The Word Magazine - The Morning After Issue by The Word Magazine

Volume 03 — Issue 01

Neighbourhood Life + Global Style

Do not throw on the public domain.

Neighbourhood Legal drugs Life It’s apocalypse ! Style Fashion revolutionary Design After disaster Culture Unseen Terence Donovan + The Car Special

www.essentiel.be MATTHIAS SCHOENAERTS PHOTOGRAPHED BY MICHEL DE WINDT

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Publisher Nicholas Lewis Editor-in-chief Hettie Judah Design Facetofacedesign pleaseletmedesign Writers Nick Amies Alex Deforce Hettie Judah Rozan Jongstra Nicholas Lewis Pelin Turgut Karen Van Godtsenhoven Randa Wazen Photography/Illustration Benoît Banis Ulrike Biets Pierre-Philippe Duchâtelet Sarah Eechaut Vincent Ferrane Félicie Haymoz Mélisande Mc Burnie Ahmet Polat Inge Rylant Yassin Serghini Bruce Tsai Interns Virginie Van de Casteele (editorial) Maren Spriewald (photography) Veerle Frissen (photography)

The editor's letter

Back when we chose it for our January issue, The Morning After seemed like it was going to be one of our lighter themes – a chance for us all to get in touch with our inner idiots and hang out, hung-over, on the sofa all day watching re-runs of Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Early brainstorms for content turned into extended confession sessions full of tales of amnesia, tattoos, bad sex and excruciating SMS messages. Things became progressively darker as the weeks wore quickly down towards deadline. What had started as a jokey riposte to the upbeat self-improvement message put out by most magazines around this time of year took on a revolutionary - even apocalyptic - aspect which manifested itself in our end-of-days board game, and explorations of religious cults and the end of capitalism. Further afield we checked in with Istanbul’s alternative scene; it’s a face of the city unlikely to be promoted by the official City of Culture events of 2010, but whether in music, cinema, fashion or visual arts there’s amazing creative energy in the air. We say - bye bye Berlin – wake up to the ‘bul. We also took a trip back in time when we were allowed special access to the archives of British photographer Terence Donovan. Leafi ng through fi les of negatives from 50 years ago was a magical experience – these were photographs that he’d taken in his very early 20s, most of which had never been printed, let alone published. Donovan famously photographed some of the most beautiful women of the early 1960s in intimate, un-posed settings (including, most notoriously, model Celia Hamilton sitting on a lavatory). We wondered whether the modern world of camera phones and Facebook –which have turned our most unguarded moments into public property – has led to us moderating our behaviour, or whether we just don’t care any more? There was a nasty moment when it looked as though we wouldn’t get to put out the magazine at all as various members of the editorial team got trapped on the wrong sides of the channel on layout week, and had to make their way back through the chaos of Europe’s over-stressed transport network. All those apocalyptic jests suddenly seemed stark and real, as it became evident how little extra stress it required for a system we all took for granted to reach breaking point.

Hettie Judah

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The contents

01 The cover The Morning After issue 02 A word from our advertisers Essentiel 04 A word from our advertisers Giorgio Armani 06 The editor's letter Volume 3 – n° 01 07 A word from our advertisers Rado 08 The contents You're looking at it 09 A word from our advertisers Fiat 10 The contributors It's a Word's world 11 A word from our advertisers Bombay Sapphire

* Life

30 The institution

* Design

72 The system

Hail the coming dawn! 32 The turnaround A hit for a hit 34 The Word on The fi rst metro 38 The other Word on Apocalypse now(ish)

For what it's worth 76 The aftermath

40 The capital What happened next

12 The diary * Culture

Waking up in Istanbul The moodboard 13 The diary Belgium 15 A word from our advertisers Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen 16 The diary Belgium + United Kingdom 18 The diary France + Holland 19 A word from our advertisers Brussels Philharmonic 20 The diary Gigs to catch & Give aways 21 A word from our advertisers Affordable Art Fair

* Style

80 The shelf Studio stack 82 The pencil Your days are numbered 84 The vault

46 The showstoppers My other morning glory 50 The fashion Word Terence Donovan: Waking up the 60's 90 The eye The morning after breakfast The morning I died *

* Neighbourhood

22 The papers

The Morning After papers 27 A word from our advertisers Anima Eterna 28 The guide Friday's coming down with style 29 A word from our advertisers De Greef

* The Car Special

60 The cover The Car Special 61 The special papers Soundtrack for… + Love foam… 62 The project Imperial return 64 The tryout This is not a test 68 The special showstoppers Grease monkeys at the body shop

94 The stockist And others we love 95 A word from our advertisers The Word Magazine 96 The advertisers Round up 98 Before we leave you 99 A word from our advertisers Ristorante Bocconi 100 A word from our advertisers BMW

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The contributors

It’s a Word’s world

Pelin Turgut Writer

Pelin Turgut is based in Istanbul and writes on a variety of issues for publications like TIME and the Independent. Founder and co-director of !f istanbul, the region’s premier festival dedicated to cutting-edge independent cinema. For this issue she reports on Istanbul’s blossoming counter-culture. The photo is taken in Assos, her favourite place to wake up. ifi stanbul.com

Bruse Tsai Illustrator

Pages n° 40 — 45

Bruse Tsai got in touch with us via our website and asked us to check out his portfolio. When a story came in about rock n’roll rehab, it seemed a good fit, and we reckon the boy has done us proud. Based in The Netherlands, Bruce has recently participated in exhibitions in Utrecht and Rotterdam. brucetmc.com

Ahmet Polat Photographer

Ahmet Polat has a Dutch mother and Turkish father and has spent many years exploring the Turkish side of his heritage through photographs. The results will be shown in a solo show at FOAM in Amsterdam next autumn. In the mean time, he’s been photographing Istanbul as it wakes up for our pages. ahmetpolat.nl

Pages n° 32, 33

Pages n° 40 — 45

Delphine Dupont + plmd Graphic designers

To label Delphine, Pierre and Damien mere graphic designers would be to grossly undervalue their contribution to the magazine. Yes, they are The Word’s custodians of style, forcing upon us their purist ethos with regards to grid design, although they go much further – from brainstorming with us to expanding our pool of contributors. This isn’t a case of ‘Us’ (the editorial team) VS ‘them’ (the designers). No, no, no. They shape the ‘us’, plain and simple. facetofacedesign.com plmd.me Pages n° 01 — 100

The moodboard Events Arts Music Getaways

Neighbourhood

Belgium ( 01¤ 10 )

Anna Michalska & Julien Pierre @ Espace Blanche (Brussels), until 30th January 2010 – Working on the theme of ‘Fragility’ for the last two years, sculptor Anna Michalska and multimedia artist Julien Pierre take their soft and studious narrative further with this presentation of a video-sculpture installation, photographs and drawings.

espaceblanche.be

02.

Humanity is dead

Outlandish (a Belgian platform for young photography) has been busy putting on various photography initiatives since its launch three years ago, culminating in a residency-come-gallery-space at Recyclart, the backdrop to its latest showcase, Getting down to the nitty-gritty. The starting point of the exhibition is an imposing office building opposite Recyclart set to be torn down in a few months. Selecting the works of 15 photographers (each presenting up to three photographs), the collective plans to plaster each of the building’s windows with a photograph, back lighting them during peak hours to give passing commuters a reason to look up. Nifty. Getting Down to The Nitty-Gritty À Until 28th February 2010 ☞ Recylcart, Brussels recyclart.be

01.

French painter Bernard Buffet was a master of that very French social phenomenon, Misérabilisme. Loved by the French public yet loathed by the country’s higher echelons, he was one of the most divisive figures on the country’s contemporary art scene, with art snobs deriding him for his factory-like output. His paintings – angular, unpretentious and strong – revealed a genius capable of depicting a struggle with worrying simplicity, yet always with a smile on his face. Showing works from his last 10 years (Buffet killed himself in 1999), Sorry We’re Closed pays tribute to a lesser-known period in the artist’s life.

02.

Bernard Buffet À Until end of February 2010 ☞ Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels sorrywereclosed.com

04. * The show you can’t miss

Love me or hate me

South of the border

Frida Kahlo paints Mexico. Frida Kahlo is Mexico : troubled and imperfect, yet ever so passionate and painfully poetic. One of the country’s most well-known artists of the 20 th century, her tumultuous life ( an early car accident, life-long surgery, a tempestuous relationship with her contemporary Diego Rivera ) lent a certain feminine strength and somber yet distinctive beauty to her work ( and also culminated in a movie on the artist’s life ). Part of Bozar’s ¡Viva México! festival, the exhibition presents the largest private collection of Kahlo’s work in its entirety, including 19 paintings, six drawings and innumerable photographs.

Alain Séchas À Until 27th January 2010 ☞ Baronian Francey, Brussels baronianfrancey.com

03.

Fast and furious

Ten canvases, all acrylic paint on paper, all vertical. No technology, no sound and no gimmickry. Alain Séchas’ exhibition at Baronian Francey presents a much quieter body of work than the dislocated sculptures he has accustomed us to. Here, Séchas confronts the viewer with a colour-chaotic world: disorganised, kaleidoscopic and busy. Not normally known for being vague, the Frenchman makes a clear break from the past, exploring the effects a more rapid-fi re approach to art-making has on his narrative. Although you’ll sometimes be left wondering what exactly it is you are looking at, the sense of urgency distilled from this latest body of work serves to paint Séchas in another light.

Frida Kahlo y Su Mundo À Until 18th April 2010 ☞ Bozar, Brussels bozar.be

* The date to remember Affordable Art Fair @ Tour & Taxis (Brussels), from 5th to 8th February 2010 – In its second installment this year, the democratising art fair comes back to Brussels, continuing in its quest to bring art to the masses. Everything goes under the hammer for ¤ 5,000 or less, and we’re not talking lobby art nor exhibition posters. Keep an especially close look for its Young Talent tent.

affordableartfair.be

04. © Banco De México Fideicomiso Museos Diego Riveray

01.

05.

06.

The diary

05.

Art on paper

Gagarin is a publication meant as a platform for artists to publish their ‘special’ and otherwise unpublished written words. It was launched in 2000 as an artistically-led way to capture the heat of the moment, and document the thoughts of everyone from Marlene Dumas and John Baldessari (who lent the periodical its design ethos with his infamous “Talking about art simply is not art…” dictum) to Sophie Calle and Peter Downsborough. As such, Gagarin has evolved into a piece of art in its own right. For this exhibition at Smak, the whole Gagarin back catalogue is on show, and contextualised alongside further works from the museum’s permanent collection. Gagarin, The Artists in Their Own Words À Until 14th March 2010 ☞ S.M.A.K, Ghent smak.be

Berlin-based Gregor Hilderbrandt’s work seems locked in a time-capsule, the result of an apparent nostalgia for 60s culture. Taking inspiration for this exhibition’s title from a Portishead song (The Rip), the artist’s deliberately referential work uses magnetic tapes to gently (and intelligently) give new meaning to images already bestowed with a strong personal expression – essentially, injecting some ‘new’ with the ‘old’. Somewhat of an artistic-recycler, his ‘blast-to the-past’ narrative, confidently poetic discourse and mix-and-match approach make for a surprisingly clean, gentle and engaging body of work.

* The artwork you weren’t supposed to see

08. James Ensor

Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Specific Objects Without Specific Form À Until 25th April 2010 ☞ Wiels, Brussels wiels.org

* The new gallery to check out The Birth @ Studio Job Gallery, Begijnenvest 8 (Antwerp) – Internationally reputed yet ignored on a national level, Studio Job take matters into their own hands with the opening of their very own gallery space. For this first exhibition, the Belgo-Dutch design duo begin by showcasing their own work.

studiojob.be

08. Gregor Hildebrandt À Until 12th February 2010 ☞ Almine Rech Gallery, Brussels alminerech.com

@ Dexia Bank (Brussels), until end of February 2010 – Dexia has one of the largest art collections in Belgium, yet up until recently it was closed (and mostly unknown) to the public. As part of its Culture for All program, this is set to change with, for starters, an exhibition of the bank’s Ensor paintings (close to a 100), which is the largest private collection of the artist’s work.

dexia.be

Look, listen and learn

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was probably best known for his viewer-inclusive and some would say overly populist works (he once made a neat pile of candy which viewers could serve themselves from), although that would have been to miss his point. Exploring and questioning notions of fragility, authority and the passage of time, Gonzales-Torres’ work was radical in its approach, doing more for conceptualism and minimalism than anybody else. This major retrospective (which premiers at Wiels) fi nally makes good the artist’s contribution to contemporary art with a mix of rarely-beforeseen and better known works.

Mix tape

06.

07.

I’m after the gold, and after that the platinum

Jewellery designer and silversmith Siegfried De Buck just turned 60 and, to mark the occasion, is given a celebratory exhibition going back his entire career of 38 years. A prolific and passionate designer, his work was characterised by an artistic rather than commercial approach, one which relentlessly put story-telling at its heart. The exhibition is divided into three sections: an exhaustive overview of his work, ‘60 ring’ (which draws on De Buck’s life but also on that of a ring from the moment it is slipped onto ones fi nger) and a tribute paid to his oeuvre by his daughter, friends, colleagues and former students. Siegfried De Buck À Until 7th February 2010 ☞ Design Museum, Ghent design.museum.gent.be

Brussels. Palais des Beaux-Arts

MOSTLY MOZART Thursday 7th of January 2010. 20:00

W.A. Mozart. Overture Die Zauberﬂöte I. Stravinsky. Danses Concertantes W.A. Mozart. Concerto for piano n° 23 I. Stravinsky. L’Oiseau de feu Jean-Philippe Collard. piano Etienne Siebens. conductor Met steun van de Vlaamse gemeenschap

reservation & tickets www.symfonieorkest.be

The diary

09.

Botox world

Noisy, brash and colourful, Terry Rodgers doesn’t do things half-heartedly. Infused with a very Californian aesthetic of plasticity and overthe-topness, his work depicts staged scenes (though worryingly familiar ones) in which the protagonist (blown-up Californian dolls in pseudo-pornographic poses and their hulking oiled-up Kens) juggles a desire and excitement with an obvious shallowness and boredom. Evocative of the absurdity and ridicule prevalent in celebrity society, the nauseous sense of perfection in Rodgers’ work, and the detail with which is it produced, really is what draws us into his world, and gives it its edge.

United Kingdom 09.

11.

10.

Ergonomics – Real Design À Until 7th March 2010 ☞ Design Museum, London designmuseum.org

12.

* The show you can’t miss

11.

crowngallery.be

High meets low

Belgian artist Jean-Luc Moerman’s work sits between two worlds. On the one hand, its organic appearance, distinctive aesthetic and broad application (he applies his brushstroke and master cut to everything from paper and aluminum to mirrors and the traditional canvas) means he’s carved out a reputation as somewhat of an experimentalist, sitting at the cusp of a very contemporary blend of abstractionism. On the other hand, taking inspiration from the world of graffiti (visible in the urgency prevalent in his work) has lent his oeuvre somewhat of a hard-edged essence and given his reputation as much street credibility as Jay Z. Jean-Luc Moerman À Until 20th February 2010 ☞ Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels galerierodolphejanssen.com

Nicholas Byrne – A Catholic Episode À Until 7th March 2010 ☞ Vilma Gold, London vilmagold.com

12. * The gig to catch Hot chip

10.

Circular reference

Nicholas Byrne’s core interest lies in the purity, and impurity, of symbols and forms, where he draws most of his inspiration from. A graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Art, his paintings have something of a reassuring warmth and lighthearted touch to them, despite a kaleidoscopic composition and a narrative steeped in history. Slightly reminiscent of the meticulousness with which crop-circles seem to appear, Byrne’s aesthetic embraces contradictions: angular yet round-shaped, structured yet chaotic, brash yet gentle. A discovery we’ve only just recently made, and one we’ll be keeping a close eye on.

Stefan Serneels

Everyday thinking

Ergonomics – the science of applying human knowledge, design and engineering in the creation of better performing systems, products and services – is one of those underrated and underappreciated yet vital functions of design, its necessity only really evident when it is poorly executed or, worse, inexistent. Consider it the science of the everyday, pairing machine and man. This engaging exhibition – which draws on everything from the Sky TV remote and the CERN control room to the tape measure and complex transport systems – fi nally puts ergonomics’ contribution to design on an equal footing with, say, CAD technology.

Terry Rodgers À Until 27th February 2010 ☞ Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels aeroplastics.net

@ Crown Gallery (Brussels), until 30 th January 2010 – Best known (and loved) for its impressive stable of photographers, Crown Gallery widens its horizons by presenting the broody, hazy and modernist mixed media (he combines Indian ink and pencil) paintings of Stefan Serneels.

( 11 ¤ 16 )

@ Brixton Academy (London), on 26th February 2010 – Hot Chip’s highly anticipated follow-up album to the classic Made in the Dark, One Life Stand (set for release beginning of February 2010) has got everybody wondering where the pop-fantastic quintet will go next. Judging by the album’s first single, it’ll be business as usual.

o2academybrixton.co.uk

Neighbourhood

Zhang Enli paints the ordinary, the simple and the everyday. Your typical ‘lo-fi’ type of painter, his work is characterised by the human relevance injected into his subjects and the sophistication and depth this lends to his paintings. His oeuvre is, for the most part, informed by his transition from rural life to urban folly (he moved from Jilin, in the Northern part of China, to Shanghai 20 years ago), although this bares no resemblance whatsoever to the public-savvy and fashionable work his contemporaries might indulge in. For his fi rst solo exhibition in London, Zhang presents a new series of work.

Twiggy: A Life in Photographs À Until 21st March 2010 ☞ National Portrait Gallery, London npg.org.uk

Zhang Enli À Until 27th February 2010 ☞ Hauser & Wirth, London hauserwirth.com

* The show you can’t miss Sara Ramo, Movable Planes @ Photographers’ Gallery (London) until 31st January 2010 – Part installation, part performance and part photography, Spanish/ Brazilian artist Ramo’s work questions notions of order and disorder, revealing a narrative so innocent, pleasing and playful in its essence you’d be forgiven for thinking a 14 year old genius is trapped within her mind.

photonet.org.uk

14.

Massala mix

As the first ever survey of historic and contemporary photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the exhibition explores notions of cultural significance and modernity through the lens of photographers. Presenting up to 300 works from 70 artists, the show is divided into five sections: The Street (on social and street photography), Intimate Relationships (which questions family ideals and group dynamics), Architecture (on the cultural value of buildings and public spaces), Points of Transition (documenting political movements) and The Portrait (which deals with the evolution of self-representation). Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh À From 21st January to 11th April 2010 ☞ Whitechapel Gallery, London whitechapelgallery.org

16.

13.

The simple and the ordinary

14.

Design as art (finally)

With Design Real, the intellectually rigorous Serpentine Gallery has fi nally allowed design a tentative place in the high arts pantheon. As guest curator, Konstantin Grcic decided to present his selection of recent industrial products – from car spoilers to fi shing lures – virtually unlabelled and isolated in the clean white space. The central hall of the gallery has been turned into a research space where Kindle electronic books are provided for visitors to look up further information on the exhibits if they wish. The show has ruffled feathers in the design fraternity so its lasting impact seems guaranteed.

15.

Design Real À Until 7th February 2010 ☞ Serpentine Gallery, London serpentinegallery.org

* The last days to see

Before Kate

Twiggy needs no introduction. The fi rst ever super model, she was obsessively photographed by the world’s leading fashion photographers, culminating in an impressive and seemingly never-ending visual archive of the model. In celebration of her 60th birthday, London’s National Portrait Gallery pays tribute to her career with an exhibition showcasing some of the most defi ning and memorable moments in Twiggy’s career. Bringing together the works of Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Bert Stern and Norman Parkinson amongst others, the exhibition documents the way in which fashion photography has evolved over the years.

16.

Barbara Kruget @ Sprüeth Magers (London), until 23rd January 2010 – Cheeky, explicit and layered, Kruget’s work balances political statement, social commentary and an exploration of cultural identities through her mixed media works which use altered found images and texts either taken from the media or invented by the artist herself to reveal a poignant and thought-provoking vocabulary.

spruethmagers.net

13.

The diary

Holland

17.

Years ahead

Alexander Rodchenko, master of the Russian avant-garde, was an acclaimed painter, sculptor and graphic designer. Emblematic of his multi-talented persona, he also took up photography in the 1920s, going on to build up an impressive archive seen as a commentary on the social and political life of the Soviet Union. Constructing an entirely new and visionary visual vocabulary, his style was characterised by experimental camera angles, deep perspectives and detailed close-ups. This unique retrospective showcases over 200 vintage photographs, and cements once and for all Rodchenko’s reputation as a jack-of-all-trades. Alexander Rodchenko. Revolution in Photography À Until 17th March 2010 ☞ Foam, Amsterdam foam.nl

( 19 ¤ 20 )

France

19.

Jim Krantz À Until 30th January 2010 ☞ Colette, Paris colette.fr

18. * The date to remember

* The artwork to lookout for

@ Caszuidas (Amsterdam), throughout January 2010 – A 40 m2 ‘urban’ screen in the heart of Amsterdam’s Zuidas district – a mix of hightech office buildings and comfortable housing areas – provides the canvas for Lionni’s piquant, tongue-n-cheek and thought-provoking pictogram-based animations.

Maison et Objet

Re-animations by Pippo Lionni

@ Paris-Nord Villepinte, from 23rd to 27th January 2010 – Although they often can be overwhelming and more tiring than anything, fairs always provide a fast-paced, sure-shot way of getting a feel for what’s going and what’s not in an industry. And if being at the tip of design innovation is your thing, pencil this one into the agenda.

19.

maison-objet.com

caszuidas.nl

Joined at the hip

In 2007, Nicole Segers travelled to the Bosporus, the area that marks the border between Europe and Asia, and which cuts through Istanbul. Travelling the straits by ferry boat, she set out to capture life along the shores, life on water, and life in the city through a succession of encounters. Her camera hops from sea to mainland and back, contrasting the ephemeral and quiet nature of boat life with the busyness and aggressivity of city life. Sometimes enigmatic, her aesthetic belies somewhat of a pleasing voyeuristic essence, taking us, for instance, inside living rooms and to the hairdresser’s. Simple, yet insightful. Nicole Segers. Encounters Alongside the Bosporus À From 23rd January to 11th April 2010 ☞ Kunsthal, Rotterdam kunsthal.nl

20.

18.

Don dada

American photographer Jim Krantz’s talent as a photographer is diverse. One the one hand, he pulls-off productions of epic proportion, whilst on the other hand he manages intimate portraits infused with an uncanny sensitivity. Balancing an incredibly successful commercial career (his client list includes, amongst others, Nokia, Adam Kimmel and the United States Marines) with an internationally-acclaimed artistic one, Krantz recently completed a documentary on Chernobyl’s Forbidden Zone, capturing its condemned inhabitants. On show for the fi rst time at Colette, expect his customary blend of poignant realism and poetic narrative.

17.

( 17 ¤18 )

20.

One for the nation

No one beats the French when it comes to championing national industries and, in VIA’s case, it is the country’s design and interiors sectors which are given a nod (in the shape of much-needed fi nancing and a platform to showcase the industries’ work). In celebration of its 30 years of nurturing and protecting the design class, VIA (which literally stands for the Organisation for the Valorisation of Innovation in Furnishing) showcases 40 prototypes it somehow or the other helped get to market. You therefore will see early works by the likes of Philippe Starck, the Bouroullec brothers and Matthieu Lehanneur. VIA. Design. 3.0 (30 years of furniture design) À Until 1st December 2010 ☞ Centre Pompidou, Paris centrepompidou.fr

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

Prix de Rome: Debussy conductor Hervé Niquet, with Guylaine Girard, soprano / Alain Buet, baritone / Bernard Richter, tenor 26/01/2010: FLAGEY – 27/01/2010: SCHOUWBURG KORTRIJK 28/01/2010: CONCERTGEBOUW BRUGGE

Tsjaikovski 5 conductor Michel Tabachnik, with Katia Skanavi, piano 25/02/2010: ELISABETHZAAL ANTWERPEN – 26/02/1010: FLAGEY 27/02/2010: DE DOELEN ROTTERDAM WIN FREE TICKETS!

l piece to your favourite classica Send an e-mail with u could be harmonic.be, and yo tickets@brusselsphil concert ticket! the winner of a free

Brussels Philharmonic – het Vlaams Radio Orkest is een instelling van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap.

www.brusselsphilharmonic.be

Vlaams Omroeporkest en Kamerkoor vzw | Eugène Flageyplein 18 B-1050 Brussel | T +32 2 627 11 60 | info@brusselsphilharmonic.be

The diary

Gigs to catch, things to do Wolfmother

Wave Machines

on 24th January 2010 @ Cirque Royal/ Koninklijk Circus (Brussels)

on 26th January 2010 @ Botanique (Brussels)

Miss Kittin & Ivan Smagghe

Menahan Street Band & Lee Fields

on 30 th January 2010 @ Petrol (Antwerp)

botanique.be

petrolclub.be

on 13th February 2010 @ Het Depot (Leuven)

botanique.be — A banging remix by Mstrkrft for Kitsuné Maison 2 is really the only reason we love these straight-up Australian hardrockers. Think Led Zep with a Mike Tyson-esque punch.

Delphic

Vampire Weekend

on 14th February 2010 @ Botanique (Brussels)

on 22nd February 2010 @ L’Ancienne Belgique(Brussels)

botanique.be

abconcerts.be

— Darlings of the electro hipster set, Delphic make the kind of melodic electro ballads you’d expect Chloe Sevigny to listen to whilst walking naked in a field. Dreamy, sexy and contagious.

— One of our favourite albums of 2009, New Yorkers Vampire Weekend’s jump-up-jumpdown type of folk is infectious, delicious and at times even delirious.

hetdepot.be — Darlings of the summer airwaves with their catchy hit I Go, I Go, I Go, Wave Machine’s debut is a cheerful and melodic press, somewhere in between Chateau Rouge and Fujiya & Miyagi.

Play London (Brixton Academy) on 21st January 2010

Play Amsterdam (Paradiso) on 25th January 2010

o2academybrixton. co.uk

paradiso.nl

Play Paris ( Le Bataclan) on 25th January 2010

myspace.com/ bataclanparis

— Doyenne of the electroclash movement, Miss Kittin is its most inspiring and talented figure, blending her incestuous vocals with naughty lyrics and turbo-speed productions. Play Paris (Le Bataclan) on 29th January 2010

myspace.com/ bataclanparis Play London (Fabric) on 7th February 2010

fabriclondon.com Play Frankfurt (Cocoon Club) on 26th February 2010

cocoonclub.net

— These guys play a blend of funk-soul probably in the same way Roy Ayers likes to listen to it, the Poets of Rhythm play it and Sharon Jones lives it. Play Paris (New Morning) on 4th February 2010

newmorning.com Play London (Blomsburry Ballroom) on 6th February 2010

myspace.com/ dunhamrecords Play Amsterdam (Paradisio) on 12th February 2010

Play Paris (Nouveau Casino) on 16th February 2010

Play London (Brixton cademy) on 16th February 2010

o2academybrixton. co.uk

nouveaucasino.net Play Amsterdam (Paradisio) on 17th February 2010

Play Amsterdam (Paradiso) on 24th February 2010

paradiso.nl

paradiso.nl Play London (Cargo) on 22nd February 2010

Play Paris (Olympia) on 25th February 2010

olympiahall.com

cargo-london.com

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Give aways TWO PAIRS OF TICKETS TO

TWO PAIRS OF TICKETS TO

WAVE MACHINES on 26th January 2010 @ Botanique (Brussels)

BALOJI on 20th February 2010 @ L’ Ancienne Belgique (Brussels)

THREE PAIRS OF TICKETS TO

TWO PAIRS OF TICKETS TO

MENAHAN STREET BAND & LEE FIELDS on 13th February 2010 @ Het Depot (Leuven)

HINDI ZAHRA on 22nd February 2010 @ L’ Ancienne Belgique (Brussels)

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.

, t e r l a i y m r S tempora . con ntagious is co

Following success in London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Sydney and Melbourne, The Affordable Art Fair comes back in Brussels in the prestigious venue of Tour & Taxis. For its 2nd edition, 80 selected galleries exhibit the best of international contemporary art in a fun and relaxed atmosphere: at AAF, buying art becomes a pleasure for everybody.

Opening hours Friday (1) Saturday Sunday Monday (2) (1) (2)

February 5 February 6 February 7 February 8

Tickets 11am - 10pm 11am - 7pm 11am - 7pm 11am - 5pm

€ 13 (free under 18)

Friday night for the benefit of Belgian Kids Fund • www.belgiankidsfund.be Pink Monday for the benefit of Pink Ribbon • www.sanoma-magazines.be

Affordable Art Fair Brussels Buy contemporary art €100 í €5000 5 - 8 February 2010 Tour & Taxis - Brussels www.affordableartfair.be

The papers Water cooler Music Disruptive We love Online Getaways Consume Lifestyle

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Is there any better soundtrack to Sunday Mornings than Sunday Morning ? When was it that we started rolling out of bed and straight into the chair in front of the computer to check what we were up to last night ? And why can we remember so little about what happened ? If we feel like a mess after one party, we wonder what Paris looks like after fashion week. What happens to all the junk after the show is over ? Writers Alex Deforce, Rozan Jongstra, Hettie Judah & Karen Van Godtsenhoven

Neighbourhood

Ever since Beck kicked off the Record Club sessions by covering The Velvet Underground & Nico, we’ve been wondering if there really is any better tune to listen to on a Sunday morning than Sunday Morning. Suggestions have been knocking around the Word office (Bon Iver seem to be a favourite), but we decided that, this being a serious matter, we should seek professional advice. So we asked some of our favourite radio DJs for a Sunday morning playlist. Leftoo got us trawling through MySpace when he chose Donn T’s Look At. “It’s an unreleased uptempo track with ?uestlove's sister singing, with production by Simbad. I'm always singing to it, perfect!”. Julien Mourlon of Laid Back Radio was appropriately enough, a little more laid back, choosing Sade’s The Sweetest Taboo; if he has time he’ll listen to “the whole Promise album while chilling in bed.” OndaSonora went for Weldone Irvine’s We Gettin' Down as the perfect start to the day.

Watch out, the world’s behind you

Johan de Smedt of FM Brussel came over all nostalgic. “It’s probably not very original but I love Nina Hagen’s Sonntagmorgen – like some beaming punk mum cooking you a large brunch,” although he has a hard time choosing between that and another Nina, Ms Simone, singing Here Comes The Sun – “possibly with an old fashioned coffee machine prattling in the background.”

For Gill Mills of NME Radio and iCast, it depends on what kind of Sunday morning she’s having. “If I’ve been out the night before and am still vibing it'd be About That Dress by the Maccabees at the moment. Otherwise it'd be the whole of the Chillout album by KLF.” (HJ)

Porter ( formerly known as The Hoar’s Nest ; the area was once famous for its brothels ), which still opens at 6.30 am. Over in Brussels, the Place du Jeu de Balle has two neighbouring establishments : La Brocante and Le Clef D’Or ( pictured ) both of which open at 5am and close for business in the late afternoon.

We find there’s one key rule when propping up the bar, market-side ; if you can possibly avoid visiting the toilets, it’s probably for the best. Wouldn’t want to give yourself any nasty shocks, now, would you ? Not in your condition. (HJ)

There are many reasons why one might want a beer at 7am. You could be at the end of a long night shift and fancy a swift one before slipping off to bed. You might have started work REALLY early in the morning and decided that it was time to let the day start getting a little easier. You could be on your way to work on a construction site and perhaps decided to find out first-hand why it was such a bad idea to operate heavy machinery after half a bottle of grappa. Absolutely no reason at all for people to assume that you’re a booze-hound still chasing the tail of a shaggy night out. People with experience of such things will tell you that the easiest way to find somewhere to raise a judgement-free dawn-time jar, your best bet is to head to the nearest market. Our London correspondents describe the Cock Tavern in the basement of Smithfield meat market as “a grungy place for meat packers and butchers finishing their night shifts to have a fried breakfast and pint of Guinness.” Borough Market in SE1 offers the slightly more salubrious Market

Is there ever a wrong time?

The papers

ˆ “ With the appearance – for the first time – of new synthetic cannabinoids, it is anticipated that the concept of ‘designer drugs’ will change significantly ” ˇ

You’ll fi nd these herbal mixtures in smartshops and on the internet, sold under brands such as Space, Scope, Relax and Bull Titan. Although advertised as an exotic incense blend and not for human consumption, when smoked, this group of products – referred to collectively as Spice – have been reported to have effects similar to cannabis. Although they’ve been circulating over the internet since 2006, it took the authorities years to be able to get a grip on the phenomenon, with the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction publishing its report ‘Understanding the Spice phenomenon’ only last November. The reason for the vagueness is not only the newness of the drugs, or the misleading information on the packages. The question international authorities are struggling with is the definition of the substances, and more specifically, which substances to take legal actions against. Known as synthetic cannabinoids this large family of chemical structures is similar in function to THC, (Tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive substance in cannabis), binding the same receptors in the brain and the organs. The effects such structures have on the human body after they have been smoked are still largely un-researched. The labels on the colourful Spice packages list several potentially psychoactive plants among the ingredients with exotic names such as Sacred Lotus, Wild Dagga, Lion's Tail and Indian Warrior. Some are traditionally known as marijuana substitutes, so the effects of smoking them are expected to be similar. Scientists know little about these plants, beyond the psychoactive properties of Indian Warrior and Lion's Tail. None of the above synthetic cannabinoids are internationally controlled as drugs and there is no information on any of them having been authorised as a medicinal product in the European Union. Most important, there is no officially published safety data and almost nothing is known about their effect on humans. The manufacturing process of Spice is highly complex ; scientific researchers have noted the professionalism involved in its production. Technically speaking, it is easier to start a crystal meth lab, than to produce Spice, since the chemistry behind it is highly specialised, and resources and knowledge about the ingredients are relatively hard to fi nd.

What’s behind that spicy high ?

With the appearance – for the first time – of new synthetic cannabinoids, it is anticipated that the concept of ‘designer drugs’ will change significantly. Up until now, this was a field almost exclusively linked to the large series of compounds featuring phenethylamine and tryptamine. Meanwhile, information about the Spice phenomenon is highly confusing. Hungarian authorities noted that the products are marketed as coming from an eco-farm, without any chemical substances, while the Dutch noted that websites selling the products, even though they had a .nl domain, excluded the country from delivery, so surprisingly enough and much against popular belief, no consumption of Spice products was reported in The Netherlands. Several countries have now banned, or are

in the process of banning, the synthetic cannabinoids found in Spice and related products. However, when Germany outlawed the products in January 2009, a new product appeared on the market within four weeks, showing that the producers are well aware of the legal framework in which they're operating, with new chemical structures selected and synthesised in advance, in anticipation of new bans. (AD)

Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/ the-unprintables-spice for our very own Word Spice massala.

Neighbourhood

ˆ “ The ability to be whoever we want to be might even cause us to lose sight of who we really are ”

Good morning, you’ve been tagged Ever woken up to a gazillion notifications of having been tagged on Facebook after a night of drunken stupor? Have you become paranoid, hiding from cameras, checking your friends’ status updates? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. After a number of horror stories about employees who got fi red because of drunken pictures available to their boss, a man who killed his ex-wife because she changed her status back to ‘single’ after the divorce, and the Belgian students whose exams were declared invalid because they cheated via wall-to-wall messages, we have learned the hard way that it's important to customise our privacy settings, and avoid embarrassing morning-after pictures. In an open letter, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, recently explained that

Facebook’s privacy settings will change because too many personal details are available to overcrowded networks. It’s a sign of the times when a company whose business model is based on selling personal information, warns its users to be more careful. Now that more than one in 20 people on the planet are on Facebook, privacy issues will only continue to rise. But although we sometimes share things we shouldn’t, most of our online behaviour and profi ling activities idealise who we are in real life, as web sociologists Danah Boyd and Jacob Van Kokswijk claim, “the online identity is in most cases embellished to make the physical person appear more intelligent, sexier, skinnier or bolder.” The issue of ‘becoming someone else’ and improving your behaviour when you know you’re being watched is older than social networks. In the 1950s, Goffman’s groundbreaking sociology work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life described the social self, in which your identity is based on your reactions to and interactions with others. It's only today that we clearly see this taking place in the online world, where social interaction is the basic building block of who you are, and your online profi le is a projection of who you want to be in the eyes of your hundreds or thousands of ‘friends’. The ability to be whoever we want to

be, and the play with different identities might even cause us to lose sight of who we really are, because we become over-socialised. Josh Harris, ‘the greatest internet pioneer you never heard of’, is the living proof of the statement that the loss of privacy leads to the loss of individuality. He chose to go public with his life more than 10 years ago, inviting his audience via webcam to take part in his life by asking questions and commenting. After losing his girlfriend and business, he ended up in a hut in Africa. So much for the advantages of the ‘participative web’. His experiments with a group of artists living in an undergound squat have recently been released as the film 'We live in Public’, showing the downfall of most of the inhabitants by stripping them away of all privacy. Doom scenarios in the vein of 1984, and tales of Facebook being sponsored by the CIA might be an exaggeration, but we need to take into account the reality of the loss of privacy, and learn how to deal with it. As Zuckerberg says; “the best way for you to fi nd the right settings is to read through all your options and customise them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you're sharing with online.” (KVG)

The papers

ˆ “ It seems to be a matter of waiting for the fashionably late fashion masses to catch up with the world of Earth Summits, Green politics and Kyoto Protocols ”

Catwalk trash Later this month we’ll be kicking off on another edition of that great celebration of frivolity and excess: Paris fashion week. Teams are already at work creating fantastical backdrops for the shows: and these sets will have cost a lot more money, material and energy than we like to think about. Last spring Alexander McQueen caused a sensation by dressing his catwalk with piles of trashed décor from his previous sets and sending models out in Philip Treacy hats made of household junk. It was an attention-grabbing move – and more a comment on fashion’s tendency to recycle old ideas than an environmental statement - but it got us thinking. Away from the cameras, what really happens to these elaborate sets when the models have left the runway and the crowds have moved onto the next spectacle? Green gestures have been made by designers such as Anya Hindmarch and Stella McCartney, (the later claiming that her organisation is now carbon neutral), that are leading a change in the industry’s attitude towards green issues. It seems

to be a matter of waiting for the ripple effect to take place, and for the fashionably late fashion masses to catch up with the world of Earth Summits, Green politics and Kyoto Protocols. According to Etienne Russo, founder of the mode-centric events company Villa Eugénie, ecological awareness will definitely be on-trend this season. “Recycling the scenery was a big issue for H&M during their recent launch party for the Sonia Rykiel collection,” he explains. “They wanted to make sure nothing would be carelessly thrown away, so we sorted all material into containers for recycling and also collaborated with a company that reuses these sets for other kinds of shows.” Responsible for catwalk shows for clients including Dries Van Noten, Chanel and Céline, Russo can tell that more and more fashion houses are starting to question the environmental impact of their events, trying to incorporate ecological solutions into the concept of their shows. Though some might react faster (and care more) than others, it’s clear that a virtuous circle has started to come into play. When creating the set for a fashion show, Russo claims that Villa Eugénie also attempts to use recycled materials as often as possible, and tries to limit waste

production. “We’re currently working on a show where the main scenery will be a pine forest. We took great care in fi nding trees that have grown to maturity, which were already destined for production. After the show, instead of just throwing the trees away, they will go back to the production cycle as was originally intended. To top it off, the designer we are creating the set for will plant new trees.” People are becoming more and more aware that even small acts of ‘greenness’ can help; Russo refers to the company’s Christmas policy: for the last three years, the budget normally allotted to end-of-year-gifts has been donated to an environmental, educational or community charity in the name of their clients and partners. He cites the Bali Teak Farm, which battles deforestation, as a recent recipient. “The fashion world can have a big impact on raising awareness for an issue – just think about how it supports the cancer and AIDS campaigns,” he enthuses. “There’s still a long way to go, but nevertheless, it’s an encouraging sight to see.” (RJ)

Anima Eterna Brugge is a unique cooperative of passionate musicians from Europe, Australia, Asia and the US founded by ?dh kVc >bbZghZZa# In the early years, this project orchestra became widely known for its ]^hidg^XVa eZg[dgbVcXZ egVXi^XZ. Enthusiastic praise from music-lovers has led to packed concert halls, and in 2003 Anima Eterna was appointed â&#x20AC;&#x153;orchestra in residenceâ&#x20AC;? at the 8dcXZgi\ZWdjl 7gj\\Z. No matter how different their training or roots are, the musicians have found one another in an ^YZVa: studying, questioning and performing music from 1600 to 1950 on the ^chigjbZcih that inspired the composers. To cover this period, one easily needs ďŹ ve different stringed instruments and ďŹ fteen wind instruments.

R E L E A S E J A NUA RY 2 010 SY M P H O N I E FA N TA S T I Q U E

BBC Music Magazine wrote about Animaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ravel cd (2006) :

â&#x20AC;&#x153;On this outstanding disc Ravelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;left-handâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; concerto sounds as never before when played on a 1905 Erard piano, more so as the orchestral winds and strings respect the norms of Ravelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own time (as distant to us today as was Mozart from Tchaikovsky!) both in terms of their construction and performance technique. This is an astonishing disc by any standards.â&#x20AC;?

JE8DB>C< 8DC8:GIH >C 7GJHH:AH XdegdYjXi^dc 7DO6G BJH>8 ;aV\Zn 05.02.2010 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 20h15 ;aV\Zn, Schubert & Chopin, soloist : Pascal Amoyel 13.03.2010 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 20h15 ;aV\Zn, Dukas, Franck & Ravel, soloists: Thomas Bauer and Sergei Istomin

www.animaeterna.be

The guide

Disruptive Consume Lifestyle Play

Friday’s coming down with style Love the binge but can’t handle the comedown? Coast present their Guide to the perfect “day after” via their new brand proposal: Friday. In the future, brands will be all about service and care, and this too is the essence of Friday, a new service that turns hangovers into an unforgettable and almost delightful brand experience.

1. Friday Recovery Lounge Mono - capsule hotel rooms with Corian flooring for easier cleaning and soundproofed walls for guaranteed recovery privacy. 2. Friday professional staff From psychologists to personal assistants, the Friday staff combines youth and intelligence; no matter how verbally abusive you become, we’ll always treat you as a privileged customer. 3. Friday Recovery airlines Short haul private airline service with access to discreet airports in the world’s greatest party cities. Recovery service available in-flight for return flights to Monday worklife.

Friday is all about forward planning, hospitality, nurturing, bespoke security and companionship, assisted recovery and specialised care and clean-up that deals with the worst after-effects of a heavy night out on the town. Friday is a global service/ product provider in the market of hangover recovery: from Friday recovery Hotels and lounges located in city centers in Brussels, Antwerp, London, New York and Paris, to Friday recovery water (boosted with multivitamins and electrolytes), Friday staff include van recovery drivers, medical and care assistants, restraint and security personnel, specialised hygiene attendants, psychological counselors, divorce lawyers, priests and personal advisers. Displayed right are the proposed brand identity and selected Friday products. Want to know more about Friday? Visit the coast blog and discover a world of products and services.

Friday, flying with care...

4. FridayNoon, recovery tablets Rehydration salts, Caffeine concentrated and highly powered Ibuprofen tablets known as “the night after” pill. 5. Friday personal card services Two versions are available : Silver (Standard) and Black (VIP). Black status permits Friday staff full access to the member’s personal data and allows them to adjust for unforeseen eventualities of the night before. 6. Adverts A nationwide campaign.

coastdesign.be/ transmission/friday © coast 2009

Thank god it's friday. Friday Recovery Services

Rue au Beurre 24-26 I 1000 BRUXELLES I TĂŠl : +32 2 511 95 98 I Fax : +32 2 511 47 48 I www.degreef1848.be I info@degreef1848.be

The institution Exclusive Fashion We love Lifestyle

Hail the coming dawn ! — His latest collection is inspired by the workers’ uniforms of Communist China and he worries that we’re living in an era of cultural poverty and moral violence. After 10 years pushing the crocodile at Lacoste, designer Christophe Lemaire is ripe for revolution. Writer Hettie Judah

For us, this story started with a shirt – subtle, yet richly detailed with a fabric that was complex without being wantonly luxurious. You could tell that it would wear well, softening with age and underpinning your wardrobe, but always holding its slightly off-kilter edge. It felt like a piece made for a real person, with the expectation that it will be worn for decades. We wanted to talk to the man who designed it. Christophe Lemaire (pictured above) resurrected his own label in 2007, seven years into his tenure as artistic director at Lacoste, and one of his aims in doing so was to go back to this kind of intimacy in creating fashion. “The fashion industry is full of brilliant designers who never meet their clients,” he explains. “What drives us here is to create a community.” His shop in the Marais district of Paris reflects this ethos;

Photography Vincent Ferrane

there’s a couch in place of a cash desk, and Christophe’s favourite magazines and CDs are stashed around the place as if it was an extension of his home. Housing his small, mineraltoned collection together with favourite pieces from Lacoste, the overwhelming atmosphere is of aged softness: the fabrics invite you to touch, the designs to wrap yourself and be enveloped. So far, Christophe has had his collections manufactured in Japan, and the attention to detail shows. “For the suiting fabric we worked with a company called Imperial Original who opened their archive and found wonderful swatches of fabric from the 60s, 70s and 80s that they reproduced for us,” Christophe enthuses. “That’s the kind of thing that makes my work exciting.” The inspiration for Christophe’s collections comes from all over, geographically - from

Afghanistan to the United States - but the baseline is always the notion of well-made workwear. He seems fascinated by the combination of the extraordinary and the everyday, the way that a material like cotton can be both very democratic and very noble. Also how people with very limited wardrobes make clothes their own. For this new collection he was inspired by Chung Kuo, Cina a documentary about Communist China, made by Michelangelo Antonioni in 1972. “There’s something about those communist uniforms; very simple and sober, but with a certain quality; the way they dressed men and women is very beautiful,” Christophe explains. “I think the women looked very feminine and stylish.”

ˆ There’s something about those communist uniforms ; very simple and sober, but with a certain quality ; the way they dressed men and women is very beautiful ˇ Prior to signing up as creative director of Lacoste in 2000, Christophe assisted in a number of grand Couture houses (most notably Lacroix) before launching his own streetwear and music-inflected label back in 1990. Music has been a constant influence on his work: he

Life

DJ’d until recently: and his seasonal collections include a regular set of 4 T-Shirts with fresh graphics that pay tribute to cult bands with the most insider-ish of references. The 1970s Kraut-Rock heroes CAN were venerated last season with designs that fl ashed obscure early concerts and nine minute album tracks as well as their most recognisable album Ege Bamyasi. Christophe is a bona-fide music nerd; one could never accuse him of rock posturing; so doesn’t he feel uneasy about pushing the musical influence in his work when popular music’s stylistic back catalogue has been so grotesquely bastardised and plundered that even kids labels now offer collections based on the ‘London Indie rock style’? “I think it’s the end of a cycle – the style movements and tribes and references have been so remixed by media and business and advertising that even the youth don’t believe in that anymore,” he shakes his head. “It’s sad”.

ˆ More and more, the mainstream image of women is that you had to look like a prostitute to look cool ; it’s cheap, it’s not even glamorous ˇ Disenchantment with the hyper packaged, hyper comodified new musical landscape is, for Christophe, only the tip of an iceberg of frustration with culture as it is currently consumed (he even slams smug gallery visitors for their uptake of culture as self-improvement). “Society is based on lies ; we are in a world of advertising – marketing and the most aggressive aspect of it – how can the younger generation grow up in a world of lies and fakery and moral violence ?” he laments, at one point. It’s a dramatic field of discussion for a Paris clothes shop on a Monday morning, but having for many years denigrated his chosen metier as “superficial”, Christophe now sees fashion as a component part of the greater cultural wealth. The underlying cultural forces of disconnect that have provoked a suicide boom among low-level French workers, and have put youth culture through the mill of mass production have also promoted an increasingly regressive – and undignified- fashion image for women. “More and more, the mainstream image of women is that you had to look like a prostitute to look cool ; it’s cheap, it’s not even glamorous.” Christophe believes his power as a designer can “make people feel better, less stupid, more dignified, more themselves.” There has been a received wisdom in the luxury market in recent years that men favour timeless quality, whereas women want something on-trend, hence

disposable. Christophe’s men and women’s collections both receive the same obsessive attention to detail, and not only relate to one another in the styling, but cross over into one another. It’s androgyny, but not in the skinny teen New York sense: this is more a nod back to the emancipation-wear of the late 70s, early 80s – volumes of fabric that get pulled in and twisted and folded to create a silhouette around the body, rather than dictating a shape. “For me, this was the golden age of style, together with the 1920s,” he explains. “It was a proposition of freedom, clothes that you could move in and walk in; very progressive.” His conversation is sprinkled with words like purity and honesty – the vocabulary of divine revelation, or at the very least, a man who has engaged in some serious soul searching. It’s hard not to look behind all this at his relationship with Lacoste, for whom he will have been working for a decade this year. After

creating a more elegant and sophisticated aesthetic for the brand, a change in management two years ago, has clearly frustrated Christophe in his attempts to push his vision for Lacoste further. “On the one hand I feel motivated to go on trying to make the brand what it should be – a unique positioning of casual style and relaxed elegance – I want to push the idea and fi nish the job. But in a big company I depend on how the shareholders see things.” He’s determined not to compromise his vision too far, and certainly hints at thoughts of quitting the crocodile altogether. For the time being, however, he’s driving out his frustration through the uncompromising progressive aesthetic of his own collection. Grab him now, while he’s still righteous. Christophe Lemaire 28 Rue du Poitou, 75003 Paris

christophelemaire.com

The turnaround Music Water cooler Lifestyle

A hit for a hit — Musical creativity and drug addiction are dark but inevitable bedfellows, but the skewed stimulation of getting trashed long-term tends to end in either death or dry out. So what happens to twisted talents when they try to go straight ? Writer Randa Wazen

Intoxication; my inspiration

Alongside love and death, drugs have inspired some of modern music’s greatest moments. The Velvet Underground’s I’m Waiting for the Man depicts a situation anyone who’s ever dealt with a punctuality challenged dealer is well familiar with, and the subject of Heroin speaks for itself. Lou Reed, who penned both tracks, is now clean and writes albums about morality whilst former bandmate John Cale admits that cocaine and alcohol disrupted his work and he lost his sense of humour. Nowadays, the 67 year old has kicked drugs and booze completely and works out in the gym. Some of the 1960s most iconic anthems pay tribute to psychedelic substances, from Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit, through the Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds to Jimmy’ Hendrix’s timeless guitar classic Purple Haze. Syd Barrett paid tribute to Albert Hofmann, who was the fi rst to synthesise LSD in Pink Floyd’s Bike

Illustrations Bruce Tsai

ˆ Jason Pierce never made his drug habit a secret; a disc by his former band Spacemen 3 was titled Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To ˇ – a reference to the chemist’s ride back home after having ingested the substance for the fi rst time as he was tripping without knowing it. Spiritualized’s frontman Jason Pierce never made his drug habit a secret ; a disc by his former

band Spacemen 3 was titled Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To, and a special edition of Spiritualized’s 1997 album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space was packaged to resemble a prescription pills box, complete with dosage indications. Get clean, get rich

Sobering up has helped some bands make the leap from cult cool to stadium rock star status. Indie darlings Kings of Leon had been around for a decade before finding a massive mainstream following a few years ago. The Followill tribe, composed of brothers Caleb, Nathan, Jared and cousin Matthew, confessed to a heavy cocaine addiction – to the point where some of them wore lipstick in an attempt to cover it up. They kicked their habit, then recorded their third album Because of the Times with a new polished sound that had mass appeal. The following

Life

record Only by the Night was a worldwide hit ( their tunes were on such heavy rotation last year that if we hear Sex on Fire one more time, our heads might explode ). Under The Bridge, The Red Hot Chili Peppers most famous single, was an account of Anthony Kiedis’ drug days that started when he was barely 12. Kiedis cleaned up just in time for the album Californication, which also saw the return of John Frusciante – fi nally free from a lengthy heroin addiction that had him inches away from his deathbed. The album marked a clear shift in the band’s musical style and was their most commercially successful to date. Courtney Love’s tabloid fame almost eclipsed the three critically acclaimed albums she released with her band Hole. Her fi rst solo album came out while she was still undergoing rehab and was a major flop. Back in 2005, during three months in a lock down rehabilitation clinic, she wrote eight songs later christened The Rehab Tapes. Re-recorded with various celebrity friends the album, now titled Nobody’s Daughter, has been mooted for release since 2007 but due to various technical problems looks likely only to appear this year. Several autobiographical tracks like How Dirty Girls Get Clean and The Depths of My Despair were leaked to considerable enthusiasm, and it still looks like this could be Love’s best shot at reclaiming her reputation. Macrobiotic shhhhhtimulation

The 80s synthpop duo Soft Cell came back in 2002 after an 18-year hiatus with the album Cruelty without Beauty. Marc Almond and David Ball’s earlier albums seemed directly influenced by the drugs they were taking at the time. Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret was their MDMA album, The Art of Falling Apart was drenched in an acid vibe and This Last Night in Sodom can qualify as their amphetamine masterpiece. When asked what his drug of choice for the fourth opus was, Almond simply replied “Evian water and macrobiotic food”. Initially

terrified of losing his creativity without being under the influence, the singer considers his sober years to be the most fruitful period of his life. After a lifetime spent exploring the limits of his own sanity ( including phases of such darkness that he burnt down his own recoding studio ) the godfather of dub, Lee “Scratch” Perry, recently quit weed at the age of 70. He explained in an interview that he wanted to fi nd out if “it was the smoke making the music or Lee Perry making the music. I found out it was me and that I don't need to smoke.”

ˆ When asked what his drug of choice for the fourth opus was, Almond simply replied Evian water and macrobiotic food ˇ Trent Reznor suffered from serious writer’s block while battling a drug and alcohol addiction following his second album, ominously titled The Downward Spiral. Trent went to rehab, felt super, and shared it with the whole world on With Teeth. Mind altering substances were always a major no-no for Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye. He famously sang “I’ve got better things to do than sit around and fuck my head, hang out with the living dead” in Minor Threat’s 1981 song Straight Edge. The song spawned the movement of the same name whose enthusiasts believe in a life of abstinence and sobriety. All creativity aside, drugs can seriously mess up another key factor : technique. Slash of Guns n Roses confessed that he’s one hell of a better guitar player since he’s been sober. Some assets on the other hand can never be retrieved. Take Whitney Houston, whose addiction to

cocaine and marijuana saw her fade away from the spotlight and caused irreversible damage to her vocal cords. Houston’s long awaited comeback album I Look to You just didn’t have that old Whitney sound. Clean and a little too serene

While certain accounts of drug days and rehab can be very deep and moving, others just fall into cliché, such as ex-Suede frontman Brett Anderson’s eponymous post-rehab solo album. Iggy Pop, once famous for his onstage antics and lyrics about beating his brain with liquor and drugs, has now become a health freak, doing tai chi every morning and releasing softspoken jazz records. Mick Jagger, who gave up drinking, drugs and partying in the early 00’s, released his fourth solo effort Goddess in the Doorway in 2001. Despite critical praise, the audience did not seem too receptive ; neither was fellow Rolling Stone Keith Richards, who dubbed it “Dogshit in the Doorway”. Much has changed in the studio environment too. While some epic recording sessions in the 60s turned into drugs and alcohol fuelled fests of chaos, these days they’re more likely to be dealt with in a fast, sterile, and businesslike fashion. If the new modus operandi hasn’t affected the actual quality of the music, it sure has killed most of the juicy stories and legendary myths surrounding it. The rehab tendency has also affected the romanticised image of the tormented artist. For where there is addiction, there usually is pain and suffering – which when creatively expressed, has been the source for much art – something the audiences feed off voraciously. As Jagger wisely put it, “who wants to listen to a load of songs about `I'm rich and happy' ” ? But then again, who wants to see their idols die choking on their own vomit ? Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/ the-unprintables-rehab for rehab rock videos.

The Word on

Arts Underground Getaways Lifestyle

The first metro â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Ghosts tremble in the grey dawn, half conscious through the mists of the night before, shrinking from the strip-lights and rushing air. This is where the end of the party meets the start of the working day. Photography Ulrike Biets

Life

The Word on

Life

Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/ the-unprintables-the-word-on for more morning metro shots.

The other Word on Events Lifestyle Business

Apocalypse now ( ish ) An astonishing number of people seem to have got very excited over the fast-approaching end of the Mayan calendar. For most of us, the endless Judgement Days that always seem to be lurking somewhere in the near future provided nothing more than a mild frisson ; perfect good fodder for Hollywood movies and pulp fiction. But for a few true believers, they become a serious matter of life and death. So what happens to doomsday cults when the world fails to end on schedule ? Writer Nick Amies

What will you be doing on December 22, 2012? Just like any day in the future, it’s very hard to say. Most people assume they will be worrying about the fact that they only have two more shopping days before Christmas. But if a growing number of self-styled prophets are to be believed, none of us will have anything to worry about – because we won’t be here. Any of us.

Illustration Inge Rylant

cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on or around December 21, 2012, the end-date of the 5,125-year-long Mayan calendar.

ˆ Groups which set an apocalyptic enddate and then kill themselves as it dawns are relatively few ˇ

The 22nd December 2012 could be the day after the end of the world. According to certain interpretations of ancient prophecies, a series of

there seems to be a group, movement or sage who has based their teachings and lifestyle on preparing for the worst. Take the DK Foundation (DKF): according to INFORM, the London-based Information Network Focus on Religious Movements, the DKF claims that there will be a cataclysmic event in 2012 which will lead to much of the earth being flooded in what the DKF likens to a global baptism. Only 0.07 percent of the population will survive – those who have prepared themselves both spiritually through the DKF’s teachings and physically by relocating to a ‘safe zone’, a community the Foundation plans to build in Lapland. These beliefs are almost identical to those held by the New Global Trust, a group based near Antwerp. According to Sandrine Mathen from the Belgian Federal Centre of Information on Harmful Sects (CIASON), the New Global Trust envisages a post-apocalyptic world virtually destroyed by the effects of violent sun storms. The Trust believes that only those deemed suitable will be brought into its secretive Survival Group to begin the painfully slow business of rebuilding civilisation after the cataclysm. Another group recruiting potential survivors is led by Belgian astronomer and end-oftime author Patrick Geryl. Geryl believes that the planet will experience a physical catastrophe in 2012 caused by “upheavals in the sun’s magnetic fields which will generate gigantic solar fl ares that will affect the polarity of the entire earth.” In preparation for this apocalypse, Geryl is now focusing on establishing a survival group. Only those with money and resources will be permitted into this group which is planning to relocate to concrete bunkers in the high mountains of Africa.

While the ancient Maya never really explained in detail what would happen, if anything, when their calendar reached the fi nal day, believers in apocalyptic prophesy have seized upon the 21st December 2012 as the date for Judgment Day. The reasons given for the end of the world on this date are legion and for every cataclysm,

These groups appear, at least at the moment, to be concentrating on surviving the predicted tribulations of 2012. Historical evidence suggests there could be others which may not wait for the end of the world before quitting the collective mortal coil, instead choosing to pre-empt the coming apocalypse by voluntarily – or forcibly – taking their own lives. “Groups which set an apocalyptic enddate and then kill themselves as it dawns are

Life

relatively few, although inevitably they attract headlines when a great disaster befalls,” says Dr. George Chryssides, an honorary research fellow in contemporary religion at the University of Birmingham. “The followers of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda believed that death was the only way they could ascend to heaven,” he adds. “Their leader predicted that the world would end on 31 December 1999, but when this failed to materialise, a new date was set for the following April. Anywhere between 500 and 1000 people died the following year when the church they were in was bolted shut from the inside and set on fi re. It’s still unclear though whether this was a suicide linked to the end-date or a murderous event to cover up suspected crimes.”

In a more recent case, Pyotr Kuznetsov, a self-declared prophet and leader of the True Russian Orthodox Church, predicted that the end of the world would come in the spring of 2007 and sent his followers underground to wait for the doomsday. When that day passed, he found himself trying to change the minds of those he himself had brainwashed. “When Kusnetsov realised he was wrong about doomsday, he admitted his mistake and tried to convince them to leave their hideout,” says CIAOSN’s Sandrine Mathen. “Members of the group refused, saying that the situation would only end with the apocalypse.” His followers slowly emerged from the cave over the following months after a siege by Russian authorities while Kusnetsov tried to commit suicide and was hospitalised.

Newcombe also says that groups sometimes take the failure of an apocalyptic prophecy to materialise as a sign that their combined actions and commitment averted the impending disaster. Or, in the case of a positive prophecy, that the believers may not have been ‘good enough’ to create a better world.

ˆ The case in Uganda highlights one of the major downsides of leading a group that has a defi nite apocalyptic end-date: what to tell your followers when nothing happens. So what will members of sects convinced that the world will end on the 21st December 2012 do if they wake up on the 22nd to fi nd that humanity is still going strong and the world remains in one piece? “Groups have two options,” says Chryssides. “To re-calculate the date or to 'spiritualize' it. I actually witnessed the endtime event of a group called Solara 20 years ago in the UK. They predicted 'the Opening of the Gate' on their specific date, but nothing at all happened. Even so, the leader announced that “the Gate is open,” and everyone seemed convinced that something important had taken place. This is a prime example of how a group can 'spiritualise' its predictions: if nothing appears to happen at a physical level, then it must be happening at some spiritual one.” “In the case of a failed prophecy, some followers just leave the group,” says Dr Suzanne Newcombe at INFORM. “Sometimes groups choose another date for the fulfi lment of the prophecy if it is accepted that something was incorrect in their original calculations or how signs were interpreted.”

His followers slowly emerged from the cave over the following months after a siege by Russian authorities while Kusnetsov tried to commit suicide and was hospitalised ˇ Both Newcombe and Chryssides agree that it’s very rare for a group’s leader to apologise and admit a mistake was made in the prophecy. “This happened in the Watch Tower movement, in 1925, when leader Joseph Franklin Rutherford predicted the return of the Patriarchs – or Old Testament leaders – in that year,” Chryssides says. “They were predicted to rise from their graves. Rutherford even bought a house for them to live in. This prediction was rather too physical and specific to be able to be spiritualised, and when pressed he admitted candidly that he was wrong – although he still entertained a belief that they would some day return.”

Ancient prophesies, scientific theories and astronomical projections can all be spun to either support or debunk beliefs about how and when we fi nally check out. Only time will tell if we’re all still here on the 22nd December 2012 – the day after the end of the world.

The capital Arts Underground Getaways We love

— In the city of the last true Bohemians, the independent arts scene thrives under the disapproving eye of a conservative, Islamically-inclined Government, and how you live and who you wake up with is still a political issue Writer Pelin Turgut

Photography Ahmet Polat

Waking up in Istanbul

Nine years ago, when we fi rst launched !f, Istanbul’s independent film festival, we programmed a gay and lesbian film section. The cinema group supporting us fretted that it would scare the punters – and sponsors – away but we were young and foolhardy enough to do it anyway. We managed to divert the conservative press and held a theme party at a divey gay bar. A few dozen people came. Over time, the festival has ballooned from 20,000 to 70,000 viewers and that section has become our second biggest-seller. The party is now a raucous annual gay pride tradition; last year nearly 2,000 people came, including some from distant Anatolian cities. This same decade has also seen the Justice and Development Party (AKP) – a conservative party with roots in political Islam – consolidate its power. The Western media speak darkly of Turkey’s “creeping conservatism”. Welcome to Istanbul, a tale not just of two cities, but of dozens. It is a tale of push and pull, a constant negotiation between conservative and progressive, secular and religious, exciting and exhausting, and yes, east and west, that makes it one of Europe’s most dynamic cultural capitals. From this high-voltage tension, a hotbed of creative talent is emerging. That is partly because Istanbul is home to one of the world’s youngest populations. Some 70 percent of Turks are under the age of 35. It is also a city of migrants. The millions who came from Anatolia to Istanbul from the 1950s onwards were driven by a hunger for a brighter future. Combined, these feed a voracious appetite for change. Street names are replaced overnight, glittery glass-and-steel business towers

are raised within months, bars open and close in the blink of an eyelid.

ˆ Istanbul is home to one of the world’s youngest populations. Some 70 % of Turks are under the age of 35. It is also a city of migrants. The millions who came from Anatolia to Istanbul from the 1950s onwards were driven by a hunger for a brighter future. Combined, these feed a voracious appetite for change ˇ Countering that is the deeply conservative, traditional side of Turkish society. It operates on what sociologist Serif Mardin calls “neighbourhood pressure,” which, much like the peer variant, is subtly oppressive. “For my parents, the hardest part of dealing with me being gay was ‘what will

we tell the neighbours’,” says Aykut Atasoy, 28, a filmmaker. “Even though we have become urbanised as a society, the rural mentality is much harder to change. A lot of things simply aren’t said aloud.” Many Istanbul neighborhoods are still organised by village or town of origin in Anatolia, and rural mores just as strictly applied. The rapidly gentrifying bohemian area of Galata, for example, is also home to migrants from the eastern town of Siirt. Some stores won’t sell alcohol and an English friend –male- who lives there was chastised by his neighbour for wearing shorts. Unlike the secularists, I don’t fear a secret Islamicising agenda on the part of the AKP. For one thing I’ve watched them become ever more enchanted with global capitalism. But I am keenly aware of their deep-seated conservatism and the subtle ways they apply and sustain pressure on groups or ideas they don’t approve of, like transvestites, or alcohol producers. Yet under the same AKP, issues that were taboo only a few years ago like the 1915 Armenian tragedy, Kurdish oppression or ending the military’s dominance over politics, are now freely discussed. There is a palpable sense of openness in the air. Such are the city’s confl icting currents as Istanbul takes up the torch for European Cultural Capital 2010. Though it is a constant struggle for activists like Atasoy, designers like Emel Kurhan or arts groups like ours, to find funding and make ourselves heard, we also recognise that creative minds thrive on limitations and nervous energy. The more you are told ‘No’, the more you will work to find a way to make it happen.

Life

Waking up in Istanbul

Emel Kurhan, Designer

The whimsical accessories Emel creates together with her sister Yaz – dog coats with matching shoes for their owners, for instancebelong to a richly imaginative fairytale world. The two sisters set out in 1999 to create a brand for “anything that goes with a black dress” – jewellery, shoes, bags and, of course, dog clothes. ( Emel is a fan of the tiny dog as fashion accessory. ) Their label took off when Bjork bought the entire Yazbukey collection in a London boutique, and the pair have just fi nished a 2010 summer accessories collection for Zac Posen.

“I left Paris because I felt stifled. I needed more dynamism. I enjoy the chaos and confusion of Istanbul. You can mould it to fit your lifestyle. If you want to be in your own private world, that’s OK, but as soon as you walk out of the door, there are 1000 options to choose from. I love the fact that Turks are so practical. There’s always a solution at hand that can be applied. I guess that kind of flexibility comes from being a developing country. I don’t like developed countries as much for that reason, they’re rigid.” “I’ve never felt like a minority here, even though I guess the work I do as a designer might make me one. I’ve never felt I had to compromise on who I am. I live exactly the way I want to. People are actually very tolerant;

they’re curious. They’ll say, “Oh, the girl with the short hair’, and ask me questions. I’ve never felt judged by anyone.” yazbukey.com

The capital

Michelle, professional transexual

Michelle, 27, moved to Istanbul from Cologne five years ago. She shares a fl at in the back streets of Beyoglu with two friends, co-habiting as a security measure. “I came to Istanbul to be able to live a comfortable life as a transvestite. There is a lot of interest in trannies here. Istanbul is Europe’s biggest city for us in terms of clients. Everyone, from the elite to guys in the ghetto, sleep with us. We can actually make money here. Half an hour and you’ve got 100TL ( about ¤46 ).” “As a trannie, you’re always a minority

here. You’re never considered part of the city. Local municipalities want your vote, but they never want to do anything for us, like open shelters for people on the streets or training schemes. We’re not even a ghetto.” “Our biggest difficulty is with the police, they are always either beating us, or fi ning us. The other day I was browsing the racks in Mango when three off-duty cops came and frog-marched me outside. They harassed me for ID and then fi ned me for obstructing traffic, as if I were a car. At four in the afternoon!” “It gets harder and harder to be a trannie here. Prostitution on the streets is almost impossible. There’s the Internet, but there’s also Internet police. And it’s also unsafe. That’s

why we’ve started co-habiting, three or four people in one house, for security.”

Life

Suzin Akalan, gallery owner & performing arts student

Suzin and her sister Lalin run a gallery-cumperformance space in Galata which opened in September in partnership with London’s Paradise Row gallery on an exhibition of works by artists like Idris Khan and the Chapman Brothers. Between four exhibitions a year in cooperation with Paradise Row they will use the space for performances, young Turkish art exhibitions and just hanging out. “We had to fi nd a place in Galata because this is Old Istanbul at the end of the day, you can’t be anywhere else. There’s a lot of heritage. Your

feet automatically bring you here. In the past year this little pocket has really come alive. There’s a lot of art-related movement; galleries and studios. There’s a real sense of connection between people here, a lot of love, that’s what takes the fatigue away.” “We see our work as trying to facilitate a collective, rather than it being about us. This place is open to all sorts of people. We’re like the space providers.” “I don’t see myself as marginal, although I guess within the larger context of Turkey you could say that. But I really don’t see it that way. I think if you’re someone with half a brain, alert to everything that’s going on, you’re motivated by a desire to do something good and its

not that hard. Its not about the money, its about a feeling of responsibility. Somebody needs to do more than just talk about what’s wrong with this society, to show a way.”

The capital

The duo behind Sinar and Yigit have been playing together since high school. As Post Dial, an edgy underground electronic music act, they play everything from bass to drums to vocals.

“We used to feel quite lonely in terms of the music we make,” says Sinan. “But over time we’ve developed a community, our own scene, and that has made life easier. New Order, Primal Scream and Depeche Mode were the original inspiration for our sound, but now we listen to everything.”

Sinan: “It’s as if we live in a small Europe within Istanbul. We’re aware that there are issues of conservatism, a Kurdish party has just been banned, all of this political stuff. But its like we have built a fence around us and we never really encounter that Turkey, except if we need an official document or something. We walk between work and the studio every day and that’s all we see.”

Yigit : “We’re ‘good kids’, from decent middle class families in Izmir ( an Aegean port city ) so it was never an option to say ‘I want to study music’ to our parents. That wasn’t a choice. Your parents encourage you to play music, but they see it as a hobby, not a career. Besides, I was 17 and at that age you’re not even sure if that’s what you want to be doing so I didn’t

Sinan Tınar and Yigit Bulbul

really insist. I don’t regret it. Being self-taught musicians forced us to learn a lot. Our feet are very fi rmly on the ground.”

Life

Zeynep Aksoy with husband David Cornwell, (both yoga teachers) and their son Arjuna

Zeynep’s chance discovery of yoga in New York led her to abandon an advertising career there to travel to India and train as a yoga teacher. In 2000, she returned to Istanbul and started giving lessons. While studying yoga in Spain, she met David Cornwell, an Irishman, and the couple were soon married. In 2006, the pair came back to Istanbul where they launched Cihangir Yoga, in a neighbourhood popular with artists, hipsters and ex-pats. Zeynep : “The work hasn’t been a struggle at all.

I’m blessed with being in the right place at the right time. In Turkey, there isn’t much of this sort of thing going on, so anyone who does it at a certain standard, professionally, can be successful. There’s not much competition. There is defi nitely an increased appetite ; we’re doubling in size every year. “It’s a growing market worldwide ; and Turkey is now part of that, consuming the latest fashion and latest movies. This is across the board, within the conservative, Islamic culture too, so it’s not an elite thing. Spirituality isn’t just for some people, it’s in the marketplace. It’s not for weird people anymore.” “I’m not an artist but I think there is a creativity to what we do. I spend every waking

moment thinking about yoga. How can we teach better? What can we do to improve our communication? The product is the community, it’s not a pose or a class and that’s what’s most satisfying. Creating an alternative community in a place where it’s all about either going to bars or a very conservative, religious culture.”

The showstoppers Consume We love Lifestyle

My other morning glory — Are you officially in trouble when you think that starting the day on a Martini would be a good idea ? Does it make any difference if you sip it lying on a daybed, while wearing crisp lounging pyjamas, immaculate undies, and brunch-time jewellery ? And what if you also keep couture cupcakes on hand to nibble over a copy of the New York Times ? Surely that’s got to be better than the crusty, grunting dribblesome ogre that stares back at us from the mirror on most of our mornings after ? Photography Benoît Banis Art direction and styling Facetofacedesign

Style

01. Earn your stripes

The basic rule about pyjamas is that you must NEVER wear them in bed. They are strictly to be used for taking mixed drinks in good company. These are just beautiful – they demand a breakfast party – and if you get to the stage where the stripes start to look like a Bridget Riley painting you know it’s probably time to go back to a bed for a catnap. Incidentally – slippers are just a total no-no – unless you are actually Paul Smith, in which case we reckon you could actually pull them off. Cotton pyjamas by Paul Smith paulsmith.co.uk

02. Reach a cord

A woman walks into the doctor’s surgery and says; “doctor, doctor – I keep thinking I’m a pair of curtains!” The doctor looks over at her and replies; “Pull yourself together love.” When you do finally pull yourself together and think about making it out of the house (at least as far as the pharmacy / off licence) Louis Quatorze’s Franco-Korean passementerie (silk cord) accessories will maintain a reassuring aura of the bedroom curtain follows you on your wobbly way. Passementerie belt with matching cuff and necklace (not pictured) by Maison Louis Quatorze

The showstoppers

03. The benzes of the lenses

Every beautiful boy knows that if you want to pull an older woman ( and what right thinking man wouldn’t ? ) it always helps to wear glasses. Not because they make you look more intelligent, but because said ladies like the idea that you won’t be able to see their wrinkles when they whip off your specs and tumble you into bed. Foxy chicas on the hunt for Mr Big might like to try a similar trick – and what better excuse do you need than a sore-eyed hangover for wearing supercool glasses to make your passes ? Sapilo Optiques spectacles, ¤ 330 by Marc Jacobs marcjacobs.com

04. Cupcake couture

We always thought cupcakes were some tacky craze pushed by rinky-dink little NewYorker chicks with grotesquely unsophisticated palates. In the rest of the world that may be the case, but Erik Vernieuw has other ideas. He’s the Tim Burton of cupcakes to the Disney-nice fluff that gets produced everywhere else. He’s made a cupcake tribute to 2-Face from Batman, he’s made cupcakes topped off with marzipan Quaaludes. We asked him for morning-after cupcakes and he gave us stubbed out cigarettes, anatomically correct hearts and icing that looked like nausea. He tells us that they taste amazing and are full of free-range eggs and wholesome goodness – we haven’t quite summoned the courage to bite into one. Made to order, price on request… erikcakes.blogspot.com

Style

05. Born again

You know those mornings when you are really not at all sure what you were doing last night, save for the fact that it was absolutely fi lthy and depraved ? Ahem, us neither, but, speaking in the abstract, we tend to think that if you’ve been a whore the night before, it’s best to dress like a virgin the morning after. How much more virginal can you get than Petit Bateau, the stuff that you started wearing when you were, ooh, three months old ? We don’t promise that you’ll look as cute in these as you did back then, but they certainly do a good job of covering up the bite marks on your arse. Striped cotton vest ( ¤ 39.50 ) and knickers ( ¤ 15 ) petit-bateau.fr

06. Mr Right for your white nights

Amazing how many people will take every vicious chemical available to humanity (or the veterinary clinician) on a Friday and Saturday night and then become militantly homeopathic and biodynamic the rest of the week. These are for you, you little hypocrites. They’re made from pretty flowers, taste like sweeties and they don’t even have a shot of brandy in them to spice things up a little, like the Rescue Remedy drops do. Aw. Aren’t you well behaved, Miss Sunday-to-Thursday goodie-two shoes? Bach’s Rescue Pastilles Available from health food stores

See page 94 for full product information.

The fashion Word Fashion Arts Consume

The morning I died

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Remember your mama telling you to wear clean underwear, so that if a car knocked you down the ambulance drivers wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see you in lessthan-respectable knickers? What if death actually had a much stricter dress code than mama realised? Would she have sent you to school in Louboutins? Photography Joanna van Mulder Styling Jo Jones & Helen Seamons

Style

Death wears: Hood Alexandra Groover, Bolero Jacket, Top Both Comme des Garcons, Skirt Yohji Yamamoto,

Tights Falke, Boots Christian Louboutin

Deceased wears: Lace Shirt Givenchy, Trousers Balenciaga, Boots Louis Vuitton

Deceased wears: Dress Stella McCartney, Tights H&M, Boots Willow

Death wears: Silk Jersey Jacket Balenciaga, Leather Blazer Hannah Marshall,

Waistcoat Giorgio Armani, Cage Shoes Christian Louboutin Deceased wears: Body Suit Camilla and Marc from Net-a-porter, Leather Waistcoat, Necklace, Belt and Skirt all from Ann Demeulemeester, Boots Topshop

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

Death wears: Dress Comme des Garcons, Shoes Alexander McQueen Deceased wears: Dress Bottega Veneta, Shoes Hermes

The fashion Word

Death wears: Beaded collar Osman Yousefzada, Dress Hannah Marshall

Style

Photographer Joanna van Mulder Production Eleonore Vanden Eynde Stylists Jo Jones & Helen Seamons Hair and make up artist Alan Milroy @PLN Management with Phenomenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;eyes & Photoperfexion from Givenchy Digital assistant and retouching Delphine Gilson Models Ilona & Michelle @ IMM Special thanks to Reginald Van de Velde suspiciousminds.com & Christiaan De Forche, Wolvenhof domein, touriesme stad van Izegem izegem.be

The And now here they are – the most daredevil group of daffy drivers to ever whirl their wheels in the Wacky Races, competing for the title of the world’s wackiest racer. Cars are approaching the starting line, first is the Turbo Terrific driven by Peter Perfect, thats Rufus Roughcut and Sawtooth in the Buzz Wagon, Manouevering for position is the Army Surplus Special, right behind is the Ant Hill Mob in their Bulletproof Bomb… and there’s ingenious inventor Pat Pending in his Converter Car. Oh, and here’s the lovely Penelope Pitstop, the glamour gal of the gas pedal! Next we have the Bouldermobile with the Slag Brothers, Rock and Gravel, lurching along is the Creepy Coupe with the Gruesome Twosome and right on their tail is the Red Max. And there’s the Arkansas Chugabug with Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear!

CAR

Sneaking along last is that Mean Machine with those double-dealing do-badders, Dick Dastardly and his sidekick Muttley. Even now they’re up to some dirty trick. And… They’re off! Away they go on the way-out, wacky races.

Wacky Races, Episode 1: See-Saw to Arkansas (Hanna-Barbera, 1968)

the Car

Cranking up Redman’s fi rst LP usually sends me into my in-car NWA mode, a left-leaning slouch, body fi rmly sunk into the driver’s seat and head held up high. Turning up the Streetlife DJs’ podcast tends to awaken the adult teenager in me, with the woofer about to burst, windows dying to be opened and my (poser) arm aching to lean out. Say what you will, the type of music you play in your car undoubtedly shapes the drive. Fact is, every situation demands a tailor-made soundtrack: the road trip of a lifetime, the ‘cooling-off’ ride, the daily commute to work, the spin around the block with your mate’s new Escort. Heck, I even have a specially selected playlist when distributing the magazine. More recently, when driving over to my parents’ place for our traditional Christmas dinner, Musiq3’s classicist playlists worked wonders for my notoriously tempestuous temper. Had Rage Against the Machine’s unlikely Christmas n°1 been the accompanying music of choice for the 10 minute drive from Ixelles/Elsene to Uccle/Ukkel, the night’s

Soundtrack for cruising

proceedings could have (would have) surely taken a turn for the worst. This same train of thought has led to a plethora of car-friendly projects sprucing up, from, top of the list, Top Gear’s The Ultimate Driving Experience (with Razorlight, Franz Ferdinand and The Killers) to the rather more specialised DJ Billy E’s Beats for my Van

(a tuner-favourite with bass-thumping titles such as Funk 4 the Trunk). Closer to home, Discobar Galaxie’s recently released Inside the Soundsystem includes a mix meant as an accompaniment to the long drive back home after a night out, with classics such as The Specials’ Ghost Town. (NL)

it’s already greener than using disposables. Our main problem with the KeepCup was the mess element – unlike a water bottle, the cup isn’t 100 percent sealable, and contains stuff that you really don’t want dripping inside a bag. Not great for those travelling by foot, but not a problem if you’re in your car (and yes, it

does fit into the driver’s cup holder). Tightwads may wish to note that some take-outs already offer a coffee discount if you bring your own cup, and we think there’s no shame in pressuring your local joint to do likewise. (HJ)

It is becoming increasingly difficult to resist the lure of takeaway coffee – once the last stronghold against the mighty Starbucks chain, Belgium suddenly seems to be under a wave of frothy milk and freshly-qualified baristas. Although we still think a good drink tastes better sipped slowly sitting down, we’re as busy as the next body, and sometimes we too need a cap’ to go as we motor around town. When we learned that about 1.8 billion disposable coffee cups were chucked out last year in the UK we started to feel more-than-usually guilty about our take-out coffee habit, so we were most pleased to discover the KeepCup, an ultra-light re-useable cup designed by a group of Australian espresso baristas. The cup is the right height to fit under the coffee machine heads, has the same internal volume as a takeaway cup and has a silicone band around it to mark your coffee order on. It’s made of recyclable polypropylene and should cope with four years of hard use – although the guys making it reckon that if you only use it 30 times,

Love foam, hate waste

keepcup.com

The project Disruptive Business We love

Imperial return

(long-lost) edge in automotive circles and a fi rm lead in the global race for green automotive engineering supremacy.

— Once in a while, you’ve got to look to the past to make a dash for the future. A halfforgotten company with roots going back to the 19th Century is about to put its name to an audacious hybrid sports car set to lead the field for top end ( green ) motoring. Writer Nicholas Lewis

Photography Sarah Eechaut

It packs a mean-intended V4 thermal engine seconded by an electric one, which can either function together or independently of each other. It can speed up from 0 to 100km/h in 4.85 seconds, roughly similar to Porsche’s 911 Carrera, and putting it 0.55 seconds ahead of, say, a Maserati Quattroporte S. Despite its top speeds, its carbon emissions output is relatively low, at 0 to 87gr of C02/km, putting it in the same class as Mercedes’ Smart car. Technologically, it is ahead of its time with, amongst other features, an electricity-led hybrid engine allowing for up to 60km stretches on battery power alone, an automatic power rationing system and a plug-in functionality

allowing drivers to charge up from any standard electrical socket. Comparatively, it is an entirely different hybrid than that other staple of green driving, Toyota’s Prius. The Prius still essentially feeds off fossil fuel, whilst this bad boy’s engine gives more room to electrical power than its aggressive design would suggest. Starting at ¤ 85,000 however (roughly 2.5 times the price of a Toyota Prius), we’re not talking matchbox-like unmarketable concept cars but rather, an incredibly promising, technologysavvy and future-friendly sports-hybrid roadster being masterminded on the back of a steep technological, industrial and manufacturing heritage. And this just might give Belgium its

Imperia my friends, the name’s Imperia

Launched in the late 1800s (1897 to be precise), the brand manufactured vehicles to start with, the fi rst car rolling out of its plant in the early 1900s. Initially based in the region of Liège (in the south eastern part of the country), Imperia quickly established itself on the homegrown market, going on to export its roundshaped four-wheelers to France, Germany, Holland and the United Kingdom where the brand acquired a reputation for technological brilliance (one of its engineers and the architect of Imperia’s Nessonvaux factory, Henri Pieper, had already developed a petrol-electric engine), robustness and prestige. The company was, however, marred by a succession of problems, not least two world wars which at the time halted production and precipitated Imperia’s downfall (its factory fi nally closed its doors in 1958). Many Imperias remained on the road however and, with them, the brand’s reputation, heritage and pride lived on. “There is a real willingness to do something for Belgium,” says Gilles Philippart, a project manager at Green Propulsion, the small-sized company that bought the rights to Imperia in early 2008. A spin-off from the University of Liege created by three of its researchers, the company bills itself as independent research and development center, with an emphasis on

the Car

the ‘independent’ as Philippart liked to stress when we met him. An outside contractor to the automotive industry with a client list that reads like the starting line at a Formula 1 race, the boutique R&D fi rm (its workshop resembles that of the automotive industry’s answer to the mad professor with, amongst other things, a suspended public transport bus and an engine hanging from the ceiling) specialises in designing prototypes for cars still at an early stage in their feasibility study. Some might go on to becoming ubiquitous on a highway near you, whilst others might result in the design department having to go back to the drawing board. Being given the dosh to toy around with other manufacturers’ pet projects however has conveniently allowed Green Propulsion to acquire something of an industry-leading expertise in hybrid technology, one which, as its name implies, puts propulsion at the heart of it.

ˆ Being given the dosh to toy around with other manufacturers’ pet projects however has conveniently allowed Green Propulsion to acquire something of an industry-leading expertise in hybrid technology

ˇ It is now busy testing, implementing and perfecting this technology on its own pet project, the Imperia ‘Powerhybrid’, doing so with an artisanal and hands-on approach characteristic of a young upstart start-up that seems to know exactly what it is doing, and has no doubts as to the commercial viability of its cars. In fact, when we visited the company’s offices situated in the “Liege Science Park” near the University, the prevailing sense of bonne entente, purpose and positivism was refreshing. Design-wise, the car’s neo-retro shape is everything a man could dream of: smooth, voluptuous and enticing (“the design evokes the future, with a proud feeling for the past,” is how Philippart eloquently put it). Think Betty Boop and Jessica Rabbit. Not too loud, yet just enough so to make a lasting impression. But let this not mislead you, this is after all a commercial enterprise, and cars need to be sold. With launch date set for early 2011 (the car still needs to be put through some stringent endurance tests) and production initially set at 50 units (Imperia Automobiles then plans to increase it to 200 per year), Philippart is confident success lies ahead: “We already have 300 intentions of orders, and even if we only achieve a quarter of this, we’re still above target.” Ambition and confidence clearly underwrite the entire project, from the earth-saving

technologies the company has developed, to its radical approach to critical thinking and, more ambitious yet, its intention to enter that most exclusive (and elusive) of automotive circles, the luxury car maker club. This is, after all, a university spin-off about to compete with the Ferraris, Porsches and Vipers of the road. When asked how important it was for the company to revive a national icon, Philippart was unequivocal: “the descendant family was glad to see the brand being revived, as are the fans. We have a nice (industrial) past, let’s be proud of it.” Dam right let’s be proud of it. imperia-auto.be

01.

Fine-tuning the Powerhybrid’s frame

02.

The Ford Escort used for testing the hybrid engine

03.

Taking a closer look

04.

3D rendering

The tryout Consume We love Getaways

This is not a test — We were about to pretend to actually know something about cars, and launch into full blown technical evaluations of their performance. Then we remembered who we were. The Word, not Car Magazine. Smart arses that we are though, we thought nothing of pairing together two drivers not exactly known for their road-safety record with an illustrator who doesn’t even drive, asking them to test some of our favourite motors to have recently hit the tarmac. The brief : to come back with a set of illustrations appropriate to the type of person most likely to be in the driver’s seat. The result : an unobstructed, free-wheeling and frank impression the cars left on our rallying team of testers. Illustrator Pierre-Philippe Duchatelet

Designated drivers Benoît Berben & Yassin Serghini

Saab 9-3X

The archetypical architect’s car, the Saab’s sturdy aesthetic and functional design lends it a certain industrial essence which meant we simply had to blueprint it for you. No point getting all technical though, other than to say that it packs a planet-friendly 2.0 liter Bio-Power engine that’ll let you rev up to ridiculous speeds whilst keeping your ecoconscience happy. For now at least. From ¤ 37 350 saab.be

the Car

BMW X1 xDrive20d

Whatever you may think, BMW always gets it right and its newly-launched X1 model is a case in point. Here’s our train of thought: if hubby has the X5, surely wifey needs the X1 (the X3 being too much of an in-betweener, and “too close to mine” as far as hubby’s concerned). As reliable a German drive as the rest of the manufacturer’s models, this particular one distinguishes itself for its family feel yet without being too bulky. Put it this way, we’re sure hubby will take it out for a spin now and then. From ¤ 34 700 bmw.be

The tryout

Fiat 500

Let’s assume you’re a 25 year old law student getting ready to graduate and your lawyer dad decides to treat you to a car in an attempt to raise that average – after the iPhone, the Zadig & Voltaire bag and the gap year in South America, he’s simply at a loss as to what can be done to improve those scores. Well, the Fiat 500 should do the trick. A cute and compact car – a slice of the Italian Riviera on our graying streets – Fiat’s revived classic has just enough style for her and her girlfriends to be seen in… From ¤ 10 750 fiat500.be

the Car

Toyota IQ

If we were to compare the IQ to an actual human being, here’s the impression he would leave: the busy, always-tapping-on-hisBlackberry type of neo-entrepreneur who has half a penthouse in the city centre and owns a chain of newly opened organic eateries. Single, with a purpose to his swagger and a pep to his talk. The details that would have particularly attracted him to the match-boxed motor: the car’s glove box which doubles up as a briefcase and a ‘start / stop’ button perfect for fast getaways. From ¤ 12 100 toyota.be

The special showstoppers Consume We love Lifestyle

Grease monkeys at the body shop — We’ve always fantasised about taking over a local mechanic’s garage. There’s something mysterious about these workshops set behind the ordinary houses on the street : do they really just fix cars in there all day, or is something else going on ? We certainly have our suspicions about what we’d get up to. Phtography Ulrieke Biets

the Car

01. Neat feet

Alpinestars are the mutt’s nuts of racing kit manufacturers. We toyed with the notion of calling in a set of their pit overalls (how we love overalls!) or protective race gear, and then discovered they actually make a version of the pro race driving boot suitable for civilian use. Called the Shibuya Shoe, it has the same hi top and wrap-around Velcro strapping as the pro boot, but its sturdier sole and chunkier padding means you can wear it with jeans and not look like a Lewis Hamilton wannabe. One note of complaint, Alpinestar folks – these appear not to be available in chick sizes ?! alpinestars.com

02. Pass the lube

Of all the retarded career ambitions that we’ve toyed with over the years (MTV VJ, stripper, journalist, dominatrix) we have never for one moment sustained the desire to splay ourselves across the bonnet of a car at a motorshow. Perhaps the idea of being upstaged by carbon fibre bodywork was too cruel on our egos, or perhaps we always knew it was naff. Hundreds of women evidently think otherwise – this book documents the shiny, sheer and sometimes downright bizarre outfits they squeeze themselves into. And – oh mama ! – those poses. Car girls (2009) by Jacqueline Hassink Aperture Foundation

aperture.org

The special showstoppers

03. Dirty weekend

Driving off to Spain for the week, are we sir ? You suave bastard, you. And we note the NDC travel bags you’re using have that utterly artful, totally worn-in and knocked about fi nish to them that suggests that you do this kind of thing every week. Quite the demon behind the wheel, too, sir, we suspect. We won’t let on that the car belongs to your dad, and that the luggage was purchased last week in Ghent, rather than 20 years ago at the Souk in Fes. ndcmadebyhand.com

04. Pooch splint

There’s nothing cuter than a sick puppy. Unless that sick puppy is sitting in the back of your car puking, bleeding or dribbling all over the freshly valetted upholstery. For the dog that has everything (ticks, abrasions, thorns in the paw) there’s now a rather natty in-car fi rst aid kit that lets you play doctors and nurses with your four legged friend. It’s how Florence Nightingale started, y’know. tomandco.be

the Car

05. Behind the fender bender

Think you know all about folding bikes do you ? Well, this baby’s got a shaft drive rather than a chain, so hah ! Think again. No chain, which means no grease in your boot, and no grease on you trousers. It weighs 14.7 kg, and we think it’s rather more stylish than most folding bikes, on top of the cool technical specs. beixo.com

06. I have a cool rating of 10

How much do we love Top Trumps ? It’s the kid game that adults actually want to play – partly for the joy of saying things like “My name is Pig Woman and I have the strength of 15”, and partly because kids don’t seem to mind that we get really competitive about it. Just after we’ve worn out our Top Gear Cool Cars set, here comes a brand new Gumball Rally set of krazy kustomized kars to keep us entertained on long journeys. Toot toot ! toptrumps.com

The system Disruptive Consume Lifestyle Water cooler

— Had enough of centralised banks, overinflated art markets and feeling like a tiny cog in the giant socio-economic machine ? You’re not alone. Across the world communities and arts associations are creating their own micro-economies – barter systems, time banks and complementary currencies – and rediscovering the value of human contact as they do so Writer Hettie Judah

For what it's worth

Design

I met Carolina Caycedo at the Frieze art fair in London. She had a one-day residency in one of the fair’s Project booths – spaces allotted to groups whose practice comments on the fierce commercial art market that keeps the fair itself afloat. Carolina had lined the walls of the booth with copies of DAYTODAY, a little book documenting an art project that has dominated her life for much of the last seven years. The book was not for sale, but, Carolina explained to visitors, you could swap it for something: another book, possessions, something you bought or an IOU. By mid afternoon, the wall was dotted with a jumble of objects – sandwiches, embroidered patches, dog-eared paperbacks and notes promising to send art materials, kids’ toys and books over to Carolina at her home in Puerto Rico. Carolina was pretty strict as regards the worth of the book – no she would not swap it for a Tracey Emin postcard offered her by a teenage girl – and bureaucratic reality – my offer of chocolate from Belgium was considered too likely to be impounded customs. Of the 30 IOUs ranged around the wall by the end of the afternoon, about 15 ended up being honoured, Carolina later told me (although she was generous enough to note that the UK was in the middle of a postal strike). The short residency at the Frieze Project booth marked a turning point in Carolina’s practice. Back in 1997, when still an art student in Bogota, Colombia, she formed Cambalache, a collective of young artists that took their practice into the streets of one of the city’s most deprived and marginalised neighbourhoods. In one project, Museo de la Calle, the group pulled a barter cart through the local street; as the objects on it were exchanged they presented a shifting portrait of the community that surrounded it. In another project they bartered skills such as hairdressing and DJing. In 2002 Carolina was invited to create a public project in Vienna – she decided to expand her arts practice into her life and to live without money, bartering her skills and services to get by. She has, at various sites around the world, been doing approximately this ever since; babysitting in return for meals, cutting hair for used computer equipment, swapping clothes, books and music with people that she has encountered along the way. Last summer she was invited for a residency in LA. It sounded fun – plenty of parties, good bartering, interesting engagements – but as Carolina felt her way through the vast LA counterculture, and encountered communities in the city engaged in Time Banking and similar alternative economies, it became clear to her that it was time to mix not just her art and her life, but her lifestyle and the values she had engaged with to a wider community. At the

time of Frieze, she had just shifted her attention from her arts practice to promoting socioeconomic community projects in her adopted home of Puerto Rico.

In public spaces, Fallen Fruit have discovered that strangers are often very open to becoming part of the experience, and their projects have the power to change peoples’ views of the city. There was a marked difference in mood, however, when they were invited to present at the MLA art fair. “Instead of a public jam we did just Fallen Fruit-made jam,” Burns explains. “The jam was free. People were curious, but when we explained they could have it, they got reluctant and suspicious – the act of paying for something validates it; the act of generosity causes suspicion.” It’s change for time

ˆ She decided to live without money, bartering her skills and services to get by ˇ Of course it grows on trees

Even the most superficial research into Los Angeles’ alternative scene turns up the broad hum of economic radicalism; it seems the extreme tendency to deracination and fragmentation usually associated with the city has created a dramatic reaction. “Your experience of LA is mostly mediated by cellphones and windshields,” admits David Burns of Fallen Fruit. Fallen Fruit is a collaboration between Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young that explores the city’s secret green spaces by mapping its publicly accessible fruit trees. “Although it’s a space of concrete, cement and cars, it does function like a garden,” explains Burns. “It’s a young city and it’s vast; what’s unique is that so much produce exists on the street of LA. When we started the project we found well over 100 fruit trees in our neighbourhood that bear fruit year round.” Last summer they presented a gallery installation called Barter Don’t Buy where people could bring home-grown or publicly picked fruit and leave it in the space for others to take. In general, explains Burns, Fallen Fruit are not interested in barter so much as “unabashed and reckless sharing”. As well as mapping trees, they hold public fruit jams where hundreds of people bring fruit to make jam together.

Oddly enough, people’s reluctance to take things without handing over money for them is a phenomenon that bedevils transactions in alternative economies in general. Time Banking – a community-based scheme in which members bank and spend “time dollars” (typically one hour of activity) – often sees participants running up enormous credits, because they feel easier about offering their services than in demanding things of others. “Giving the two-way street is really important, otherwise it’s just some grandiose volunteering project,” explains Lucie Stephens of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in London. One of the principles behind time banking is that there are skills and services within a community that are not accessible through the traditional economy; Lucie cites an example in Japan where people who live far away from their parents take care of elderly neighbours, earning time credits which they then pass on to their own parents to redeem. Another Time Bank in London was started by a local doctor who realised that most of his patients suffered more from social isolation, than they did from actual illnesses. “Time Banking made visible the social connections that existed within that community,” explains Lucie. “It’s the opportunity to do something for someone else. Whether it’s babysitting, walking a dog or fi xing a gate, every hour you give entitles you to a credit.”

01.

Fallen Fruit, City Hall / Fruit Protest, giclee print on wood panel, 96” x 120”, 2005

02.

Camper vans La Niña (top) and Cholota (bottom) used by Carolina Caycedo during her 7 year DAYTODAY project

The system

There are currently active Time Banks operating in 22 countries around the world; advocates celebrate the scheme’s egalitarianism; it judges everyone’s time to have equal value no matter whether they are an architect, a dressmaker or a member of the long-term unemployed. The scheme does have intrinsic problems and limitations, however. Firstly it works better within a relatively small community (a few hundred people, say) that means that some skills may be more evident than others. Secondly, irrespective of formal qualifications, there are simply some people who are genuinely time-impoverished for whom such a scheme is impractical. One of the founders of the Echo Park Time Bank in LA eventually had to drop out of active timebanking when she became a mother; with a full time job and a small child, it made more sense for her to operate fully within the cash economy.

ˆ Fallen Fruit are not interested in barter so much as unabashed and reckless sharing ˇ Lucie also cites a more subtle problem. “There is a danger that people not using money creates a ghetto of its own,” she explains. This is particularly so when Time Banking is started as a way to engage people in areas of high unemployment: in its purest form, the system gives no access route out itself. IOU, no, really I do

One solution is to use units of time as a complement to the formal currency, rather than as an alternative to it. The Social Trade Organisation (STRO), based in the Netherlands, works on drawing up alternative local economic models, including micro-credit programs, and schemes by which businesses can barter excess assets; lightbulbs for man hours, for example. They have also developed an open source online banking software called Cyclos specifically for Complementary Currency systems. Josh Ryan-Collins, also from NEF, explains that complementary and local currencies can make up in the shortfall of provision created by an over-centralised banking system. “Central banks are not atuned to the needs of

local businesses and people in their countries,” explains Josh. “Rather than seeing local currencies as unique and kooky, I think it’s strange we’ve created these monopolies (the central banks) that don’t fulfi l a market function.” Complementary currencies like the Brixton Pound can look like cutesy celebrations of neighbourhood values, but they can be enormously important to small businesses and local commerce. “Small business often have to wait 90 days to receive payment after issuing an invoice,” explains Josh. “This monetarises

that invoice, which can be used to pay off suppliers – it speeds up the velocity of money.” STRO’s recent research into such a banking scheme has being funded by the Uraguayan government. “The government is essentially insuring all the small businesses involved.” The parallel currency structure actually went live in Urguaguay a couple of months ago. Barter can likewise function on a massive scale. “In 2007 the commercial barter industry enabled trades worth $10 billion” estimates Josh. “There’s a lot of evidence to show it’s

Design

countercyclical – when real money dries up businesses turn to commercial barter schemes in order to keep exchanging things.” He cites Switzerland’s WIR bank, an independent complementary currency established in 1934 through which businesses can extend credit to one another – essentially low interest loans that permit business to continue.

ˆ There is a danger that people not using money creates a ghetto of its own ˇ How the artist became a banker

Just as the art market is a real market that just happens to deal in the fruits of creativity and inspiration, so the alternative economic models explored by projects like Fallen Fruit and DAYTODAY have significant applications beyond art events, fairs and galleries. As she settled into her new role of setting up a time banking community with the Red de Treque Boriken barter collective, I asked Carolina what her status was as an artist in all this. Did the image of the artist in society come with certain freedoms that allowed them to push for change? “It makes me feel free to use a variety of strategies and ideas without having to be socially responsible,” she explained. “However the art context or art circuit can also be very enclosed, and you risk not surpassing its limits, and (having) your message circulating in a rigid and limited context. I think it is important to reach a wide audience, not only gallery goers, or art experts.” Back in DAYTODAY, she wrote of how the beginning and end of the project had been marked by two major economic crises; that of Argentina, and that of the global economic recession. She explains her belief that, even as she brings this part of her art practice to a close, she feels there is greater need than ever before for socially and politically engaged artwork, but offers, as words of warning, a line from the philosopher Hakim Bey; “political art which fails to destroy the target of its laughter ends by strengthening the very forces it sought to attack.

03.

The Brixton pound carries the face of some of the area’s notable residents: Olive Morris, founder of the Brixton Black Women’s Group on the £1; James Lovelock, originator of Gaia Theory on the £5; CLR James, historian and political theorist on £10; Vincent Van Gogh, artist and local resident 1873-1874 on the £20

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Fallen Fruit, Urban Fruit Action, giclee print, 40” x 60”, 2005

The aftermath Disruptive Lifestyle We love

— After the worst has happened – heart attack, bomb attack, natural disaster, disease – human needs narrow to a few essentials ; medical treatment, security, shelter, clean water, communications. Working in a crisis, you have to place immense faith in your equipment, be it something as apparently simple as a water filter or complex as body armour suitable for biological or chemical warfare. Writer Hettie Judah

What happened next

Design

Who’s in charge here?

We like to think that when something bad happens, the people who are dealing with us know exactly what they are doing and how to sort it out, but they’re as fallible as the rest of us – we don’t always perform as well as we’d like in crisis situations, particularly if we have to use complex equipment. Even something close to home; the standard cardiac resuscitation equipment used in the emergency room of a hospital; doesn’t necessarily get used the way that it should. “A normal hospital ward can be a boring place to be; so if a patient has a cardiac arrest every man and his dog shows up,” explained designer Jonathan West. “Everyone wants to lend a hand; in one cubicle I counted 13, 14 people; in a bed space that’s quite crammed in.” Jonathan’s research into Cardiac Resuscitation came in response to a request from the UK’s National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) which had been fielding a lot of incident reports about resuscitation trolleys – patients had literally died because trolleys were being incorrectly stocked. Jonathan and fellow designer Sally Halls received funding from the Helen Hamlyn Centre to look into the trolleys and see if there was any way that they could improve them. At fi rst the brief had been to change the way the trolleys were stocked, but Jonathan and Sally soon discovered that the problem went much deeper; the equipment was not intuitive to use, so it was easy to make elementary mistakes; it didn’t allow the resuscitation team to position themselves correctly around a patients’ bed, and most importantly it didn’t help a group of people who had not necessarily worked together before to function effectively as a team. After months working together with teams at St Mary’s hospital, they developed a trolley that split into three sections for use by the different teams colour coded according to the standard triage system (yellow for IV equipment, red for airways, green for drugs and everything else). More radically the trolley demanded one person to lead the team through the resuscitation process, using an integrated screen. “This made clearly designated team roles; anyone who wasn’t working within one of these roles was clearly superfluous” explained Jonathan. If I could only make this darned thing work

Intuitive design may seem to be a buzz phrase these days, but in an emergency it is crucial; people in the field won’t have the time to read complicated user instructions, let alone a manual. Vestergaard-Frandsen, whose lifesaving fi ltration devices include the LifeStraw personal water cleaner and ZeroFly mosquito netting, need the function of their products to be understood immediately, without being able to assume any level of literacy or common language in the user. “Customs and beliefs, as well as educational levels, vary greatly in the developing world,” explained Peter Cleary, the company’s Communications Director. “As a result our products must be accompanied by simple, easy to use and understand instructions. For

LifeStraw, for example, we created a series of small graphics to guide the user.” Even so, they still have to assume that their partners in the field will put in place a detailed pubic health program to ensure that the products not only get into the hands of those most in need of them, but “the end user understands correct product usage.” Products like this simply don’t function unless they are coupled to the correct distribution and information network; you can’t just dump boxes of LifeStraws in a refugee camp; not only do people need to know how to use them, they need to trust that they will work. Take no shortcuts

“It’s nothing really very sexy – it’s hard work, having a track record, making sure you fi nd out in the field where things went wrong in the previous generation,” muses John Hutchison of FreePlay when I ask him what makes for a successful product in the field. “It’s about taking no short cuts.” Based in South Africa, FreePlay specialise in ultra-durable products with offthe-grid sustainable power sources; their fi rst product was the original wind-up radio, and since then they have produced torches, generators, phone chargers and, most recently, a fetal heartrate monitor and Pulse Oximeter, all powered by human energy. Although wind-up radios are now widely available in the developed world, FreePlay decided to come out of that market and

concentrate on the needs of the developing world quite simply because the requirement of the two markets were radically incompatible: buyers in North America wanted a competitively priced product that they could use in an ‘emergency’ (during a power cut, for example), while users in Africa needed a product that could cope with almost constant handling and usage in dusty conditions, and that could be repaired endlessly with limited equipment. “We make it so anyone in the field with savvy and basic tools can bastardise parts and put it together again.” Explains John. “No other products are designed to do that anymore. What’s repairable these days? When did you last fi x an electronic device that broke? TV? Computer? Microwave? It breaks you throw it away. That’s not possible there.”

ˆ The directors of Vestergaard-Frandsen put the liquid manure from the floor of an African cattleshed into one of their water filters then drink the result ˇ

The aftermath

ˆ We make it so anyone in the field with savvy and basic tools can bastardise parts and put it together again. No other products are designed to do that anymore ˇ FreePlay radios were originally manufactured for mass distribution by aid and donor organisations as a way to disseminate information about AIDS. While many households owned radios, those radios required expensive batteries, which in turn meant that the radios were used sparingly, and generally only by the head of the household. FreePlay’s radios, which combined solar and wind-up power, changed families’ listening patterns; rather than using the radio for 30 minutes a day, they would now have it on almost all the time. They have noticed a similar behavioural change with a lantern they have made for the rural Indian market. The lanterns are used far more than the dangerous kerosene lanterns they replaced – families now have access to a renewable source of light in the evening, and they are using it.

FreePlay’s has recently moved its research and development energies more heavily towards sustainable medical supplies, an area that turns out to have been bedevilled hitherto by good intentions and lack of field research. “African hospitals are often a graveyard of broken or unused western medical equipment,” John explains. “You’ll see someone fitting an operating theatre but they are too sophisticated and complicated and require replaceable or disposable elements, and electrical power that may not be available or is interrupted.” FreePlay don’t get involved in the electronics; they concern themselves with the casing and power; essential diagnostic devices are stripped back to their minimum components and made incredibly rugged and hand-powered. They’ve just had their fi rst bulk order of Fetal Heartrate Monitors from Medecins Sans Frontiers, who have been testing the products in the Philippines. Standard test protocols don’t exist for these things

How do you test for the toughest user environments in the world? One thing that seems to unite producers in the broad field of emergency relief products is that those with successful products all have a belief in what they are doing that comes from incredibly rigorous field testing. There’s a video on the Internet showing the directors of Vestergaard-Frandsen putting

the liquid manure from the floor of an African cattleshed into one of their water fi lters then drinking the result. Allen-Vanguard operate on the rather less touchy feely side of disaster and emergency response – they provide the professional equipment for rapid response forces, specifically military units dealing with unexploded devices. Their hazard equipment is designed variously to deal with land mines, bullets, various explosives and chemical and biological agents. And they all get tested on humans

Design

– albeit after every other possible test and simulation available. “When the threat is chemical or biological there are various ways of testing; you want to do the live agent test only at the very end,” reassures Aris Makris, Vice President of Research and development and chief technology officer. “There are simulated chemical and biological agents – which can behave and penetrate in same way but are not toxic. In government labs we put sensors all over an individual, and put them in a simulated control chamber with all the equipment they’d wear in an actual response scenario. They go through exercises; climbing stairs, lifting boxes, rolling on the floor. At the end they remove the mask and suit and the sensors are inspected to see if they got contaminated.” Aris explains that using a live tester is essential because the movements of the human body expose weaknesses in the suit that would not otherwise be apparent. After any fault areas have been identified and fi xed, they submit the suit to one of the very few specialist laboratories that has access to the actual agents of concern; they expose the material itself and see if it meets requirements. “If all those go well a live agent trial can be conducted. That’s done in even fewer places around the world. Then we have confidence that people will survive and the equipment works.” The logistics that go into developing a suit and helmet from scratch is substantial. “It can take two or three years of intensive effort in very diverse skills,” Aris explains – you need material scientists, blast physic experts, mechanical and electronic engineers, seamstresses, industrial designers, test engineers, composites engineers, and operator input coupled into the team.” But the company can build on and adapt its existing products rapidly to cope with developments in the field – they depend to a high degree on having a regular and dependable supply of information delivered back to them from potential hot spots. Learning value or real world value?

Early on in my research for this article, I called Allen Chochinov who teaches in the graduate department at New York’s Pratt Institute and School of Visual Arts, and edits the Core 77 design blog. Not much happens in the world of design without passing beneath Allan’s nose at some point. He has a design background in medical and diagnostic work, and has written

stirring essays on how design can make a difference; I was hoping that he could point me toward some interesting projects that dealt with crisis response. After all, Core 77 is full of right-on design proposals, and projects from his students featured prominently in the book Design Revolution.

ˆ Using a live tester is essential because the movements of the human body expose weaknesses in the suit that would not otherwise be apparent

always interested in projects that designed for social impact, there was an enormous gulf between the products that we see documented on the Internet, in design exhibitions, books and awards, and those that are actually functioning out there in the field. Put bluntly – almost none of the designs that are lauded, exhibited and documented end up being actualised. Having received my warning, I made sure that almost all the products explored in this feature were actually out there and functioning. (While the prototype of the Resus-station is already on display at the Design Museum in London as part of the Real Design ergonomics exhibition: the trolley itself is still undergoing clinical trials.) Clicking through blogs and leafi ng through magazines, it is easy to feel complacent in the belief that much is being done to address the needs of the most challenging scenarios out there. Real life tells it rather differently.

ˇ Allan was circumspect; I could hear his eyebrows raising down the phone when I told him about projects that I wanted to include in the article – medical devices that had been nominated for INDEX awards, equipment for refugees – and as I enthused about the energy that seemed to exist in the field at the moment. I swear that I could hear a sharp intake of breath. He explained that while, yes, his students were

01. 02. 03.

04. 05. 06.

Vestergaard Frandsens’ LifeStraw in use in Ghana, 2006 The Resus-Station, designed at the Helen Hamlyn Centre Jonathan Macumi, Rwanda with his Lifeline radio: genocide left him head of household at the age of 11 (Freeplay Energy) Freeplay Energy’s Fetal Heartrate Monitor Allen-Vanguard’s body armour going through a blast test Allen-Vanguard’s Spider Boot, used for de-mining

The shelf Arts Consume We love

Studious stack — Sometimes in the library it can be hard to keep our eyes open – we don’t care to count the number of times that we’ve woken up with our faces covered in print and other readers giggling at our snores. Fortunately this month’s book selection has filled us with get-up-and-go. Writer Hettie Judah

Photography Yassin Serghini

Remake it Home (2009) by Henrietta Thompson, illustrations by Neal Whittington

Art direction Mélisande Mc Burnie

Design Revolution (2009) by Emily Pilloton

Has anyone out there noticed that we Wordites have a serious Polaroid fetish? No? Or a bit of thing for paint-spattered backpacks and empty spraycans? The authors of this book sent Polaroid cameras and film out to 13 graffiti writers in different countries and asked them to record their daily life. The results took 2 years to come in, and range from the spectacular to the charmingly mundane, and together represent a noble attempt to present the less-commercial face of the culture. Spontaneous and subversive this may be, but there’s a lot of thought going on behind these snapshots.

Prestel Publishing

Brunch (2006) by Isabel Brancq

The essays and images brought together in this book unite the art, music, architecture and design of mid-century Caifornia and treat them as a modernist whole – each in their own way influenced by the technological and material innovations, stong, clear light and socio-economic climate of Southern California at the time. Everything from the Case Study houses to the Jazz of Chet Baker, Hard-Edge art, and of course the life and work of Charles and Ray Eames get pulled into the mix that made up that fugitive look and feel that still seems to defi ne cool today.

Marabout

Men In The Cities (2009) by Robert Longo / David Byrne Schirmer / Mosel

Thames & Hudson

Design for “the other 90%” has become a hot topic in the past few years, and Design Revolution presents 100 projects that are ‘changing people’s lives’ in fields such as medicine and power, together with some stirring essays and pointers towards designing for the future. While full of good stories, the book fails to discriminate strongly enough between the astonishing for-profit products designed and manufactured for the developing world, and unrealised projects (often the work of design students or recent graduates) that are long on good intentions but short on real life.

Dokument Press

Birth of the Cool (2007) by Elizabeth Armstrong

Thames & Hudson

This is for the kind of person who thinks Sunday mornings are BORING and always needs something to fiddle with: a book full of handy hints on how to turn stuff knocking around your house into other stuff. Henrietta Thompson is Wallpaper*’s design editor, so this is rather more stylish than the usual dreck churned out by either the taste-free environmental brigade or the self-righteous DIY-ers. It includes contributions and tips from big design names including Jasper Morrison and Marcel Wanders. Most of all we simply love Neal Wittington’s how-to illustrations.

Like Lipstick Traces (2009) by Aurélien Arbet and Jérémie Egry

Back in the 1980s, Longo became renown for his vast works on paper showing people in suits writhing and fl ailing against blank backdrops as if contorted in emotion or engaged in a furious dance. (One hung on the wall of Patrick Bateman’s apartment in the movie of American Psycho, trivia fans!). The drawings were based on a series of photos taken by Longo on his roof, in which his friends (including Larry Gagosian and former partner Cindy Sherman) were trussed in ropes or made to duck rocks and rubber balls. This book of source material, published 30 years later, is curiously moving.

All the books featured on this page are available at Bozar Shop (Brussels).

Brunch is the only truly elegant meal left in the modern repertoire, without the pretention of dinner or the stress of lunch. Great for the indecisive: you can put eggs, cake, fi sh and fruit all on the same plate, and you get to drink coffee and alcohol at the same time (although, we would suggest, not out of the same container). Like many of the simplest things in life, it is of course, fraught with pitfalls, so it’s worth putting a little study in to make sure that you get it just right. Lesson one: buy this book. Lesson two: get someone else to do the cooking.

Culture

Also pictured:

60 Innovators Shaping our Creative Future (2009) Thames & Hudson / Lanoo

T&H celebrate their 60th birthday by asking their favourite artists and designers to nominate the creative visionaries whose work excites them. Tattoo Book (2008) by Marti Guixe Maurizio Corraini

Former Word-star Marti Guixe lets our tattoo imagination run wild with a book of naked body parts to doodle over.

造 From top to bottom

Design Revolution (Thames & Hudson), Remake it Home (Thames & Hudson), Birth of the Cool (Prestel Publishing), Like Lipstick Traces (Dokument Press), Men in the Cities (Schirmer/Mosel), 60 Innovators Shaping our Creative Future (Thames & Hudson), Tatoo Book (Maurizio Carraini)

Visit thewordmagazine.be/dribbles/the-unprintables-the-shelf for more pictures of the books as well as Amazon links.

The pencil Arts Play Exclusive

Your days are numbered Words & illustrations FĂŠlicie Haymoz

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I'm from Switzerland and when you enter a Swiss house, there's a little yellow paper on the wall, stating where you have to shelter in case of a nuclear emergency. The government also sends us potassium pills that we keep in our pharmacy cabinet, in case a nuclear plant explodes. I would like to spread that healthy, well-organised sense of paranoia. The game is to be played as often as you can, in order to be prepared for any kind of disaster. The game is to be played with anything you can lay your hands on as a pawn. You just have to feel that this button or spinning top or whatever you use has the potential to represent you and save the earth. Best played with two or three other survivors. You're free to decide what to do with them when you reach the centre square and win the game.

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 vault Exclusive Arts Back in the days Fashion We love

— Terence Donovan set up his own studio in London in 1959 at the age of 22, and became one of the handful of young photographers who epitomised the ‘Swinging London’ of the 1960s, with an image that came to be immortalised in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow Up. Best known in Britain for his fashion photography, nudes and portraiture, as a young photographer Donovan also turned his camera on the world around him, documenting the bohemian counter-culture, life on the streets and London’s less visible underbelly. We were invited to go through the archive of his prints and negatives in London and select unseen – and in some cases never printed – works from his personal collection. The portfolio we selected shows London in 1960, waking up to a new decade . Writer Hettie Judah

With thanks to the Terence Donovan Archive. Terence Donovan will be the subject of a major exhibition at Polar+ NKA*Photography gallery in Brussels later this year.

Culture

The vault

From The Layabout Life, a series documenting a bohemian family living in a squat in Notting Hill 02 On Primrose Hill 03 A personal photograph thought to show model Celia Hamilton 04 - 05 from a series following the life a couple of London strippers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Donovan shot them during their stage shows, in their dressing rooms and then followed them back home as they bathed and went to bed. The fi nal image (page right) shows one of the girls walking to church on Sunday morning.

05.

The eye Play Consume

The morning after breakfast â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Photographing the decaying evolution of a morning after fry-up, our breakfast fit for kings takes a turn for the worst in this day-to-day documentary of the rotten. Photography Sarah Eechaut

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The eye

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con ntagious is co

No matter how different their training or roots are, the musicians have found one another in an ^YZVa: studying, questioning and performing music from 1600 to 1950 on the ^chigjbZcih that inspired the composers. To cover this period, one easily needs ďŹ ve different stringed instruments and ďŹ fteen wind instruments.

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fashion Gastro Weaponry

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BMW bmwbrussels.be

29/12/09 15:26

Before we leave youâ&#x20AC;Ś Play The team

Dining in style

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