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Founder & Editor in Chief Art Director & Stylist Mafalda M. Kyambel Intern Assistant Editor India Belce Kennedy Senior Editor Ena Martinovic ART Senior Editor Alice Brace Editorial Contributors Sara Cunningham Sawyer Gebauer CULTURE Senior Editor Ena Martinovic Tom Besley Editorial Contributors Sara Cunningham Sawyer Gebauer Catherine Verdonnet FASHION Senior Editor Mafalda M. Kyambel Editorial Contributors Murray Clark Olivia Gordon
ART DIRECTION KROL STUDIO Visual Communication & Design Rue des Vollandes, 15 | CH 1207 Geneva, Switzerland T + 41 22 700 70 36 www.krolstudio.com Nicolas Chaumontet / Cédric Paquotte / Jérome Bart Aurélien Fontanet / Marc Guillotte / My-Hong Ngo Fabien Constanty / Clémentine Bischoff Contributors Art Directors India Belce Kennedy Contributors Photographers India Belce Kennedy Arnaud Gelard ADVERTISING C&C CONSULTING COMMUNICATION SARL Rue de Genève, 104 | 1226 Thônex, Switzerland T + 41 76 369 11 84 c.rolland@cc-communication.ch www.cc-communication.ch PUBLISHING ATAR ROTO PRESSE SA Rue des Sablières, 13 | Zimeysa voie 11A CP 565 | CH 1214 Vernier T + 41 22 719 13 13 | F + 41 22 719 13 56 LETTER TO THE EDITOR info@tribumagazine.com TRIBU Magazine International Representative Office Rue de la Servette, 11 | CH 1201 Geneva, Switzerland
DESIGN Senior Editor Alice Brace
WWW.TRIBUMAGAZINE.COM
Editorial Contributors Léa Villette India Belce Kennedy
DISTRIBUTION Geneva - Zurich - Paris - London - Berlin - New-York Hong-Kong - Beijing - Shanghai - Tokyo - Sydney
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Based in Geneva and London, TRIBU is an Art and Fashion magazine with a mission to present a new breed of texts and photos, conceived and developed to perfection in an effort to better understand the issues pertaining to our time. A publication truly dedicated to a more balanced, satisfying, and meaningful approach to life. As a social catalyst and a melting pot for dynamic forces from all across the globe, TRIBU will present a wide range of current topics, observing our period through a curious and original prism, determined to go beneath the surface of things and foster a public discussion on its pages. Motivated by a desire to tickle its readers’ minds with new ideas, TRIBU will approach current issues with a curious eye and an authentic, profound consideration of modern-day cultural conditions. TRIBU will explore different horizons, a discussion panel for ideas originating across borders, from diverse disciplines. Presenting essays, critiques, works of fiction; a kind of text and photography that creates a space to reflect – uniquely, a creative process within an informative entertainment experience. A truly independent magazine not afraid of mixing ideas and emotions, reactions and opinions; transcending the borders of cultural divisions, TRIBU – a fierce magazine, afraid of nothing at all! For this first edition, we have put Switzerland in a place of honor, as it has proven rich in events during the entire year. Switzerland has shown its strenght in the fields of Design, Luxury, Art and Culture. Meeting the artists has been an immense privilege. We hope you will apreciate their world. Here, everything is shared. Welcome to TRIBU ! MMK Founder & Editor in Chief
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ENA MARTINOVIC THE SOUL OF A WRITER SENIOR EDITOR ART | CULTURE LONDON
ALICE BRACE THE SHARP EYE OF TRIBU SENIOR EDITOR ART | CULTURE LONDON | PARIS
INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY THE HEART OF TRIBU INTERN ASSISTANT EDITOR ART DIRECTOR ASSISTANT CULTURE | DESIGN GENEVA
TOM BESLEY THE PASSIONATE NOMAD SENIOR EDITOR CULTURE LONDON
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CONTRIBUTORS SARA Y. CUNNINGHAM THE SOFTNESS OF TRIBU SENIOR EDITOR ART | CULTURE BERLIN
MURRAY CLARK THE EYE OF MEN'S FASHION SENIOR EDITOR FASHION LONDON
SAWYER GEBAUER THE MUSICIAN SENIOR EDITOR CULTURE BERLIN
OLIVIA GORDON THE HUNTER FOR PLACES TO BE EDITOR LIFESTYLE PARIS
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SUM -MARY
ART
ART FOR A CHANGE / 16 SABRINA TEGGAR / 32 SANG D’ENCRE / 38 INFIN8 / 44 OLMO DEL POZZO / 50 ADELINE DE MONSEIGNAT / 54 SHADES OF IRÈNE: IRENE LE FANZINE EROTIQUE / 60 CULTURE
ART BASEL 2013 / 68 MENUHIN FESTIAL GSTAAD 2013 « WATER » / 76 MONTREUX JAZZ FESTIVAL / 80 PALEO FESTIVAL 2013 / 84 KADEBOSTANY / 88 FASHION
BACK TO BASICS / 92 MODE SUISSE 2013 / 104 LES COMBLES DU MINIMALISME / 124 LUXURY
BASELWORLD 2013 / 172 DESIGN
MUSEE MILITAIRE DE DRESDEN / 186 ISLAMIC ART LOUVRE / 194 A BIT MORE OF NOTHING PLEASE / 200 ON THE ROAD
AMAZONIAN MEMORY / 206 MADAGASCAR / 210 LIFESTYLE
L’INGENIEUR EN SAVEUR / 220 SURFACE TO AIR / 226 BURGERS EXTRA LOVE / 230 WE LOVE PARIS / 232 LITERARY
JOURNALS FROM MY FABULOUS, TROUBLED YOUTH / 240 WILL KITSON / 248 GOD WAS AN INSOMNIAC / 252 POETRY SECTION / 254
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ART FOR A CHANGE Article by SARA Y. CUNNINGHAM
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U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies Program Honours Five Renowned Artists We know the headlines by heart: ‘Violent Uprising’, ‘Deadly Clash’, ‘Drone Attack’, ‘War’. The cynics, or realists, depending on whom you ask, will tell you that traditional diplomacy is dead. Still, others believe the opposite; we just might not recognize their kind of diplomacy. These new diplomats don’t give speeches, make clandestine phone calls or send early morning wires. They make art. Yes, artists are the new ambassadors. At least that’s the conviction behind Art in Embassies, a worldwide initiative run by the U.S. Department of State that facilitates artistic exchange between 189 countries. The ambassadorial program, formalized in 1963 by John F. Kennedy, fosters cultural understanding between
nations through their art. This year, the program is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary by honouring five international artists, Cai Guo-Qiang, Jeff Koons, Shahzia Sikander, Kiki Smith and Carrie Mae Weems with the newly minted Medal of Arts. For some, the fact that the world’s most powerful government has given these artists accolades demonstrates the transition of their work from the critical periphery into the mainstream. This shift, however, shouldn’t obscure their vital, often challenging contributions to the contemporary art scene over their varied careers. Below, we introduce you to the new art ambassadors. Who better to legislate the world than artists? Cai Guo-Qiang likes to blow things up. It’s the live fuse that has run through his entire career and propelled him to inter-
Words by Sara Y. Cunningham | Images by Art Embassy © | More infomations : www.art.state.gov
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national fame. In Project for Extraterrestrials No. 1 (1989) he staged a massive nine-minute explosion five months after the Tiananmen Square massacre that was visible from space – a non-violent explosion that transcended, in a tower of smoke, national and political boundaries. No stranger to politics, Guo-Qiang sparked controversy when he used his expertise to create the fireworks at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, thus collaborating with the same government he criticised in his early years. For better or worse, Guo-Qiang engages opposite ends of the political spectrum. The results are never boring. Speaking of controversy, Jeff Koons has been dividing critics for almost thirty years, earning him almost as much derision as reward. Last year, his ‘Tulips’ sold for a staggering US$33,682,500 (GBP£21,219,975) at Christie's New York, the largest sum ever paid to a living artist. His New York Art factory regularly employs 90 assistants who use his pioneering “colour-by-numbers” system to produce his pop-artworks under his supervision. Among his most iconic creations are ‘Rabbit’ (1986) and the livesized ceramic sculpture ‘Michael Jackson and Bubbles’ (1988). American-Pakistani artist, Shahzia Sikander prefers working on a much smaller scale — in miniature, to be precise. In her early art, she championed the genre of Indo-Persian miniature painting and made a successful career of blending the ancient form, often relegated to museum displays in the Western world, with a modern outlook. Her work reflects her mixed cultural background and deals, in equal parts, with traditional Muslim themes and Western imagery – so that one image, although rendered in miniature, reveals soccer balls and cowboys. She’s
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a truly international force for understanding between cultures. Born in Nuremberg, Germany, American artist Kiki Smith is a pioneer in feminist art. Since the 80s, she’s produced work at once intimate and bracing in almost every media. She challenges the way we think about women and their place in the world. Whether in sculpture, print or installation, she exemplifies her acute interest in concepts of the feminine, especially their embodiment. Her cast-iron sculpture, ‘Mary Magdalena’ (1994) shows the holy figure almost entirely flayed except for her breasts, navel and face. She also wears a chain on one ankle. Unlike many contemporary artists, Smith draws inspiration from the medieval period instead of contemporary American culture. As a result, her pieces feel elemental, brutal and provocative, standing in opposition to the disposable pop-culture favoured by other artists today. Portland, Oregon native Carrie Mae Weems focuses her photographic lens on African-American subjects. Her pictures portray heartbreakingly intimate moments. In ‘Kitchen Table Series’, figures are caught mid-act around the kitchen table in black and white, sharing their private lives with the camera. Her photos, besides their aesthetic value, draw viewers into critical discussions about marginalisation and racism in America. She moves effortlessly from close, domestic scenes to open landscapes and classical interiors – always evoking a strong sense of personal and political history that enjoins subject and observer in a shared human narrative. Love them or hate them, these artists transform politics into art, rather than conflict. How’s that for a change?
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Words by Sara Y. Cunningham | More infomations : www.art.state.gov CAI Guo-Qiang Š
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More infomations : www.art.state.gov CAI Guo-Qiang Š
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More infomations : www.art.state.gov Carrie Mae Weems Š
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More infomations : www.art.state.gov Jeff Koons Š
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More infomations : www.art.state.gov Kiki Smith Š
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More infomations : www.art.state.gov Shahzia Sikander Š
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More infomations : www.art.state.gov Shahzia Sikander Š
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SABRINA TEGGAR “Mnémosyne”, goddess of memory and the box of Pandora.
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Sabrina Teggar, a young Westerner born to a Swiss mother and an Algerian father, has been leading an identity quest through photography, in the most natural manner. She confronts her misty childhood memories to Algeria’s 21st century. The photographs she takes are traces of a profound sincerity and of a resolutely and deliberately non-appreciative insight. In spite of all the paradoxes and contradictions, the agonies of indecisions in the country are plain to see. The work merges childhood memories, a woman’s vision, today’s and yesterday’s Algeria, religious aspects and the Western copy of Algeria, but is first and foremost the look Teggar has of herself through tensions which are characteristic of any community; characteristic of the confrontation of two cultures, as well as characteristic of the parallel between memories and reality. Though Teggar knew Algeria as a child when she would go and see her grandparents in El Asnam, a city which was destroyed by earthquakes in the ‘50s and ‘80s, and renamed Chelif, the political and religious situation of the country now forbids her access. It was only at the age of 30 that she undertook the initiatives that allowed her to obtain an Algerian passport and to thus accompany her father to see her family and add a few pieces to the puzzle. In 2013, Sabrina Teggar joined Phovea photo agency.
Translated by India Belce-Kennedy | © Sabrina Teggar/phovea | www.sabrinateggar.com
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Š Sabrina Teggar/phovea | www.sabrinateggar.com
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Š Sabrina Teggar/phovea | www.sabrinateggar.com
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SANG D'ENCRE Article by ALICE BRACE
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To some cultures, aging is a sign of wisdom and knowledge; a lifetime of learning and consequence. To others, it is the sign of a loss of zeal and the beginning of the end. Whatever implications aging has for each culture, they are all bound by one universal truth: the passing of time is inevitable, and aging is an organic bi-product thereof. Arguably the biggest give-away to the aging process is the skin, which begins to lose its elasticity and vibrancy. In this collection by Ismail Bahri, titled simply “Sang d’Encre” [Blood Ink], the wrinkles of the skin are an essential conduit for the creation process. Bahri drops ink into the subjects’ pores with a nib and draws “comme l’on sème” [“as if sowing”]. The ink then follows the natural imprints of the skin and creates networks which meet at each mark. The result is an intricate labyrinth of assured blots stemming into uncertain trails, colliding and reaching out to one another. It would be easy to make a comparison to anything from astronomical constellations, to metro maps the world over, but the interconnectivity of all of these reference points is poetry enough in itself. This collection envelops a real sense of journey, be it physical, emotional or something completely abstract, not only through the inking itself, but the areas of skin chosen as a canvas by the artist. Bahri focuses on delicate, sentimental parts of the body, including the eyes and hands, thus creating a level of romanticism, as well as touching on the idea of fragility. By choosing these as focal points, Bahri alludes to seeing and feeling, which are arguably the keys to learning and development. Rather than tattoos, henna, or other forms of body art, “Sang d’Encre” is not simply about the final drawing on the skin. It utilises nature, in the form of the skin, human emotion, in the form of the drawing process, and chance, as the ink spreads itself through the contours of the surface, rather than sinking in: there is no definitive direction which Bahri is able to shepherd the ink, nor, to some extent, how he feels whilst creating the works. The artist describes how the physical act of drawing leads to a hesitation between the possible caress or sting, sweetness or pain, bringing an element of performance to the collection, as the process of realisation becomes an intrinsic part of the concept. This, entwined with the fact that the subjects are Bahri’s parents, fosters yet more depth into the piece. As a source of inspiration throughout the artist’s work and life, one can imagine the gentility with which the ink was dropped onto his parents’ skin, forming the key themes and foundations of the collection before even having begun. The title, “Sang d’Encre”, refers to the dissemination of the ink, which reveals otherwise invisible cracks and brings to light all of the skin’s mysteries, showing its vitality as well as its weariness. The curiosity is provoked by the way Bahri captures his work. Each portrait maintains a level of anonymity, with barely more than the inked areas in shot, let alone in focus. Yet despite the mystery, and despite the inconclusive nature of this emotive concept, Ismail Bahri manages to appeal to a much deeper identity by casting aside pretence, focussing instead on unabashed human honesty.
Words by Alice Brace | Images by Ismail Bahri © | www.ismailbahri.lautre.net
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Images by Ismail Bahri Š | www.ismailbahri.lautre.net
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INFIN8 CHYETT DE LANDRÓN-SMITH
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Growing up in the culturally-rich and ever-changing San Francisco Bay Area, my parents were always introducing me to new experiences. Family trips to museums, foreign cinema, and art galleries are far too numerous to count. In the company of my older brothers (both musicians), my remaining free time often consisted of exploring both the touristic, and less pleasant areas of ‘The City by The Bay’. Throughout these experiences and extensive travel to Europe, it seems that my mind was always set to record. This mind-set has followed me in my life abroad in France, and now Switzerland. I continue to soak in my surroundings, observe the people around me, and aim to make sense of it all through the lens. Each of these photographs was made in an improvised manner with the intention of capturing what Henri Cartier-Bresson calls ‘The Decisive Moment’. The process is an entirely intuitive, and highly subjective. For me, inspiration is dependent on light, shadow, mood, a glance or gesture, and geometric sense. Each experience is a random adventure and I feel that I work better on-the-fly and remaining open to possibility. In the end, I simply set out to observe and capture interesting life moments with my camera.
Words by Chyett De Landrón-Smith | Images by infin8 © | www.infin8photography.com
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Images by infin8 © | www.infin8photography.com
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Images by infin8 © | www.infin8photography.com
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OLMO DEL POZZO Article by INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY
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Born to a Turkish Mother and a Swiss father, Olmo Del Pozzo was born in Geneva. In his adolescent years his father put him on the promising path of accounting in the British School of Sevenoaks, but chance put Art in his way and he quickly found himself substituting his studies for creativity. His teacher showed him iron rods which immediately caught his eye. Del Pozzo started bending and soldering this rigid material, somehow finding satisfaction in the spontaneity and improvisation it allows. With trial and error, he manages to assemble and twist until he finds the right shape. This multifaceted young man grows through non-conformity and questionings towards a creative transcendence that defies boundaries in the multidimensional Art world. To his artistic pallet, Del Pozzo adds in a colourful selection of painted portraiture and cityscape-photography. The first constitutes a technique that flirts which abstraction, where the viewer’s appreciation depends on the distance that stands between him and the painting, the latter started off as traditional and is gently switching onto digital. Although not indifferent to the ideal, Del Pozzo still keeps his working life - presently in marine transport – separate from his creative activity, convincing himself it keeps him from creating solely with the motivation to sell. Consequently, Olmo Del Pozzo’s art keeps an undeniable purity and authenticity.
Words by India Belce-Kennedy | Images by Olmo Del Pozzo © | www.olmo-art.com
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Images by Olmo Del Pozzo © | www.olmo-art.com
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ADELINE DE MONSEIGNAT Article by ENA MARTINOVIC
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I set out to interview Adeline de Monseignat about The Uncanny, an exhibition of her and Berndnaut Smilde’s work, in which her beautiful and somewhat scary giant glassand-fur eyeballs come to light ever so slightly, and which – even at a distance – fed my long-lived Freudian dream-work obsession. I initially plan to talk to her about all things uncanny and what the concept – a meeting point of peculiarity, eeriness, and an absence of consensus – means to her. Immediately, however, I fall down the rabbit hole of de Monseignat’s – for lack of a better word – specialness, and as I hold one of the baby glassand-fur eyeballs in my hands, its thick furriness frustratingly separated from me by the cold glass of its outer shell, I no longer remember what is that I wanted to ask. We speak, nonetheless, for a good part of two hours, as snowflakes the size of goose feathers fall from the sky onto London’s streets. There is a spring blizzard outside, the wind so strong to blow you away Mary Poppins-style, yet the air is still not cold enough for the flakes not to melt once they touch the ground. Despite the weather, Adeline is wearing a layered tank top and glowingly sporting a tan fresh from a mini-break in Morocco; there is what appears to be a pregnant kitten playing like a dog; even her street is somewhat of a fairy tale in itself, one of those streets where Victorian history meets restrained perfection meets modern controversy in the shape of a really famous American designer shops. There is a sensorial displacement way beyond de Monseignat’s artwork in the room, and I realize the feeling of being in some sort of Wonderland is what forms the elephant in the room – in a good way. Something is happening to me, and I realize whatever is so special about this interview is the fact that I’m not merely interviewing an artist. Speaking to Adeline about her life and work means partaking in a work of art. There is nothing graceful about a magician telling his secrets – and the same is, oftentimes, true for artists. Adeline is a bit of both: at once strong and playful, naughty and perfectly nice, extraordinary and unthreatening, and somehow the dichotomy of her personal chemistry seems to break down this truism. As boring as it can be to listen to another person recount their empty dreams, there is hardly anything more interesting than having a person let you into their world. This is even more pronounced when the artist is a true work of art, especially if it comes in a form of a truly special young woman; or as the media would call them bright young things, prolific and talented and without a hint of self-destructive pathos, whose view of the world makes you wonder where you forgot your own curiosity, and why is it that you don’t sit down and dwell on things, or observe and really see the world in all its perplexing glory. In fact, sitting next to this young artist, all of a sudden I genuinely wonder: what on earth is it that I want to accomplish with my own life? De Monseignat describes the theme of her work as its DNA; she developed a three-pegged thematic structure of the Uncanny, the Origin, and the Contact as a kind of Borromean knot to her conscious artistic mind; she also uses mind maps to create and explain her work. These means of cognitive discipline aren’t how she finds inspiration but rather how she keeps it at bay, realizing she is constantly at risk of a tsunami of thought overflowing her. It’s, according to her, how she keeps herself from being spread too thin.
Words by Ena Martinovic | More infomations : Watch for Adeline de Monseignat on adelinedemonseignat.com, the streets of Brooklyn, London, or Monaco, and The Ronchini Gallery ©.
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I get up and roam the room, careful not to step on toes (or ghosts) in what is such a vividly personal space; a photo of her as a child – all chubby-cheeked, curly, blond perfection – playing in the sand reveals an observer, a life-long explorer of worlds, singling out and reassembling microcosms within the obvious. “Making objects isn’t good enough, it isn’t good enough to be a creator of objects meant to just be beautiful,“ de Monseignat says, almost repulsed at the thought. I wonder - isn’t it what most of us do, in whatever it is our job to produce? There needs to be a story around it, something that will breathe life, making the familiar strange, the fragile strong, the weird precious. The fact that glass is fragile is important – a fact she mentions several times over, leaving no room for fragility in her objectively fragile body frame as she speaks - because it hints at the frailty of all living things, a characteristic at once precious in its melancholy, and in its ability to create new life forms. Adeline doesn’t merely find a new life for objects in her work, the mere transience of things is a light motif. The idea of Contact is a continuity of being; sand becoming glass, fur disintegrating over time; the idea of her creaptures - creatures - sculptures meant to be held in one’s arms and in themselves modeled after the subjects’ weight and size at birth – but also a sensorial charge which is either intense in its experience or even more so in lack thereof. Contact is also the access to a personal story, a life she keeps recreating through the stories she inject into her artwork. Origin is more than point zero, it flows out of Continuity. Her interest in motherhood is not merely a journey of the organic, but a metaphysical concept, a consensus with her own self to explore the nature of being, the nature of why and how we are here, in this body and form – and in all seriousness, de Monseignat is adamant at having fun with it. Fur, sand, hand-blown glass filled alchemically-named liquids, walking on eggshells, sandwiches made of paint; these are elements of her work that provide almost a sensory overload, inviting the viewer’s senses to interact with their expectations, leaving him – in the end – with a vivid reaction as aftershock, without setting out to do so. A passionate explorer and a self-proclaimed aficionado of etymology, de Monseignat is far from an entomologist of life. There is no death or destruction hinted in the way she deals with fragility and transience. Perpetual with seemingly no effort, her creative process is one of birth all along, one that emerges rather beautifully as a consequence of the incessant pursuit of contact. Next to us on the sofa sits a powder pink reincarnation: what was originally the lining of the fur coat used to construct the giant furry eyeball (once commissioned for a lady called Loleta, as is beautifully emblazoned in the shiny pink fabric) is now reborn as a jacket, which Adeline wore to the exhibition opening. “That’s the beauty of making, all of a sudden it just comes together and happens.” Even in the way she speaks, de Monseignat is building up words, performing her art through a way of being, wildly unaware of how refreshingly rare it is. Not a creator for creation’s sake, but a tester of life, she insists, someone who experiments with it on her skin. She almost sings as she explains how everything is about life, testing what you know, seeing things from a different angle, but also about the idea of having a body, something we take for granted, yet is in itself almost incredible. With more
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than a whiff of genuine humbleness, she recounts how defining the DNA of Uncanniness, Contact and Origin has taken time, and acknowledges the fear of being typecast – by herself and others – both in the themes and materials she works with. Despite the fact that ontological themes are bouncing off the walls of her flat, there is nothing ethereal bout our conversation. Nothing is rehearsed or planned it either, there is a definitely no hysteria of spontaneity thrown at you. Whatever it is, Adeline does it gracefully. “Being able to surprise yourself means you can surprise others, embracing your weirdness is when interesting things happen,” she shrugs. “Sometimes we need to submerge ourselves in the overload of things in the world.” Incurably curious, she very consciously remains afloat her own sea of curiosity, anchoring herself deeply so that her vision would grow, in order to give more strength to her work. Coming into one’s own usually implies some stumbling about, a slight discomfort about one’s self, and a clumsy queasiness about the world. There is none of that about de Monseignat, she is the picture of grace and elegance, a character F. Scott would have written had he lived in our present day, but with no danger of a glamorously sweet downfall. Subtle and comfortable in her movement, she has the silent gravitas of a young woman doing what she is supposed to be doing in the world. Intermedial, intertextual, inextricably layered in her expression, de Monseignat has a modern-day post-modern presence. In her very essence, she results as both visionary and somehow belonging to a time past – or maybe, the rebirth of a time yet to come. A painter who abandoned the medium to sculpt – she finds the process of painting as lonely as it is sensual – she is, for a few months, abandoning London for New York, in pursuit of her own new noise. I ask her if she’s uncanny. “I’m a bit weird,” she answers. “And it’s a compliment!” We laugh. It may be easy being weird when you’re weird in a fabulous way – but maybe not. The afternoon is coming to its end, the feather-sized snowflakes are waning, even the pregnant-looking kitten is tired of being recorded. There is a beautiful sister, a fun flatmate, the mention of the warm weather in Monaco, where she grew up, yet de Monseignat, like a genuine artwork, seems somehow detached from her own world, sitting beautiful and freckled, so capable and surreal in dealing with the real, the uncanny, and what was supposed to be long-gone. I want to tell her that she needs to write, to do that PhD she muses about, to teach – some day, not now – and that I hope the world is ready for a bright young thing with actual substance. But I don’t, because I know she’ll do all of it – and then some.
Words by Ena Martinovic | More infomations : Watch for Adeline de Monseignat on adelinedemonseignat.com, the streets of Brooklyn, London, or Monaco, and The Ronchini Gallery ©.
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Words by Ena Martinovic | More infomations : Watch for Adeline de Monseignat on adelinedemonseignat.com, the streets of Brooklyn, London, or Monaco, and The Ronchini Gallery Š.
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Shades of Irène
IRENE LE FANZINE ÉROTIQUE Article by IRÈNE SANTAMANS
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How ? IRENE results from the meeting of three French girls in London. Their visiting reasons were different, however, they were bound with the same dynamics, energy and curiosity. Geneviève Eliard was attending lingerie courses, Esthèle, a graphic designer, was there to assist photographers while Lucie Santamans, previously a student in History of Art, had been in London for a while, tickled by the desire to discover what was beyond the “Manche” and unable to leave such a cool city. Geneviève maintains a profound culture of eroticism, which she then transmitted to us. Soon after, the collective decision was made to renew a genre that has been so often tarnished and make a real project out of it. We wanted to create something else, with a different approach, more secret, discrete, elegant, suggestive and most of all, more arousing. We wanted to draw the attention to things that were simpler, more sensual and carnal… a delicately lifted skirt, the soft skin of a neck, the hands of a man discovering a woman’s body. We also had a studio, time, inspiration and especially, the London energy with us. Everything was right to create IRENE. As a matter of fact, the first number was created in London, before we all came back to France with our project under the arm, ready for it to get bigger and bolder.
Why? We wanted to create a space to breathe, bring something light - a bit naïve too – but it was also important for us to bring a feminine point of view to eroticism. Forget the clichés of bold images of naked bodies; our desire was to bring back its forgotten side, with more modesty, less vulgarity and no taboos. IRENE also allows us to work with young (and less young) photographers, illustrators and authors. A pool of five to ten artists contributes to each publication. It is for them, the opportunity to work on projects that are made to stay very personal. In exchange, we present their work and portfolio on our website. The “curating” dimension for IRENE is very important. Each publication goes with exhibitions, which is an opportunity to sell the prints but also to activate the “networking” side of these events. All three of us actually evolve in different sectors: Geneviève is lingerie stylist, Esthèle works in graphic arts and Lucie evolves in audio-visual production. The fanzine allows us to meet and put together our talents, meet other interesting people and most importantly, to do what we want. This is an exceptional plus for us, and an even more interesting business card.
Who for? Actually, we started IRENE for ourselves, without really asking ourselves if it was for any one else at that point. Little by little, we found our audience and then it happened really fast. They all contributed to IRENE’S success and helped us stay connected. Our target audience is unisex, with a strong panel between 20 and 35 years old. People that like IRENE are those who recognize themselves in alternative publications. The fanzines and the independent press are going well nowadays, people look to discover new things and are asking for this type of content. There is a good dynamic, a less smooth aesthetic, it is also particularly Anglo-Saxon and more real. The “fanzine” phenomenon actually spread itself everywhere; the object took on a real value on the press market. Words by Irène Santamans | Translated by India Belce-Kennedy | Images by Irène Erotic Fanzine © | www.irene-eroticfanzine.com
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Images by Irène Erotic Fanzine © | www.irene-eroticfanzine.com
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Images by Irène Erotic Fanzine © | www.irene-eroticfanzine.com
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Images by Irène Erotic Fanzine © | www.irene-eroticfanzine.com
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ART BASEL 2013 Article by ALICE BRACE
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Since its debut art show in 1970, which attracted more than 16,000 visitors, Art Basel has had an enormous influence on the art world. Four decades later Art Basel hosts annual shows in Basel, Miami and, more recently, Hong Kong – it’s debut show utilising 245 exhibitors across 35 countries in order to present the most prominent contemporary artists to potential patrons. Art Basel has been an intrinsic associate of Contemporary Art. It first made its name as one of the most successful art shows of the century, with particu-
lar focus on ‘Neue Tendenzen’ (‘New Trends’), Video Art, and Photography; a medium for which Art Basel is now a leading platform for promoting thanks to an incredibly well received celebration of its 150th anniversary. Having hosted innumerous household names at the very foundations of their careers, Art Basel celebrates and sources new talent to help pave way for them to be identified in the art world. The concept, originally founded by Basel-based gallerists Ernst Beyeler, Trudi Bruckner and Balz Hilt, is to
More infomations : www.artbasel.com
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build dynamic relationships directly between the artists and their hosts, including galleries as well as private collectors. The funding provided allows the artists to further develop their work, and in turn, the art world itself. As the programmes for each show feature such an extensive array of the new as well as the long-established, each branch of Art Basel is divided up into sectors, under the titles ‘Unlimited’ (“platform for projects that transcend the limitations of a classical art-show stand”), ‘Statement’ (“new solo projects by young, emerging artists”), ‘Feature’ (“emphesizes precisely curated projects”), ‘Edition’ (collaborations between leading publishers of editioned works and prints with renowned artists), ‘Parcours’ (“engages the city’s historical quarters with site-specific sculptures, inventions and performances”), ‘Film’ (“weeklong program of films by and about artists”), and arguably the most important of all, ‘Galleries’ which incorporates the world’s leading galleries
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of Modern and Contemporary Art to show off 20th- and 21st- century artworks. On display at the participating showrooms is a vast range of works, from classical paintings, drawings, and sculpture to large-scale installations and digital art from over 4,000 artists. For the newest edition to Art Basel, Hong Kong’s show is broken into bespoke sectors in order to thoroughly exhibit its diverse range of works, under the titles ‘Insights’, ‘Discoveries’ and ‘Encounters’, as well as the essential ‘Galleries’ and ‘Magazines’. The decision to expand into Hong Kong this year was made with a mind to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western art: a relationship that has already developing for years. As the sub-cultures of the world come into the mainstream with better technologies, influence is taken mutually from the East to the West and vice-versa, and Hong Kong was the obvious choice as Asia’s flagship
More infomations : www.artbasel.com Kaumann Repetto Adriean Paci The Column Courtsey the artist and the gallery ©
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More infomations : www.artbasel.com Gallery EM Jae Yong Rhee Memories of the Gaze Courtsey of the gallery and the artist Š
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correspondent due to its already highly diverse cultural opportunities. Museums, concert halls and performance spaces are amongst the participating galleries this year to show off the most vibrant artists of the region. Highlights from the East’s first taste of Art Basel include a retrospective look at neo-expressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat’s works, as well as a selection of the most acclaimed paintings of Frank Auerbach’s oeuvre. But festooning the walls of the majority galleries are the works of a meticulously selected range of little known artists including the likes of Jae Yong Rhee and Juree Kim, who’s collaborative photographic collection ‘Memories of the Gaze’ is both haunting and nostalgic as it reflects the rapid manner of modern life and materialism. Video and photographic project ‘The Column’ by Adrian Paci is on display in Paris’ Jeu de Paume as one of the contributing galleries for the Basel branch of Art Basel. The video, coming in at 25 minutes and 40 seconds, follows a sculpting crew on a vast open-top cargo ship as they transform a marble block into a beautiful, baroque column. When Paci first heard of this method of production, he says “I found it terrific. It sounded so weird, simoultaneously sick and fabulous, someting mythological and at the same time in keeping with the capitalistic logic of profit”. The project is a visually stunning documentary about the construction of the column as well as of the voyage itself. Filmed in HD, ‘The Column’ is an absorbing and important piece of cinematography into the modern relationship between traditional craftsmanship and big-business. Already hosting artists from almost every country in the world and with exhibitions in every continent, Art Basel has been loyal to its concept throughout its longevity, and long may it continue to bring artists closer to not only their hosts, but to aspiring artists and otherwise dull concrete canvases.
More infomations : www.artbasel.com Galerie Daniel Templon, Chiharu Shiota In Silence, 2008 | Courtsey the gallery and the artist ©
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More infomations : www.artbasel.com Monior Adam Avikainen Ginger Glacier, 2012 | Courtsey of the artist and the gallery Š Beck & Eggeling Heinz Mack Dynamic Structure Synthetic resin on cotton, 1964 | Courtsey of the artist and the gallery Š
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MENUHIN FESTIVAL GSTAAD 2013 « WATER » 78 - TRIBU MAGAZINE
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Dear friends of Music, it is a real pleasure to share with you the detailed program of the 2013 edition of the Menuhin Festival, which will be held from the 18th of July to the 7th of September. The theme of ‘water’ is present in many concerts. Through Haendel’s ‘Water Music’ or Smetana’s ‘Moldau’, you will learn that this element is also inspired by the pages of Teleman, Britten, Schubert and Mendelssohn. To import this music, we have invited, like every year, a number of celebrities, such as Angela Gheorghiu, the pianist Hélène Grimaud, the conductor Andris Nelsons as well as many revelations such as Soprano Nuria Rial, the violinist Vilde Frang and trumpeter Gabor Boldoczki. We are also proud to propose symphonic evenings in the company of prestigious orchestra such as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Lyon, the Russian National Orchestra and our very own Gstaad Festival Orchestra, not to forget the more intimate bills of the Kammer Orchester Basel which escorts this year the pianist Hélène Grimaud and clarinettist Sabine Meyer. Among the strong moments of this summer 2013 figures the Gstaad Festival Orchestra evening under the baton of the main conductor Kristian Järvi. Evenings that are, similarly to the festival, placed under the theme of Water, with two ‘tubes’ - the ‘Moldau’ by Smetana and ‘the Sea’ by De Bussy – and a perfect discovery signed Fazil Say: a concerto for piano composed especially for the occasion with the artist himself in solo, fusion of turkish and oriental musical elements as well as classic and jazz influences. 2013 marks a forward step towards the development of our academic offer: alongside the Choral and Piano Academies brought by Silvana Baazzoni-Bartoli and Andras Schiff, the festival proposes for the first time, a String and Baroque Academy under the direction of renown professors.
Words by India Belce-Kennedy | More infomations : www.menuhinfestivalgstaad.ch Facebook : www.facebook.com/MenuhinFestivalGstaad
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More infomations : www.menuhinfestivalgstaad.ch
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MONTREUX JAZZ FESTIVAL Article by INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY
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Music fans around the world have surely all heard of the Montreux Jazz Festival, where Pink Floyd, Ella Fitzerald, Aretha Franklin, Deep Purple and Frank Zappa, to name but a few, have had their guitars and drums resonating on the water of the Lake Léman for many years. Since 1967, Claude Nobs, founder, has been recruiting the greatest musicians across the globe to put together a sharp event that owes its name in every ear. He has shaken the hands and shared the night’s last whiskies with the world’s greatest rock bands and artists. Although jazz constitutes this festival’s core, along the
years all types of music have graced the different stages with particularly ambitious choices, which make it’s reputation. When Miles Davis came down to Montreux, his iconic presence was rewarded by one of the stages being named after him, and he kept coming back for the ten years that followed. So naturally, the great Prince and Sting didn’t hesitate to put on a show and even jam after that with the lucky fans who managed to stay the latest on the small stages, which gives the festival a particularly intimate setting to keep the fans and their idols at reach. The newer pop artists such as the Black
Words by India Belce-Kennedy | More infomations : www.montreuxjazz.com
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Eyed Peas, Lily Allen, Missy Elliott and Massive Attack quickly caught the fever to keep this Festival at its best. Classical and Jazz music are pillars of the event, and to keep it so, Nobs had the smart idea of organising competitions for great piano, guitar and voice soloists, rewarding virtuosos since 2007. But the Festival owes its success to the free concerts, notably in the park, surrounded by bars, chill-out areas, workshops, exhibitions and projections of the Festival’s video archives. Since 1969, the Swiss Television has been recording the concerts before the Festival itself took over to capture
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the most remarkable concerts, and since 1973, every single concert was recorded to equal 10 000 video and audiotapes for the 4 000 bands and 20 000 musicians that have come and gone. This year’s edition will be graced by the presence of, once again, great figures of the musical scene: Leonard Cohen, Bobby Womack, Wyclef Jean & the Refugee Camp, Paolo Conte, ZZ Top, James Blake, Prince, Sting, Diana Krall and many more. This year’s Electro scene is lucky to welcome Paul Kalbrenner, Kraftwerk, Richie Hawtin, Joris Delacroix, Solomun and Andrea Olivia.
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Jake Bug | Cat Power | Paul Kalkbrenner | James Blake | Davendra Banhart Bobby Womack | Mark Lanegan Band | The Hives | Diana Krall
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PALÉO FESTIVAL 2013 Article by INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY
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Every July, roaring music can be heard from the banks of Lake Geneva in the fields of Nyon, a small country town which holds one of the biggest and most important Festivals in Switzerland. Be it under pouring rain, crashing thunder or glorious sunshine, 230 000 spectators mingle in the mud for six days and six nights to the sound of some of the world’s greatest artists in truly idyllic scenery. A fantastic atmosphere invites fans both during the day and throughout the night in front of the six stages surrounded by 200 food and drink stands. The smaller stages under circus tents assure late DJs for those happy campers, or the more dodgy ones who come out when all the others get back behind the wheel, with one eye closed and the other on the left over beer in the bottom of that plastic cup you’ve been clinging on to all night but forgot to go get your coin given in return for not throwing it on the floor. Yes, Switzerland still likes its festivals clean and everyone has a small part of responsibility, although 4 565 volunteers work hard to keep the beers flowing, the food cooking and the ground clean. Across the field, a number of quite amazing artistic installations give that extra oomph to make the place look great. Local artists create custom-made chill out areas and recreate truly exotic sceneries. From giant pebble-like waterbeds on imported sand under huge hammocks rocking among bond fires, there is no room for a random space and no excuse for boredom even if the rock and electro bands are not your scene.
Words by India Belce-Kennedy | More infomations : www.paleo.ch
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For over ten years, the festival has been sold out only a few hours after the online tickets are posted. The festival owes its growing reputation and disputable popularity to names such as Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, James Brown, Joe Cocker, Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Placebo, Jamiroquai, Muse and Jane Birkin, among many others who have been regularly seen on the Paleo stage since the very beginning. For this 38th edition, the big names include The Smashing Pumpkins, Santana, Crystal Fighters, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Blur, Breakbot, Dizzee Rascal, Asaf Avidan, Alt-J, Neil Youg&Crazy Horses, Phoenix and Sigur Ros. But we will also have the pleasure of hearing local bands which have made a great impression across borders, such as Alvin Zealot, Nick Porsche, The Lonesome Southern Comfort Company, The Animen and Kadebostany. These local artists have for the first time been granted the opportunity to play on bigger stages in order for them to acquire better visibility. But this is also because the bar is high and people come for them as much as for the others. Quite a soft earthy feel for some of these new locals; Nick Porsche maintains a folk quality in a world music album. His particular voice transcends a soul feel that tunes perfectly with his guitar. The Lonesome Southern Comfort Company’s indie sound finds its inspiration in other sounds such as Iron & Wine and Steve Earle, while The Animen dares a bolder and more rock sound.
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Alt-J | Alvin Zealot | Breakbot Live | Asaf Avidan | Crystal Fighters | The Lonesome Southern Comfort Company Pony Del Sol | Merz | The Animen
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KADEBOSTANY Article by INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY
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Many are those who will agree that a good piece of music can be a journey. Sound can transport us to corners of our minds we rarely attend otherwise, or parts of our lives we sometimes apprehensively reminisce, or on the contrary, desperately grab on to. Music has a way of delicately labelling what we see, feel, experience, remember or imagine in a way that is defined perhaps by one’s state of mind, education, mood or total unconscious. The latter is the best part; this is where the journey begins. And surely, rare are those who have been able to truly lift off the ground and land on imaginary grounds simply with a piece of music, or more precisely, with the environment in which each note was incubated. This band will assure you a take-off to somewhere which sounds like familiar but are not quite sure of its location. Meeting Kadebostany’s charismatic president, greeting you with a brilliant smile and sincere humility, is a unique experience. On his left shines the national Diva, his pride and joy. Both seem to hang on the thread of being fascinating protagonists of an exotic fiction and simple musicians passionately dedicated to their ideal. In both cases, Kadebostan and Amina are bonded by their uniqueness and emanate alien yet attractive genius. The first album ‘Songs from Kadebostany’ is a true outcast and the cradling of the trumpet and saxophone fanfare promises a colourful journey through landscapes of Southeastern Europe, or at least what one’s imagination of such a country would be. While the electronic beats give this album cohesion and familiarity, all the other instruments come in and amplify its absurd identity. Each song possesses undeniable cinematographic potential, contributing to the feeling of being taken on a journey, far, far away. No standards, no expectations and no repetitions might be the recipe to such eclectic and fascinating music. The musicality of its melodies finds its similarities in many different genres, such as classical music, electronica and cabaret, but somehow, mastered and metamorphosed into a powerful blend of poetic melancholy. The second album, ‘Pop Collection’, assures a bold strike on fans. Beautified by Amina’s original and delectable voice, the new tracks are filled with surprising and addictive sounds. It demonstrates even more facets, resonating with revisited jazz, rock and techno, not to reveal them all, and the trumpets are even sexier and groovier than one can expect. Live, the duo shows great pleasure in making the crowd ecstatic, for their smiles and stage presence demonstrate an impressive and touching generosity. So when the ears and eyes are satisfied and the lights turn off, you’ll still be screaming for more.
Words by India Belce-Kennedy | www.kadebostany.com © | www.facebook.com/kadebostany | https://twitter.com/kadebostany Next single video trailer : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7o-it3NU240
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Images by Supermafia © | www.supermafia.com
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L'œil de la rue
BACK TO BASICS Article by MURRAY CLARK
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After perusing AW13 trends, something notable quite struck me. Aside from the dazzling tailoring of JW Anderson and the fur detailing of Shaun Samson, there were plenty of pieces geared towards a very niche section of fashion’s fandom. Many pieces, although interesting, lacked that classic appeal that defines contemporary menswear; for me, fashion should always be chic, stylish, flattering and well-crafted. Witnessing a kaleidoscope printed drop-crotch tracksuit did little to alleviate my concerns (I’m looking at you, East London). I’m all for menswear going in a braver, more experimental direction but a fine balance must always be struck: should ready-to-wear collections really border upon the unwearable? A recent jaunt across Southeast Asia introduced me to hordes of men drowned in garish Aztec and Navajo prints, and it looked like chic simplicity had died a very painful death. Granted, the high street variations of the print trend can be a little inelegant when compared to their high fashion counterparts, but it's a stark illustration of how busy recent looks can be. Undoubtedly, this shift is a result of the catwalk trends, so why do we overcomplicate style in a bid to be interesting? A reversion back to staple fashion basics is quite possibly the only cure to this fashion ailment.. There's something incredibly masculine about the Hedi Slimane-esque all-black outfit, whilst tonal minimalism was everywhere at Paris Fashion Week. Furthermore, the most successful outfits often incorporate trends in a very subtle manner; my favourite SS pieces quietly boast floral and neon accents and details as opposed to something louder. Quiet style inferences overrule brash fashion statements any day of the week. It's not that I disregard anything remotely experimental - much to the contrary. Fashion is after all a vehicle of artistic communication, but basing an entire outfit upon fleeting (and sometimes novelty) trends is an accident waiting to happen. I despair when I gaze upon Dalston party-goers head to toe in predictable leather sports luxe - just because the 90s are making a comeback doesn't mean you need to look like an extra from Clarissa Explains It All. This rule too works both ways; the disciples of luxury brands show little knowledge of style and editing when an entire outfit is Burberry, Chanel or Prada. Good style always requires some personal originality. Why not opt for the contemporary conservatism of this season’s McQueen rather than the overdone, overworked fluoro trend? Why not incorporate the abundance of orange fabrics into classic tailoring? Understandably, the looks we see during show season are often sources of inspiration rather than examples of mimicry yet this is transforming. I’m increasingly seeing bold and brazen tweed-cloaked, feather-covered male fashionistas with top hat and green eyebrows in tow which causes my own to raise. Whilst I praise such individuals for their unique and bold approach to menswear, such a statement look is never going to become timeless style. My verdict? Don’t overthink and don’t overcompensate. A simple outfit is most often the greatest, and just because there isn’t anything remotely avant-garde to your look doesn’t mean it’s not as relevant. Sometimes, a pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt really does cut it.
Words by Murray Clark | Images by www.pittimmagine.com | www.le-21eme.com ©
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Images by www.pittimmagine.com | www.le-21eme.com Š
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Images by www.pittimmagine.com | www.le-21eme.com Š
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MODE SUISSE 2013 Article by MODE SUISSE | MAFALDA M. KYAMBEL | INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY
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We think of Switzerland as keeping a rather low profile, especially concerning its fashion scene in spite of local designers doted with a surprisingly bold talent and desire to get bigger and more “out there”. Mode Suisse has allowed these blooming designers to shout it out loud and get a walk under the spotlight thanks to Yannick Aellen. Creative director and show producer, he has applied all the knowledge and precious experience acquired during 15 years of fashion industry and shows to give Switzerland its very own fashion platform. Mode Suisse resembles its fellow glamorous events of the sort but faithful to its promise, it naturally conserves a certain simplicity and humility which makes it enjoyably accessible. The astonishingly attractive industrial building, in which took place the 3rd edition, perfectly advantaged the event by giving it a certain “cachet” one might not usually look for. The runway stretched out under a massive, rounded and rough ceiling, which undulated to reach tall and imposing glass façades. On the first floor, the designers mingled among themselves and their collections, exchanging sincere interest and sympathy. Among some of the well-established designers, hung the collection of the HEAD school (Superior College of Art and Design) of Geneva. The young talents working to achieve a Bachelor in Fashion design, eager to share their inspirations and development concerning their collections, were radiant with professionalism and excitement. Further along, aligned neatly around the room, proudly stood the bigger names, such as Little Black Dress, Julia Winkler, Lela Scherrer, Julian Zigerli and many more. As one examined the outfits, a striking sense of originality and conceptualisation emanated from the pieces and attracted one’s curiosity. These Swiss designers seriously master both their creative and business potential while it seems they constantly look to push further the stories behind their creations. From the Church and Pope, to Malevitch’s cross and the Universe, the concepts are more surprising and delightful than ever. However, simplicity, rationality and harmony are the master words that reinforce the attractiveness of these collections. While the show was buzzing, eyes were riveted both on the outfits and the gorgeous models. A simple runway and great music were a perfect plus to the already fantastic show. While Yannick Aellen and the entire team behind him worked hard and well to make this happen, the Swiss designers could relish of the result and the great opportunities it has brought them, both on a local and international base. Mode Suisse is a must to follow and attend for enthusiasts of innovative fashion.
Words by MODE SUISSE | Mafalda M. Kyambel | India Belce-Kennedy | Images by Mode Suisse © | www.modesuisse.com
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ALEKSANDRA WISNIEWSKA
Aleksandra Wisniewska successfully graduated in July 2002 from "Ecole Supérieure des Arts et Techniques de la Mode (ESMOD)" in Paris. During her studies, she completed an internship with the famous Parisian label "Chloé". In April 2001, she made it to the finals of the international fashion contest "Brother cup", and was invited to present her collection in Beijing. After her graduation, Aleksandra Wisniewska came back to Switzerland to take part in the "Prix Bolero" fashion contest, and walked off with the public's price. 2006 the designer founded her fashion label "Aleksandra Wisniewska collection". "Aleksandra Wisniewska collection" expresses the elegant, feminine and self-confident woman with a touch of extravagance.
www.aleksandra-wisniewska.ch ©
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STEFANIE BIGGEL
Stefanie Biggel`s collections are modern and distinguish themselves through distinct yet unpretentious cuts. Each piece is feminine without being overly playful or ornate. Her unique designs are inspired by, and thus reflect, her personal moods and impressions. Her collections are aimed at confident women who are aware of their femininity yet have the courage to challenge that notion. The current AW13 Collection - "I leave you my portrait" – combines folklore with sportive elements and tells a story about departure, isolation and homecoming. Stefanie Biggel`s label was founded in 2012. In 2009 she graduated from the Institute for Fashion Design at the Academy of Arts and Design Basel. After her studies she concentrated on her own projects and collaborations with artists and graphic designers. Stefanie lives and works in Zurich.
www.stefaniebiggel.com ©
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IKOU TSCHÜSS
Ikou Tschüss is a Swiss designer knittwear brand for women, men and children. Reimagining the craft in unexpected ways, Ikou Tschüss is known for it’s unique details, such as lining colorful handprinted silk scarves with beautiful crocheted borders. In the words of the designers: „We use traditional savoirfaire and mix it with unusual materials to create a new modernity. As part of our commitment to quality, every knit and crocheted piece is fabricated by hand in Switzerland and Europe. The social- and environmental friendly aspect is crucial to us”. The label’s idea is to keep the production local, intimate and being environmentally friendly. The result is that every Ikou Tschüss piece both conforms to the highest standard of quality and is at the same time completely individual and unique. 2010 Ikou Tschüss won the Swiss Federal Design Award. In the same year they came together with the renowned artist Urs Fischer to design their New York pop-up store. Ikou Tschüss is sold in selected stores worldwide. www.ikoutschuss.com ©
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JAVIER REYES
Known for his understated urban allure, designer Javier Reyes proposes a veritable fusion of his pieces with their wearer by distinctively underlining femininity in an almost whispering way. The Mexican-born, Bern-based designer creates pieces that beg for a second look, leading to a long-lasting impression of his fluid lines and sober silhouettes. In a mobile and constantly changing society heavily influenced by sportswear, Reyes infuses his designs with discreet sensuality, giving them a perfect balance between unhurried wearability and stylish fluidity.his collections are accentuated by elements directly derived from sports, traditional craftsmanship and the art of draping. A classic color palette reflects the sobriety of today’s urban elements while still expressing sensuality and functionality.
www.javier-reyes.ch ©
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JULIA WINKLER
“Pinky’s Dream, Watch the Room a/w 2012/13” The collection PDWTR is inspired by the first album of David Lynch “Crazy Clown Time”. The work process shows an experimental consolidation of different senses into a new outcome, bringing together abstract music and experimental shape. The result
of this consolidation is a complex atmosphere, filled with interlaced and ambivalent elements and emotions. A coexistence of geometric, almost sculptured shapes and flowing drapery, taking distance of being only functional, yet expressing the complexity, ponderosity and the interplay of elements of David Lynch’s spherical soundscape. The colour palette stays around noncolours: shades which seem to be aubergine or orange, but are not at the same time. Like the music, the colours are elusory and non-nameable. The stiff, radical and rough elements of David Lynch’s music is shown through the fabrics as well: stiff wool felt, static and sculptural, is brought together it fluent artificial fibre. Julia Winkler was born in Zurich and graduated from the International University of Art for Fashion ESMOD in Berlin with a BA in stylism and modelism in 2012. Her way of approaching design shows an experimental way of work. With “PRWTR “ she was awarded with the “prix du jury 2012” and the “annabelle award 2012”. Julia currently works in Paris.
www.studiowinkler.com ©
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JULIAN ZIGERLI
Julian Zigerli's AW13 Collection "Happy Tears" is inspired by the concept of Tears of Joy. These so called "Happy Tears" shoot through our veins like free flowing dopamine and leave us comfortably cringing. The prints, cuts and materials from this collection are reminiscent of the feeling of coming home and at the same
time letting go. This intimately familiar laugh echoes through our memories. Prints made from magnetized iron powder and inked veins support the feelings of power, agitation and liberation. Electrifying layouts contrast the languorous high-quality materials and in turn deliver extreme comfort in winter through their practical functionality. Tears of joy seize us suddenly and unexpected, whether we want them to or not. This power is reflected in Zigerli's collection. The harmonic assortment surprises with its practicality, details and colors that make ones puls race. Julian Zigerli was born and raised in Switzerland. At the age of 20 Julian left for Germany to study fashion design at the University of Art Berlin (UDK). After graduating in 2010 he returned to his roots in Switzerland and founded his own label: 'Julian Zigerli'. One of the founding concepts of this label was to focus on constructing garments out of innovative Swiss textiles. Since his first collection, Julian Zigerli has celebrated great success both nationally and internationally including a nomination for the Swiss Design Prize in 2011 and the winning of the Federal Design Prize Switzerland in 2012. He has presented his collections in Zürich, Berlin, Paris, London, Florence and Seoul. www.julianzigerli.com ©
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JULIE EGLI
The Julie Egli scarves stick out with especially large sizes and big images of non- recurring patterns. Her signature prints take you on a sophisticated journey through different ethnic cultures and fantasy worlds with a touch of a psychedelic twist. She is working with her own explicitly detailed hand drawings, bold organic-graphic paintings or photographic collages. Notable is her special and attentive treat with color. Bringing together fashion, art and manufacture, she is committed to create beautiful objects in high quality throughout the process. The collection is continually growing and not
seasonally. The design is long-lived, never fast-paced and suitable for both genders. Silk is one of the most beautiful, exclusive materials. It has a unique color reflection and an insulating effect against cold and heat. She says: "A scarf can totally make your outfit – there are so many ways to wear it! Enjoy the bold size for a dress, even put it on your wall or use it as a plaid for your bed or sofa. In 2013 she enriches her Brand with new leather accessory and scarves inspired by surreal, hyper Gauchos, traveling to dark islands with palm trees and spicy fruits, printed on a soft Modal/Cashmere blend. To be presented in March 2013 at Capsule show in Paris and Mode Suisse in Zurich and Geneva. Julie Egli scarves have reached an international shop presence in Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Zurich, Barcelona and Basel and is available worldwide in online-shops. Julie is currently based in Zurich. She studied and lived seven years in Barcelona and was co-founder and designer of LAVA 02-04 that was sold in Barcelona, Zurich, Stockholm, Beirut and Geneva. Julie Egli is working as an independent designer in fashion and textile since 2001.
www.julieegli.com ©
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LELA SCHERRER
Swiss born fashion designer Lela Scherrer established her independent studio in Antwerp/Basel in 2002. Ever since her work has expressed a strong creative urge to integrate the complementary influences of her background: contemporary and traditional, local and foreign, craftsmanlike and industrial
elements become her source of inspiration. Combined with the profound technical knowledge of a tailor and her experience as a costume designer various approaches fuse into Lela’'s distinctive and versatile style of creation. As of recent Lela has relaunched her own line in which she shows her personal creative vision at will. The collection is available by order, each piece exclusively tailor-made to satisfy the needs of her private customers. Her work assignments for fashion and concept design include collaborations with companies like Dries van Noten, ELLE, Walter van Beirendonck and Wim Neels amongst other, the Swiss pavilion at World Expo 2005 as well as costume design for theater companies in Switzerland and Belgium. To be on top of things Lela keeps pursuing other projects in order to challenge and stimulate her creativity. All of her work explores boundaries, venturing into collaborations with artists and product designers. Lela lives and works in Switzerland and the Benelux.
www.lelascherrer.com ©
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LAEND PHUENGKIT FEAT. BAIES D'ERELLE
The new Autumn/Winter 2013 Collection “Miss Lanna” by Laend Phuengkit transports us back in time to 19th century Thailand’s Kingdom of Lanna. Inspired by the unique and elaborate culture of Lanna, the woven cotton and skilfully draped silhouette creations draw on this historical heritage and give it a new lease of life for 2013. Throughout, Laend Phuengkit remains true to his style - emphasising the unison of contrasting elements as well as the combination of Asian and European flavours. The new “Miss Lanna” collection is characterised by the sculpting drapery used in the creations. As was once typical in Lanna, Laend Phuengkit uses different techniques to swathe the body in material. Dresses and skirts are artistically wrapped to create a welldefined, light silhouette and to give the wearer a feeling of freedom. As the reign of King Rama V came to an end (1900), women in Lanna, who were influenced by western fashion trends, began to wear blouses. This combination of western and Asian elements is also reflected in Laend Phuengkit’s creations: traditionally inspired light, woven cottons blended together with urban cuts produce exciting contrasts. Laend Phuengkit launched the up-and-coming fashion label, Studio Laend Phuengkit, in 2010. Zurich-born Phuengkit is a graduate of the FHNW (Institute for Fashion Design) and is now living in Berlin. He has already presented his designs at the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Berlin and was the first Swiss to be nominated a finalist for the Ramazotti Award. In 2011, he won the renowned Swiss Design Award. Phuengkit presented his latest collection, “Silent City Of...“ as part of Mode Suisse Edition 2 in Geneva and Zurich and at the Mercedes Benz Fashion Days in November 2013. Laend Phuengkit's aesthetics and designs are characterised by the innovatively creative way in which European and Asian patterns and styles fuse together, evoking the contrasting lifestyles and philosophies of life. The designer achieves this by incorporating different shapes, patterns and prints into his passion for drapery. The unfamiliar slowly unfolds to reveal an exotically seductive power, luring the beholder towards familiarity.
www.laendphuengkit.com ©
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Baies d'Erelle The Baies d’Erelle brand is designed by the French-Swiss designer Erelle Bertolini with a desire to create the perfect harmony between the jewellery and the body. She graduated with a Master’s degree in design and has been creating jewellery since 2008. Each piece is 100% organic and ethically created by craftsmen. My designs reflect my folk and nomadic lifestyle, combining metallic and organic materials in perpetual evolution. Brass, copper or old-looking silver chains wrap themselves around semi-precious stones like wires. A subtle union between hardness and flaws, the irregularities of the stones reflect their raw and mineral character. And because they exist since the dawn of time, I love working with these minerals which are like talismans that would accompany us every day. "Hecate, Queen of the dark moon", the fall-winter 2013/14 Collection, celebrates the goddess of the moon through Greek mythology, Phrygian, Sumerian, Celtic and Inca.
www.baiesderelle.com ©
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LITTLE BLACK DRESS
The two swiss designers Eliane Diethelm & Joanna Skoczylas founded their Zurich-based brand, Little Black Dress in 2009 and since then they offer carefree chic for women, with their mutual passion, the legendary „little black dress“. For the two designers, the LBD can be more than just a black cocktail dress, it stands for the perfect dress. And it’s the dress itself which is most important to them, because it’s a complete outfit and you can up and down dress it easily with just the right accessories, for every occasion, for every woman, in black – as well as in the colors of the season. In the three annual collections you’ll find a variety of dresses, the seasonal collections come with new themes and colors every half a year and there’s a new annual collection: LBD WHITE, for the modern and sophisticated brides, who prefer to marry in an extravagant cocktail dress rather than in a huge princess-baiser.
www.littleblackdress.ch ©
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MADEMOISELLE L
After a total revival of the brand mademoiselle L with the collection # A CROSS L - summer 2013, a succession of events and awards unanimously welcomed the contemporaneity of her collection and her “dégaine décalée“ that blends sophistication and streetstyle. With the collection # A CROSS part II - winter 2014, mademoiselle L claims for the second consecutive season a collection of clothing declined as object design and divided into four compact collections: jeans, t-shirts, jewelry and bag. In continuation of her previous collection, mademoiselle L’s inspiration is based on the black square of Malevich, worked in clothing by cutting and leather inserts. At last, rings, bracelets and XXS bags also worn as jewelry complement the silhouettes. It is the “dégaine“ that binds these clothing together, a reverent and irreverent “dégaine“, chic and “brut“.
www.mademoisellel.ch ©
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PORTENIERROTH
Instead of semi-annual new creations PortenierRoth are opting for an All-Season collection. By emphasizing different key attributes, pieces not only serve each season but can also be easily combined with each other. This approach is rooted in regional handicraft combined with the Zeitgeist of contemporary fashion. Each article can be sustainably reproduced whenever needed. The user-friendly intention, however, is to entice wearers into playfully varying their selection and combination of garments. The silhouettes of the individual pieces are designed to function equally well both alone and together to form a total look. Great care has been given to enable the attired woman to spend her day appearing modern and timeless. This nonchalance has accentuated the designers’ line on the catwalk ever since <<Croisière 11>> when models wore oversized men’s shoes. Only such a touch sets the kind of laissez-faire pace that the designers already have in mind in the early stages of creation. This results not only in clothing but also in shoes that encourage more (fashionable) sturdiness.
www.laboutiquevolante.com ©
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SANDRO MARZO
Sandro Marzo is a fashion designer based in Basel. Shortly after graduating from the Academy of Art and Design Basel in 2011, he launched his own label Sandro Marzo. Focusing on the particularity of traditional textiles, the cuts and silhoutes are determined by the specific textures of the used materials.
The variability of textil types means a challenge to find a common expres sion. This process though cannot be seen as minimization, nore as a historical study of the materials, but more as a continuous development encouraged by chosen thematical concepts. This leads to a constant tension of the individual pieces, whose interaction increases this tension to a highlight of the presented outfits. Sandro Marzo’s debut collection explores the days of the first communion within its religious context, which also becomes a metaphor for the launching of his own label. The idea of a baptism, performed by a group of men in a traditional and spiritual manner, his AW 13/14 collection refers to codes taken from religious garments used in christian rituals. In combination with flight jackets, military-tailored coats and bonded leather boots, it walks a fine line between an agressive, ritualistic and almost gang-like view on menswear, which suddently becomes innocent, pure and sacral at times. Camouflage embroideries are covering the outfits like floral patterns, fine freckled wool and cashmere-knit pullovers, scarfs and beanies are supplementing the collection.
www.sandromarzo.com ©
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PERRET SCHAAD
This season, Perret Schaad’s collection cites the contrasts between a dreamy yet harsh frosted landscape and the warmth and pleasure of a cozy home on a cold winter day. Perret Schaad uses a precise vocabulary of lines and volumes. Their designs result from research and play with the contours and the geometry of the (human) body. The way the fabrics fall is relevant to the designs as it is translated into fluidity, which contrasts sculptural details. Precise outlines are created by sharp cuts, while drapery enhances hidden spaces. The result is silhouettes that are concrete and sensual, strict and naive. Perret Schaad uses an autumnal palette. The duo combines woody and urban tones not deciding for a colour range from a city or a natural scape. Urban greys and stormy blues are lightened up with lunatic icy lilac. As the ancient rose and northern beiges evoke associations with a vanishing, soon crystallized nature, the poppy red quotes awakening springtide. Importance is given to the quality of materials and finishing. The designers love to reinvent each fabric's personality, using them in extremely noble pieces that are yet cool and modern. Glossy silks reflect the light, while soft cashmere knits and rich wool georgettes are used to create an easy elegance. Constant research of materials and the movement of materials led Perret Schaad to develop prints this season, using patterns inspired by works of art. The use of 3 dimensional elements made of painted paper by artist Peter Jap Lim picks up on the game between blur and structure. The looks are fresh and charismatic, giving those who wear them a feeling of originality and refined beauty. Since 2009, the design duo Perret Schaad shows its passion to create clear and original silhouettes using fine materials and traditional handcraft to meet a contemporary design vision. Perret Schaad has developed collections enwrought with playful ambiguity. Its design aesthetic is both strict and poetic, its fabrics both innovative and precious, its colours, soft yet radical. The semi-sculptural silhouettes designed by the Berlin-based duo mix structure and fluidity. The result is a complex vision of beauty, freedom and independence. The Perret Schaad look is discreet, feminine and definitively modern.
www.perretschaad.com ©
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HEAD HAUTE ECOLE D'ART ET DE DESIGN GENÈVE
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Attaining high standards is a key concept that shapes our student programme. Throughout their course of study at HEAD-Geneva, we encourage students to question and to stretch the limits of their creative universe, while at the same time confronting them with the realities of the fashion world. Driven by their passion for fashion, our students acquire the high standards necessary to ensure success in all aspects of their projects through the variety of experiences offered by our teaching staff. Rather than just handing over the keys, we aim to empower students to learn how to forge for themselves the essential tools for their future career as designers. Christiane Luible Head of Department of Industrial and Product Design For Mode Suisse 2013, this year we have selected six school projects from "collection 5". Camille Buhler “Bel/plante”, Sophie Colombo "La réalité contradictoire entraine la couleur", Jeremy Gaillard “Post-Matriarcat”, Amandine Mane “Le geste nécessaire”, Lucille Mosimann “Nasty Faces: Retour de Bagarre au petit matin” and Anaïs Pierquet "Là-bas les larmes s'élèvent vers les âmes et les feuilles ne perdent jamais leur couleur vive".
www.head.hesge.ch ©
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SANDRO MARZO | INTEMPORELS
INTEMPORELS
JEREMY GAILLARD | HEAD
LELA SCHERRER | LITTLE BLACK DRESS
JEREMY GAILLARD | HEAD
MADEMOISELLE L
INTEMPORELS | DRYKORN
SANDRO MARZO
LITTLE BLACK DRESS | INTEMPORELS
SANDRO MARZO
LITTLE BLACK DRESS | INTEMPORELS
MADEMOISELLE L | ALEKSANDRA WISNIEWSKA | INTEMPORELS
SANDRO MARZO
MADEMOISELLE L | INTEMPORELS
ALEKSANDRA WISNIEWSKA | INTEMPORELS
LITTLE BLACK DRESS | INTEMPORELS
PHOTOGRAPHY: KROL STUDIO, JEROME BART, CÉDRIC PAQUOTTE ART DIRECTION AND STYLING: MAFALDA KYAMBEL HAIR AND MAKE-UP: NOELIE JESUS MODEL AGENCY: DEMOISELLE MODELS - SANDY JUILLERAT MODELS: TOM, FRANCK, KARL, EMMA, JADE, SHAILY, MAEL, SEBASTIEN, OCEANE ASSISTANT: INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY, MY-HONG NGO THANKS TO MODE SUISSE DESIGNERS & GLOBUS
On the left : LITTLE BLACK DRESS | INTEMPORELS | SANDRO MARZO
On the right : LITTLE BLACK DRESS | SANDRO MARZO
SANDRO MARZO
LITTLE BLACK DRESS
STEFANIE BIGGEL | DRYKORN | ZARA
STEFANIE BIGGEL | SENSO
DRYKORN | GLOBUS
STEFANIE BIGGEL | SENSO | ZARA
STEFANIE BIGGEL | INTEMPORELS | ZARA
MICHAEL KORS | DRYKORN | LELA SCHERRER | LITTLE BLACK DRESS | INTEMPORELS
LITTLE BLACK DRESS | INTEMPORELS
MICHAEL KORS | GLOBUS HOMME | INTEMPORELS | JEREMY GAILLARD | HEAD
GLOBUS HOMME | INTEMPORELS
LELA SCHERRER | LITTLE BLACK DRESS | INTEMPORELS
MICHAEL KORS | GLOBUS HOMME | INTEMPORELS
PHOTOGRAPHY: KROL STUDIO, JEROME BART, CÉDRIC PAQUOTTE ART DIRECTION AND STYLING: MAFALDA KYAMBEL HAIR AND MAKE-UP: NOELIE JESUS MODEL AGENCY: DEMOISELLE MODELS - SANDY JUILLERAT MODELS: TOM, FRANCK, KARL, EMMA, JADE, SHAILY, MAEL, SEBASTIEN, OCEANE ASSISTANT: INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY, MY-HONG NGO THANKS TO MODE SUISSE DESIGNERS & GLOBUS
SOPHIE COLOMBO | HEAD
SOPHIE COLOMBO | HEAD
SOPHIE COLOMBO | HEAD
SOPHIE COLOMBO | HEAD
SOPHIE COLOMBO | HEAD
SOPHIE COLOMBO | HEAD
PHOTOGRAPHY: KROL STUDIO, JEROME BART, CÉDRIC PAQUOTTE ART DIRECTION AND STYLING: MAFALDA KYAMBEL HAIR AND MAKE-UP: NOELIE JESUS MODEL AGENCY: DEMOISELLE MODELS - SANDY JUILLERAT MODELS: TOM, FRANCK, KARL, EMMA, JADE, SHAILY, MAEL, SEBASTIEN, OCEANE ASSISTANT: INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY, MY-HONG NGO THANKS TO MODE SUISSE DESIGNERS & GLOBUS
SHOES : GREYMER | BRACELETS : INTEMPORELS | BRACELETS & NECKLACE : LITTLE BLACK DRESS | SCARF : JULIE EGLI Images by Arnaud Delaunoy ©
BASELWORLD Text by BASELWORLD | Adapted by INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY
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Each spring, some 1450 companies from the watch, jewellery and precious-stone industries, together with related sectors, showcase their latest developments and innovations in Basel. The world's most renowned brands display their collections exclusively at BASELWORLD. About 120,000 visitors from the specialist retail and wholesale trade make their way to Basel from all over the world to discover the current trends and view the latest creations from the watch and jewellery sectors. The presentation staged at BASELWORLD is truly unique, providing an opportunity to experience brand worlds at the topmost level, as well as enjoy the sophisticated ambiance that prevails at this leading world event. BASELWORLD offers you the ideal networking platform. Here you can forge valuable personal contacts in an exclusive business atmosphere. You are invited to experience this exceptional setting and to combine the fascinating world of watches and jewellery with business success. The world's biggest and most important event in the watch and jewellery sector is being held in Basel, Switzerland, from March 27 to April 3, 2014. Our exhibitors rate the quality of their visitor contacts and business activities at BASELWORLD as outstanding. HERE'S WHAT A FEW OF THEM HAVE TO SAY ABOUT BASELWORLD 2013: A new century has been heralded in for the watch industry with BASELWORLD 2013. Exceptional business deals have been concluded in this exceptional infrastructure. It proved to be a successful edition, despite the fact that it was held later in the year than usual. All the markets were present, and a very good media presence was recorded at the Chopard stand, for example. Both guests and journalists were delighted with the new show. The general mood was an exceptionally positive one. This key meeting point for the industry enables brands to meet all their dealers, establish their views and perspectives for the current year and present their innovations to them. Tag Heuer seemed to profit from this excellent edition, able to record two-digit growth rates. The new position and the new stand offered their customers greater comfort and convenience. The new hall gave the show even more prestige and definitely put it in the top league. Baselworld is, above all, an out-of the ordinary communication platform, which gives brands the opportunity to speak to the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s press and keep abreast of the market within the space of just a few days. This years edition allowed brands such a Pichiotti to acquire new customers and especially from Russia and the Far East. Many brands will agree that this year was the best in five years.
Words taken from www.baselworld.com | Adapted by India Belce-Kennedy | Images by Mafalda Kyambel Š
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Hermes | www.hermes.com
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Chopard | www.chopard.com
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Omega | www.omegawatches.com
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Blancpain | www.blancpain.com
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Salvatore Ferragamo | www.ferragamo.com
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Burberry | ch.burberry.com
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Jacob & Co | www.jacobandco.com
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Messika | www.messika-joaillerie.com
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Versace | www.versace.com
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Pasquale Bruni | www.pasqualebruni.com
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Boucheron | www.boucheron.com
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Vertu | www.vertu.com
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MUSéE MILITAIRE DE DRESDEN Article by INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY
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Daniel Libeskind is a major influence in the 21st century’s architecture. His design for the Military History Museum in Dresden, which was actually named after him, demonstrates an audacious breach into the classic façade. The previously symmetrically shaped building is brutally interrupted by this other bold shape. By doing this, it was the architect’s intention to intercept visitors and raise the issue of how the city’s fate and military organization are tangled together. The compelling asymmetrical construction made up of metallic plates superimposed on the historical building emphasises the unforgettable, senseless violence and destruction of European cities by the Nazis. The statement is clearly felt by the use of glass, concrete and steel to build what resembles a slice of cake. It truly is the metaphor of the reality that has torn this city apart. Having survived bombings at the end of the Second World War, the museum has been considered as a Saxon armoury, a Nazi museum, a Soviet museum and East German Museum. A century later, it is recognized as the museum of a unified and democratic Germany. After being shut down, an architectural competition was held in the hope of conciliating the people and their history. Daniel Libeskind’s design won with the advantage of representing the old and new ways of thinking about war. The traditional, severe and opaque original structure represents an authoritarian past, while the bold and more transparent addition represents the acceptance of today’s democratic society. In this way, the proximity between tradition and innovation is a true homage to the city. The American architect was born from Jewish and Polish parents who spent the war in a soviet work camp before immigrating to Israel and then to the USA. After designing the Jewish museum of Berlin in 1999, their architect son knows how to remind the Germans of their history. Within the two buildings, different exhibitions take place, notably the traditional and chronological one held in the 1972’s building which tells the story from the Middle Ages to Afghanistan. In Libeskind’s extension, eleven different courses to follow, under titles like “ war and fashion”, “politics and violence”, “war and hate”, “war and games”, “army and language”, “army and music”, “war and suffering”, with some of them projected on the walls, in the manner of an art show to assure a “ succession of experiences”. Some may be shaken up by the harsh reality emanating from the exhibitions; putrid smells can sometimes be distinguished and images of a cat’s slow death by gas is shown on film. The intention is to demonstrate violence as explicit as possible. Germany could probably never have a war museum with a simple chronology of events; there must be a demonstration of horror, distress and absurdity. However, the public can enjoy different aspects of the exhibitions. Within 10 000 square meters, 10 000 objects are exposed of which a massive V2 missile, a helicopter, a selection of 23 bombs, and the remains of old German army cars attacked in Afghanistan in 2004 to name a few. With new deliveries such as the first EADS drone worth 1.3 billion euros, the Military museum of Dresden will always have the resources to amaze, shock and touch the public. But apart form this museum’s compelling content, many can simply rejoice of its fascinating architecture. It is the case of Architecture Photographer, Bruno Helbling, who has captured the beauty of this imposing museum. Having been on an intense photography life course since 1995 in Zurich, firstly as a student and then assisting various photographers and working as an editorial and advertising photographer in Switzerland and worldwide before starting his own office in Zurich. His sharp eye for structures and line has caught this colossal building in its finest details. Putting aside the historical objects, his work demonstrates a pure and audacious space, a perfect blend of old and new with immaculate surfaces, charming stone remains and intriguing leaning walls. Both his photography and the architecture demonstrate beautiful minimalist landscapes.
Words by India Belce-Kennedy | Images courtesy by Bruno Helbling © www.helblingfotografie.ch | www.daniel-libeskind.com | www.mhmbw.de
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Images courtesy by Bruno Helbling Š www.helblingfotografie.ch | www.daniel-libeskind.com | www.mhmbw.de
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Images courtesy by Bruno Helbling Š www.helblingfotografie.ch | www.daniel-libeskind.com | www.mhmbw.de
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Architecture
ISLAMIC ART LOUVRE Article by INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY
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The opening in September 2012 of the new spaces dedicated to the collections of the Islamic art department is the successful realization of the biggest building site since the construction of the grand Louvre. Almost 3 000 works are now exposed, stemming from more of 1 000 years of history as well as of a territory covering more than three continents, from Europe to Asia. It was in 1893 that a section of the Muslim art was created at the Louvre Museum, and in 1905, a first room dedicated to the Islamic collection was accessible within the department of Art Objects. The collection then considerably grew under the impulsion of conservators and notably, Gaston Migeon. In 1932 the Asian Arts department was created, to which the Islamic collections were then attached. After the Second World War, an Islamic section was created within the department of Oriental antiquities while the works from the Far East were transferred to the Guimet Museum. The Islamic Arts section became its own department in 2003, the date of its creation. Its spaces were then closed to the public in 2008 in order to proceed to a meticulous inventory of its collection and a major operation to restore the works of art. Since September 2012, new spaces were delicately inserted between the restored facades in the Visconti courtyard in which the department resides. The building, created by architects Rudy Ricciotti and Mario Bellini, is a jewel; its golden glass cover and woven metallic structure undulates over the richest and most beautiful Islamic Art collections in the world. Supplied by more than 14 000 objects and admirably completed by the 3 500 works deposited form the Museum of Decorative Art – from which many are exclusive – the Islamic Art collection testifies of the richness and diversity of artistic creations of the Islamic lands. The history of the collections touches both taste and grand history. The first Islamic objects to arrive at the Louvre since the creation of the central arts Museum on the day after the Revolution, in 1793, are issued from royal collections. Among them, a prestigious basin of carved metal crafted in Syria in the 14th century and known as the “Baptisère de Saint-Louis”, as well as Ottoman jade cups having belonged to Louis XIV. From the last decade of the 19th century to the First World War, Paris became the most important host to Islamic art. Thanks to an audience of amateurs and collectors, the Museum has acquired a number of its best acquisitions. After the Louvre still benefits from large donations, for example, in 1922 from the Rotschild Collection, and in 1932, from M. ad Mrs Kechlin, such as the “Plat du Paon”. Later, in 2009, a donation of over 100 works as part of the Pantanella-Signorini donation, were also displayed, the most important collection since François Chandon de Briailles donated in 1955. The museography allows to raise a panorama of artistic works from the foundations of Islam from around the 7th century to the beginning of the 19th century: architectural elements, ivory objects, stone, metal, glass, ceramics, textiles, carpets and books… The two story open space further suggests the confrontation of different cultures and the permanent exchanges between regions of the Islamic world. While browsing through the collections, one notices the chronological order of the works, which allows a further appreciation of the homogeneity of Islamic art as well as the extreme variety of artistic productions within similar themes. The continuous politic of acquisition as well as the important donations of the Decorative Arts Museum have allowed to complete collections in the domains that are less represented, such as Maghreb of Moghol India, giving the opportunity to represent an even more complete panorama of the art from Islam’s last empires.
Informations taken from the Louvre website : www.louvre.fr/departments/arts-de-lislam
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Informations taken from the Louvre website : www.louvre.fr/departments/arts-de-lislam
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Bassin dit « baptistère de Saint-Louis » | Plat Samarkand | Images by H. Dubois ©
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Lion de Monz贸n | Images by H. Dubois 漏 Informations taken from the Louvre website : www.louvre.fr/departments/arts-de-lislam
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A BIT MORE OF NOTHING PLEASE Article by INDIA BELCE-KENNEDY
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After centuries of overabundant ornaments and sumptuous decorations filling up every available space of our houses, as though not to miss the chance to adorn any piece of wall, or to desperately garnish emptiness itself, the spaces we were so frantically clogging up finally punctured and claimed a space to breathe. In the early 19th century, some architects felt the need to rethink the way architecture looked like, felt like and what it meant. In the ‘80s, minimalism already defended itself throughout most artistic fields, notably in design and fashion. The roughness of bare simplicity became the best way to communicate the intricacy of a design, be it on clothes, posters or objects. Simple lines and few colours took the place of decorative patterns and excess textures. Before the turn of the century, architecture soon became the prime model for minimalism. The aspects of buildings were simplified to reveal their essential attributes while living spaces could also appreciate the absence of unnecessary cluttering. Each space exposed its innate function and allowed to enjoy the essence of materials and objects. These aesthetic values travelled from Japan, where minimalism does not need to be a recognized movement to be enjoyed. The appreciation of simplicity and empty space has always been part of Japanese culture and inseparably, of their home architecture. Their ‘microhabitats’, usually no bigger than 30 square meters, leave no space for a cluttered life, where anything without a specific purpose becomes an obstacle. They manage to unite the strict necessities for a convenient life while ingeniously making their homes visually attractive and comfortable. This raises the debate on architect Philip Johnson’s belief that the discipline is “the art of how to waste space.” It goes without saying that when one has nothing, there is no need to unclutter one’s interior. However, the question of accumulation concerns every layer of society. Be it rich or poor, we all hang on to relics of our past or present life. We all tend to want to possess more than we need and have trouble getting rid of our belongings. So we pile up, stack, collect, add on, hide in drawers and behind closets, turn our living rooms into a Christie’s exhibit ready for auction or regenerate a space into a
walk-in lumber room. Space is fundamental to architecture in the sense that spatial experience is dynamic and relies on what is not constructed. Our experience of architecture is firstly felt by the space we are able to move in within particular boundaries. The design of these boundaries is intrinsic to the good circulation in the space within or around a construction. Space enables us to live and circulate within a structure, but it also enables light and air to penetrate. One’s comfort criteria may differ according to how much space one needs or feels comfortable with, but instead of considering that space comes free, one must truly learn to live with it and appreciate the exquisite and essential presence of an empty volume. So in terms of pure architecture, is wasting space the idea of filling it with walls and stairs? If so, the Japanese have mastered the art of minimal architecture and how to blend empty space and basic structures to reach a perfect equilibrium. The result of such balance and delicate details sometimes resembles a tableau, composed of dramatic curves and perfect angles that meet to form a poetic ensemble, where a human presence almost seems out of place. Every texture, surface, and opening exists for itself and by itself. One’s consciousness of various elements and one’s self in space becomes undeniable and appreciable. For this reason, the composure that minimalism proposes, without going to its extreme, almost becomes indispensable to a comfortable home and good living, because it brings this serenity of mind and discharge from material accumulation of subsidiary ‘stuff ’. The idea that “less is more” suddenly makes more sense and generosity comes from the appreciation of fewer things that become more essential. Locally, a house designed for a South African Family in Erlenbach, Zurich, is a jewel of Swiss Minimal Architecture. Gus Wüstemann ‘s “ Two Verandas” show a real respect of space and light and the way one lives within four walls. The dramatically large empty spaces are beautified by the choice of noble materials. The openings towards the exterior play an important role in this perfectly balanced relationship between nature and manmade structures. The rigidity of the concrete walls and sincerity of the wood make of this place a perfect space to reflect and enjoy simplicity.
Words by India Belce-Kennedy | Images courtesy by Bruno Helbling © www.guswustemann.com | www.helblingfotografie.com
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Images courtesy by Bruno Helbling Š www.guswustemann.com | www.helblingfotografie.com
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Images courtesy by Bruno Helbling Š www.guswustemann.com | www.helblingfotografie.com
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Interview
AMAZONIAN MEMORY DANIEL SCHWEIZER & AURÉLIEN FONTANET
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Daniel Schweizer and Aurelien Fontanet’s archives of the Yanomami tribe in the Rio Branco.
What for: This project first saw the day to talk about forgotten people of the Amazon; Indian tribes that live in harmony with nature but that are conscious and apprehensive of the danger coming their way, from our world. We work towards preserving their environment, help them communicate and give them a voice. The western world lives with an abundance of ways of expression, which these people are excluded from, and they need us to carry their message, which is just as important as ours. These tribes are living in the heart of our planet, on a fertile earth, which is sacred to them and money to us. Their fragile environment and primary goods are being exploited and the tribes themselves are decimated by clandestine people.
How: This project helps these people by anchoring their existence through photography and film, giving them an opportunity to leave a trace and have their say. This creates precious relationships on both a short and long term. Two years ago, our first contact with the Yanonami tribe gave place to trust and communication, which then resulted in a collection of meaningful images. The tribe chief, Davi Copenawa, then accepted to accompany us back to Switzerland to the UN and also gave his presence in the FIFDH Festival (International Film Festival of Human Rights). This amazing opportunity allowed him to express himself and also gave us the chance to build a project, which is still in progress today. We are thus able to meet and live with other Tribes and collect cultural material and testimonials in order to set up an international exhibition. The aim is to represent images from their past, their present and their future, thanks to Swiss ethnologists, Rene Fuerst and Paul Lambert, who have gone there in the 50’s and 60’s, so we try to continue their work of archives.
Who for: This project concerns everyone. We try to be mediators and carry this subject for the world to see. It is an open work in progress, so artists’ interested in this thematic and wishing to collaborate are welcome. This project deserves to be developed further and get bigger. Not only is it cultural and informative but it can develop into a great artistic project.
Words by Daniel Schweizer & Aurélien Fontanet | Translated by India Belce-Kennedy
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Images by Daniel Schweizer & Aurélien Fontanet © | Translated by India Belce-Kennedy
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MADAGASCAR Article by TOM BESLEY
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Madagascar Part 1 Choosing Madagascar as a destination was inevitable. I had watched endless hours of documentaries about the endemic species that live on the island, a cornucopia of evolved oddities that was jettisoned 88 million years ago from what became the Indian mainland. For diversity - of all kinds - this was the place to go. The eastern side of the island drives up into a mountain range. As you go north along this range it turns from long valleys of rain-sculpted bouldered peaks and deep sun scorched valleys, to dense rain and cloud forest, sprawling outward to the sea until you hit the prosperous Sava Coast where most of the vanilla is grown. As you head further to the south-east, the land dries out, the forests turn to dry savannah, the wildlife becomes sparser and the land becomes threatening. Deserted stretches of rain-sharpened tsingy, stone sabres that guard cool, caved pools of water as jealously as the bloated baobabs and spiny tentacled ‘octopus trees’ on the surface store it in their trunks. Across the island there are all kinds of places to stay, ranging from spartan campsites and hostels, to world class eco-lodges of Masoala that provide luxury in some of the most beautiful and inaccessible parts of the island. The capital, Antananarivo, ranges over a crest of hills, on top of which sits the 17th-century Rova palace, a bulky cube with high, empty arched windows that looks out onto the city swarming below, past the replica ‘Hollywood’ sign that reads "Antanana-ivo", since the "r" has collapsed. Taxi drivers switch off their engines and coast down the sloping streets as they ferry you to markets, to gardens, to view points, to restaurants. There are the usual faux-western coffee shops and bars that you find in every capital city with a colonial hangover, there are five star hotels, there are endless street vendors. And there is also a lot of genuinely successful and homegrown eateries, serving everything from recognisably Madagascan fare such as green peppercorn steak, to the ‘bat on the wing’ that I nibbled on the last night, having chosen between this and the hedgehog that was also on special. From one end of the island to the other, tropical edibles grow in abundance - coffee, cinnamon, cloves, pineapples, bananas, mangoes, vanilla, ginger, tomatoes, coconuts, all kinds of greens - including ‘brèdes mafane’ (‘Acmella oleracea’), an oversized daisy that is stewed or chewed and has the effect of a tingly anaesthetic - and fields and fields of rice, ploughed by great Zebu bearing curved horns and great fatty humps to which their burden is yoked. Rice is the staple, consumed gluttonously by a people for whom the verb to eat, ‘mihinam-bary’, translates literally as ‘to eat rice’. The first stop after leaving Tana was Fianarantsoa. It was misty. We walked into town, past boys racing trailers down hills banked by trash mounds, past a gloomy football stadium to the train station, a proud colonial building with an enormous clock. We weren't taking the popular train ride to Manakara, instead heading to Amabalavao, a small town on the road to Andringitra National Park. When we arrived in Ambalavao we were welcomed into the office of a tour organiser, who insisted that there was no way of getting to the park without renting 4x4s and tents and porters and cooks. We declined, much to his protest. He laughed at us, dismissing us with certainty that we would not find a way into the park without him. So we walked up to the National Park’s office (tip: always go to the
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governmental parks offices, which are well run with fixed prices and honest, informed staff), where a visibly sick manager got out of bed to direct us to a taxi stand where we could find onward transport. We waved goodbye to the insulted tour operator, walked past an enormous church - lofty, out of place and all the better if it were broken down to make strong homes for the people who live there in substandard accomodation - and round the back of the local radio station to a truck stop. For next to nothing we hauled into a creaky pick up truck and rode the road to a small junction town. From here the only way in was on foot, a trek that took us well into the night. We arrived at the edge of the park, greeted by young porters who invited us for hot tea. We ate peanut brittle and rice, played guitar and collapsed in our tent. In the morning we were dropped (free of charge) at the base of the trail by a 4x4, driving over a stream flanked by trees and looking like Switzerland. Spending a few notes at a small stall selling wrapped sweets and dried locust, we took a route along hand carved water channels towards two sacred waterfalls, one male and one female. Local lore has it that a couple who spends a night sleeping by these waterfalls will conceive. The route was lined with medicinal trees: remedies for asthma, skin rash, lethargy. The wildlife throughout the route was sparse, but the landscape was epic. Walking up past the tree line we reached a plateau, above which soared immense bouldered peaks that had been scalloped and ribboned by millennia of downpours. Alone up here, the sun disappearing on the plains below, the temperature dropped. We huddled in a porter's shelter around a fire, cooking, drinking tea, singing songs. The cold was bitter and the night, long. In the morning we set off to cross the plateau. We walked for hours over bare rock, riddled with water channels and enormous boulders wedged in crevices. It was lunar, with eagles circling around the full moon that was visible overhead. The echoes of our cheers ricocheted before us. The valley sloped down suddenly, first into a dense palm forest, then red fields of grass peppered with bright colourful wild flowers and on along a river through glades of mango trees, across stepping stones and around a chorus of frogs calling the night in. A superb trek ended in a village, early on the morning of the third day. Lines of children danced to radios on their way into school, others made clay models of zebu on the river bank. We left a pair of binoculars with our guide - a keen ornithologist - who said he will treasure them until he dies. Before heading north, we visit Ranomafana, which means ‘hot water’ (useful to know when checking into hostels), as the area is home to a superbly managed nature reserve. Whereas Andringitra is rarely visited and therefore a spartan affair for independent travellers, Ranomafana is perfect for spontaneous drop-ins. There is a restaurant/campsite with shared dorms and an excellent locally run restaurant which serves plates of enormous crevette sourced from the crashing river that runs throughout this mountainous forest. As the parks are not opened over night, it makes sense to arrive early and buy a day pass. On the first night we joined a night walk and it soon became apparent both how rich this land is in wildlife, and how lucky we were. Walking along the main road that runs along the park boundaries, we spotted the diminutive brown mouse lemur (‘Microcebus rufus’), four species of chameleon, numerous chirping frogs, and most spectacular of all, the first of the ‘Uroplatus’ family, leaf-tailed geckos over a foot long whose markings and body shape are such perfect mimics of fallen leaves and tree branches that they are undetectable when sitting on a branch less than a metre away. Entering the park the next morning, we were already an hour behind the spotters who spread out into the park seeking lemurs. We ran into a family of golden bamboo lemur (‘Hapalemur aureus’), an
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endangered species whose discovery in 1986 triggered the establishment of the park in 1991. Breaking off from the main group, we followed the trackers’ whistles, bringing us to a set of red-bellied lemurs (‘Eulemur rubriventer’). They allowed us to stand near them as they slowly wandered through the thicket above our heads. They look like racoons in the trees, or red pandas. All lemurs are endemic to Madagascar and most are endangered. The second biggest of the lemurs, Milne-Edwards' sifaka (‘Propithecus edwardsi’), also lives in Ranomafana and we were delighted to spend nearly an hour standing next to a family group. They are enormous, bigger than a child, and happy to rest on branches just metres from us. They revealed themselves by barking, followed by a drawn out chrous of grumbling, which was a sign that a predator was nearby - likely a bird of prey as the main predator on the island is the fossa (‘Cryptoprocta ferox’), a badgery weaselcat that is shy and nocturnal. But they didn't seemed bothered by us. They look directly at you, through you. Picking wild raspberries from the trail, our guide drew giant banana leaves from the trees onto the floor in front of a roaring waterfall which turned turbines feeding hydroelectric power to miles around. We ate lunch, swam in the cool water and walked into town. Venturing to the edge of the park, the effects of deforestation were vivid. Whole valleys of trees stripped back to splintered scrub, bananas and pineapples growing everywhere, the cocooned air of the jungle evaporated into glaring sun. The mystery of being surrounded by a myriad of concealed species irremediably vanished. Travelling across the country, evidence of the deforestation is explicit and relentless. In a country rich in resources, the people are poor, living in a period of political uncertainty under an acting president who established his position with military backing, going on to overturn Malagasy laws in order to take the presidential position as the youngest in Madagascar's history. He is the latest phase in a turbulent political narrative that has taken lives and is memorialised by bombed bridges on the road into Antananarivo from the south, destroyed in attempts to siege the capital in years gone by. When conversations turned to politics on the long taxi-brusse journeys, those who were old enough to have learnt French when it was still taught in schools conveyed their exhaustion with the government's incapacity to support the people, with many working as farm labourer well past the age of 65. As an amateur naturalist I was appalled by the deforestation, but it soon became clear that this was the only wealth the people could hope to profit from. The Malagasy need farmland for crops and wood for fire to support their ever increasing population. The efforts of the local park wardens and NGOs is not enough to ward off the destruction of these wild places simply because with no alternatives, the people have no way of finding food, shelter and warmth. Political impotence combined with the inaccessibility of the wilderness makes it harder to protect, especially from the lucrative international trade in precious woods. In the northern regions of Masoala and Marojejy, precious woods have been extracted from the rainforest since colonial times; you can still walk along the wooden railed tracks that were used to haul wood inland to the coast. The demand from global markets for precious woods is as detrimental as the populations unrelenting slash and burn mentality, not least because it creates a financial incentive to destroy the forests, a much more devious and destructive motivation than just needing the basics to survive. Foreign money drives the exploitation of Madagascan resources across the island, be it crystal, precious woods or as we discovered on the Sava coast, gold and young women. To be continued in Part II on TRIBU Magazine second edition.
Words by Tom Besley
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Images by Tom Besley ©
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Images by Tom Besley ©
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Images by Tom Besley ©
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L'INGÉNIEUR EN SAVEUR FABIEN CONSTANTY & DAVID PINTO
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While some people become more and more demanding in every domain, seeking originality in everything from their wardrobe all the way to their plate, others work hard to find innovation where it seems absent, and the meeting of the two is a rather pleasant surprise. For those whose mojitos taste bland and parties look ‘has been’, here is a lesson that should please the buzzy bees of special event management. Founded in 2011 in Geneva, L’ingénieur en Saveur (The Flavour Engineer) has developed a brand new concept of ‘liquid catering’. Fresh and original cocktails with an innovative service adapted to all kinds of events allow a custom-made and visually artistic approach. Weddings, banquets, seminars and other celebrations inviting from anywhere between 30 to 1000 guests, can enjoy an exclusive tasting in a relation based on exchange and respect in search of creative solutions for any demanding clientele. The art of mixology as well as the selection of fresh products, space scenography and personalized service assure this creative duo to be totally innovative in terms of event planning. A cocktail should be a balance of flavours, subtlety, sensual delight and exoticism, an inspiration as much as a reflection of elegance for the tongue that tastes it. Well concocted, it is an invitation to escape and travel. So, through the magic of molecular cooking, these cocktails adorn themselves with sparks, sweet crackling surprises, exotic mysteries, spicy flavours, flower petals and colourful foams. This innovative technology finds its roots in basic bar products and techniques, but L’ingénieur en Saveur associates them with traditional methods used by chefs, and pushes the boundaries further in visual appreciation. Every recipe is thus invented and available to the client’s infinite demands and desires. First devoured by the eyes, these cocktails offer a unique and amazing tasting experience that accompanies perfectly the evening’s guests and theme.
Words by Fabien Constanty & David Pinto | Translated by India Belce-Kennedy L’ingénieur en Saveur | Case Postale 400 | 1225 Chêne-Bourg | Genève - Suisse www.ingenieurensaveur.ch
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Images by YCKARTS © | www.yckarts.com
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Images by YCKARTS © | www.yckarts.com
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SURFACE TO AIR Article by OLIVIA GORDON
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Surface to Air Store & Collection Review
Surface to Air is slowly taking over the fashion world little by little. They fall into the category of the minimalistic, modern and slightly ‘avant-garde’ houses that are revolutionizing our wardrobes everyday. The stylists know how to get that simple white tee shirt in the perfect cut and perfect fabric giving it the power to work it's way into any outfit, being elegant and chic or grunge and laid back. With the opening of their second store in Paris situated in the 7th district, we decided to go and review the new collection along with the new boutique.
The Collection What's in store this summer for the devoted clients of this brand? Well, what we love about Surface to Air is you always have a little bit of everything. We saw a lot of black, ironically enough, but then again if it's worn the right way during the summer then why not? Several leather jackets were on display and each different in their own way, giving the customer a difficult choice to make, for all were not only original but an excellent quality of leather (they're even taking a risk with white leather, and we must admit it worked). They released a group of silk printed articles along with that, which immediately made us think of the House of Holland collection we so daringly adored. We spotted several cable knit sweaters which seemed heavy for summer but once tried on, appeared to be quite light. What we loved was that these were structured knits, giving volume to the shoulders and slimming the rest of the body. Not to mention the quality of the knit was promising enough to know that the sweaters won't lose form after several visits in the washing machine. It was hard to choose from the several cute a girly dresses we saw hanging on the racks. Keeping them short and in very feminine cuts and ready to be thrown on for any occasion during the warm season.
The Boutique Like the other stores, this space is laid out over about 50m2, and decked out in marble. To try to differentiate this boutique from the very few around the world, Parisian architect Federico Massoto used vivid coloured marble. We're talking warm oranges and blues, which gave the retail space a hint of seventies, almost galactic, and a modern twist. Women's clothes are found at the front of the store, with two wall length racks on each side of the room. As we head towards the back we bump into the shoe display and then the classy men’s collection right before the cabins. What we didn't like? Entering the boutique, and receiving the worst excuse for a "bonjour" anyone has ever given, were the only words the salesman shared with us. Not even an: "are you looking for anything in particular? Would you like to see a size for that?" Nothing! For a label which is on such a good roll right now, it's a shame to have a fault where it's most important.
Words by Olivia Gordon | Surface to Air | 22, rue de Grenelle | 75007 Paris | Images by Surface to Air © | www.surfacetoair.com
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Surface to Air | 22, rue de Grenelle | 75007 Paris | Images by Surface to Air Š | www.surfacetoair.com
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BURGER EXTRA LOVE Article by OLIVIA GORDON
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LIFE -STYLE Ten years ago, for most of us, a hamburger was what you get when ordering an Happy Meal at McDonald’s. Today it’s almost impossible to find a new restaurant that doesn’t have a burger on the menu. How did this junk food symbol become the new must-eat? Let’s play with some ideas… Many have already discussed the regressive appeal of the burger. Clearly, this feature stands for a key point of its tantalizing attractiveness. As children, we all indulged ourselves in the delightful privilege of eating with our hands. For adults, removing the need for cutlery gives an immediate feeling of breaking the rules, which in itself provides a tiny (but precious) sensation of freedom to act like a little bandit – and getting away with it. We also know that ketchup is more of a candy than a sauce, and that there isn’t a single kid in the world who wouldn’t kill his sister to get an extra serving of fries. Above all, Sigmund Freud and Marcel Proust could both argue for its relevance as a memento of a childhood long-gone causing the irresistible appeal of the burger. Yes, when you push your teeth into a juicy steak, it digs into your sweetest child memories and give you a subconscious glimpse of this blessed times, when you were discovering the amazing McDonald’s toy under the kind and enthralled look of Mummy and Daddy. If nostalgia is a key factor in explaining our natural inclination towards burgers, this criterion doesn’t encompass all the reasons for its overwhelming success. Burgers come from the US (well, initially from Germany but as we all forget that, so who cares?) and that in itself matters. We live in a declining continent, and oftentimes the very evocation of the word “Europe” makes us think of something old, decaying and depressing. Obviously, no one says ” hey, I need to be rebooted with inspiring strong values: let’s have a burger!” but imagine that you’re about to throw a party, don’t you agree that a feta cheese salad followed by a paella would sound a little bit inappropriate for a festive dinner? A mini burger would! No matter where or how, sinking your teeth into a burger, you are taking a bite at a lifestyle. As we do for everything, we rate food according to its inner supposed attributes. Burgers remind us of our affiliation with the glorious Western civilisation, the one who doesn’t worry about tomorrow and can simply enjoy life. Our dear old burger benefits from yet another characteristics that drives its success: it’s not sophisticated, but easy going. Ordered in a suburb take-away or a five star hotels, its appearance is more or less the same. Reassuring in its predictability, the sweet-and-meaty bundle of juiciness soothes the starving you and makes for a fail-safe choice. It also perfectly masters the rules of soft declination: livened up with caviar, tweaked with a special truffle sauce, at the end of the day, it remains itself. All these attributes may explain why it became so trendy. As a hype must-eat, it can benefit from its position and make us forget all its downsides – and organic green smoothies. Consider the number of size-zero girls that you saw devouring one in an absolutely guiltless way, and you will agree that calories counting doesn’t apply in this case. The only thing that can threaten its supremacy is that – like every heavy trend – we might one day lose the thrill or all adopt a vegan diet. For now, however, this doesn’t seem to be on the radar… So, meanwhile, don’t miss to taste a good one there: Geneva: M Genève, 14 rue de la Rotisserie The Hamburger Foundation, Food Truck Paris: Coffe Parisien, 4 rue Princesse & 7 rue Gustave Courbet Lausanne: Holy Cow, 1 rue Marterey Beau Rivage Palace, 17 place du Port New York: The Burger Joint, 118 West 57th Street London: Lucky Chips, The Sebright Arms 31-35
Words by Catherine Verdonnet
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WE LOVE PARIS Article by OLIVIA GORDON
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Caves Joséphine Finding a wine bar in Paris is like trying to find the Eiffel Tower. It's pretty easy. But finding a unique and original one is where things get tricky. Now, for several weeks we have been reading about a new wine bar that opened up in the 11th that had to do with tattoos and wine. Those being two of our favourite words put in one sentence; we were practically already dancing on tables with joy.
Who is Joséphine? “A young Parisian woman delicate around the outside. Josephine loves wine and beautiful tattoos. Under her wise look when darkness believes, the kid unbridled, offers a new Eden, where rock 'n' roll and whiskey 15 years of age prevail.” Café Joséphine was inspired by Joséphine Baker, a Franco American singer, dancer, actress and avant-garde tattoo artists in the 1940s. As you enter the wine bar, you find yourself in a dim-lit art deco style wine bar. Behind the bar, wooden shelves cover the entire high rising wall with bottles stacked from top to bottom. It is a beautiful wine bar, but where’s the rock'n'roll part? Where is the whiskey? Then we saw people coming out of a discreet door on our left. As you turn left, you enter another space with a second bar that is more dedicated to cocktails, whiskey and rock'n'roll. Everything makes complete sense from there on about Joséphine's identity. Appearing as a simple chic wine bar at first sight, then it is as if you travel deeper into her ‘soul’ and you find a girl with a darker spirit. With dark green walls and more dim lighting there is also a small dance floor (with 2 rectangles of glass in the floor showing the giant cave under the bar) for when the ambiance picks up and the DJs spin music at the end of the week. After the dancefloor we find a little area with several places to sit which is perfect for groups of people to chitchat while sipping their drinks. A hidden smoking room makes a great plus.
What does Joséphine drink? The menu offers a vast selection of well-priced homemade cocktails; we tried the Joséphine, which is based with yellow chartreuse and absinthe. We could definitely say it's the drink that would take the edge off a very bad day. You'll also find many whiskeys from around the world, not to mention a few rare ones. And let's not forget your correct selections of beer. We had the chance of passing by on the night they were inaugurating their private tattoo parlour, Le Sphinx. People of all sorts were there drinking and dancing including the artists SM Bousille and Ludo Cannibale, who helped host the event. Because Joséphine has 2 sides to her personality, you’ll find a wide range of people form different ages there, from their early 20s to late 30s. You can find people having an aperitif in the front or letting down their hair next door with a good old whiskey at hand. This will definitely be one of the bars of the year and I can't wait to attend more of their events!
Words by Olivia Gordon | Joséphine | 25, rue Moret | 75011 Paris | Images by Café Joséphine © | cafe-josephine.tumblr.com
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Le Comptoir General Living in a city has just as many ups as it has downs. Let's start with the negatives: it gets crowded, it's constantly a fast moving environment, it’s polluted - the list goes on. But as for the positives, there are constantly things to be discovered, and there's always a place that suits your taste. Paris has taught me to never judge something from the exterior because you never know what lies behind the door. Literally. When a friend told me to meet him at Le Comtoir General, I immediately thought it to be just another bar in Paris, same as the others. Following the gaps to the address in Canal St Martin, we arrived at a big black gate and I immediately thought this couldn't be it, it looked like a driveway. Alas, I stood corrected for just in front of the gate were 2 bouncers and a few people lined up along the wall waiting. Anxious to see what the fuss about this place was, we got in line and waited a short 5 minutes until they let us in. At the first sight of the entrance, you think you're going to an underground strip club, for after the black gate you walk down (just what it appeared to be hiding) a driveway. At the end of the driveway is a small building with a neon sign hanging on the façade. As you enter you are literally transported out of Paris. I don't know where exactly to, but definitely nothing close to any other type of bar we've been to. Le Comptoir is a multifunctioning establishment, or in other words, initially a culture centre, but foremost a cocktail bar and restaurant. The eclectic and exotic decor evokes that statement, like the entrance hall, which reminds of an old hotel from a movie in the 1920s. There's a vintage shop, library, an African hair salon, greenery all around, there's even a witchcraft cabinet, and an exotic garden. There are constant surprises hidden in little corners making it impossible to not run around like little children in amazement. They work hand in hand with curators from the art agency SECOUSSE to correctly preserve all the precious items. Their weekly programmes consist of movie projections from Monday starting at 18H30 and what they like to call ‘African Sundays’, where they host a brunch starting at 11H30 to 16h. What's an even bigger catch about this place is that it's an ecological space, too. All rain water (because there is definitely enough of that in Paris) is collected then reused, and all the proceeds of events that are held there go to foundations. Let's not forget the recycled furniture they use to give the decoration the all-around vintage vibe. To elaborate on the shops they have installed inside, the book shop is in fact for Biblioteques Sans Frontieres, which is a leading charity fighting against world poverty and on the mezzanine, there's also a local Radio Shop that sells cds, vinyls and dvds. It's great to see a place contributing to good causes to help people around the world, and these guys seem to know exactly how to get more people involved. Whether you're meeting your friends for an African beer or mojito, or simply came just to escape the hard and fast moving city of Paris, Le Comptoir General is open to everyone from Monday to Sunday.
Words by Olivia Gordon | Le Comptoir Général | 80, quai de Jemmapes | 75010 Paris | Images by Comptoir Général © | www.lecomptoirgeneral.com
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LIFE -STYLE
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WELCOME TO THE LITERARY 240 - TRIBU MAGAZINE
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WORLD OF TRIBU JOURNALS FROM MY FABULOUS, TROUBLED YOUTH WILL KITSON POETRY SECTION
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JOURNALS FROM MY FABULOUS, TROUBLED YOUTH Story by ENA MARTINOVIC ©
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In the perfect life I had, it was always me who didn’t make sense. Despite, or maybe just because of the near-perfection of everything around my silver-slippered life, I felt a strange attraction to everything odd and broken. The forced, stiff attempts at perfection my family represented made me itch with discomfort. I revelled in the beauty of my own everything, but I was bored with the one-sidedness of it all. I wanted a crazy complexity of senses stimulating me allover to a full-blown explosion of sensory overload. I wanted insane, filthy views from my perfect room, a desert of strawberries and dirt served to me after lunch, the smell of burnt rubber bothering me when I sat in the drawing room; I wanted to be wedged between street urchins and crazies preaching World’s end, and stand pretty in my Jimmy Choo boots contemplating whether they knew something I didn’t. Knowing I was somehow perverse really set me free. I was a freak, an improbable and completely offbeat lone rider in the insipid world of my family’s quail-eating, tea-sipping Victorian play of a life. I found the irony of this all genius! Next to a bunch of belowaverage brats, a line of vain, pretty people with little to say and even less on their minds, who just fluffed their feathers and yapped with no sense or order – it was I who made no sense. And then I came up with it. I had this fantasy, you see, being snatched away by Kidnapper Man. Someone to take me away from my world and rip my heart apart with passion and molest every last shred of innocence out of me with the sheer intensity of his love. But it wasn't as easy as I'd thought. As my teenage years kicked off, between homework, drug experiments and all the useless extracurricular, I kept working on getting kidnapped. Very soon I began to realize just how much it took for a kidnapper to act, and how much I would have to rely on destiny to send someone really up to it my way. I was, however, going to be fully prepared for his coming, and so I worked on myself continuously. I was already young and stunning, but I needed more; a little somethingsomething that would set me apart and make me the most kidnappable girl in history. I experimented with different ways of being. I refused to have my youth be as wasted as my childhood – a soppy cupcake of a life with mildew catching on its strychnine sweetness – and so I threw myself into random characters that appealed to me, the power of transformation becoming motif in my little life. Like Thumbelina who born out of a barleycorn flower, one morning I uncovered my duvet and jumped out of my pajamas ready to get into character – a dreamy-eyed, pout-lipped, dark and gloomy vixen – worlds away from the troop of big babies my boarding school buddies were. As much as I tried, in my daily life I could change nothing, there were no dark corners to slip into and disappear, and I was way too outnumbered by normal kids to in any way attract an episode of excitement – as if they never read books or listened to music, and had no clue you had to constantly change everything about yourself to matter. I had an instant passion for the nighttime – it was just, I guess, how I was. I knew the dangerous hours concealed the most dangerous men, they steered clear from daylight, it was so unforgiving to frown lines anyway, and so nothing that happened in the day could ever really matter in my pursuit of their perfect wickedness. I sailed through the long portions of daytime with the detachment of an autistic genius, and lived for after-school hours when my peers were deep in their teenage drama, when I slipped out of sight and into the night. I had never found darkness scary, rather than frighten me, it provided shelter, letting me hide in plain sight and all that. Come nightfall and my eyes widened and my heart pounded wildly; behind my boarding school walls I cut off my jeans and smudged black eyeliner until I looked like I’d never been to bed. I posed in front of the mirror in full makeup, took off my underwear and squeezed my breasts like I hoped a stranger would, they were cold and hard under the mesh fabric and I made a mental note to arch my back when groped as not to appear dead. In the night I skipped over the school’s fences and slipped my feet into something expensive and overly-heeled, heading out to wherever I thought mischief would await; and on the street I was just an outline of a
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pretty young thing, a leather jacket and legs, about as anonymous as it gets. The prospect of late-night taxis with dirty velvet seats made me sexually aroused and – sneaking out to play under the stars in the sky – my head spun with excitement. It was all about dingy clubs and sleazy cocktails, waitresses and crumpled bills, hands of strangers oh-so-wayward leaving fingerprints on my leather corset, smiling dirtily, not a clue what they were up against. I was just exploring everything, really, dangerous in my fearlessness, ready to kill and be killed in the pursuit of experience. I was fifteen and I was a Soft Cell song; nothing could surprise me or catch me off guard, and I didn’t bat an eyelash or break a crinkle in my smile as my armpits surprised me with cold sweat after the first bump of cocaine I ever had. Laughing loudly at some monster’s nonsense jokes, I took another hit and ran off – chasing after miracles down some ally where everything goes. The city I was living in had no underground scene to speak of, and I needed somewhere to start, somewhere more promising than third-rate drug dealers who drank sugar-free mojitos. Right after my sixteenth birthday, after enough red lipstick bleeding with vodka shots, I decided to delve into a basic slut persona to see where that would take me. In the city of pot-bellied money pigs, I flirted with every older man I saw, and eventually picked a random one to have a proper mini-fling with. He was a married Gulf impresario I met through some complete strangers in a particularly seedy establishment – one where the booze is too bad to drink and people only come to talk dirty – and although I didn’t find him appealing or anything, he had some sort of pathetic sexiness behind his showman façade, or maybe he didn’t at all, but he drank whiskey and that was better than mojitos in a man (or a woman for that matter) and so I kissed him while he leaned on the sticky bar, and later got him naked in some five-star hotel suite, where he proved of no particular use to me either. Whatever my particular talent was, it worked on him like catnip on cougars. Next thing I knew, he cried love and showered me with disgusting adoration, and even shared his ridiculous dreams of leaving everything and starting over in Hong Kong as a documentary director with me as his muse. We would, he said, live on oysters and almond milk (DIS-GUS-TING), and he would install cameras all over our glass-doored penthouse to see my every move, and in an incentive to elope with him, the moron even offered to buy a girl to bathe and dress me (URGHH URGHHH PUKE) – and although what he proposed was definitely illegal and almost a kidnapping, seeing him deliver the scenario with a thrilled twinkle in his eye made me hate him completely. He was no kidnapper, just a sad little pervert. After such a devastating revelation, I was very quickly bored of his muddy skin and his clingy fetishism and I hated the way his tongue felt fat and slimy like a giant sleepy slug when he kissed me. Once I ascertained I could push myself to do that, there were so many modes of existence left to explore – and so I moved on, dumping him via voicemail that threatened to report him to the police unless he left me alone forever and ever. After sending me a love letter full of poems, sketches and snapshots of his underimpressive anatomy (collectively, they made me vomit in my own mouth with disgust) he disappeared into some grimy hole, where he shifted his devotion to Johnny Walker and underage prostitutes, until – as the paper reported one day or another – he was found hanging like a chunk of stale ham with his Hermes belt around his neck and his penis in his hand. Overall, I think it was pretty lucky I missed out on that one. Teenage Thumbelina then moved on to greener pastures. Next on my repertoire was a more esoteric persona, a smoky eyed skeleton obsessed with film, photography and fake heroin (I was too scared to take the real kind), and so I ran off to Berlin to smoke handrolled cigarettes and have deep discussions with androgynously dressed twentysomethings who took themselves to be the Messiahs of the art world. This came to an abrupt end after a physical altercation with a misogynist freckled dramaturge called Lars over the importance of post-Balanchine ballet, who responded to my punch in his nose by spitting blood and saying he had a rare strain of Lithuanian hepatitis and shouldn’t be
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beaten; which, of course, sent me running in a frenzy. Although the whole episode turned into a bit of a nightmare, I am happy to report that was back in my boarding school spa (all kinds of hepatitis-free) before my boarding school’s militia managed to send someone to Berlin to fetch me. I soon morphed into a more socially acceptable horse fanatic and fell head over heels for a polo player whose padron was my Colombian roommate’s father, after which, in my penultimate underage winter, I explored being more God-like and joined an evangelical charity, spending my free evenings sowing jute bags and vowing to join a mission in Ethiopia as soon as I turned eighteen. All these teenage experiments were as short-lived as they were absurd, and although I jumped enthusiastically into each, none of them meant anything to me. Each time I reinvented myself, the experience would fail to deliver anything but annoyance or a blaring hangover, and in between these cockamamie episodes I would go back to living in the same-old self-imposed limbo where no one and nothing was allowed to matter while I waited to make my copperfieldesque escape from that essay-writing, triple-pirouetting hell with the mysterious man known only as The Kidnapper. In the promenade of people I came across on my exploits, some I despised, some I aspired to resemble, but I studied them all to bits. It was the start of a decade long study in anthropology, something that has now, when I can do nothing but remember, become my life’s unwritten work. In order to find my kidnapper, I needed to understand everyone who would not be that, to decode people and give them labels in my personal filing system. And yes, my dears, I still took inked down purple notes in my organizer. The banalities of like take on a higher meaning on paper; written down, they become almost bearable… If I could write, my darlings, or just talk to someone, instead of this never-ending coma-life, there would be no stopping me. But let’s get back to how I progressed along the path that made me slide off the disco ball and end up telling you this, journaling my fabulous, troubled youth, my darlings. In my teenage audacity, I eventually decided to hide in plain sight and transform into what everyone (from my hairdresser to Grandmamma) expected me to be, a fabulous junior glamazon, one of those Eurogirls with super long arms, editorial-worthy dresses and unusual names; all youth and relevance and beautiful hair. It gutted me terribly to have to succumb to that, trot around like an airhead in ostrich feathers and make friends with shoe designers and air-kiss; it was all about tweeting nonsense and Italian Vogue, smiling under headlines like DIOR Galore, and telling people to tell you more when you wanted them to shut up and die. And so, there I was, yelling “bring on the spotlights” and working the room, having no room for darkness or mystery at all, in the midst of a bunch of career sluts, glamorous junkies and faux artistes telling seventeen year olds they were the most fabulous thing that happened since liquid Xanax. In my defense, I knew very well it would be perfect bait for the kidnapper, and once he got close to me, it wouldn’t matter anyway, not what we did or what we thought or who we were before we met. There were more Fashion Week invites arriving to my boarding school than to an Asian Vogue, and as the boarding school crowd ripened into couture-wearing adults, I snapped my fingers and hopped onto the bandwagon of these happy campers. We were all big kids with expensive teeth, barely out from our braces into our skinny jeans and SUVs. Gorgeous smiles, mouths full of big words coming out of even bigger heads, nearly grown up and hopelessly, endlessly clueless. Like luxe gypsies, we trotted around the world feeling to cool to breathe, doing all the hotspots and ending up in fashion blogs, tilting our golden-locked heads together whenever a camera snapped. We acted elusive in daylight (mostly, we studied for our IB finals, unless ambitious mothers made us do Vanity Fair family spreads) but come nightfall, we went all out. Home-delivered it- dresses, our first names listed V-V-VIP in all the latest clubs, net-jet weekends in Paris where we improvised photoshoots double-parked on the Champs-Elysees when we stopped to have our post-disco snacks, all the lesser kids just dying to be us. When things got really boring
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we went to the Grand Prix and film festivals to revel in euphoria and our parents’ money, each brat doing its own victory dance, warding off some personal trauma or the potential of their future irrelevance. Boys in white jeans and slicked-back hair, maneuvering six-liter vodka bottles and jeroboams, shouting out The World Is Mine or some other David Guetta nonsense; girls jumping on the marquee like some pornographic monkeys, flashing our underwear and pretending we didn’t care about the state of our hair, jealously eyeing our table so no anonymous girl or supermodel dare infiltrate in the chaos of disco euphoria; ever-so-mindful of the little coke kits in our Balenciaga bags that just replaced our Polly Pocket Lockets. Sometimes we went overboard and woke up next to strangers, or snorted bad drugs off of bathroom floors, ending up stuck with coke-induced diarrhea in the bathroom with no toilet roll. Clubbing was messy but everything was better than growing up. It was kind of cute really, how we misbehaved but kept our faces pretty, there was always someone to tell me if I had lipstick on my teeth or if my current toyboy was stepping out on me with a Moldovan model who didn’t even dye her hair; in some disco-Borg way we took care of each other, making sure we all did the same thing, as if boarding school made us believe we could get away with anything, just as long as the naughty business in question was being done en groupe. For me, it wasn’t about belonging to this ridiculous rat pack of celebrated brats, I found the group mentality as revolting as it was unnatural, but the whole Social Me was, as means to a whole different end, all very intentional. Were it not for my ulterior motives, I wouldn’t have bothered with the “golden youth” lifestyle really, I never liked any of the girls I was supposed to be friends with, and I was hardly ever attracted to a boy from our group, they were all about pompousness and hair gel, wore way too much bad perfume and just embarrassed themselves with those orange tans. All I really wanted was to finally get my ass snatched by a very grown-up villain and have a life, and I figured having my photo taken looking stupid at fashion shows only increased my kidnappage worth. While I danced on tables in four-figure shoes and experimented with personas as other girls did with green eyeliner, people pushed and shoved and elbowed their way to a bit of my attention. The impenetrable electric wall around me attracted and then burned them alive like flies, because there was nothing I could give – I was already truly, madly, deeply in love with the man I was waiting to meet. At parties, my übercool friends celebrated me as the Next Young It Thing by, child prodigy artists and stylists du jour loved the pretty young thing that I was, reveling in every piece of vodka-fuelled nonsense that came rolling of my mouth. Very soon it became quite tiresome and I feared I was losing focus. I was rapidly approaching my late-teens, time to get kidnapped was running out (I feared no one would want to snatch a twentysomething year old cow) and my insides were in a constant knot of expectation of the Messiah lover to come and take me away. Time and time again I found myself over-stimulated and under-amused, faced with the deafening despair of ennui and the oh-so-familiar noise of my brain yelling IDONTWANTTHIS, and there I would be, wearing some tiny cocktail dress embroidered with ten pounds of plume d’autruche, my bare legs folded on the floor under me, shoving things up my nose and licking strangers’ fingers on other stranger’s living room floors, and clenching, like when I was little, some fabulous fur at my chest, that failed, as always, to provide any comfort for the bleeding open wound that was my life. Chain smoking, trash talking, I was a prisoner of my own master plan, a hostage in the drugged-up drama of some after party, all the while knowing I did not care in the slightest about anything or anyone at all, praying for my kidnapper to knock the door down and pull me by the hair and take me out of there, and for my life’s work and pain and suffering to be forever over. In any case, everything that happened in my wasted glittery youth comes very handy now that I am comatose. It isn’t being still that I mind the most. You stand still to have
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your pictures taken, sit still while your grandmamma lectures you on the importance of brushing your hair five thousand times a month, sit quietly in class while a mediocre teacher elaborates what F. Scott really intended with the character of Gloria, and, more pleasantly, lay very still when you have your volcanic-ash facial. So it really isn’t the stillness I hate, but the predictability of the plot that gets to me – in movies, books and life – especially the pathetic excuse for a life that this coma thing is. Nothing ever happens, except for an occasional itch I cannot scratch, or a mini drama among the hospital staff when my blood pressure is high or low or something else fails, and even though the memories seem fake now, when you wake up and go to sleep with the smell of floor sanitizer and hydrogen peroxide around you day in and out, you cling onto them for dear life. Now there, let’s not get melodramatic just yet... Only a few years ago, there I was, alive and kicking as the resident princess of Europe’s Wonderland, self-taught at faking who I was. Waking up on the morning of my eighteenth birthday – finally a grown up, free to pack up and leave my school, leave Europe and go to Mars – I opened my eyes to the reality as grey as my bedroom ceiling. Like a prisoner after a ten-year sentence I was ashamed to admit that I felt safer on the inside, and yet I so longed to break free. I got up and looked out the window for a clue, something to tell me what to do with myself now that I was unshackled, but as it happens in poncy boarding schools, of all the clues in the world none were parked under my window, just a pack of girls dragging themselves to lacrosse practice, still sleepy in white-and-blue jerseys as they treaded the dark green lawn. In the air of the morning silence, I could do nothing but breathe in out in and face the shameful truth that all my kidnapper pursuits had resulted in absof***inglutely nothing. I hope you never know how lonely it can get, and how much it can hurt to desperately need someone, even if you, like Eighteen Year-Old Me, have everything. (If you ever do, feel like that I mean, the sadness butchering you with a dull cold knife, and your insides crushing down from the weight of your nothingness, I just hope you don’t cry, because tears only ever give you puffiness.) In any case, back in my room, my roommate was fast asleep all over her school books, her box of Ritalin lay empty on the floor, the sight of her dumb young face sticking out from under the duvet all screwed up with sleep and those things and clothes everywhere made me want to jump out the window and die, brains scattered all over the lawn and everything, grayish bones protruding out of pierce white skin and all that, because this life, I thought, was all one big fat nothing. I was full of age and still stuck where my mother had dumped me almost a decade ago and it made me so furious I could kick and scream and kill and cry, and I thought “I’ll get back at you, I will you show you all,” and I clenched my fists so hard my nails bled and I puffed like an angry hog until I ran out of breath. I was – despite of everything I tried, and to my own terrible shame and misery still just one big baby. And so I didn’t cry or mope around, and instead, for the remaining few months of my scholastic sentence, I parked in front of the mirror and practiced looks. The Dreamy was my favorite, eyes kind of closed and my head tilted sideways to show off my good profile (the left one for melancholy, the right one to show anger); then there was The Sultry that was pretty good, mouth slightly ajar and a diagonal, upward glance, stiff face, you get the picture. Over and over I’d look at my face in all kinds of light, it was so important to know it when I knew nothing else, it was my only certainty, and in every second I knew I could control what state of being I was emitting. I needed to keep ahead of the game of my stupid empty life, I needed to keep on acting, and faces were great once I knew how to use them, every time I felt so alone I could be erased into oblivion, I made a face and held the reigns over whom I was playing at the moment. And that day, my first grown up birthday – right before I got what I wanted and had my heart and soul roughed up enough to actually become someone – I was just that, a collection of well-practiced faces feigning emotion, and a crazy, untamable hunger for the unknown.
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WILL KITSON Interview by ALICE BRACE
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LITE -RARY
Paris-based writer Will Kitson talks to TRIBU about the creative writing process
Where does an idea come from? Well, it’s such an individual process. One of my old tutors had this collection of postcards and if he was starved for an idea, he would just flick through them. For me, I never sit down in front of my laptop with no idea of what I’m going to be doing. I always have the concept before I start working on it. Where does that come from? I have no idea. Something just clicks in my mind and I can’t get rid of it. I like to start from a very strong point and then I feel I’m ready to begin; a lot of things which I write change dramatically from the beginning to the final product, but I certainly like to have very strong images of the main characters and of the landscape in a cinematographic sense. I’m not rigid with it, it’s very malleable.
How does that idea become a concept for a story? You get to this point where you form a dialogue between two things you’ve experienced and that becomes interesting. This is where my own technique comes into play; I let that dialogue simmer. I don’t like to let it take control of me. I sit back and have a think about it. You get another experience which comes within the dialogue, and another and another and you get this kind of nexus. Then you’ve got to put it in a story format. ‘Hollow Streets’ is a good example of this – I was reading a lot of dystopian texts about nature and the idea of the city as an experiment, I had just been to this lecture about these failed utopian cities and it interested me. Then I started thinking about my hometown, Bath, and about the people who live there. You get some people who left, but the experiences of the ones who stayed seem to be quite recurring. So I had these two things in my mind: these abandoned, purpose-built cities, connected with the cyclical nature of staying in one place, and both fused. It was just subconsciously going on and interesting me, but then I got really hooked into it when I had these images in my mind of streets littered with possessions. Not dirty streets, more like they had been left with a sense of urgency, like an abandoned city, something
Dali-esque. That hooked me in and it took about four months before I got to a point where I thought I need to put this into something tangible. That’s the process I always go through when I write. If it’s still interesting me after four months, or around that, it’s probably worth writing. If I’m bored of it after a month and I’ve forgotten about it then there’s probably a reason for that.
After this simmering process, how do you translate that concept to the written word? The simmering is just about having the ideas. You can still have the ideas exploding but have no idea what you’re going to write. You’ve got to make it into a form which is compelling and inspiring to other people. I wait until I know the first paragraph is absolutely right for setting the mood for the rest of the piece. This can take a long time. The first paragraph for me is like a jumpstart, in the sense that it gets me into the writing process. You get the first paragraph out and you’ve literally got ink on the page: it’s got flavour all of a sudden. It’s turned from something which is quite abstract, to being on paper, and it’s a significant leap. So that’s why I spend so long trying to get that right; I have to be happy with it, so I can draw that energy through the rest of the story. That’s the reason the first paragraph is rarely altered throughout all the drafts, not out of obstinacy, for me it should be perfect before I put it onto paper.
How do you know when you’re ready to begin? At the very beginning, like I said, it’s more of a subconscious thing going on, but when it reaches that critical mass, it becomes difficult to focus on anything else. It just kind of screams at you to be written, that’s when you know. If you hit a blank point, is it something you feel you can skip over and come back to? Generally it halts the process. You’ll get a thousand words written then suddenly nothing’s working. I always try to cross those bridges when I come to them, but if it’s something which isn’t a crucial, pivotal moment, and there’s a burning desire to get somewhere else, then I’ll skip it. But I don’t like to do that. The big problems are when you feel you can’t go on anymore and you think
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get into that frame of mind and it’s difficult. We exist in a quotidian life. We’re not dealing with a mathematical equation here; we’re dealing with a feeling. I have to get back into that mode of thinking, feel that same feeling again, before I can start extending it.
How do you know when you’ve reached the end? ‘why don’t you just chuck it out the window’. There’s no easy way to go around it. I don’t think there’s any ‘onesize-fits-all’ solution, you have to come up with a unique way of dealing with that specific problem. For instance with ‘Hollow Streets’ I wrote the last half and read it back and I knew there was something very wrong about it, especially with this character Rebecca. I was in full swing with the story, I wanted to push it forward and I wanted to bring in Rebecca, but I didn’t actually know her as well as my other characters. I didn’t know what to do because I’d already written it. That’s one of the most frustrating things about being a writer, when you’ve already written something and you have to go back and change it, especially when it is something as deeply ingrained as the essence of a character. It makes the whole thing wrong. I have to know what’s going on beneath the surface – all the characters that I write have a life outside of the story, they weren’t born into the story. No one exists as an extra in someone else’s life. There’s something called the Proustian Analysis, which is a series of questions which you ask a character: some are very obvious, some are seemingly boring like “what’s in your pocket?”. It’s where the individual personality comes into it. With my characters, I want to be at a point where you could ask me anything about them and I could just answer easily. It’s about getting to know them. With Rebecca I knew I had to get a solution. I thought something’s not working here: I’ve got this 2-dimensional character who is halting everything, I don’t know anything about her, and I have to know because we find her in a very distraught position and it’s important to know how she got there, even though I didn’t write about it. So what I did was write a series of diary entries for her. In total I wrote about 2,000 words – nearly half the entire story.
When you come back to a piece, how do you get back into the writing mindset? I have to be prepared; I can’t turn it on and off. I have to know I’ve got time to get into it - it could take two minutes, but it could also take two hours. It depends on what mood you’re in, it’s incredibly variable. I always start by reading back from where I’ve left off and I always read aloud, usually standing up, it’s very intimate. That’s the difficulty with writing, because you’re writing the same thread and you have to get back into it. You have to
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To be honest, I’ve never written something which I’ve felt I can never come back to if I wanted. But I can’t stress enough that’s just me personally. There’s always something that you can change – even something as simple as a full stop for a semi colon. Interview by Alice Brace for TRIBU Magazine
An extract of ‘Hollow Streets’ from ‘Unreal City’, a collection of short stories by Will Kitson Oooooorin. Oriiiin. Orohrohroh-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin-yah. He waited for the blank white ceiling to respond. And again: Oriiiin. Oriiiin. Oriiiiiiiiiiiin-ee-nee-nee-nee-nyah. Nothing. Even the echoes have fled the city, he thought. Time, too, had left him behind. Become distant. It no longer pushed him forward and whinnied at his heels. Ever since ‘The Slight Flight’ – as they’d called it – time had become a commodity, a superfluity; the faces of watches had become stoic and meaningless, and the chiming of the big clock had become anachronistic. How long had he been lying on that hard grey carpet? MinutesDaysHoursMonthsWeeks? Answer: Unknown ... or even: Unimportant. Orin pulled himself to his feet and went to look at the streets because he had to do something. We always have to do something. Those streets were like moving pictures stuck in a loop, a skipping disc, playing the same infinitesimally small fragment of time over and over and over again. Old pianos, wicker chairs, and attic-space TVs sat lifelessly on the pavement and in the middle of the road like some 21st century Dali pastiche. How can a piano walk to the street corner on such weak little legs? Perhaps, in one last desperate plea, it had managed to make it to the car before being rejected in favour of the chrome bed-posts;
or maybe it had lulled the looters with its detuned cracking keys; anything to escape this timeless cell. And those who’d left – his family, friends, people he’d hated, people he’d never met, them lot just chasing hopeless dreams, grabbing at lost time, unknowingly rotting away in a brave new fake fucking world – stuck with him, their memories haunting his every thought. Orin longed for them to return and bring back time and make everything right again; and yet he despised them for abandoning him like some old discarded piece of past. He didn’t want to leave that town, those streets; of course it was dull but it was familiar and comfortable, like an incubator: tepidly warm, dimly lit, safe. And so he would wait for them to come back to him. Wait. An old armchair sat by the street sign, New Avenue. Wrinkling damp patches of grease stained the centre; probably belonged to the senile granddad of the family, no point in taking that along after the old geezer popped his clogs ... Is this a window or a mirror? New Avenue into Bright Street. Encky’s bookshop sat on the corner; and the alleyway next to it where Tombo fingered the girl from Haynes comp in year 9. Bright Street right-angles into Outlook View. Orin remembered getting into a fight with some boys from Culverhay. ‘12 of them, there were’, he’d told his mates, ‘all of them year 11s, tough as shit. One of them hit me right here on the cheek, and then another came at me. So I grabbed this iron pole and hit him hard on his shoulder, yeah, and he ran like fuckin’ nothing, he was scared shitless, y’ know. And then I hit another and another and they all fuckin’ legged it.’ Such memories decked the crumbling mortar and brick of the failed town with a beautiful iridescence, his imaginary puissance that carried his own happiness here and there. But those spectres were just like early morning fog (a fog which at that moment began to cluster and cling to the street-level), and he sifted through them towards his destination, Hope Cul-deSac: a dead-end littered with stacks of rotting bin-bags, masses of tins, cans, and cigarette-ends collected in the drain; and a mirror, lying in the gutter, which Orin stepped over on his way to make his dailyweeklymonthly(?) food-shop and stared at it, searching for his reflection. But because of the fog – that fog – he just looked like shadow. He stepped into Mr Brown’s, with its windows smashed in and all the fags and booze robbed. The word Cuntttt was splashed in dripping blue graffiti paint
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behind the till and followed Orin like lacklustre eyes as he drifted in and out and in-between the aisles. Beans and sausages last time, ravioli before, beans before, beans and sausages before, ravioli before. He picked up a tin of beans and habitually stood in front of the counter waiting for service, staring at the Cuntttt as it stared lazily back at him.
Was he happy in ghosting those hollow streets? Of course not. Every fragment of the day Orin wished for a catalyst of change, a propellant into the future, a gust of wind blown from Paradise. But his future lust was as vague as anything he had ever lusted after. It was a formless form, a shapeless shape, an apparition snugly lost in that fog. He had no idea what he was looking for. And so he had stayed. Unlike the others there had been no forceful pull or allure strong enough, brave enough, to drag him out of the fog. That fog, in front of him, which had thickened, which he normally avoided (sidestep Outlook View and detour around Prospect Place and through Chancery Gardens, extra fifteen minutes but at least you avoid the thick fog); the fog which right then started to exhort a rumbling sound from the past that he hadn’t heard since, a kind of self-propelling chuntering that fed off of its own reverberations until it was dangerously approaching the end of the fog, the fog which stared straight into Orin’s soul, which embodied that vicious rumbling until it was ready to burst free of the fog and all over Orin; and then a new sound alongside the chuntering rumble: frenetic, energised, angelic, storm-like, human voices! ‘TURN! TURN! TURN, YOU IDIOT-BOY!’ Orin, fixed to the spot, watched as some sort of car – assembled from the debris of the past (rusting hubcaps, steel roof sheets, TV antennas arbitrarily poking out at jaunty angles) – exploded from the fog, skidding from Orin’s death into Hope Cul-de-Sac’s brick-wall corner with an emphatic tumult of ripping metal and melting rubber and shattering glass. ‘YOU FIEND YOU TIT YOU FUH ...’ the words crashed into an eerie silence which sat uncomfortably upon the calamitous scene. Steam poured rapidly from the contraption’s hood and Orin thought he made contact with a pair of quick eyes in the rear-view mirror. And then that voice again: ‘Go see the damage, Cal.’
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GOD WAS AN INSOMNIAC Article by SAWYER GEBAUER
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This week I experienced a day at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The festival draws out new connections between art, culture, and technology with strong focus on contemporary culture and politics in the form of multi-media technologies. I met an interesting Portuguese bystander who is an inventor, or, what he likes to label himself as “a creator”. I was interested in the “why” factor of the inventing process and the mentality of being a “creator”. This is also a slow progress toward a confession of a man playing a failed god, and a double persona with a never ending quandary prototype of his own being. My trouble is insomnia. If I slept properly, I would have never created a thing…I like to think that God was an insomniac, toiling away for an eternity in the secure blanket of nothingness. Creating time to kill it. A lot can go wrong when you´re creating and don´t sleep for days on end, of course. I think we can see that in many of these exhibits now, the tiredness, the anguish, the pride and solidarity of it all. We create to be fully into our own minds, our own ideas, rationals and scenarios. It is like writing a book or directing a movie. There is always a hero, a damsel in distress, and a villain. The hero of course, is the final project and what it becomes. The damsel is the process, the beauty and desire for a happy ending, yet, always doubt. And the villain is yourself. The emotional darkness. The fear of failure and the angst for something more than oneself can handle. Sometimes it´s a romantic story. The other a tragedy…Few of the times a thriller, but usually it ends up a comedy. Inventing is an art form like anything else. Drawing. Painting. Photography. Sculpting. And most importantly, which many artists and inventors will never tell you, is that it´s a liars game. We steal and cheat. We are the worst kind of lovers. In-fact, thats why I´am here now. Not for the inspiration and interest of it all, but to see where the competition stands! I think every innovation from the light bulb to the hybrid car has been stolen in one way or another. Yet, that is the beauty of art. Where would we be now if we were not all thieves? The desire to relish our own beings? And it all started with dilapidated stick figures on walls of caves. The apple may be gone but there is always the core to eat when we are hungry… A question a creator must ask themselves is if what they are doing not only beneficial to himself, but to the people as well. Is the creation a disease or a cure? Sometimes you try your best to create the cure, but in the end, it results in nothing but chaos. E=mc2 is a probably a very prominent example…Can you imagine the feeling if you created the most astounding equation in the history of science, to help understand how the universe works and how we can help this race of ours, and yet, it goes
LITE -RARY on to making bombs and killing thousands? Ah, what creations we are…God must have been very tired. Yet, I guess the greatest part of creating is the beauty of the unknowing. I am older now I must admit. I am tired, and so is my mind. I am not ashamed to say that I have slowed down. It use to come so easily, like heel to toe. Smoke to ash. The stench lingers but there are no remains. I was one of the first men to have a solid prototype for a perpetual motion machine? I had two surface plates which was the driving source of the engine. And between these two surfaces you fill it with high pressure gas. And this high pressure air would create a force pushing apart these two surfaces. The force would then push these plates apart and provide the energy for the engine. But, it didn’t work because the FORCExDISTANCE. It violates the first law of thermodynamics. The French have it now, but I am not mad. As I referenced earlier, a liar cannot be angry at a thief. I do not believe I walk this earth in vain. Yet I wonder, is the realization that I may toil and writhe for the rest of my days an illusion? A reality? A lie? Or perhaps the dirty truth? These are yet more dilemmas we creators invent for ourselves. Will we get something in the nick of time? The time before mercy, or will it be too late? We invent because life is boring sometimes, like drawing cocks on our school table or the bathroom stall. We as humans already have a plan made. We know how it starts and we know how it will end. There is not much to fix besides evolve somehow, and that is nothing new. Creating is an actually physical means of writing a formula for your life. Perhaps it is purely a structural basis to live. It is a complex of living in the now and thinking hundreds of years into the future. Creating is a dangerous game because we are playing god, of course. I am not a religious man, but god is not exactly a metaphysical idea either. Purely a symbol of what we as humans will always desire, but never claim. Next to my dreams about being God, I also dream about being mad. When all is well, I feel like the most powerful being in the world, as if I have created the soil beneath our feet myself. And when I fail, I feel like the devil, and wish to abolish all the beautiful things into the eternal flames. I acknowledge that I am purely human trying to fight the truth that technology and innovation will out live me and all of us. Perhaps it will be our conqueror. But to me thats a beautiful thing. Wouldn’t you want to fall to something out of your own creation? Collapse on your own accord? Even though it was not intentional, it was possible to create something that can do such a horrible thing…Just like God himself, tired and bored in the secure blanket of nothingness.
Words by Sawyer Gebauer
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POETRY SECTION By ALICE BRACE Poeme by ALI PATT, CLEMENTINE VON RADICS and JOSEPH KNIGHT
In an age of micro-blogging, status-updating and hash-tagging, expression through traditional art forms is often overlooked. With the ability to share with any number of followers exactly what is on oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mind at any hour of the day or night, it seems that less people are investing time in creating poetry. But of course, with poetry being such an essential, human form of expression, there has bred a new generation of poets. Their contemporary style can only have been written in this decade as, much like the greats of yesteryear, they draw inspiration from their immediate surroundings and personal experiences, but in such a defined technological age, each stanza reads as a record of the times. The following is a selection of some prominent names in the contemporary poetry circles. Ali Patt, Clementine von Radics and Joseph Knight are based in London, Portland and Paris, respectively.
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Ali Patt Insomniac Without the Insomnia I know the itch of sleep in my skin all too well. Could draw you a map of my ceiling and the way the colours of the sunrise seep into it at 6 am. I’ve scanned the stars, back and forth, back and forth - storing galaxies in my mind’s eye. When midnight ghosts come out to play I hold their hands and float with them through misty death. I converse with the foxes under black shrouds and tap my fingers, waiting, waiting, to be spellbound with slumber, or for morning to join me in my wired tiredness. When she finally does, I drift off leaving the day to do its deeds. Hurricanes and Holly Bushes My loves tear the limbs off each other. But they never used to interfere with organs until you, lovely little hurricane, surged through holly bushes, amongst other things, and ripped out their roots, like they weren’t vital. Strewn across rubble and clothes tossed out in moments of dark passion, my holly bush has been left without heart. The Misfortune of the Rag Doll in Sawmill Springs They took her. They took her, and they shook her rag doll arms, her limp rag doll legs, ripped her rag doll stitches. When they were done, they left her for rag doll dead. Now her stuffing is yellowed. Most just sit and laugh or turn their noses up at the smell. She’s trying to pack her padding back in, but she lost her heart, and what’s the use without one?
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Clementine von Radics Something My Father Told Me The human heart is a beating muscle we evolved to build bone cages around. Don’t trust anyone keeps that on their sleeve.
Untitled He says “But darling, there are oceans between us” I say “you act like love can’t beat that. Like my arms won’t grow to reach you.
Untitled Mostly, the memories come to me the same way you did: Overpowering and Unwanted in the middle of the night and in my own bed.
Advice To Those Like Me, With Hearts Like Kindling Darlings, sometimes love will come to you like a fire to a forest. When it does, be braver than I was. Just leave. Take only what you can carry. No tears. No second thoughts. You have hands like tinder boxes, the smallest spark will kill you. Get in the car. Pour water on the maps. Avoid gas stations. Don’t look at the flames dancing in the rear view mirror. Go to new cities, climb on rooftops and slow dance with your coldest memories. Wallpaper your home with every dusty, desperate love letter you swore you’d never send. Find a stranger with sharp edges and uncharted hips. Press your stories into their skin and forget you ever knew his name. Just promise me you won’t think of burning or embers. Even when there is ash in your hair. Even when there is smoke in your mouth.
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Joseph Knight The Ecstatic Cult of Chaos Chaos, chaos - glorious chaos an illuminated path of destruction/ vomit Plump naked lovers performing unspeakable acts in public parks debauchery, chaos; wine, fucking, the sweetest grape is also sour the nature of experience is dependent on how we come to abolish normality. Love, wine sex are the fruits of Olympians, mystical connections to the heavens and ancient tokens of spirituality. Life should not be monotonous save that constant of death.
One More Midlands Poem I’ve been looking for romance but there is nowhere to cast my eye – Suburbia is relentless and endless from the stale canals to the sky. See, I was brought up in a cul-de-sac It’s affected my mindset and world view watching the cars turn around and never once bidding the driver adieu. My breath fogged the Window of my parents Midlands living room – My breath stained the window for it is the souls forlorn fumes.
Thoughts on Americans in Paris Paris is full of fresh-faced twenty something vixens on ‘vacation’ rebelling against twenty odd years of suburban America and Judeo / Christian / Middle Class ideals they suffered in the land of dreams where they romantised Paris in a dream that was in fact a false dream within a false dream. However; Conversations of Woody Allen’s early work and comparisons between Fante and Bukowski disrupt me as I think this poem through. The only thing worse than an uneducated American, is an educated on
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