuberbier points out, “evolution did not creates soap or showers before humans ; daily washing with soap is not a pre

Writer Hettie Judah

requisite to live.” Dr Zuberbier is Professor of Dermatology and Allergy at Berlin’s Charité – Universitätsmedizin, but while he waxes humorous on contemporary obsession with scrubbing and perfuming ourselves, he does also warn that a lot of the media reports into allergy and hygiene have been misleading, particularly in the interpretation of research into childhood exposure to potential allergens.

ˆ Evolution did not create soap or showers before humans ; daily washing with soap is not a pre requisite to live ˇ “Early contact in life with pathogenic bacteria and parasites prevents allergies of allergic rhinitis and asthma by 50% but it’s not a question of not washing the kids – what’s protective is drinking milk with tuberculosis bacteria and being in a barn with swine for three hours a day. It has nothing to do with washing the skin and household, it’s about getting the bacteria into you skin and your gut.” Dr Zuberbier also points out that certain allergic conditions – notably Atopic Dermatitis (a variety of eczema) involve an overgrowth of bacteria that irritates the skin – so would not profit from less washing. Overall, however, he does feel that we overdo hygiene in our society : “people wash their clothes frequently, but you would never wash your shoes frequently.” Professor Swen Malte John of the department of Dermatology and Environmental Medicine at the University of Osnabrueck has

rather stronger feelings about the role dirty skin has to play in building up our immune system. “Children get bugs into their mouths via their fi ngers,” he explains. “If you have good hygiene in the living space and in your skin, it will render the immune system unemployed. In families with four children the likelihood of any child having the disease is lower than in families with one child, because the standards of hygiene won’t be the same.” Dr John considers argument for frequent washing to be a question of sociability rather than health. “We are not fi sh – our skin doesn’t like to be swimming all the time ; the longer you put skin into water the more permeable it gets. Water dries skin, then it starts splitting and gets little fi ssures and allergens can easily get in.” He also points out that the ‘pet’ bacteria that we need as a barrier on our skin thrive in an acid environment of around ph 4 or 5. Detergent soaps can have an alkaline ph of up to 9. In addition, modern fluid soaps contain preservatives and perfumes that often provoke an allergic reaction ( whether the fragrance is ‘artificial’ or of plant origin has no bearing ). For those of us who can’t kick the washing habit, Dr John stresses the importance of rehydrating the skin after the shower ( he recommends using almond oil ) and avoiding harsh and heavily perfumed soap.

For more information on Sonja Baumel : sonjabaeumel.at For more information on dermatology : eadv.org

Life

Kasper Moreaux

Kasper travels as an artist with his theatre company De Vuurmeesters, creating big installations that spit fire. While he is playing with fire, he tries to avoid the use of the one thing that could save him if a fire trick goes wrong: water. Trained as a geologist he is all too aware that we’re close to running out of drinkable water. “Especially because we don’t have much rain or reserves here. People think Belgium is such a

wet country, but in fact, it’s just a grey country, not at all wet. Imagine that one day, for some reason the production of chlorine was stopped or the most important cleaning systems would be out of order. That would be a disaster, since most of the water in Belgium has to be purified. Unlike New Zealand or Australia, we can’t go to a lake to provide ourselves with clean water, because we don’t have them. We depend on installations.” Kasper wants to make people aware of how to keep their practises with water

as economic as possible. “We live in a house with a community of 15 adults, and our consumption of water is less than a regular household. We try to not bath or shower that often. When we do, we use the rainwater we catch in barrels in our garden. And when the water is used for showering, we re-use it for flushing the toilets. It’s irresponsible and ridiculous to flush a toilet with 13 litres of drinkable water. It goes straight into the sewer, into the sea. That’s almost what you drink in a whole week, just to get rid of a simple pee.”

The report

Cam Pipes

Cam is the lead singer of the Canadian heavy metal band 3 Inches Of Blood, which means that being on tour with a bunch of dudes is a big part of his life. “Our days on tour consist of sitting in a small van, travelling from venue to venue. After a few days, that thing is a total mess. Especially because in the US and Canada, venues don’t have a real backstage area, and certainly not showers. So if we can’t

handle the odours anymore – and when we’re out of baby wipes – we stop at a hotel just to take a quick shower. We only do it out of mutual respect. Your own smell is never as bad as someone else's smell.” Even at home Cam only occasionally takes showers. “I don’t mind, my girlfriend doesn’t mind, so there is no reason to shower.” Only when he sees other people looking all clean and fresh, with wet, washed hair, is he tempted to take a cleaning moment for himself. “Even after a show I’d

rather grab a beer than a shower. Then again, too much alcohol can be the trigger for a long hot bath, or at least the hangover can be.”

Life

Jennifer Beckx

Knowing your body consists of 40% water, you can hardly imagine someone being allergic to this substance, but Jennifer has a condition called Aquagenic Urticaria, a rare disease in which water dissolves her skin protein which in turn provokes an allergic reaction. “When my body comes into contact with water, I get red and dry spots all over. They itch, so I can't help scratching them, which makes it even

worse. At the end my body always looks as if I have been caught in some kind of burning accident.” When she was four years old, Jennifer became really sick when visiting her family in Romania. “I went for a swim in a lake near the Black Sea. The water was dirty and green, but we didn't think it could do any harm. All the other kids were swimming there too.” But Jennifer became ill, vomited for two weeks and became dehydrated. “I think my allergy to water can be attributed to that

particular event,” she says. She now has the choice between washing or painful spots. “I practically never wash my face. Whenever I take a bath, I have to add oil to the water to soften it.” Jennifer tries to avoid water in all circumstances, even during her job. “I'm a cleaning lady, so I have no choice but to work with water all day. It ruins my hands, my nails are crumbling, but I do my very best to fi nd a way to combine my job with my disabilities, and try to live my life as normally as possible.”

The report

Jonas Geysemans

A while ago, Jonas discovered an abandoned minigolf course and decided this would be his new home. Together with a few friends he squatted it, and made it into a cosy, welcoming but very unusual house. “We are melting snow on the big stove now, because we live here without a water supply. We have no choice but to be creative about it ; we use all kinds of different ways to obtain water, mainly to flush

the toilets with. Showering is not that important to us ; we wash our hands with rainwater, and if we feel too dirty, we shower at school, at our workplace or with friends. I am an educator in a boarding school for mentally disabled children, and sometimes, at night, when they are all asleep, I have a quick wash over there when I feel too fi lthy. We don't want to be ‘the smelly kid’, but as long as you don't stink, washing is a luxury. A full wash once in a few weeks is sufficient, and things like

greasy hair you can easily cover with a hat, like I do now,” he laughs. “The only downside of having no tap water for us is that although we dream of installing our own silkscreen atelier here, we can’t, because we’d need a pressure washer. But otherwise, living without tap water is really not such a big deal… once you’re used to it.”

Life

Ronny “Manoly”

Ronny “Manoly” is one of the full members of the Hell’s Angels in Ghent, which means he has earned all the patches on his black leather sleeveless jacket. The patches state your place in the group, as being a hang-around, a prospect or a full member. In the early days, the Hell’s Angels used to baptise these jackets with beer and dirt, but these days this ritual has kind of disappeared. “If someone wants

his jacket to be baptised, no problem, but it’s not an obligation anymore to become part of the pack. Now, the baptism takes place over the years, because no one ever washes their jacket, so it becomes a kind of souvenir that contains smells and stains from everything we went through. We wear it outside of our other gear, so whenever we take a trip through Europe or the rest of the world, it has been there with us. Sometimes the evidence is clearly present ; the sweat, or the dirt from

when we hit the ground or fall down while riding our bikes. But at that moment, the only thing we care about is our Harley. That machine is like a woman to us, we love it almost as much as our family and brothers. If the jacket is ruined, we take off the patches, burn the jacket, buy a new one, and stitch the patches back on. With our bikes it's not that simple of course.”

The showstoppers

Consume We love Lifestyle Classic Fashion

Sensory recall — They say fetish is all to do with memory – experiences that leave traces on you like stains on the skin from back in childhood. Something about the creases round the ankle on a pair of silk stockings, the crisp first touch of rolling papers stolen from an older cousin, the smooth glossy metal of a very expensive, very forbidden thing. We still like mucking around with fake tattoos, pretending that we’re still pretending to be grownups, but watching Shane Meadows movies reminds us what it really felt like at the time, back in our younger skins. Photography Benoît Banisse

01. Night moves

We’re not often serious on these pages, but bear with us for just a moment, because we did start this with naughty intentions. We wanted to shoot a special movie; small audience, two actors, minimal dialogue; you know the type we’re talking about. So we asked a few of our favourite digital maestros what we should buy and they ALL told us to go for this baby – the Flip Mino HD. The quality is excellent, it’s the size of a mobile ‘phone and, let’s face it, it’s styled like a top-of-the-range sex toy. We want it so much. Oh yes, oh yes. Flip Mino HD ( ¤ 164.96 ) thefl ip.com Available from amazon.co.uk

Art direction and styling Facetofacedesign

Style

02. Where we’re coming from

The films of Shane Meadows were without question the single biggest point of reference for this issue of the magazine. The look, the feel, the sound, the refusal to take the easy path or the cheap shot, the unflinching treatment of difficult subjects and the firm grasp on how it really felt to be a kid. Total respect. This Is Shane Meadows boxset (¤ 22.49) shanemeadows.co.uk Available from amazon.co.uk

03. Brand nude

We can only imagine that every stylist in the world got jealous of our Skin edition and wanted in on the action. Because when Chanel Makeup’s creative director Peter Philips came up with a set of fake tattoos that let you transfer the brand’s logo all over your skin, we naturally assumed that he’d done it just for us. Now they’re so hype that the waiting list has gone into overdrive, and we’re kind of regretting plastering ours all over the party balloons. Oh well, we live and learn. Les Trompe-L’Œil de Chanel (¤55)

04. Grubby mits

The problem with all those pale, nude-coloured clutch purses is that we don’t have a pale, nude-coloured lifestyle. We have a lifestyle filled with paint and dirt and chocolate sauce. We’re probably the people that Longchamp had in mind when they came up with these bags – pre-sullied, for lower stress levels. What they forget is that although we really are a little bit scummy, we do still aspire to be immaculate sometimes. Longchamp Artitude purse (¤120)

The showstoppers

05. Crispy skins

You know, you can play a thoroughly educational and child-friendly game with skins – the one where you write a name on one side and stick it on someone’s forehead then get them to guess who they are? Not that your mum will ever believe that you don’t smoke cigarettes (and worse) when she finds them in the back pocket of your jeans. But mum, they’re a design classic… Rizla Silver. Available everywhere.

06. Get your seams straight

So wrong their right, there’s something about skin-toned hosiery that always provokes a reaction. We blame Betty Draper for fl ashing her taupe suspenders in Mad Men, because since then we haven’t been able to get enough; whether they’re delectable silk stockings that shimmer down your leg like a 1930s starlet, opaque tan weave straight off the skating rink or thick fetish-tastic bandage-coloured hose from AF Vandervorst’s nursing-inspired underwear range. Flesh coloured hosiery Available from Underwear

See page 94 for full product information.

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thewordmagazine.be

The way Lifestyle Fashion Classic Underground

Hard as nails, soft as velvet — A freshly clipped grade 2, checked shirt and a pair of Doc Marten’s have come to inspire fear in the moral majority. Where did it all go so wrong for this brotherhood of British and Jamaican youth styles ? And how did labels like Fred Perry and Ben Sherman, that had such tight associations to the bitter end of the skinhead movements, manage to rehabilitate themselves ? Writer Nick Amies

Illustration Marcel Ceuppens

Nothing makes old people cower in fear and young mothers pull their offspring closer than the sight of a group of skinheads marching down the street in full regalia. Skinheads are the bogeymen of youth culture; a movement that has been a social pariah for decades. Their violent reputation and far-right connotations precede them. Their uniforms label them a threat. Or do they? While there is little doubt that skinheads have always had a reputation for disorder, to judge a shaven-headed lad or lass by his or her clobber may be a dated misconception that is fi nally ready to be consigned to the history books. Clothing has been an important part of the skinhead culture ever since the schism in the mid1960s mod scene in Britain created the ‘peacock’ mods – a less violent, more affluent and fashion conscious group who favoured expensive clothes – and 'hard' mods who embraced a more working-class image and whose less privileged lives gave them a tougher edge. By the end of the decade, these ‘hard’ mods were known as skinheads and their lives and their fashions had strayed further away from the middle class fascination with the latest trends, settling for an image made up of practical styles that suited their employment – steel-toed boots, straight-legged denim jeans, shirts and braces. “When the skins segued from the mods, they adopted a more robust image,” says Bill Osgerby, Professor in Media, Culture and Communications at London’s Metropolitan University. “However, this didn't mean that they were shabby or scruffy. In fact they

maintained that mod aesthetic for being obsessively fastidious about what they wore. They were well polished, stylish and street sharp. Some of the brands they wore were actually quite up-market, like the Cromby overcoat which was favoured by city gents.”

ˆ They were employed and had money to spend on looking good. It’s a myth that the skins were more about fighting than fashion ˇ Bill maintains that just because the skins were working class, it didn’t mean they were poor. They were employed and had money to spend on looking good. “They bought brands like Fred Perry and Ben Sherman off the peg which was still fashionable but cheaper than having a suit made,” he says. “It’s a myth that the skins were more about fighting than fashion. This was not a pauperised style.” Bill says that these skins were, in essence, robustly masculine mods that stayed loyal to the fashion fusion of black – most Jamaican – youth styles and a British working class image.

This meant that by the late 60s, skins were clad in a uniform of long- or short-sleeve button-up shirts or polo shirts, religiously pressed straightlegged Levi’s jeans and shiny, heavy boots. “This image sent out a message that these were intensely masculine, working class people whose highly polished and fastidious dress showed a real pride in their identity,” Bill says. When the punk movement and the death of the sixties dream in the mid-1970s brought with it anarchy and social despair, far-right groups saw the potential in the proclivity for violence and fierce patriotism that some punk or Oi! skins were beginning to embrace. Recognising the power images of snarling, shaven-headed youths waving nationalist flags could have, far-right groups began both recruiting white skins with right-wing views and promoting the skinhead image among their own youthful members. While adopting even shorter haircuts, tighter jeans, combat trousers and knee-high boots, these Nazi boneheads also kept their Brutus and Ben Sherman shirts, their Lonsdale sweaters and Fred Perry cardigans. As a result skinheads and skinhead fashion became synonymous with the neo-Nazis. "With the skinhead revival in the 1970's and the fusion with punk, the style became more aggressive and we saw an adoption of the skinhead style which has since been popularised by skins in former Eastern Bloc countries and other parts of Europe,” says Bill. “This was not the classic skin image but it was the one which became equated with the movement and with the far-right, racist elements involved in it.” While there have always been aggressive overtones to the movement, violence for the original skinheads was never the consuming passion, and contrary to popular belief, they were not grouped together around a fl ag of nationalism and united by a racial hatred of minorities either. In fact, coming from the working classes, they mixed with immigrants from all over the world in their manual jobs, their tight-knit communities and in their dancehall leisure time where they danced to ska, reggae, and rocksteady beats alongside their Jamaican co-workers. These traditional skinheads, also known as trads or Trojan skins, gathered around the nucleus of Afro-Caribbean music, not a banner of extremism. However, these skinheads found that since their image, style and brands had been perverted by the right-wing skins and claimed by the neo-Nazis, they were now being tarred with the same brush. Fuelled by sensationalist television coverage, all skinheads were suddenly stereotyped as mindless, violent, and racist, with little attempt made to discriminate one subgroup from another. In the eyes of the media and the public, every skinhead was a racist, everyone who wore

Style

division manager of ARW Belgium, the main distributor for Fred Perry and Ben Sherman in Belgium. “We did have some problems with the far-right so we stopped stocking the brands in shops where we knew they were selling to this area of the market. We also took out some articles from the Fred Perry clothing line that featured the big laurel design, which were very popular with the far-right, and we also stopped selling the cheaper end of the collection, making it a little bit more expensive. Both brands are now on another level and are seen as designer labels. Before they were selling to everybody, Ben Sherman especially. The problem was that there they were selling two collections, one of which was much cheaper and more popular with these types of clients.”

ˆ Fred Perry have targeted alternative movements by using personalities with positive images such as Paul Weller to promote their clothing to indie and rock audiences ˇ

a Fred Perry shirt was a fascist, and everyone who wore Doc Marten’s boots was a Nazi. “Of course some of the brands adopted by far-right skins come from the pre-political origins of the subculture, labels like Fred Perry and Lonsdale for instance,” said Bernd Richter, a German expert on far-right movements and their symbolism. “These have been politicised, however, purely by being worn by these groups. Once they were embraced by the far-right, rightly or wrongly, they became signifiers.” Bernd said that some brands sullied by farright association have attempted to change their image through specific marketing and advertising campaigns. “Fred Perry, for example,

have targeted alternative movements by using personalities with positive images such as Paul Weller to promote their clothing to indie and rock audiences and have always used ethnic models to promote equality in their ads, harking back to the origins of the skinheads when it was a multi-racial scene.” The labels themselves have noticed a positive change in the way the public and media perceive them in recent years, although it took more than dressing palatable rock stars in their clothes to make a difference in some cases. “In the last five years we’ve seen a real decrease in the association with the rightwing skins across Europe,” says Carl Toye, the

Carl says that the brands themselves never made an issue out of the right-wing connection or reacted to it because they believed that if they had, they would have had a very different problem. Instead, they began a policy of spreading a positive message to the next generation through grass roots interaction and support. “What the brands have done is use positive role models in sport and music, and have reached out to younger audiences by sponsoring sports events, such as table tennis tournaments in inner-city youth clubs,” explains Carl. And what of the skins themselves ? “The traditional skins, especially the older generation, have done much to move away from this racist image by forming action groups and promoting the Jamaican roots, style and music of the original movement,” Bill Osgerby concludes. “As the original trads regularly used to say : You can't have roots in black music and be into white power.” Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/ hardasnailssoftasvelvet for classic skinhead styles.

The fashion Word Arts Consume

— So maybe this isn’t England, and maybe we weren’t around when it all kicked off, and so what if we don’t listen when you try to make us do things your way? You say original – we say new generation – but we’re all still Photography Kris De Smedt

Styling Pierre-Yves Marquer

Style

She wears: Shirt Lacoste, Jacket Paul Smith, Trousers Levi’s He Wears: Shirt and Trousers Comme Des Garcons, Jacket Levi’s

Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Shirt Essentiel, Jacket Viktor&Rolf Monsieur, Jumper Hermes, Bermuda Shorts U-NI-TY, Socks Burlington, Shoes Essentiel

Coat and Jacket Dries Van Noten, Shirt Diesel Denim Gallery

He Wears: Polo Shirt Ben Sherman, Jacket Cabane De Zucca, Shorts Comme Des Garcons, Shoes Vans (Model's own), Socks American Apparel She Wears: Jacket Comme Des Garcons Shirt, Shirt Berangere Claire, Tie Paul Smith, Shoes Dr Martens@Syriana Shop

Death wears: Lace Blouse, Wool Trousers both Stella McCartney, Boots Willow Deceased wears: Lace Shirt Givenchy, Trousers Balenciaga, Boots Louis Vuitton

Leather Jacket Christopher Kane, Shirt Felipe Oliveira Baptista, Jumper Cp Company, Trousers JBrand, Socks Burlington, Sneakers Nike

The fashion Word

Jacket Junya Watanabe Man (Stylist’s Own), Polo Shirt Ben Sherman, Jacket Y’s

Style

Jacket Adidas Originals, Shirt Fred Perry, Tank Top Yâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, Shorts Filippa K

Photographer Kris De Smedt cestchicagency.be Stylist Pierre-Yves Marquer cestchicagency.be Stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Assitant Sybille Langh Models Eva Heisp & Rutger Derksen newmodels.be Hair & make-up artist Miaou cestchicagency.be with Redken for hair and Dior make-up With special thanks to Luc Francken & Phil Wright from zabriskie.be for the fabulous location

The 1.

Since most women do not know themselves they should try to do so. 2. A woman who buys an expensive dress and changes it, often with disastrous result, is extravagant and foolish. 3. Most women (and men) are color-blind. They should ask for suggestions. 4. Remember-twenty percent of women have inferiority complexes. Seventy percent have illusions. 5. Ninety percent are afraid of being conspicuous, and of what people will say. So they buy a gray suit. They should dare to be different. 6.

FAshion

Women should listen and ask for competent criticism and advice. 7.

They should choose their clothes alone or in the company of a man. 8. They should never shop with another woman, who sometimes consciously or unconsciously, is apt to be jealous. 9. She should buy little and only of the best or cheapest. 10. Never fit a dress to the body, but train the body to fit the dress. 11. A woman should buy mostly in one place where she is known and respected, and not rush around trying every new fad. 12.

g And she should pay her bills.

The 12 commandments of Elsa Schiaparelli

the Fashion

Fashion is a precious world, and many designers have a hair-trigger sensibility for the petty tragedies of the everyday. Too often, it seems, no crisis is too small for a melodrama. In this regard Josephus Melchior Thimister is certainly a man apart. This comeback, comeback, comeback kid has endured the many knocks and turnarounds in his designing career with his equanimity and good humour intact, perhaps because he has his eye set on graver and nastier things than the carrousel of seasonal trends. In previous years, Josephus presented a collection inspired by the Baader-Meinhof urban guerrilla group, and his latest offering – the fi rst since 2001 – was inspired by the Russian Revolution and has blood-stains and scorch-marks laid across the immaculate tailoring. “The show was giving beauty out of bloodshed,” he explained, noting that where you fi nd luxury, violence is rarely found far behind. Josephus is a true Word-style internationalist : half Russian with homes and roots in the UK, The Netherlands, France and Belgium, he studied at the Antwerp fashion academy then moved to Paris where his fi rst big break came in 1992 at the then broken house of Balenciaga. “There was no atelier, no commercial department, nothing,” he recalls. “I stayed six years and constructed the whole thing like it is today, but after six years I wanted to do my own thing.” By the time Josephus left the house, it was back on track as the house of elite high-fashion, with a young Nicolas Ghesquière already in place, ready to move up the ranks into Josephus’ shoes. A professional interest in violent upheavals seems curiously honest, given his fascination with martial tailoring “for me, the military jacket is my Chanel jacket,” he explains. He also attributes his on-going fascination with all things Russian to his mixed parentage, which influences everything, right down to his selection of runway models. “It was very important that most of the models were Russians. The music I used was a Russian choir– old songs, sung by deep vibrating voices – it was like going to mass, it was almost spiritual, and they were very touched by it ; one model actually wept during the show.” After leaving Balenciaga, Josephus ran his Thimister label for four years, at which point, as he puts it, “I’d had no money anymore, and I’d had enough.” He travelled for three years, then came back and worked with Charles Jourdan and the Andy Warhol Foundation. His return this season to the world of Haute Couture seems to have happened almost by accident – the collection started as an art installation that

Burnt, bloodied, but unbowed

expanded to fit the opportunities presented. Eventually the Haute Couture federation suggested that instead of showing it during Frieze or FIAC, Josephus came as a guest designer during the Haute Couture week in Paris. His decision to do another collection was in part a response to the emptiness he feels in the marketing-led fashion scene of the last 10

years. Josephus considers creative people to have a duty to centralise their energies and make something out of the global mess of the current moment. “Is fashion art ?” he muses. “It can be but not necessarily. It’s all a means of expression – as an artist or designer you are always marginalised by society. But society needs that margin to go on : that margin is its conscience.” (HJ)

The fashion papers Disruptive Online Talent We love Consume

We’ve suddenly found ourselves in a bubbly, bobbling sea of crochet projects this month – from bacteria-mapping gauntlets to bespoke second skins to Shauna Richardson’s crochetdermy project – and we can’t help thinking that the sudden chic attached to knot-work is largely down to Arielle de Pinto. Arielle crochets with chain, and over the last few years her free-form body adornments have become the fashion sophisticates’ chosen glory, furnishing this young New York-based Canadian with demand she can barely keep up with. “It still does come organically from me,” she tells us of her designs. “Crochet use to be something that kept me feeling peaceful but it doesn’t really anymore. It’s a very meditative practice, but as soon as you have a deadline you lose that.” Until recently, her life was as spontaneous as her designing style : she travelled with her equipment – including up to 50lb of silver chain – in her bag. It was when the metal treatment chemicals exploded inside the case one day, destroying all her best clothes, that she realised that it

Girl, you got me hooked

was time to formalise. While Arielle still creates the expressionistic prototypes by hand, she now sits down and analyses the process that’s gone into the pieces with a specially trained team who will reproduce the works by hand. There is something magical to her work – the fragile decay of sleeping beauty running riot

in the handsome prince’s chainmail. Copycat works are already starting to hit the market, but it only encourages Arielle to keeping pushing her very particular skills ; “that’s something I love about being specialised ; I still feel like I’m ahead of the game.” (HJ) arielledepinto.com

printed, structured draping has been dripping off the red carpet from the backs of style icons from Rihanna to Michelle Obama. Pilotto’s strengths are more commercially viable than those traditionally prized on the Antwerp scene – the clothes are wearable, they make women look and feel good, and they’re distinctive without being overbearing. While

graduates from the Belgian schools usually seem to look to Paris for the next rung up the career ladder, London seems to have been good for Pilotto. Well-administered awards have helped the label grow, and demonstrated how even the most talented designers need proper support before they can begin to shine. (HJ) peterpilotto.com

The soaring reputation of Peter Pilotto ( pictured on the left ) is a wonderful illustration of the British fashion world’s ability to claim a new star as its own. Three years ago, the designers behind the label were Antwerp boys, at least enough to earn a place in the Antwerp 6+ exhibition as part of the ‘new generation’ of fashion talents working out of Flanders. The style was recognisable – a kind of retro-futurist femininity – if hardly mainstream. Born in Wörgl, Austria in 1977, Peter Pilotto’s initial studies in London were followed by a stint as a window dresser for Vivienne Westwood before he entered the Antwerp Academy in 2000. He graduated in 2004 to a cluster of awards, but despite titular support from the powers-that-be in Antwerp fashion, it was not until his move to London, and his formal creative partnership with fellow Academy student Christopher de Vos, that he really started causing a stir. This time last year, Pilotto was the frontrow’s label of choice at London Fashion week, and in the succeeding 12 months their digitally

Looks good in print

the Fashion

They have been labeled as pesky, a threat to a noble profession, a hodgepodge of relentless posers and a slew of other colourful compliments. Someone (cough – Cathy Horyn of the New York Times – cough) claims they have “overrun the ivory tower”. All this upheaval is about the ominous rise of the deadly – cue evil organ music – fashion bloggers. Not the slightest hint of an altered hemline or sneak peak at a luscious lapel is too trite for them ; all it takes is a click, a fl ash and an upload button for it to become instant digital fashion fodder for fawning over ; “ Givenchy announced this an hour ago, it’s common knowledge ! ” or “ Surely that jumper can double as a skort ? ” Always on the look-out for the latest trends and popular it-people, designers have given some famous bloggers ( like Bryanboy or 13 year-old Tavi from Style Rookie ) the same privileges as professional journalists, stylists

Ctrl-alt-del the front row

and editors : front-row seats at major shows and even design input in the form of capsule collections. It’s not a stretch to imagine that this hasn’t gone down well with most pros: lacking ‘proper’ education or work experience, bloggers are a big – albeit well-dressed – thorn in their side. Why the fear ? For the speed that bloggers process information or the fact that some have escaped from behind their bedroom desks and mouse-clicked their way into the limelight ?

Bloggers and readers will always need the magazines to feed on their editorials, inspiring articles and general fabulosity. Why can’t we have a healthy symbiosis of industry insiders and outsiders; a dialogue between those with a passion for fashion, instead of a soliloquy ? (IA)

responsibility for how our operations affect people and the environment… We donate garments that do not meet our quality requirements to organizations such as UNHCR, Caritas, Red Cross and Helping Hands…” Regardless of circumstance, alternative solutions should have been considered. H&M enjoy a caring and committed image; were this

truly the case, surely the only items found in their New York trash would have been bagel wrappers and empty juice bottles. (AN)

Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/ ctrlaltdelthefrontrow for prime seat shots.

By the end of last year, close to 15.3 million Americans were out of work, and the prospects of economic recovery seemed painfully slow. In New York, as in other major cities, people faced winter out on the streets without enough food or clothing. It was against this harsh economic backdrop that Swedish retail chain H&M was caught redhanded destroying its own garments. According to the New York Times, Cynthia Magnus, a student at the City University of New Yorkk discovered bags of slashed up clothes which ‘appeared to have never been worn’ at the back off the H&M located on 34th street, Manhattan. The report read like dispatches from a fashion horror movie: fingers were chopped off gloves, jackets ripped to shreds, and shoes stripped of soles. When asked to comment on the incident, Håcan Andersson, spokesperson for H&M’s head office in Sweden, denied allegations of carelessly destroying or throwing away unsold items. “We want to clarify that we do not throw away unsold garments… We have thoroughly examined [and] have determined that these garments were damaged, did not meet our safety standards or had been used for instore display… H&M is committed to taking

Style: catch it, bin it, kill it

The project Disruptive Business We love Consume

Currently available at — Dover Street Market still feels fresh as new despite being around for half a decade, which means that it's held its place as our favourite one-stop fashion shop. Writer Randa Wazen

Photography Charlotte May Wales

Let’s face it : shopping can be an absolute drag, even for the most athletic among us ( and particularly if you’re wearing six-inch heels ). Sure, department stores are convenient – and easier on the Jimmy Choos – but while they’ve simplified the game, they’ve also killed the fun. The brand and designer’s visual identities are wiped out in favour of a uniform, sleek, if not sterile, atmosphere, and before you know it, you’re suffocating on the stench of consumerism pushed to the max. The billboards carrying artist Barbara Kruger’s slogans : “I shop therefore I am” – “you want it, you buy it, you forget it” : that Selfridges displayed in its windows for the launch of its 2007 Boxing Day sale summed it up with a chilling dose of irony.

Comes the curious case of the Dover Street Market. The six-storey shop located in London’s Mayfair district, created by Comme Des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo and her husband Adrian Joffe, does not look like any other place in the world. It operates as Comme’s London fl agship store, stocking all 10 lines as well as its perfume range, yet offers a cutting-edge selection of other high fashion brands as well as more challenging independent designers. Often compared to Colette, it almost makes the Rue Saint-Honoré’s temple of cool look mainstream. Dover Street is not a department store, and dismisses the trendy label of concept store. And even though the price tags are not for the faint-hearted and there’s a fair chance

haggling won’t go down too well, the ‘market’ appellation seems to be the most fitting one. Kawakubo envisioned this project as a tribute to Kensington’s iconic market and has always professed her love and fascination for bazaars all over the world. The goal was to channel their energy and disorder in order to create what she describes as “beautiful chaos”. The overall raw and unfinished look of the premises : bare ceilings, concrete walls, coarse wood and plastic fi lm covering the elevator’s buttons: put it light years away from the clean and polished interiors of the neighbourhood’s designer boutiques. There are eccentric touches, like the cashpoint machine hidden in a giant hut in the middle of the room, antique dealer Emma Hawkins’ exquisite collection of Victorian stuffed birds and rare animal skulls at the entrance, and tongue in cheek plays on random every-day objects, such as the vending machine that sells Dover Street Market label t-shirts for £25 a pop, or the big portacabins that serve as fitting rooms ( trust us, trying on garments in one of those is truly disarming ). It’s all topped off with an atmosphere of creative tension spilling from the eclectic stall designs, and the singular sense of style and laid back attitude of the staff, that make them look more like Factory hangers by than busy bee salespeople. The anti-glam aesthetics are no shocker to those familiar with Comme Des Garçons shops and philosophy, but the novelty here is in the

the Fashion

direct collaboration with the other brands involved. Artistic freedom and creative control are offered to designers like Alber Elbaz of Lanvin, Phoebe Philo of Celine or Nicholas Kirkwood, allowing them to direct their own space. In return, Dover Street Market is granted limited edition ranges and exclusives like the Peter Jensen collection and Charles Anastase’s ethereal drawings.

ˆ Constantly renewing the space, Dover Street Market undergoes a biannual makeover named Tachiagari, meaning ‘start’ or ‘beginning’ in Japanese ˇ Constantly renewing the space, Dover Street Market undergoes a biannual makeover named Tachiagari, meaning ‘start’ or ‘beginning’ in Japanese. The store is closed for a few days during which all the installations are revamped and new designers introduced. This spirit of perpetual evolution creates excitement among its loyal customer base and it’s now traditional to fi nd an army of fashion cognoscenti queuing outside before each re-opening. If we were to play one of our favourite games and imagine we were obscenely rich for the day, a pair of Cutler and Gross vintage shades, Bibi’s rings made of prehistoric mammoth ivory, a lifetime guaranteed leather bag courtesy of Bedouin, and a whole lot of Rodarte, Pierre Hardy, Hussein Chalayan, Comme des Garçons, Givenchy, Giles, Ann Demeulemeester, Behnaz Kanani, Giambattista Valli, Bess jeans and Proenza Schouler could all easily fi nd their way into our shopping basket. For now we will just indulge in a veggie pie by Rose Bakery’s organic open kitchen on the top floor and a Comme Des Garçons Play striped knit. Thankfully the visual treat is free. One of the most intriguing areas is the World Archive ; pieces collected by Michael Costiff from around the globe, from African masks and tribal jewellery, to communist memorabilia. Magazine geeks will thrill to the Idea Books corner, a simple table and chair surrounded by Angela Hill’s jaw dropping collection of vintage magazines, vanished cult fanzines and old art books. The basement stocks enough gems to make any street wear junkie or sneaker fetishist’s head spin in a fraction of a second. We were lucky enough to be allowed a guided tour before opening hours in order to take shots, and caught a designer presenting his new collection of handmade denim, limited to one hundred pieces, to the team of sales assistants. Sessions of this kind were frequent, we were told, and essential for the creator to pass along the knowledge and love invested in the product. This passion and attention to detail

on the part of everyone involved seems to be a kind of key to Dover Street Market Adding to the mix is the aura of mystery around the place, sacredly guarded by everyone involved. There is no advertising, buyers refuse to comment on their modus operandi, Kawakubo is notoriously media shy and when she or her husband grants an interview, they remain carefully elusive, reluctant to defi ne the Dover Street Market philosophy. The stubborn secrecy and vagueness could be perceived as presumptuous and almost become annoying, if not for its irreproachable result. The idea is that each individual that comes to the store is meant to make up his or her own answers and interpretation of what it’s meant to be. Dover Street Market is different to everyone. Kind of like a David Lynch fi lm.

Dover Street Market Dover Street 17-18 London W1S 4LT United Kingdom doverstreetmarket.com

Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/ currentlyavailableat for more insider shots of Dover Street Market.

The look Classic We love Watercooler

Minority report — Try matching a worn-out, baggy pair of corduroy trousers ( and beige at that ! ) with a shiny new Prada baseball cap and you’ll quickly understand that these cats are geniuses at the art of mix-and-match street fashion. Having observed the style’s many evolutions over the years, we thought it high time to immortalize it once and for all. With nothing, nothing but love, respect and admiration. Photography Sébastien Bonin

Assistant Ludo Hanton

the Fashion

Jalal Labchiri (28)

Occupation: Sous-chef Favourite brand: Adidas Signature accessory: Barcelona football shirt Wearing: Barcelona football shirt, leather jacket, Adidas tracksuit bottoms and Nike Air Max Style tip: Watch La Haine Style icon: Pepe Guardiola Favourite piece in wardrobe: â&#x20AC;&#x153;My Barcelona football shirtâ&#x20AC;?

The look

Patrice Tuilier (29)

Occupation: Tram driver and founder of independent label Give me 5 Favourite brand: Giorgio Armani Signature accessory: Baseball cap Wearing: Burberry shirt, Louis Vuitton belt, Lee Cooper Casuals corduroy trousers, Sebago shoes, Prada baseball cap, Prada man bag and Breitling watch Style tip: Take a trip down Francis Ferent (on Avenue Louise 60 Louizalaan, 1050 Brussels) Style icon: George Clooney Favourite piece in wardrobe: â&#x20AC;&#x153;My new Moncler coatâ&#x20AC;?

the Fashion

Mounir Benkassem (23)

Occupation: Tram driver Favourite brand: Lacoste Signature accessory: iPod Wearing: Lacoste jacket, Adidas tracksuit bottoms, Sebago shoes, Fossil watch, Yashmag scarf Style tip: RM Sport and M&M Sport, both in Brussels Style icon: “My cousin Wajid, who works at Francis Ferent” Favourite piece in wardrobe: “Never without my Scapa winter coat”

Part of an ongoing project on overlooked street fashion.

The special showstoppers Consume We love Lifestyle Fetish

You show me yours and I’ll show you mine

— We went through all kinds of torment working out what could possibly be fashiony enough to cut it as our Fashion Special showstoppers. There could have been books and bags and accessories and all kinds of bits and pieces, but none of them really got our juices going. That’s because what gets our juices going always tends to come inside a sturdy oblong box, wrapped lovingly in tissue paper. So since nothing else was doing it for us, we ditched the other ideas and followed our raw, instinctive passion for shoes. And at base, that pretty much defines fashion for us. You can wear what the hell you want : so long as your shoes are fabulous, then, well, so are you. Photography carmendevos

the Fashion

01. —

Suede desert boots with blue sole by Diesel ( ¤ 100 ) Austin derbies by Hermes ( ¤ 620 ) Sand and beige showgirl pumps with textured fi nish by Nathalie Verlinden from Hatshoe ( ¤ 305 )

02. —

Suede desert boots with blue sole by Diesel ( ¤ 100 ) Beige-brown shoe with red laces by Camper Eliot ( ¤ 150 )

The special showstoppers

03. —

Black mid-heel peek-a-boo pumps by Costume National from Hatshoe ( ¤ 360 ) “Serie. 7” desert boots by Pierre Hardy & Kitsune ( ¤ 310 )

04. —

Black slingbacks with a glossy ecru heel by Dries Van Noten from Hatshoe ( ¤ 399 ) Textured gold leather gladiator sandals by Chloe from Hatshoe ( ¤ 415 )

the Fashion

05. —

Futuristic grey leather sandals by Costume National (defi lé collection) from Hatshoe ( ¤ 325 ) Ecru tie-top wedge sandals with a carved wooden heel by Ellen Verbeek from Hatshoe ( ¤ 350 )

06. —

Suede high tops by Yves Saint Laurent (stylists’ own) Gray-silver Velcro sneakers by Pierre Hardy (stylist’s own) Boat shoe by N.D.C ( ¤ 200 )

See page 94 for full product information.

The advance Disruptive Water cooler Technology

— Superhuman cyborgs, self-aware computers, rebel replicants and autonomous humanoid devices : the promise of man-like machines seems to inspire as much fear in us as it does excitement. How far off is the time when robots will be a visible part of our everyday lives ? And what will they do when they get here ? Writer Hettie Judah

Photography Vincent Fournier

Our new brothers under the skin

Walking through the Meat Packing district one January afternoon I crossed paths with a young guy, wide eyed and stripped to the waist, who was waving his arms and shouting at people with terrified desperation: “The Cyborgs are already among us! They’re here, right here in New York City!” Everyone ignored him but he kept going for hours, walking a tight grid of streets, warning us all over and again. It was hard to tell if he was mad, performing, or just communicating with us from his own private place, but you have to hand it to the guy: he had a point. The word robot appeared in fiction long before it was adopted by science; it comes from the Czech, originally meaning slave or serf. Much of the fear and confusion surrounding the modern robotics industry springs from the difficulty we still find in drawing a fi rm line between the real and the fictional. Robots are all around us; they have been for years; but they’re more likely to be hanging out in Detroit than New York City. Most of them are involved in industries where they can be kept separate from their human co-workers, and perform repetitive, often dangerous tasks without needing to stop for meals or sue for repetitive strain injury. The classic science-fiction robot – a bipedal autonomous humanoid rippling with whizz-bang functions – is still a long way in the future. The annual robot and artificial intelligence research jamboree RoboCup, centres around the creation of a robot football team composed of bipedal players who will communicate with one another on the pitch. RoboCup has been on the go since 1997, and the current

aim is to have a team that could be capable of playing in the human World Cup by 2050. It seems a long way off: current hurdles faced by team members include basic issues like standing up, walking and kicking the ball.

ˆ Most of them are involved in industries where they can be kept separated off from their human co-workers, and perform repetitive, often dangerous tasks without needing to stop for meals or sue for repetitive strain injury ˇ TUlip, a bi-pedal robot being developed by the University of Eindhoven, will be on his way to RoboCup 2010 in Singapore this June. Dr Dragan Kosti who is leading the design team behind TUlip, admits that making robots bipedal to give them a human aspect brings with it a particular series of stability problems, but notes that studying the mobility of human limbs has been very useful in successful robotic design.

“If you look at the anatomy of biological species we see different biomechanical solutions that are applicable in robotics,” he explains. “Human arms have seven fields of freedom from shoulder to wrist – it allows us to execute the same motion with many different postures of the arm itself. We equip robot arms with human-like dexterity so they too can execute motions with different postures, allowing them to avoid obstacles and undue pressures.” Dragan draws an important distinction between the manufacture robots currently flexing away on car plants and production lines, and the service robots that will be designed for close interaction with humans. The robots designed to conduct a repetitive precision task

Design

do so in isolation – they have a very limited field of response: certainly far too limited to deal with human behaviour. These robots are dangerous not because they have intelligence but because they lack it. For robots to operate safely in a space shared with humans they need to be able to adapt and respond independently to their immediate surroundings. The Eindhoven facility’s robotics research of course goes beyond the playful TUlip to look at both manufacture and service robots. Perhaps the most extreme end of the human interaction research is going into the development of robots for the therapy of autistic children. Although the research is currently in its infancy, it is based on an observed behaviour of autistic children that

suggests that they could specifically benefit from robot assistance. “It was observed that autistic children have a problem mimicking other people,” explains Dragan. “But suprisingly they are not reluctant to imitate the behaviour of a toy. If a car moves in a circle, autistic children start walking along the circle. That led to a hypothesis that we could create a robot that could help autistic children to start getting involved and react to this behaviour.” Currently the research in this field is focused around response – developing a robot that responds to human body language and emotions in a meaningful way; a happy interaction will elicit a happy response, an angry one will be met with something more nuanced.

The philosopher Richard Sennett draws a useful distinction between robots and replicants. The replicant is something that mimics human form without exceeding human capability: the robot takes human capability and exceeds it, it is the more-than-human, able to survive where humans are not, in toxic environments or extremes of temperature, to work without rest, to be predictable, to be spared the weaknesses of bone and sinew. While the dream of fully automated robots waits for science fact to catch up with science fiction, there is a middle ground – teleoperated robots– that allows us to take advantage of the robot’s super-human physical capabilities (in a dangerous environment such as a nuclear

The advance

power plant, for example) by coupling it to the cognitive abilities of an actual human. Super-human capabilities is perhaps a misleading term, for the everyday robot’s usefulness comes in to play in those arenas for which the human’s attention-span and tendency to get damaged by repetitive tasks puts it at a disadvantage. “We see interest in application for robots in the field of civil engineering, particularly in setting tiles on big factory floors, or swimming pools,” explains Dragan. “Laying tiles is a tedious job; it requires skills, but by

age of 55, 40 percent of tile-layers become invalids because of the un-ergonomic posture these people take. They work on their knees and get back trouble – there is a significant cost to society for the treatment of people after they get disabled.” In fact the biggest social force propelling robot research currently seems to be the ageing population. In Japan, in particular, robots are sought as a solution to fill the imminent gaps in the employment market created by the ageing workforce. In Eindhoven, Philip’s Applied

Technology department is working on robot devices designed to respond to and assist the elderly, rather than bolster the ranks of the young. “An aging population has more need for care than there are people who can give care,” explains senior scientist Dr Georgo Angelis. “Funding will be a problem since there are less people working to raise the funds to support people who need care. Technology will play a role.” Among other things, the Applied Technology department is currently designing a robot arm specifically intended for use by people

Design

or from the user’s wheelchair. The next phase in the design will aim to make the arm mobile, allowing it to leave the living space and conduct guided tasks such as supermarket shopping.

ˆ In Japan, in particular, robots are sought as a solution to fill the imminent gaps in the employment market created by the ageing workforce ˇ

While the merit of allowing the housebound to care for themselves independently via a robot slave is evident on a certain level, it’s hard not to feel uncomfortable at the prospect of a future in which the elderly and disabled are relegated to the care of machines. Georgo is upbeat, pointing out that the optimal use of such machines will be to relieve the physical strain on the human caregiver, making the task less of a burden. “Of course people would be scared that they won’t see their caregiver any more. You have to think of keeping the quality time a caregiver has with the receiver, and be supportive. But if you can relieve the heavy workload of the care provider, there is less chance of them getting sick or needing to step out of the care process – if a care provider needs to get up a few times at night to turn someone over, it’s a heavy task and a big burden, if we can help to do that with technology its already a big step forward for people who are taking care.” Georgo considers these more controlled robots to be not simply a technological intermediary point on the way to fully automated robots, but also an important step psychologically. “A fully automated humanoid robot is in control of a situation, whether he’s completely self directing, programmed or knows what to do, he’s in the lead. We try to keep people in the lead and let the robot technology be supportive to people not the other way round. We don’t believe people are willing to get help from a robot that is replacing a person.”

There is a danger that people not using money creates a ghetto of its own ˇ

with limited mobility. The arm can be mounted on a wheelchair, help the user to get in and out of bed, and is already capable of performing simple tasks such as wiping a table of pouring a glass of water. It is sensitive enough to feel its environment and respond to it – if it senses someone coming close it will cease its movement and prepare to move with and absorb impact, so as to avoid causing harm if it is bumped into. Philips is developing the technology to sell on to other clients – they do not intend to commercialise the arm themselves – and it is

thought that a functioning saleable model will be available within five years. Already working models are in certain university departments researching new potential fields for this humancompatible design. As currently conceived, the arm would be teleoperated to a certain extent either by the user or a remote operator – the arm is in effect a robot in the true sense; a slave of the user; that provides the human operator with surrogate dexterity and mobility. Currently the arm is operating either from a stable platform

01.

Robot-arm, Philips Applied Technologies, High Tech Campus 5, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, February 2010

02.

Humanoid robot TUlip at the Eindhoven University, The Netherlands, February 2010

The advertorial Design Lifestyle We love

— An unlikely flag-waver for Belgium’s design dynasty, Charles Kaisin distinguishes himself by a thoughtful and moving approach to design, with his focus firmly set on the innovative use of recyclable materials. Having sat down with the designer back in March 2008 for our Green Revolution Issue, we thought it fitting to give him a nationalistic nod on the eve of a major installation of his, set to open during Milan’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile.

The Word & Charles Kaisin

Musicians bring out Best Of compilations whilst sportsmen get inducted into Halls of Fame. Designers and artists – never ones to get outdone – get given retrospectives however. After 10 years of painstaking research, countless product launches and numerous exhibitions, Charles Kaisin wraps it all up in the shape of Design in Motion, a mid-career retrospective. Taking as starting point his customary interest in movement and recycling, Design in Motion traces the turning points of Kaisin’s career through sketches, research papers, models and never-before-seen designs (a limited-edition watch for Swatch for example, or even a pixilated wool pompom chair). With room upon room fi lled with Kaisin creations, the show’s attracting treat – the cherry-on-the-cake if you will – most surely will be the world-premiere of his crystal collection for venerable Belgian house Val Saint Lambert. All brought underneath the same roof (Assab One, in Milan’s lively Cimiano district) and paired together with an insane installation by Spanish artist Terre Recarens (moving floors, crumbling shelves, smashing glass and all), Kaisin hereby reinforces his ‘stalwart of Belgian design’ status – if ever there was a need to. Design in Motion From 11th April until 28th June 2010 Assab One, Milan

assab-one.org

Design

What one might call a responsible designer with a strong work ethic, Kaisin is an unrepentant advocate of what many refer to as ‘cleaner’, more socially-responsible design. This, however, doesn’t stop his work from giving food for thought – whether it be his now-infamous K-Bench ( a beehive-like extendable and flexible seating system ) or his collection of bags created together with Delvaux ( flat packed-like, organic bags which defi ne themselves by the shape of things they carry ). With a followedthrough lightheartedness to it, Kaisin’s work never fails to dazzle, amaze and intrigue. 04

charleskaisin.com delvaux.be val-saint-lambert.com Pixel Wine Bar Rue Ernest Allard 39-41 Allardstraat 1000 Brussels

01.

Kasin and Terre Recarens' installation for this year's Salone.

02.

The Hairy chair.

03.

Kaisin's celebrated K-Bench.

04.

The Pixel Bar, Brussels. Kaisin designed the interiors of this wine and food bar with 7500 pixels.

05.

The collection of glasses, vases and bowls Kaisin created for Val Saint Lambert, recently presented at Paris' Maison et Objets.

The shelf Arts Consume We love

Public library reading — With our account running up ridiculous late return fines, our membership’s been revoked and the librarian’s now determined not to let us enter her turf anymore. Not that that’d stop us. We have a secret passage through the air vents. Nah nah. Photography Yassin Serghini

Writer Nicholas Lewis

Destroy/Rankin (2009)

Glen Luchford (2009)

Gestalten

Steidl

“When the idea of Destroy came into my mind, it was in the context of power and control, and about the confl ict between fantasy and reality.” So begins British photographer Rankin in his new book Destroy/Rankin. An attempt to demystify photography and its role in image-making, the magazine founder and publisher (Dazed & Confused, Another Magazine and Another Man) takes a personal approach by asking the very music dignitaries he captured over the years (everyone from Michael Stipe and Roots Manuva to Joe Strummer and The Gossip) as well as some of his artist friends to revisit his iconic portraits. The end result is nothing short of refreshing, something of a School of Rock for the under aged with Crayola pens captured on paper.

From Willem Dafoe to Tim Roth, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that British photographer Glen Luchford actually was a fashion photographer. Forever associated to the British photography of the early 1990s, his was a gritty, realist and evocative narrative : spontaneous, straight from the heart and honest. As versed in commercial commissions (Yves Saint Laurent and Levi’s) as he is in editorials (W Magazine and POP Magazine), it is his ability to bring his work within the realms of fi ne art photography which ultimately has made him one of the greats, on a par with the Erwin Olafs of this world. Polarized (2009) by Marc Lagrange Ludion

New Topographics (2009) Steidl

In his opening preface to the book, director of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film Anthony Bannon sums up the historic relevance of the exhibition it was initially published alongside of : “this moment ( the opening in 1975 of the New Topographics exhibition at the George Eastman House ) marked a turning point for the medium, its full acceptance as expressive and collectible art.” No more, no less. Typified by Robert Adam’s deep American landscapes, Lewis Batlz’s disparate suburban snapshots and Stephen Shores’ removed Middle America, their work resonated ( and still does) for its ability to capture what were, until then, the unseen elements of a very American way of life.

If Nick Brandt photographed insanely beautiful and, above all, naked women instead of getting up-close-and-personal with animals, you’d get something not too different than what Belgian photographer Marc Lagrange has been doing since the 1980s. Theatrical and teasing, you sense a bit of Bourdin as well a bit of Newton in his narrative, although Lagrange’s talent really seems to be composition: the luscious models, the fabulous interiors and the very Belgian touch of humour. Proud flesh (2009) by Sally Mann Aperture

Flicking through American photographer Sally Mann’s book, you somehow have the feeling you’re intruding on a somewhat difficult conversation going on between two lovers: fraught, painful and intense. Her work’s fragility and

overall sense of despair lend it an incredibly strong and powerful nature – similar to a bare knuckle fight – with an added vulnerability to it. The book’s large format allows for her sensuous black and white prints to be experienced as they should be – from up close. Kamaitachi (2009) by Eikoh Hosoe Aperture

Kamaitachi is a demon which has haunted tales of rural Japanese life for centuries, and somehow continues to do so to this day. Back in 1969, photographer Eikoh Hosoe and choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata (founder of ankotu butoh dance) let loose in a northern Japanese farming village, re-enacting their interpretation of the urban legend with artistic brilliance. Intertwined with the village’s every elements, from its rice fields to its bewildered villagers, these ultimately are integral to the final body of work, a soothing and seductive interaction between performance and photography. Less and more, the design ethos of Dieter Rams (2009) Gestalten

Exhibition catalogues serve two purposes: to solemnise a timeless exhibition, or to lay to rest the guilty consciences of people having missed the chance to catch said exhibition. Rather conveniently in our case, it serves both. Published alongside the exhibition of the same name ( set to close four days after this issue hits the stand ), ‘Less and more, the design ethos of Dieter Rams’ is as complete and representative of Rams’ lifelong oeuvre as the exhibition. Finished with a rubber-like cover and wrapped in its own hardback sleeve, the book might actually be better than the show – you can keep it forever. Skin Two Fetish Yearbook 2009 Skin Two

Skin Two used to be a fetish club operating out of a dingy Soho basement in London which spanned a magazine (Skin Two), an annual fair (Skin Two Rubber Ball), an eponymous clothing range (Skin Two Clothing) and numerous fi lms. A subculture with an incredible following, the brand alone conjures up sentiments of tasteful art direction, intellectual intercourse and daring creativity rather than the seedy etiquette usually associated to the world of rubber romps and spanking sessions.

Culture

造 From top to bottom

Polarized ( Ludion ), Proud Flesh ( Aperture ), Kamaitachi ( Aperture ), Destroy / Rankin( Gestalten ), Glen Luchford ( Steidl ), Skin Two, The New Topographics ( Steidl ), Less and more ( Gestalten )

Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/theshelf for more photographs of the books as well as Amazon links.

The pencil Arts Play Exclusive Talent

Some ink on skin Illustrations Jean Biche

Culture

Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/the-unprintables-the-pencil for a user-friendly, A3 version of the game as well as a demo by FĂŠlicie.

The portfolio Exclusive We love Photography

The finest work â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Reconstructing and rehabilitating the skin is a most delicate specialty. We take a look behind the closed doors of a private plastic surgery clinic and the burns unit of a military hospital. Photography Sarah Michielsen

Culture

The portfolio

Culture

03 06

The portfolio

Louise Medical Centre Brussels

Burns & injuries centre, Queen Astrid Military Hospital Neder-Over-Heembeek

01.

Private clinic Louise Medical Centre has an 'aesthetic clinic' where they offer plastic and reconstructive surgery and anti-aging medicine. Photographs shows a mammography before breast enlargement.

04.

Hand of a man who had been victim of a gas-explosion in 2002. After the wound heals, the patient needs intensive kinetherapeutic sessions and scar massages due to contractures of the recovering skin that decreases movement.

02.

Operating room on the 7th floor of the Louise Medical Centre, where aesthetic surgery takes place.

05.

Hands of a man who was victim of a gas-explosion. The skin of his hands has been reconstructed with the aid of artificial skin transplantation.

06.

Hands of a little girl who was victim of an electric burn six months ago. The skin of her thumb has been reconstructed : skin taken from an unburned area of her arm and placed on the burned thumb.

07.

Room where skin bandages are changed. This is the bath tub where the skin wounds are washed and cleaned, before the changing of bandages.

03.

Table where surgical instruments (surgical scissors, scalpels, tweezers, sterile gauze, etc.) are prepared prior to an operation.

louise-medicalcenter.be

BUROFORM P R I N T I N G

Creative thinking, qualitative printing Buroform Printing NV • Zandvoortstraat 6 • Industrie Noord • 2800 Mechelen • t. +32 15 288 999 info@buroform.be • www.buroform.be

The eye Arts Photography Play

— When we asked makeup artist Ciara O’Shea to create a fantasy of future skin, we had to decide between a world of fire and a world of ice. After months of slumming it in sub zero temperatures, we were intrigued by her proposal of how beautiful we could be if we all evolved a more protective epidermis and silky arctic fur. Makeup, concept and styling Ciara O’Shea

Photography Michelle Beatty

Culture

The eye

Culture

The stockists Consume We love

Adidas Originals +32 (0) 800 01 10 01

adidas.com/originals Aperture

aperture.org Bee Factory Rue de l’Aurore 44 Aurorestraat + 32 (0) 2 647 06 85 1000 Brussels

beefactory.be Ben Sherman +32496268376

bensherman.com Bérangère Claire

berangereclaire.com Bill Tornade

billtornade.com Burlington

burlington.com

Delvaux Brussels Boulevard de Waterloo 27 Waterloolaan 1000 Brussels +32 (0) 2 513 05 02

Delvaux Antwerp Komedieplaats 17 2000 Antwerp + 32 (0) 3 232 02 47

delvaux.be Diesel Brussels Rue A. Dansaertstraat 38 1000 Brussels + 32 (0) 2 503 34 27

Diesel Antwerp Meir 22 2000 Antwerpen + 32 (0) 3 213 79 79

diesel.com Dries van Noten Brussels (at Stijl) Rue A. Dansaertstraat 74 1000 Brussels + 32 (0) 2 512 03 13

Dries van Noten Antwerp Cabane De Zucca +33 (0) 1 44 58 98 88

zuccone.com Chanel Brussels Boulevard de Waterloo 63 Waterloolaan 1000 Brussels + 32 (0) 2 511 20 59

Chanel Antwerp (at SN3) Frankkrijklei 46-48 2000 Antwerp + 32 (0) 3 231 08 20

chanel.be

(Modepaleis) Nationalestraat 16 2000 Antwerpen + 32 (0) 3 470 25 10

chloe.com Christopher Kane

Ellen Verbeek

ellenverbeek.com Essentiel Brussels Avenue Louise 66 Louizalaan 1050 Brussels +32 (0) 2 513 18 91 Schuttershofstraat 26 2000 Antwerp +32 (0) 3 201 13 80

essentiel.be

Comme des Garçons Shirt (at Houben) +33 (0) 1 53 30 27 27

Hatshoe Rue A. Dansaertstraat 89a 1000 Brussels + 32 (0) 2 512 41 52

Paul Smith Kelderstraat 2-3 2000 Antwerp + 32 (0) 3 221 51 11

paulsmith.co.uk

Hermès Boulevard de Waterloo 50 Waterloolaan – 1000 Brussels +32 (0) 2 511 11 82

Pierre Hardy

pierrehardy.com

hermes.com Rob Jbrand +33 (0) 1 40 20 07 80

Boulevard de la Woluwe 28 Woluwedal 1150 Brussels

jbrandjeans.com

+ 32 (0) 2 771 20 60

robfi nefood.be

Kiehl’s Antwerp Lombardenvest 80 2000 Anvers + 32 (0) 3 226 14 60

Rituals Antwerp Schrijnwerkersstraat 13 2000 Antwerp +32 (0) 3 227 53 43

Kiehl’s Brussels (at Senteurs d'Ailleurs) Avenue Louise 94 Louizalaan 1000 Brussels +32 (0) 2 511 69 69

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Swatch

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Levi's

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Nike

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L’Oréal

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Houben Brussels Place du Nouveau Marché aux Grains 6 Nieuwe Graanmarkt 1000 Brussels +32 (0) 2 502 32 05

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CP Company +32 (0) 3 227 03 88

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fi lippa-k.com Fred Perry +33 (0) 1 53 25 13 30

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Longchamp Avenue Louise 5 Louizalaan 1050 Brussels + 32 (0) 2 543 07 02

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longchamp.com Viktor & Rolf Monsieur

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Ludion

ludion.be Y’s NDC Rue Léon Lepage 36 Léon Lepagestraat – 1000 Brussels +32 (0) 9 224 29 79

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Austria / dana charkasi / ernst hilger / krinzinger / mario mauroner / elisabeth & klaus thoman / hubert winter / Belgium / aeroplastics / aliceday / baronian-francey / jacques cerami / crown gallery / d&a lab / patrick de brock / dependance / deweer / galerie el / fifty one / fdc satellite les filles du calvaire / annie gentils / geukens & de vil / gladstone / hoet bekaert / xavier hufkens / jos jamar / rodolphe janssen / jozsa / koraalberg / elaine levy / maes & matthys / maruani & noirhomme / greta meert / meessen de clercq / moba nomad / mulier mulier / nathalie obadia / office baroque / guy pieters / tatjana pieters / elisa platteau / almine rech / andré simoens / stephane simoens / sorry we’re closed / sutton lane / think21 / transit / triangle bleu / twig / nadja vilenne / zwart huis / de zwarte panter / Brazil / leme / Cuba / habana / China / continua / Denmark / martin asbaek / bo bjerggaard / larm / nils staerk / nicolai wallner / France / galerie 1900-2000 / air de paris / art:concept / claude bernard / bernard bouche / jean brolly / chez valentin / continua / jean fournier / gdm / frederic giroux / laurent godin / in situ fabienne leclerc / jgm / jousse entreprise / la b.a.n.k. / lelong / new galerie de france / nathalie obadia / francoise paviot / emmanuel perrotin / praz-delavallade / almine rech / michel rein / pietro sparta / suzanne tarasieve / triple v / daniel templon / georges-philippe & nathalie vallois / vu’ / Germany / adler / andersen’s contemporary / guido baudach / bourouina / buchmann berlin / conrads / cuc charim / volker diehl / duve berlin / feinkost / kleindienst / klemm’s / johann könig / kudlek van der grinten / lüttgenmeijer / mario mazzoli / martin mertens / birgit ostermeier / esther schipper / sprüth magers / tanit / traversee / upstairs berlin / wentrup / zak branicka / zink / Greece / bernier eliades / Hungary / kisterem /Israël / chelouche / Italy / cardi black box / conduits / continua / photo & contemporary / tucci russo / Luxembourg / nosbaum & reding / toxic / Norway / galleri k / Poland / czarna / lokal 30 / Portugal / filomena soares / Russia / regina / Slovenia / skuc / Spain / adn / espai 292 / max estrella / horrach moya / senda / michel soskine / Switzerland / analix forever / annex 14 / guy bärtschi / blancpain / boltelang / buchmann / freymond-guth / hauser & wirth / patricia low / rotwand / The Netherlands / de expeditie / grimm / ron mandos / alex daniels - reflex / gabriel rolt / United Kingdom / ancient & modern / the approach / laura bartlett / ben brown / pilar corrias / domobaal / fred / james hyman / annely juda / sutton lane / simon lee / lisson / sprüth magers / marlborough / victoria miro / stuart shave - modern art / maureen paley / seventeen / United States of America / miguel abreu / conner / lisa cooley / crg / gladstone / hauser & wirth / lelong / luxe / marlborough / emmanuel perrotin / salon 94 / michel soskine / Venezuela / faria fabregas

28 contemporary art fair 23-26 april 2010

preview & vernissage 22 april (by invitation only)

www.artbrussels.be

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Round-up

page 27

page 49

1 SUB-

1 — issue 02 0 volume 01

Ç ;G::

lifestyle Walking-the-walk

fashion Paper or plastic

design Materialize it

culture Plane Simple

01 — issue 03 3 volume 01

Ç ;G::

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style

belgium Pitch Perfect

lifestyle First Encounters

fashion In or Out

design Fair Trade

culture Banking on Art

Do not throw on the public domain.

volume 01 — issue 05

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style — the green revolution issue —

belgium Snack Life

lifestyle Midnight Burning

fashion Gastro Weaponry

design Dirty Dishes

culture Mood Food

Do not throw on the public domain.

volume 01 — issue 04

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style — the secret society —

belgium Gate Crashing

lifestyle Baggage Check

fashion Macadam Boulevard

design Handle with Care

culture Bubble Superstar

Do not throw on the public domain.

volume 01 — issue 06

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style — the delectable foodie issue —

belgium In-House

lifestyle Sole Brothers

fashion Tainted Love

design War Games

culture Made-to-Order

Do not throw on the public domain.

volume 02 — issue 01

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style

— the ultimate getaway —

Belgium Living at Mum’s Lifestyle Asleep on the Job Fashion Wasted Days Design Sleep Keepers Culture Motel Coma + The Car Special

Do not throw on the public domain.

volume 02 — issue 02

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style

— the essential luxuries issue —

Belgium Behind the Curtains Lifestyle Feeding Power Fashion Manicured Mysteries Design Moving Horizons Culture Cinematic Mystery + The Fashion Special

Do not throw on the public domain.

SCRIBE 2 GET BACK ISSUES 3 READ THE BLOG

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style

belgium You say potato

volume 02 — issue 03

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style

Do not throw on the public domain.

Belgium Thick Skinned Lifestyle Scar Studded Fashion Vast Airs Design The Land of the New Culture Godly Structures + The Travel Special

volume 02 — issue 04

“THE CINEMATIC ISSUE ” Neighbourhood Life + Global Style

An Original Screenplay by The Word Magazine

Belgium Me, Myself & I Lifestyle Lonesome Cowboys Fashion Mole Men Design When Right Met Left Culture Micro Mad + The Design Special

THE BIG ISSUE Do not throw on the public domain.

volume 02 — issue 05

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style

Do not throw on the public domain.

Belgium Pocket Moves Lifestyle Tokyo Entourage Fashion Yamamoto & Daughter Design My Robot Fridge Culture Rope Burns + The Beauty Special

I S S U E

volume 02 — issue 06

N I P P O N

T H E

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style

Do not throw on the public domain.

Belgium Big Consoles Lifestyle Techno Techno Techno Fashion Mason’s Apprentice Design Studio Job Are Older Than Jesus Culture Boy Guards + The Bling Special

Ons vakmanschap drink je met verstand. Notre savoir-faire se déguste avec sagesse.

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Remy Cointreau remy-cointreau.com

The Word thewordmagazine.be

pages 78 -79 78

page 89 The advertorial

Design

Design Lifestyle We love

The Word & Charles Kaisin

Musicians bring out Best Of compilations whilst sportsmen get inducted into Halls of Fame. Designers and artists – never ones to get outdone – get given retrospectives however. After 10 years of painstaking research, countless product launches and numerous exhibitions, Charles Kaisin wraps it all up in the shape of Design in Motion, a mid-career retrospective. Taking as starting point his customary interest in movement and recycling, Design in Motion traces the turning points of Kaisin’s career through sketches, research papers, models and never-before-seen designs (a limited-edition watch for Swatch for example, or even a pixilated wool pompom chair). With room upon room ﬁ lled with Kaisin creations, the show’s attracting treat – the cherry-on-the-cake if you will – most surely will be the world-premiere of his crystal collection for venerable Belgian house Val Saint Lambert. All brought underneath the same roof (Assab One, in Milan’s lively Cimiano district) and paired together with an insane installation by Spanish artist Terre Recarens (moving ﬂoors, crumbling shelves, smashing glass and all), Kaisin hereby reinforces his ‘stalwart of Belgian design’ status – if ever there was a need to.

What one might call a responsible designer with a strong work ethic, Kaisin is an unrepentant advocate of what many refer to as ‘cleaner’, more socially-responsible design. This, however, doesn’t stop his work from giving food for thought – whether it be his now-infamous K-Bench ( a beehive-like extendable and flexible seating system ) or his collection of bags created together with Delvaux ( flat packed-like, organic bags which defi ne themselves by the shape of things they carry ). With a followedthrough lightheartedness to it, Kaisin’s work never fails to dazzle, amaze and intrigue.

BUROFORM P R I N T I N G

charleskaisin.com delvaux.be val-saint-lambert.com Pixel Wine Bar Rue Ernest Allard 39-41 Allardstraat 1000 Brussels

Design in Motion From 11th April until 28th June 2010 Assab One, Milan

assab-one.org

01.

Kasin and Terre Recarens' installation for this year's Salone.

02.

The Hairy chair.

03.

Kaisin's celebrated K-Bench.

04.

The Pixel Bar, Brussels. Kaisin designed the interiors of this wine and food bar with 7500 pixels.

05.

The collection of glasses, vases and bowls Kaisin created for Val Saint Lambert, recently presented at Paris' Maison et Objets.

Creative thinking, qualitative printing Buroform Printing NV • Zandvoortstraat 6 • Industrie Noord • 2800 Mechelen • t. +32 15 288 999 info@buroform.be • www.buroform.be

Charles Kaisin charleskaisin.com

Buroform buroform.be

page 95

page 99

page 100

Dining in style

28 contemporary art fair 23-26 april 2010

preview & vernissage 22 april (by invitation only)

www.artbrussels.be

Ristorante italiano , part of The Rocco Forte Collection “Hotel Amigo” Rue de l'Amigo 1, 1000 BRUXELLES | Tel. : 02.547.47.15 | Fax : 02.547.47.67 www.ristorantebocconi.com | bocconirestaurant@roccofortecollection.com

Artbrussels artbrussels.be

Ristorante Bocconi ristorantebocconi.com

Bombay Sapphire bombaysapphire.com/inside

Before we leave you… Play The team

Dining in style

Ristorante italiano , part of The Rocco Forte Collection â&#x20AC;&#x153;Hotel Amigoâ&#x20AC;? Rue de l'Amigo 1, 1000 BRUXELLES | Tel. : 02.547.47.15 | Fax : 02.547.47.67 www.ristorantebocconi.com | bocconirestaurant@roccofortecollection.com

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